Rejecting Reality in Iraq

By Robert Parry
May 18, 2007

The well-regarded British research organization, Chatham House, has published a new report with the seemingly unobjectionable title “Accepting Realities in Iraq.” But it is that difficulty – facing up to what is real – that has been at the heart of this political and military catastrophe.

From the beginning, George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers have put ideology and wishful thinking ahead of rationality and realism. This tendency explains why so many pieces of evidence cited to support the Iraq invasion have proven false and why so many claims of progress have proven overly optimistic.

Read on.

Michael Moore's New Film Takes on the Health Industry, Gets Him in Trouble with Treasury Dept.

For those who have been wondering, as I have, when Michael Moore's film taking on the health insurance industry would finally be complete, there's no need to wait any longer. Yesterday, Moore announced that the film was finished and that it would be debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, which opened on Wednesday.

Moore explained the lack of publicity surrounding the film, titled "Sicko," in a letter to supporters yesterday:

My intention was to keep "Sicko" under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. ... [My] silence was also because I knew that the health care industry -- an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP -- was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be.

But there is some concern that he will have trouble even getting the film out of the country and to the Cannes festival.

"For some strange reason," he explains, "on May 2nd the Bush administration initiated an action against me over how I obtained some of the content they believe is in my film."

Bush's Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, launched an investigation of a trip I took to Cuba to film scenes for the movie. These scenes involve a group of 9/11 rescue workers who are suffering from illnesses obtained from working down at Ground Zero. They have received little or no help with their health care from the government. I do not want to give away what actually happens in the movie because I don't want to spoil it for you (although I'm sure you'll hear much about it after it unspools Saturday). Plus, our lawyers have advised me to say little at this point, as the film goes somewhere far scarier than "Cuba." Rest assured of one thing: no laws were broken. All I've done is violate the modern-day rule of journalism that says, "ask no questions of those in power or your luncheon privileges will be revoked."

This preemptive action taken by the Bush administration on the eve of the "Sicko" premiere in Cannes led our attorneys to fear for the safety of our film, noting that Secretary Paulson may try to claim that the content of the movie was obtained through a violation of the trade embargo that our country has against Cuba and the travel laws that prohibit average citizens of our free country from traveling to Cuba. (The law does not prohibit anyone from exercising their first amendment right of a free press and documentaries are protected works of journalism.)

I was floored when our lawyers told me this. "Are you saying they might actually confiscate our movie?" "Yes," was the answer. "These days, anything is possible. Even if there is just a 20 percent chance the government would seize our movie before Cannes, does anyone want to take that risk?"

In order to avoid the master copy of the documentary being confiscated by the Bush administration, Moore made a duplicate master copy last week and smuggled it out of the country.

While this action taken by the Bush administration may seem extraordinary, it actually fits in quite well with a pattern it has established over the past several years. Since taking office, Bush has been cracking down hard on Americans who defy the Cuba travel ban, on both individuals and agencies that specialize in travel to the forbidden island. In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department suspended the licenses of four travel agencies and six religious organizations for illegally providing travel to Cuba.

Also, Bush's use of the Treasury Dept. to go after Michael Moore, a long-time thorn in the side of the administration and its corporate allies, is reminiscent of other actions taken by the government against administration critics, including environmental groups, civil liberties organizations, and peace groups.

In 2003, for example, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Justice Department dusted off an 1872 law against “sailor-mongering” to prosecute Greenpeace. The case against the environmental organization followed an attempt by a couple of its members to board a ship transporting illegally harvested Brazilian mahogany. The protesters intended to unfurl a banner that read, “President Bush: Stop Illegal Logging.”

The law that was used against them however was clearly never intended for environmental activists. Its purpose was described by an Oregon court in 1890: to prevent “the evil” of “sailor-mongers [who] get on board vessels and by the help of intoxicants, and the use of other means, often savoring of violence, get the crews ashore and leave the vessel without help to manage or care for her.”

The environmental group came under attack again in 2005 when the IRS launched a months-long audit of the organization for alleged money laundering and other crimes. The audit was prompted, according to an IRS auditor, by complaints from a group called Public Interest Watch, which has been funded almost entirely by Exxon-Mobil.

