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EDWARD SAID: US programme for the Arab world has become the same as Israel's
The reactionary Washington institutions that spawned Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams and Feith provide an unhealthy intellectual and moral atmosphere. Charting a strategic course for the most lavishly endowed military establishment in history is left to ideologically based pressure groups (eg fundamentalist Christian leaders), wealthy private foundations and lobbies like AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. The US programme for the Arab world has become the same as Israel's. Along with Syria, Iraq once represented the only serious military threat to Israel and, therefore, it had to be smashed.
Give Us Back Our Democracy
Americans Have Been Cheated and Lied To
by EDWARD SAID
In a speech in the Senate on 19 March, the first day of war against Iraq, Robert Byrd, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia, asked: 'What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomacy when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?'
No one bothered to answer, but as the American military machine currently in Iraq stirs restlessly in other directions, these questions give urgency to the failure, if not the corruption, of democracy.
Let us examine what the US's Middle East policy has wrought since George W. Bush came to power. Even before the atrocities of 11 September, Bush's team had given Ariel Sharon's government freedom to colonise the West Bank and Gaza, kill and detain people at will, demolish their homes, expropriate their land and imprison them by curfew and military blockades. After 9/11, Sharon simply hitched his wagon to 'the war on terrorism' and intensified his unilateral depredations against a defenceless civilian population under occupation, despite UN Security Council Resolutions enjoining Israel to withdraw and desist from its war crimes and human-rights abuses.
In October 2001, Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan, which opened with concentrated, high-altitude bombing (an 'anti-terrorist' military tactic, which resembles ordinary terrorism in its effects and structure) and by December had installed a client regime with no effective power beyond Kabul. There has been no significant US effort at reconstruction, and it seems the country has returned to its former abjection.
Since the summer of 2002, the Bush administration has conducted a propaganda campaign against the despotic government of Iraq and with the UK, having unsuccessfully tried to push the Security Council into compliance, started the war. Since last November, dissent disappeared from the mainstream media swollen with a surfeit of ex-generals sprinkled with recent terrorism experts drawn from Washington right-wing think-tanks.
Anyone who was critical was labelled anti-American by failed academics, listed on websites as an 'enemy' scholar who didn't toe the line. Those few public figures who were critical had their emails swamped, their lives threatened, their ideas trashed by media commentators who had become sentinels of America's war.
A torrent of material appeared equating Saddam Hussein's tyranny not only with evil, but with every known crime. Some of this was factually correct but neglected the role of the US and Europe in fostering Saddam's rise and maintaining his power. In fact, the egregious Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam in the early 80s, assuring him of US approval for his catastrophic war against Iran. US corporations supplied nuclear, chemical and biological materials for the supposed weapons of mass destruction and then were brazenly erased from public record.
All this was deliberately obscured by government and media in manufacturing the case for destroying Iraq. Either without proof or with fraudulent information, Saddam was accused of harbouring weapons of mass destruction seen as a direct threat to the US. The appalling consequences of the US and British intervention in Iraq are beginning to unfold, with the calculated destruction of the country's modern infrastructure, the looting of one of the world's richest civilisations, the attempt to engage motley 'exiles' plus large corporations in rebuilding the country, and the appropriation of its oil and its modern destiny. It's been suggested that Ahmad Chalabi, for example, will sign a peace treaty with Israel, hardly an Iraqi idea. Bechtel has already been awarded a huge contract.
This is an almost total failure in democracy - ours, not Iraq's: 70 per cent of the American people are supposed to support this, but nothing is more manipulative than polls asking 465 Americans whether they 'support our President and troops in time of war'. As Senator Byrd said: 'There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered ... a pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.'
I am convinced this was a rigged, unnecessary and unpopular war. The reactionary Washington institutions that spawned Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams and Feith provide an unhealthy intellectual and moral atmosphere. Policy papers circulate without real peer review, adopted by a government requiring justification for illicit policy. The doctrine of military pre-emption was never voted on by the American people or their representatives. How can citizens stand up against the blandishments offered to the government by companies like Halliburton and Boeing? Charting a strategic course for the most lavishly endowed military establishment in history is left to ideologically based pressure groups (eg fundamentalist Christian leaders), wealthy private foundations and lobbies like AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It seems so monumentally criminal that important words like democracy and freedom have been hijacked, used as a mask for pillage, taking over territory and settling scores. The US programme for the Arab world has become the same as Israel's. Along with Syria, Iraq once represented the only serious military threat to Israel and, therefore, it had to be smashed.
Besides, what does it mean to liberate and democratise a country when no one asked you to do it and when, in the process, you occupy it militarily while failing to preserve law and order? What a travesty of strategic planning when you assume 'natives' will welcome your presence after you've bombed and quarantined them for 13 years.
