Love Is All

She is my woman and so we belong to each other.The depths of her love and her beauty fill me with awe and a profound love for her, that is true and passionate. I am the most fortunate man, so I would walk thru fire for her, without hesitation.

She is an incredible soulmate

To Be A Fool

I'm so tired, I have no place to put this pain. Everything goes on and on. Sometimes it seems like the only way to bring it to an end is to end myself. I think if it weren't for my dogs that i would be gone already. I'm so tired of this screaming in my head.

“Wind is to fire like distance is to love; it extinguishes the small and enflames the great.”

Unknown

To Be A Fool

"The spaces between your fingers were created so that another's could fill them in."

LEONARD COHEN You Know Who I Am

I cannot follow you, my love,
you cannot follow me.
I am the distance you put between
all of the moments that we will be.
You know who I am,
you've stared at the sun,
well I am the one who loves
changing from nothing to one.

Sometimes I need you naked,
sometimes I need you wild,
I need you to carry my children in
and I need you to kill a child.

You know who I am...

If you should ever track me down
I will surrender there
and I will leave with you one broken man
whom I will teach you to repair.

You know who I am...

I cannot follow you, my love,
you cannot follow me.
I am the distance you put between
all of the moments that we will be.

You know who I am...

Love Itself

The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.

In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love Itself
Love Itself was gone.

Then I came back from where I’d been.
My room, it looked the same –
But there was nothing left between
The Nameless and the Name.

All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.

I’ll try to say a little more:
Love went on and on
Until it reached an open door –
Then Love itself,
Love Itself was gone.
Love Itself was gone.

by Leonard Cohen

To Be A Fool

I feel her all around me, in every breath I take and with every breath I expire

rainbow_elam_3.jpg (JPEG Image, 900x525 pixels)

McGovern and Polk | A Blueprint for Leaving Iraq Now

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110906C.shtml

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Frank Rich | Dying to Save the GOP

Bush's Absolute Power Grab

Bush's Absolute Power Grab
 By Carla Binion
Consortium News


Saturday 21 October 2006



Many Americans are in denial about what is happening to the United States. They don't want to believe that a totalitarian structure could be put in place in their own country. They don't want to view the various pieces of George W. Bush's "anti-terror" system in that broad a context. They hope that someone or something - the Supreme Court maybe - will strike down the excesses of the Republican-controlled Congress and the Executive Branch.

Though there are still obstacles that stand in Bush's way - the Nov. 7 elections, for instance - America's march down a road to a new-age totalitarianism has advanced farther than many understand, as freelance reporter Carla Binion argues in this disturbing guest essay:

On October 17, George W. Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This new law gives Bush power similar to that possessed by Stalin or Hitler, and grants agencies within the Executive Branch powers similar to those of the KGB or Gestapo.

Bush justifies this act by claiming he needs it to fight the "war on terror," but a number of critics, including former counterterrorism officials, have said the administration has greatly exaggerated the threat and used illogical methods to combat terrorism. (Examples are listed below.)

Except for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, few television news reporters have bothered to mention that the Military Commissions Act has changed the U.S. justice system and our approach to human rights. As Olbermann said of the new law on his October 17 Countdown program, the new act "does away with habeas corpus, the right of suspected terrorists or anybody else to know why they have been imprisoned."

Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor, was Olbermann's guest. Olbermann asked him, "Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?"

Turley responded, "It does. And it's a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president…People have no idea how significant this is. What, really a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values."

Although we have a free press, rather than follow Olbermann's good example, most television news reporters have responded to this nullification of America's fundamental principles by avoiding the subject. News networks which voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to challenge government officials function more as the Soviet Union's Pravda or Hitler's Nazi press program than as a genuinely free press.

Just as the mainstream media failed to adequately question the Bush administration's many shifting rationales for invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war, they're now failing to challenge Bush's logic and motives as he justifies eviscerating the Constitution in the name of his ever-expanding "war on terror." How realistic is this so-called war, and is the Bush administration conducting it effectively?

Robert Dreyfuss covers national security for Rolling Stone. He interviewed nearly a dozen former high-ranking counterterrorism officials about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. In his article, "The Phony War," (Rolling Stone, 9/21/06) Dreyfuss says these officials conclude:

* The war on terror is bogus. Terrorism shouldn't be treated as if it were a nation to be battled with the military, but should instead be fought with police work and intelligence agencies.
* Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow.
* Bush lacks a clear understanding of the nature of the "enemy" and has no real strategy for dealing with them.
* The Bush administration confuses the issue by grouping "Al Qaeda" with everything from Iraq's resistance movement to states such as Syria and Iran.
* Today, there's virtually no real "Al Qaeda threat" to Americans.
* Bush's policies have spawned a new generation of "amateur terrorists," but there are few of them, and they're not likely to pose a major threat to the U.S.
* Though Bush has said he will fight his "war" until every last terrorist is eliminated, terrorism can never be defeated, merely "contained and reduced."

Dreyfuss says, "In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involved, more than anything, plain dumb luck."

Not only has the Bush administration falsely characterized and exaggerated the threat of terrorism; they have gone out of their way to mislead the public by claiming credit for preventing attacks. Dreyfuss points out that although Bush has claimed we've fended off 10 terrorist plots since 9/11, "on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas."

Dreyfuss also notes that, although in 2002 the Bush administration leaked to the press that Al Qaeda had 5,000 "sleepers" in the U.S., there were, in fact, none. (Or, as Dreyfuss says, not a single one has been found.) If the administration believes the facts bolster their case for a war on terrorism, why do they find it necessary to leak false information?

The administration has done little to secure U.S. borders, ports, airports and nuclear facilities. What could logically explain their inattention to these vulnerabilities if they believe a terrorist threat here is likely? Bush has said he'll do anything it takes in order to protect the American people. Why hasn't he secured our nuclear facilities?

Exaggerating the terrorist threat does give the Bush team an excuse to seize more power for the Executive and shred the Constitution. In an article for Foreign Affairs (September/October 2006), political science professor John Mueller supports Dreyfuss's view that the war on terrorism is bogus.

Mueller points out that not only have there been no terrorist incidents here in the past five years, but there were none in the five years before 9/11. Mueller asks: "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could be so easily exploited?"

He also bolsters Dreyfuss's conclusion that the Bush administration can't take credit for the fact that we haven't been attacked again. He says, "the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched."

Mueller addresses Bush's irrational argument that we're "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." He points out that terrorists with Al Qaeda sympathies have managed to carry out attacks in a variety of countries (Egypt, Jordan Turkey, the United Kingdom), not merely in Iraq.

He adds that a reasonable explanation for the fact that no terrorists have attacked since 9/11 is that the terrorist threat "has been massively exaggerated." He notes that "it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 - about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor."

Although Bush's justification for the war on terror has been illogical and deceptive, the administration has used it as an excuse to abuse the U.S. military in Iraq, tear down our system of government at home and seize power on his own behalf. As Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann on his October 17th program, with the signing of the Military Commissions Act, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers…I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking - overtaking - almost absolute power."

Bush's many power grabs and refusal to submit to usual constitutional checks and balances indicates he prefers monarchy or dictatorship to the government set up by America's founders. The framers of our Constitution provided checks on tyranny by writing into law separation of powers, granting the legislative and judicial branches of government the ability to curb abuses by the executive. Today, the Congress has abdicated its constitutional obligation and serves only as a rubber stamp for the despotic president, and to date, the courts have done much the same.

Can George W. Bush be trusted with absolute power? Here are some things he has done with his unchecked power:

* Stolen two presidential elections.
* Exaggerated and falsely characterized the terrorist threat.
* Misled the country into war with Iraq.
* Urged the U.S. intelligence agencies to fix the intelligence around the Iraq war policy (as confirmed by the Downing Street Memo and other sources) in order to mislead the Congress and public into supporting war with Iraq.
* Abused human rights by promoting the use of torture and setting up virtual gulags.
* Suspended habeas corpus for some.
* Tried to silence political opposition by pronouncing them "weak on terrorism" or somehow "with the terrorists," and
* Placed himself above the law by issuing more legislation-challenging signing statements (around 800) than all of his predecessors put together.

Bush's unnecessary invasion of Iraq alone has cost nearly 3,000 American lives. An October 11, 2006 article by Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher says that a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "suggests that more than 600,000 Iraqis have met a violent or otherwise war-related end since the U.S. arrived in March 2003."

The Bush administration's policies have not only resulted in high death counts, but also in widespread, out of control torture. A September 22, 2006 Christian Science Monitor report says:

"The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was 'totally out of hand.'"

