The JvL Bi-Weekly

 

James van Luik

Publisher & Editor & Compiler

 

Please forward the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested

 

 

Sunday, August 15^th, 2004

Volume 3, No. 14

 

Articles, Pages

 

1. Ramsey Clark's Statement to the July 25^th Rally at the DNC in Boston

2. Part of an Extensive Letter to Tom Kean, the 9/11 Commission Co-Chair

3. The War Is a Fraud

4. Living in the House of Lies

5. Deviate From the US Line and End Up Like a Kleenex

6. Dangers from Terrorism Scant Compared to Other Risks, Experts Say

 

          1. RAMSEY CLARK'S STATEMENT TO THE JULY 25^TH RALLY AT THE DNC IN BOSTON

 

By your courage and commitment, you have won the Constitutional rights to speak, assemble and petition on Boston Common and beyond. Let your message ring out!

 

It is not enough to vote a lawless President out of Office.

 

Lawlessness must be removed from office.

 

George W. Bush made his criminal intentions clear long before committing his war of aggression against Iraq, an act held to be the "supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg Tribunal. The war has taken tens of thousands of lives.

 

In front page headlines in the New York Times on January 29^th, 2003 alone, the American people were told "Calling Iraq a Serious Threat, Bush Vows that He'll Disarm It," – "President Says America is Not Afraid to Take Unilateral Action" – "Bush Enlarges Case for War by Linking Iraq with Terrorists."

 

He boasted of assassinations and summary executions in his State of the Union message in January 2003, making them official US policy along with the direct targeting of civilians and civilian facilities.

 

President Bush has placed himself above all law. His lawyers in the Defense and Justice Departments have pronounced that the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander in Chief authority," (March 2003) and, "Any effort to apply (the criminal law against torture) in a manner that interferes with the President's direction of such core matter as the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants thus would be unconstitutional." (August 2002) We now know that such torture has led to scores of deaths.

 

The American people should not have needed the disclosures of the criminal conduct of President Bush by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11, or in books by former Bush Administration Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, former Chief Security Advisor on Counter Terrorism Richard Clarke, or preeminent investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh, among many others, important as their contributions are.

 

President Bush told the world himself time and time again that the law is no obstacle to him, making our country the enemy of the people of the planet. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

 

Any political party aspiring to nominate a person for President must renounce international crime and pledge accountability for its past commission.

 

The US military occupation of Iraq remains a crime. The troops must be withdrawn and reparations paid for the death and destruction from US Shock and Awe – terror Bush style. And  "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States" responsible for such crimes "shall be removed from office:" now. Article II, Section 4. Constitution of the United States of America.

 

Impeachment of George W. Bush and other officials of the United States who participated in this criminal enterprise by the US House of Representatives and their trial by the Senate for "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" is essential to the integrity of the Constitution and the honor of the elected representatives whose duty it is.

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 2. PART OF AN EXTENSIVE LETTER TO TOM KEAN, THE 9/11 COMMISSION CO-CHAIR

BY

SIBEL EDMONDS

 

Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the Commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. I, Sibel Edmonds, a concerned American citizen, a former FBI translator, a whistleblower, a witness for a United States Congressional investigation, a witness and a plaintiff for the Department of Justice Inspector General investigation, and a witness for your own 9/11 Commission investigation, request your answers to, and your public acknowledgement of, the following questions and issues:

 

After the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, we, the translators at the FBI's largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of 'extensive backlog of untranslated documents', and justify its request for budget and staff increases. While FBI agents from various field offices were desperately seeking leads and suspects, and completely depending on FBI HQ and its language units to provide them with needed translated information, hundreds of translators were being told by their administrative supervisors not to translate and to let the work pile up (please refer to the CBS-60 Minutes transcript dated October 2002, and provided to your investigators in January-February 2004).

 

After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of 'protecting certain foreign business relations.' The victims' family members still  do not realize that information and answers they have sought relentlessly for over two years has been  blocked due to the unspoken decisions made and disguised under 'safeguarding certain diplomatic relations.' Your report did not even attempt to address these unspoken practices, although, unlike me, you were not placed under any gag. Your hearings did not include questions regarding these unspoken and unwritten policies and practices. Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain US officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so. How can budget increases address and resolve these problems, when some of them are caused by unspoken practices and unwritten policies? How can a new bureaucratic layer, "Intelligence Czar", in its cocoon removed from the action lines, override these unwritten policies and unspoken practices incompatible with our national security?