A preposterous mindset about American beneficence has infiltrated the minutest levels of the media. In writing about a 70-year-old Baghdad widow who ran a cultural centre in her home that was wrecked by US raids and who is now beside herself with rage, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins implicitly chastises her for her 'comfortable life under Saddam Hussein' and piously disapproves of her tirade against the Americans, 'and this from a graduate of London University'.
Adding to the fraudulence of the weapons not found, the Stalingrads that didn't occur, the artillery defences that never happened, I wouldn't be surprised if Saddam disappeared suddenly because a deal was made in Moscow to let him, his family, and his money leave in return for the country. The war had gone badly for the US in the south, and Bush couldn't risk the same in Baghdad. On 6 April, a Russian convoy leaving Iraq was bombed; Condi Rice appeared in Russia on 7 April; Baghdad fell 9 April.
Nevertheless, Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly and Bush looks like a cowboy. On matters of the gravest importance, constitutional principles have been violated and the electorate lied to. We are the ones who must have our democracy back.
Edward Said is Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York
Americans Have Been Cheated and Lied To
by EDWARD SAID
In a speech in the Senate on 19 March, the first day of war against Iraq, Robert Byrd, the Democrat Senator from West Virginia, asked: 'What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomacy when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?'
No one bothered to answer, but as the American military machine currently in Iraq stirs restlessly in other directions, these questions give urgency to the failure, if not the corruption, of democracy.
Let us examine what the US's Middle East policy has wrought since George W. Bush came to power. Even before the atrocities of 11 September, Bush's team had given Ariel Sharon's government freedom to colonise the West Bank and Gaza, kill and detain people at will, demolish their homes, expropriate their land and imprison them by curfew and military blockades. After 9/11, Sharon simply hitched his wagon to 'the war on terrorism' and intensified his unilateral depredations against a defenceless civilian population under occupation, despite UN Security Council Resolutions enjoining Israel to withdraw and desist from its war crimes and human-rights abuses.
In October 2001, Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan, which opened with concentrated, high-altitude bombing (an 'anti-terrorist' military tactic, which resembles ordinary terrorism in its effects and structure) and by December had installed a client regime with no effective power beyond Kabul. There has been no significant US effort at reconstruction, and it seems the country has returned to its former abjection.
Since the summer of 2002, the Bush administration has conducted a propaganda campaign against the despotic government of Iraq and with the UK, having unsuccessfully tried to push the Security Council into compliance, started the war. Since last November, dissent disappeared from the mainstream media swollen with a surfeit of ex-generals sprinkled with recent terrorism experts drawn from Washington right-wing think-tanks.
Anyone who was critical was labelled anti-American by failed academics, listed on websites as an 'enemy' scholar who didn't toe the line. Those few public figures who were critical had their emails swamped, their lives threatened, their ideas trashed by media commentators who had become sentinels of America's war.
A torrent of material appeared equating Saddam Hussein's tyranny not only with evil, but with every known crime. Some of this was factually correct but neglected the role of the US and Europe in fostering Saddam's rise and maintaining his power. In fact, the egregious Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam in the early 80s, assuring him of US approval for his catastrophic war against Iran. US corporations supplied nuclear, chemical and biological materials for the supposed weapons of mass destruction and then were brazenly erased from public record.
All this was deliberately obscured by government and media in manufacturing the case for destroying Iraq. Either without proof or with fraudulent information, Saddam was accused of harbouring weapons of mass destruction seen as a direct threat to the US. The appalling consequences of the US and British intervention in Iraq are beginning to unfold, with the calculated destruction of the country's modern infrastructure, the looting of one of the world's richest civilisations, the attempt to engage motley 'exiles' plus large corporations in rebuilding the country, and the appropriation of its oil and its modern destiny. It's been suggested that Ahmad Chalabi, for example, will sign a peace treaty with Israel, hardly an Iraqi idea. Bechtel has already been awarded a huge contract.
This is an almost total failure in democracy - ours, not Iraq's: 70 per cent of the American people are supposed to support this, but nothing is more manipulative than polls asking 465 Americans whether they 'support our President and troops in time of war'. As Senator Byrd said: 'There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered ... a pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.'
I am convinced this was a rigged, unnecessary and unpopular war. The reactionary Washington institutions that spawned Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams and Feith provide an unhealthy intellectual and moral atmosphere. Policy papers circulate without real peer review, adopted by a government requiring justification for illicit policy. The doctrine of military pre-emption was never voted on by the American people or their representatives. How can citizens stand up against the blandishments offered to the government by companies like Halliburton and Boeing? Charting a strategic course for the most lavishly endowed military establishment in history is left to ideologically based pressure groups (eg fundamentalist Christian leaders), wealthy private foundations and lobbies like AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. It seems so monumentally criminal that important words like democracy and freedom have been hijacked, used as a mask for pillage, taking over territory and settling scores. The US programme for the Arab world has become the same as Israel's. Along with Syria, Iraq once represented the only serious military threat to Israel and, therefore, it had to be smashed.
