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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (40284)	3/23/2004 11:11:47 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

The Canary in the Coalmine ___________________________ by Robert O. Boorstin March 23, 2004 americanprogress.org In his new book, "Against All Enemies," Dick Clarke – the former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism - gives the straight story about what was going on in the Bush White House before and after Sept. 11, 2001. It is not a pretty picture. Clarke takes us inside a White House that was deaf to the threat posed by al Qaeda, a White House that took eight months to schedule a principals meeting to address the problem – the meetings where the president and the Cabinet make the most important decisions about national security. Clarke gives us a look into a White House and an administration populated by officials who were blinded by an obsession with Iraq. He offers us a glimpse into the Situation Room, where President Bush repeatedly asked Clarke and his staff to look for proof that Saddam Hussein had taken down the World Trade Center immediately after the attacks. And he takes us into a White House where officials who dissented from the official line chose to be mute rather than protest when they thought things were moving down the wrong track. Clarke's conclusion is tough, direct and on point: the Bush administration "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings." It launched "an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide." This is strong stuff at any time. But this is particularly damning at a time when Karl Rove and his money machine are engaged in an all-out offensive to convince the American people that we can rest easy at night with George W. Bush in the White House. Already the attacks have begun and the administration's shills are hard at work. They are casting aspersions on his motives; dissecting Clarke's observations about the facial expressions of Condoleezza Rice; making creative excuses for their lack of follow-through and reductions in counter-terrorism funding; and calling him a partisan. Underneath their orchestrated rebuttals lies a chilling assertion – that legitimate criticism of the administration's approach to terrorism is unwarranted and will not be tolerated. Of course, the most predictable spin by the right wing on Clarke's actions is that he is part of a vast Democratic conspiracy. They point out that Clarke is teaching a course at Harvard with Rand Beers, his colleague of more than two decades and the man who now heads the national security policy shop for presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry. Naturally, they neglect to mention that Clarke was a registered Republican at the time of the 2000 election. These attacks should come as no surprise. After all, this is the White House that – in one of the most serious breaches of national security on record – exposed a CIA agent whose husband dared to challenge the president's version of the truth. A grand jury investigation is ongoing. This is the administration that threatened to prosecute former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill for exposing documents he used in his recently released memoir, "The Price of Loyalty" - unclassified documents that the Treasury Department released to him. Meanwhile, there has been no investigation into the president's decision to openly discuss highly classified national security meetings and directives with Bob Woodward for his largely favorable book, "Bush at War." And this is the administration that summarily fired economics adviser Larry Lindsay when he estimated that the war in Iraq could cost up to $200 billion. Well, we're at $170 billion and counting and Iraq is far from stable or secure. Full disclosure. I worked with Clarke in the White House in 1994-1995, when I was national security speechwriter for President Clinton. Clarke is not a quiet man and he has ruffled his share of feathers. He can be rightly accused of stubbornness and a no-nonsense approach when it comes to pursuing his missions – tracking down al Qaeda, preventing an attack on our nation's computer systems, or making sure our nation's emergency response systems are the best they can be. But Clarke is, above all, a patriot. He has spent more than 30 years of his life working to protect the people of the United States. He was hired by Ronald Reagan and worked for four presidents – three Republicans and one Democrat. Dick worked for governments, not political parties. And for years he was the canary in the coal mine, warning about the grave threat posed by al Qaeda. Bush's top officials, it turns out, were not willing to listen. Perhaps it was because Clarke, like CIA director George Tenet, was a holdover from the Clinton administration. And the Bush administration national security doctrine on taking office was rooted in the fundamental premise that everything Clinton did was wrong. Perhaps it was because although Clarke criticized the Clinton administration, he was even more critical of George W. Bush's tenure. The efforts to defame Clarke for telling the truth are ultimately both pathetic and damaging. Pathetic because attacking people's character is the only route left for a White House that has been marked by delusion and deception. Damaging because the White House has no good response to the bottom line: the American people today are less safe than we otherwise might have been. Only history will judge the wisdom of the Bush administration's failures in its first nine months in office to deal with al Qaeda and its obsession with Iraq to the exclusion of other, more important threats. But Dick Clarke has given us the first draft of that history – and it's a scary read. __________________________ Robert O. Boorstin is the senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress.

