Patrick Cockburn: It is no use blaming Iran for the insurgency in Iraq

More good sense from Patrick Cockburn.

It is scarcely surprising that the Iranian government believes that the United States is behind the kidnapping of one of its diplomats in Baghdad on Sunday. The Iranians say he was seized by 30 uniformed men from an Iraqi army commando battalion that often works with the US military services in Iraq.

The US had already shown its contempt for any diplomatic immunity protecting Iranians in Iraq by arresting five officials in a long-established Iranian office in the Kurdish city of Arbil last month. The White House had earlier authorised US forces to kill or capture Iranians deemed to be a threat.

It is striking how swiftly Washington is seeking to escalate its confrontation with Iran. Its rhetoric has returned to the strident tone so often heard when the US was accusing Saddam Hussein in 2002 and 2003 of hiding weapons of mass destruction that threatened the world.

No serious observer of Iraq since the US invasion believes for a moment that Iran has sustained the Sunni insurgency or played an essential role in the rise of the Shia militias. It was obvious that when Saddam fell Iran would benefit. He was, after all, the arch enemy of Tehran, and the Iranians were delighted to see him go.

A second inevitable consequence of the end of Saddam's predominantly Sunni regime was that the Iraqi Shia, 60 per cent of the population, would take power in Baghdad. Foreseeing and wishing to avoid just such an outcome, President George Bush senior refused to send the US Army to Baghdad after his victory in Kuwait in 1991.

What does Mr Bush hope to achieve by confronting and possibly even going to war with Iran? Within Iraq it is a policy of great foolishness, because it will be seen as being anti-Shia as well as anti-Iranian. The Iraqi Shia are suspicious that the US is planning to rob them of power. Since last year, for the first time, a majority of the Shia support armed attacks on US-led forces.

There are some benefits for Washington in escalating the conflict with Iran. The Bush administration has specialised in creating demons responsible for all the ills of Iraq. First there was Saddam Hussein and then Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Both were killed last year, but the war has continued to escalate.

Iran is now being promoted as the new demon. It is supposedly behind the provision of roadside bombs that have killed so many US and British troops - though the technology involved in these simple but deadly devices could generally be found in a garden shed.

Iraq has long been short of everything except weapons. Every Iraqi family possessed arms even under Saddam Hussein. In the early 1990s he introduced a buy-back programme by which he would pay for heavy weapons handed in. One tribe in south-east Iraq turned up with three tanks which they offered to sell to the government if the price was right. Deeming the official offer too low, they returned the tanks to their tribal arsenal.

It will be very difficult for the US to pursue an anti-Iranian policy in Iraq and the Middle East while supporting a pro-Iranian Shia government in Baghdad. Strangely, the only powerful party that is as vociferously anti-Iranian as Mr Bush is the Baath party. It has for long justified its opposition to the takeover of government by the Shia majority by pretending they are Iranian pawns.

In the Middle East as a whole, the new US anti-Iranian policy has more to recommend it from an American point of view. There is plenty of anti-Iranian and anti-Shia sentiment around. Sunni Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan were embarrassed by the success of the Shia Hizbollah in the war in Lebanon last summer, compared to their own supine incompetence. Little wonder they are happy to join the US in whipping up feeling against the Shia and the Iranians.

Mr Bush is acting rather like cynical Tory politicians at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries who played "the Orange Card" over Ulster. Claiming to be safeguarding the empire, they stirred anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry to their own political advantage. Mr Bush may reap similar benefits by playing the anti-Shia and anti- Iranian card.

One expert on Iraq asked me in perplexity: "Even if Bush does launch a war against Iran, where does he think it will get him? He will still be stuck in Iraq and the Iranians are not going to surrender. He will just have widened the war."

The answer to this question is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the hidden hand behind US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat.

The Bush administration has always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the Republicans were able to retain the presidency and both Houses of Congress in 2004. Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.

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tag: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Ahmadinejad, Bush

Children of war: the generation traumatised by violence in Iraq

There's a fascinating article in the Guardian about the effect the Iraq war is having on Iraqi children.

The car stopped at the makeshift checkpoint that cut across the muddy backstreet in western Baghdad. A sentry appeared. "Are you Sunni or Shia?" he barked, waving his Kalashnikov at the driver. "Are you with Zarqawi or the Mahdi army?"

"The Mahdi army," the driver said. "Wrong answer," shouted the sentry, almost gleefully. "Get him!"

The high metal gate of a nearby house was flung open and four gun-toting males rushed out. They dragged the driver from his vehicle and held a knife to his neck. Quickly and efficiently, the blade was run from ear to ear. "Now you're dead," said a triumphant voice, and their captive crumpled to the ground.

Then a moment of stillness before the sound of a woman's voice. "Come inside boys! Your dinner is ready!" The gunmen groaned; the hapless driver picked himself up and trundled his yellow plastic car into the front yard; the toy guns and knives were tossed by the back door. Their murderous game of make-believe would have to resume in the morning.

What they are re-enacting is a scene they witnessed three weeks ago, when their teacher was hauled from his car and had his throat slit in front of them.

In a rare study published last week, the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (API) said the violence had affected millions of children, raising serious concerns for future generations. It urged the international community to help establish child psychology units and mental health programmes. "Children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnapping and explosions," the API's Marwan Abdullah told IRIN, the UN-funded news agency. "In some cases, they're found to be suffering extreme stress," he said.

Sherif Karachatani, a psychology professor at the University of Sulaymaniya, said: "Every day another innocent child is orphaned or sees terrible things children should never see. Who is taking care of the potentially enormous damage being done to a generation of children?"

There are well-founded fears, he said, that the "relentless bloodshed and the lack of professional help will see Iraq's children growing up either deeply scarred or so habituated to violence that they keep the pattern going as they enter adulthood".

Of course, help for the children of Iraq is minimal. When one is dealing with death and destruction on this scale psychological damage is something that is put on the back burner to be dealt with at another time, if at all.

However, as the war is about to enter it's fourth year, the damage that has been done to youngsters who have spent a large part of their formative years in the midst of civil war is incalculable, reflected in the fact that school attendance is down by 60%.

In a strange way, the re-enactment of their teacher's throat slitting incident is actually healthy. It would be far worse were the children to internalise what they had seen, rather than turn it into part of their game play.