Greenpeace and other administration critics also have been investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “The FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace,” the New York Times reported. [NYT, July 18, 2005]

Another group singled out by the FBI was United for Peace and Justice, which has facilitated many of the mass marches against the war in Iraq. Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for the coalition, said she was particularly concerned that the FBI’s counterterrorism division was examining the coalition’s operations.

“We always assumed the FBI was monitoring us, but to see the counterterrorism people looking at us like this is pretty jarring,” Cagan said.

So, despite how extraordinary the administration's actions against Michael Moore may seem, unfortunately, they should not come as a surprise. Nevertheless, "Sicko" is being called Cannes' "hottest ticket," and with the positive publicity the film is sure to receive, it could prove quite difficult for the administration to succeed in squashing the movie, as it seems intent on doing.

The Iraq War: Going, Going, ...

By Robert Parry
May 17, 2007

How should the American people interpret the extraordinary fact that George W. Bush couldn’t convince a single retired four-star general to sign up as the new “war czar” for coordinating the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – and finally had to settle for an active-duty three-star general who had opposed Bush’s “surge” in Iraq?

After an embarrassing failure to convince at least five former generals, including one of the original “surge” architects, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, to take the new high-powered job, Bush finally gave the “war czar” role to Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, a known critic of Bush’s troop escalation in Iraq.

Read on.

Jerry Falwell's Deal with the Devil

By Robert Parry
May 16, 2007

The Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death will elicit scores of eulogies on the good the televangelist did, even while acknowledging some hurtful actions, such as blaming gays and civil libertarians for 9/11. But there is another little-known chapter of Falwell’s career: his collaboration with a Korean cult leader bent on transforming the United States into a theocracy.

Like other prominent Republican figures, Falwell entered into a behind-the-scenes alliance with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon even as the self-proclaimed Messiah was denouncing America as “Satan’s harvest” and vowing to incorporate the United States into a worldwide theocratic empire that would eradicate all individuality.

Read on.

Iran's Mission Accomplished

By Ivan Eland
May 16, 2007

With its usual tin ear for public relations, the Bush administration provided another “Kodak moment” of incompetent belligerence by yet again sending a high-level administration official to use an aircraft carrier as a prop for a hawkish rant.

Vice President Dick Cheney did manage to refrain from displaying another “Mission Accomplished” banner during his address to the crew of the John C. Stennis, stationed 150 miles off Iran’s coast. But as Cheney warned Iran against disrupting oil transportation routes or getting nuclear weapons, the speech’s imagery also reminded the American public of President Bush’s previous fiasco on another aircraft carrier.

Read on.

How George Tenet Lied

By Ray McGovern
May 14, 2007

Mercifully, the flurry of media coverage of former CIA director George Tenet hawking his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, has abated. Buffeted by those on the right and left who see through his lame attempt at self-justification, Tenet probably now wishes he had opted to just fade away, as old soldiers used to do.

He listened instead to his old PR buddy and “co-author” Bill Harlow who failed miserably in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. By this point, they may be having second thoughts.But, hey, $4 million is a sizable sum, even if split two ways. But, aside from the money, what else could they have been thinking?

Read on.

No More Purple Fingers: GOP Disappointed with Iraq's Government

Republicans in Congress who once seized on the election of an Iraqi government as a total vindication of George W. Bush's decision to invade the country and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, are now expressing overwhelming disappointment in that very government.

As Reuters reported yesterday,

The top-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate on Sunday expressed frustration with the Iraqi government, saying Republicans were "overwhelmingly disappointed" with the lack of political progress.

"The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN'S Late Edition on Sunday.

"So far, they've not been able do anything they promised on the political side," the Kentucky Republican said, citing the Iraqis' failure to pass a new oil revenue bill, hold local elections and dismantle the former Baath Party of Saddam Hussein. "It's a growing frustration."

"Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government," he added.

It's a far cry from the sentiment expressed at Bush's 2005 State of the Union address, given just weeks after Iraq's much-heralded national elections. At that that State of the Union, Republican lawmakers dyed their fingers purple in a gesture meant to convey their solidarity with the people of Iraq and its newly elected government.



The purple fingers were a reference to a technique used in the Iraqi elections to protect against voter fraud. After casting their ballots, Iraqis had their fingers dipped in purple dye, in order to prevent multiple voting. The practice produced many media-friendly images which were broadcast widely on U.S. television in a self-congratulatory atmosphere, with pundits endlessly marvelling at how proud Americans should be for bringing democracy to the long-oppressed Iraqi people. One of the most iconic of these images was of a young Iraqi woman giving the "victory" sign with her purple-stained finger:



This image became a symbol of the hope that the U.S. had brought the people of Iraq, particularly the women.