 

I am writing this letter in light of my direct experience within the FBI's translation unit during the mot crucial times after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in light of my firsthand knowledge of certain problems and cases within the Bureau's language units, and in light of what has already been established as facts. As you are fully aware, the facts, incidents, and problems cited in this letter are by no means based upon personal opinion or un-verified allegations . As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. As you know, according to officials with direct knowledge of the Department of Justice Inspector General's report on my allegations, 'none of my allegations were disproved.' As you are fully aware even FBI officials 'confirmed all my allegations and denied none' during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff over two years ago. However, neither your Commission's hearings, nor your Commission's five hundred sixty seven-page report, or your recommendations include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems. Your report's coverage of FBI translation problems consists of a brief microscopic footnote (Footnote #25). Yet, your commission is geared to start aggressively pressuring our government to hastily implement your measure and recommendations based upon your incomplete and deficient report. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0408/S00012.htm

 

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 3.THE WAR IS A FRAUD

BY

ROBERT FISK

 

The war is fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida which didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking about the new lies.

 

For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist, now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 – the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.

 

The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial". Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe – until he reached the courtroom – that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked "disoriented" – CNN's helpful description – because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi: "Are you a lawyer? … Is this a trial?" And swiftly, as he realized that this really was an initial court hearing – not a preliminary to his own hanging – he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence.

 

But don't think we're gong to learn much more about Saddam's future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime – which were primarily with the United States.

 

Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition; so much for the Butler report.

 

Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realize this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad – and even there its ministers and civil servants are car bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now.

 

When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the National Conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary – be he American, British or South African – believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so.

 

But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the "coalition", that they support their new US-manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that the Americans s are safer. Then I go to an internet site and watch two hooded men hacking off the head of an American in Riyadh, tearing at the vertebrae and an American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposed came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins.

 

I keep re-reading Tony Blair's statement. "I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life." And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain  thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision – because, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, it was the right thing to do. And driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing yet another thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I realize what all this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought – correctly – that it might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to British troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not Hollywood but "real flesh and blood". Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed – but for weapons of mass destruction that weren't real at all.

 

"Deadly force is authorized," it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad. Authorized by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out of the city US soldiers shriek at motorists and open fire at the least suspicion. "We had some Navy Seals down at or checkpoint the other day," a 1^st Cavalry sergeant says to me. "They asked if we were having any trouble. I said, yes, they've been shooting at us from a house over there. One of them asked: 'That house?' We said yes. So they have these three SUVs and a lot of weapons made of titanium and they drive off towards the house. And later they come back and say 'We've taken care of that'. And we didn't get shot at any more."

 

What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lieutenant Colonel Garry Bishop of the 37^th Armored Division's 1^st Battalion believes it was an "ideal" battle (even though he failed to kill or capture Muktada Sadr whose "Mehdi army" were fighting the US forces). It was "ideal", Bishop explained, because the Americans avoided damaging the holy shrines of the Imams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury and then bragged that they hadn't damaged Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful?

 

What, indeed are we to make of a war which is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, US Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage-taking is having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular a power cuts. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them. This is the "safer" Iraq which Mr. Blair was boasting of the other day. What world does the British Government exist in?

 

Take the Saddam trial. The entire Arab press – including the Baghdad papers – prints the judge's name. Indeed, the same judge has given interviews about his charges of murder against Muqtada Sadr. He has posed for newspaper pictures. But when I mention his name in the Independent, I was solemnly censured by the British Government's spokesman. Salem Chalabi threatened to prosecute me. So let me get this right. We illegally invade Iraq. We kill up to 11,000 Iraqis. And Mr. Chalabi, appointed by the Americans, says I'm guilty of "incitement to murder". That just about says it all.

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 4. LIVING IN THE HOUSE OF LIES

BY

JIM KIRWAN

 

For almost the last three years the only thing the Bush administration has wanted to talk about has been "security." But what does that word really mean in the real world? When it comes from this outlaw government, 'security' is code for insecurity, for paranoia, and for the complete breakdown of this society: This is what this administration has been trying extremely hard to create from the ashes of nine eleven.

 

We've received endless warning of threats, we've seen endless photographs of armored security forces, helmeted and masked troops, armored vehicles, and wire ringed police barricades. We've seen the helicopters and the jet fighters, and we've seen the warnings, heard the speeches, and we've felt the terror emanating from those assigned to guard us and protect us from the terrorists. But are we safer, are we more secure from any angle? No. In fact we are far more at risk now than at any time in the history of this nation. Bush demands that we think about "security," so let's talk about what it is and what it is not.