The CS Monitor mentions the fact that the recent compromise between the Bush White House and dissident Republicans (including Senator John McCain) allows torture to continue. The article quotes a Washington Post piece:

"The bad news is Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects…It's hard to credit the statement by [McCain] yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.' In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent."

Congress has given Bush a blank check as he's bulldozed toward an imperial presidency. We have the outward forms of democratic institutions such as Congress and a so-called free press. However, the people currently managing those institutions behave as if they're being forced to serve a totalitarian dictator.

A perfect example of this surrender to Bush's virtual despotism is Congress's and the mainstream media's compliance regarding Bush's Military Commissions Act. While Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley see the extreme danger posed by Bush's authoritarian moves, Congress has done little to challenge Bush, and, overall, the press is eerily silent.

In The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer said the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany." According to Shirer, Max Amman, Hitler's top sergeant during the war and head of the Nazi Party's publishing firm and financial head of its press said that after the Nazis seized power in 1933, it was "a true statement to say that the basic purpose of the Nazi press program was to eliminate all the press which was in opposition to the party."

The U.S. mainstream press doesn't have to be coerced by a government Press Law to avoid publicly opposing Bush's most egregious policies. Television news networks, in particular, have voluntarily held back serious scrutiny. They have not only failed to discuss the recent Military Commissions Act at length, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and comedian Bill Maher were fired for challenging the White House spin about Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

Shirer also describes the ease with which the German Reichstag gave Hitler the power to change the nature of Germany's parliamentary democracy. He writes:

"One by one, Germany's most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler and to pass quietly, unprotestingly, out of existence…It cannot be said they went down fighting. On May 19, 1933, the Social Democrats - those who were not in jail or in exile - voted in the Reichstag without a dissenting voice to approve Hitler's foreign policy."

Shirer concludes: "The one-party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic responsibilities."

The U.S. Congress, like the German Reichstag, has abdicated its democratic responsibilities by granting Bush an inordinate amount of power - "with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance." The U.S. press has abandoned its role as democracy's watchdog by failing to question this development. Both of these institutions have failed the American people.

Considering Bush is using the war on terror to justify seizing undue power, both Congress and the media should question his reasoning and offer opposition. Just as they didn't effectively challenge the administration's shifting excuses for attacking Iraq, these institutions haven't scrutinized Bush's claims about the need for the Military Commissions Act and the apparently endless war on terrorism.

Among things Congress and the media should challenge is George W. Bush's false claim that the United States does not torture. In an article published at the CommonDreams.org site, journalist Molly Ivins reports that in one case of death from torture by Americans, the military at first said the prisoner's death was caused by a heart attack. Ivins adds that the coroner later said the heart attack occurred after the prisoner "had been beaten so often on his legs that they had 'basically been pulpified.'"

She adds that the Bush administration's officially sanctioning torture "throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary - these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law." Ivins isn't inclined to hyperbole, yet she says of Americans' passive acceptance of this new law: "Do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."

As Jonathan Turley said on Olbermann's program, "I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won't be kind to President Bush. But frankly, I don't think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, 'Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law?' There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps; there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate."

Future generations will wonder why the U.S. Congress and mainstream press helped Bush build up an imperial presidency and eliminate Constitutional protections. If they're able to sort through the administration's fallacies and lies and clearly see what went wrong with America during this time, they'll wonder why there were so few Molly Ivins's, Keith Olbermann's and Jonathan Turley's.

Coming generations will also ask why by comparison there were so many who failed to notice the obvious holes in Bush's logic and why so many turned a blind eye to his numerous false assertions and cruel policies. They'll wonder why so many supported, whether by direct action or by silence, the Bush administration's changing the fundamental nature of the democratic Republic we were given by America's founders, based on the flimsy excuse of fighting a war on terrorism - a "war" Bush defines falsely and fights ineffectively.

Generations to come might ask why this president who lied so often, about Iraq and other critical matters, was ever entrusted with enough power to damage this country's founding principles and wage endless, unprovoked war on other nations. If Congress and the media would ask these questions now, they might prevent Bush from doing further harm. This might save many lives, prevent much unnecessary suffering and possibly steer this country out of its present darkness.

Carla Binion is a freelance researcher and writer whose essays have been published at various Web sites.
Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation
Frank Rich | Dying to Save the GOP

A Major Event

Beyond that, of course, are the casualties. Much has been made in the media of late about the number of American soldiers who have been killed recently. 2,787 troops have been killed since the invasion was undertaken, with 74 of those deaths coming in the month of October alone. As bad as this is, these numbers do not accurately reflect the calamity this war has visited upon our armed forces.



The Department of Defense's own reports tell the broader tale. A report from the Defense Manpower Data Center lays it out in stark detail: the total number of "non-mortal" casualties among American soldiers stands at 44,799. Add this to the 2,787 soldiers killed, and we reach 47,586.



A typical military division has between 10,000 and 20,000 soldiers, which means the casualties suffered by our troops in Iraq to date amount to between two and four full divisions that have been damaged or ultimately erased. The Army and Marine Corps have thirteen active divisions, so at the worst end of the measurement, the Iraq occupation has sapped a full third of the fighting strength of the US military.

Tremors in India After the North Korean Test

J. Sri Raman | Tremors in India After the North Korean Test
By J. Sri Raman
t r u t h o u t |
Perspective

Friday 13 October 2006


The most immediate questions raised by North Korea's nuclear-weapon test were not about its impact on Northeast Asia. They concerned the consequences of the test for two far-off countries of the continent - Iran and India.

The world waits, with trepidation, to see what the blast means for Tehran and the bleeding Middle East. What deserves to be watched with nearly equal concern is how the "provocation" from Pyongyang (as Washington describes it) impacts the US-India nuclear "deal."

Indications as of now are that the nuclear test won't act as a deterrent against the "deal." Not only that. Chances are that the US-India "strategic partnership," which the "deal" is supposed to symbolize, is now poised to be carried to the stage of a closer and more dangerous collaboration.

The first reactions to the test in the pro-"deal" quarters in India betrayed a new fear following a major frustration. New Delhi's reverie, in which it saw the elite nuclear club receiving it soon at least as a second-class member, suffered a rude jolt in the US Senate at the end of September. The House went into a recess then without passing a bill to arm President George Bush with powers to implement the "deal." Nuclear hawks, wearing the hat of "experts," hastened to restore the morale of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government. They held out the hope that Indian and US mandarins together will find a constitutional way out of the impasse by mid-November.

Then came the North Korea's nuclear revolt, and the hope seemed to recede. Reports from Washington recorded the fears of the pro-"deal" lobbyists (with corporate interests in the lead) that Kim Jong-Il had thrown a lifeline to their opponents in the Senate. The Bush regime - so it was argued - could not convincingly act outraged over North Korea's violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) while rewarding a non-signatory to the treaty with nuclear largesse.

Such simple and straight logic, however, did not apply to a "strategic partnership." The "experts" swung into action again, counseling the government and reassuring the country against despair over the "deal." In their view, a prompt and correct response to the test could save the "deal" and actually strengthen the "partnership." New Delhi acted on the advice, and has had no reason for regret.

As we have noted in these columns before, New Delhi has long been rehearsing for the role of a recognized member of the "nuclear club" by lecturing non-nuclear-weapon nations on non-proliferation. Even while pursuing the "deal," it has been reminding Iran and North Korea of their "duties" under the NPT, which India has rejected as "discriminatory" down the decades. The harangue has acquired a holier tone since the North Korean test.

Besides denouncing the test as a "violation of [North Korea's] international commitments," India's Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee talked of Pyongyang's illustration of "the dangers of clandestine proliferation." The layman may wonder if a nuclear bomb becomes any more or less of a weapon of mass destruction because of the manner of its acquisition. The Indian "expert" and establishment, however, are trying to make an entirely different point.

The reference to "clandestine proliferation" is a none-too-veiled allusion to reports of covert nuclear collaboration between North Korea and Pakistan, with the suspected involvement of infamous Abdul Qadeer Khan. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has reacted by making a distinction between his country and Khan as an individual scientist of adventurous inclinations. The general has also denied any link between the Pakistan and North Korean nuclear programs.

New Delhi, however, has not been deterred from its campaign with the dual aim of pleasing Bush and baiting Pakistan. The articulate "experts" are admonishing innocent Indians who might have taken the India-Pakistan "peace process" too seriously. They are asking the people to remember that Pakistan's missiles, developed with North Korean help, can hit all major Indian cities. That India's missiles can bomb out Pakistan's cities, too, seems to the "experts" somewhat beside the point.

