At last a scintilla of truth breaks through the Israeli propaganda as CNN finally realise that the narrative they have been pushing is false. Rick Sanchez does well to dig the truth out and Jim Clancy is quick to try and get him back on to the Israeli narrative.
Of course, it is a narrative that completely ignores the siege of the people of Gaza.
Israel yesterday bombed two schools, which they knew the UN were using as refugee centres, killing more than forty people, including an entire family of seven young children.
The UN protested at a "complete absence of accountability" for the escalating number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying "the rule of the gun" had taken over. Doctors in Gaza said more than 40 people died, including children, in what appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.
Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood.
I watched Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, on Newsnight last night offer no apology for Israel's latest action, nor did he deny that they knew they were attacking schools, but rather he sought to put the blame on Hamas fighters who he said were firing from within the school compound. A UN spokesman denied that this was the case, although he did admit that there had been clashes between the IDF and Hamas in the area.The UN was particularly incensed over targeting of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with families as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaflet drops and loudspeakers. It said it had identified the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli military and provided GPS coordinates.
Israel accused Hamas of using civilians as cover, and said the Islamist group could stop the assault on Gaza by ending its rocket attacks on Israel.
Earlier in the day, Ging visited Gaza's hospital and was shocked at the scale of civilian casualties. "What you have in this hospital is the consequences of political failure and the complete absence of any accountability for actions that are being taken. It's the rule of the gun now, and it has to stop," he said.Even the Americans appear shocked:
The White House offered its first hint of concern at Israel's actions by calling on it to avoid civilian deaths. The president-elect, Barack Obama, broke his silence by saying he was "deeply concerned" about civilian casualties on both sides. He said he would have "plenty to say" about the crisis after his swearing in.It reminds me of the Israeli shelling of the UN compound in Qana, Lebanon, in 1996, when more than 100 people lost their lives. The difference is that on that occasion Israel expressed regret, which was not on display last night during Regev's interview with Paxman.
It really says a lot that the leader of a major British political party would go as far as Clegg has done and make this call. He is to be applauded for having the moral courage to speak out, a courage that Brown - like Blair before him - has notably lacked.Brown must also halt Britain's arms exports to Israel, and persuade our EU counterparts to do the same. The government's own figures show Britain is selling more and more weapons to Israel, despite the questions about the country's use of force. In 2007, our government approved £6m of arms exports. In 2008, it licensed sales 12 times as fast: £20m in the first three months alone.
There is a strong case that, given the Gaza conflict, any military exports contravene EU licensing criteria. Reports, though denied, that Israel is using illegal cluster munitions and white phosphorus should heighten our caution. I want an immediate suspension of all arms exports from the EU, but if that cannot be secured, Brown must act unilaterally.
Politicians are, by their very nature, a mostly spineless bunch; but it is only when an outrage of this scale is greeted with their measured phrases and diplomatic tones that one realises just how out of touch with the rest of us they really are.What is amazing is that so many Western leaders, so many presidents and prime ministers and, I fear, so many editors and journalists, bought the old lie; that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties. "Israel makes every possible effort to avoid civilian casualties," yet another Israeli ambassador said only hours before the Gaza massacre. And every president and prime minister who repeated this mendacity as an excuse to avoid a ceasefire has the blood of last night's butchery on their hands. Had George Bush had the courage to demand an immediate ceasefire 48 hours earlier, those 40 civilians, the old and the women and children, would be alive.
What happened was not just shameful. It was a disgrace. Would war crime be too strong a description? For that is what we would call this atrocity if it had been committed by Hamas. So a war crime, I'm afraid, it was.
I think that Jeb would possibly be a better president than W - granting the fact that the bar we're measuring him against is a particularly low one - but the truth is that W has poisoned that particular well for the Bush family for decades to come.
Perhaps his father, like members of the Bush team and Bush himself, thinks history night one day exonerate the Frat president, but I seriously doubt this. Look, for instance at how his most loyal defenders list his achievements:
"History will show that President Bush was successful in protecting the homeland," says Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the only member of his original Cabinet who remains there.Most departing presidents can list things which they have done and claim them as their achievements; the Bush administration are asking to be remembered for things which didn't happen.