Besides, what does it mean to liberate and democratise a country when no one asked you to do it and when, in the process, you occupy it militarily while failing to preserve law and order? What a travesty of strategic planning when you assume 'natives' will welcome your presence after you've bombed and quarantined them for 13 years.
A preposterous mindset about American beneficence has infiltrated the minutest levels of the media. In writing about a 70-year-old Baghdad widow who ran a cultural centre in her home that was wrecked by US raids and who is now beside herself with rage, New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins implicitly chastises her for her 'comfortable life under Saddam Hussein' and piously disapproves of her tirade against the Americans, 'and this from a graduate of London University'.
Adding to the fraudulence of the weapons not found, the Stalingrads that didn't occur, the artillery defences that never happened, I wouldn't be surprised if Saddam disappeared suddenly because a deal was made in Moscow to let him, his family, and his money leave in return for the country. The war had gone badly for the US in the south, and Bush couldn't risk the same in Baghdad. On 6 April, a Russian convoy leaving Iraq was bombed; Condi Rice appeared in Russia on 7 April; Baghdad fell 9 April.
Nevertheless, Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly and Bush looks like a cowboy. On matters of the gravest importance, constitutional principles have been violated and the electorate lied to. We are the ones who must have our democracy back.
Edward Said is Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York
For more information:
http://www.counterpunch.org/said04212003.html
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In a scarcely reported speech given on the Senate floor on March 19, the day the war was launched against Iraq, Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and the most eloquent speaker in that chamber, asked "what is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomacy when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?" No one bothered to answer him, but as the vast American military machine now planted in Iraq begins to stir restlessly in other directions in the name of the American people, their love of freedom, and their deep-seated values, these questions give urgency to the failure, if not the corruption of democracy that we are living through.
Let's examine first what US Middle East policy has wrought since George W. Bush came to power almost three years ago in an election decided finally by the Supreme Court, not by the popular vote. Even before the atrocities of September 11, Bush's team had given Ariel Sharon's government a free hand to colonize the West Bank and Gaza, to kill, detain and expel people at will, to demolish their homes, expropriate their land, imprison them by curfew and hundreds of military blockades, make life for them generally speaking impossible; after 9/11, Sharon simply hitched his wagon to "the war on terrorism" and intensified his unilateral depredations against a defenseless civilian population, now under occupation for 36 years, despite literally tens of UN Security Council Resolutions enjoining Israel to withdraw and otherwise desist from its war crimes and human rights abuses. Bush called Sharon a man of peace last June, and kept the 5 billion dollar subsidy coming without even the vaguest hint that it was at risk because of Israel's lawless brutality.
On October 7, 2001 Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan, which opened with concentrated high-altitude bombing (increasingly an "anti-terrorist" military tactic, bearing in its effects and structure a strong resemblance to ordinary, garden variety terrorism) and by December had installed in that devastated country a client regime with no effective power beyond a few streets in Kabul. There has been no significant US effort at reconstruction, and it would seem the country has returned to its former abjection, albeit with a noticeable return of elements of the Taleban, as well as a thriving drug-based economy.
Since the summer of 2002, the Bush administration has conducted an all-front campaign against the despotic government of Iraq and, having unsuccessfully tried to push the Security Council into compliance, began its war along with the United Kingdom against the country. I would say that from about last November on, dissent disappeared from a mainstream media swollen with a surfeit of ex-generals and ex-intelligence agents sprinkled with recent terrorism and security experts drawn from the Washington right-wing think tanks. Anyone who spoke up and actually managed to appear was labeled anti-American by failed academics who mounted websites to list "enemy" scholars who didn't toe the line. Emails of the few visible public figures who struggled to say something were swamped, their lives threatened, their ideas trashed and mocked by media news readers who had just become the self-appointed, all-too-embedded sentinels of America's war.
An overwhelming torrent of crude as well as sophisticated material appeared everywhere equating the tyranny of Saddam Hussein not only with evil, but with every known crime: much of this in part was factually correct but it eliminated from mention the extraordinarily important role played by the US and Europe in fostering the man's rise, fuelling his ruinous wars, and maintaining his power. No less a personage than the egregious Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam in the early 80's as a way of assuring him of US approval for his catastrophic war against Iran. The various US corporations who supplied Iraq with nuclear, chemical and biological material for the weapons that we supposedly went to war for were simply erased from the public record.