The "experts" have proven right in their expectations from Washington. US Under Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Nicholas Burns has just ruled out any comparison between the Bush-aided blooming of India as a nuclear power and the reprehensibly "clandestine proliferation" represented by a "rogue state" like North Korea. Burns has assured New Delhi that the Bush administration will continue to "push" the "deal." That should have sufficed for the purposes of the "strategic partnership."

The "experts," however, are of the view that, with the test, the time has come to enlarge the scope of the US-India team-up. They are calling on New Delhi to take two concrete and major steps toward making the "strategic partnership" appear almost a military alliance. They want India to enlist as a member of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and to get inducted into the US Missile Defense program. India's political establishment has not been opposed to either of the proposals in principle.

In the wake of 9/11, India's navy joined the US in the euphemistically so-described "search" and "anti-piracy" operations in the Straits of Malacca and did not endear itself to the Southeast Asian countries and governments in the process. This was the beginning of the Bush campaign for a PSI.

Strategic analyst and member of India's National Security Advisory Board C. Raja Mohan now writes: "It is fine to raise the alarm bells on illicit nuclear trade (as India has done after North Korea's test). But what is India doing about it?... Why is New Delhi not part of the current global mechanism (the PSI) designed precisely to counter clandestine proliferation?"

In 2001, India was among the first few states to extend support to the National Missile Defense and Theater Missile Defense programs of the USA. In return then for India's support for the programs (on the specious ground of the "deep cuts" these would effect in the US nuclear arsenal), Washington had certified that India had developed only a "minimum nuclear deterrent."

On June 27, 2005, in Washington, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and India's Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee signed a ten-year agreement titled the New Framework for US-India Defense Relationship (NFDR). The agreement had a provision for India's induction into the missile defense program. Raja Mohan argues that this is an ideal time to tap the potential of the provision.

Says he: "One inevitable consequence of North Korea's nuclear weapons will be the acceleration of the missile defense programs of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Taiwan. Must India be the last Asian power to focus on missile defense?"

The North Korean nuclear test will not only threaten peace and security in Northeast Asia. The post-test tremors will be felt in South Asia as well.

A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular contributor to t r u t h o u t.
AlterNet: American Fascism Is on the Rise

American Fascism Is on the Rise

By Stan Goff, Truthdig. Posted October 14, 2006.

The precursors of fascism -- militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization -- are ascendant in America today.

AlterNet: American Fascism Is on the Rise

American Fascism Is on the Rise

By Stan Goff, Truthdig. Posted October 14, 2006.

The precursors of fascism -- militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization -- are ascendant in America today.

Bob Dylan

There doesn't seem to be any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, no matter in what position, it's always been today.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092906J.shtml In Case I Disappear

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 29 September 2006


I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. "Be careful," people always tell me. "These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed." A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.

I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff. Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought. This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn't yet been red-lined, I thought.

Matters are different now.

It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid. It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough. Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.

So much of this legislation is wretched on the surface. Habeas corpus has been suspended for detainees suspected of terrorism or of aiding terrorism, so the Magna Carta-era rule that a person can face his accusers is now gone. Once a suspect has been thrown into prison, he does not have the right to a trial by his peers. Suspects cannot even stand in representation of themselves, another ancient protection, but must accept a military lawyer as their defender.

Illegally-obtained evidence can be used against suspects, whether that illegal evidence was gathered abroad or right here at home. To my way of thinking, this pretty much eradicates our security in persons, houses, papers, and effects, as stated in the Fourth Amendment, against illegal searches and seizures.

Speaking of collecting evidence, the torture of suspects and detainees has been broadly protected by this new legislation. While it tries to delineate what is and is not acceptable treatment of detainees, in the end, it gives George W. Bush the final word on what constitutes torture. US officials who use cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment to extract information from detainees are now shielded from prosecution.

It was two Supreme Court decisions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that compelled the creation of this legislation. The Hamdi decision held that a prisoner has the right of habeas corpus, and can challenge his detention before an impartial judge. The Hamdan decision held that the military commissions set up to try detainees violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

In short, the Supreme Court wiped out virtually every legal argument the Bush administration put forth to defend its extraordinary and dangerous behavior. The passage of this legislation came after a scramble by Republicans to paper over the torture and murder of a number of detainees. As columnist Molly Ivins wrote on Wednesday, "Of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place."

It seems almost certain that, at some point, the Supreme Court will hear a case to challenge the legality of this legislation, but even this is questionable. If a detainee is not allowed access to a fair trial or to the evidence against him, how can he bring a legal challenge to a court? The legislation, in anticipation of court challenges like Hamdi and Hamdan, even includes severe restrictions on judicial review over the legislation itself.

The Republicans in Congress have managed, at the behest of Mr. Bush, to draft a bill that all but erases the judicial branch of the government. Time will tell whether this aspect, along with all the others, will withstand legal challenges. If such a challenge comes, it will take time, and meanwhile there is this bill. All of the above is deplorable on its face, indefensible in a nation that prides itself on Constitutional rights, protections and the rule of law.

Underneath all this, however, is where the paranoia sets in.

Underneath all this is the definition of "enemy combatant" that has been established by this legislation. An "enemy combatant" is now no longer just someone captured "during an armed conflict" against our forces. Thanks to this legislation, George W. Bush is now able to designate as an "enemy combatant" anyone who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."

Consider that language a moment. "Purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" is in the eye of the beholder, and this administration has proven itself to be astonishingly impatient with criticism of any kind. The broad powers given to Bush by this legislation allow him to capture, indefinitely detain, and refuse a hearing to any American citizen who speaks out against Iraq or any other part of the so-called "War on Terror."

If you write a letter to the editor attacking Bush, you could be deemed as purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States. If you organize or join a public demonstration against Iraq, or against the administration, the same designation could befall you. One dark-comedy aspect of the legislation is that senators or House members who publicly disagree with Bush, criticize him, or organize investigations into his dealings could be placed under the same designation. In effect, Congress just gave Bush the power to lock them up.

By writing this essay, I could be deemed an "enemy combatant." It's that simple, and very soon, it will be the law. I always laughed when people told me to be careful. I'm not laughing anymore.

In case I disappear, remember this. America is an idea, a dream, and that is all. We have borders and armies and citizens and commerce and industry, but all this merely makes us like every other nation on this Earth. What separates us is the idea, the simple idea, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our organizing principles. We can think as we please, speak as we please, write as we please, worship as we please, go where we please. We are protected from the kinds of tyranny that inspired our creation as a nation in the first place.

That was the idea. That was the dream. It may all be over now, but once upon a time, it existed. No good idea ever truly dies. The dream was here, and so was I, and so were you.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

Are We Really So Fearful?

Ariel Dorfman
The Washington Post


Sunday 24 September 2006

Durham, North Carolina
- It still haunts me, the first time - it was in Chile, in October of 1973 - that I met someone who had been tortured. To save my life, I had sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy some weeks after the coup that had toppled the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, a government for which I had worked. And then, suddenly, one afternoon, there he was. A large-boned man, gaunt and yet strangely flabby, with eyes like a child, eyes that could not stop blinking and a body that could not stop shivering.

That is what stays with me - that he was cold under the balmy afternoon sun of Santiago de Chile, trembling as though he would never be warm again, as though the electric current was still coursing through him. Still possessed, somehow still inhabited by his captors, still imprisoned in that cell in the National Stadium, his hands disobeying the orders from his brain to quell the shuddering, his body unable to forget what had been done to it just as, nearly 33 years later, I, too, cannot banish that devastated life from my memory.

It was his image, in fact, that swirled up from the past as I pondered the current political debate in the United States about the practicality of torture. Something in me must have needed to resurrect that victim, force my fellow citizens here to spend a few minutes with the eternal iciness that had settled into that man's heart and flesh, and demand that they take a good hard look at him before anyone dare maintain that, to save lives, it might be necessary to inflict unbearable pain on a fellow human being. Perhaps the optimist in me hoped that this damaged Argentine man could, all these decades later, help shatter the perverse innocence of contemporary Americans, just as he had burst the bubble of ignorance protecting the young Chilean I used to be, someone who back then had encountered torture mainly through books and movies and newspaper reports.

That is not, however, the only lesson that today's ruthless world can learn from that distant man condemned to shiver forever.

