The Rag Blog

WASHINGTON (March 1) – The Bush administration took a major step Friday toward building a new generation of nuclear warheads, selecting a design that is being touted as safer, more secure and more easily maintained than today’s arsenal.

A team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will proceed with the weapons design with an anticipation that the first warheads may be ready by 2012 as a replacement for Trident missiles on submarines.

The Democratic Party now has a majority in both houses of Congress. This new majority had promised, if elected, to act against the war. Every politician is trying to posture as if they are listening to their constituency. They are consumed with how to “spin” the war.

In questions of war, the executive, the president, has the decision-making power. But according to the Constitution only Congress may appropriate the funds for the war.

During the week of March 12 to 19, Congress is scheduled to cast the most critical vote since it voted in October 2002 to give President George Bush. full authorization to invade and occupy Iraq. That vote took place when the Democrats were also in the majority in the Senate. From the very beginning this has been a bipartisan war.

For revolutionary forces and determined opponents of the war, the question now is how to intervene in the congressional debate in a way that exposes the criminal complicity of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the war.

Is it inevitable that any struggle involving Congress will be co-opted by the Democratic Party and derailed?

Can the demand that Congress cut the funds for the war become a popular cry? Congress has the constitutional authority to do so.

As the Pentagon aims its guns at Iran, a determined struggle by the anti-war movement could open up additional demands. Millions of people in the U.S. who oppose war would learn that Congress also has full legal authority to act against the immediate threat of a new wider war on Iran. It would become clear that Congress has the authority to open a struggle against the whole gargantuan Pentagon budget, but only if masses of people in the U.S. are mobilized to demand it.

The Pentagon budget is an ever-growing monstrosity sucking in more than $1 million a minute. Every needed social program in the country—from education to health care, transportation to the environment—is being cut in order to fund a military budget that further enriches the largest corporations, especially the oil monopolies and the military-industrial complex.

If Democrats were really determined to end the war—even without a majority—a determined congressional minority could block the funding for the war. They could disrupt and filibuster. They could call on people from around the country to surround Congress. Any real resistance in Congress would inspire a response from the population and from GIs who are now opposing the war in greater numbers.

If there is no strong political intervention from below, then a weak, non-binding resolution like the one the House passed Feb. 16 will look like the best that can be done. To abstain from this struggle is to leave the arena totally to the reformists who want to pull the movement behind the Democratic Party and leave it without independent power.

The Democrats are quite willing to grandstand against the war. It is easy for them to target George W. Bush, a Republican. He is justifiably hated around the world. He is a war criminal by every standard. His popular support is now the lowest of any presidency, with the exception of Richard Nixon just before his resignation on the eve of impeachment.

These powerful Democratic politicians and their major financial backers are interested in pulling the attention of the mass anti-war movement away from the Democratic Party’s own support for the war, typified by Hillary Clinton’s refusal to state that she should not have voted for the war in the 2002 vote. She is currently refusing to take a nuclear strike at Iran “off the table.”

The Democrats are trying to focus the anger against the war exclusively on Bush. That is their entire 2008 election strategy.

It may not be popular or easy to open a struggle against all the forces—both Republican and Democratic—which support the war, as well as the interests of U.S. imperialism that they serve. Nevertheless, it is an essential struggle.

By the age of eight or nine, most children realize that Santa Claus isn’t a real person, just as they know the Easter Bunny and similar pleasantries are only make-believe, tales of imagination offered to add a bit of fun to the holidays. The great majority of children give up these fantasies without experiencing emotional upheaval that remotely approaches serious trauma. Those very rare children fortunate enough to be raised by adults who accord them the seriousness and respect they deserve know such stories to be ones of invention from the beginning.

Unfortunately, the great majority of Americans — led by a relentlessly trivial and mendacious political class and a comparably anti-intellectual media — never approach again the psychological achievement of children who undergo this transition. Still more unfortunately, most of these same children, while able to recognize fabrications of the Santa Claus variety, become prisoners of the American mythology that I recently discussed. Their pathetic plight is understandable in one sense, since almost no one will disabuse them of the lies with which they comfort themselves. Nonetheless, one can legitimately hope and expect that upon attaining adulthood, more individuals would be prepared to exercise even limited independent powers of assessment. But if you have such expectations, you will almost always be disappointed.

Thus it is that we have repellently idiotic episodes of the following kind:

A tempest has been brewing today over something Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said while on CBS-TV’s Late Show With David Letterman.

“Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be,” about the situation in Iraq, McCain said. “We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.”

The word “wasted” drew a sharp rebuke from the Democratic National Committee:

“Senator McCain should apologize immediately for his comments,” Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney said in an e-mail to reporters. “McCain should also explain this poll-driven change in his tune. How is it that John McCain now believes American lives are being ‘wasted,’ yet he so stubbornly supports the President’s plan to escalate the war in Iraq and put more American lives in harm’s way? Clearly in looking at his sinking poll numbers, he really will do or say just about anything to win.”