But all this and more was deliberately obscured by both government and media in manufacturing the case for the further destruction of Iraq which has been taking place for the past month. The demonization of the country and its strutting leader turned it into a simulacrum of a formidable quasi-metaphysical threat whereas and this bears repeating its demoralized and basically useless armed forces were a threat to no one at all. What was formidable about Iraq was its rich culture, its complex society, its long-suffering people: these were all made invisible, the better to smash the country as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers. Either without proof or with fraudulent information Saddam was accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction that were a direct threat to the US 7000 miles away. He was identical with the whole of Iraq, a desert place "out there" (to this day most Americans have no idea where Iraq is, what its history consists of, and what besides Saddam it contains) destined for the exercise of US power unleashed illegally as a way of cowing the entire world in its Captain Ahab like quest for re-shaping reality and imparting democracy to everyone. At home the Patriot and Terrorist Acts have given the government an unseemly grip over civil life. A dispiritingly quiescent population for the most part accepts the bilge, passed off as fact, about imminent security threats, with the result that preventive detention, illegal eavesdropping and a menacing sense of a heavily policed public space have made even the university a cold, hard place to be for anyone who tries to think and speak independently.
The appalling consequences of the US and British intervention in Iraq are only just beginning to unfold, first with the coldly calculated destruction of its modern infrastructure, then with the looting and burning of one of the world's richest civilizations, and finally the totally cynical American attempt to engage a band of motley "exiles" plus various large corporations in the supposed re-building of the country and the appropriation not only of its oil but also its modern destiny. To the dreadful scenes of looting and burning which in the end are the occupying power's responsibility, Rumsfeld managed to put himself in a class beyond even Hulagu. "Freedom is untidy," he said on one occasion, and "stuff happens" on another. Remorse or sorrow were nowhere in evidence.
General Jay Garner, handpicked for the job, seems like a person straight out of the TV-serial "Dallas." The Pentagon's favorite exile, Ahmad Chalabi, for example, has intimated openly that he plans to sign a peace treaty with Israel, hardly an Iraqi idea. Bechtel has already been awarded a huge contract. This too in the name of the American people. The whole business smacks of nothing so much as Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
This is an almost total failure in democracy, ours as Americans, not Iraq's. 70% of the American people are supposed to be for all this, but nothing is more manipulative and fraudulent than polls of random numbers of Americans who are asked whether they "support our President and troops in time of war." As Senator Byrd said in his speech, "there is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unansweredA pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq." Who is going to ask questions now that that Middle Western farm boy General Tommy Franks sits triumphantly with his staff around one of Saddam's tables in a Baghdad palace?
I am convinced that in nearly every way, this was a rigged, and neither a necessary nor a popular war. The deeply reactionary Washington "research" institutions that spawned Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Feith and the rest provide an unhealthy intellectual and moral atmosphere. Policy papers circulate without real peer review, adopted by a government requiring what seems to be rational (even moral) justification for a dubious, basically illicit policy of global domination. Hence, the doctrine of military pre-emption, which was never voted on either by the people of this country or their half-asleep representatives. How can citizens stand up against the blandishments offered the government by companies like Halliburton, Boeing, and Lockheed? And as for planning and charting a strategic course for what in effect is by far the most lavishly endowed military establishment in history, one that is fully capable of dragging us into unending conflicts, that task is left to the various ideologically based pressure groups such as the fundamentalist Christian leaders like Franklin Graham who have been unleashed with their Bibles on destitute Iraqis, the wealthy private foundations, and such lobbies as AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, along with its associated think tanks and research centers.
What seems so monumentally criminal is that good, useful words like "democracy" and "freedom" have been hijacked, pressed into service as a mask for pillage, muscling in on territory, and the settling of scores. The American program for the Arab world is the same as Israel's. Along with Syria, Iraq theoretically represents the only serious long term military threat to Israel, and therefore it had to be put out of commission for decades. What does it mean to liberate and democratize a country when no one asked you to do it, and when in the process you occupy it militarily and, at the same time, fail miserably to preserve public law and order? The mix of resentment and relief at Saddam's cowardly disappearance that most Iraqis feel has brought with it little understanding or compassion either from the US or from the other Arab states, who have stood by idly quarreling over minor points of procedure while Baghdad burned. What a travesty of strategic planning when you assume that "natives" will welcome your presence after you've bombed and quarantined them for thirteen years. The truly preposterous mindset about American beneficence, and with it that patronizing Puritanism about what is right and wrong, has infiltrated the minutest levels of the media. In a story about a 70 year old Baghdad widow who ran a cultural center from her house wrecked in the US raids and is now beside herself with rage, NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins implicitly chastises her for having had "a comfortable life under Saddam Hussein," and then piously disapproves of her tirade against the Americans, "and this from a graduate of London University."