However, I'm left wondering how many armchair generals would continue to support this immoral war were it their innocents who were re-enacting such horrors?

In Britain at the moment the airwaves are full of the story of the friendly fire incident which killed Lance Corporal Matty Hull and the fight to have video evidence admitted into the coroner's report.

I have great sympathy for the young American pilots who killed him. When he realises that he has killed "blue on blue" one of the young pilots, identified as POPOV35 says, "I'm going to be sick." When watching the video, it is hard not to share his sentiment.

The incident highlights the danger of war fought from such a safe distance, where possible targets become blips on a screen shorn of their humanity. You can see the video from the pilot's cockpit here and will notice how much the whole thing resembles a video game.

This is as near as armchair generals get to an actual war and it is why they find it so easy to support such carnage and to challenge the patriotism of anyone who objects.

As the trauma of Iraq's children proves, war is a very different matter when it is experienced up close and personal.

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tag: Iraq, Iraq war, blue on blue, war on terror

A Soldier's Duty? The Ehren Watada Story

At the luncheon of the National Press Club on Feb. 17, 2006, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, was asked by his interviewer, John Donnelly: "Should people in the U.S. military disobey orders that they believe are illegal?" Pace's response:

"It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral."

And from President Bush's famous "48 Hours" speech, we know that for anyone who carried out illegal acts, Bush stated: "It will be no excuse to say 'I was just following orders.'"

And yet, we have the case of Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq War and occupation. For the first time since 1965, the military is prosecuting an objector for his opinions. Bush himself has said that Iraqis should not obey orders they regard as illegal. As Watada correctly identifies the Iraq war as illegal, why is he being prosecuted for the doing the very thing that Bush asked Iraqi soldiers to do? Refuse to obey an illegal order.



tag: Ehren Watada, Iraq, 1441, Iraq war, accountability, foreign policy, UN, illegal, protest, freedom, war on terror

Turning Toward Iran

Michael Barone has an article up at Real Clear Politics, where he talks of the difficulty of defining the "turning points" that change the course of military conflicts, especially regarding the current conflict in Iraq and any future US involvement in other wars in the Middle East.

The first he identifies as "the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006."

This was intended to, and evidently did, spark an upsurge of sectarian violence -- Shias killing Sunnis and vice versa.

So far, we can all agree with his logic. The bombing of the Golden Mosque was indisputably a turning point. As often happens with Bush supporters, Barone starts with something that we can all agree on in order to, hopefully, lend credence to his next statement.

His next statement is this:

The other turning point, as I look back, was Hezbollah's invasion of Israel last July.

This is fantastical. What invasion of Israel?

He is no doubt referring to Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on Israel's border.

However, that cannot be seriously referred to as an "invasion". Or rather, it could only be referred to as such if one was to ignore all that preceded that incident.

It is true that Israel at the time referred to this incident as "an act of war", ignoring the fact that the incident was carried out by Hizbullah rather than the Lebanese government. Israel, as we all know, went on to conduct a brutal war in Lebanon that resulted not in the defeat of Hizbullah, but rather in it's victory over Israel (based on the very fact that they survived) which left it free to challenge Siniora's government.

However, the story of Israel's war with Hizbullah did not begin with the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers, it began with the election of Hamas and with the US and Israel's decision to punish the Palestinians for having the temerity to vote for a government that they disapproved of. This election led the US and Israel, shamefully assisted by the EU, to adopt a policy of starving the Palestinians in the hope of forcing the Hamas government to fall. In the memorable words of Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.'

So, apart from conducting a policy of starving the Palestinians, Israel on June 24th took things further and abducted two Gazan civilians, a doctor and his brother. The next day militants in Gaza abducted Gilad Shalit in the hope of forcing the Israelis to agree to a prisoner swap. The Israelis responded by invading Gaza. The day after Hizbullah abducted two Israeli soldiers on Israel's border in what was generally agreed to be an attempt to reduce Israel's pressure on the Palestinians by forcing the Israelis to fight on two fronts simultaneously.

So that is the proper background to Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. One can disapprove of this action, but only a fantasist would refer to this action as an invasion. Indeed, the level of Barone's fantasy is summed up best by his confusion at what result the war produced.

The military effectiveness was hard to gauge and Israelis are still arguing about whether they suffered a defeat, scored a victory or managed a stalemate.

Most reasonable people - indeed, most Israelis - have agreed that Israel suffered a massive defeat based on the fact that Olmert was not able to succeed in obtaining any of his war aims, the first of which was the fantastical claim that he intended to wipe out Hizbullah.

However, it is not Barone's misreading of the past which I find most offensive, it is rather the conclusion that he draws from this misreading of the past and the direction that he believes this incident should lead us in.

The Sunni Arab states viewed the Hezbollah attack -- undertaken without even the notification of the Lebanese government, yet putting Lebanon at grave risk -- as an Iranian offensive aimed at establishing something like hegemony over the greater Middle East.

So, not content with exaggerating the kidnapping of two Israelis and turning it into "an invasion", Barone takes it further and turns it into an Iranian invasion.

His conclusion?

As with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, so with the Hezbollah attack on Israel, the United States took time to respond -- more time, I suspect, than future historians will decide was appropriate. But after the policy review that followed the Republican defeat in the November elections, we have responded. The rules of engagement have been changed in Iraq: U.S. forces captured and held Iranian "consular" officials in Erbil, and there is reason to believe we're stepping up interdiction of Iranian weapon supplies to various hostile forces in Iraq.

It's war with Iran, of course. And anyone who points out that this course is madness is obviously a friend of the mullahs.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded by demanding that the administration not take action against Iran, and The New York Times condemned Bush for "bullying" poor, sweet little Iran. These responses are typical of the fundamentally unserious criticism being lobbed against Bush these days. The correct criticism is not that we're doing too much to hurt the mullahs, but that we're doing too little.

The critics ignore the fact that Iran has been making war against us for 27 years, since they violated the most fundamental law of diplomacy by taking our diplomats hostage. The critics seem more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win. Fortunately Bush still wants to prevail.

So, in order to construct a case against Iran, Barone has had to completely reinvent what took place on Israel's border. He does so by exaggerating what happened and by ignoring totally the context in which the event occurred. He then argues that action against Iran is something that historians will conclude was taken too slowly, and that anyone who thinks expanding the US's wars in the Middle East to be a bad idea are, "more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win".