But even at the time, most commentators seemed to miss the significance of the elections, which astute observers noted actually pointed to the desire of the Iraqi people for U.S. and coalition forces to leave their country. As Matthew Rothschild wrote in The Progressive,

Despite President Bush's trumpeting of the elections as a symbol of support for the U.S. efforts, many Iraqi voters, like [Khalid] Kareem, cast their ballots to boot out the Americans. Even in Fallujah, a city that is one of the most potent symbols of resistance to the occupation and the new government, local leaders and resistance groups risked assassination by jihadis by encouraging their followers to vote and avoid attacking polling stations. In some cases, these leaders even called upon their people to protect polling stations from Al Qaeda operatives, who threatened death for anyone participating in the political process.

Rothschild quoted Moayed Jassim Abed, a truck driver from Ramadi, who seemed to reflect the sentiments of many Iraqi voters, that their primary concern in electing their government was the ongoing problem of security. "We want security and stability," Abed said. "The Americans have been there three years and they have done worse than Saddam has done."

By participating in the electoral process and electing a national government, Abed, like so many other Iraqis, hoped that he would be hastening the day that the Americans would leave.

Beyond anecdotal evidence, Rothschild also cited a nationwide poll conducted just before the election:

A recent Oxford Research Associates poll conducted for a number of Western media organizations found two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of U.S. troops in their country. In the same poll, "occupation forces" came last behind religious leaders, police, the United Nations, the new Iraqi army, and political parties when Iraqis were asked, "How much confidence do you have in ...?" A survey conducted by Iraqi pollster Saadoun Al-Dulaimi (now the minister of defense) ahead of the January 2005 elections found that 85 percent of Iraqis wanted withdrawal "as soon as possible."

A secret poll taken by the British Ministry of Defense less than a year later found an even greater majority of Iraqis opposing the presence of foreign troops in their country. The poll, reported the conservative British Telegraph, found that 82% of Iraqis opposed the occupation and that up to 65% of Iraqis supported attacks on occupation forces. Fewer than one percent thought that U.S. and British military involvement was helping to improve security in their country.

Now, two years later, with the security situation in Iraq worse than ever, it appears that the Iraqi parliament is finally coming to express the popular will of the Iraqi people. As the Washington Post reported last week,

A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress.

The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

For his part, Mitch McConnell said that if the Iraqi legislation passes, the U.S. would be happy to leave the country. "I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request," he said.

If so, it may mark the first time that Republicans actually respect the popular wishes of the people being occupied by U.S. forces, or for that matter, the American people, who also support ending the occupation as soon as possible. These wishes have been expressed both in public opinion polls, and at the voting booth. As Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) noted last week,

The congressional vote reflected public opinion about the war. Before the [November 2006 congressional] election, the Iraq war was a top priority for 61% of Democrats and 52% of Independents, compared to 38% of Republicans. Democratic Party leaders in both the House and the Senate have explained their effort to pass legislation to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq as keeping faith with the voters in the November 2006 congressional elections, which brought Democrats to power. As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put it, “Last fall, the American people voted for a new direction in Iraq.”

Public opinion has become even more opposed to the war since the November elections. A recent New York Times-CBS News poll found 64% of Americans supported a timeline for withdrawal in 2008. A CNN poll shows that 54% of American opposed the Bush veto of the deadline for withdrawal bill. In February 2007, the Vermont state legislature became the first in the union to support resolutions calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Other states may follow as they see the congressional initiative stall.

If other states begin to follow suit as FPIF predicts, and if the anti-occupation legislation passes in the Iraqi parliament, it could be interesting to watch just how stubborn George Bush and his allies in Congress remain in continuing this unpopular war. With the vast majority of the world, as well as the Iraqi and American people, opposed to the war, the Republican rationales for continuing it are increasingly difficult to justify.

Indeed, if by dipping their fingers in purple ink they meant to indicate their support for democracy -- either in Iraq or at home -- they would be working to end this war as soon as humanly possible.

Mumia's Chance for a New Trial: May 17

On May 17, oral arguments for death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, PA. In the following days, the court will decide whether Mumia will be granted a new trial, life in prison, or whether he shall be put to death.