So, Franken has beaten Norm Coleman but Coleman is refusing to accept the result and vows to fight on.
This YouTube clip of how O'Reilly might take the news made me laugh.Democrat Al Franken won the recount of ballots for a Minnesota senate seat Monday but the contentious battle was set to drag on for weeks or months as his Republican rival vowed to contest the results.
The legal battle will leave the seat empty and weaken the Democratic majority as president-elect Barack Obama works to implement a massive economic stimulus package.
Election officials certified the recount results which handed Franken victory with a margin of 225 votes out of nearly three million ballots cast in the November 4 election.
But Franken will not officially win the election until the legal battle is over and the governor and secretary of state issue an election certificate.
"That certificate will not be issued until after the conclusion of the election contest," secretary of state Mark Ritchie said in announcing the certified results.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that 50% of the casualties he is seeing are women and children. He says that anyone who says that Israel is fighting "a clean war against another army is lying. This is an all out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza. And we can prove that with the numbers."
The average age of a Gazan resident is 17. And lets not forget that the people of Gaza have nowhere to flee to. The borders are closed. They are literally living in an Israeli shooting range.
Let's begin by remembering that the Palestinians chose Hamas as their democratic representatives at the last election. That Israel and the US and Europe refused to accept that decision and that Israel - with the backing of the Bush administration - then started arming Fatah in the hope of encouraging civil war. Hamas then pre-emptively struck Fatah, which is how we arrive where we are now, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip. Indeed, as Vanity Fair set out in March of last year, the blame for how we arrived where we are now lies totally in the hands of the Bush administration.
Indeed, even David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative who resigned shortly after the coup in Gaza, laid the blame at the door of Bush and called him out on his hypocrisy.
“There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”And now, having told us that they invaded Gaza to stop rockets from being fired into Israel, after initially telling us that they intended to crush Hamas, they have now resorted to their initial war aim and removing Hamas from the equation is back at the top of the agenda.
There is, as Wurmser might put it, a "stunning disconnect" between the constant Israeli claim to have removed themselves from Gaza - with the dishonest implication that they are no longer that areas occupiers - and the zeal with which they seek to remove Hamas from the equation.Israeli intelligence and military officials are increasingly pushing for the assault on Gaza to continue until it assures the eventual downfall of Hamas amid assertions that the 10 days of military bombardment have crippled the Islamist party's ability to govern.
As the onslaught progresses, officials are more confident of "changing the equation" in Gaza and are predicting the collapse of the Hamas administration.
Livni's determination reflects a growing confidence in the upper echelons of the Israeli establishment that the assault will fatally damage the foundations of Hamas's control and, in time, drive it from power. Intelligence and military officials have told the cabinet that "not much" remains of the Hamas administration in Gaza and that its ability to take control again has been undermined by the destruction of a large part of the physical infrastructure of administration, including the parliament building and many government offices.So now the destruction of so many government buildings is explained. It was not because they felt that weapons were held there or that terrorists were squatting inside, it is to make sure that the governing of the strip is an impossibility by the time they have finished.
The intelligence services also told the cabinet that they believe the Israeli bombardment is turning Palestinian popular opinion against Hamas and that terms can be forced on the Islamist party that will further weaken its control.I simply don't believe that a people under the kind of bombardment Israel have inflicted on Gaza will feel anything but the deepest hatred for their attackers, which will mean that they identify even stronger with Hamas.
And here we have the glorious swansong for Bush's stated policy of importing democracy to the Middle East. Israel would like the party that the Palestinians chose as their democratic representatives to "submit" to the same people whom the Palestinians rejected at the last election.Hamas leaders have been assassinated and driven underground before, and the organisation has generally emerged fortified and more radical. Israel has also pursued these tactics in the past and failed to curb Hamas's influence or the rocket attacks. But whether or not the Israeli military and intelligence leaderships' claims to the cabinet are overstated, they reflect a strengthening intent to bring down Hamas.
