Deep Blade Journal

Helen Thomas presses for the real reasons behind the war

Facing The Beard about the Bush press conference

Will a tribunal in the distant future try him for Aggression? Will a day ever arrive when the world gathers enough power to bring the president to justice?

Helen Thomas has pushed the envelope for years. Now we should all thank her for her strength in trying to get answers from the president about why Iraq was attacked, given the stated arguments for doing so always were false. A pretty simple consequence if the basis for the war was false is the war is illegal. Helen’s the only one with enough courage and force to bring this out in the open in a press conference.

Here’s a short version in an exchange between Helen and Wolf Blitzer:

BLITZER: But you can’t forget 9/11, 3,000 people were killed.THOMAS: But the Iraqis didn’t do it. I mean — why don’t you go bomb some other country? If you have no reason. This is — I don’t believe in preemptive war and it certainly is against international law. It’s against the U.N. Charter. It’s against Geneva and it’s against Nuremberg.

I should note here, as Rodger Payne pointed out in comments a few posts back, that Helen is wrong on the semantics of international law with the often-misused term “preemptive war”, which might be legal when attack is imminent. But I don’t think Helen was referring to Article-51-based preemption under “…the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations”. She’s really talking about preventive war, or what is sometimes called “anticipatory self-defense”.

Bush doctrine says that international law is basically inoperative when the biggest bully on the block throws its weight around, crushing self-identified “threats” before they “materialize.” But if this doctrine were to be enshrined with legality, what would stop, say, Iran or N. Korea from attacking US missile silos or aircraft carriers arguably poised to “materialize” into a threat to these countries. Desire not to commit suicide, I suppose is the simple answer.

President Bush, for his part, as Josh Marshall points out, just can’t get his facts straight about events three years ago:

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That’s why I went to the Security Council; that’s why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences … and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

I don’t think he’s lying. He’s just repeated the wrong information so many times–unlike what the president said, UN inspectors were allowed into Iraq prior to the war–he believes it. Furthermore, UNSCR 1441 did not confer the automatic right for the US to invade. See this post for more…

The easy path to war through panic & revenge

How long will our country hum along practically oblivious to the great spasms of incredible cognitive dissonance like those on display in the President’s Tuesday news conference? Threat mongering through juxtaposition was always the way 911 and Iraq have been linked. This presidential agitprop is clever, but it is becoming a very stale case to make. I hope people are beginning to realize that all the times he says “Iraq” and “Saddam Hussein” within a few sentence radius of “al Qaeda” or “September the 11th” is not automatic proof of Iraqi involvement in the attacks and that war was “the right thing to do.” It seems to have been easy to panic America and whip up flames of reprisal, even though the main target of the president’s choice had zero to do with the attack.

This pattern continued when Helen Thomas asked Mr. Bush on Tuesday to explain why he went to war, given that all of his pre-war claims about Iraqi weapons turned out to be false. Here is how the president answered:

Excuse me, excuse me. No President wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it’s just simply not true. My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We — when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I’m never going to forget it. And I’m never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq — hold on for a second — [emphasis added]

Okay, the radius between “September the 11th, 2001” and “That’s why I went into Iraq” is about four sentences with sixty words. The clauses clearly are linked. And that’s how Bush and other administration figures have always peddled the war–so much so that 4 out of 5 US troops in Iraq thinks of the war as some sort of vengeance for 911.

Helen tried to point out the clear truth that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism in the US, especially not 911. Just like the 911 Commission reported:

Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein’s secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Ladin associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

A ways back, I assembled a few more quotes that illustrate the rhetorical device of proximity Mr. Bush and other figures almost always use to link Saddam’s Iraq to 911. If they never said directly this was so, they implied it so often and so effectively that at one point they had 2 out of 3 Americans believing it. Here are some of the examples I dug up.

Mr. Bush directly responded on June 17, 2004 after a Cabinet meeting to the 911 Commission finding quoted above:

The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There’s numerous contacts between the two.

I always said that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people. He was a threat because he was a sworn enemy to the United States of America, just like al Qaeda. He was a threat because he had terrorist connections — not only al Qaeda connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations; Abu Nidal was one. He was a threat because he provided safe-haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi, who is still killing innocent inside of Iraq.

No, he was a threat, and the world is better off and America is more secure without Saddam Hussein in power.

But how about these? Setting aside the meaningless nonsense images of intelligence officers meeting, do you think any of the following quotes make it look like this administration said “the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda”??