The issues under consideration by the court will include whether Abu-Jamal was denied the right to due process of law and a fair trial under the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments because of the prosecutor’s “appeal-after-appeal” argument. This argument essentially encouraged the jury to disregard the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, and err on the side of guilt.

Also being considered on May 17 is whether the prosecution’s use of peremptory challenges to exclude African Americans from sitting on the jury violated Abu-Jamal’s rights to due process and equal protection under the law. In addition, the court will consider whether the jury instructions and verdict form that resulted in the death penalty deprived Abu-Jamal of rights guar­anteed by the Eight and Fourteenth Amend­ments to due process of law.

After 25 years on Pennsylvania's death row, the May 17 court date may represent Abu-Jamal's best chance yet during his long incarceration for the chance of a new trial -- especially due to newly discovered evidence, such as a crime scene photograph from Dec. 9, 1981 that purportedly documents police manipulation of the scene.

For years, human rights and legal groups such as Amnesty International and the National Lawyers Guild have called his original trial deeply flawed and have been calling for a new chance for the former Black Panther and radio journalist to prove his innocence in the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. As Amnesty International said in 2000,

Amnesty International today called for a new trial in the case of Mumia Abu Jamal on the basis that his original trial was deeply flawed.

"This is not about an issue affecting the life of just one man. This is about justice -- which affects us all. And justice, in this case, can only be served by a new trial," Amnesty International said.

After many years of monitoring the case and an exhaustive review of the original documents, Amnesty International has concluded that the proceedings under which Mumia Abu-Jamal was tried, convicted and sentenced to death fail to reach the minimum international standards for fair trials.

Their exhaustively researched report, A Life In The Balance -- The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, was made available online. It begins by noting the international significance of Mumia's case:

His case has generated more controversy and received more attention, both national and international, than that of any other inmate currently under sentence of death in the United States of America (USA).

Having lived in Europe for a couple of years, I can vouch for the passionate commitment many Europeans have for his case. While travelling through Italy, I remember once seeing a huge mural of Mumia in Milan, and in Copenhagen, Denmark, I once joined a march of thousands of Danes to the US embassy demanding a new trial for Mumia.

Indeed, as the New York-based International Action Center notes,

Mumia Abu-Jamal is recognized internationally as a political prisoner whose Constitutional rights have been consistently violated in the state's mad dash to railroad him to execution. Mumia has been declared an honorary citizen of Paris, Palermo, the Central District of Copenhagen. Mumia was awarded the coveted Solhvervfonden Foundation Award in Copenhagen, Denmark for his services to humanity as a voice of conscience.

While Amnesty International is careful not to identify him as a political prisoner, choosing instead to focus on the unfairness of his original trial, many around the world have no such qualms. While marching in Copenhagen, I remember asking one young Dane how much he knew about Mumia's case. He replied that he just knew that Mumia was an American political prisoner that the U.S. government was trying to execute in order to silence his voice.

Many of these suspicions are fueled by the criticism that Mumia Abu-Jamal levels against the U.S. criminal justice system, the failures of American capitalism, and the injustices of U.S. foreign policy -- criticisms that are so scathing that they seem to go beyond the limits of acceptable political discourse in America. His imprisonment has not stopped him from continuing to speak out, with several books published over the years, and countless radio commentaries broadcast on Pacifica Radio and other outlets.

Many of the commentaries are now available on YouTube, and listening to him slam U.S. policy, one might be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that his voice is one that the U.S. government would simply love to silence:





Whether one subscribes to the view that Mumia is a victim of a system that has targetted him due to his political views, it has become increasingly difficult to justify his continued denial of a new trial. So much evidence has emerged since 1981 that points to his innocence, it is hard to imagine what more it might take for the Appeals Court to allow it to finally be heard. One man, Arnold Beverly, has even personally admitted to the murder of Daniel Faulkner, saying Mumia had nothing to do with it.

Furthermore, it has become clear that exonerating evidence was suppressed in his original trial, that key witnesses were intimidated from testifying, that other witnesses were intimidated into fingering Mumia as the shooter, and that his presiding judge, Albert Sabo, was on a personal crusade to send Mumia to death. With a fair hearing on May 17, there's a real possibility that Mumia may be given a new chance to prove his innocence in a court of law.