Livni told the cabinet that a diplomatic agreement for a ceasefire should weaken Hamas politically. "This is not a matter of an isolated operation and every arrangement should advance the interests of the state of Israel vis-à-vis Hamas. There is no intention here of creating a diplomatic agreement with Hamas. We need diplomatic agreements against Hamas, and any agreement that weakens it is positive in our eyes," she said.
Israel wants foreign powers to impose terms on Hamas that would in effect require it to submit to the authority of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Authority, which was driven from the territory in bloody internal fighting two years ago.
Gary Younge covered this very subject in today's Guardian:
The trouble is that over the last seven years, the war on terror has been thoroughly discredited - not only morally, but militarily and strategically. Nobody listens to moderates, let alone to reason, when bombs are falling and people are dying. That is as true for the rockets that have killed a handful of Israelis as it is for the barrage of bombs and now tanks that have killed hundreds of Palestinians.I find the hypocrisy the Americans are displaying here quite breathtaking. Lets remember what they said about Russia after it responded when Georgia attacked South Ossetia. At that time McCain and others told us it didn't matter who started the war, but that Russian aggression was "disproportionate". And Georgia didn't merely fire a few dud rockets into South Ossetia - as some Palestinians have done to Israel - they invaded with an army and committed war crimes as they did so.
By erasing any prospect of negotiation, the violence did not weaken extremists but emboldened them. Israel may want to boost the moderate Fatah faction which governs the West Bank now. But Hamas's electoral rise was a direct result of the contempt the Israeli's showed them in the past.
And the question, asked by one reporter, asking if Israel was, "fighting back after years and years of absolute terror" seemed to utterly ignore the other - utterly valid - side of that same coin; are the people firing the rockets, "fighting back after over 40 years of brutal military occupation and eighteen months of an immoral siege carried out as deliberate policy on a civilian population?"Eyewitnesses have described how Georgian tanks fired directly into an apartment block and how civilians were shot at as they tried to escape the intense fighting.
Research by the organisation Human Rights Watch points to indiscriminate use of force by the Georgian military and the possible deliberate targeting of civilians.
Indiscriminate use of force is a violation of the Geneva Convention and serious violations are considered to be war crimes.
I understand Obama's line that the US has only one president at a time and that this explains his reluctance to speak out as Israeli forces enter the Gaza Strip, but this silence is now starting to hurt him.
Here in the UK Gordon Brown has actually called for a ceasefire but that didn't stop a wave of protest being addressed at Downing Street during Saturday's Rally for Gaza as Brown is perceived not to come out strongly enough against Israel's actions.But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama's detachment - and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush's strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush's bias or simply does not care.
The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising "the deafening silence from the Obama team" suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.
"People recall his campaign slogan of change and hoped that it would apply to the Palestinian situation," Jordanian analyst Labib Kamhawi told Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune. "So they look at his silence as a negative sign. They think he is condoning what happened in Gaza because he's not expressing any opinion."
It's quite extraordinary to hear an American politician talk with such honesty about the Israel/Palestine dispute as Ron Paul does here. He speaks of the Palestinians living "in a concentration camp" and of the Israelis being able to "turn off all the food and all the water" to the people of Palestine whenever they choose.
He also talks about the US accepting some of the "moral responsibility" for what's occurring and asks the larger question of why the US continually inserts itself into this dispute.
With so many others simply endlessly repeating tired Israeli talking points, Ron Paul at least tries to ask why the US is so obsessed with ensuring that one side in this dispute is so fervently supported no matter what actions they indulge in.
The Palestinian death toll yesterday passed the 500 mark as Israel continues it's assault on the Gaza Strip, an assault from which the world's press have been barred from witnessing. No reporters are being allowed in to watch what Israel is doing, despite Israel's Supreme Court on Friday demanding that Israel allow the press to enter the area.
It's hard to even talk about proportionality when Israel killed, "at least 40 more civilians, including children" yesterday alone.