Indeed, anyone who challenges this misguided and essentially untruthful version of events is indulging in, "fundamentally unserious criticism".

Only those who advocate an insane war against Iran, a war that would be catastrophic for the US, are deemed "serious".

And so by lies, distortion of past events and labelling all who disagree with them as "more interested in seeing Bush lose than in seeing the United States win", do the right wing promote their desired future confrontation with Iran.

Logic is beyond these people. Their truth so skewered that they look at even fairly recent history and learn nothing. But make no mistake, they now want war with Iran. And they are already preparing to label anyone who tries to stop them as unpatriotic persons indulging in "fundamentally unserious criticism".

Click title for Barone's article.

tag: Bush, Israel, Lebanon, Gilad Shalit, Gaza Strip, Iran, Olmert

British Jews break away from 'pro-Israeli' Board of Deputies

I have long known from conversations with Jewish friends in this country that the universal approval of Israel's actions from Jews in the Diaspora (implied in the charge that any criticism of Israel is merely anti-Semitism under another guise) was false. Indeed, it is simply another way of ending any serious discussion of Israel's shortcomings.

Now, a group of British Jews are forming a new organisation to counter the perceived pro-Israeli bias in existing Jewish bodies in the UK.

The founders of Independent Jewish Voices, IJV, which will include such luminaries as the Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter and the historian Eric Hobsbawm, say that the group is being established as a counter-balance to the uncritical support for Israeli policies offered by established bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

More than 100 high-profile British Jews have already signed the group's founding declaration: "Those who claim to speak on behalf of Jews in Britain and other countries consistently put support for the policies of an occupying power above the human rights of the occupied people."

Other signatories include the film director Mike Leigh, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, fashion designer Nicole Farhi and the actors Stephen Fry and Zoe Wanamaker. The initiative was born out of frustration with the assumption by non-Jews that Jewish opinion in the UK is monolithic in its support for Israel's policies.

Professor Hobsbawm told The Independent: "It is important for non-Jews to know that there are Jews ... who do not agree with the apparent consensus within the Jewish community that the only good Jew is one who supports Israel."

Supporters hope to create an opportunity for Jews of different political affiliations to express opinions "without being accused of disloyalty or being dismissed as self-hating", said a spokeswoman. "The idea is to create a platform for critical debate about the situation in the Middle East that until now has not existed."

This is long overdue. And although the IJV is not positioning itself as a replacement for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, its charter includes an implicit rebuke for the Board.

"The broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole," it says.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has long given the impression that support for Israel's policies is almost guaranteed amongst Britain's Jewish population, a claim that I have always found to be false from arguments I have had with my Jewish friends, some of whom support Israel no matter what and many more who are vehemently opposed to Israel's actions towards the Palestinians.

It will be interesting to see how quickly this group are labelled as irrelevant, as the pro-Israeli groups usually waste no time in dispensing with perceived enemies. However, the charge of anti-Semitism will not stick, so I imagine we will soon be reading about how they are "self hating Jews". The charge that is usually levelled at any Jew in the Diaspora who dares to speak out against Israel's actions.

I already notice that some are claiming that such criticism is "fuelling anti-Semitism by challenging the existence of Israel." This furore started early this year when the AJC published an article which urged the community to 'confront' those Jews who had joined in the 'verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish state':

On one side is an array of prominent Jewish community leaders and institutions saying that such criticism plays into the hands of Muslim radical groups and other extremists.

On the other side, left-wing Jewish writers and academics insist that basic freedom of expression is at stake. Some British Jewish voices have warned of an atmosphere of 'McCarthyism' reminiscent of the anti-Communist witchhunts in 1950s America.

The current dispute erupted earlier this year in the United States, home to the world's largest Diaspora Jewish community, with an essay published by the American Jewish Committee. The AJC urged the community to 'confront' those Jews who had joined in the 'verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish state'. The essay denounced some critics by name, including prominent historian Tony Judt and Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the play Angels in America

The heated argument escalated further with a feature on the dispute in the New York Times. Judt, who was criticised in the article for having denounced Israel as 'arrogant, aggressive, anachronistic, infantile... [and] immoral,' told the New York Times he was convinced that leading Jewish voices simply wanted to stifle any harsh criticism of Israel.

But in a separate article, Boston-based sociologist Shulamit Reinharz - wife of the president of America's leading Jewish university, Brandeis - rejected the idea that Jewish left-wingers could question the very existence of Israel without imperilling Jews. 'Most would say they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews.'

Many members of the IJV have countered the claim that their stance is harming Israel by arguing that it is actually the unstinting support for Israel's policies that represents the more serious challenge to Israel's well being.

The psychologist Susie Orbach, who has also signed the IJV declaration, said: "As a Jew, I feel a particular duty to oppose the injustice that is done to Palestinians ... The Israeli government does not speak for me."

Mr Bindman said: "The easy assumption that all Jews support Israel and its ill-treatment of Palestinians is an insidious form of racism. I, like many Jews in and outside Israel, am appalled and disgusted by the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian territory and its brutal treatment of Palestinians."

At the height of the bombardments of Lebanon and Gaza last year, the Board of Deputies organised a rally to support Israel.

David Goldberg, the author and emeritus rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, said: "When Israel's Jewish supporters abroad don't speak out against disastrous policies, that neither guarantee safety for her citizens nor produce the right climate in which to try and reach a just peace with the Palestinians ... then they are ... acting against Israel's own long-term interests."

Independent Jewish Voices are a welcome addition to the British political scene. The very fact that a group of British Jews will be willing to publicly challenge the consensus that criticism of Israel is a disguised form of anti-Semitism will make that charge much harder to sustain and, hopefully, pave the way for a broader and more open discussion regarding Israel's disgraceful treatment of the Palestinians.

Shorn of the implication that only anti-Semites oppose Israel's actions, one can only hope that the Israelis would have to engage more seriously in any future peace negotiations.

However, as the argument raging in the US proves, the pro-Israelis are not going to allow that perception to be removed without a long and bloody fight.

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tag: Board of Deputies of British Jews, Independent Jewish Voices, Israel, Palestine, Road Map

One death amongst so may others.

I wonder if politicians ever pay any price when they get things wrong. We have watched both Blair and Bush insist that Saddam had to be removed because he possessed WMD. We saw this lie exposed as the falsehood that it was and we also witnessed that neither Blair nor Bush fell on their swords. The days of honourable resignations are truly over.