All those years ago, that torture victim kept moving his lips, trying to articulate an explanation, muttering the same words over and over. "It was a mistake," he repeated, and in the next few days I pieced together his sad and foolish tale. He was an Argentine revolutionary who had fled his homeland and, as soon as he had crossed the mountains into Chile, had begun to boast about what he would do to the military there if it staged a coup, about his expertise with arms of every sort, about his colossal stash of weapons. Bluster and braggadocio - and every word of it false.

But how could he convince those men who were beating him, hooking his penis to electric wires and waterboarding him? How could he prove to them that he had been lying, prancing in front of his Chilean comrades, just trying to impress the ladies with his fraudulent insurgent persona?

Of course, he couldn't. He confessed to anything and everything they wanted to drag from his hoarse, howling throat; he invented accomplices and addresses and culprits; and then, when it became apparent that all this was imaginary, he was subjected to further ordeals.

There was no escape.

That is the hideous predicament of the torture victim. It was always the same story, what I discovered in the ensuing years, as I became an unwilling expert on all manner of torments and degradations, my life and my writing overflowing with grief from every continent. Each of those mutilated spines and fractured lives -- Chinese, Guatemalan, Egyptian, Indonesian, Iranian, Uzbek, need I go on? -- all of them, men and women alike, surrendered the same story of essential asymmetry, where one man has all the power in the world and the other has nothing but pain, where one man can decree death at the flick of a wrist and the other can only pray that the wrist will be flicked soon.

It is a story that our species has listened to with mounting revulsion, a horror that has led almost every nation to sign treaties over the past decades declaring these abominations as crimes against humanity, transgressions interdicted all across the earth. That is the wisdom, national and international, that has taken us thousands of years of tribulation and shame to achieve. That is the wisdom we are being asked to throw away when we formulate the question - Does torture work? - when we allow ourselves to ask whether we can afford to outlaw torture if we want to defeat terrorism.

I will leave others to claim that torture, in fact, does not work, that confessions obtained under duress - such as that extracted from the heaving body of that poor Argentine braggart in some Santiago cesspool in 1973 - are useless. Or to contend that the United States had better not do that to anyone in our custody lest someday another nation or entity or group decides to treat our prisoners the same way.

I find these arguments - and there are many more - to be irrefutable. But I cannot bring myself to use them, for fear of honoring the debate by participating in it.

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the "intelligence" that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?

Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America? Have we so lost our bearings that we do not realize that each of us could be that hapless Argentine who sat under the Santiago sun, so possessed by the evil done to him that he could not stop shivering?

--------

Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American writer and professor at Duke University, is author of Death and the Maiden.

Burning Down The House

An alltime awesome song by one of the greatest bands ever

Robert Parry | The Bushes and the Truth About Iran

Thursday 21 September 2006


Having gone through the diplomatic motions with Iran, George W. Bush is shifting toward a military option that carries severe risks for American soldiers in Iraq as well as for long-term U.S. interests around the world. Yet, despite this looming crisis, the Bush Family continues to withhold key historical facts about U.S.-Iranian relations.

Those historical facts - relating to Republican contacts with Iran's Islamic regime more than a quarter century ago - are relevant today because an underlying theme in Bush's rationale for war is that direct negotiations with Iran are pointless. But Bush's own father may know otherwise.

The evidence is now persuasive that George H.W. Bush participated in negotiations with Iran's radical regime in 1980, behind President Jimmy Carter's back, with the goal of arranging for 52 American hostages to be released after Bush and Ronald Reagan were sworn in as Vice President and President, respectively.

In exchange, the Republicans agreed to let Iran obtain U.S.-manufactured military supplies through Israel. The Iranians kept their word, releasing the hostages immediately upon Reagan's swearing-in on Jan. 20, 1981.

Over the next few years, the Republican-Israel-Iran weapons pipeline operated mostly in secret, only exploding into public view with the Iran-Contra scandal in late 1986. Even then, the Reagan-Bush team was able to limit congressional and other investigations, keeping the full history - and the 1980 chapter - hidden from the American people.

Upon taking office on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush walled up the history even more by issuing an executive order blocking the scheduled declassification of records from the Reagan-Bush years. After 9/11, the younger George Bush added more bricks to the wall by giving Presidents, Vice Presidents and their heirs power over releasing documents.

Impending War

But that history is vital today.

First, the American people should know the real history of U.S.-Iran relations before the Bush administration launches another preemptive war in the Middle East. Second, the degree to which Iranian officials are willing to negotiate with their U.S. counterparts - and fulfill their side of the bargain - bears on the feasibility of talks now.

Indeed, the only rationale for hiding the historical record is that it would embarrass the Bush Family and possibly complicate George W. Bush's decision to attack Iran regardless of what the American people might want.

The Time magazine cover story, released on Sept. 17, and a new report by retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner - entitled "The End of the 'Summer Diplomacy'" - make clear that the military option against Iran is moving rapidly toward implementation.

Gardiner, who taught at the National War College and has war-gamed U.S. attacks on Iran for American policymakers over the past five years, noted that one of the "seven key truths" guiding Bush to war is that "you cannot negotiate with these people."

That "truth," combined with suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions and Tehran's relationship with Hezbelloh and other militant Islamic groups, has led the Bush administration into the box-canyon logic that war is the only answer, despite the fact that Gardiner's war games have found that war would have disastrous consequences.

In his report, Gardiner also noted that Bush's personality and his sense of his presidential destiny are adding to the pressures for war.

"The President is said to see himself as being like Winston Churchill, and to believe that the world will only appreciate him after he leaves office; he talks about the Middle East in messianic terms; he is said to have told those close to him that he has got to attack Iran because even if a Republican succeeds him in the White House, he will not have the same freedom of action that Bush enjoys.

"Most recently, someone high in the administration told a reporter that the President believes that he is the only one who can 'do the right thing' with respect to Iran. One thing is clear: a major source of the pressure for a military strike emanates from the very man who will ultimately make the decision over whether to authorize such a strike - the President."

A Made-Up Mind

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who reflects the thinking of influential neoconservatives, reached a similar conclusion - that Bush had essentially made up his mind about attacking Iran.

Krauthammer noted that on the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Bush responded to a question about Iran by saying: "It's very important for the American people to see the President try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."

"'Before' implies that one follows the other," Krauthammer wrote. "The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option." [Washington Post, Sept. 15, 2006]

Yet, before making such a fateful decision, shouldn't Bush at least ask his father to finally level with him and with the American people about what happened in 1980 when the country was transfixed by Iranian militants holding 52 American hostages for 444 days?

At Consortiumnews.com, we have a special interest in that history because it was my discovery of a trove of classified documents pointing to the secret Republican negotiations with Iran that led to the founding of this Web site in 1995 and the publication of our first investigative series.

In the mid-1990s, the U.S. news media was obsessed with issues such as the O.J. Simpson trial and the so-called "Clinton scandals," so there was little interest in reexamining some historical mystery about Republicans going behind Jimmy Carter's back to strike a deal with Iran's mullahs.

[The fullest account of this history can be found in Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege, which was published in 2004.]

But that history now could be a matter of life or death for thousands of people in the Middle East, including Iranians, Israelis and American soldiers in Iraq.

False History

The false history surrounding the Iranian hostage crisis also has led to the mistaken conclusion that it was only the specter of Ronald Reagan's tough-guy image that made Iran buckle in January 1981 and that, therefore, the Iranians respect only force.

The hostage release on Reagan's Inauguration Day bathed the new President in an aura of heroism as a leader so feared by America's enemies that they scrambled to avoid angering him. It was viewed as a case study of how U.S. toughness could restore the proper international order.

That night, as fireworks lit the skies of Washington, the celebration was not only for a new President and for the freed hostages, but for a new era in which American power would no longer be mocked. That momentum continues to this day in George W. Bush's "preemptive" wars and the imperial boasts about a "New American Century."

However, the reality of that day 25 years ago now appears to have been quite different than was understood at the time. What's now known about the Iranian hostage crisis suggests that the "coincidence" of the Reagan Inauguration and the Hostage Release was not a case of frightened Iranians cowering before a U.S. President who might just nuke Tehran.

The evidence indicates that it was a prearranged deal between the Republicans and the Iranians. The Republicans got the hostages and the political bounce; Iran's Islamic fundamentalists got a secret supply of weapons and various other payoffs.

State Secret

Though the full history remains a state secret, it now appears Republicans did contact Iran's mullahs during the 1980 campaign; a hostage agreement was reached; and a clandestine flow of U.S. weapons soon followed.