McCain’s wording was similar to that of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., another presidential contender who got criticized for saying last month that “we now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.” He quickly apologized, saying that “even as I said it, I realized I had misspoken.”

…

McCain has moved to calm the waters. His staff just e-mailed a statement from the Republican senator, acknowledging that he too agrees he shouldn’t have used the word “wasted”:

“Last evening, I referred to American casualties in Iraq as wasted,” McCain says. “I should have used the word, sacrificed, as I have in the past. No one appreciates and honors more than I do the selfless patriotism of American servicemen and women in the Iraq War. We owe them a debt we can never fully repay. And America’s leaders owe them, as well as the American people, our best judgment and honest appraisal of the progress of the war, in which they continue to sacrifice.

…

“That does not change the fact, however, that we have made many mistakes in the past, and we have paid a grievous price for those mistakes in the lives of the men and women who have died to protect our interests in Iraq and defend the rest of us from the even greater threat we would face if we are defeated there.”

“The selfless patriotism” of those “who have died to protect our interests in Iraq…”

America’s growing economic dependence on the hi-tech defense industry is creating a culture that views peace and nonviolence as seditious concepts.

“The fellas from 121 started showing up the other day. It’s starting to sink in… I’ll have to go home, the opportunities to kill these fuckers is rapidly coming to an end. Like a hobby I’ll never get to practice again. It’s not a great war, but it’s the only one we’ve got. God, I do love killing these bastards. … Morale is high, the Marines can smell the barn. It’s hard to keep them focused. I still have 20 days of kill these motherfuckers, so I don’t wanna take even one day off. ” — letter home from an unnamed Marine F/A -18 pilot in Iraq.

The above letter arrived in my inbox via an email circular sent by an acquaintance of mine, a defense analyst and former congressional aide named Winslow Wheeler. It came alongside a pained commentary by another former Pentagon analyst named Franklin (Chuck) Spinney, who is probably best known for the famous “Spinney report” of the mid-’80s which exposed the waste and inefficiency of many hi-tech Defense Department projects.

Spinney’s career followed the classic whistleblower arc; after sending his courageous Jerry Maguire letter on Pentagon waste up the bureaucratic flagpole, he was nearly buried by his own bosses only to be saved from ignominy at the last minute by the intercession of Senator Chuck Grassley, who invited him to air his findings in Congress.

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) – U.S. House of Representatives Democrats will more than fully fund President George W. Bush’s request for money to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, but are still debating conditions that could be attached, senior lawmakers said on Thursday.

“There will be $98 billion for the military part,” about $5 billion above the Bush administration’s request, said Rep. John Murtha, chairman of a defense spending panel overseeing war funds.

Murtha told reporters Democrats were still discussing provisions he wants to attach requiring that U.S. troops have proper training, adequate equipment and enough rest before being deployed into combat. “We don’t have it yet. We keep going back and refining it,” Murtha said.

But he sketched out a certification process that could be tougher than one floated earlier this week in which Bush would have been given flexibility to “waive” Murtha’s requirements.

Republicans and many conservative Democrats have expressed opposition to adding such conditions. That has forced House Democratic leaders to try to find a compromise that allows them to say they are working to phase out the war while also fully funding troops already in Iraq.

The additional money House Democrats want to add in includes $1 billion more for U.S. troops girding for a spring offensive in Afghanistan, Murtha said, and nearly $1 billion more to treat wounded American soldiers suffering from brain injuries and psychological problems related to combat.

Middle East: Most Early Reaction Welcomes US Participation in Regional Iraq Conference Amidst limited official reaction, a number of Arab journalists from Iraq’s key neighbors greeted the US decision to participate in regional meetings on Iraq as a positive step, though a leading Saudi-owned London-based daily, referring to statements by White House Spokesman Tony Snow, claimed that the Bush Administration was sending mixed signals. Initial Egyptian reaction has been terse and reportorial, while Turkish media warmly welcomed the idea, which one source claimed Turkey had initiated. Iran and Syria were more tepid, with Iran focusing on the effect of the meetings on Iraq, not on Iranian-US relations, and Syria stressing a need to consider a broader range of issues than just the situation in Iraq.

The limited initial reaction from key neighboring states to Secretary of State Rice’s 27 February announcement that the US would participate in the regional conferences was mostly hopeful, despite scattered claims of dubious US motives (for example, Al-Arab al-Yawm, 1 March).

An editorial in the independent, pro-government, wide-circulation Saudi daily, Al-Riyad, for example, characterized the US decision as a “radical change in American politics,” claiming that it could be a “lifeboat” for a way out of the Iraq crisis “with some success.” The influential Saudi-owned London daily Al-Hayah, however, citing assertions by the White House that it “has not changed its policy” towards Iran and Syria, claimed in a front-page report that the US was sending “conflicting signals” about conducting direct talks with the two countries (1 March).