However, another case has come to light where a politician has made a claim that, in this case, has led directly to a man's death.

The man was Abdullah Tokhi. He was an Afghan who sought asylum in Britain on the grounds that if he was ever returned to Afghanistan that his life would be in danger. The British Home Secretary at the time, David Blunkett, claimed that - thanks to the actions of the British and the Americans - Afghanistan was now liberated and that Abdullah Tokhi's life was no longer in danger in liberated Afghanistan.

From today's Independent newspaper:

They shot Abdullah Tokhi dead at midday, in a crowded street in a bazaar. It was a very public "execution", a message to show that his killers knew they would never be brought to account for their crime.

The murder of Mr Tokhi is only one of the many that are happening almost daily in Afghanistan, but this one could surely have been prevented had David Blunkett not felt the need to stick so rigidly to the government's script about what is actually happening in Afghanistan.

Nor is the danger that Blunkett denied the family were in limited merely to Mr Tokhi himself.

A week after his father's death, 10-year-old Nasratullah was on his way to school when he was shot from a car. The bullets hit him on the arm and legs. "I was very sad about what had happened to my father," said Nasratullah. "I knew there were bad people who had killed him. But I did not think that they would try to attack me. It hurt a lot when I was shot. Now I am very scared, for myself, and also my brother and sisters. We would like to move away from here, but we do not know where to go ... I miss my father very much."

Today Mr Tokhi's widow, two sons and seven daughters live in fear at a farm in Paghman, south-east of Kabul. They say the police were complicit in the death and the suspected killers can be seen in the area, walking around with impunity.

So not only was Mr Tokhi murdered but his son has also been shot at on his way to school in "liberated Afghanistan".

Tokhi had made his way to Britain via Pakistan, arriving here at Dover in November 2002. He applied for asylum claiming that if he ever returned to Afghanistan that his life would be in danger.

Blunkett refused his application citing the government fantasy that life is different in "liberated" Afghanistan. Because of that decision, this man is now dead.

Does Blunkett regret the decision I wonder? However, even as I formulate the question, I know that I am asking for our politicians to accept a moral responsibility for their own actions that has become exceedingly unfashionable.

Bush and Blair do not regret invading Iraq on a totally false prospectus and continue to insist that it was "the right thing to do". Estimates of the civilian casualties of that conflict go as high as 655,000.

So perhaps I am being unfair when I ask if Blunkett regrets or feels any responsibility for the death of Mr Tokhi.

However, Bush and Blair will cloak their responsibility in the dreadful omelette analogy, claiming that a certain amount of eggs had to be broken to achieve whatever nominal result they feel they have pulled off in Afghanistan.

The case of Mr Tokhi is shorn of any such omelette cover.

This is the case of an individual who said, "If you send me back there I will die." They sent him back there and he has died.

But I do not imagine that Blunkett will feel any regrets. For, if he were to do so, he would be going against the political grain that Bush and Blair have established.

Both Bush's Republican Party and Blair's New Labour have stressed the need for individual responsibility whilst evading their own personal responsibility for the dreadful misjudgements that both of their governments have made.

Neither has fallen on their swords and neither has expressed any form of regret.

So it's probably unfair of me to expect any such regret from Blunkett. However, a man is dead who should be alive were someone in power to have told the truth about what is actually happening in Afghanistan.

His death is analogous of so many deaths in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So many people have died because the governments of both Britain and the US continue to insist that their lie is the truth.

I am sure history will hold them to account. But the punishment of history will not bring one dead body back to life. Nor will it, in any way, be commensurate with the punishment that should fit their crimes.

Abdullah Tokhi is simply one more dead man amongst hundreds of thousands of dead civilians in Bush and Blair's wars. But his death highlights the chasm between government rhetoric and the reality on the ground. It also highlights the hypocrisy of regime's that call for individual responsibility, whilst refusing steadfastly to accept any responsibility for the mistakes made by themselves.

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tag: Bush, Blair, Iraq, Afghanistan, war on terror

In Iraq, Kurds train to battle Iran

I've made no secret of the fact that I think Bush is gunning for an opportunity to attack Iran, nor that I do not expect him to even approach Congress for authority, instead relying on a Tonkin Gulf moment where he can claim to be responding to Iranian aggression.

The United States' ambassador to Nato, Victoria Nuland, has told Sky News that:

"For a long time the Iranians have been increasing their aggressive actions in the region, and they have been counting on the US being too tied down in Iraq to do what we have traditionally done, which is to maintain a strong military presence in the Gulf," Nuland told Sky.

The US is committed to "support our friends and partners in that part of the world, many of whom are very scared, particularly in the Gulf region, of Iran's aggressive behaviour," she said.

I notice that Nuland is already beating the Bush drum concerning Iran's "aggression".

Meanwhile in the Kurdish sector of Iraq, recruits are training to attack Iran, even though "they belong to an organization officially outlawed as terrorist by Washington". Despite this fact they appear able to operate quite freely in an area controlled by US forces.

In the Nov. 27 issue of The New Yorker, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh wrote that PEJAK was receiving support from the U.S. as well as from Israel, which fears Iran's nuclear ambitions and Ahmadinejad's call to wipe the Jewish state off the map."

PEJAK says it regularly launches raids into Iran, and Iran has fired back with artillery. In October the English-language Iran Daily, published by Iran's official news agency, said Iran accused PEJAK of killing dozens of its armed forces in insurgent attacks.

So here we have the PEJAK forces, possibly financed by the US and Israel, attacking and killing Iranians inside Iran. And they are doing so from a territory that is controlled by US forces.

James Brandon, an analyst for the U.S.-based Jamestown Foundation, told The Associated Press that PEJAK has refused to discuss its funding sources. But he said its greatest threat to Iran is not military. It has veins running deep into the Iranian Kurdish population and is offering to join forces with other restless minorities in Iran, he said.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said "Israel is not involved in any way in what's going on there."

Meir Javedanfar, an Israel-based Iran expert, noted however that Israel has a long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani and "It would not surprise me to discover that Israel is using the Kurdish areas of Iraq to undermine Iran's influence in Iraq and monitor what's going on along the Iranian border, as well as to undermine the Iranian government itself."