As former Secretary of State Kissinger recently stated: ‘The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action.’ If the United States could have preempted 9/11, we would have, no question. Should we be able to prevent another, much more devastating attack, we will, no question. This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes.

Vice President Cheney, August 26, 2002

Iraq’s government openly praised the attacks of September the 11th. And al Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq…. With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.

President Bush, September 12, 2002

The danger to our country is grave and it is growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist groups, and there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq. This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year.

President Bush, Radio address, September 28, 2002

We will break up terror networks, hold to account nations that harbor terrorists, and confront aggressive tyrants holding or seeking nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons that might be passed to terrorist allies. These are different faces of the same evil. Terrorists need a place to plot, train, and organize. Tyrants allied with terrorists can greatly extend the reach of their deadly mischief. Terrorists allied with tyrants can acquire technologies allowing them to murder on an ever more massive scale. Each threat magnifies the danger of the other. And the only path to safety is to effectively confront both terrorists and tyrants.

For these reasons, President Bush is committed to confronting the Iraqi regime, which has defied the just demands of the world for over a decade. We are on notice. The danger from Saddam Hussein’s arsenal is far more clear than anything we could have foreseen prior to September 11th. And history will judge harshly any leader or nation that saw this dark cloud and sat by in complacency or indecision.

Dr. Condoleeza Rice, October 1, 2002

The president’s October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati was so loaded I’ll just refer you there.

Oh, and here’s what Mr. Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign sounded like:

September the 11th taught a lesson I will never forget and America must never forget: America must confront threats before they full materialize. My administration looked at the facts and the history and looked at the intelligence in Iraq, and we saw a threat. Members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence, and they saw a threat. The United Nations Security Council looked at the intelligence and it saw a threat. The previous administration and the previous Congress looked at the intelligence and made regime change in Iraq the policy of our country.

In 2002, the United Nations Security Council — yet again — demanded a full accounting of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs. They did so because they saw a threat. And as he had for over a decade, Saddam Hussein refused to comply. He deceived the inspectors. He did everything he can to deny access to the truth. And so I had a choice to make: Either take the word of a madman, or defend the United States of America. And given that choice, I will defend America every time. (Applause, USA! USA! USA!)

Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, we were right to go into Iraq. And America is safer today because we did. (Applause.) We removed a declared enemy of America who had the capability of producing weapons of mass destruction and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take.

President Bush, July 13, 2004

Congress is far from off the hook for this. In the October 2002 war resolution, there is this:

Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;…

In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon there after as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, and

(2) acting pursuant to this resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Then, bloody hell, this reads like a well-edited version of the same answer Mr. Bush gave Helen on Tuesday:

President Signs Iraq Resolution
I hope the good people of Iraq will remember our history, and not pay attention to the hateful propaganda of their government. America has never sought to dominate, has never sought to conquer. We’ve always sought to liberate and to free. Our desire is to help Iraqi citizens find the blessings of liberty within their own culture and their own traditions. The Iraqi people cannot flourish under a dictator that oppresses them and threatens them. Gifted people of Iraq will flourish if and when oppression is lifted.

The terrorist attacks of last year put our country on notice. We’re not immune from the dangers and hatreds of the world. In the events of September the 11th, we resolved as a nation to oppose every threat from any source that could bring sudden tragedy to the American people. This nation will not live at the mercy of any foreign power or plot. Confronting grave dangers is the surest path to peace and security. This is the expectation of the American people, and the decision of their elected representatives.

To shrink from this threat would bring a false sense of temporary peace, leading to a future in which millions live or die at the discretion of a brutal dictator. That’s not true peace, and we won’t accept it.

Like the members of Congress here today, I’ve carefully weighed the human cost of every option before us. If we go into battle, as a last resort, we will confront an enemy capable of irrational miscalculations, capable of terrible deeds. As the Commander-in-Chief, I know the risks to our country. I’m fully responsible to the young men and women in uniform who may face these risks. Yet those risks only increase with time. And the costs could be immeasurably higher in years to come.

When Iraq has a government committed to the freedom and well-being of its people, America, along with many other nations, will share a responsibility to help Iraq reform and prosper. And we will meet our responsibilities. That’s our pledge to the Iraqi people. [emphasis added]

Of course, what the war has really done is create a predictable spiral of violence that has a great probabilty of coming home to roost in the worst way, not to mention the devastation of Iraq.