But as Amnesty notes in A Life in the Balance, "The politicization of Mumia Abu-Jamal's case may not only have prejudiced his right to a fair trial, but may now be undermining his right to fair and impartial treatment in the appeal courts." With this politicization in mind, many worry that Mumia will once again be denied a new trial and sent back to prison, where he has now spent more than half of his life.

In an attempt to ensure that Mumia is finally granted the fair trial that he has for so long been denied, several groups are urging concerned citizens to descend on the courthouse in Philadelphia on May 17. The Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition is calling on people converge at 8:30 am at the U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia on 6th and Market Streets to demand justice for Mumia.

The New Emperor's New Clothes

By Inez Hollander, Ph.D.
May 11, 2007

In 2000 I lost my Dutch citizenship to become a God-fearing and patriotic American. This was never much of a moral dilemma as Lady Liberty had been a shining beacon throughout my life in The Netherlands.

Americans had liberated Holland when my parents were still teenagers: conversations around the dinner table sometimes went back to that moment of liberation when my parents had been dancing in the streets, decked out in red, white and blue, smoking American cigarettes and eating chocolate handed out by good-looking GIs.

Read on.

Unrest in France Following a General Trend Across Europe

In France, anarchists and other leftists are reacting to the electoral victory of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy with riots, although you probably have not heard about the unrest in the U.S. media. While it is obvious that many of the rioters see Sarkozy as an anti-immigrant zealot and denounce him as a "fascist," informative reporting from the streets may be hindered by a law recently passed by the French Constitutional Council that effectively criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists.

Despite the new law, there is plenty of footage on YouTube, some of which we are providing here.





While there may not be one single issue that could be blamed for sparking the riots, it's worth noting that Sarkozy is decidedly pro-American, and with so much anger in France over the Iraq war and other unpopular U.S. policies, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that passions are so intense over the election results. Also, Sarkozy has vowed to tackle the French "welfare state," promising to “restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.” In a country like France, with its 35-hour work week and generous vacation time, many see Sarkozy as a threat to their very way of life.

In a broader sense, it could also be pointed out that the riots seem to be following a general pattern that is being seen across Europe recently. From Greece to Italy to Denmark, people are taking to the streets -- sometimes violently -- to protest neoliberal economic policies such as the privatization of the university system in Greece and American encroachments into Europe such as the new military base proposed for Vicenza, Italy.

In typically tranquil Denmark, thousands of youth recently rioted in response to the Danish government's decision to shut down a decades-old anarchist squat known as Ungdomshuset, or "The Youth House." Following the eviction of Ungdomshuset, the Copenhagen neighborhood of Norrebro became the scene of ongoing street battles for several days:



A similar scene played out in Greece in March, when the Greek constitution was amended to allow privatization of the country's university system:



These scenes of violence may soon sweep Italy as well, if the U.S. government carries through on its plans to make the northeastern Italian town of Vicenza the largest US military site in Europe. David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org reported yesterday that "the people of Vicenza, and all of Italy, have sworn it will never happen," and noted that in February 200,000 people descended on the town in protest of the plans.

Largely as a result [of the protest], the Prime Minister of Italy was (temporarily) driven out of power. Meanwhile, just outside Vicenza, large tents now hold newly minted citizen activists keeping a 24-hour-per-day vigil and training hundreds of senior citizens, children, and families every day in how to nonviolently stop bulldozers. The bulldozers they are waiting for are American.

The conflict, should it come about, will be as surprising to American television viewers as were the attacks of 9-11, unless someone tells them ahead of time what is going on. This week a group of Italians is in Washington, D.C., attempting to do just that. A group of Italian Members of Parliament also visited Washington last month in opposition to the base.

While so far the demonstrations have been peaceful, it should not come as a great surprise if Italian anger over the proposed base spills into violence, if recent trends across Europe are any indication.

Panel Calls for Due Process for Journalists Held by U.S. Military

On a panel held yesterday in connection with World Press Freedom Day, representatives of two journalists held by the U.S. military called upon the U.S. to either charge them with crimes or release them. Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held in Iraq for a year, and Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the Middle East television station Al-Jazeera, has been detained since late 2001 and is currently at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Neither have been provided an opportunity to prove their innocence in a court of law.