In effect, while Americans thought they were witnessing one reality - the cinematic heroism of Ronald Reagan backing down Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - another truth existed beneath the surface, one so troubling that the Reagan-Bush political apparatus has made keeping the secret a top priority for a quarter century.

The American people must never be allowed to think that the Reagan-Bush era began with collusion between Republican operatives and Islamic terrorists, an act that many might view as treason.

A part of those secret dealings between Iran and the Republicans surfaced in the Iran-Contra Affair in 1986, when the public learned that the Reagan-Bush administration had sold arms to Iran for its help in freeing U.S. hostages then held in Lebanon.

After first denying these facts, the White House acknowledged the existence of the arms deals in 1985 and 1986 but managed to block investigators from looking back before 1984, when the official histories assert that the Iran initiative began.

During the 1987 congressional hearings on Iran-Contra, Republicans - behind the hardnosed leadership of Rep. Dick Cheney - fought to protect the White House, while Democrats, led by the accommodating Rep. Lee Hamilton, had no stomach for a constitutional crisis.

The result was a truncated investigation that laid much of the blame on supposedly rogue operatives, such as Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Many American editors quickly grew bored with the complex Iran-Contra tale, but a few reporters kept searching for its origins. The trail kept receding in time, back to the Republican-Iranian relationship forged in the heat of the 1980 presidential campaign.

"Germs" of Scandal

Besides the few journalists, some U.S. government officials reached the same conclusion. For instance, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan's assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, traced the "germs" of the Iran-Contra scandal to the 1980 campaign.

In a PBS interview, Veliotes said he first discovered the secret arms pipeline to Iran when an Israeli weapons flight was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course on its third mission to deliver U.S. military supplies from Israel to Iran via Larnaca, Cyprus.

"We received a press report from Tass [the official Soviet news agency] that an Argentinian plane had crashed," Veliotes said. "According to the documents … this was chartered by Israel and it was carrying American military equipment to Iran. …And it was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment.

"Now this was not a covert operation in the classic sense, for which probably you could get a legal justification for it. As it stood, I believe it was the initiative of a few people [who] gave the Israelis the go-ahead. The net result was a violation of American law."

The reason that the Israeli flights violated U.S. law was that no formal notification had been given to Congress about the transshipment of U.S. military equipment as required by the Arms Export Control Act - a foreshadowing of George W. Bush's decision two decades later to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan-Bush camp's dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election.

"It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration," Veliotes said. "And I understand some contacts were made at that time."

Q: "Between?"

Veliotes: "Between Israelis and these new players."

Israeli Interests

In my work on the Iran-Contra scandal, I had obtained a classified summary of testimony from a mid-level State Department official, David Satterfield, who saw the early arms shipments as a continuation of Israeli policy toward Iran.

"Satterfield believed that Israel maintained a persistent military relationship with Iran, based on the Israeli assumption that Iran was a non-Arab state which always constituted a potential ally in the Middle East," the summary read. "There was evidence that Israel resumed providing arms to Iran in 1980."

Over the years, senior Israeli officials claimed that those early shipments had the discreet blessing of top Reagan-Bush officials.

In May 1982, Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told the Washington Post that U.S. officials had approved the Iranian arms transfers. "We said that notwithstanding the tyranny of Khomeini, which we all hate, we have to leave a small window open to this country, a tiny small bridge to this country," Sharon said.

A decade later, in 1993, I took part in an interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Tel Aviv during which he said he had read Gary Sick's 1991 book, October Surprise, which made the case for believing that the Republicans had intervened in the 1980 hostage negotiations to disrupt Jimmy Carter's reelection.

With the topic raised, one interviewer asked, "What do you think? Was there an October Surprise?"

"Of course, it was," Shamir responded without hesitation. "It was." Later in the interview when pressed for details, Shamir seemed to regret his candor and tried to backpedal somewhat on his answer.

Lie Detector

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh also came to suspect that the arms-for-hostage trail led back to 1980, since it was the only way to make sense of why the Reagan-Bush team continued selling arms to Iran in 1985-86 when there was so little progress in reducing the number of American hostages in Lebanon.

When Walsh's investigators conducted a polygraph of George H.W. Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg, they added a question about Gregg's possible participation in the secret 1980 negotiations.

"Were you ever involved in a plan to delay the release of the hostages in Iran until after the 1980 Presidential election?" the examiner asked. Gregg's denial was judged to be deceptive. [See Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Vol. I, p. 501]

While investigating the so-called "October Surprise" issue for PBS "Frontline" in 1991-92, I also discovered a former State Department official who claimed contemporaneous knowledge of an October 1980 trip by then vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush to Paris to meet with Iranians about the hostages.

David Henderson, who was then a State Department Foreign Service officer, recalled the date as October 18, 1980. He said he heard about the Paris trip when Chicago Tribune correspondent John Maclean met him for an interview on another topic.

Maclean, son of author Norman Maclean who wrote A River Runs Through It, had just been told by a well-placed Republican source that Bush was flying to Paris for a clandestine meeting with a delegation of Iranians about the American hostages.

Henderson wasn't sure whether Maclean was looking for some confirmation or whether he was simply sharing an interesting tidbit of news. For his part, Maclean never wrote about the leak because, he told me later, a GOP campaign spokesman had denied it.

Faded Memory

As the years passed, the memory of that Bush-to-Paris leak faded for both Henderson and Maclean, until October Surprise allegations bubbled to the surface in the early 1990s.

Several intelligence operatives were claiming that Bush had undertaken a secret mission to Paris in mid-October 1980 to give the Iranian government an assurance from one of the two Republicans on the presidential ticket that the GOP promises of future military and other assistance would be kept.

Henderson mentioned his recollection of the Bush-to-Paris leak in a 1991 letter to a U.S. senator, which someone sent to me. Though Henderson didn't remember the name of the Chicago Tribune reporter, we were able to track it back to Maclean through a story that he had written about Henderson.

Though not eager to become part of the October Surprise story in 1991, Maclean confirmed that he had received the Republican leak. He also agreed with Henderson's recollection that their conversation occurred on or about Oct.18, 1980. But Maclean still declined to identify his source.

The significance of the Maclean-Henderson conversation was that it was a piece of information locked in a kind of historical amber, untainted by subsequent claims from intelligence operatives whose credibility had been challenged.

One couldn't accuse Maclean of concocting the Bush-to-Paris allegation for some ulterior motive, since he hadn't used it in 1980, nor had he volunteered it a decade later. He only confirmed it when asked and even then wasn't eager to talk about it.

Bush Meeting

The Maclean-Henderson conversation provided important corroboration for the claims by the intelligence operatives, including Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe who said he saw Bush attend a final round of meetings with Iranians in Paris.

Ben-Menashe said he was in Paris as part of a six-member Israeli delegation that was coordinating the arms deliveries to Iran. He said the key meeting had occurred at the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

In his memoirs, Profits of War, Ben-Menashe said he recognized several Americans, including Republican congressional aide Robert McFarlane and CIA officers Robert Gates, Donald Gregg and George Cave. Then, Ben-Menashe said, Iranian cleric Mehdi Karrubi arrived and walked into a conference room.

"A few minutes later George Bush, with the wispy-haired William Casey in front of him, stepped out of the elevator. He smiled, said hello to everyone, and, like Karrubi, hurried into the conference room," Ben-Menashe wrote.

Ben-Menashe said the Paris meetings served to finalize a previously outlined agreement calling for release of the 52 hostages in exchange for $52 million, guarantees of arms sales for Iran, and unfreezing of Iranian monies in U.S. banks. The timing, however, was changed, he said, to coincide with Reagan's expected Inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.

Ben-Menashe, who repeated his allegations under oath in a congressional deposition, received support from several sources, including pilot Heinrich Rupp, who said he flew Casey - then Reagan's campaign director - from Washington's National Airport to Paris on a flight that left very late on a rainy night in mid-October.

Rupp said that after arriving at LeBourget airport outside Paris, he saw a man resembling Bush on the tarmac. The night of Oct. 18 indeed was rainy in the Washington area. Also, sign-in sheets at the Reagan-Bush headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, placed Casey within a five-minute drive of National Airport late that evening.

Other Witnesses

There were other bits and pieces of corroboration about the Paris meetings. As early as 1987, Iran's ex-President Bani-Sadr had made similar claims about a Paris meeting between Republicans and Iranians. A French arms dealer, Nicholas Ignatiew, told me in 1990 that he had checked with his government contacts and was told that Republicans did meet with Iranians in Paris in mid-October 1980.