But we must never forget that it is the Iranians who are being "aggressive" here. At some point, when the Iranians respond to these actions, they will be deemed to have crossed some kind of line and Bush will start to base his justifications on their "aggressive acts".

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tag: Iraq, US foreign policy, Seymour Hersh, Iran, surge and accelerate, Ahmadinejad, Kurdistan, Kurds,

Edwards: 'Iran must know world won't back down'

It's stories like this that scare the shit out of me when it comes to possible attacks on Iran and what the Democrats would do to prevent Bush carrying out such a lunatic action.

In a speech at a conference in Herzliya, Israel, former Senator John Edwards (D-NC) took aim at Iran, warning that the "world won't back down." The 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, who recently launched a new presidential campaign, also said that Israel should be allowed to join NATO.

Although Edwards has criticized the war in Iraq, and has urged bringing the troops home, the former senator firmly declared that "all options must remain on the table," in regards to dealing with Iran, whose nuclear ambition "threatens the security of Israel and the entire world."

"Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons," Edwards said. "For years, the US hasn’t done enough to deal with what I have seen as a threat from Iran. As my country stayed on the sidelines, these problems got worse."

Edwards continued, "To a large extent, the US abdicated its responsibility to the Europeans. This was a mistake. The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats."

"Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile," Edwards said.

Edwards added, "Iran must know that the world won’t back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table."

Now I know that all US politicians go slightly loopy when the subject of Israel comes up, and I am bearing in mind that Edwards made these remarks inside Israel itself. However, what's worrying is that he seems to be falling over himself to stress that war is still an option.

That is a simply insane position to hold considering the quagmire that the US are currently bogged down in in Iraq.

I expect such nonsense from neo-con lunatics, but when it's coming from a Democratic candidate for the 2008 Presidency, it's enough to make you despair.

But then I recently read Nancy Pelosi saying:

"There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza," Pelosi said as she rallied AIPAC loyalists. "This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist."

When it comes to the subject of Israel, the Democrats are every bit as deluded as the Republicans are, and they certainly - with the notable and much derided exception of Carter - insist on viewing this conflict through an Israeli prism.

However, when we are talking about any future conflict with Iran we must never forget that, like the war with Iraq, the security of Israel is as central to the war as any other issue.

Neither Edwards nor Pelosi's remarks convince me that the Democrats will do enough to stop Bush from the insane course that he is currently heading on where an attack on Iran seems to be inevitable.

Certainly Perle and Netanyahu are already in full throttle as they demand action. Edwards has sadly now added his voice to that cacophony of warmongering.

I find that incredibly bloody depressing.

UPDATE:

Glenn Greenwald has a very good article that might explain why Edwards is banging this particular drum at this particular time:

New York is the ATM for American politicians. Large amounts of money come from the Jewish community," he said. "If you're running for president and you want dollars from that group, you need to show that you're interested in the issue that matters most to them."

Click title for full article.

tag: Israel, Iraq war, Netenyahu, Ahmadinejad, Iran, John Edwards, Nancy Pelosi

Defense Official Resigns Over Detainee Remarks

I've covered this matter before.

A senior Pentagon official responsible for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said he finds it "shocking" that top US attorneys are rushing to defend "terrorists" locked up there.

"The major law firms in the country ... are out there representing detainees," Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said in a Federal News Radio interview Thursday, available online.

"And you know what, it's shocking," he said.

This was the astonishing position held by Cully Stimson, revealing that under the Bush administration, the concept of innocence until proven guilty had been all but abandoned. The very fact that a person had been held in Guantanamo Bay, was for Stimson sufficient proof of guilt that no lawyer should ever consider defending such a person. Indeed, he went further and said that:

"I think quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

So he not only tried to discourage lawyers from defending persons held at Guantanamo Bay, he went further and suggested that lawyers who did so ought to be boycotted by leading firms.

I said at the time:

If the Bush regime have any last remnant of decency, they will fire him. But watch this space, they won't.

However, it would appear that whilst I was correct that they wouldn't fire him, they have at least put sufficient pressure on him to fall on his own sword. From the New York Times:

A senior Pentagon official resigned Friday over controversial remarks in which he criticized lawyers who represent terrorism suspects, the Defense Department said.

Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Charles ''Cully'' Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, told him on Friday that he had made his own decision to resign and was not asked to leave by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

''He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position,'' Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments.

As his position included responsibility for the men detained at Guantanamo Bay, I should think his comments "hampered his ability to be effective in his position" a great deal.

It's only right that he has gone, although I can't help thinking that Gates has missed a good opportunity to signal that there has been a clean sweep after the Rumsfeld years at the Defence Department. He should have personally fired him and kicked him out of the Pentagon. Then we'd really know that things had changed there.

We can be thankful for small mercies though, at least Stimson did admit that he was leaving because of those inane remarks, rather than expressing some wish to spend more time with his kids.

Click title for full article.

tag: Cully Stimson, Guantanamo Bay, Robert Gates,

Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair

Sorry to be cutting and pasting like this, but this needs nothing more from me. This is sensational. If it's true, will Pelosi then think of impeaching Bush?

By Jason Leopold and Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by defense attorneys for former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.

Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy's stinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.

But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador begs the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercover role with the CIA?

Further, the highly explicit nature of Cheney's comments not only hints at a rift between Cheney and Bush over what Cheney felt was the scapegoating of Libby, but also raises serious questions about potentially criminal actions by Bush. If Bush did indeed play an active role in encouraging Libby to take the fall to protect Karl Rove, as Libby's lawyers articulated in their opening statements, then that could be viewed as criminal involvement by Bush.

Last week, Libby's attorney Theodore Wells made a stunning pronouncement during opening statements of Libby's trial. He claimed that the White House had made Libby a scapegoat for the leak to protect Karl Rove - Bush's political adviser and "right-hand man."

"Mr. Libby, you will learn, went to the vice president of the United States and met with the vice president in private. Mr. Libby said to the vice president, 'I think the White House ... is trying to set me up. People in the White House want me to be a scapegoat,'" said Wells.

Cheney's notes seem to help bolster Wells's defense strategy. Libby's defense team first discussed the notes - written by Cheney in September 2003 for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan - during opening statements last week. Wells said Cheney had written "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others": a reference to Libby being asked to deal with the media and vociferously rebut Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration knowingly "twisted" intelligence to win support for the war in Iraq.