 

What can roadblocks really accomplish when our cities are open on all sides? What good is increased vigilance when there are no uniforms on those we are supposed to fear. Who exactly is the enemy that all this firepower is meant to intimidate? You and me – that's who is supposed to be terrified by these expensive displays of unbridled military force.

 

Picture a downtown city street at lunch hour, add a platoon of marines backed up by local SWAT teams and Special Forces, suitably garbed for urban warfare and armed to the teeth. Just who is it that the troops or the police have suddenly come to arrest or intimidate? How will they decide whom to grab or whom to interrogate, who will be seen as "suspicious" or somehow "just not right?" Will it be a vendor selling hot-dogs, a salesman with his sample bag after a particularly bad morning under his or her belt? Ask yourself how will they go about deciding who belongs where, or who really is an enemy and who might be a friend? All the public gets is that one word uttered from between clenched teeth "SECURITY" and that's supposed to say it all. But it says nothing of the kind, all that says to most of us is that we are supposed to be very afraid – and the only thing we can see is all that firepower and all their hatred of anyone or anything that might be different, that would be the ordinary everyday  people of day–to-day life.

 

This place used to have a degree of trust in everything we did, before Reagan made "trust" a public sin. Ronnie substituted greed for trust, and began to teach America how to take instead of give, how to grab instead of ask—and from this we became a nation of strangers to each other. Since then we have only built on that. Now we're really rolling in ourselves, and all our petty crimes against each other  - except that now we no longer have a place where we can live our lives. Even that has been consumed by all this governmental fear and manufactured propaganda; all that paranoia only serves to isolate us further from each other. This is not some leftist plea for righteous justice, this is about what it takes to have a nation that functions. This is about how lies can sometimes clarify the truth.

 

When a foundation is built on nothing but lies, then no truth can ever stand upon it: Not even the US can defy that simple principle. That is exactly what the House of Bush has been hell bent on building—The House of the Lie.

 

Government is saying that we are safer now than before Bush took that office. Are we?

 

Our port security is a joke, container cargo is not scanned, or guarded by much of anything at all, and there isn't enough money in two worlds to even begin to think about trying to guard and protect everything that needs it. Before Bush and his belligerent policies there was no need to have to guard everything every single aspect of our lives. There still isn't.

 

If the House of Bush were to eliminate the policies that foster worldwide hate and contempt for everything we've come to stand for under them, then the world could get back to being nations in the global community—but they will not quit.

 

Our trains are unprotected, the same is true for power plants, electrical power grids, the roads and bridges, we cannot do it all—it's a physical impossibility. Why this masquerade? The charade is part of the final curtain being drawn down on this civilization and our trusting ways. The outlaws need to crush whatever might be left of what we used to feel for one another. It's is that simple.

 

If "SECURITY" were real then there would no longer be a War on Drugs, because nothing so large could continue to enter this nation in such volume, and with such ease. Yet there does not seem to be a diminution in the availability of illegal drugs on the streets of America, so are there some holes in our national shield against the bad guys.

 

What about the War on Crime? If there is such tight security in America, what about the gang activities, the daily shootings , the nightly drive-bys, how is that a part of the newly secure America? What about the theft and fraud on such an outrageous scale that it has no previous equal? In a true time of war, the profiteers would surely go to jail, or at least be charged, like Prescott Bush was during his time.

 

If "SECURITY" were a real concern, we'd be hiring more ops and more first responders, not firing the ones we have. If "SECURITY" were real we'd be demanding that the public get involved in the war effort, but instead there's a stealthy move afoot to draft all men and women up to the age of 38, in the coming year—no exceptions, no deferments. That will kill their occupations and their private lives, not to mention what it will do to American businesses—but hey, we're at war! If "SECURITY" were real we'd want to have the best and the brightest people in the system to insure that we have found and prosecuted all the threats against the nation. Instead we've got criminals and ex-felons running secret information collection programs, and spying on every aspect of our lives, for no particular reason except to build files on each and every one of us.

 

The government's message is clear: "No one can be trusted!"