One Israeli soldier was killed near Jabalya in the first hours of the invasion. A further 32 were injured. A total of five Israelis - three civilians and two soldiers - have been killed since last Saturday when the Israeli campaign began.And all this is occurring because Hamas refused to accept that a ceasefire should continue whilst the Israelis starve the Palestinians for daring to vote for them.
The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it's not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man's entire family, it's hard to imagine that doesn't give his colleagues at least a moment's pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions.That's simply horrendous. Leaving aside the attempt to dehumanise the enemy Israel is facing - "it's not clear that they are rational, at least not like us" - what we are witnessing here is an American journalist actually applauding the killing of innocents and hoping that Hamas take this as a lesson well learned about how far Israel is prepared to go.
There are few concepts more elastic and subject to exploitation than "Terrorism," the all-purpose justifying and fear-mongering term. But if it means anything, it means exactly the mindset which Goldfarb is expressing: slaughtering innocent civilians in order to "send a message," to "deter" political actors by making them fear that continuing on the same course will result in the deaths of civilians and -- best of all, from the Terrorist's perspective -- even their own children and other family members.Obviously not all of Israel's supporters are as indifferent to the deaths of innocents as Goldfarb is, but this does represent a new rejection of the proportionality argument. Some of Israel's more deluded supporters are now actually embracing the killing of innocents as a way to teach Hamas a lesson.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, said Israel would not accept a ceasefire. "Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it," he told a US television network.That's a very different war aim from the claimed one of simply stopping rocket fire into Israel, as even people like Peres are now openly stating that one of the aims of this war is to teach Hamas "a lesson".
The Bush presidency ends as most of it has been conducted, with the US vetoing any resolution which might stop Israel slaughtering Palestinians.
The United States thwarted an effort by Libya on Sunday to persuade the UN Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after Israel launched a ground invasion, diplomats said.No president has ever done more damage to America's reputation in the Middle East - and throughout the world - than this moron has done. For eight years he has always encouraged Israel to act as they please and - eight years on - all he has to show for it is the fact that Israel lost her first ever war on his watch.
Several council diplomats told reporters that the U.S. refusal to back a Libyan-drafted demand for an immediate truce at a closed-door emergency session had killed the initiative, since council statements must be passed unanimously.
It's nice to see Hanan Ashrawi on the Larry King show attempting to remind the American people of the fact that the illegal occupation is the underlying reason for the violence we are witnessing.
She also reminds people that it was Israel who broke the ceasefire - stylishly doing so on the night that Obama was elected whilst the rest of the world was looking the other way - and that Hamas, contrary to the claims Israel are making, actually offered to renew the ceasefire if Israel would only stop their inhumane siege of the people of Gaza.
Israel refused to do so. She is insisting on her right to starve the Palestinians for having the temerity to vote for Hamas.
And this assault on the people of Gaza for daring to elect Hamas was sanctioned, shamefully, at the highest levels.Perhaps crucial to the ceasefire's collapse were the differing views of what it was supposed to achieve. Israel regarded the truce as calm in return for calm. Hamas expected Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza that the latter said was a security response to the firing of Qassam rockets.
But Israel did not end the siege that was wrecking the economy and causing desperate shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Gazans concluded that the blockade was not so much about rocket attacks as punishment for voting for Hamas.
The US and Europe agreed to the measure on the principle that it would force the people of Gaza to rethink their support for Hamas. The logic was supposedly similar to the one that drove the sanctions applied to Iraq under Saddam Hussein through the 1990s: if Gaza’s civilians suffered enough, they would rise up against Hamas and install new leaders acceptable to Israel and the West.At a time when we are supposed to be "exporting democracy" all of our governments have played a shameful role in punishing the Palestinians because we did not like the democratic choice they made. That, much more than these pathetic rockets the Palestinians have fired, is the real reason why the Israelis are now pounding Gaza. (It also helps Livni at the polls if she can be seen to be battering Arabs on the TV.)
