*Kurt Nimmo-- Rove: Voters don't matter, results do

Kurt Nimmo here decodes -- not that much needs to be decoded -- Rove's shameless announcement on NPR that votes don't matter, only the people that count the votes matter. Rove indicated that just because GOP fear campaign tactics are more threadbare than usual, that's hardly a reason that this election be any different from the last 3 or 4 they've stolen.

I've omitted Nimmo's rants on the lack of difference between the parties which is a lesser truth beneath the reality that we're currently ruled by a small clique of exceptional irrational radicals who are bent on permanent war and destroying their domestic and international opposition. I've also omitted Nimmo's plan to make a statement by not voting.

My present view as I vote in NYC on my old trusty lever machines (perhaps for the last time since they are destined to be replaced by hackable digital machines) with virtually no local voter suppression that I'm aware of is to join those exhorting the most massive possible turnout. The hope is that people will start to wake up to what's going on and find Ghandian ways to make a statement. (Nimmo ridicules candlelight vigils, but the point is to force the media to report our outrage since cowards or villains like Kerry refuse to lead us.)

For this cycle we're reduced to hoping that some of the CIA apparatchiks at the NYT and people like Rupert Murdoch and Hillary Clinton will begin to pay attention in the wake of more and more obvious stolen elections.

-- Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***


Kurt Nimmo
Voting: What is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing
Monday October 30th 2006, 3:28 am
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=634

David Swanson provides us with a glimpse of the stolen election, a mere eight days away. Zooming in on an NPR transcript of a conversation between NPR’s Robert Siegel and a boorish Karl Rove, we learn from the interview that Republicans use a “different math” to count polls, as they use “different math” to count election results at odds with exit polls. In other words, Rove was indicating, once again, Republicans will steal the election and thus retain possession of the House and Senate.

“Democratic candidates, consider yourselves warned. Don’t concede a shady election the next day and then complain weeks later that you didn’t realize, you hadn’t been aware, or you didn’t want to put us through a traumatic experience. Our uncertainty as to whether you will fight for your votes is what is traumatizing us,” writes Swanson. “Citizens, consider yourselves warned…. prepare yourselves to make sure the votes are counted. Then join a blue revolution: candlelight vigils outside county election offices the evening of November 7th—Let them know we’re watching.”

I can see Rove and the Republicans rolling on the floor, their sides splitting. Candlelight vigils? Please. Instead, activists should gather at the polling places and demand the removal of all devices—computer, optical, even card punch—and insist paper ballots be used instead. People should refuse to vote until this changes.

Here in New Mexico, we have optical readers. Since an optical reader translates my paper ballot into digitized information, subject to hacking and manipulation, it is not acceptable. I demand a paper ballet counted and recounted by human eyes not connected to the Republican or Democratic party. Short of this, there is no reason to vote. The last time I voted, in 2004, my vote was stolen. Ballots were “spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush ‘won’ an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush,” writes Michael Parenti.

Of course, I didn’t vote for Bush Lite, Kerry, who thumbed his nose at the large antiwar faction of his party, thus revealing once again there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, exemplified by the fact Kerry and Bush are distant cousins and Skull and Bones Yalies, products of the same, for lack of a better word, shadow government, consisting of “high finance, big oil, corporate elitism,” as Jonathan Vankin notes, the members of which “slide smoothly into cabinet-level jobs in Republican and Democratic administrations.”

[snip]

Of course, going to the polling place will not matter, as the going there did not matter during the 2002 midterm election, when “blackbox” voting ruled the day. “It’s a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It’s a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers—and presidential family members—lie down together in the slime. It’s a hacker’s dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny,” writes Jon Traudt. “The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players—Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia—with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies—all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid—were given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide for the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems—many using ‘touch-screen’ technology that leaves no paper trail at all—are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.”

[snip]

*Letter re Frank Rich & Stern + notes

Emboldened by the strong language the NYT allowed in its letters column on October 29th (see my letter and Fritz Stern's letter below) I decided to burn up some energy and time testing whether they were in the mood for another version of reality.

*On another matter, I guess we're seeing Kerry's version of an October surprise. The treachery never ends.

*On Scott Ritter's silly prediction that the attack against Iran would occur BEFORE the election, he might have learned the lesson of the Nixon and the Reagan years: the period just before the election is the quiet time: do whatever is necessary to keep oil prices low and the stock market and housing prices high. If the attack on Iran happens, early 07 is the target time. Look for the rhetoric to heat up when appropriate.

*As far as the election, there's nothing visible to revise the prediction that Bush is so confidently making: the fix is very much in. How many readers doubt that Rove (and Bush) know within 2-3 exactly the margin that they will keep the House and 1 or 2 the Senate. If Ritter were clued into election fraud and stolen elections, he'd know they didn't need an October surprise. They've got a November surprise -- only the 3rd or 4th since 2000.

The only question is how the public will take it: just another bad day in Dodge City? Or is it time to storm the barricades and demand change? Note that Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker is already making excuses for another stolen election: it's gerrymandering and so on. Will the NYT and the Democratic Party go down so easily again? --Ronald
***

The New York Times
Letter to the Editor

letters@nytimes.com

October 29, 2006

To the Editor:

At first sight, letter writer Fritz. Stern (“Conservatism Abandoned,” Oct 29, 2006) seems to be dead on in excoriating President Bush for instituting a “chaotic recklessness…a subversion of the constitution, finally provoking…a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world.”

On closer examination, however, Mr. Stern faults the president with “ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq.” This misses the point as does Frank Rich (“Dying to Save the G.O.P. Congress,” Op-ed, October 29, 2006) when the usually superbly on target columnist wrongly predicts that after the election Bush will allow “adults to step in…and pull the plug” on our Iraq adventure.

Both writers ignore the reality of the billions of dollars that continue to be spent erecting about a dozen permanent military bases in Iraq. But the larger point that few speak about is that the aim of the Iraq war is to destroy Iraq. This is a work in progress that will not be completed by November 7. The White House wants to ensure that Iraq remains a failed state unable to challenge Israel’s hegemonic ambitions. In addition, the neocons in command are bent on maintaining the momentum of a permanent war agenda and a national security state.

Sincerely,
Ronald Bleier
www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com
http://desip.igc.org
***


New York Times
Letters
October 29, 2006

Letter writer, Fritz Stern wrote:
Conservatism Abandoned (1 Letter)
To the Editor:

In “The Era of What’s Next” (column, Oct. 26), David Brooks posits that between 1980 and 2006, a conservative ideology held sway. This characterization of the chronology strikes me as unhistorical.

Does he really not see that instantly upon his inauguration in 2001 President Bush broke with longstanding foreign and domestic policies that had been supported by both parties, substituting a chaotic recklessness in every respect, a subversion of the Constitution, finally provoking with his ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world?

In the last six years, America has been led not by conservatives but by radical right-wingers, empowered by an astounding plutocratic machine, infused by a neoconservative ideology that believes in projecting American power — even in defiance of American interests and capacities.

Since 2001, genuine conservatives have seen the G.O.P. desert its basic principles; actually, the country is now in desperate need of leaders who truly represent the rectitude and realism associated with traditional conservatism.

Fritz Stern
New York, Oct. 27, 2006
The writer is university professor emeritus at Columbia University.

*Patrick Cockburn: The Dissolution of Iraq

Patrick Cockburn has done some of the best Iraq reporting, and he's of course correct to point to the outcome of the war as the dissolution of the Iraqi state (involving an unspeakable tragedy for the Iraqi people, the vast waste of human and financial resources, lasting political instability from which we may never recover, etc. etc.) yet his title: That's the way Bush and Blair wanted it -- promises much more than the article delivers.

Let's say it clearly: the purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to destroy Iraq.

For two reasons:

a. To destroy a potential opponent of Israeli hegemony

b. to sustain the momentum of a permanent war agenda by homegrown irrational American radicals bent on destruction for the sake of destruction: war for the sake of war. If this seems counterintuitive, that's because we're normal people.

Here I have to part company a little from my (political) friends Mearshimer and Walt who argue that the Iraq war was imposed on the Bush administration by the Israeli lobby. No, it was the Israeli lobby who made it possible, who greased the way. Without them the Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld clique would have had to swim that much further upstream against a public aware of how wildly irrational was the war. It couldn't have been done without the Lobby. But the Iraq war was in the end an essentially American adventure, with US neocons brilliantly and cynically making use of a Likud program for their own endless war agenda.

It should be self evident that this was not a war for oil even to Chomsky, since we're getting less of its oil than when Saddam was in power, (not was it for control of Middle East oil, whatever that means: does controlling it mean burning it in our gas tanks?) nor was this a war for privatization, nor was it a war on behalf of the bankers or the Illuminati, or the Council on Foreign Relations, since the irrational radicals who lead our government don't care about such things. They only care about destruction.