Women and children were not spared

Among the grisly tales President Bush spun in Cleveland Monday was one of a child murdered by terrorists who then used his body as a booby trap bomb. Beyond just general skepticism, at this point I have no information leading me to believe the incidents in Tal Afar, Iraq the president spoke of are not true. I just have a problem with the example the US itself is setting in Iraq. In many, many cases, our own military and its allies seem to be no better than the kind of atrocities the president rightly decries.

On Friday, I noted the slaughter at the hands of US forces of at least 11 members of a family 16 kilometers north of Balad, Iraq. Thanks to Knight-Ridder, more information has become available:

The villagers were killed after American troops herded them into a single room of the house, according to a police document obtained by Knight Ridder Newspapers. The soldiers also burned three vehicles, killed the villagers’ animals and blew up the house, the document said.

The whole document is reproduced in the Knight-Ridder story.

Highly organized death squads
The US is behaving as if it is powerless to stop brutality by Iranian-trained Badr corps militias. In fact, the US military is enabling and assisting them.

Christopher Allbritton writes for Time Magazine this week that following “…the distinct and disturbing possibility that the U.S. is in fact training and arming one side in a conflict seeming to grow worse by the day,” outrageous atrocities are being committed by the Badrs that are controlled by the ostensible US allies:

The most gruesome discovery was an 18-by-24-foot mass grave in the Shi’ite slum of Kamaliyah in east Baghdad containing the bodies of 29 men, clad only in their underwear with their hands bound and their mouths covered with tape. Local residents only found it because the ground was oozing blood. In all, 87 bodies were found over two days in Baghdad.

Marines in al Anbar
Also in Time Magazine comes this disturbing story by Aparisim Ghosh, chief international correspondent for Time magazine:

On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communique from Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed by the blast and that “gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,” prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one other…

But,

According to eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and three children.

The latter seems just about right for Haditha, in light of the hard-to-uncover truth about the al Anbar offensives the US has conducted over the last several months. Back in October, I posted this from deep within a Washington Post story:

Mohammed Hadithi, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in Haditha, charged the U.S. troops violated the rights of residents during the assault. The Marines “neglected the humanitarian standards,” he said. “If the American people come and see the army they are proud of doing that to unarmed women and children, they would have disowned the army because those they are looking for have escaped hours before they came and attacked.”

Looking back over that post, I see that the US “rampage” actually extended to the bridges and entire infrastructure of the region.

Speaking of Tal Afar, President Bush made a big point yesterday of how the “terrorists and the insurgents” controlled “the only hospital in town”. Why? I think that the since US destroyed Falluja in November 2004, it has had to create rhetorical cover for the blatant war crime of attacking and destroying those very hospitals itself–not because terrorists use them, but rather because hospitals have been a source of truth about the heavy civilian casualties the US is causing.

We hurt ‘em, we heal ‘em
Finally, America has a generous, concerned spirit outside of its War Party. Here is an exchange with a father whose daughter was hit in the face with shrapnel in a US attack from a heartbreaking story on Democracy Now!:

Amy: Are you afraid to return to al Qaim now?

Translator for Khalid Hamdan Abd: It is kind of scary to go back, because even if you’re just driving your car peacefully in the streets, you might be shot by the American troops for no reason. So it is not easy to live there…

…

Amy: How do you feel that it’s an American bomb that killed your children, and an American … doctors that’re helping your surviving child heal?

Translator for Khalid Hamdan Abd: When he was first told by this Iraqi doctor that he’s gonna, they’re gonna try and get him out of the country for treatment, he thought it’s going to be an Arab country, so it’s okay, but when they told him it’s America, he refused. They told him again for three times, he told them he doesn’t want to go, until somebody told him the people–the population–are different from the Army, they’re not the same. So, on that basis, he accepted to come here…

The whole extensive segment should be required viewing in the White House, the Congress, and on the mainstream media.

When President Bush talks about the “killers’’ who attack innocents, painting America as needed in Iraq as some sort of chivalrous knight on a white horse against them, its a delusion of the worst order. Iraq clearly, most certainly, would be better off without us.

President’s serial hypocrisy revealed again

News today in the New York Times:

[An] elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

George W. Bush has been naked for years on these atrocities, preaching serial hypocrisy on torture with extrordinary balls, since he claimed back in 2003 that Iraq under his fatherly love would be “free of assassins, and torturers, and secret police” and that — like he claimed three years ago this week — that Iraqis no longer would have to fear the tyrant Saddam’s “torture chambers and rape rooms”. Seems those same torture chambers have instead been built up and enhanced, continuing to be scenes of torture under Bush to this day, two years after the Abu Ghraib story broke.