Adding to the fraudulence of the weapons that weren't there, the Stalingrads that didn't occur, the formidable artillery defenses that never happened, I wouldn't be surprised if Saddam disappeared suddenly because a deal was made in Moscow to let him out with his family and money in return for the country. The war had gone badly for the US in the south, and Bush couldn't risk more of the same in Baghdad. US National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice appeared in Russia on April 7. Two days later, Baghdad fell on April 9. Draw your own conclusions, but isn't it possible that as a result of discussions with the Republican Guard mentioned by Rumsfeld, Saddam bought himself out in return for abandoning the whole thing to the Americans and their British allies, who could then proclaim a brilliant victory.
Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly, and Bush looks like the moral equivalent of a cowboy sheriff who has just led his righteous posse to a victorious showdown against an evil enemy. On matters of the gravest importance to millions of people constitutional principles have been violated and the electorate lied to unconscionably. We are the ones who must have our democracy back. Enough of smoke and mirrors and smooth talking hustlers.
Let's examine first what US Middle East policy has wrought since George W. Bush came to power almost three years ago in an election decided finally by the Supreme Court, not by the popular vote. Even before the atrocities of September 11, Bush's team had given Ariel Sharon's government a free hand to colonize the West Bank and Gaza, to kill, detain and expel people at will, to demolish their homes, expropriate their land, imprison them by curfew and hundreds of military blockades, make life for them generally speaking impossible; after 9/11, Sharon simply hitched his wagon to "the war on terrorism" and intensified his unilateral depredations against a defenseless civilian population, now under occupation for 36 years, despite literally tens of UN Security Council Resolutions enjoining Israel to withdraw and otherwise desist from its war crimes and human rights abuses. Bush called Sharon a man of peace last June, and kept the 5 billion dollar subsidy coming without even the vaguest hint that it was at risk because of Israel's lawless brutality.
On October 7, 2001 Bush launched the invasion of Afghanistan, which opened with concentrated high-altitude bombing (increasingly an "anti-terrorist" military tactic, bearing in its effects and structure a strong resemblance to ordinary, garden variety terrorism) and by December had installed in that devastated country a client regime with no effective power beyond a few streets in Kabul. There has been no significant US effort at reconstruction, and it would seem the country has returned to its former abjection, albeit with a noticeable return of elements of the Taleban, as well as a thriving drug-based economy.
Since the summer of 2002, the Bush administration has conducted an all-front campaign against the despotic government of Iraq and, having unsuccessfully tried to push the Security Council into compliance, began its war along with the United Kingdom against the country. I would say that from about last November on, dissent disappeared from a mainstream media swollen with a surfeit of ex-generals and ex-intelligence agents sprinkled with recent terrorism and security experts drawn from the Washington right-wing think tanks. Anyone who spoke up and actually managed to appear was labeled anti-American by failed academics who mounted websites to list "enemy" scholars who didn't toe the line. Emails of the few visible public figures who struggled to say something were swamped, their lives threatened, their ideas trashed and mocked by media news readers who had just become the self-appointed, all-too-embedded sentinels of America's war.
An overwhelming torrent of crude as well as sophisticated material appeared everywhere equating the tyranny of Saddam Hussein not only with evil, but with every known crime: much of this in part was factually correct but it eliminated from mention the extraordinarily important role played by the US and Europe in fostering the man's rise, fuelling his ruinous wars, and maintaining his power. No less a personage than the egregious Donald Rumsfeld visited Saddam in the early 80's as a way of assuring him of US approval for his catastrophic war against Iran. The various US corporations who supplied Iraq with nuclear, chemical and biological material for the weapons that we supposedly went to war for were simply erased from the public record.
But all this and more was deliberately obscured by both government and media in manufacturing the case for the further destruction of Iraq which has been taking place for the past month. The demonization of the country and its strutting leader turned it into a simulacrum of a formidable quasi-metaphysical threat whereas and this bears repeating its demoralized and basically useless armed forces were a threat to no one at all. What was formidable about Iraq was its rich culture, its complex society, its long-suffering people: these were all made invisible, the better to smash the country as if it were only a den of thieves and murderers. Either without proof or with fraudulent information Saddam was accused of harboring weapons of mass destruction that were a direct threat to the US 7000 miles away. He was identical with the whole of Iraq, a desert place "out there" (to this day most Americans have no idea where Iraq is, what its history consists of, and what besides Saddam it contains) destined for the exercise of US power unleashed illegally as a way of cowing the entire world in its Captain Ahab like quest for re-shaping reality and imparting democracy to everyone. At home the Patriot and Terrorist Acts have given the government an unseemly grip over civil life. A dispiritingly quiescent population for the most part accepts the bilge, passed off as fact, about imminent security threats, with the result that preventive detention, illegal eavesdropping and a menacing sense of a heavily policed public space have made even the university a cold, hard place to be for anyone who tries to think and speak independently.