Some weeks ago Frank Rich came pretty close to putting his finger on it when he used the pillage of the Iraqi museum and the destruction of the Iraqi universities as the central motif of his Sunday NYT op ed column. He came so close to saying that this vicious clique INTEND the destruction of as much of Iraqi culture and civil life as they can manage. What did Rumsfeld say? Things happen.

Is there anything in their record over the last five years that suggests that they aren't intent also on destroying the civil and cultural life of the US? Recall that culture, science, education is their enemy. They believe that the power of the government to do anything positive domestically or internationally should be destroyed. They believe the only legitimate purpose of government is to make war if you're stronger than anyone else. Yes, they're bullies.

What did Grover Norquist say -- out loud?! He wants to reduce government (i.e., its power to do good) to the point where he can drown it in the bathtub. We may soon begin to take him seriously. --Ronald Bleier /www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com



October 26, 2006

www.counterpunch.org

The Iraqi Government is Weak, Because That's the Way Bush and Blaired Wanted It
From "Mission Accomplished" to "Mission Impossible" in Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN

"It sounds like a face-saving way of announcing a withdrawal," commented an Iraqi political leader yesterday on hearing that the US military commander in Iraq and the chief American envoy in Baghdad had said that Iraqi police and army should be able to take charge of security in a year or 18 months.

Yet the only real strength of the Iraqi government is the US army. In theory, it has 264,000 soldiers and police under its command. In practice they obey the orders of their communal leaders in so far as they obey anybody.

There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter. "This Mehdi Army militia group has to be brought under control," said the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday. But in the past few months most of the Shia districts in Baghdad --and Shia are the majority in the capital --have come under the control of the Mehdi Army, the militia of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is all so different from that moment of exuberant imperial hubris in May 2003 when President George Bush announced mission accomplished in Iraq.

Where did the US go wrong? Saddam Hussein's government collapsed almost without a fight. Iraqis would not fight for him. Iraqis may not have welcomed American tanks with sweets and rose petals but they were very glad to see the back of their own disaster-prone leader.

The greatest American mistake was to turn what could have been presented as liberation into an occupation. The US effectively dissolved the Iraqi state. It has since been said by US generals --many of whom now claim to have been opponents of the invasion all along --that given a larger US army and a more competent occupation regime, all might still have been well. This is doubtful. The five million Sunni Arabs were always going to fight the occupation. The only Iraqi community to support it were the five million Kurds. The Shia wanted to use it to gain the power their 60 per cent of the Iraqi population warranted but they never liked it.

One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years --the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted. All Iraqi governments, unelected and elected, have been tainted and de-legitimised by being dependent on the US. This is as true of the government of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today as it was when sovereignty was supposedly handed back to Iraq under the prime minister Iyad Allawi in June 2004. Real authority had remained in the hands of the US. The result was a government whose ministers could not move outside the Green Zone. They showed great enthusiasm for press conferences abroad where they breathed defiance at the insurgents and agreed with everything said by Mr. Bush or Tony Blair.

The government can do nothing because it only came into existence after ministries were divided up between the political parties after prolonged negotiations. Each ministry is a bastion of that party, a source of jobs and money. The government can implement no policy because of these deep divisions. The government cannot turn on the militias because they are too strong.

It is also true that almost all parties that make up the government have their own militias: the Kurds have the Peshmerga; the Shia have the Mehdi Army and the Badr Organisation; the Sunni have the insurgents. In areas of Iraq where civil war is already raging or where it is impending, people look to these militias to defend their homes and not to the police or regular army.

The US has lost more than 500 of its soldiers, dead and wounded, this month. Every month this year the combined figure --more telling than that for dead alone --has been creeping up, as the area of US control is diminishing. The handover of security to Iraqi government forces --the long-trumpeted aim of American and British policy --is, in practice, a handover to the local militias.

The problem for the US and British is that many Iraqi leaders outside the government think the British and Americans are on the run. Wait, they say, and they will become even weaker. The US is talking to senior Baath party military officials in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who control the insurgency if anybody does. But it is unlikely that they would call a ceasefire except on terms wholly unacceptable to other Iraqis.

Can the US extract itself from Iraq? Probably it could but only with great loss of face which the present administration could not endure after its boasts of victory three-and-a-half years ago.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', published by Verso.

Ronald Sept 2006

  

FDR, Gruber and me: Zionists stymie WWII rescue plan

by Ronald Bleier

September 2006

From time to time I get into conversations which allow me to tell the story of my family’s immigration to the U.S. when I was an infant during WWII. Late in the war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to accept about 1000 mostly Jewish refugees into the U.S. for temporary asylum. My parents, my brother and I were among these refugees. We traveled to the U.S. by ship from Italy to New York in August 1944. Upon arrival we were interned at an old army barracks in Oswego, N.Y. for almost two years. (After the war, Congress passed, and President Truman signed legislation that allowed us to remain in the U.S.)

A special hero of this story was a woman called Ruth Gruber, who had been working in the Interior Dept under Harold Ickes. As she relates in her book on the subject, Haven (1983) (later made into an undistinguished TV movie), she bravely volunteered to be our liaison with the government, to join us in Italy and accompany us to the U.S. Wonderfully capable and compassionate, she was loved and revered by all for her untiring and invaluable efforts on our behalf.

It so happens that Ms Gruber, now about 95 years old, is a New Yorker and my family and I met her in the late 1980s in connection with a reunion of the Oswego refugees. We met one evening at her apartment on the West Side of Manhattan and then we went to dinner together. She had written several books, among them a novel called Rebecca, that I happened to browse while at her apartment. I read the first page which described an Arab raid on a terrified Zionist kibbutz in Palestine in the pre-1948 period. It was clear that the story was written from the Jewish settler’s point of view.

Some time after our dinner evening together, I telephoned Ms. Gruber and raised the question of Zionism’s record when it came to the human and national rights of the Palestinians. The tone of our conversation remained friendly, but she was very clear that there was little I could say that would cause her to change her strong pro-Israeli and pro-Zionist views.


In Haven, she tells the story of how she volunteered to join our refugee group in wartime Italy, and she gives some background as to how FDR made the decision to shelter 1,000 refugees. Upon receiving permission to join the mission as our liaison, she did some research in State Department files.

According to Gruber (Haven, Ch.2), President Roosevelt was forced into making some kind of demonstration on behalf of European, especially Jewish, refugees because of the embarrassing publication of war time cables from the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland to Washington relating to what later became known as the Holocaust. According to Gruber, in these documents, the State Department in Washington, D.C. revealed its disinterest if not outright anti-Semitic hostility toward the mostly Jewish victims of Nazi persecution by ordering their colleagues in Switzerland to discontinue sending Washington such news.

In Gruber’s version, the shocking disclosure of these communications empowered members of the Jewish community to apply to a reluctant (and she implies, anti-Semitic) President Roosevelt, with a proposal to save hundreds of thousands of European Jews. In Gruber’s version, FDR finally agreed that the U.S. provide temporary haven for 1,000 refugees.

I believed Gruber’s story and repeated it often to friends. Only later did I learn that the very opposite was the truth. The real FDR was very much aware of and troubled by the plight of the wartime refugees and he proposed a plan to save half a million or more. He envisioned an agreement with such countries as the UK, Canada, Australia, and others with the U.S. and the U.K. leading the way by each taking in 150,000 “displaced persons” as they were then called. FDR’s emissary for this plan managed to get agreement in principle from the British but in the end the plan was vetoed by the Zionists. The Jewish leadership were afraid that providing haven for European Jewish refugees anywhere but Palestine would be at cross purposes with their plan for a Jewish state there.

Noted anti-Zionist author Alfred Lilienthal tells this story in his important and effectively buried book What Price Israel.

Here’s Lilienthal’s version

www.alfredlilienthal.com/what_price_israel_2.htm

President Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political belief. The President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 Displaced Persons could be achieved by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the President went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would take in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia and the South American countries would gladly open their doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress could be "educated to go back to our traditional position of asylum." The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report, and this is what took place in the White House (as related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):

Ernst: "We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000.

Roosevelt: "150,000 to England—150,000 to match that in the United States—pick up 200,000 or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these oppressed people."

A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.

Roosevelt (turning to Mrs. Ernst): "Margaret, can't you get me a Jewish Pope? I cannot stand it any more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise leaves the White House he doesn't see Joe Proskauer on the way in." Then, to Mr. Ernst: "Nothing doing on the program. We can't put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won't stand for it."

"It's impossible! Why?" asked Ernst.

Roosevelt: "They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, 'There is no other place this poor Jew can go.' But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money. Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say 'What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world."

Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, without mentioning the President's or the British reaction. As he himself has put it: "I was thrown out of parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said 'Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement.' " He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and their leaders. Everywhere he found "a deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement" in men "who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own."

This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe's Displaced Persons.

