Deep Blade Journal

If Bush and Rice could only hear themselves…

Mr. Russert and colleagues can’t see it from the air

Today on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about Lebanon. Quite rightly, Dr. Rice spoke of how the Lebanese deserve a political process free from foreign interference.

DR. RICE: …We’re concentrating, Tim, on trying to remove the artificial element in Lebanese politics at this point and that is Syrian troops and the Syrian security forces, intelligence services. Once that is done, the Lebanese will be able to have a political process that is free of that kind of foreign interference, a political process that will begin to develop and we will be able to see or they will be able to see what the real balance of forces looks like in Lebanon. But as long as you have an overwhelming security and troop presence there for the Syrians, it is not possible for them to do that work.

This follows wisdom President Bush dispensed in a March 8 speech at the National Defense University.

All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections, for those elections to be free and fair….The elections in Lebanon must be fully and carefully monitored by international observers. The Lebanese people have the right to determine their future, free from domination by a foreign power. The Lebanese people have the right to choose their own parliament this spring, free of intimidation. And that new government will have the help of the international community in building sound political, economic, and military institutions, so the great nation of Lebanon can move forward in security and freedom. (emphasis added to passage where the equivalent does not apply in Iraq)

It all passes without comment from Tim Russert and his colleagues in the US media. I take that back, Jon Stewart commented a few nights ago on the fake news Daily Show, “They don’t do irony, do they.”

Algerian minister echoes sentiment he expressed last August

Do the OPEC countries have enough capacity to manage swing production of oil into the future?

Chakib Khalil, minister for energy and mines, said today in Algiers

OPEC has reached its production limits. It doesn’t have much production capacity…If it came to a crunch, it has capacity for one million barrels [more per day], and I don’t think a production increase would influence the barrel price.

If this is so, then OPEC no longer has the ability to set the oil price or manage swing production. All producers will pump at 100%, despite their mysterious deliberations. Is now a time for OPEC equivalent to the moment in the spring of 1971 when the Texas Railroad Commission, at that point empowered to limit Texas oil well production, announced “a 100 percent allowable for next month.” (Quote from Kenneth S. Deffeyes)

What followed that announcement by the Texas Railroad Commission, of course, were the 1970s we remember: gas lines, threats of superpower war, invasions, the Carter years and the Carter Doctrine. To what future are we entering now?

Her oped published today shows why most of the US public knows nothing about and cares little for civilian catastrophes wrought by US bombing and killing

A stuffed animal has more conscience concerning the US policy choice of depopulation and widespread aerial bombardment of Iraqi cities than US Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).

Results of the US bombing campaign in Fallujah that Senator Collins failed to mention. [Update 4/21/2005: I replaced the image that was originally displayed here, as links into Crisis Pictures or Fallujah in Pictures are now missing or unreliable.]

There has been a lot of noise recently in the news in America about how Iraqis are angry about loss of life caused by “insurgent” attacks. Of course the war-torn people of Iraq are angry at the terrible toll the violent opposition to the US occupation causes. Unfortunately, people seeking jobs as security personnel for the occupation are perceived as collaborators, no matter that the desperate economic situation is what leads Iraqis to seek these jobs — not a belief in American goals for their country.

But missing from the discussion of “insurgent” violence is any like discussion of massive-scale US violence and war crimes applied to whole cities over the last few months. (Some of my previous entries on the US flattening of Fallujah are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Senator Collins in her piece today refers to a recent junket to Afghanistan and Iraq she took with her colleagues John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Russ Feingold and Hillary Clinton. I blogged on the remarks of Hillary Clinton two weeks ago, calling the senator’s rosy picture of Iraq a mythology. The true picture of the city is more like a scene from Warsaw after the Nazis were through with it in 1943.

I find it ironic beyond belief that Senator Collins in her piece admits while trying to talk up potential US “success” and its “tipping point”, that the real picture of the US occupation are conditions (well after the January election) where

our Senate delegation could not drive along the streets of Baghdad. We were transported in armed Black Hawk helicopters to the heavily fortified “Green Zone,” where American and British headquarters as well as the Iraqi government offices are located. We wore 45-pound armored vests and heavy helmets much of the time and had to return to Kuwait each night.

But this is the paragraph from the oped Collins wrote that struck me hardest:

The most encouraging part of my visit to Iraq was our trip to Fallujah, a city once synonymous with danger and firmly in the insurgents’ control. Once a sanctuary for insurgents, Fallujah is now what one Marine described as the “safest city in Iraq” due to a fierce battle in which the Marines rooted out the insurgents and destroyed scores of weapons caches. This success has also encouraged more than a thousand Iraqis in the Fallujah area to have the confidence to come forward to fill police and army positions.

That’s all the US did to achieve “success”? Root out some weapons caches? What sickness ignores the overall leveling of a city once with a population of about 300,000, creating a massive refugee problem and thousands of deaths? War crimes committed in the process included destroying hospitals, shooting fleeing civilians, and prohibiting relief from entering the city — actions all specifically condemned by the Geneva Conventions.