The appalling consequences of the US and British intervention in Iraq are only just beginning to unfold, first with the coldly calculated destruction of its modern infrastructure, then with the looting and burning of one of the world's richest civilizations, and finally the totally cynical American attempt to engage a band of motley "exiles" plus various large corporations in the supposed re-building of the country and the appropriation not only of its oil but also its modern destiny. To the dreadful scenes of looting and burning which in the end are the occupying power's responsibility, Rumsfeld managed to put himself in a class beyond even Hulagu. "Freedom is untidy," he said on one occasion, and "stuff happens" on another. Remorse or sorrow were nowhere in evidence.
General Jay Garner, handpicked for the job, seems like a person straight out of the TV-serial "Dallas." The Pentagon's favorite exile, Ahmad Chalabi, for example, has intimated openly that he plans to sign a peace treaty with Israel, hardly an Iraqi idea. Bechtel has already been awarded a huge contract. This too in the name of the American people. The whole business smacks of nothing so much as Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
This is an almost total failure in democracy, ours as Americans, not Iraq's. 70% of the American people are supposed to be for all this, but nothing is more manipulative and fraudulent than polls of random numbers of Americans who are asked whether they "support our President and troops in time of war." As Senator Byrd said in his speech, "there is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unansweredA pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq." Who is going to ask questions now that that Middle Western farm boy General Tommy Franks sits triumphantly with his staff around one of Saddam's tables in a Baghdad palace?
I am convinced that in nearly every way, this was a rigged, and neither a necessary nor a popular war. The deeply reactionary Washington "research" institutions that spawned Wolfowitz, Perle, Abrams, Feith and the rest provide an unhealthy intellectual and moral atmosphere. Policy papers circulate without real peer review, adopted by a government requiring what seems to be rational (even moral) justification for a dubious, basically illicit policy of global domination. Hence, the doctrine of military pre-emption, which was never voted on either by the people of this country or their half-asleep representatives. How can citizens stand up against the blandishments offered the government by companies like Halliburton, Boeing, and Lockheed? And as for planning and charting a strategic course for what in effect is by far the most lavishly endowed military establishment in history, one that is fully capable of dragging us into unending conflicts, that task is left to the various ideologically based pressure groups such as the fundamentalist Christian leaders like Franklin Graham who have been unleashed with their Bibles on destitute Iraqis, the wealthy private foundations, and such lobbies as AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, along with its associated think tanks and research centers.
What seems so monumentally criminal is that good, useful words like "democracy" and "freedom" have been hijacked, pressed into service as a mask for pillage, muscling in on territory, and the settling of scores. The American program for the Arab world is the same as Israel's. Along with Syria, Iraq theoretically represents the only serious long term military threat to Israel, and therefore it had to be put out of commission for decades. What does it mean to liberate and democratize a country when no one asked you to do it, and when in the process you occupy it militarily and, at the same time, fail miserably to preserve public law and order? The mix of resentment and relief at Saddam's cowardly disappearance that most Iraqis feel has brought with it little understanding or compassion either from the US or from the other Arab states, who have stood by idly quarreling over minor points of procedure while Baghdad burned. What a travesty of strategic planning when you assume that "natives" will welcome your presence after you've bombed and quarantined them for thirteen years. The truly preposterous mindset about American beneficence, and with it that patronizing Puritanism about what is right and wrong, has infiltrated the minutest levels of the media. In a story about a 70 year old Baghdad widow who ran a cultural center from her house wrecked in the US raids and is now beside herself with rage, NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins implicitly chastises her for having had "a comfortable life under Saddam Hussein," and then piously disapproves of her tirade against the Americans, "and this from a graduate of London University."
Adding to the fraudulence of the weapons that weren't there, the Stalingrads that didn't occur, the formidable artillery defenses that never happened, I wouldn't be surprised if Saddam disappeared suddenly because a deal was made in Moscow to let him out with his family and money in return for the country. The war had gone badly for the US in the south, and Bush couldn't risk more of the same in Baghdad. US National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice appeared in Russia on April 7. Two days later, Baghdad fell on April 9. Draw your own conclusions, but isn't it possible that as a result of discussions with the Republican Guard mentioned by Rumsfeld, Saddam bought himself out in return for abandoning the whole thing to the Americans and their British allies, who could then proclaim a brilliant victory.
Americans have been cheated, Iraqis have suffered impossibly, and Bush looks like the moral equivalent of a cowboy sheriff who has just led his righteous posse to a victorious showdown against an evil enemy. On matters of the gravest importance to millions of people constitutional principles have been violated and the electorate lied to unconscionably. We are the ones who must have our democracy back. Enough of smoke and mirrors and smooth talking hustlers.