Kurt Nimmo: Not My Son in Video Says Atta Sr.

See below for another Nimmo post on the same subject.

Kurt Nimmo writes:
Not My Son in Video, Declares Atta Senior
Tuesday October 03rd 2006, 6:57 pm
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587

In fairness, you’d think the corporate media would hear out Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta, father of patsy hijacker Mohammed Atta, who has told the Saudi daily al-Watan the latest intelligence video fabrication, allegedly showing Mohammed and Ziad Jarrah, is a crass fake. “The video-testament of my son is false and I continue to believe he is innocent,” Atta said. “There is a big difference between this photo and the images shown by the Americans—that one is not my boy…. “The Americans tampered with and falsified that video … they want to change the truth in order to achieve their goals in the Middle East.”

A Google News search returns exactly one reference to Atta’s comments, posted on the Adnkronos International web site. But even Adnkronos International accepts as gospel truth the dubitable myth the younger Atta “flew one of the planes that brought down the World Trade Center.” As of yet, nobody has demonstrated Atta was anywhere near an airplane on September 11 and as for bringing down the WTC with planes, this is in the province of flat-worlders and physical science no-nothings, including not only every damn neocon on the planet but no shortage of daft left gatekeepers such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.

It is interesting to compare the now infamous mugshot of Atta with this supposed earlier likeness. According to at least one nine eleven researcher, the Mohammed in Florida was fond of alcohol and cocaine, and if indeed this is the case imbibing these substances must have taken a heavy toll over the period of 20 months because the Atta portrayed in the passport mugshot is far more haggard and older looking than the earlier, smiling Atta, who looks to be less of a psychopath as well.

But the inconsistencies really shine in compared photos of Ziad Jarrah, as Steve and Paul Watson demonstrate on the Infowars web site.

“These are clearly not the same man, there are up to three different people feature\d here! The passport found in the wreckage does not show the face of the Jarrah in the latest video release who is Jarrah #1,” write the Watson brothers.

As for the recently released video, they conclude: “All indicators suggest that it was filmed by U.S. intelligence and purposefully timed for a politically expedient release to coincide the the passage of the Military Commissions Act. The fact that Atta and Jarrah appear in the same release, even though it was not the same day as the Rally and they may not have been in the same location as Bin Laden makes the whole thing stink to high heaven.”

Indeed, it does stink to high heaven, and then some.

This latest attempt to add fluff to the boxcutter wielding hijackers fable fits nicely in previous attempts, most notably the fat Bin Laden video, the Osama with a nose job video, and the recycling of old, pre-nine eleven CIA videos shot in Afghanistan, attempting to pass them off as newly acquired footage.

Of course, for the corporate media, not allowing Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta to have his say is wholly predictable, as they have a vested interest in promulgating the neocon version of events, considering the multinational corporations that own our media stand to cash-in on the “clash of civilizations” farce. However, you’d think, with the billions of dollars at their disposal, they would do a better job at pulling the wool over our eyes.

See also Nimmo's previous post on the same subject.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=584

Missing Link Atta “Martyrdom” Video Appears Five Weeks Before Election
Sunday October 01st 2006, 9:31 am

Suddenly, with the midterm election five weeks away, a previously undiscovered video emerges, showing Mohammed Atta “reading his ‘martyrdom’ will inside Afghanistan at Usama bin Laden’s headquarters.”

In another segment, Atta appears with Ziad Jarrah, who, according to the official nine eleven fairy tale, was the pilot of “United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers apparently stormed the flight deck,” according to Fox News.

As an extra added bonus, the tape shows Ramzi Binalshibh, the “senior” al-Qaeda leader and Hamburg cell member, supposedly captured after a gunbattle in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002, and handed over to the United States.

Read the full post
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587

Mark Crispin Miller: How They're Gonna Keep Control of Congress -- Part 2

http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm

Even while the NYT continues to print Page One upbeat articles about the coming November elections, ("With Guarded Cheer, Democrats Dare to Believe This is Their Time," by Adam Nogourney and Robin Toner, 10.22.06) the issue of the Republican plan to steal the election once again by means of electronic voting manipulation, control of voter rolls, suppression of the Democratic vote and other such means continues to be virtually universally ignored not least by John Kerry and the Democratic Party.

That the plan is currently firmly in place was revealed in a glaring example in a California by-election this summer that Mark Crisipin Miller cites in the second part of his essay on our election process. Note that not even Democracy Now noticed or bothered to report on this outrage and they have been covering the issue far more than others. --RB


Mark Crispin Miller writes:

http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm

BRAZEN BEHAVIOR—While the [Republican] party has pre-empted innumerable votes below the radar, it has also shown a steely willingness to thwart the voters openly, if they should dare resist the party's will. Take, for example, last summer's special race in San Diego to fill the empty seat of the felonious Randy Cunningham, a former Republican congressman who is now doing time for accepting bribes. Although leading in the pre-election polls, the Democrat, Francine Busby, lost to Brian Bilbray of the GOP; and then it came out that the party's poll workers had been ordered to take the e-voting machinery home with them for several days before the vote.

At the news of this jaw-dropping wrong (it being a very simple task to fiddle with the gadgets' memory cards and thereby fix the final count), San Diegans called for an investigation and a new election. A week after the election—and seventeen days before the vote was even certified—Bilbray flew to Washington, where he was summarily sworn in by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In late August that amazing move was, still more amazingly, approved by Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann, who argued that the state of California had no jurisdiction once the Speaker of the House had made the people's choice.

If Dennis Hastert can choose Brian Bilbray for that seat, irrespective of the will of the electorate, why bother having House elections anywhere? Indeed, why bother with elections? Why not just have Congress's membership decided by the Speaker of the House—or by President Bush himself? Maybe that imperial arrangement would amuse the press as much as it appeals to Bush & Co. Otherwise there might have been some coverage of the scandal by the news media, which has largely disregarded it (while Hastert's role in Foleygate is a huge story).

The other new point that Miller makes is that if by chance the Republicans lose either House of Congress they have a plan to counter the Democratic victory. While it's far from clear that it will work, we should be aware of the danger.

ELEVENTH-HOUR PLAN—Such journalistic silence [about Republican plans to steal the election once again] makes it all the likelier that the Republicans will get away with it again—although it's also possible, of course, that they will somehow fail to steal it on Election Day. Chance, accident, imperial over-reaching and/or popular resistance can thwart the best-laid plans. If that should happen, though, the party has a plan to fix the problem; and the press's eerie silence on the danger of election fraud could help that strategy succeed.

If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic "voter fraud" through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.

For the full text of Miller's article:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm

Two NYT articles in mid October provided evidence that Bush has signaled to all who are interested: Republican solons, members of the Justice and Homeland Security departments, the entire Fed bureaucracy, the army of Washington and local lobbyists, that they needn’t be concerned about a possible loss of Congressional control of congress.



1.Bush Joins Hastert at Rally, And Lavishes the Praise,” Jim Rutenberg, NYT, 13 Oct 2006

We might expect that if the elections were fair, Bush would distance himself from the tainted Hastert



2.. Jim Rutenberg “President Sees Signs Favoring GOP Victory,” NYT, 12 October 13, 2006



The fix is very much in.

Mark Crispin Miller: Stolen Elections Explain Radical Agenda

Synopsis and commentary by Ronald Bleier



In early September 2006 Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of culture and communications at New York University, the author of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (2005), spoke briefly as part of a presentation conducted by the World Can’t Wait organization in connection with their October 5 day of protest.


Miller began by asserting that the government of George W. Bush has never been elected, that they have come to office through stolen elections. He explained that they have to steal elections because their agenda is so extreme that they wouldn’t be in power otherwise. Gerrymandering upheld by the Supreme Court has facilitated their election fraud. They don’t fear electoral defeat.


Miller explained that their electoral strategy as determined by Karl Rove is to have Republicans keep repeating the election year mantra of:

War and Terrorism,

War and Terrorism,

War and Terrorism.

According to Miller, this is not because Rove thinks such repetition will make people vote for them, but is simply to give the media talking points in order to provide the necessary cover story for the day after.


Miller asserted that whatever the Democrats do, it won’t matter. They might have the best electoral strategy in the world, and they will still lose because “these people have no exit strategy.” Despite the current talk of a Democratic victory in November, the Karl Rove team will not allow a Democratic victory.


“Understand this,” Miller continued: they (the Bush administration) “are not incompetent.” Incompetence was not the reason for the kind of response we saw in Katrina. As for Iraq, “the way this war was handled, it’s not about incompetence.”


“At holding power,” Miller continued, “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer, They’re extremely good, they’ve done a great job.”


That’s why the terrorists get along with Bush and Cheney; Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists share with them an apocalyptic world view. Such a view is profoundly un-American, Miller said towards the close of his brief remarks.