Yesterday I read this:
Polls also showed rising support for centrist parties, with significant jumps in the approval ratings for the Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, outgoing premier Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak. However, the right-wing Likud, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, still remains in the lead.So today we read this:
Israeli troops backed by helicopters advanced into Gaza today, a Palestinian witness and the Israeli army said, in the first ground action of an eight-day offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave.Public opinion in Israel was firmly behind the air strikes, but is more lukewarm about Olmert and Livni's latest vote winning tactic:
An opinion poll this week in the Haaretz newspaper showed support of 71 per cent among the public for continuing air strikes, while 21 per cent backed ground operations as well – the same number who supported a ceasefire.Keen as Olmert and Livni are to out prove themselves even more hawkish than Netanyahu in order to win the election, it would appear that the Israeli public remember the danger of employing ground troops from the war in Lebanon even as their leaders choose to forget in the hope of winning re-election.
The IDF Spokesperson's office issued a statement, emphasizing that this stage of the operation will further the goals of the eight-day offensive as voiced by the IDF until now: To strike a direct and hard blow against the Hamas while increasing the deterrent strength of the IDF, in order to bring about an improved and more stable security situation for residents of Southern Israel over the long term.An "improved security situation... over the long term". Could you set the bar any bloody lower?
The US, obviously, are offering the usual unconditional support for anything that Israel does, but protests are erupting throughout Europe at this latest Israeli assault on the people of Palestine with the British now adopting the same method of protest as the Iraqi journalist who had enough of listening to Bush.Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in European cities on Saturday against Israel's bombardment of Gaza, including protesters who hurled shoes at the tall iron gates outside the British prime minister's residence in London.
In London, at least 10,000 people, many carrying Palestinian flags, marched past Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street residence to a rally in Trafalgar Square. Outside Downing Street, hundreds of protesters stopped and threw shoes at the gates that block entry to the narrow road.And protests were occurring all over the place:
Shoe-throwing has become a popular gesture of protest and contempt since an Iraqi journalist pelted U.S. President George W. Bush with a pair of brogues in Baghdad last month.
The London protest was one of 18 that took place across the UK yesterday. There were also rallies in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Athens and several Asian cities.Nor are these protests simply being made by the general public, European political leaders are also registering their complaints.
France last night was swift to condemn the invasion, which it described as a dangerous military escalation that "complicated efforts by the international community to end the fighting, bring immediate aid to civilians and reach a permanent ceasefire". In London the foreign secretary David Miliband said the intensification of the Israeli assault would cause "alarm and dismay" and renewed calls for a swift cessation of violence.But all of this protest at Olmert and Livni's cynical attempt to improve their electoral chances by battering the Palestinians will be meaningless as long as Bush is in the White House. This is a man who has never, ever, had even the slightest rebuke for any Israeli action, no matter how severe; so it would be a fool who would expect him to change his tune so late in his presidency.
Not only does Rasmussen find that Americans generally "are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip" (44-41%, with 15% undecided), but Democratic voters overwhelmingly oppose the Israeli offensive -- by a 24-point margin (31-55%).Of course, the fact that a majority of Democratic supporters oppose this recent Israeli action will not be reflected in anything we hear from Pelosi and the others. It's a very strange democracy where the views of the political class are so out of step with their own supporters. Indeed, where the views of the political class show the kind of uniformity which one would usually expect from the politburo or a parliament headed by Saddam.
But 77 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama in the November elections. Jewish Americans are divided on the strikes on Gaza, as they are on the Palestinian issue in general. But the Democratic Party doesn't want to undermine their reputation as a reliable defender of Israel. Therefore, the Democrats take the position of uncritical support for whatever Israel does.That doesn't explain why the Democratic party ignore the wishes of the majority of the other 97% of their supporters who are not Jewish. And it doesn't address the issue of how immoral it is to support another country no matter what action it takes.
The Republican Party's position is equally simplistic. It might seem to defy reason that the GOP would pander to a population that makes up roughly three percent of the electorate (mostly in solidly Blue States) and which votes against them at an over three-to-one clip. But the Republicans aren't pandering to Jewish voters (except those that live in purple Florida), they're pandering to evangelical voters that believe Israel must remain in Jewish hands for Jesus to return and bring Armageddon.