However, when Cheney wrote the notes, he had originally written "this Pres." instead of "that was."

During cross-examination Tuesday morning, David Addington was asked specific questions about Cheney's notes and the reference to President Bush. Addington, former counsel to the vice president, was named Cheney's chief of staff - a position Libby had held before resigning.

"Can you make out what's crossed out, Mr. Addington?" Wells asked, according to a copy of the transcript of Tuesday's court proceedings.

"It says 'the guy' and then it says, 'this Pres.' and then that is scratched through," Addington said.

"OK," Wells said. "Let's start again. 'Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy ...' and then what's scratched through?" Wells asked Addington again, attempting to establish that Cheney had originally written that President Bush personally asked Libby to beat back Wilson's criticisms.

"T-h-i-s space P-r-e-s," Addington said, spelling out the words. "And then it's got a scratch-through."

"So it looks like 'this Pres.?'" Wells asked again.

"Yes sir," Addington said.

Thus, Cheney's notes would have read "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The words "this Pres." were crossed out and replaced with "that was," but are still clearly legible in the document.

The reference to "the meat grinder" was understood to be the Washington press corps, Wells said. The "protect one staffer" reference, Wells said, was White House Political Adviser Karl Rove, whose own role in the leak and the attacks on Wilson are well documented.

Furthermore, Cheney, in his directive to McClellan that day in September 2003, wrote that the White House spokesman needed to immediately "call out to key press saying the same thing about Scooter as Karl."

McClellan had publicly stated in September 2003 that Rove was not culpable in the leak of Valerie Plame's covert CIA identity, nor was he involved in a campaign to discredit her husband, but McClellan did not say anything to the media that exonerated Libby, which led Cheney to write the note. A couple of weeks later, in October 2003, McClellan told members of the media that it was "ridiculous" for them to suggest Libby and Rove were involved in the leak, because he received personal assurances from both men that they had nothing to do with it.

Moreover, Wells insinuated Tuesday that Cheney's note [seemingly] implicating President Bush in the discrediting of Wilson was one of the 250 pages of emails and documents the White House failed to turn over to investigators who had been probing the leak for more than two years.

Wells insinuated that Cheney's note, because it contained a reference to "this Pres." may have been an explosive piece of evidence that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who at the time of the leak was White House counsel, withheld from investigators, citing executive privilege. Addington told Wells that when subpoenas were first issued by the Justice Department in the fall of 2003, demanding documents and emails relating to Wilson and Plame be preserved, he was given Cheney's notes and immediately recognized the importance of what the vice president had written. Addington said he immediately entered into a "discussion" with Gonzales and Terry O'Donnell, Cheney's counsel, about the note, but Addington did not say whether it was turned over to investigators in the early days of the probe.

Wells's line of questioning is an attempt to shift the blame for the leak squarely onto the shoulders of the White House - a tactic aimed at confusing the jury - and will likely unravel because it has nothing to do with the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges at the heart of the case against Libby. Still, Tuesday's testimony implicating President Bush may be the most important fact that has emerged from the trial thus far.

Addington revealed during his testimony Monday that in June 2003 there were internal discussions - involving President Bush and Vice President Cheney - about declassifying for specific reporters a portion of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate as a way to counter Wilson's criticisms against the administration. That portion purportedly showed that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger to use for building an atomic bomb - a claim that Wilson had debunked when he personally traveled to Niger to investigate it a year earlier.

In late June or early July 2003, "a question was asked of me - by Scooter Libby: Does the president have authority to declassify information?" Addington told jurors Monday, in response to a question by defense attorney William Jeffress. "And the answer I gave was, 'Of course, yes. It's clear the president has the authority to determine what constitutes a national security secret and who can have access to it.'"

President Bush signed an executive order in 2003 authorizing Cheney to declassify certain intelligence documents. The order was signed on March 23, four days after the start of the Iraq War and two weeks after Wilson first appeared on the administration's radar.

Click title for source.

tag: Cheney, Scooter Libby, Bush, Wilson, Plame,

Defiant Blair rejects quit calls

Tony Blair is adamant that, despite a second interview by the police, he intends to remain in office saying, "You will have to put up with me for a bit longer."

Blair has never named a date for his exit although he is widely expected to leave Downing Street in June, having taken the expected hit at the May local elections.

However, as the repercussions from the Cash for Honours enquiry threatens to engulf his administration there are many within and out with his party who are calling for him to fall on his sword.

Senior Labour figures, including party chairman Hazel Blears and former leader Neil Kinnock, have said the cash-for-honours inquiry is damaging the government.

Conservative leader David Cameron has called on Mr Blair to stand down now "in the national interest".

Blair has launched a defence that it would "not be very democratic" if he were to step down now. This increasingly bizarre defence is one that he has been relying on for quite a while now to hold the Brown camp at bay, insinuating that - by remaining in office - he is merely carrying out the promise he made to the electorate before the last general election that he would serve a full term.

It ignores the fact that many people who voted for him, myself included, voted not for him but rather for the Labour Party in general; and we had to do so with clothes pegs over our noses such was our revulsion at his Iraq policy.

Blair has transformed this into a vote for him personally as he seriously believes that he saved the Labour Party, an assumption that stands up to no objective analysis. The Tories were so on the ropes that almost anyone would have seen them off.

However, the most incredible part of this whole episode is that, towards the end of his tenure, Blair - the master of spin - is no longer in charge of events. The police are.

Blair cannot control the events that are now swirling around him. Although I personally think it is in Blair's interest that the investigation appears - and that's all I can say as we all really don't know what the police are going to do - appears to be moving towards obstruction of justice as opposed to the original cash for honours question.

As Lord Levy was quoted as saying, there's "only one person can nominate people for honours and it isn't me".

So it rather suits Blair that we are now moving on to the question of cover up, although if there is any suggestion that he was involved in any cover up then it will be time for him to take his final bow.

But one thing is certain, much as we can't guess how this is going to end, the same appears to be true of the Prime Minister. And he'll hate that.

Click title for full article.

tag: Blair, Lord Levy, Cash for Honours

Biden on The Daily Show

Biden attempts to recover from "that" gaffe.

Part 1.