***


Commentary

It was heartening to find one public intellectual at last make the obvious and totally ignored connection between the Bush/Rove control of the election process and their radical, unpopular and destructive agenda.


The connection between stolen elections and their radical agenda is regularly ignored both in the mainstream media and in the Left and, progressive media, despite growing public awareness and massive evidence of voter fraud in every election cycle since at least 2000. Typical of mass media coverage is a front page story in the New York Times (9.28.06) headlined: “Democrats Cite New Hope In Bid to Retake Senate,” ignoring the implications of election fraud.


Anecdotally, when I’ve raised this issue with friends, I’ve had several offers to bet that the Democrats will win at least one house of Congress. Unfortunately I’ve sworn off betting. (Much of this was written before the front page efflorescence of the Mark Foley scandal which could change things. Are all bets off? I don't know. Even at this late hour, a month before the election, I can’t imagine Karl Rove letting November 2006 slip away from him without a fight.)

A perfect example of the way the mainstream media ignore the implications of election fraud on foreign and domestic policy is the New York Times’s editorial, “Rushing Off a Cliff” (9.28.06) expressing horror at Senate approval of the Military Commissions Act which gave President Bush everything he wanted. The Times editorial writers could have been channeling Karl Rove as they repeatedly insisted that the purpose of this bill was to intimidate and clobber the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. Once again the Times ignored evidence that the Bush administration act as if they are not worried about the electoral process.


The NYT can fulminate as it did in its “Rushing off a Cliff” editorial about Bush’s “ghastly ideas about terrorism,” but they ignore their own responsibility in joining the silence of the Democratic party about the illegitimacy of the last two presidential elections and many state wide elections going back to at least 1998.


Incompetence or policy goals
On the issue of whether or not the response to Katrina and the Iraq disaster can be put down to incompetence, had Miller been given more time he might have made the case that the administration’s response to Katrina and the continued immiseration and eviction of tens of thousands of its poorest and minority citizens was precisely what the Bush administration intended and successfully fought to ensure.

In the case of Iraq, given more time, Miller might have pointed out the Bush clique intended the current tragedy and dysfunction that Iraq is today. For one thing, the ongoing nightmare makes it impossible for Iraq to play its former role as a leading adversary of Israeli hegemony. The current Iraqi disarray also contributes to the instability and chaos in the area favored by Washington in its pursuit of a permanent war agenda.



In addition, pouring $8 billion a month into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fits nicely into their radical right wing program of “starving the beast,” i.e., the Federal treasury, of funds that might go toward social spending.

One can’t help but wonder about a political culture where only political outsiders like Mark Crispin Miller make the obvious connection between our eviscerated voting process and a radical agenda, intentionally far more destructive than any previous American government. Apparently this is what Miller had in mind when he insisted that the current regime is very good “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer.”


For a video of Miller’s remarks click on the following url:

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2905&Itemid=223


See also Miller’s excellent blog: www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com

For an important follow up see Miller's recent article for the Washington Spectator, “The Elephant in the Polling Booth,” (October 2006)

www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061001elephant_3.cfm


Here Miller asserts:

That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The case was made, first, by the House Judiciary Committee—or rather by its Democratic members, who conducted a meticulous inquiry into the debacle in Ohio. (The Republicans boycotted the investigation, and obstructed it.) Its findings were released on January 5, 2005, in the so-called Conyers Report, after Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the committee's ranking Democrat. The Republicans attacked it, and the press and leading Democrats ignored it; yet that report was sound, its major findings wholly accurate.

US to attack Iran in early 2007? -- See Krauthammer and Podhoretz

A recent email (9.15.06) included the following analysis by radical right wing pundit, Charles Krauthammer deconstructing Bush’s remarks on an “inevitable” war with Iran.


Like John Podhoretz before him, Charles Krauthammer in his column today announces that he now understands the President's words to mean that war with Iran is inevitable:


The next day, [President Bush] responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: "It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."

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



When it comes to war, war, war, it’s hard to fault Krauthammer’s and Podhoretz's analyses. If they are right, and if it’s Bush’s intention to attack Iran, or as Phyllis Bennis has been suggesting (WBAI “Wake Up Call,” 9.22.2006) to provoke a war with Iran by blockading its ports, it’s not unlikely that such U.S. attacks or provocations will be postponed until after the November elections and the New Year. Thus the most likely time for hostilities to break out seems to be early 2007, perhaps February or March, as in the March 2003 war against Iraq.

*J. Petras: Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications + E.J. Steele: Is a TATP Bomb on a plane possible?

Petras's article is the latest and among the best I've seen exposing the alleged UK airline terror plot. Other excellent ones are several by former British ambassador Craig Murray and one by British 9/11 researcher Nafez Ahmed. There are any number of others: from one I'll excerpt below a description of the practical impossibility creating a TATP bomb on board a plane. If readers would like links to some of these articles, simply write to me. Also check out Xymphora's blog where a list of relevant articles was provided about a week ago.

To those who like to see things in terms of a hidden elite responsible for such policies such as the Illuminati, or other groups favored by Webster Tarpley, Petras reminds us that these government hoaxes are profoundly anti capitalistic, they get in the way of the everyday business of making money.

As Petras writes below:

The bomb plot hoax has caused enormous losses (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to the airlines, business people, oil companies, duty free shops, tourist agencies, resorts and hotels, not to speak of the tremendous inconvenience and health related problems of millions of stranded and stressed travelers. The restrictions on laptop computers, travel bags, accessories, special foods and liquid medicines have added to the ‘costs’ of traveling.

It might be added that these tremendous costs are a deliberate part of the hoaxes since without them, these *terror plots* would not have their desired political impact (see below).


The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 25, 2006

The charges leveled by the British, US and Pakistani regimes that they uncovered a major bomb plot directed against nine US airlines is based on the flimsiest of evidence, which would be thrown out of any court, worthy of its name.

An analysis of the current state of the investigation raises a series of questions regarding the governments’ claims of a bomb plot concocted by 24 Brits of Pakistani origin.


The arrests were followed by the search for evidence, as the August 12, 2006 Financial Times states: “The police set about the mammoth task of gathering evidence of the alleged terrorist bomb plot yesterday.” (FT, August 12/, 2006) In other words, the arrests and charges took place without sufficient evidence -- a peculiar method of operation -- which reverses normal investigatory procedures in which arrests follow the “monumental task of gathering evidence.” If the arrests were made without prior accumulation of evidence, what were the bases of the arrests?

The government search of financial records and transfers turned up no money trail despite the freezing of accounts. The police search revealed limited amounts of savings, as one would expect from young workers, students and employees from low-income immigrant families.

The British government, backed by Washington, claimed that the Pakistani government’s arrest of two British-Pakistanis provided “critical evidence” in uncovering the plot and identifying the alleged terrorist. No Western judicial hearing would accept evidence procured by the Pakistani intelligence services that are notorious for their use of torture in extracting ‘confessions’. The Pakistani dictatorship’s evidence is based on a supposed encounter between a relative of one of the suspects and an Al Qaeda operative on the Afghan border. According to the Pakistani police, the Al Qaeda agent provided the relative and thus the accused with the bomb-making information and operative instructions. The transmission of bomb-making information does not require a trip half-way around the world, least of all to a frontier under military siege by US led forces on one side and the Pakistani military on the other. Moreover it is extremely dubious that Al Qaeda agents in the mountains of Afghanistan have any detailed knowledge of specific British airline security, procedures or conditions of operations in London. Lacking substantive evidence, Pakistani intelligence and their British counterparts touched all the propaganda buttons: A clandestine meeting with Al Qaeda, bomb-making information exchanges on the Pakistani-Afghan border, Pakistani-Brits with Islamic friends, family and terrorist connections in England . . .


US intelligence claimed, and London repeated, that sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to allow the plotters to buy airline tickets. Yet air tickets were found in only one residence (and the airline and itinerary were not stated by the police). None of the other suspects possessed plane tickets and some did not even have passports. In other words, the most preliminary moves in the so-called bomb plot had not been taken by the accused. No terrorist plot to bomb airplanes exists when the alleged conspirators are lacking travel funds, documents and tickets. It is not credible to argue that the alleged conspirators depended on instructions from distant handlers ignorant of the basic ground level conditions.

Initially the British and US authorities claimed that the explosive device was a “liquid bomb,” yet no liquid or non-liquid bomb was discovered on the premises or persons of any of the accused. Nor has any evidence been produced as to the capability of any of the suspects in making, moving or detonating the “liquid bomb” -- a very volatile solution if handled by unskilled operatives. No evidence has been presented on the nature of the specific liquid bomb question, or any spoken discussion or written documents about the liquid bomb, which would implicate any of the suspects. No bottle, liquid or chemical formula has been found among any of the suspects. Nor have any of the ingredients that go into making the “liquid bomb” been uncovered. Nor has any evidence been presented as to where the liquid was supposed to come from (the source) or whether it was purchased locally or overseas.