For more information:
http://www.counterpunch.org/said04222003.html
9/11 happened to this country.
I know alot of you would like to forget htat.
However it truly is a new ballgame.
Never again will America stand by and wait for our enemies to strike first.
We tried that. Look what it got us.
Never again.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
You can thank you pal, Osama.
I know alot of you would like to forget htat.
However it truly is a new ballgame.
Never again will America stand by and wait for our enemies to strike first.
We tried that. Look what it got us.
Never again.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
You can thank you pal, Osama.
Osama was not the one to Evacuate his building mere minutes before the attack.
Osama didn`t make a profit from Stock Shares either.
Osama didn`t make a profit from Stock Shares either.
The ones who made a Iast minute profit from inside trading And the ones who evacuated their Instant Messaging offices on the Iast minute had orchestrated the event.
Bellow is an article that appeared in the Washington Post on, September 28, 2001
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Instant Messages To Israel Warned Of WTC Attack
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
NEW YORK -- OFFICIALS at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks. Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender.
But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack. Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification.
Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today. The Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.
In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company. Odigo is online at http://www.odigo.com .
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
Bellow is an article that appeared in the Washington Post on, September 28, 2001
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Instant Messages To Israel Warned Of WTC Attack
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
NEW YORK -- OFFICIALS at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks. Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender.
But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack. Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification.
Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today. The Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.
In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company. Odigo is online at http://www.odigo.com .
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
Try to focus on the topic
I know it's tough, but the question was:
WHAT HAPPEN TO AMERICA
9/11 happened to this country.
I know alot of you would like to forget htat.
However it truly is a new ballgame.
Never again will America stand by and wait for our enemies to strike first.
We tried that. Look what it got us.
Never again.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
You can thank you pal, Osama.
I know it's tough, but the question was:
WHAT HAPPEN TO AMERICA
9/11 happened to this country.
I know alot of you would like to forget htat.
However it truly is a new ballgame.
Never again will America stand by and wait for our enemies to strike first.
We tried that. Look what it got us.
Never again.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET
You can thank you pal, Osama.
Pick up a book and start reading.
The last time a country decided to give up civil rights in the interest of national security, we had ourselves a world war.
What's worse than flying two planes into two towers?
Knowing about it and not picking up the phone! Thanks Israel.
The last time a country decided to give up civil rights in the interest of national security, we had ourselves a world war.
What's worse than flying two planes into two towers?
Knowing about it and not picking up the phone! Thanks Israel.
9/11 explains a lot.
You see, America's agenda for the Arab world became similar to Israel's...
When the agenda of the Arab world for America became similar to their agenda for Israel.
And please, I can't believe people are quoting conspiracy theories about Instant Messages. Oh wait, this is IMC. I guess I can believe it.
You see, America's agenda for the Arab world became similar to Israel's...
When the agenda of the Arab world for America became similar to their agenda for Israel.
And please, I can't believe people are quoting conspiracy theories about Instant Messages. Oh wait, this is IMC. I guess I can believe it.
The question is not WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICA-
(a Calculated Masscre)..
BUT WHO LET IT HAPPEN AND FOR WHAT ULTERIOR MOTIVES?
(a Calculated Masscre)..
BUT WHO LET IT HAPPEN AND FOR WHAT ULTERIOR MOTIVES?
If the official version of what happened on 9/11 is true, and Osama did it, he didn't "strike first." He struck back. America bombed him first. His base in Afghanistan was the target of American cruise missles, years before 9/11, way back during the Clinton administration.
``And please, I can't believe people are quoting conspiracy theories about Instant Messages``
The quote was extracted from a
Sep 28, 2001 Washington Post article.
The quote was extracted from a
Sep 28, 2001 Washington Post article.
So it it was a "quote" in a Washington post article?
Perhaps it was a quote about something ridiculous?
Perhaps it was a quote about something ridiculous?
It was a quote. The WP ran an article about conspiracy theories after 9/11. The IM story was one of them. Yes, it was an article about something ridiculous. But that's good enough to pass as fact on indymedia.
A search of the Washington Post archives reveals no such article on that date.
Perhaps the poster can supply an author to the article?
Perhaps the poster can supply an author to the article?
Washington Post on, September 28, 2001
Instant Messages To Israel Warned Of WTC Attack
NEW YORK -- OFFICIALS at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks. Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender.
But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack. Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification.
Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today. The Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.
In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company. Odigo is
Instant Messages To Israel Warned Of WTC Attack
NEW YORK -- OFFICIALS at instant-messaging firm Odigo confirmed today that two employees received text messages warning of an attack on the World Trade Center two hours before terrorists crashed planes into the New York landmarks. Citing a pending investigation by law enforcement, the company declined to reveal the exact contents of the message or to identify the sender.