Part 2.



tag: Joe Biden, Barak Obama, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Molly Ivins Shook the Walls With Her Clarion Call

By Maya Angelou
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, February 2, 2007;

Up to the walls of Jericho

She marched with a spear in her hand

Go blow them ram horns she cried

For the battle is in my hand

The walls have not come down, but they have been given a serious shaking.

That Jericho voice is stilled now.

Molly Ivins has been quieted.

The writer and journalist, dearly loved and admired by many, hated and feared by many, died of cancer in her Texas home on Jan. 31, 2007.

The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty, which she railed against valiantly all her public life, have not fallen, but their truculence to do so does not speak against her determination to make them collapse.

Weeks before she died, she launched what she called "an old-fashioned newspaper crusade" against President Bush's announcement that he was going to send more troops to Iraq.

She wrote, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. Every single day every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. We need people in the streets banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it now!'"

Years ago there was a fundraising gala for People for the American Way in New York, and Molly Ivins was keynote speaker. I was a loyal collector and serious Ivins reader, but I had not met the author. Another famous journalist, who was to have introduced her, had his flight canceled in a Southern city. Norman Lear, founder of the organization, asked me to introduce her. I did not hesitate. I spoke glowingly about Ms. Ivins for a few minutes, then, suddenly, a six-foot-tall, red-haired woman sprang from the wings. She strode onto the stage and over to the microphone. She gave me an enveloping hug and said, in that languorous Texas accent, "Maya Angelou and I are identical twins, we were separated at birth."

I am also six feet tall, but I am not white. She was under 50 when she made the statement, and I was in my middle 60s, but our hearts do beat in the same rhythm. Whoever separated us at birth must know it did not work. We have been in the struggle for equal rights for all people since we met on that Waldorf Astoria stage. We have laughed together without apology and we have wept when weeping was necessary.

I shall be weeping a little more these days but I shall never forget the charge. Joshua commanded the people to shout and the walls came tumbling down.

Molly,

I am shouting,

With two voices,

Walls come down!

Walls come down!

Walls come down!

Poet Maya Angelou is the author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

Click title for source.

tag: Molly Ivins, Maya Angelou

Blair interviewed again by police

After a six day news blackout it has now been revealed that Blair was interviewed by the police for a second time last Friday. This interview - which we are only being told of today - took place several days before the arrest of Lord Levy for the second time which took place last Tuesday on suspicion of obstructing the course of justice, leading one to speculate on whether or not Blair's answers concluded with Lord Levy's.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister was not interviewed under caution and was not accompanied by a lawyer - although a civil service note-taker was present. A Scotland Yard statement said the news blackout was requested for "operational reasons", but gave no further details.

It added: "The prime minister has been interviewed briefly to clarify points emerging from the ongoing investigation. He was interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect and co-operated fully."

This whole thing is getting curiouser and curiouser. Blair has declined to make any comment. He was the first ever sitting Prime Minister to be questioned by the police in Downing Street as part of a criminal investigation and now, lo and behold, he's the second as well!

Click title for full article.

tag: Blair, Cash for Honours, Lord Levy

Obama says troops out by 2008

Obama says enough is enough. It's fascinating to see how it is now possible for mainstream US politicians to say things that were considered by the Republicans as "treason" and "cutting and running" two years ago. This is the proof of how much Bush has lost the argument.

As Obama says, "The time for patience is over."



tag: Barak Obama, Iraq war, surge and accelerate, The Baker Report, Iraq Survey Group

German Court Challenges C.I.A. Over Abduction

A German court has issued arrest warrants for thirteen people involved in the mistaken kidnapping and jailing of a German citizen of Lebanese descent in the most serious challenge yet to the CIA's practice of extraordinary rendition, where they take suspects to other country's where many of us suspect these individuals may be tortured.

Prosecutors in Munich said the suspects, whom they did not identify, were part of a C.I.A. “abduction team” that seized the man, Khaled el-Masri, in Macedonia in late 2003 and flew him to Afghanistan. He was imprisoned there for five months, during which, he said, he was shackled, beaten and interrogated about alleged ties to Al Qaeda, before being released without charges.

His ordeal is the most extensively documented case of the C.I.A.’s practice of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects are seized and sent for interrogation to other countries, including some in which torture is practiced.

“This is a very consequential step,” August Stern, the prosecutor in Munich, said in a telephone interview. “It is a necessary step before bringing a criminal case against these people.”

The CIA have refused to make any comment on the matter and have refused to say whether or not they were involved in Khaled el-Masri's abduction.

However, the German courts actions are substantial improvement on the behaviour of other European country's who were recently found to be complicit in rendition flights passing through their country's. Here in Britain the government had always claimed to have no knowledge of whether the US were using this country's airports as part of their extraordinary rendition programme. An enquiry found this claim to be false.

Issuing an arrest warrant is a major expansion of the legal challenge to the C.I.A.’s rendition program in Europe. Italian prosecutors are seeking indictments against 25 C.I.A. operatives and Italy’s former intelligence chief for the kidnapping of a militant Egyptian cleric in 2003.

In Germany, unlike Italy, defendants cannot be tried in absentia. As a practical matter it is unlikely that the Bush administration will acquiesce in the extradition to Germany of the 13 suspects. But the arrest warrant could further hinder their ability to move around Europe.

So whilst Bush is unlikely to hand over the suspects to the German courts, there is some small comfort to be taken from the fact that these suspects will be less likely to enter Europe again as their arrest would be almost guaranteed.

Mr Masri has attempted to bring charges against his abductors in US courts with little success.

Mr. Masri is petitioning a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to reinstate a lawsuit against the agency. Last May a federal judge threw out a suit brought by Mr. Masri, accepting the government’s contention that it would be impossible to hold a trial without disclosing state secrets.

The Justice Department have refused to help German prosecutors, forcing them to rely on other sources, including journalists.

A major break, Mr. Stern said, came from a Spanish reporter who compiled a list of the names of people said to have been involved in Mr. Masri’s abduction from sources in the Civil Guard, a Spanish paramilitary police agency. The C.I.A. used the Spanish island of Majorca as a logistics center for its flights, Mr. Gnjidic said, and the authorities found the names of members of the rendition team on hotel logs there.

Meanwhile in Spain "a judge has ordered Spain’s intelligence agency to declassify any documents it has about secret C.I.A. transporting of terrorism suspects, court officials said Wednesday".