When the liquid bomb story was ridiculed into obscurity, British Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clark claimed that, “bomb making equipment including chemicals and electric components had been found,” (BBC News, 8/21/2006)

Once again there is no mention of what “electronic components” and “chemicals” were found, in whose home or office and if they might be related to non-bomb making activities. Were these so-called new bomb-making items owned by a specific person or group of persons, and if so were they known by the parties implicated to be part of a bombing plot. Moreover, when and why have the authorities switched from the liquid bombs to identifying old fashion electronic detonators? Is there any evidence -- documents or taped discussions -- that link these electronic detonators and chemicals with the specific plot to “blow up 9 US bound airliners”?

Instead of providing relevant facts clearing up basic questions of names, dates, weapons, and travel dates, Commissioner Clark gives the press a laundry list of items that could be found in millions of homes and the large number of buildings searched (69 so far). If stair climbing earns promotions, Clark should be nominated for a knighthood. According to Clark the police discovered more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones, 8,000 computer media items (items as catastrophic as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs); police removed 6,000 gigabytes of data from the seized computers (150 from each computer) and a few video recordings. One presumes, in the absence of any qualitative data demonstrating that the suspects were in fact preparing bombs in order to destroy nine US airliners, that Commissioner Clark is seeking public sympathy for his minions’ enormous capacity to lift and remove electronic equipment from one site to another in up to 69 buildings. This is a notable achievement if we are talking about a moving company and not a high-powered police investigation of an event of “catastrophic consequences.”

Some of the suspects were arrested because they have traveled to Pakistan at the beginning of the school year holidays. British and US authorities forget to mention that tens of thousands of Pakistani ex-pats return to visit family at precisely that time of year.

The wise guys on Wall Street and The City of London never took the liquid bomb plot seriously: At no point did the Market respond, nose-dive, crash or panic. The announced plot to bomb airlines was ignored by all Big Players on the US and London stock markets. In fact, petrol prices dropped slightly. In contrast to 9/11 and the Madrid and London bombings (to which this plot is compared) the stock market ‘makers’ were not impressed by the governments’ claims of a ‘major catastrophe.’ George Bush or Tony Blair, who were informed and discussed the “liquid bomb plot” several days beforehand, didn’t even skip a day of their vacations, in response to the catastrophic threat.

And each and every claim and piece of ‘evidence’ put forth by the police and the Blair and Bush security authorities runs a cropper. Some of the alleged suspects are released, and new equally paltry ‘evidence’ is breathlessly presented: two tape recordings of “martyr messages” were found in the computer of one suspect, which, we are told, foretold a planned terrorist attack. The Clark team claimed with great aplomb that they found one or a few martyr videotapes, without clarifying the fact that the videos were not made by the suspects but viewed by them. Many people the world over pay homage to suicide martyrs to a great variety of political causes. Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan visits a shrine dedicated to World War II military dead -- including kamikaze suicide pilots, defying Chinese and Korean protests. Millions of US citizens and politicians pay homage to the war heroes in Arlington cemetery each year, some of whom deliberately sacrificed their lives in order to defend their comrades, their flag and the justice of their cause. It should be of no surprise that Asians, Muslims and others should collect videos of anti-Israeli or anti-occupation martyrs. In none of the above cases where people honor martyrs is there any police attempt to link the reverent observer with future suicide bomb plots -- except if they are Muslims. Hero worship of fallen fighters is a normal everyday phenomenon -- and is certainly no evidence that the idolaters are engaged in murderous activity.

A “martyr message” is neither a plot, conspiracy nor action, it is only an expression of free speech -- one might add, ‘internal speech’ (between the speaker and his computer) which might at some future time become public speech. Are we to make private dialogue a terrorist offense?

As the legal time limit expires on the holding of suspects without charges, the British authorities released two suspects, charged eleven, and eleven others continue to be held without charges, probably because there is no basis for proceeding further. As the number of accused plotters thin out in England, Clark and company have deflected attention to a world-wide plot with links to Spain, Italy, the Middle East and elsewhere. Apparently the logic here is that a wider net compensates for the large holes. In the case at hand, of the eleven who have been remanded to trial, only eight have been charged with conspiracy to prepare acts of terrorism; the other three are accused of “not disclosing information” (or being informers . . . of what?) and “possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism.” (BBC News, 8/21/06) Since no bombs have been found and no plans of action have been revealed, we are left with the vague charge of ‘conspiracy’, which can mean a hostile private discussion directed against US and British subjects by several like-thinking individuals. The reason that it appears that ideas and not actions are in question is because the police have not turned up any weapons or specific measures to enter into the locus of attack (air tickets to board planes, passports and so on). How can suspects be charged with failing to disclose information, when the police lack any concrete information pertaining to the alleged bomb plot. The fact that the police are further diluting their charges against three more plotters is indicative of the flimsy basis of their original arrests and public claims. To charge a 17 year-old-boy with “possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism” is so open-ended as to be laughable: Did the article have other uses for the boy or for his family (like a box cutter). Did he ‘possess’ written articles because they were informative or fascinating to a young person? Since he still possessed the article, he had not passed these articles to any person making bombs. Did he know of any specific plans to make bombs or any bomb-makers? The charges could implicate anyone possessing and reading a good spy novel or science fiction thriller in which bomb making is discussed. The eleven have already pleaded innocent; the trial will begin in due time. The government and mass media have already convicted the accused in the electronic and print media. Panic has been sown. Fear and hysterical anger is present in the long security lines at airports and train stations . . . Asian men quietly saying prayers are being pulled off of airplanes and planes diverted or airports evacuated.

The bomb plot hoax has caused enormous losses (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to the airlines, business people, oil companies, duty free shops, tourist agencies, resorts and hotels, not to speak of the tremendous inconvenience and health related problems of millions of stranded and stressed travelers. The restrictions on laptop computers, travel bags, accessories, special foods and liquid medicines have added to the ‘costs’ of traveling.

Clearly the decision to cook up the phony bomb plot was not motivated by economic interests, but domestic political reasons. The Blair administration, already highly unpopular for supporting Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was under attack for his unconditional support for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, his refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire and his unstinting support for Bush’s servility to US Zionist lobbies. Even within the Labor party over a hundred backbenchers were speaking out against his policies, while even junior cabinet ministers such as Prescott stated that Boss Bush’s foreign policy smelled of the barnyard. Bush was not yet cornered by his colleagues in the same way as Blair, but unpopularity was threatening to lead his Republican party to congressional defeat and possible loss of a majority of seats.

According to top security officials in England, Bush and Blair were “knowledgeable” about the investigation into a possible “liquid bomb” plot. We know that Blair gave the go-ahead for the arrests, even as the authorities must have told him they lacked the evidence and at best it was premature. Some reports from British police insiders claim that the Bush Administration pushed Blair for early arrests and the announcement of the ‘liquid bomb’ plot. Security officials then launched a massive, all-out ‘terror propaganda’ campaign designed to capture the attention and support of the public with the total support of the mass media. The security-mass media campaign served its objective -- Bush’s popularity increased, Blair avoided censure and both continued on their vacations.

The bomb plot political ploy fits the previous political pattern of sacrificing capitalist economic interests to serve domestic political and ideological positions. Foreign policy failures lead to domestic political crimes, just as domestic policy crises lead to aggressive military expansion.

The criminal frame-up of young Muslim-South Asian British citizens by the British security officials was specifically designed to cover up for the failed Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the Anglo-American backing for Israel’s destructive but failed invasion of Lebanon. Blair’s “liquid bombers” plot sacrificed a multiplicity of British capitalist interests in order to retain political offices and stave off an unceremonious early exit from power. The costs of failed militarism are borne by citizens and businesses.

In an analogous fashion Bush and his Zioncon and other militarists exploited the events of 9/11 to pursue a militarist multi-war strategy in Southwest Asia and the Middle East. With time and scientific research, the official version of the events of 9/11 have come under serious questioning -- both regarding the collapse of one of the towers in New York, as well as the explosions in the Pentagon. The events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sacrificed major US economic interests: Losses in New York, tourism, airline industry and massive physical destruction; losses in terms of a major increase in oil prices and instability, increasing the costs to US, European and Asian consumers and industries.

Likewise the Israeli military invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, backed by the US and Great Britain, were economically costly destroying property, investments and markets, while raising the level of mass anti-imperial opposition.

In other words, the politics of US, British and Israeli (and by extension World Zionist) militarism has been at the expense of strategic sectors of the civilian economy. These losses to key economic sectors require the civilian-militarists to resort to domestic political crimes (phony bomb plots and frame-up trials) to distract the public from their costly and failed policies and to tighten political control. On both counts, the civilian militarists and the Zioncons are losing ground. The “liquid bomb” plot is unraveling, Israel is in turmoil, the Zioncons are preaching to the converted, and the US is, as always, the United States: The Democratic civilian militarists are capitalizing on the failures of their incumbent colleagues.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu.