But Alex Diamandis, vice president of sales and marketing, confirmed that workers in Odigo's research and development and international sales office in Israel received a warning from another Odigo user approximately two hours prior to the first attack. Diamandis said the sender of the instant message was not personally known to the Odigo employees. Even though the company usually protects the privacy of users, the employees recorded the Internet protocol address of the message's sender to facilitate his or her identification.
Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York, the Odigo employees notified their management, who contacted Israeli security services. In turn, the FBI was informed of the instant message warning. FBI officials were not immediately available for comment today. The Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Diamandis said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.
In addition to operating its own messaging service network, Odigo has licensed its technology to over 100 service providers, portals, wireless carriers, and corporations, according to the company. Odigo is
For more information:
http://© 2001 The Washington Post Company
Yeah, we're impressed you can copy and paste. But that article does not exist in the Washington Post archives. Tell us the journalist who wrote the article so the skeptics can confirm for themselves. Otherwise, it's just another "CNN faked the footage" story.
There were No casualties in the Two Israeli companies located at ground zero!
LucK, Maybe...
BTW, where can I find the FOX NEWS ARTICLE
linking the ``ART DEALERS`` from Israel to
the attacks on 9\11
?
LucK, Maybe...
BTW, where can I find the FOX NEWS ARTICLE
linking the ``ART DEALERS`` from Israel to
the attacks on 9\11
?
Many Muslims ALSO perished in the attack as well as christians yet it doesn`t absolve Israel from prior
knowledge and involvment in the Devestating attack!
knowledge and involvment in the Devestating attack!
Nobody has yet demonstrated that Israel or America had prior knowledge of the attack. The cited article does not exist, never existed, except in the minds of conspiracy theorists. It was most likely written in a basement for distribution on the Internet along with the 4,000 Jews story. Not even an author to the article.
The weeders have been hard at work.
All you have to do is provide an author and we can easily verify if the claim is true.
But that hasn't been done. Why?
I could easily say the WP printed an article claiming Bush is an alien and reality is a giant computer program. But no one can find it! It must be Weeders!
But that hasn't been done. Why?
I could easily say the WP printed an article claiming Bush is an alien and reality is a giant computer program. But no one can find it! It must be Weeders!
Are you implying that Israeli nationals evacuated their offices WITHOUT a timely tipoff...
No, I am implying that Israeli nationals died, and al Manar lied.
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/COUNTRY_CITIZENSHIP.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/rumors.htm#israel
If the terrorists had hit the towers an hour later, after the 9AM workday begins, more people from every country would have died. As it is, they only got 3,000 early risers.
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/COUNTRY_CITIZENSHIP.htm
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/rumors.htm#israel
If the terrorists had hit the towers an hour later, after the 9AM workday begins, more people from every country would have died. As it is, they only got 3,000 early risers.
you are implying that ONE Israeli died,
a mossad agent who was on the plane that hit one
of the WTC buildings...
september11victims.com/september11victims/COUNTRY_CITIZENSHIP.htm
Where were rest of the israeli Citizens who worked at the trade Center for odigo and zim
( 2 Israeli companies),
yet were Suspiciously absent during the deadly attack?
a mossad agent who was on the plane that hit one
of the WTC buildings...
september11victims.com/september11victims/COUNTRY_CITIZENSHIP.htm
Where were rest of the israeli Citizens who worked at the trade Center for odigo and zim
( 2 Israeli companies),
yet were Suspiciously absent during the deadly attack?
The site you saw listed 3 Israeli deaths, but only 1 Irish death.
Answer: The Irish did it!
Also notice, no Arab countries except Lebanon, and only 1 French death, what can you infer from that? Exactly what you can infer about Israel: nothing!
Answer: The Irish did it!
Also notice, no Arab countries except Lebanon, and only 1 French death, what can you infer from that? Exactly what you can infer about Israel: nothing!
If the Lebanese and French had companies in the WTC and suffered Zero casualties due to evacuating the premises before the attack --
Call me anti - French....
but I say let`s investigate them !
Call me anti - French....
but I say let`s investigate them !
But if Israel suffers 3 casualties, no proof of prior knowledge, you demand they be investigated anyway.
So far you have an article posted on the internet, credited to a newspaper although it does not exist in that paper's archives, with no author byline. Is that sufficient proof for you? What else can you prove in this manner?
So far you have an article posted on the internet, credited to a newspaper although it does not exist in that paper's archives, with no author byline. Is that sufficient proof for you? What else can you prove in this manner?
On what basis, if any do you presume Iraqis and/ or al Qauida knew about it yet didn`t warn anyone about it ..
"What else can you prove in this manner?"
That you're a naive buffoon.
That you're a naive buffoon.
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