Deep Blade has covered serial hypocrisy on torture and rape in Iraq for years now. See entries here, here, and here among other places. A couple of years ago, William Saletan published a timeline called Rape Rooms: A Chronology What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded — damning indictments.

These are war crimes, for which Bush as Commander-in-Chief is ultimately responsible.

Cascade Park, Bangor, Maine

It was the very best Chain of Concern we’ve ever had. Over 150 people stretched about 300 meters along US Rt. 2 in Bangor at Cascade Park from 11am to noon this morning. Traffic is quite heavy there on a Saturday. Hundreds of drivers honked for peace as they went by.

Delusions
Meanwhile, President Bush peddled in his radio address today incredible delusions about how “the reaction to the recent violence by Iraq’s leaders is a clear sign” that “progress is being made” and of “Iraq’s commitment to democracy”.

Well, Bush is telling us the truth about just one aspect of his forcing us to hang on to his despicable Iraq policy. That is, “More fighting and sacrifice will be required to achieve this victory.”

To President Bush: We in the Peace Movement totally and completely reject your deluded statements following your call upon others to sacrifice. You offer a false choice between staying the course and presuming that removing our imperial occupation forces would constitute “abandoning our commitments”, and that “there is no peace, there’s no honor, and there’s no security in retreat”.

No one wants America to “abandon” Iraq. What we want is to pull out our military occupation so that Iraq will be allowed to solve its own problems. We owe the people of Iraq nothing less than to take our stranglehold off of their people, politics, and resources. Then we must pay Iraq reparations for the decades of support we gave Saddam, the destruction of infrastructure our bombing and corrupt bumbling of reconstruction have caused, and most importantly, for the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis our policies have killed or injured.

Luck o’ the Irish edition

Four days of 10+°C wiped out the snow. Now we’re back to cold and bare.

History: March 2003, not really prescience

Ready for war: left to right, Prime Minister Blair, President Aznar, President Bush and Prime Minister Barroso - the Azores, Portugal, Sunday, March 16, 2003. White House photo by Eric Draper. President Bush: “The dictator of Iraq and his weapons of mass destruction are a threat to the security of free nations…He possesses the weapons of mass murder…the Iraqi regime will disarm itself, or the Iraqi regime will be disarmed by force. And the regime has not disarmed itself.”

It is nothing I ever wished to have been right about. But even in March 2003, it was not hard to foresee resistance to the coming US invasion.

From the original Deep Blade, March 12, 2003:U.S. taking of Iraq does not appear to be the end of the imperial designs of U.S. planners. An extended, dangerous period of escalation of application of U.S. power in an attempt to hold and control its expanding spoils of war can be expected. Despite their arrogance and hubris, Bush and his team should not have much confidence that the chaos of the post-invasion period can be kept benign. There is great uncertainty about the controllability of forces that could be unleashed as America commits to new global management requirements far beyond its present substantial deployments. Current U.S. planning envisions a three-phase transition of Iraq from American military administration to some form of American-style government led by current Iraqi exiles. This process will be highly problematic and will probably require considerable force to pacify the disparate populations within Iraq. Beyond Iraq, the U.S. intends to insure that the behavior of Saudi Arabia and other countries with strategic resources align with its hegemonic goals, thus inviting a radical anti-american response.

And here are additional remarks from the same issue of Deep Blade, that I also gave in a public forum held for the Maine Congressional delegation at the Bangor Theological Seminary on March 16, 2003. (Only Congressman Michaud was in attendance):

This war will perhaps be the worst cynical betrayal of the fighting men and women in the military in U.S. history. The American people need to know that it is only the peace movement that truly supports the troops. The only troop support that means a damn thing is stopping the war in the first place. This is a strong statement given the experience of Vietnam and the first Gulf War, but I believe that this is true. Our troops will be thrown into a battlefield where they will be exposed to deadly toxins. The deleterious effects on our troops and the Iraqi population of extensive use of depleted uranium munitions in the first Gulf War is only now coming to light…

The imperialism of Bush and his lieutenants is a BETRAYAL of the troops and the American people, while they engender a false image that American troops do not care about human life. This image of our troops as storm troopers enforcing imperial policy, like it or not, will take a quantum leap in currency after an attack on Iraq. We will have lost any remaining legitimacy we have in using our military might against actual terrorists (not that I agree this has been the U.S. aim at any point, but post-9/11 legitimacy in the eyes of the world will have been squandered totally). None of this weight do I want our great country, our troops, and all of our people to have to bear.

Bear it we must.