A well-connected French investigative reporter Claude Angeli said his sources inside the French secret service confirmed that the service provided "cover" for a meeting between Republicans and Iranians in France on the weekend of Oct. 18-19, 1980. German journalist Martin Kilian had received a similar account from a top aide to the fiercely anti-communist chief of French intelligence, Alexandre deMarenches.

Later, deMarenches's biographer, David Andelman, told congressional investigators under oath that deMarenches admitted that he had helped the Reagan-Bush campaign arrange meetings with Iranians about the hostage issue in the summer and fall of 1980, with one meeting held in Paris in October.

Andelman said deMarenches ordered that the secret meetings be kept out of his biography because the story could otherwise damage the reputation of his friends, Casey and Bush. "I don't want to hurt my friend, George Bush," Andelman recalled deMarenches saying as Bush was seeking re-election in 1992.

Gates, McFarlane, Gregg and Cave all denied participating in the meeting, though some alibis proved shaky and others were never examined at all.

Lashing Out

For his part, George H.W. Bush lashed out at the October Surprise allegations. At a news conference on June 4, 1992, Bush was asked if he thought an independent counsel was needed to investigate allegations of secret arms shipments to Iraq during the 1980s.

"I wonder whether they're going to use the same prosecutors that are trying out there to see whether I was in Paris in 1980," Bush snapped.

As a surprised hush fell over the press corps, Bush continued, "I mean, where are we going with the taxpayers' money in this political year?" Bush then asserted, "I was not in Paris, and we did nothing illegal or wrong here" on Iraq.

Though Bush was a former CIA director and had been caught lying about Iran-Contra with his claims of being "out of the loop," he was still given the benefit of the doubt in 1992. Plus, he had what appeared to be a solid alibi for Oct. 18-19, 1980, Secret Service records which placed him at his home in Washington on that weekend.

However, the Bush administration released the records only in redacted form, making it difficult for congressional investigators to verify exactly what Bush had done that day and whom he had met.

The records for the key day of Sunday, Oct. 19, purported to show Bush going to the Chevy Chase Country Club in the morning and to someone's private residence in the afternoon. If Bush indeed had been on those side trips, it would close the window on any possible flight to Paris and back.

Investigators of the October Surprise mystery - including those of us at "Frontline" - put great weight on the Secret Service records. But little is really known about the Secret Service's standards for recording the movements of protectees.

Since the cooperation of the protectees is essential to the Secret Service staying in position to thwart any attacker, the agents presumably must show flexibility in what details they report.

Few politicians are going to want bodyguards around if they write down the details of sensitive meetings or assignations with illicit lovers. Reasonably, the agents might have to fudge or leave out some of the facts.

Bush's Alibi

As it turned out, only one Secret Service agent on the Bush detail - supervisor Leonard Tanis - claimed a clear recollection of the trip to the Chevy Chase Country Club that Sunday. Tanis told congressional investigators that Mr. and Mrs. Bush went to the Chevy Chase club for brunch with Justice and Mrs. Potter Stewart.

But at "Frontline," we had already gone down that path and found it to be a dead end. We had obtained Mrs. Bush's protective records and they showed her going to the C&O Canal jogging path in Washington, not to the Chevy Chase club.

We also had reached Justice Stewart's widow, who had no recollection of any Chevy Chase brunch. So it appeared that Tanis was wrong - and he later backed off his claims.

The inaccurate Tanis account raised the suspicions of House International Affairs Committee counsel Spencer Oliver. In a six-page memo urging a closer look at the Bush question, Oliver argued that the Secret Service had withheld the uncensored daily report for no justifiable reason from Congress.

"Why did the Secret Service refuse to cooperate on a matter which could have conclusively cleared George Bush of these serious allegations?" Oliver asked. "Was the White House involved in this refusal? Did they order it?"

Oliver also noted Bush's strange behavior in raising the October Surprise issue on his own at two news conferences.

"It can be fairly said that President Bush's recent outbursts about the October Surprise inquiries and [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best," wrote Oliver, "since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush."

Secret Flight

Unintentionally, Bush's eldest son poked another hole in the assumption that the government would never doctor official records to help cover up international travel by a protected public figure.

For Thanksgiving 2003, George W. Bush wanted to make a surprise flight to Iraq. To give Bush's flight additional security - and extra drama - phony flight plans were filed, a false call sign was employed, and Air Force One was identified as a "Gulfstream 5" in response to a question from a British Airways pilot.

"A senior administration official told reporters that even some members of Bush's Secret Service detail believed he was still in Crawford, Texas, getting ready to have his parents over for Thanksgiving," Washington Post reporter Mike Allen wrote. [Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2003]

Besides falsely telling reporters that George W. Bush planned to spend Thanksgiving at his Texas ranch, Bush's handlers spirited Bush to Air Force One in an unmarked vehicle, with only a tiny Secret Service contingent, the Post reported.

Bush later relished describing the scene to reporters. "They pulled up in a plain-looking vehicle with tinted windows. I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled 'er down - as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple," he said, referring to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Though the melodramatic deception surrounding Bush's flight to Baghdad soon became public - since it was in essence a publicity stunt - it did prove the ability of high-ranking officials to conduct their movements in secrecy and the readiness of security personnel to file false reports as part of these operations.

Collapsing Alibis

By the late 1990s, other elements of the Republicans' October Surprise alibis were collapsing, including pro-Reagan-Bush claims cited prominently by some news organizations, such as the New Republic and Newsweek. [For more details, see Parry's Secrecy & Privilege or Consortiumnews.com's "The Bushes & the Death of Reason."]

With the Republican defenses falling apart and with many documents from the Reagan-Bush years scheduled for release in 2001, the opportunity to finally learn the truth about the pivotal election of 1980 loomed.

But George W. Bush got into the White House via a ruling by five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes in Florida. Then, on his first day in office, his counsel Alberto Gonzales drafted an executive order for Bush that postponed release of the Reagan-Bush records.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush approved another secrecy order that put the records beyond the public's reach indefinitely, passing down control of many documents to a President's or a Vice President's descendants.

Thus, the truth about how the Reagan-Bush era began in the 1980s - and what was done to contain the Iran-Contra investigations in the late 1980s and early 1990s - might eventually become the property of the noted scholars, the Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara.

The American people will be kept in the dark about their own history, like the subjects of some hereditary dynasty. Without the facts, they also face the possibility of being more easily manipulated by emotional appeals devoid of informed debate

That moment has come sooner than many expected. The United States appears to be on the brink of a war with Iran, while many government officials and the citizenry are operating on historical assumptions derived more from fiction than fact.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & "Project Truth."

Shapeshifting

He will be a dragon before the host at the onset,
He will be a wolf of every great forest,
He will be a stag with horns of silver . . .
He will be a speckled salmon in a full pool,
He will be a seal, he will be a fair-white swan.
He will be throughout long ages
An hundred years in fair kingship...

John Cory | Clowns and Harlots

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 07 September 2006
 We now live under a government and media run by clowns and harlots who peddle their wares from the corner of K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue all the way to Main Street, USA. They spray the night air with the rancid perfume of fear while selling cheap lipstick-lies that kill, as they offer the flesh of our Constitution to the highest corporate bidder.

Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, chief clowns in a circus of hate and vitriolic stupidity, are allowed to spew their obscenities on FOX and friends. Why? Because avarice, and the gluttony of power, trumps moral values in this crowd.

ABC will join the club of harlots when it airs "The Path to 9/11," a supposed docudrama that smears the Clinton administration while glorifying the boy-king Bush. It's a Disney version of "War and Peace," from Fantasyland. Never mind the truth. The American media has become nothing more than a midway of mendacity in a carnival of greed, broadcasting deceit and sleight of hand distractions from the harsh reality of the Bush politics of pain and death.

There are clowns and harlots, right and left, in the GOP, willing to use America as their personal ATM machine no matter the price to our future. There are clowns and harlots like Joe Lieberman, who dress as Democrats, ready to sell out their country and party for their own self-centered egos. And yet, every harlot has a price below which they will not go.

And what is it that the Republicans have sold to America? A president who ignored the warnings of 9/11, and sat frozen while death and mayhem burned a city. A president whose lies have killed 2600 soldiers. A president on continuous vacation while a city drowned in a flood of ineptitude and corporate cronyism. A president who would rather see the wealthy enriched and the middle-class erased. A president who ignores the rule of law, because he believes that he is above the law. A president who dwells in secrecy while spying on America like a tawdry little schoolboy in short pants.