To: lurqer who wrote (40284)	3/23/2004 11:55:58 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Killing Of Sheikh Yassin __________________________ The Chilling Implications Of This State Killing by Robert Fisk; March 23, 2004 IT DOESN'T take an awful lot of courage to murder a paraplegic in a wheelchair. But it takes only a few moments to absorb the implications of the assassination of Sheikh Yassin. Yes, he endorsed suicide bombings - including the murder of Israeli children. Yes, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, in a wheelchair or not. But something went wrong with the narrative of the news story yesterday - and something infinitely more dangerous, another sinister precedent - was set for our brave new world. Take the old man himself. From the start, the Israeli line was simple. Sheikh Yassin was the "head of the snake" - to use the words of the Israeli ambassador to London - the head of Hamas, "one of the world's most dangerous terrorist organisations". But then came obfuscation from the world's media. Yassin, the BBC World Service Television told us at lunchtime, was originally freed by the Israelis in a "prisoner exchange". It sounded like one of those familiar swaps - a Palestinian released in exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. And then, later in the day, the BBC told us that he had been freed "following a deal brokered by King Hussain (of Jordan)". Which was all very strange. He was a prisoner of the Israelis. This "head of the snake" was in an Israeli prison. And then, bingo, this supposed monster was let go because of a "deal". Sheikh Yassin was set free by no less than that law-and-order right- wing Likudist Benjamin Netanyahu when he was Prime Minister of Israel. King Hussain wasn't a "broker" between two sides. Two Israeli Mossad secret agents had tried to murder a Hamas official in Amman, the capital of an Arab nation which had a full peace agreement with Israel. They had injected the Hamas man with poison and the late King Hussain called the US President in fury and threatened to put the captured Mossad men on trial if he wasn't given the antidote to the poison and if Yassin wasn't released. Netanyahu immediately gave in. Yassin was freed and the Mossad lads went safely home to Israel. So the "head of the snake" was let loose by Israel itself, courtesy of the Israeli Prime Minister - a chapter in the narrative of history which was conveniently forgotten yesterday. Which is all very odd. For if the elderly cleric really was worthy of state murder, why did Mr Netanyahu let him go in the first place? It was not a question that anyone wanted to ask yesterday. But there was something infinitely more dangerous in all this. Yet another Arab - another leader, however vengeful and ruthless - had been assassinated. The Americans want to kill Osama Bin Laden. They want to kill Mullah Omar. They killed Saddam's two sons. The Israelis repeatedly threaten to murder Yasser Arafat. It's getting to be a habit. No one has begun to work out the implications of all this. For years, there has been an unwritten rule in the cruel war of government-versus- guerrilla. You can kill the men on the street, the bomb makers and gunmen. But the leadership on both sides - government ministers, spiritual leaders - were allowed to survive. Now all is changed utterly. Anyone who advocates violence is now on a death list. So who can be surprised if the rules are broken by the other side? With all their own security, Bush and Blair may be safe, but what about their ambassadors and fellow ministers? Leaders are fair game. We will not say this. If, or when, our own political leaders are gunned down or blown up, we shall vilify the killers and argue a new stage in "terrorism" has been reached. We shall forget that we are now encouraging this all- out assassination spree. zmag.org

To: lurqer who wrote (40284)	3/23/2004 12:45:51 PM
From: Mannie	Respond to of 89467

Turkmen also reject Iraqi constitution By Hussain Hindawi UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL LONDON, March 23 (UPI) -- Iraq's minority Turkmen community are opposed to the newly-endorsed interim constitution that will rule their country during the transitional phase on the grounds that it "marginalizes" their role as Iraq's third ethnic group. Turkmen's political parties threatened to declare the state of "Iraq's Turkmenistan" with the oil-center of Kirkuk as its capital if the interim constitution signed by the Iraqi Government Council earlier this month is not amended to guarantee their rights and role in the country. Anwar Niazi, politburo member of the Turkmen's al-Akhaa'Party told United Press International in a telephone interview from Baghdad that the "interim constitution bluntly ignored the rights of Iraq's Turkmen community, leaving no room for political maneuvering for Turkmen parties." "The most dangerous thing is that the interim document is considered as the constitution of Iraq for an indefinite period of time, threatening to consecrate the marginalization of the Turkmen and