Death squad tactics

US raid slaughters family, including five children–one just six months old

For any reader skeptical that this is intentional US policy, recall discussion of the “Salvador Option” that goes back to a Newsweek story by Michael Hirsh and John Barry from January 2005:

the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported “nationalist” forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal…

He [Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service] said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”

Iraqis understand exactly what is happening as the bodies pile up. US media can’t bring itself to take a good hard look at who is responsible.

Now this…

Operation Swarmer

The U.S. military and Iraqi forces launched the largest air assault in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion in a bid to root out insurgents hiding around Samarra.

Operation Swarmer began early today with more than 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi troops, about 200 tactical vehicles, and more than 50 aircraft, the U.S. military said in a statement e-mailed from Baghdad. Samarra is about 80 miles (125 kilometers) north of Baghdad on the Tigris River. …

There may also be civilian casualties resulting from the operation, [Ted Galen Carpenter, a defense analyst at the Cato Institute] said, adding: “That’s not going to win hearts and minds.”

The attack oughta really improve the Iraqi view of American intentions. But does that matter any more? It almost seems like the US military has taken a decision to just smash the place up.

Update (3/17): Allbritton says this operation is “overblown” — “There is so far no evidence of bombardment of any kind.” I say good to that. I’ll be happy if I’m totally, completely wrong that the US military is using these kinds of operations to slowly smash up the country. But there is a “Long War”, and Iraq is a strategic base in that war…

Also today…

Endless war under Bush Doctrine of anticipatory self-defense
This‘ll keep agitating people all of the world against America–a re-declaration of the Bush Doctrine where the US will

anticipate and counter threats, using all elements of national power, before the threats can do grave damage. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.

I can’t do a better job tackling the huge faults in this policy than Helen Thomas did today at the White House press briefing:

Q [Thomas] Does the President know that he’s in violation of international law when he advocates preemptive war? The U.N. Charter, Geneva, Nuremberg. We violate international law when we advocate attacking a country that did not attack us.

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I would just disagree with your assessment. First of all, preemption is a longstanding principle of American foreign –

Q It’s not a long-standing principle with us. It’s your principle.

MR. McCLELLAN: Have you asked your question?

Q It’s a violation of international law.

MR. McCLELLAN: First of all, let me back up, preemption is a longstanding principle of American foreign policy. It is also part –

Q It’s never been.

MR. McCLELLAN: It is also part of an inherent right to self-defense. But what we seek to do is to address issues diplomatically by working with our friends and allies, and working with regional partners. That’s what we’re doing when it comes to the threat posed by Iran pursuing nuclear weapons. That’s what we’re doing when it comes to resolving the nuclear issue with North Korea. So we seek diplomatic solutions to confront threats.

And it’s important what September 11th taught us –

Q The heavy emphasis of your paper today is war and preemptive war.

MR. McCLELLAN: Can I finish responding to your question, because I think it’s important to answer your question. It’s a good question and it’s a fair question. But first of all, are we supposed to wait until a threat fully materializes and then respond? September 11th –

Q Under international law you have to be attacked first.

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, you’re not letting me respond to your question. You have the opportunity to ask your question, and I would like to be able to provide a response so that the American people can hear what our view is. This is not new in terms of our foreign policy. This has been a longstanding principle, the question that you bring up. But again, I’ll put the question back to you. Are we supposed to wait until a threat fully materializes before we respond –

Q You had no threat from Iraq.

MR. McCLELLAN: September 11th taught us –

Q That was not a threat from Iraq.

MR. McCLELLAN: — some important lessons. One important lesson it taught us was that we must confront threats before they fully materialize. That’s why we are working to address the threats when it comes to nuclear issues involving Iran and North Korea. That’s why we’re pursuing diplomatic solutions to those efforts, by working with our friends and allies, by working with regional partners who understand the stakes involved and understand the consequences of failing to confront those threats early, before it’s too late.

Q What are the consequences?

MR. McCLELLAN: The consequences of a nuclear armed Iran, they are very serious in terms of stability –

Q Are you warning Iran that it has consequences as you did Iraq?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, what has happened with Iran right now is that the matter has been reported to the United Nations Security Council because the regime in Iran has failed to come into compliance with its safeguard obligations, and they continue to engage in enrichment related activity. And we have supported the efforts of the Europeans to resolve this matter diplomatically, but the regime in Iran continues to pursue the wrong course.

They need to change their behavior. They continue to defy the international community. That’s why the matter has been reported to the Security Council. We have now entered a new phase of diplomacy. And there are a lot of discussions going on about how to prevent the regime from developing a nuclear weapon capability, or developing nuclear weapons. And that’s why those discussions are ongoing.