 

More importantly, if 9/11 had been real we would have prosecuted those who did the crime, and any that might have aided in that effort. Instead "somehow" national security was by-passed on that day, and the attacks were allowed to continue for an hour and forty five minutes without the US military even showing up. Did the Commander-in-Chief get questioned? Was the Congress concerned, were the courts even asked to oversee and inquiry? No, nothing happened to address the horror or the death upon that day. Obviously we did not have a security problem, we had a fledgling bush of treason growing in our midst that was set upon us like a plague, to root out and destroy what was left of what we used to be. We've been taken over by a bunch of amateurs, and so far at least they've had their way with us.

 

The proof of that lies in the strictest of military laws. There is a direct chain of command that goes right to the top. The system was created to prevent exactly the type of thing that happened on 9/11, and the only way that chain of command could have been broken was if the president ordered NORAD to stand down. Whatever happened, there were no US fighter planes evident over NYC, until after the damage had been done, and not even that panel of simpletons on the commission dared to question that.

 

The taxpayers have laid out many trillions of dollars over the fifty-nine years since World War II to protect this country from exactly this kind of an attack. The one time that it happened, there was nothing to prevent those horrors from running their intended course. Was anyone in "national security" or the armed services ever disciplined for this "lapse" – no. Was any member of the government disciplined for what happened on that day – no. Yet we are expected to place blind faith in these same people and believe everything they tell us while we watch our lives and our drams being sucked into this government machine that wants to spy on everything we think or do? Where is the threat they are so taken with? Where is this impervious invasion force of unstoppable monsters that will kill us in our sleep or nuke us where we live?

 

Compare the money that we've spent, the lives that we' have lost and taken; then ask yourself if this was worth it? Was this worth shredding the Constitution and enshrining Bush and Ashcroft and Ridge as our surrogate parents? How much is enough? We no longer have an economy, most of the states are having trouble staying afloat, health care has been decimated, Social Security is being targeted, public education is becoming competitive with the third world – and we're being told that it's good for our economy that most of our jobs are being sent overseas!

 

We still know virtually nothing about our supposed enemies, except that we do indeed have enemies. This government is not willing to even try to explain itself or its actions in the world for the last three years, on any topic. Yet we are told that nearly half the country stands foursquare behind George W. Bush. Either we have become the dumbest people on the planet, or someone is lying about a while lot of things—continuously.

 

Of course, the laws we live by have all been changed since 9/11. There is no longer anything free or democratic about this nation now. Wait for the Republican convention and see who makes it to the cages, then watch what happens to the rights of those who would speak against the dictator. There's nothing new about dictatorships, except that they haven't formally been a part of the USA before, but then we were never so bold before, about openly attacking other countries, just because we could. The media has become a third rate propaganda machine for the Bushites, but what is really amazing is how few have raised their voices in protest against what we have become.

 

All the lies are there for anyone who cares to judge them for themselves. Sometimes lies can be used to show the truth, or at least the reality of who, and what, and where, and why and how—anything can happen. That used to be what journalists determined. Now it's nothing but another relic, in another dusty book that seems to go unread. Soon it won't matter anyhow, because the sheep will go wherever their Shepherd sends them, even if it's to the holding pens or to the camps themselves. It's all been written before, by a number of really authoritative authors – too bad no one bothered to believe , that—YES , this can happen here!

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 5. DEVIATE FROM THE US LINE AND END UP LIKE A KLEENEX

BY

LINDA S. HEARD

 

CAIRO, 10 AUGUST 2004 – Alleged bank embezzler, US-Iranian double agent, intelligence fabricator and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, Ahmad Chalabi is being accused of money laundering and forgery.

 

An Iraqi judge with the US guiding his pen, has signed a warrant for Chalabi's arrest, no doubt proving a huge embarrassment to his former best buddy US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

 

The Pentagon has long promoted Chalabi as an upstanding guy and ideal candidate to step into Saddam's muddied shoes against the serious reservations of Colin Powell and the State Department.

 

At one time Chalabi must have thought his future premiership was a done deal as he did the rounds of the US talk shows before the invasion often with one of his many relatives in tow.

 

When he was flown in to the country along with his band of American-armed thugs to play conquering hero in the Shi'i south he must have thought he'd got it made. As a member of the initial interim Governing Council things were going swimmingly for Chalabi until he deviated from the script, suggesting the Americans and the British should hurry up and leave his country. That was the kiss of death for his life's ambitions.

 

His nephew Salem Chalabi, who founded the special Iraqi Tribunal, and who has repeatedly gloated over Saddam's incarceration, has been named as a suspect in the murder of the former director general of Iraq's Finance Ministry. Lawyers both, the Chalabi relatives could end up tending the lone palm sapling of another member of their legal fraternity – Saddam Hussein, the man they fought so long and hard to topple.