Other Articles by James Petras

* International Immigration and Imperial-Centered Accumulation
* Crisis of US Capitalism or the Crisis of the US Wage and Salaried Worker?
* Latin America, the EU and the US: The New Polarities
* ALBA: Proposals for the New Social, Economic and Cultural Order
* AIPAC: Lobbies and Whistleblowers Yes!, Spies No!

***


from

Liquid Bombers Prove: "They Hate Our Freedoms!"

by Edgar J. Steele

TATP or Not TATP? - That is the Question

A friend with a doctorate in chemistry sent me the following:

"According to the official government story, TATP (triacetone triperoxide) was the explosive these conspirators were planning to manufacture aboard the airliners.

"This story is not plausible for a number of reasons, but let's take a quick look at just enough of the science so as not to provide anybody with a guide to making an actual bomb: TATP is made from hydrogen peroxide solution, acetone and sulfuric acid. The reaction can be carried out with just about any concentration, but is best done with concentrated solutions of both peroxide and acetone.

"The peroxide and acetone can be pre-mixed, but the acid must be added, a drop at a time, to the solution, all the while continuously stirring it and keeping it continuously chilled. This step of the process will take several hours, during which the fumes given off will be substantial and quite overpowering, thus a lab-quality air evacuation system is required. (ES: right here, the whole idea of a TATP bomb becomes ludicrous. Difficult in a lab, but impossible in an airplane due to the environment - the toilet - and the time requirement.)

"One then must let the resulting solution stand for an extended period at temperatures above the freezing point, but definitely below 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). Above 10 Celsius, the TATP does not form; instead, diperoxide forms, which is so unstable it cannot be worked with. The time required for the reaction to go to completion is at least 24 hours and often several days.

"Once the TATP forms, it crystallizes as snowflakes from the solution and must be harvested by filtration and the liquid discarded. The TATP then is dried and carefully stored until needed. It must be stored below 10 Celsius or it converts spontaneously to the unstable diperoxide.

"There is neither the time, the workspace nor the other materials required to make TATP on an airliner. The time required, the temperatures required, the workspace required and the need to dry the chemical prior to use preclude this story being reasonable. This chemical process is much more sensitive than making, for example, nitroglycerin."

The technically proficient reading this will recognize that a necessary step has been omitted and some others have been altered in critical ways. None of these purposeful camouflages alter the ingredients or the time, care and equipment required. Nor will I describe how TATP can be fabricated beforehand and then detonated aboard an airliner in flight. After all, though we want to demonstrate the impossibility of what has been claimed, we don't want anybody actually trying this at home - and there really are some genuine whack jobs out there. After all, we elect some of them to public office.

An excellent (and humorous) on-line discussion by British writer Thomas Greene, also as to why TATP simply cannot be made aboard a plane: "Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?" Mr. Greene agrees with my friend, the PhD in chemistry, and concludes his description of the process of creating TATP with: "So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question."

So it's impossible to make TATP as claimed, yet still they confiscate liquids from us, including sodas and baby formula, not to mention toothpaste and, even, lipsticks? Even if possible to make TATP as claimed, the individual smells of peroxide, acetone and sulfuric acid are obvious enough to preclude people having to be shaken down and terrorized by the airport Gestapo in this fashion. You have to wonder: Just exactly what is going on. ...

***

Note: In the course of his article, Steele argues that it is the governments of the US and the UK who are the ones who hate our freedoms. It would seem that his argument is irrefutable.

*S.Blumenthal: The necons' next war +link, Parry: Bush want wider war + exchnage

Perhaps the best part of the Blumenthal article is that it presents a picture of what should have passed for normal had we had a normal U.S. administration. The Israeli attack on Lebanon wouldn’t have gone on for more than a week – plenty of time to do terrible damage – before a stiff UN resolution ordering Israel out, another week for Israel to delay, and finally a reluctant pull out.


I’m beginning to wonder if this “normal” scenario isn’t what Israel expected and counted on: a routine rescue from the corner it has painted itself into by its big brother in America.

The Blumenthal article, the Forward article and the Parry article – so far among the best I’ve seen on the direction of current policy – (“Bush Wants Wider War” (http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/080206.html) – are slowly painting a picture of a reluctant and mystified and scared Israel resisting U.S. attempts to widen the war to Syria and Iran. This is their – the neocons’ – big chance.

Regarding the Blumenthal article, I’m wondering why he seems to favor the distinction common everywhere between Bush and the neocons, as if Bush himself and his Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld clique were not themselves the chief neocons. This is odd considering Blumenthal provides evidence in his article that Bush is chief neocon #1.

At his first National Security Council meeting, President George W. Bush stunned his first secretary of state, Colin Powell, by rejecting any effort to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When Powell warned that "the consequences of that could be dire, especially for the Palestinians," Bush snapped, "Sometimes a show for force by one side can really clarify things." He was making a "clean break" not only with his immediate predecessor but also with the policies of his father.

Earlier in his article, Blumenthal makes reference to the neocons on Cheney’s national security staff as if there were some distance between Cheney and his staff when it comes to policy issues.

More and more people are beginning to recognize as we approach a month of the current Lebanon horror, that we are dealing with an exceptional U.S. president, one who has again and again gone beyond the normal bounds into recklessness and destruction everywhere.

And how is Bush and his team -- Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld (one might add Bolton as the exemplary spokesman) – exceptional? They are exceptional in that they advocate a permanent war agenda. Before this latest outbreak of hostilities they were faced with the conundrum of how to proceed in their attacks on Syria and Iran. It was clear that with the fiasco in Iraq on everyone’s mind, it was not going to be easy to get the necessary legitimacy for widening the war to Syria, much less Iran.

The important thing to note is the current clique’s exceptionalism. Would a Democrat in power like Kerry or Gore be following the same Bush policy of resisting a cease fire? The Blumenthal article, detailing broadly the kind of advice that a normal president with the interest of the U.S. uppermost would be getting suggests otherwise.


One important distinction to be made is between the wall to wall solid bipartisan support for Israel in Congress as a measure of AIPAC’s control – we’ve noticed that this hasn’t changed one iota despite the hoopla surrounding the Mearshimer-Walt paper – and how Congress would react if a normal administration were in power.

The current situation is so obviously not in the interests of the United States that it is bleeding onto strange places like NPR, CNN and perhaps even sporadically the New York Times. So it wouldn’t be difficult for Congressional sheep to follow a call for a cease fire since that is what always happens.

Another odd thing is that many on the left have long understood the depth of Bush’s radical departure from civilized norms when they say correctly that Bush is the worst president this country has ever seen. But there seems to be a wall between this clear understanding in the abstract and when they analyze a particular crisis like the current war in the Middle East. When it comes to current events, it seems much more difficult to say flatly that this president is taking us on a dangerous, reckless and irresponsible path to more and more war.

One can also quibble with Blumenthal's portrayal of a marginalized Condi Rice. Both she and Powell knew from the outset what their role was: i.e., to present a normal face to an abnormal and exceptional clique of radical crazies and monsters. (If _monsters_ seems too strong, just take a look at some of the pictures from Lebanon and if the evildoers have their way, the ones to come from Syria – and I don’t even want to say, Iran.)

As bad as Bush’s first term was, this one is clearly another order of magnitude for sheer misery and destruction, and Condi is thus having a harder time putting on that normal face for the butchers who hired her. Calls by the radical press for Condi’s ouster merely help Bush pretend he’s just like other U.S. presidents.

--Ronald Bleier

(Thanks to JG for finding the Parry article and to SF for the Blumenthal.)



Exchange with Harry:

Harry begins by quoting from my comments above:

a reluctant and mystified and scared Israel resisting U.S. attempts to widen the war to Syria and Iran.

Harry writes:

Ron, no one is compelling a "mystified and scared Israel" to bomb the Syrian border in the process of pulverizing Lebanon and enrage the
Shia in Iraq and Saudi Arabia with obvious risk of widening the war. Israel knows with perfect clarity the risks it is running. --HFC.

Ronald responded.

Thanks Harry. Your comment is on target and is also helpful in getting more into the heart of the matter. It’s universally acknowledged that the U.S. is blocking a cease fire. Why does the Bush clique – totally isolated internationally – want to continue the war indefinitely?

I’ve noted several reports that Israel is resisting U.S. calls for Israel to widen the war to Syria (including one in the Jerusalem Post that I haven’t yet seen.) If these reports are accurate, that means that decisions will be more and more taken away from the political echelon in Israel – newcomers Olmert and Peretz and their war cabinet -- and placed more and more in the hands of the Israeli military.

The reason for this transfer of power is that as weak politicians, Olmert and Peretz can’t back down from their repeated commitments to win this war, whatever that means. They can’t themselves call a halt to the fighting.