This is an important issue. It outlines in our national security strategy that this is one of the most serious challenges that we face.

Q Are we threatening Iran with preemptive war?

MR. McCLELLAN: We’re trying to resolve this in a diplomatic manner by working with our friends and allies.

It is the outrageous US policy of invading to “confront threats before they fully materialize” that has materialized what is now reported as a “sectarian” conflict bordering on civil war in Iraq. It’s incredible that anyone can blame some supposed Iraqi historical animosities for the conditions now existing.

In fact, it appears the Americans are fanning the flames as hard as they can. The policy reaches back even farther than El Salvador in the 80s–to a Vietnam-style program of smashing a country to pieces so that it will never be a threat to American hegemony.

In Iraq, this is a far more important strategic goal than it ever was in Vietnam. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is too important to give up in the end. America appears to be moving towards destroying the country, then keeping it.

Evidence for that? General John Abizaid said yesterday that the United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect oil supplies!

Meanwhile, to distract the public from the meltdown resulting from 2003’s attack, groundwork for some sort of new war in Iran is being laid.

Big Gulf of Mexico oil find announcement

According to Mexican President Vincente Fox, Mexico has made a deep-water oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico that could be larger than the country’s giant Cantarell offshore field.

But let’s look at the context. Slipped into the cited story is the following:

Original total reserves at Cantarell, Mexico’s largest oil field, stood at 11.5 billion barrels but its output has been steadily falling. Production at Cantarell is expected to decline 6 percent this year, to 1.9 million barrels a day, and decline even more sharply in subsequent years.

Hmmm, that would seem to be the buried lead–Mexican oil production is on the precipice and ready to fall off the cliff. Then we read:

The fastest way for Pemex to get the oil out would be by forming alliances with companies that have the deep-water technology. However, current laws forbid private companies from exploration and production activities in Mexico except when they are under contract to Pemex.

Energy Secretary Fernando Canales told Dow Jones Newswires the ban on Pemex forming alliances for deep-water drilling would slow down the process of developing the reserves, but won’t keep Pemex from getting at the oil.

“We don’t need just one, but many wells,” Canales said.

He declined to give further details of the new oil find.

The Fox administration has been attempting to ease foreign investment restrictions in the state-run energy sector. But all his initiatives have been blocked by the opposition-dominated Congress.

Is the hype about the size of the “find” pretty much dreaming? Are they just trying to push neoliberal policy through reluctant legislators? And check this out. We’ve heard it all before, back in 2004.

Also, see this in Deep Blade Journal. An un-named Pemex engineer in an interview posted on oilcast.com in December says flatly that “the days of the Mexican super giants are over” and that Pemex is “in the middle of the Hubbert curve.”

Deepwater, or tar sands for that matter, are not the panacea that they sometimes are made out to be. And major world fields like Bergun in Kuwait, Cantarell in Mexico, and the North Sea are already in precipitous decline. That’s the real story, not the hype of ethereal new oil finds.

Censure motion against lawbreaker Bush

The most interesting thing about Wisconsin US Senator Russ Feingold’s Censure Resolution against President Bush for illegal warrantless wiretapping is the way it injects a dose of political reality into a media atmosphere smothered by its own nearly unshakable delusions. A large swath of the public has become sensitized and now rejects the criminality of President Bush and his administration. But usually you wouldn’t hear that perspective in mainstream reporting.

Feingold’s Censure Resolution would seem to be an anemic move given the colossal transgressions of Bush. Of course I agree totally with impeachment efforts (thanks for links, Francis) Rep. John Conyers and the Center for Constitutional Rights are now promoting. But now with Feingold out there, a pretty good sized spasm of coverage for the case against Bush for lawbreaking is out there. In this environment, even a little thing like censure is such a massive departure from the consensus narrative that it echoes everywhere like an explosion.

Even so, there is a great deal of work left to do. The explosion will not last long. The push-back coverage is abundant today–“Feingold Draws Little Support for Censure”. While Frist wants to wash Feingold with a bucket of “we’re at war” nonsense, support for censure even from Feingold’s own Democrat Party is “tepid”. So, yes, this move will probably not stay out front just now. But it is a move in a healthy direction to have it there at all. Thank you, Russ Feingold.

Follow the story/watch the video:
1. Initial interview on ABC This Week
2. Democracy Now! piece, including Senate floor statement
3. Russ Feingold is a solid guy, can hold his own in a hostile interview.