Every time I turn on the TV or open a newspaper in recent days and see the nightmare which is unfolding in the Gaza Strip I always find myself asking the same question: "What is the plan?"
Days ago the Olmert regime were promising to "eliminate Hamas", which sounded an awful lot to me like their previous promise to "eliminate Hizbollah", and with as much chance of success. There is something haphazard about the way Olmert wages war, which always gives me the distinct feeling that he is making it all up as he goes along.
That was certainly evident in Lebanon were he unleashed chaos upon a civilian population in the hope of having his kidnapped soldiers released, a plan that was plainly bonkers as his actions were as likely to bring about their deaths as to ensure that they would be released.
He now tells us - having at first promised to "eliminate Hamas" - that all he wants is to stop Palestinian rockets from hitting southern Israel. I would argue that a better way to achieve this would have been to agree to lift the siege on Gaza - as his refusal to do so was the only reason that Hamas refused to renew the ceasefire - but he was never going to do that as he still wants to destroy Hamas or, at the very least, cause the people of Gaza to rise up and overthrow them.
So now, with no discernible next move that anyone can see, he threatens to invade.
This is where Olmert proves that he is no Ariel Sharon. Sharon, the old war criminal, always defined for himself achievable military objectives and set about ruthlessly carrying them out.Israel appears poised to extend its week-long assault on Gaza by launching a ground assault, amid renewed reports last night that troops and armour were preparing to move into the besieged Palestinian territory.
As more than 300 foreign passport holders were allowed to leave Gaza after the border was temporarily opened, Israeli officials warned that a ground offensive was needed to break the military power of Hamas, which has continued to carry out rocket attacks despite pulverising air strikes.
A White House spokesman appeared to give tacit backing to Israeli military tactics by refusing to answer questions on whether the United States believed a ground offensive was justifiable. "Those will be decisions made by the Israelis," said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.Olmert would do well to remember that these are the same loons who encouraged him to enter Lebanon and the end results are unlikely to be any different.
Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005.This is written by the truly deluded Charles Krauthammer who, in the same article, says that Israel is "scrupulous about civilian life" and that the entire conflict, "possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating."
Since 2005, the agenda of Weissglas has been much more in evidence than the dreamy landscape painted by Krauthammer."Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda," he said. "And all this ... with a [U.S.] presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress."
Just in case someone still doesn't quite get it, he explains that the proposed disengagement "is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
There's an interview in today's Guardian with Lynndie England, the 21 year old whose face became the seared in the public's mind as synonymous with Abu Ghraib and the mistreatment of prisoners which occurred there.
I'm presuming that the Guardian rushed a reporter there to hear her reaction to the Senate armed services committee report which stated that what occurred at Abu Ghraib was not the work of "a few bad apples", as the Bush administration had always claimed, but that this was the inevitable result of policies put into place by Donald Rumsfeld and others which "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees".
The first thing that strikes you when you read the interview is the sense in which this girl's life has been ruined.
Her attempts to find a job have so far been unsuccessful. Most of the fast-food joints in the area won't employ felons, and when she goes for an administrative job, she makes it to the second interview before word gets back that the staff would feel uncomfortable working with her.Some might think that she deserves her fate but what struck me about the photos when I first saw them was the people standing casually around indicating, to me at least, that what was occurring was not at all out of the ordinary.
And that is the story which England tells, that this was simply what happened at Abu Ghraib:It would be the testimony of England, Graner and the five other soldiers identified in the photos that when they arrived at the prison, the abusive practices - keeping inmates naked, making them wear female underwear and crawl on the floor - were already established in some form as part of pre-interrogation "softening up" techniques approved by military intelligence officers.
[...]
When she got to Abu Ghraib, she was assigned to administrative duties and had no cause to be in the cellblocks, except that she was hanging out with Graner. She found the scene down there odd. "When we first got there, we were like, what's going on? Then you see staff sergeants walking around not saying anything [about the abuse]. You think, OK, obviously it's normal." Graner, too, was initially disturbed, and is on record as having raised some objections. "When he first started working on that wing, he would tell me about it and say, 'This is wrong.' He even told his sergeant and platoon leader. He said he tried to say something. But everyone is saying it's OK to do it and getting pats on the back."And that certainly seems to me to be be the story of the pictures that emerged from that place. In any wide shot there were always plenty of uniformed legs standing casually around, there was certainly no sense in anyone's body language that what was occurring was in any way shocking. It appeared to be utterly routine.