 

In the unlikely event the former foes find themselves in the same exercise yard, they could while away the time swapping yarns about America's treachery. Saddam was once the Pentagon's man, too, and the recipient of a "made in the USA" state-of-the-art arsenal, including chemical weapons, with which to fight a proxy war against Iran.

 

Saddam's mistake was the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which he might say went ahead after US Ambassador April Glaspie gave him the wink and the nod -- provided he ever gets the chance.

 

We're unlikely ever to know the truth about this, as subsequent to the former dictator's eloquent oratorical show at his hearing, his trial (if he ever gets one) is unlikely to be transparent. But we do know Saddam fell irreparably from American grace when he allegedly attempted to assassinate the current US president's father. (Editor's note: I really doubt this.)

 

Interestingly it was the CIA, along with Pakistan's ISI, which once supported the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan – a movement in which Osama Bin Laden played a key role. From 1982 to 1989, the CIA encouraged an Islamic jihad against the apostate Soviet occupiers and eventually some 35,000 militants from 40 Islamic countries joined the fight without realizing they, too, were fighting a proxy war on behalf of Uncle Sam.

 

President Ronald Reagan signed Directive 166 in 1986 authorizing increased clandestine aid to the militants who by 1987 were receiving 65,000 tons of US weapons annually, while the CIA helped train the guerrillas. Once the Soviets literally ran for the hills, Afghanistan's new trial rulers turned the country into an internecine battle ground.

 

The advent of the hard-line Taliban brought repression but also security to the country and although their rule was not officially recognized by the US they did receive millions of American government dollars to curtail poppy growing.

 

At the same time their leadership was courted by the US – and given a red carpet tour of the US – over a proposed UNICAL natural gas pipeline. Negotiations between the US and the Taliban concerning the pipeline's route continued right up until September 2001 but the Taliban refused to play ball. The rest is history. A former UNICOL executive Hamid Karzai ended up as Afghanistan's president and the poppies have never bloomed as brightly.

 

Like Chalabi, Karzai initially believed he had real authority and days after his appointment wanted to give amnesty to Taliban spiritual head Mulla Omar.

 

This didn't play well in Washington and he was severely rapped on the knuckles by Rumsfeld , who threatened to chop down the money tree. Karzai now knows where his bread is buttered. And so it seems does the US-appointed interim Prime Minister of Iraq Iyad Allawi who has offered amnesty to rank and file insurgents, provided they are not directly responsible for the deaths of  Iraqis and foreign invaders. Both sensibly welcome American and British troops with open arms.

 

At the same time, foreign forces along with civilian contractors and mercenaries enjoy immunity from international or Iraqi justice when it comes to the 20,000 or so Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives, brushed aside as collateral damage.

 

Burly US bodyguards perpetually surround both Karzai and Allawi even as they vaunt their respective nations' sovereignty and independence and the rest of us try and pretend the Americans are around from purely altruistic motives.

 

If Mohammed Reza Pahlevi the former Shah of Iran was still alive he might have a few things to say about his American fair-weather friends. It was a CIA-sponsored coup, which overthrew Mossadeq who dared to nationalize Iranian oilfields and to install the Shah in his place.

 

Throughout the Shah's iron-fisted rule when his opponents were ruthlessly killed and tortured, Reza Shah acted as regional bullyboy on America's behalf. When he was forced into exile in 1979 by followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran soon demanded his extradition from the US where he was undergoing medical treatment. During the Iranian hostage crisis, America's long-time friend the Shah morphed into a liability, a hot potato and his  requests for US sanctuary were turned down. It was left to Anwar Sadat to offer him shelter in Egypt where he died of cancer in 1980.

 

The region's leaders and prospective leaders would do well to take note. Beware of US officials bearing gifts! America's friendship is self-interested and strictly utilitarian. And nobody is immune to its sudden reversal to which Ahmad and Salem Chalabi, still reeling from their own reversal of fortunes will no doubt attest.

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 6. DANGERS FROM TERRORISM SCANT COMPARED TO OTHER RISKS, EXPERTS SAY

BY

MILES BENSON

 

The terrorists can't win. They can't wreck the economy or inflict other forms of irreparable damage on the nation, despite their ability to impose great inconveniences, disruptions, expense and occasional scary periods of elevated alert, many experts say.