Republicanism has given us a president whose quotation of Bin Laden's words boomerang back on him: "History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake.The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say?"

Indeed.

Now is the time to listen to heroic voices. Voices that dare speak up; that dare to be heard. Voices that remind us of who we once were, and can be again.

It is time to shed the falsehood of fear. Time to embrace the dissent that is liberty. Time to stand in the sunlight of democracy rather than cower in the shadows of tyranny. Time to demand Democrats represent "We, the people."

On September 10th and 11th, do not turn on the television. Instead, light one candle for the war widow, the newly orphaned child, the empty chair at holiday gatherings that now populate American families whose loved ones have been lost to this war of lies.

Light one candle for the loss of truth and justice.

Light one candle for the Towers that held our brothers and sisters, and another for those who perished in flight. Light one candle to chase away the darkness that has engulfed America.

Yes, light one candle, then sit on the front porch and face your neighbors in the flickering evening of hope and unity, and remembrance.

Pay no attention to the harlots who lurk beneath streetlights, as they work the cruising limos of deception, while the clowns flop and flail under a Big Top filled with the wind of their own hollow voices.

Light one candle, one small spark, for America.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Pot Kettle Black

Howard Zinn | War Is Not a Solution for Terrorism

War Is Not a Solution for Terrorism
By Howard Zinn
The Boston Globe

Saturday 02 September 2006

There is something important to be learned from the recent experience of the United States and Israel in the Middle East: that massive military attacks, inevitably indiscriminate, are not only morally reprehensible, but useless in achieving the stated aims of those who carry them out.

The United States, in three years of war, which began with shock-and-awe bombardment and goes on with day-to-day violence and chaos, has been an utter failure in its claimed objective of bringing democracy and stability to Iraq. The Israeli invasion and bombing of Lebanon has not brought security to Israel; indeed it has increased the number of its enemies, whether in Hezbollah or Hamas or among Arabs who belong to neither of those groups.

I remember John Hersey's novel, "The War Lover," in which a macho American pilot, who loves to drop bombs on people and also to boast about his sexual conquests, turns out to be impotent. President Bush, strutting in his flight jacket on an aircraft carrier and announcing victory in Iraq, has turned out to be much like the Hersey character, his words equally boastful, his military machine impotent.

The history of wars fought since the end of World War II reveals the futility of large-scale violence. The United States and the Soviet Union, despite their enormous firepower, were unable to defeat resistance movements in small, weak nations - the United States in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan - and were forced to withdraw.

Even the "victories" of great military powers turn out to be elusive. Presumably, after attacking and invading Afghanistan, the president was able to declare that the Taliban were defeated. But more than four years later, Afghanistan is rife with violence, and the Taliban are active in much of the country.

The two most powerful nations after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, with all their military might, have not been able to control events in countries that they considered to be in their sphere of influence - the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the United States in Latin America.

Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a "war on terrorism" is a contradiction in terms. Wars waged by nations, whether by the United States or Israel, are a hundred times more deadly for innocent people than the attacks by terrorists, vicious as they are.

The repeated excuse, given by both Pentagon spokespersons and Israeli officials, for dropping bombs where ordinary people live is that terrorists hide among civilians. Therefore the killing of innocent people (in Iraq, in Lebanon) is called accidental, whereas the deaths caused by terrorists (on 9/11, by Hezbollah rockets) are deliberate.

This is a false distinction, quickly refuted with a bit of thought. If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a "suspected terrorist" is inside (note the frequent use of the word suspected as evidence of the uncertainty surrounding targets), the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is "inevitable."

So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians. And when you consider that the number of innocent people dying inevitably in "accidental" events has been far, far greater than all the deaths deliberately caused by terrorists, one must reject war as a solution for terrorism.

For instance, more than a million civilians in Vietnam were killed by US bombs, presumably by "accident." Add up all the terrorist attacks throughout the world in the 20th century and they do not equal that awful toll.

If reacting to terrorist attacks by war is inevitably immoral, then we must look for ways other than war to end terrorism, including the terrorism of war. And if military retaliation for terrorism is not only immoral but futile, then political leaders, however cold-blooded their calculations, may have to reconsider their policies.

Howard Zinn is a professor emeritus at Boston University and the author of A People's History of the United States.

-------

Frank

The essence of
Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit
that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All
the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going
on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your
fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

-- Frank Zappa,

Truth from William Rivers Pitt

Fascism must always be fought

Top 10 Pot Studies Government Wished it Had Never Funded

What delicious irony this all is

"Every new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one."

America's Rottweiler

26-08-2006

 IN HIS latest speech, which infuriated so many people, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad uttered a sentence that deserves attention: "Every new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one."

Of all that has been said about the Second Lebanon War, these are perhaps the most important words.

The main product of this war is hatred. The pictures of death and destruction in Lebanon entered every Arab home, indeed every Muslim home, from Indonesia to Morocco, from Yemen to the Muslim ghettos in London and Berlin. Not for an hour, not for a day, but for 33 successive days - day after day, hour after hour. The mangled bodies of babies, the women weeping over the ruins of their homes, Israeli children writing "greetings" on shells about to be fired at villages, Ehud Olmert blabbering about "the most moral army in the world" while the screen showed a heap of bodies.

Israelis ignored these sights, indeed they were scarcely shown on our TV. Of course, we could see them on Aljazeera and some Western channels, but Israelis were much too busy with the damage wrought in our Northern towns. Feelings of pity and empathy for non-Jews have been blunted here a long time ago.

But it is a terrible mistake to ignore this result of the war. It is far more important than the stationing of a few thousand European troops along our border, with the kind consent of Hizbullah. It may still be bothering generations of Israelis, when the names Olmert and Halutz have long been forgotten, and when even Nasrallah no longer remember the name Amir Peretz.

IN ORDER for the significance of Assad's words to become clear, they have to be viewed in a historical context.

The whole Zionist enterprise has been compared to the transplantation of an organ into the body of a human being. The natural immunity system rises up against the foreign implant, the body mobilizes all its power to reject it. The doctors use a heavy dosage of medicines in order to overcome the rejection. That can go on for a long time, sometimes until the eventual death of the body itself, including the transplant.

(Of course, this analogy, like any other, should be treated cautiously. An analogy can help in understanding things, but no more than that.)

The Zionist movement has planted a foreign body in this country, which was then a part of the Arab-Muslim space. The inhabitants of the country, and the entire Arab region, rejected the Zionist entity. Meanwhile, the Jewish settlement has taken roots and become an authentic new nation rooted in the country. Its defensive power against the rejection has grown. This struggle has been going on for 125 years, becoming more violent from generation to generation. The last war was yet another episode.

WHAT IS our historic objective in this confrontation?

A fool will say: to stand up to the rejection with a growing dosage of medicaments, provided by America and World Jewry. The greatest fools will add: There is no solution. This situation will last forever. There is nothing to be done about it but to defend ourselves in war after war after war. And the next war is already knocking on the door.

The wise will say: our objective is to cause the body to accept the transplant as one of its organs, so that the immune system will no longer treat us as an enemy that must be removed at any price. And if this is the aim, it must become the main axis of our efforts. Meaning: each of our actions must be judged according to a simple criterion: does it serve this aim or obstruct it?

According to this criterion, the Second Lebanon War was a disaster.

FIFTY NINE years ago, two months before the outbreak of our War of Independence, I published a booklet entitled "War or Peace in the Semitic Region". Its opening words were:

"When our Zionist fathers decided to set up a 'safe haven' in Palestine, they had a choice between two ways:

"They could appear in West Asia as a European conqueror, who sees himself as a bridge-head of the 'white' race and a master of the 'natives', like the Spanish Conquistadores and the Anglo-Saxon colonists in America. That is what the Crusaders did in Palestine.

"The second way was to consider themselves as an Asian nation returning to its home - a nation that sees itself as an heir to the political and cultural heritage of the Semitic race, and which is prepared to join the peoples of the Semitic region in their war of liberation from European exploitation."

As is well known, the State of Israel, which was established a few months later, chose the first way. It gave its hand to colonial France, tried to help Britain to return to the Suez Canal and, since 1967, has become the little sister of the United States.

That was not inevitable. On the contrary, in the course of years there have been a growing number of indications that the immune system of the Arab-Muslim body is starting to incorporate the transplant - as a human body accepts the organ of a close relative - and is ready to accept us. Such an indication was the visit of Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem. Such was the peace treaty signed with us by King Hussein, a descendent of the Prophet. And, most importantly, the historic decision of Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian people, to make peace with Israel.