depriving them of their present rights," Niazi said. The interim constitution is to rule Iraq during the transitional phase that starts July 1, the deadline for transferring powers to Iraqis, until general elections are held for a legislative assembly that will be entrusted with drafting the country's permanent constitution. Soun Kul Jabok, the Turkmen's representative in the 25-member Governing Council, threatened last month to declare the entity of "Iraq's Turkmenistan" in the north of the country if the Kurds insisted on federal rule for Iraq's Kurdistan. Nevertheless, Jabok placed her signature on the interim constitution draft, which is rejected by leading Turkmen parties, including the Iraqi Turkmen Front, the Turkmen People's Party, al-Akhaa' Party, the Turkmen National Front and the Islamic Party of Iraq's Turkmen. None of these groups has good relations with the two main Kurdish parties -- notably, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan led by Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massud Barzani. Turkmen parties dislike the fact that the interim constitution, whose signing was postponed twice due to differences between the various Iraqi factions, gave the Kurds a large margin of independence. Kurds accuse the Turkmen community of subordination to Turkey which dreads the rise of a federation in Iraq that will give the Kurds greater independence from Baghdad. The Iraqi Governing Council affirms that the interim constitution is for a transitional period that would not exceed one year. But Niazi fears that "the interim document could become a permanent norm or tradition for dealing with essential issues." He also expressed great doubt that the future Iraqi authorities will be able to conduct sound and correct elections within a definite period of time and was skeptical that Iraq will get a permanent constitution "if internal struggle and disputes" between the country's main ethnic groups persisted. Niazi noted that Iraq's Turkmen community exercised their rights during monarchy rule more than they did under republican regimes. He said the Turkmen were deprived of their rights for long years during the Baath Party rule and were oppressed and persecuted but kept their faith in a free, united and democratic Iraq, "not a federal country divided along ethnic and sectarian lines." Salman Karkukli, head of the Turkmen National Front in Iraq, blasted the interim constitution which he said "ignored the rights of the Turkmen people and undermined their role within their own country. He said the Turkmen community, estimated at more than 3 million of Iraq's population of 27 million, "decided not to abide by the interim constitution's clauses." Karkukli said the Turkmen plan to declare the state of Iraq's Turkmenistan with Kirkuk as its capital "in order to put an end to the violations and harms committed against them." He called for recognizing the Turkmen as the third ethnic group in the country and declaring the Turkmen language as the third official language in the state after Arabic and Kurdish. Karkukli also demanded to "safeguard the Turkmen character of Kirkuk by securing the withdrawal of Kurdish forces from the city and halting attempts to change its demographic structure and that of other Turkmen towns." Jabok, the Turkmen representative in the Governing Council, had previously accused the Kurds of "seeking to change social and demographic" facts in Kirkuk, which she said was initially inhabited by the Turkmen before the Kurds arrived there in the late 1950s. "The Kurds believed that a federal system is the best solution for guaranteeing their rights. ... We (Turkmen) are not opposed to federation as such, but we refuse to give one faction authority over the other, and we refuse demographic changes in the city," Jabok said. Tension escalated in Kirkuk and surrounding region following the assassination of Akkar al-Tawil, the Arab representative in the city's local council, earlier this month. Two Turkmen leaders, Farouk Abdullah Abdel Rahman and Sobhi Saber from the Turkmen Front party, escaped attempts on their lives in February. The Turkmen people are believed to make up 10 percent of Iraq's populations, and they are mainly concentrated in the districts of Khormatu, Dakouk, Toz, and Kirkuk, which are also home for Arab, Kurdish, Chaldean and Assyrian communities. The chief of the Islamic Movement for Iraq's Turkmen, Sami Donmez, also rejected the interim constitution on the grounds that "it is void of any indication to the rights of the Turkmen people." "We in the Islamic Movement of Iraq's Turkmen assert our rejection to that interim draft because it did not recognize the Turkmen as the country's third ethnic group and did not guarantee our rights and existence," Donmez said in a statement received by UPI. He warned that the Turkmen will be "forced to resort to other means to recover their legitimate rights, which were lost under the former racist regime and were ignored by those who drafted the new constitution." Donmez did not elaborate on the alternative means.