"You're in a war, and you're the good guys and they're the bad guys, and that's how most Americans see the world. And those were the bad guys."It says something about the random way the US rounded up people in Abu Ghraib that 90% of those detained were eventually released without charge. But, whilst in custody, they were "the bad guys", which is not dissimilar to Rumsfeld's claim that the people held at Guantanamo Bay were "the worst of the worst", despite the fact that the majority of them were eventually released without charge.
2008 was a great year to be a blogger as there seemed so much to write about. The epic battle between Obama and Clinton and then the utterly disgraceful campaign of John McCain, which was about as dirty and dishonest as any I have ever seen waged.
Then came the unexpected bonus of Sarah Palin, who was literally the gift that kept on giving, with her incredible lack of knowledge and her astonishing self confidence.
Looking back at it in such a short clip it all seems so inevitable that Obama would walk it. But there were many days when it didn't feel that way. However, that's all behind us and, in 18 days, we begin a new chapter.
Any hopes nurtured by the Bush administration that Iraq were going to be their natural allies in their ongoing ideological war with Iran have surely been dashed with this news:
It's notable that this is almost the first thing the Iraqis have done the moment they regard their sovereignty as being restored.Iraq plans to close a camp for Iranian dissidents who used to cross into Iran to mount assassinations and sabotage - a decision that has sharpened political differences between Baghdad and Washington.
Camp Ashraf, about 80 miles north of Baghdad, came under Iraqi control yesterday in a broad security handover that forms part of the US withdrawal agreement concluded late last year.
Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, led a delegation of defence and interior ministry officials to the camp last weekend, warning its 2,500 male and 1,000 female inmates that "staying in Iraq is not an option". The Iraqi government said it "is keen to execute its plans to close the camp and send its inhabitants to their country or other countries in a non-forcible manner".
Under the security deal Iraq yesterday took over the Green Zone and Saddam's former presidential palace. The prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, declared a national holiday, saying it amounted to the moment when sovereignty was restored.Once Iraq elected a Shia government it was inevitable that relations between Iran and Iraq would improve, no matter what the Bush administration desired. Indeed, under the new US/Iraq security agreement the Iraqis have insisted on a clause which states that the US cannot use Iraqi soil for an attack on any other country.
The Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, stated during a visit to Paris yesterday that, "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."
However, several international relief organisations dispute this assessment and say that the people of Gaza are, indeed, facing a humanitarian crisis with air strikes causing severe problems in getting food, medicine and fuel supplies to the besieged civilian population.
One shouldn't need relief organisations to tell us that there must be severe problems in the Strip as the area has already been under siege before the air strikes began and air strikes are never likely to make the distribution of food and supplies easier.
I would imagine that in any area where extensive bombing was taking place that a humanitarian crisis would quickly develop, and, were this to be done in an area that had already been subjected to restricted supplies of food and medicines, that a crisis would develop quite rapidly.While relief shipments were allowed into Gaza by the Israeli authorities in the days before the start of the offensive, they came after weeks of virtually no supplies getting through, the agencies point out.
The biggest difficulty is that many people are too frightened by bombing to venture out to collect food rations. Gaza officials are also unwilling to take part in food distribution because they could be considered legitimate targets by the Israeli military for working for the Hamas-run administration. Chris Gunness of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which looks after 750,000 refugees in Gaza, said: "How can one carry out proper relief work in these conditions of violence? The people of Gaza have already suffered the most stringent economic sanctions. There are obviously problems with giving out aid. Even when people want to get food for their hungry family, they are very aware of the dangers they are facing in going out."
Mr Gunness said the agency carried out food distribution yesterday. "But, as things stand now, we have only a few days supply left."