U.S. officials claim that because Hussein took photographs of explosions in Iraq, that he must have been at the locations ahead of time, and therefore complicit with the Iraqi insurgency. But Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP, said he was "simply the unlucky fellow who happened to be the photographer for the world's largest newsgathering organization in a difficult province." She called the U.S. claims against him a "rolling set of allegations that arise and then disappear without the benefit of a trial."

Similarly, Al-Hajj has faced varying allegations, but has been denied the opportunity to refute them because the U.S. government has never filed charges or presented evidence against him. He has been in custody since he was stopped at the Afghanistan border by Pakistani authorities in December 2001 and turned over to U.S. authorities six months later.

His attorney, Zachary Katznelson, pointed out that the evidence being used to justify al-Hajj's detention is classified, so neither the journalist, his lawyers, nor the public have been able to see it. In al-Hajj's ongoing interrogations at Guantanamo, U.S. officials have focused almost exclusively on obtaining intelligence regarding al-Jazeera and its staff. His interrogators have told him that he would be released if he provided information about the satellite network’s activities, an offer that al-Hajj has consistently refused. Al-Hajj, who has been force-fed while on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration, appeared weak during a recent visit, the lawyer said.

Katznelson called upon the U.S. to make public the classified evidence that the U.S. says justifies his detention. "If there is any evidence, then let's see it," Katznelson said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which sponsored yesterday's panel at the National Press Club, details Al-Hajj's case in a 2006 report called, "The Enemy?"

In the report, CPJ notes that al-Hajj

has been held for nearly five years on the basis of secret evidence; he has not been convicted or even charged with a crime. Until this year—when an Associated Press lawsuit prompted the Pentagon to identify the detainees—the military would not acknowledge al-Haj was in custody. Al-Haj’s lawyer, who has been barred from attending his client’s hearings, has called the allegations baseless and the justice system at Guantanamo a sham.

“There is absolutely zero evidence that he has any history in terrorism at all,” said Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, who took up al-Haj’s case in 2005. Stafford Smith contends that al-Haj’s continued detention is political, and the main focus of U.S. interrogators has not been al-Haj’s alleged terrorist activities but obtaining intelligence on Al-Jazeera and its staff.

CPJ also notes that the detentions of al-Hajj and Hussein are part of an ongoing pattern by the U.S. military to detain reporters without charges, in what could be seen as a concerted campaign of intimidation.

Hussein’s detention is not an isolated incident in Iraq. Over the last four years, dozens of journalists, mostly Iraqis, have been detained by U.S. troops, according to CPJ research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction. In all previous detentions journalists were released without charges ever being substantiated.

Even without the arbitrary detentions of journalists by the U.S. military, Iraq is already the most dangerous place in the world for reporters to work. Of the 56 confirmed deaths of journalists worldwide in 2006, CPJ notes that 32 were in Iraq.

The latest victim was Dmitry Chebotayev, a Russian photographer killed on Sunday in Baqouba. He was 29 years old.

The Right's Parallel Universe

By Richard L. Fricker
May 9, 2007

To understand how the United States got itself into its current fix, it’s helpful to understand that the American Right and its powerful media apparatus have created a kind of parallel universe that has its own internal logic that sort of makes sense even if the “reality” isn’t exactly real.

So, on the Iraq War, everything is going pretty well except, as Fox News reminds its viewers, the “liberal media” keeps hiding all the positive developments from the American people. Plus, the only way to explain hostility toward George W. Bush is to postulate that his critics are consumed by irrational hatreds. The Right’s reality-divergent narrative exists on domestic policy, too.

Read on.

Blaming the Iraqis

By Ivan Eland
May 9, 2007

The Bush administration and Congress have put too much faith in governments—the U.S. as well as the Iraqi—to remedy the chaos in Iraq.

To keep the pressure on the administration for eventual U.S. troop withdrawals, the Democrats have already begun to blame the Iraqi government for not meeting benchmarks for progress and are threatening to include them in legislation.

Read on.

Qaeda's Reverse-Reverse Psychology

By Robert Parry
May 8, 2007

George W. Bush loves to tell his audiences that they must “listen to the words of the enemy” and “take their words seriously,” thus setting up his argument that al-Qaeda wants the United States to leave Iraq so the U.S. military must stay in Iraq

Like much of what Bush has said about the Iraq War, this presidential homespun wisdom always has had more emotional appeal than actual logic. But a newly released videotape from al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri demonstrates why Bush’s argument has never made sense.