The rest of the story, gathered by independent journalists, and told by Dahr Jamail in a recent interview goes like this…

Basically Fallujah today closely resembles a concentration camp. The military maintains that strict cordon; any of the people who live there who want to go back into the city have to get a retina scan and get finger-printed, and then get an I.D. card made. Then they go through a very strict checkpoint with full body searches, very intrusive searches. Then they’re allowed into the city, where at least 60 per cent of the city’s been bombed to the ground. There’s no electricity, no water, and of course no jobs. So, of the 350,000 people who lived there, roughly 25,000 have returned to try to sort out what’s left of their homes. It closely resembles a wasteland at this point.

So I have prepared a letter today for my esteemed senator, asking her to

please explain to me your motivation for leaving out news of the complete shattering of this city and its mostly innocent people. Do you not understand what has happened there, or are you intentionally keeping the truth from the American people? Your gall in calling this “success” should at least be an issue for your conscience.

For now, I won’t take on Collin’s mellow picture of Afghanistan, except to say that the recent reports suggest it has evolved into a failed narcotics state. I am ashamed to have as my senator the shameless propagandist Susan Collins.

Were the US hawks correct about the effect of regime change and elections in Iraq on its larger neighbor? If so, why do they want to bomb Iran? Such an attack would destroy the Iranian reform movement.

Excellent reporting from Iran by PBS Newshour correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth broadcast last Friday (2/25) included interviews with Iranian reformers (Newshour screen pictures, Dr. Mohammad Reza Khatami and Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi)

The reports the PBS Newshour’s Elizabeth Farnsworth has filed from Iran are very worthwhile. (Transcript from 2/25/2005 here) There is one strong message for the American War Party Farnsworth carried from Iranian reformers, especially this comment from the Reformist vice presidential candidate and brother of the current Iranian president, also named Mohammed Khatami:

DR. MOHAMMAD REZA KHATAMI: One thing that is very clear - that the plan of the U.S. Government is change of regime in Iran. And I think people here in Iran also are against many activities of behavior of the government; they do not want a change of regime, because we have an example here that one revolution is enough for us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: This was a theme we heard over and over: That Iranians had suffered enough in the past quarter century….

Farnsworth also quoted and then heard a strong message against US intervention from Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi:

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Attorney Shirin Ebadi has also been outspoken in opposing American intervention in Iran. In a Feb. 8 op-ed article, she and Hadi Ghaemi of Human Rights Watch insisted that what they call “civil society activists” are the best hope for change in Iran. They warned that: “The threat of foreign military intervention will provide a powerful excuse for authoritarian elements to uproot these groups and put an end to their growth.”

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why would an invasion hurt human rights?

SHIRIN EBADI (Translated): It’s very natural for them to use the excuse of national security to crush all of those who are fighting for freedom.

The Iranian reformers clearly are taking the election in Iraq as a positive sign! Is this not what President Bush wants? It must be clear to the ultrahawks in Washington that a June attack, timed to strike right in the midst of the Iranian election, would in fact disrupt this chance for reform, and bring on a hard-line security reaction.

And the administration did follow up with a signal that June will be the time for an attack, saying that the EU would have until then to come up with a nuke deal.

But earlier in Brussels, Bush said he had no plans to attack Iran. “Ridiculous,” he said last week, even though “All options are on the table.”

For observers of President Bush, such duplicitous statements should through experience tell us that what he really means is that an attack is being planned — the case in point remarks Bush gave during a visit with German Chancellor Schroeder in Berlin on May 23, 2002.

PRESIDENT BUSH: …And I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and that we’ve got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein. And I appreciate the German Chancellor’s understanding of the threats of weapons of mass destruction. And they’re real.

The world has since learned, of course, that plans for the invasion of Iraq to occur in ten months were well underway on that day in May 2002, and that the weapons were not real. Bush is shameless in his lying about US intentions.

It all looks so similar. And it is not just Fox News that is playing the fear mongering game. The New York Times is out today with this agitative, stenographic story:

U.S. Accuses Iran of Deceiving U.N. Inspectors

VIENNA, March 2 - The United States and other members of the board of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency intensified the pressure on Iran today, accusing the nation of numerous failures to abide by its own promise to suspend all its uranium enrichment activities.

Déjà Vu all over again. I’ll have to save for another post analysis of the question of why they want to attack Iran now and pull the rug out from under reformers there. I believe this policy to be quite intentional.

Juan Cole includes in a post today this short blurb:

A prominent trade unionist was also assassinated, but apparently only New Zealand cares.

Speaking of which, as a parting gift the interim Allawi government has [Arabic link] dissolved a number of civil society organizations, including the Lawyers’ Union. Iraqi attorneys abroad accused the interim government of violating a number of international treaties and agreements to which Iraq is signatory.

US mainstream media appears to have behind the scenes instructions not to mention unions if at all possible (older television actors remember this instruction being explicit back in the 1960s with regard to dramas.)

Please see my previous post on labor conditions in Iraq under the US occupation. Juan Cole’s suggestion that there is a US news embargo on reporting about these labor conditions explains a lot about why Americans are so woefully informed on the true nature of the disaster the invasion has visited upon Iraq.