Dr Hassan Khalaf, of the main Shifa hospital in Gaza City, said that Palestinian civilians are paying a terrible price: "We are getting really badly injured people coming in every day. What is the point of saying you are allowing food in for people when you then go on to bomb them? The Israelis may say they are just attacking Hamas but I am seeing children and women coming covered in blood. What we are seeing is a war on the people. The Hamas fighters firing the rockets are at the border, they are not in the city.I know that truth is the first casualty of war, but Livni is simply insulting our intelligence when she states something as banal as, "there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce."
'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' he said. The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.So, starving the Palestinian population was official policy long before the bombing began. The notion that the situation has not further deteriorated since then is simply incredulous.
Cenk Uygur sums up the proportionality argument perfectly. If someone is throwing stones at you it would make you furious, but would you want to burn down the building where they were throwing them from? Indeed, would you want to burn it down even if you knew it contained people who had nothing to do with the stone throwing?
Leaving aside the inappropriateness of that action, can you imagine trying to explain to a judge that the stone throwers were hiding amongst the non-stone throwers and that their deaths are, therefore, not your fault? I wonder how that argument would go down in a court of law?
Happy New Year to one and all. Jon Swift rounds up what's happened on the blogs.
Israel are resisting calls for a ceasefire with the US predictably aiding them in avoiding any UN resolution which might force their hand.
The US ambassador at the UN - who as one of the permanent Security Council members can veto any resolution - said that he believed it was up to Israel and Hamas themselves to agree to a ceasefire, and that the UN should not impose one.There are, however, signs of a slight disagreement on tactics on the Israelis side.
"If conditions will ripen and we think there will be a diplomatic solution that will ensure a better security reality in the south, we will consider it. But at the moment, it's not there," an aide quoted Olmert as saying. "We didn't start this operation just to end it with rocket fire continuing as it did before it began. Imagine if we declare a unilateral ceasefire and a few days later rockets fall on Ashkelon. What will that do to Israel's deterrence?"I personally think he means what will happen to his party's re-election chances should that scenario occur as that is what all of this is actually about.
Political considerations are not influencing the decision-making about the future of Operation Cast Lead, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak claimed Wednesday.
Though the February 10 general election is only 40 days away, Olmert and spokesmen for Livni and Barak said they were not considering the impact of military moves on the race. None of them denied that they disagreed about tactics for continuing the war, but they said the disputes were unrelated to politics.
But there are already reports that Olmert, Barak and Livni are at odds regarding how to proceed.
But political sources confirmed that there was a deep mutual mistrust between the three leaders that clouded their decision-making and that every little decision one of the three made was being scrutinized by the other two.
Two examples were Olmert's criticism of Barak's announcement to reporters that he was considering a cease-fire and disputes between the three of them over their separate press statements Saturday.
"When Menachem Begin was prime minister, decisions could be made without regard to politics, but not with Olmert," Likud MK Reuven Rivlin said. "Even the most naive person would think that politics are a factor in Olmert's, Barak's and Livni's decisions. But I pray that they are not only politicians, but also patriots."
I personally think Olmert is an appalling politician and an even worse military campaigner. His ill advised invasion of Lebanon, which began his premiership, is being perfectly dovetailed by this ill thought out attack on Gaza. Like the invasion of Lebanon this operation began with an utterly unrealistic military aim - the destruction of Hamas - although I note that this is being frantically re-framed as a mission to end rocket attacks rather than it's initial highly ambitious aims.
One Hamas spokesman in Gaza said the group was open to another ceasefire, but wanted Israel's economic blockade lifted. For more than a year Israel has prevented all imports, except limited humanitarian supplies, and prevented all exports from Gaza - in effect destroying private business.Hamas, who Israel constantly remind us "broke the ceasefire", actually refused to renew the ceasefire as long as the Israelis continued their appallingly cruel siege of Gaza which has left the civilian population scavenging rubbish dumps for food.
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"Those who would sacrifice a little liberty for a perceived increase in security, deserve neither - and will eventually lose both." Benjamin Franklin.
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