Read on.

Bush Sat on Evidence of Cuban Terror

By Robert Parry
May 7, 2007

Earlier this year, as accused right-wing terrorist Luis Posada Carilles successfully sought to be freed on bond, the Bush administration possessed secret evidence implicating the 79-year-old Cuban exile in terrorist bombings in Havana a decade ago.

The evidence, an FBI document based on interviews with confidential sources in the late 1990s, linked Posada to a wave of hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. Administration lawyers have now filed the document in court as part of the illegal immigration case against Posada that is scheduled to resume in Texas on May 11.

Read on.

Tenet-Bush Pre-9/11 'Small Talk'

By Robert Parry
May 6, 2007

In late August 2001, when aggressive presidential action might have changed the course of U.S. history, CIA Director George Tenet made a special trip to Crawford, Texas, to get George W. Bush to focus on an imminent threat of a spectacular al-Qaeda attack only to have the conversation descend into meaningless small talk.

Alarmed CIA officials already had held an extraordinary meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10 to lay out the accumulating evidence of an impending attack and had delivered on Aug. 6 a special “Presidential Daily Brief” to Bush entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”

Read on.

The Ongoing Iraq Intel Fraud

By Robert Parry
May 5, 2007

Almost five years and perhaps half a million deaths too late, it’s finally the accepted wisdom in Washington that the intelligence that George W. Bush used to justify invading Iraq was garbage. But the pattern of twisting the truth about Iraq continues unabated and the President is still rarely called on it.

Bush has never stopped making statements about the Iraq War that are untrue, illogical or irrelevant. Yet, the Washington press corps remains almost as lax today about holding Bush accountable as it was in 2002 and 2003.

Read on.

Echoes of Cold War in Russia-Estonia Spat

There is an interesting article at Antiwar.com today (written by Patrick Buchannan of all people), dealing with the current tension between Russia and Estonia. In case you weren't aware, Estonia is becoming increasingly angry with Moscow, saying that the Russian government is not meeting international standards for protecting diplomats. As Buchannan explains,

All week, young toughs in Moscow have besieged the Estonian embassy to harass Ambassador Marina Kaljurand. Her bodyguards had to use a mace-like spray to drive back the thugs, who call Estonia a "fascist country." Estonian diplomats and their families are being pulled out of Moscow and sent home.

Relations between the countries are about to rupture, if the Kremlin does not reign in the bully-boys.

At issue is a decision by the Estonian government to relocate a Soviet-era statue, which to many Estonians is a symbol of Soviet oppression, but to many Russians is a symbol of their sacrifice in liberating Estonia from Nazi occupation. The tension continues to escalate, as Russia announced on Wednesday that it would halt deliveries of oil products to the small Baltic nation.

Although Americans tend not to concern themselves much with the affairs of Europe, in this situation, the U.S. could find itself directly involved, if the situation continues to deterioriate. As Buchannan further explains,

If President Putin decides the Estonians need a lesson, and sends troops to teach it, the United States, under NATO, would have to treat Russian intervention in Estonia as an attack upon the United States, and declare war on behalf of Estonia.

So we come face to face with the idiocy of having moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, and having given war guarantees to three little nations with historic animosities toward a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran.

While many readers might disagree with Buchannan on other issues, on this particular matter, he has a good point.

Although the conventional view is that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, in significant ways, the East-West competition that characterized the Cold War never really ended. Indeed, that East-West competition actually predated the Cold War, going back to the days of the Russian Empire.

This is why Russia has always seen it as a provocation for NATO to expand all the way to its doorstep, and indeed, the fact the U.S. insists on continuing to expand the NATO alliance can only be seen as an attempt to expand Western and U.S. power at the expense of Russian hegemony.

The neoconservatives in the Bush administration have taken a provocative stance towards Russia almost since day one. Indeed, one of the first foreign policy acts of the Bush administration was to expel dozens of Russian diplomats from Washington, accusing them of being spies. The act was widely seen as provocative in Russia, as well as in Europe.

The Bush administration also announced early on that it would revive a Reagan era project known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka, "Star Wars." (See Ivan Eland's article below for more information.) This was also seen by Russia as an act of outright provocation, since it would seem to violate numerous treaties, including the Outer Space Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush confirmed Russian fears a few months later, when he announced the official U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty.