To: lurqer who wrote (40284)	3/23/2004 1:26:32 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

C'mon guy. You want Bush to see subtleties? Bush doesn't do subtlety. It's all black and white. The Repubs call it moral clarity. Others are ... less charitable. Liberty takers Tristram Hunt Paul Kennedy, the great historian of empires, likes to remind his audience that George Bush read history at Yale - but not that many history books. However, since September 11 and the installation of a Churchill bust in the Oval Office, President Bush seems to have put his college days behind him. History is now in vogue at the White House. Indeed, the entire Bush foreign policy has been premised on a narrative of America's past at the heart of which is the principle of liberty. Since the inception of the "war on terror", the Pentagon has been careful to eschew the call of empire. What motivates neoconservatives, we are told, is not the aggrandisement of American power but ensuring the beacon of liberty shines brightly across the globe. In his 2003 state of the union address, President Bush reassured his global audience that America sought to "exercise power without conquest". Although the neoconservative polemicist Charles Krauthammer has declared America to be "the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome", and Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, sounds every day more like an Edwardian viceroy, the White House is adamant that the war on terror is distinct from the colonial ambitions of previous great powers. Instead, what the Bush administration is concerned with is fulfilling the ideals of the American revolution. However, although bookshops in the US are awash with new biographies of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, what the White House has learned from all this scholarship seems little different from the historical interpretation of the Mel Gibson film The Patriot. For Gibson, the revolution was a clear-cut struggle for liberty from the wicked British. The neoconservatives have taken this dubious history as read and then universalised the principle. The liberty won by the founding fathers in the 18th century is for the Pentagon hawks a value of global validity. As President Bush put it: "If the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others." And as the disillusioned Republican thinker Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it is this claim of universality that seems to endow American principles with their monopoly on virtue. It behoves America, as a republic of virtue, to export these ideals around the world. The president certainly feels the hand of history and casts himself as a latter-day Churchill. Recently, at a Churchill exhibition at the Library of Congress, Bush aligned himself with his hero, announcing: "We are the heirs of the tradition of liberty, defenders of the freedom, the conscience and dignity of every person". This sense of moral clarity is what is meant to distinguish neoconservatism from plain old conservatism. While the likes of Kissinger and Nixon were happy to collude with terrorism and bolster tyrannies, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, will brook no such betrayal of America's heritage. It is this call of historic virtue that accounts for President Bush's recently launched "forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East". Instead of supporting friendly if corrupt Arab regimes, democracy and liberty would provide the litmus test for US diplomacy in the region. "For too long, American policy looked away while men and women were oppressed," announced the leader of the free world. "That era is over." Leaving aside US support for some pretty distasteful regimes in the oil-rich Caspian basin, or Rice's intervention in the Venezuelan elections, or the decision to postpone the polls in Iraq, there remainfundamental historical problems with the neoconservative vision. For at the political core the American revolution was a highly restricted notion of freedom: the right of property holders to dispose of their wealth as they saw fit. Many revolutionaries simply wanted to be treated as Englishmen - which might account for Benjamin Franklin lobbying for a job in the Westminster government as late as 1771. No taxation without representation is a very different cry from the universal right to liberty. Moreover, the property that many founding fathers wanted to protect was their slave holdings. One of the more unpublicised episodes of the war of independence is the history of black loyalism, of the tens of thousands of slaves who made their way to the British side to form the Ethiopian Regiment, the Black Brigade and the Black Pioneers. For the chattels of America, it was the British government not the righteous revolutionaries that promised liberty. Politicians with moral clarity are indubitably attractive, and after the tergiversations of the Clinton era, there is some refreshing candour about the Bush agenda. But if the president had read just a little more history he might appreciate the complexity of the past - and show some humility in the present. guardian.co.uk lurqer