The German court action, like the Spanish and Italian ones, are a sign that the Europeans - emboldened by the enquiry that found their government's to be complicit in rendition and simply lying to their respective electorates - are no longer going to find it easy to assist the CIA in this barbaric and ludicrously illegal process.

Merkel has been bending over backwards to try to make amends for Germany's stance on the Iraq war, however German courts are making clear that the law is more important than diplomatic niceties.

This is a welcome change and the beginning of the end of Europe's participation in the extraordinary rendition process.

Nor should we be in any doubt about how brutal and indiscriminate this process has been. You can read Khaled el-Masri's story here. This is simply a taster:

A man is walking alone along a mountain path in the darkness. He is carrying a suitcase. He seems frightened, tired and confused. He has long hair and a long beard, but they are untidy, as if he did not grow them voluntarily. He turns a bend and meets three men carrying Kalashnikovs.

The man shows them his passport. It indicates that he is a German citizen, born in Lebanon, called Khaled el-Masri. Using poor English, he tells them that he does not know where he is. They tell him that he is on the Albanian border, close to Serbia and Macedonia, and that he is there illegally since he doesn't have an Albanian stamp in his passport.

The story that el-Masri tells them by way of explanation, on this evening in late May 2004, is extraordinary: a story of how an unemployed German car salesman from the town of Ulm went on a New Year's holiday to Macedonia, was seized by Macedonian police at the border, held incommunicado for weeks without charge, then beaten, stripped, shackled and blindfolded and flown to a jail in Afghanistan, run by Afghans but controlled by Americans. Five months after first being seized, he says, still with no explanation or charge, he was flown back to Europe and dumped in an unknown country which turned out to be Albania.

Civilised country's operate legal systems that render treating any suspect in this way deeply illegal and unethical. It is simply astonishing that Europe's leaders for so long facilitated such a process.

Thank God Europe's courts are finally forcing their governments to comply with law as we all understand it. One day books will be written about the practices that the Bush administration indulged in and most Americans will scarce recognise the country that is being described as their own.

Click title for full article.

tag: Khaled el-Masri, extraordinary rendition, US, Germany, Bush, Merkel,

Iraqis abandon their homes in Middle East's new refugee exodus

Iraq is experiencing the largest human exodus in the Middle East since the Nakba in which Palestinians were forced to flee their homes and country before the formation of Israel.

This human catastrophe is one of the least discussed aspects of Bush and Blair's misguided war in Iraq. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said 50,000 Iraqis a month are abandoning their homes. That is an astonishing figure that it is only possible to overlook because the appalling violence on the Iraqi streets commands more of the media's attention.

They flee because they are in fear for their lives, with many leaving after receiving death threats.

Some 3,000 Iraqis are being killed every month according to the UN. Most come from Baghdad and the centre of the country, but all of Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the north is extremely violent. A detailed survey by the International Organisation for Migration on displacement within Iraq said that most people move after direct threats to their lives: "These threats take the form of abductions; assassinations of individuals or their families."

And, of course, the irony is that the more of them flee the more that sectarian violence can begin to take the form of mortar attacks as rivals can attack each others community's safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely to kill members of their own community.

It is all part of the bigger picture which is the complete disintegration of Iraq.

The most common destinations are Jordan and Syria which have taken 1.6 million people. At first it was the better-off who fled, including half of Iraq's 34,000 doctors. Now it is the poor who are arriving in Amman and Damascus with little means of surviving.

Only Syria has formally recognised a need for temporary protection for Iraqis. Others, including the US and UK, are loath to admit that one of the world's great man-made disasters is taking place. The UNHCR thinks every Iraqi should qualify as a refugee because of the extraordinary level of violence in the country. "This is the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world," Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International told the US Senate Judiciary Committee.

The fastest growing refugee crisis in the world is taking place and both the US and UK refuse to accept it is happening as it is counter to their propagandist version of events.

Remember when both the US and UK used to claim that we were going into Iraq to help the Iraqi people?

Now, as their country and their cities become too dangerous for them to live in, we refuse to accept that this humanitarian crisis is upon us.

Some do not run fast enough. Ali, a Shia businessman who also had a job with the government, was slow to abandon his fine house in a Sunni part of west Baghdad. One day he was picked up by a gang, whipped and only released when he had handed over all his money. "The kidnappers told me to leave the country," he said."

But not all succeed in getting out of the country. The land routes to Jordan and Syria run through Sunni territory. Shia trying to reach safety have been taken from their vehicles to be shot by the side of the road. But Shia can move to safety in south Iraq and therefore make up the bulk of the internally displaced.

For Sunni there is no real place of safety in Iraq. In Baghdad they are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas. Cities like Ramadi and Fallujah are partly ruined and very dangerous. Mohammed Sahib Ali, 48, a government employee, was forced out of the al-Hurriyah area by Shia militiamen. A Sunni, he took refuge in a school in Salah ad-Din province. "We are dying here," said Ali. "Not enough food, not enough medicines. I can't go to work and my three sons can't attend their classes. We don't know what to do."

I remember, shortly after Paul Wolfowitz was made President of the World Bank, thinking that an historic opportunity had been lost. The people who championed this illegal war have been allowed to waltz away from it's consequences almost guilt free. As Iraq collapses into ruin I think those who supported the invasion should be made to put right the wrong that they supported.

I'd start by making Paul Wolfowitz Mayor of Baghdad. Perle can have Tikrit.

Real people are suffering real consequences as a result of the fantasies of these neo-con lunatics. And not one of them, to my knowledge, has paid any price for the fantastically bad advice they have given. Nor has any one of them ever expressed any real contrition for what they have done. Oh, they have sought to distance themselves by claiming that the war has been badly managed, but not one of them has ever admitted that they were wrong to support the war in the first place.

I'd ship the lot of them to Iraq and not allow them to come home until they had sorted the mess they helped to create.

Click title for full article.

tag: Iraq, Iraq war, refugee crisis, exodus, Nakba, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, snark

Biden gives a lesson on how to f@ck it up..

Joe Biden is making big news today. But for all the wrong reasons. Take this comment about Barak Obama:

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

What?!? The first EVER? Did I imagine Sydney Poitier? Denziel Washington? Harry Belafonte? The list could run for pages, but I can't be bothered. You get the point.

There are times when I am simply left speechless.

tag: Joe Biden, Barack Obama