And as if the Israeli military weren’t bad enough on their own, even with exemplary leaders, the simple momentum of ongoing war will be sufficient to drive matters in the direction of a wider conflict.

It appears that Olmert and Peretz recognize on some level that since the U.S. isn’t behaving normally and putting an end to the slaughter, that Israel is being driven into a wider war that they understand cannot be good for the Zionists.

Sadly, tragically, genocidally, as of now, there appears no force capable of stopping the U.S. and the Israeli generals.

We keep saying, stick a fork in us, we're done. But with each day and month that passes, the fork finds a way to go deeper and deeper. -- Ronald
***

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/print.html

Salon
August3, 2006
Sidney Blumnenthal


The neocons' next war

By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and
undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardliners in the
Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East
conflict to Iran and Syria, not stop it.

By Sidney Blumenthal

The National Security Agency is providing signal
intelligence to Israel to monitor whether Syria and Iran
are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah as it fires
hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, according to
a national security official with direct knowledge of
the operation. President Bush has approved the secret
program.

Inside the administration, neoconservatives on Vice
President Dick Cheney's national security staff and
Elliott Abrams, the neoconservative senior director for
the Near East on the National Security Council, are
prime movers behind sharing NSA intelligence with
Israel, and they have discussed Syrian and Iranian
supply activities as a potential pretext for Israeli
bombing of both countries, the source privy to
conversations about the program says. (Intelligence,
including that gathered by the NSA, has been provided to
Israel in the past for various purposes.) The
neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the
possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to
widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and
Israel and Hamas into a four-front war.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have been
"briefed" and to be "on board," but she is not a central
actor in pushing the covert neoconservative scenario.
Her "briefing" appears to be an aspect of an internal
struggle to intimidate and marginalize her. Recently she
has come under fire from prominent neoconservatives who
oppose her support for diplomatic negotiations with Iran
to prevent its development of nuclear weaponry.

[snip] for a continuation, go to:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/08/03/mideast/print.html

*Forward: US ripped by Israel for inaction on Syria

I almost fell out of my seat reading the first paragraph. From the headline I expected another one of those articles slamming the Bush administration for not supporting Israeli aims to widen the war (excuse me, defend its security) to Syria.

Here it is, out in the open -- in the Jewish press at least-- Israel looking to the US to make sure the war doesn't spill into Syria, and the US, saying, no, we think a war with Syria to devastate the country (excuse me, for regime change in the interests of democracy no doubt) is opportune right now. After all, Syria borders on Lebanon. It shouldn't take much to involve such a close neighbor. That should make China and Russia wake up and move a little closer toward the causus belli we hope will take place in good time before we lose power.

I can almost hear the ridiculous Webster Tarpley opining that some mysterious cabal is forcing Bush to fight the clash of civilizations, not to mention the next world war. But the cabal is out in the open and clearly expressed, as the Forward quotes, by Daniel Pipes, a newspaper columnist and director of the Middle East Forum. We have learned that these crazies, like Michael Ledeen and William Kristol and suchlike others are the voice of the administration, expressing policy options that more and more and sooner rather than later are translated into action.

"Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried," Pipes wrote Tuesday in The New York Sun. "My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon, and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence."

Pipes proposed warning Damascus that Syrian targets would be bombed each time Israel was hit by Hezbollah. "Such targets," he wrote, "could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures."

I'm wondering what Tarpley and others arguing for Illuminati control of the USG make of the NYT report, headlined: "Bush's Embrace of Israel Shows Gap With Father," (8.2.06) quoting Bush proclaiming to Sharon at their first White House meeting, saying out of nowhere: "I'll use force to protect Israel." A WH aide later remarked to a reporter, "I was like, whoa, where did this come from?"

Here's a chilling paragraph from the Forward story:

In recent internal discussions, according to one well-placed source who spoke on condition of anonymity, some administration officials went so far as to advocate that America encourage Israel to attack Syria in order to induce the fall of Assad's regime. It was impossible to corroborate that information with other independent sources, but some Israeli media reports suggested that officials in the Bush administration have encouraged Jerusalem to consider strikes against Syria. Several hawkish pro-Israel scholars and pundits, including Michael Oren and Daniel Pipes, have written columns in favor of such an approach. ---Ronald

Forward


News
U.S. Ripped For Inaction On Israeli, Syrian Front
By ORI NIR
August 4, 2006

WASHINGTON — As Jerusalem mobilizes reserves and Damascus puts its troops on the highest state of alert, the Bush administration is not taking overt steps to prevent Israel's war with Hezbollah from spilling over into Syria.

Even as Israeli officials repeatedly accuse Damascus of supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, Jerusalem insists it has no intentions of attacking Syria. In turn, spokesmen for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad are sending similar messages back in the other direction.

But both sides are suspicious of the other's intentions and are concerned about an armed conflict being sparked unintentionally.

In the past, when tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus approached a boiling point, the United States intervened, typically by sending an envoy with chilling messages for leaders in both countries. This time, however, despite Israeli requests for American intervention, the Bush administration has not sent a senior official to Syria and shows no signs of upgrading its low-level contact with Damascus.

Assad has declared a willingness to hold comprehensive talks with Israel, and Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz reportedly has pressed his government to explore the Syrian option. But elements in the Bush administration are said to oppose any steps to relieve the pressure on Syria.

In recent internal discussions, according to one well-placed source who spoke on condition of anonymity, some administration officials went so far as to advocate that America encourage Israel to attack Syria in order to induce the fall of Assad's regime. It was impossible to corroborate that information with other independent sources, but some Israeli media reports suggested that officials in the Bush administration have encouraged Jerusalem to consider strikes against Syria. Several hawkish pro-Israel scholars and pundits, including Michael Oren and Daniel Pipes, have written columns in favor of such an approach.

Top Israeli and American officials have disagreed repeatedly over the appropriate policy toward Syria. Upset over Syria's alleged support for anti-Israel terrorist groups and anti-American forces in Iraq, the Bush administration in the past several years has considered pushing for regime change in Damascus. Israel, on the other hand, continues to seek stability in Syria, viewing Assad as "the devil it knows" and objecting to the creation of a political void that could be filled by Islamists or by sheer chaos.

Some Israeli diplomats have been saying — both before the current crisis and in recent days — that the administration is making a mistake by not having a more nuanced policy toward Syria. Engagement with Syria, one Israeli diplomat said, does not necessarily have to lead to major rewards. America can pursue a modest, gradual process in which small carrots — or simply the holding back of sanctions — would be offered for small Syrian steps, the Israeli official said.

According to diplomatic sources in Israel and in Washington, in the past three weeks Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has turned to the Bush administration to intervene with Syria, only to end up relying on other third parties because of the White House's policy of isolating Damascus.

"We have had incidents before, when Israel and Syria, unintentionally, stumbled into confrontation," said William Brown, former ambassador to Israel. Brown is now president of Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace.

"People in such situations can do screwball things," Brown said. He noted that in the past small-scale attacks ended up ballooning into broader confrontations.

Last Tuesday night, Israel reportedly airlifted hundreds of soldiers by helicopters to attack Hezbollah bases in the Bekaa area, in northeast Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border. One poorly aimed bomb, Brown said, could spark an unintended confrontation that could be very difficult to contain.

The Israeli maneuvers came a day after Assad called on his army to maintain the highest level of alert. Speaking to troops while marking the annual "army day," Assad vowed to "assist the brothers" who are fighting Israel's occupation. "This is the time of the national patriotic resistance," he said, adding that "the resistance continues as long as our land is occupied and our rights are denied." On the day of the attacks, Israel's vice premier, Shimon Peres, speaking in Washington, said that he "is not impressed by the Syrian threat." Peres said that the Syrian military is weak and that its equipment is old. "I don't think that Syria will go for war," he flatly told reporters. He also taunted Assad by calling him "the son of a wise man," a reference to a late Syrian leader, Hafez Assad.

Syria is hearing the reassuring messages from Israel but is paying more attention to the belligerent bravado of the past three weeks, said Moshe Maoz, a leading Israeli expert on Syria.

"The Syrian government is very suspicious. It does not believe Israel's reassuring statements. The Syrians often suspect 'Zionist conspiracies,'" he said.

According to Maoz, America's insistence to isolate Syria and avoid any contact with Assad's regime is not in Israel's interest. "Israel needs an effective channel to Syria," he said. "But in recent years, America has become more of a spoiler than an arbitrator in trying to improve relations between Israel and Syria."

Like many other foreign policy experts, Maoz advocates harnessing the resolution of the current crisis to a broader resolution to Israel's conflict with Syria and the Palestinians. "The Syrians are ready for peace negotiations with Israel. Maybe it's time to try it," Maoz said.