 

To be sure, bombs or other forms of attack on the homeland could take lives, and the respite since 9/11, may not last. But the danger of average Americans or their loved ones becoming casualties in the war on terrorism is scant compared, say, to the daily risks they face from automobile accidents, crime or weather–related menaces.

 

"A false sense of insecurity" grips the nation, spurred partly by war rhetoric from President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. Kerry, warns John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University.

 

The election campaign intensifies " a general tendency to exaggerate worst-case scenarios—that terrorists can destroy our way of life," Mueller said. "That strikes me as basically wrong. Most likely there is some destruction here and there, which is very tragic—we can't downplay the horror to the people directly involved—but the idea that tiny group of terrorists on the run can actually destroy the US is extremely questionable."

 

Other experts agree that the climate of danger and concern is out of proportion to the reality of terrorists capabilities.

 

Al-Qaida might target the US financial-services industry—that threat triggered the current elevated alert in New York, Washington, DC, and Newark, NJ—but even a successful attack would not bring the nation's economy to a halt.

 

"Blowing up the IMF or the New York Stock Exchange would be calamities, but not in that category, because the economy recovers from personal tragedies quite readily, in a heartless kind of way," said Henry Aaron, an economist at the Brookings Institution.

 

"We should not be complacent," said Chester Crocker, a former assistant secretary of state under President Reagan, now a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University. "But there is danger of people who don't know how the world is organized getting spooked and hysterical by the hype and emotional overreaction at the popular level."

 

Terrorists may attempt to tear the fabric of society, but can they accomplish that?

 

"No, not tactically," said Fran Cilluffo, associate vice president for homeland security at George Washington University and a former senior terrorism adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. It's not "within the realm of probability,. But they are in the business of inflaming fear. They can win battles, but in the long term they cannot overcome our resilience and who we are as a nation."

 

While there is always the chance of losing hundreds of lives or critical parts of the infrastructure, "there is no danger of massive defeat of the US" by terrorism, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Factors like the weather attack us all the time and produce casualties, but we are a great deal more resilient than most people understand."

 

"Terrorism has become one more actuarial risk, like getting out of bed. Americans have shown they can live with the risks of getting out of bed, and terrorism as well, particularly if terrorism is as low as it has been."

 

The National Center for Health Statistics, which tracks 113 causes of death in the US, reported that in the same year that nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, 43,788 died in motor-vehicle accidents, 30,622 by suicide, 20,306 were murdered (including 11,348 by firearms), 14,078 died by accidental poisoning and 3,021 died as a result of complications from medical care*. An additional 700,000 Americans died of heart disease, the No. 1 killer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 553, 768 died of cancer and 32,238 died of blood poisoning. (Editor's note: Check this out:

 

*How Common Are Medical Mistakes? - WrongDiagnosis.com

... that 2.4 to 3.6 percent of hospital admissions were ... Surgical errors: Death rates from anesthesia in surgery have ... massively to about 1 per 200,000-300,000 cases ... wrongdiagnosis.com/mistakes/common.htm -

 

 

"It's hard to compare the dangers of terrorism with other threats to life," said Dr. Robert Lifton, a psychiatrist who has studied and written extensively about the ways people react to extreme situations.

 

"With terrorism, with 9/11, there was a shocking experience of violation of America's sense of safety," said Lifton, author of "Superpower Syndrome," a book about the nation's response to the terrorist threat.

 

Some critics think the Bush Administration has manipulated warnings about the timing of possible terrorist attacks for political purposes. Cilluffo, a Republican, dismissed such suggestions as "truly Preposterous."

 

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national-security adviser to former President Carter, is not so sure, and he worries about the degree to which perceived political imperatives drive leaders in both parties.

 

"My grave concern is that we are hyping ourselves into a state of panic which is going to discredit us intentionally even if it has some utility in the short run for the administration," Brzezinski said. "It reinforces the theme that we are at war. In a war, you don't change your commander in chief. This is a pretend war. If it was a real war, we would have a draft, special taxes and a sense of sacrifice, posters with Uncle Sam pointing a finger at you and saying, 'I want you,.'"

 

Brzezinski acknowledged that the Democratic presidential nominee Kerry also is talking "war" and using other language similar to Bush in describing the terrorist threat.

 

"I suspect it's unnecessary," Brzezinski said. He blamed other party leaders including Sen. Joe Liberman of Connecticut and former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

 

"Democrats were stampeded into supporting Bush and enlarging the scope of the conflict," Brzezinski said.

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