But after every huge step forward, there came an Israeli step backward. It is as if the transplant rejects the body's acceptance of it. As if it has become so accustomed to being rejected, that it does all it can to induce the body to reject it even more.

It is against this background that one should weigh the words spoken by Assad Jr., a member of the new Arab generation, at the end of the recent war.

AFTER EVERY single one of the war aims put forward by our government had evaporated, one after the other, another reason was brought up: this war was a part of the "clash of civilizations", the great campaign of the Western world and its lofty values against the barbarian darkness of the Islamic world.

That reminds one, of course, of the words written 110 years ago by the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, in the founding document of the Zionist movement: "In Palestine…we shall constitute for Europe a part of the wall against Asia, and serve as the vanguard of civilization against barbarism." Without knowing, Olmert almost repeated this formula in his justification of his war, in order to please President Bush.

It happens from time to time in the United States that somebody invents an empty but easily digested slogan, which then dominates the public discourse for some time. It seems that the more stupid the slogan is, the better its chances of becoming the guiding light for academia and the media - until another slogan appears and supersedes it. The latest example is the slogan "Clash of Civilizations", coined by Samuel P. Huntington in 1993 (taking over from the "End of History").

What clash of ideas is there between Muslim Indonesia and Christian Chile? What eternal struggle between Poland and Morocco? What is it that unifies Malaysia and Kosovo, two Muslim nations? Or two Christian nations like Sweden and Ethiopia?

In what way are the ideas of the West more sublime than those of the East? The Jews that fled the flames of the auto-da-fe of the Christian Inquisition in Spain were received with open arms by the Muslim Ottoman Empire. The most cultured of European nations democratically elected Adolf Hitler as its leader and perpetrated the Holocaust, without the Pope raising his voice in protest.

In what way are the spiritual values of the United States, today's Empire of the West, superior to those of India and China, the rising stars of the East? Huntington himself was compelled to admit: "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." In the West, too, women won the vote only in the 20th century, and slavery was abolished there only in the second half of the 19th. And in the leading nation of the West, fundamentalism is now also raising its head.

What interest, for goodness sake, have we in volunteering to be a political and military vanguard of the West in this imagined clash?

THE TRUTH is, of course, that this entire story of the clash of civilizations is nothing but an ideological cover for something that has no connection with ideas and values: the determination of the United States to dominate the world's resources, and especially oil.

The Second Lebanon War is considered by many as a "War by Proxy". That's to say: Hizbullah is the Dobermann of Iran, we are the Rottweiler of America. Hizbullah gets money, rockets and support from the Islamic Republic, we get money, cluster bombs and support from the United States of America.

That is certainly exaggerated. Hizbullah is an authentic Lebanese movement, deeply rooted in the Shiite community. The Israeli government has its own interests (the occupied territories) that do not depend on America. But there is no doubt that there is much truth in the argument that this was also a war by substitutes.

The US is fighting against Iran, because Iran has a key role in the region where the most important oil reserves in the world are located. Not only does Iran itself sit on huge oil deposits, but through its revolutionary Islamic ideology it also menaces American control over the near-by oil countries. The declining resource oil becomes more and more essential in the modern economy. He who controls the oil controls the world.

The US would viciously attack Iran even it were peopled with pigmies devoted to the religion of the Dalai Lama. There is a shocking similarity between George W. Bush and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The one has personal conversations with Jesus, the other has a line to Allah. But the name of the game is domination.

What interest do we have to get involved in this struggle? What interest do we have in being regarded - accurately - as the servants of the greatest enemy of the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular?

We want to live here in 100 years, in 500 years. Our most basic national interests demand that we extend our hands to the Arab nations that accept us, and act together with them for the rehabilitation of this region. That was true 59 years ago, and that will be true 59 years hence.

Little politicians like Olmert, Peretz and Halutz are unable to think in these terms. They can hardly see as far as the end of their noses. But where are the intellectuals, who should be more far-sighted?

Bashar al-Assad may not be one of the world's Great Thinkers. But his remark should certainly give us pause for thought.

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AlterNet: How Washington Goaded Israel
Appeasement and War on Iran by Michael S. Rozeff

ENOUGH

AlterNet: Blogs: The Mix: Rickie Lee Jones has had enough Bush

"Have You Had Enough?"

DownWithTyranny!: HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH? A SONG FOR CHANGE

Have you had enough of hypocrisy?
Have you had enough of the spending spree?
Have you had enough?
Does it make you want to scream and shout?

Have you had enough of the rubber stamps?
Have you had enough of the wire taps?
If you’ve had enough, then it’s time to throw the rascals out!

We’ve let them take the test too long
They’ve gotten all the answers wrong
No plan, no shame, no oversight
Now’s the time to put it right!

Have you had enough, cause they’re all corrupt?
Have you had enough of being divvied up?
If you’ve had enough, then it’s time to throw the rascals out!

Well, do what’s right and spread the word
It’s time to make our voices heard
You cast your vote it don’t cost a dime
Sittin’ it out will be a crime

I’ve had enough, and it’s time to throw the rascals out!

After Hizbullah and Hamas

Middle East: what will emerge from the ruins?, by Alain Gresh

THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Press Agency - SPA

JEDDAH, JULY 25, SPA -- FOLLOWING IS THE STATEMENT ISSUED TODAY BY THE ROYAL COURT:
" THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA HAS UNDERSTAKEN THE ROLE REQUIRED OF IT BY ITS RELIGIOUS AND NATIONAL DUTY WITH REGARD TO THE SITUATION IN THE REGION AND REPERCUSSIONS OF EVENTS IN LEBANON AND THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES. IN THIS REGARD, IT HAS CAUTIONED, WARNED AND EXTENDED ADVICE. FURTHERMORE, IT HAS STRIVEN FROM THE FIRST MOMENT TO STOP THE AGRRESSION, MOVING ON MORE THAN ONE FRONT AND BY MORE THAN ONE MEANS, TO PERSUADE THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO FORCE ISRAEL TO AGREE TO A CEASEFIRE.
MEANWHILE, THE KINGDOM HAS DISPATCHED HRH THE FOREIGN MINISTER AND HRH THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL TO MEET H.E. THE U.S. PRESIDENT IN WASHINGTON AND INFORM HIM OF ITS VIEWS ON THE GRAVE AND UNPREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCES OF THE UNREMITTING ISRAELI AGGRESSION IF MATTERS WENT BEYOND CONTROL. THE KINGDOM HAS ALSO ASKED PERSONAL ENVOYS TO VISIT THE CAPITALS OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL'S PERMANENT MEMBER STATES TO CONVEY THE SAME MESSAGE.
THE ARABS HAVE PROCLAIMED PEACE AS A STRATEGIC OPTION FOR THE ARAB NATION. THEY PRESENTED A JUST AND DISTINCT PLAN FOR REGAINING THE OCCUPIED ARAB TERRITORIES IN EXCHANGE FOR PEACE. THEY REFUSED TO RESPOND TO PROVOCATIONS AND IGNORED ANTI-PEACE EXTREMIST CALLS. IT SHOULD BE STATED THAT PATIENCE COULD NOT LAST FOREVER. IF THE ISRAELI MILITARY BRUTALITY PERSISTED WITH KILLINGS AND DESTRUCTION NO ONE COULD PREDICT THE CONSEQUENCES AND THAN REGRETS WILL BE IN VAIN.
THEREFORE, THE KINGDOM ADDRESSES AN APPEAL AND A WARNING TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN ITS ENTIRETY, AS REPRESENTED BY THE U.N. AND IN PARTICULAR THE U.S.
THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA CALLS ON ALL TO ACT IN ACCORDANCE WITH HONEST, CONSCIOUS AND INTERNATIONAL MORAL AND HUMANITARIAN LAWS. IT ALSO WARNS ALL THAT IF THE PEACE OPTION IS REJECTED DUE TO THE ISRAELI ARROGANCE THEN ONLY THE WAR OPTION REMAINS AND NO ONE KNOWS THE REPERCUSSIONS BEFALLING THE REGION, INCLUDING WARS AND CONFLICT THAT WILL SPARE NO ONE INCLUDING THOSE WHOSE MILITARY POWER IS NOW TEMPTING THEM TO PLAY WITH FIRE.
--MORE 1625 Local Time 1325 GMT