But sources close to the White House say that the Bush administration rejects the idea of "rewarding" Damascus by facilitating negotiations with Jerusalem over the return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

Barak Ben-Zur, a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence and in Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, said that the Bush administration might be missing an opportunity by not taking advantage of Syria's current sense of vulnerability to extract Syrian concessions. "America has various issues to settle with the Syrians. It can apply pressure or offer enticements to get the Syrians to cooperate both on issues such as Iraq and on the current crisis," he said. "Why not try to manipulate them? Why not use this golden opportunity, when the Syrians feel threatened?"

According to Ben-Zur, "there certainly is a potential to work with now. Unfortunately, the Americans insist on having no direct dealing with Syria."

Some pro-Israel commentators, however, are arguing for a military response to Syrian support for Hezbollah.

"Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different needs to be tried," Pipes wrote Tuesday in The New York Sun. "My suggestion? Shift attention to Syria from Lebanon, and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible for Hezbollah violence."

Pipes proposed warning Damascus that Syrian targets would be bombed each time Israel was hit by Hezbollah. "Such targets," he wrote, "could include the terrorist, military, and governmental infrastructures."

Copyright 2006 © The Forward

*J.Frank & Xymphora: Israel's Lebanon Pretext Challenged

Two colleagues harshly critical of Israel's actions have written to me to say they are skeptical of the charge that the Israeli soldiers were captured INSIDE Lebanon as part of an Israeli operation. As Frank has it:

These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon's southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.

(Some of the documentation in the Frank article is repeated in the following url which provides a handy map)http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/israeli_solders.html

According to Frank this version of Israel perhaps seeking a provocation _has become general knowledge_. So why aren't we hearing this in public statements from Hezbollah? Well, according to some of the sources cited, Hezbollah did make these statements at the time. However, when the official story was changed by Israel, and before the savage attacks on Lebanon began, Hezbolloh apprarently went along with the change. We can only specualte why. Perhaps at first it seemed like a good PR move on their part. Afterwards, it may be that they felt that they couldn't back down, or that it was too late for a challenge to the official story.

Nevertheless, I would think it possible for a reporter to follow up by interviewing Hezbollah officials.

Israeli and US ambitions. I've speculated elsewhere that by encouraging an indefinite Israeli continuation of the destruction of Lebanon, the US can more or less effortlessly achieve what might have seemed unlikely without the ongoing Israeli butchery and destruction of Lebanon. namely a widening of the war to Syria and Iraq.



Note: After I wrote the intro above, I found Xymphora's blog on the same subject. He suggests that not only was the capture made in Lebanon -- as is the Occam's razor view of how it happened -- but Xymphora, a Canadian blogger, opines that the incident was planned in cahoots with chief neocon (= fanatic warmonger) Cheney et al in Colorado in June.

--Ronald
***

July 26, 2006

Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon?

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank07262006.html

Israel’s Invasion Pretext Under Fire
by JOSHUA FRANK

As Lebanon continues to be pounded by Israeli bombs and munitions, the justification for Israel's invasion is treading on very thin ice. It has become general knowledge that it was Hezbollah guerillas that first kidnapped two IDF soldiers inside Israel on July 12, prompting an immediate and violent response from the Israeli government, which insists it is acting in the interest of national defense. Israeli forces have gone on to kill over 370 innocent Lebanese civilians (compared to 34 killed on Israel's side) while displacing hundreds of thousands more. But numerous reports from international and independent media, as well as the Associated Press, raise questions about Israel's official version of the events that sparked the conflict two weeks ago.

The original story, as most media tell it, goes something like this: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. The alternate version, as explained by several news outlets, tells a bit of a different tale: These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon's southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.

As the AFP reported, "According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in middle of morning." And the French news site www.VoltaireNet.org reiterated the same account on June 18, "In a deliberated way, [Israel] sent a commando in the Lebanese back-country to Aitaa al-Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, taking two prisoners."

The Associated Press departed from the official version as well. "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them," reported Joseph Panossian for AP on July 12. "The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity."

And the Hindustan Times on July 12 conveyed a similar account:

"The Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. 'Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon,' a statement by Hezbollah said. 'The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place,' it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they 'infiltrated' into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border."

Whether factual or not, these alternative accounts should at the very least raise serious questions as to Israel's motives and rationale for bombarding Lebanon.

MSNBC online first reported that Hezbollah had captured Israeli soldiers "inside" Lebanon, only to change their story hours later after the Israeli government gave an official statement to the contrary.

A report from The National Council of Arab Americans, based in Lebanon, also raised suspicion that Israel's official story did not hold water and noted that Israel had yet to recover the tank that was demolished during the initial attack in question.

"The Israelis so far have not been able to enter Aitaa al-Chaab to recover the tank that was exploded by Hezbollah and the bodies of the soldiers that were killed in the original operation (this is a main indication that the operation did take place on Lebanese soil, not that in my opinion it would ever be an illegitimate operation, but still the media has been saying that it was inside 'Israel' thus an aggression first started by Hezbollah)."

Before independent observers could organize an investigation of the incident, Israel had already mounted a grisly offensive against Lebanese infrastructure and civilians, bombing Beirut's international airport, along with numerous highways and communication portals. Israel didn't need the truth of the matter to play out before it invaded Lebanon. As with the United States' illegitimate invasion of Iraq, Israel just needed the proper media cover to wage a war with no genuine moral impetus.

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org


Xymphora wrote:
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Offence dressed as defense
The idea that the Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah in Lebanon is starting to make people very nervous. After all, the whole military history of Israel – a history we’re not supposed to know about – is based on various tricks to make Israeli offensive land-grabbing acts look like defensive acts. If this ‘defensive’ act with its appalling consequences is shown to be a trick, Israel will have trouble pulling these tricks in the future. Even a ‘Zionist lite’ like Ran HaCohen now feels the need to ‘refute’ the idea that the attack on Lebanon is based on another such trick. Of course, critics of Israel don’t need to take a position on where the soldiers were captured in order to maintain that it is not acceptable to destroy a whole country in retaliation for the capture of two soldiers. Nevertheless, you can see where the Zionist rhetoricians are going with this:

a.. critics of Israel rely on where the capture was made as being important
b.. capture is ‘proved’ as being in Israel
c.. therefore, what Israel is doing is justified.
This is an old debating trick, and the fact that it does not follow doesn’t mean they won’t try to use it.

If you read HaCohen’s arguments, you will see that he in no way disproves the common assertion that the capture was made in Lebanon. He has a quibble for each separate source, but no more than a quibble, and the fact that all the sources consistently and independently point to a capture on Lebanese territory seems to conclude the issue.

Representative Press (found via Cannonfire) argues that one of the sources for the idea that the capture was in Lebanon, AP, is based on a faulty translation of a Hezbollah statement. Even if that is so – and the fact that the theory is given support from closet Zionist Noam makes me suspicious of it – it only leaves us with the ambiguous statement that the capture occurred near the border (I note that Hezbollah has an interest in being vague, as a cross-border attack makes it look more heroic), and doesn’t do anything to deal with the other independent sources which all claim the capture was in Lebanon. What Representative Press does show us is a textbook example of the original pre-spin reporting being gradually modified to fit the official, pro-Israeli, story.

Noam has apparently come out against the attack on Lebanon, which is humorous when you consider that his rejection of the Israel Lobby thesis provided cover which helped the neocons plot the attack with the Israeli generals as recently as June. Noam can now give a completely useless condemnation of the attack, an attack which his protection for the Lobby helped bring about. Here’s Wayne Masden on July 28:

“Countering the spin. Hezbollah sources have an entirely different story about the incident that triggered the Israeli attack on Lebanon. The counter-story lends credence to the pre-meditated nature of a plan that was hatched in a three-way meeting between Dick Cheney, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Natan Sharansky at an American Enterprise Institute conference in Colorado last month.

Hezbollah reports that on July 12, two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) troops were captured by Hezbollah after they entered Lebanese territory. Hezbollah put out feelers that they would entertain a prisoner swap, something that had occurred many times in the past. However, already looking for an incident on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the Israeli government dispatched a Merkava-2 tank into Lebanon to retrieve its two captured troops. The tank hit a land mine, killing four Israeli soldiers. Haaretz confirmed that the tank was destroyed by a mine and not in a Hezbollah attack.

The neo-con spin machine, including George W. Bush, claims that Hezbollah entered Israel in an unprovoked attack and kidnapped the two Israelis.”

I return to my original argument. If Israel had been planning the attack for months, had been plotting it with the neocons as recently as June, and had given its Lebanese spotters a warning to be ready for an attack within four days, how could it possibly have predicted, within a very short time span, a cross-border successful Hezbollah capture of Israeli soldiers? The only way the Israeli generals could know this was going to happen, and serve as the excuse for the Israeli attack on Lebanon, was to make it happen by sending Israelis into Lebanon on a suicide mission.