"I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks," Bush announced in December 2001.

Predictably, Putin responded coolly to the decision, but apparently was not surprised. "This step was not a surprise for us. However, we consider it a mistake," he said. Most significantly, the development of a missile shield would disrupt the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which was the cornerstone of the U.S.-Russian balance of power for the entire Cold War.

Following 9/11, the U.S. began further encroaching on Russia's traditional sphere of influence, hatching secret bilateral agreements with autocratic Central Asian nations, and even sending troops into the murky and complicated geopolitical mess in the Caucasus. As I explained in an article written in 2002:

The Russian government of Vladimir Putin has criticized the Georgian government of Eduard Schevardnadze for giving safe haven to the Chechen rebels. Meanwhile, Schevardnadze’s Georgian government has blamed Putin’s Russia for aiding and abetting separatists from the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia.

While rebels in Chechnya want to break away from Russia, rebels in Abkhazia and South Ossetia want to break away from Georgia. Complicating matters further, the Chechen civil war has been the scene of widespread human rights abuses on both sides, while the Georgian region of Abkhazia has had its own ugly scenes of ethnic cleansing.

Into this maelstrom of regional and ethnic warfare now steps George W. Bush and his “crusade” to “rid the world of evil.” The Bush administration wants U.S. troops to assist Georgian soldiers in hunting down and killing al-Qaeda fighters holed up in Georgia’s lawless Pankisi Gorge.

This perceived American overreaching led a group of retired Russian military generals to brand Putin a Western lackey and a traitor to Russian interests. "With your [Putin's] blessing, the United States has received military bases in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and, maybe, Kazakhstan," the generals declared in a published broadside. "In the long run, these bases are for dealing a strike on Russia, not bin Laden."

For years, Putin was somewhat restrained in his criticism of U.S. policy, but that restraint was abandoned in a speech at security conference this February. “The U.S. has overstepped its political limits in almost all spheres,” Putin told the meeting of policy makers with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in the audience. “We are witnessing an almost unrestrained hyper-use of force in international relations,” Putin said, adding that Russia doesn’t need lessons in democracy from “people who didn’t practice it themselves.”

Now, Putin and Russian diplomats are slamming the West again, for its perceived support for Estonia in its current row over the Soviet statue. As AFP reported yesterday,

Russia lashed out Thursday at the European Union and NATO for supporting Estonia in its row with Moscow over the relocation of a Soviet war monument.

Russia's representative to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Alexei Borodavkin, attacked what he called EU and NATO "indifference and connivance."

"What happened in Estonia ... cannot fail to affect relations between Russia and the European Union and the North Atlantic alliance," he was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Whether the tension will continue to escalate is a matter of speculation, but what is clear is that the competitive East-West dynamic of the Cold War has by no means passed, and that indeed, the policies of the Bush administration -- beginning with its initial decision to expel some 50 Russian diplomats in March 2001 -- has probably done more to fuel the tension than any actions taken by the other two post-Cold War American administrations.

We can only hope that Buchannan is being paranoid when he forsees a possible armed conflict between Russia and Estonia, which according to NATO treaty obligations, could bring the U.S. into open war with Russia. As Buchannan points out, Russia is "a nuclear power that has the ability to inflict 1,000 times the destruction upon us as Iran."

Missile Defense Seen as Dangerous

By Ivan Eland
May 4, 2007

President Bush’s plan to deploy missile defenses in Central Europe will reduce U.S. security, not enhance it. Installing radar for tracking incoming missiles in the Czech Republic and anti-missile interceptors in Poland could do more harm than good.

Ostensibly, the European radar and interceptors are aimed at the future threat of nuclear-armed Iranian missiles. But Russia suspects—perhaps with good reason—that the real purpose of the deployments is to cement the security guarantees the United States has given to the two former Russian allies.

Read on.

Setting the Table, with All the Options

By Peter Dyer
May 3, 2007

There is a consensus among American foreign policy makers and major presidential candidates: “All options are on the table.” This phrase has been repeated so often by so many that it is now a cliche.

It seems reasonable enough. When faced with a problem, most of us would like to have at our disposal any and all tools available to remedy the problem.

But what do these words really mean when used by the most powerful people in the world’s most powerful country? The bland lanaguage of the cliche masks its implicit terror.

Read on.