The wide circulation, partially government -owned Jordanian daily Al-Dustur similarly said the US decision was “certainly a good step ,” calling it “a chance to open the closed gate of hope and revive a semi-dead peace process in the greater Middle East.” Likewise, a commentary in the wide circulation, partially government owned Al-Ra’y welcomed the fact that “representatives of the United States and Iran” will “sit at one table,” suggesting that Iran’s desire to “break the international isolation” and the US search “for a solution that would spare it more losses” may lead to progress on Iraq (1 March).

The United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan called the decision a “promising turning point.” Saying it was unclear what brought about the change, the commentary concluded that “the important thing is that one of the gateways to . . . dialogue has opened.” While acknowledging the skepticism of naysayers, it concluded that their doubts “do not cancel out the fact” that the US and Iran and Syria “are being brought together by the conviction that there is enough common ground for them to stand on” (1 March).

The independent Qatari daily Al-Sharq also welcomed the US decision, asserting that “hopes are now hanging on the international Iraq conference . . . not only to end the conflict in the country but also to find an honorable way out for US forces” (1 March).

Initial Egyptian media reaction to the announcement was terse.

In a front-page report, the Egyptian daily of record, Al-Ahram, called the US decision “a sudden change,” while noting that the US had agreed to “discussions, not negotiations” with Iran. Neither Al-Ahram nor other Egyptian papers have yet been observed to comment, though Western media cited a “top Egyptian diplomat” as saying that Egypt would send a representative to the meetings (AP, 28 February).

Initial Turkish reaction welcomed the meetings and touted Turkey’s role in bringing it about.

The secular, centrist, mass-appeal daily Milliyet asserted that “international diplomacy is the only way to achieve a solution,” while claiming that “it was Turkey . . . that launched the idea of bringing together” neighboring countries “two years ago” (1 March). The English -language secular centrist Turkish Daily News, citing unnamed diplomatic sources “close to the matter,” claimed that Turkey itself hopes to host a round of negotiations that includes the UN Security Council permanent members and members of the G-8 such as Japan, Germany, and Italy, noting that the efforts could even lead to a meeting of Iraqi President Talabani with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan (1 March).

Iran and Syria both offered a tepid welcome for the meetings. Iran’s reaction focused more on what official and media sources claimed were concerns for the well being of Iraq and Iraqis than on the opportunity to engage with the US, while Syrian official and media sources stressed a need to discuss a broader set of regional problems than just the situation in Iraq.

Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said that Iran would participate “if it will be of help to Baghdad” while dismissing the need for US participation, explaining that “regional countries can solve the Iraq problem and there is no need for . . . extra-regional countries” (Mehr News Agency, 28 February).

A pair of commentaries on Iranian state-run radio similarly cast doubt on US motives, saying that the “real intentions of the American Administration remain suspicious” and argued that the US willingness to talk with Iran “can (only) be considered sincere if it is accompanied by the amendment of Bush’s so-called new Iraq plan” (Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Radio-1, 28 February).

“The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete.” – Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006

“The second concern is that if an underground laboratory is deeply buried, that can also confound conventional weapons. But the depth of the Natanz facility – reports place the ceiling roughly 30 feet underground – is not prohibitive. The American GBU-28 weapon – the so-called bunker buster – can pierce about 23 feet of concrete and 100 feet of soil. Unless the cover over the Natanz lab is almost entirely rock, bunker busters should be able to reach it. That said, some chance remains that a single strike would fail.” – Michael Levi, New York Times, April 18, 2006

03/01/07 “ich” — – A familiar means of denying a reality is to refuse to use the words that describe that reality. A common form of propaganda is to keep reality from being described.

In such circumstances, silence and euphemism are forms of complicity both in propaganda and in the denial of reality. And the media, as well as the major presidential candidates, are now complicit.

The stories in the major media suggest that an attack against Iran is a real possibility and that the Natanz nuclear development site is the number one target. As the above quotes from two of our best sources note, military experts say that conventional “bunker-busters” such as the GBU-28 might be able to destroy the Natanz facility, especially with repeated bombings. On the other hand, they also say such iterated use of conventional weapons might not work, e.g., if the rock and earth above the facility becomes liquefied. On that supposition, a “low yield” “tactical” nuclear weapon, say, the B61-11, might be needed.

If the Bush administration, for example, were to insist on a sure “success,” then the “attack” would constitute nuclear war. The words in boldface are nuclear war, that’s right, nuclear war – a first strike nuclear war.

We don’t know what exactly is being planned – conventional GBU-28s or nuclear B61-11s. And that is the point. Discussion needs to be open. Nuclear war is not a minor matter.

The Euphemism

As early as August 13, 2005, Bush, in Jerusalem, was asked what would happen if diplomacy failed to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. Bush replied, “All options are on the table.” On April 18, the day after the appearance of Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker report on the administration’s preparations for a nuclear war against Iran, President Bush held a news conference. He was asked,

“Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?”

He replied,

“All options are on the table.”

The President never actually said the forbidden words “nuclear war,” but he appeared to tacitly acknowledge the preparations – without further discussion.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, speaking in Australia last week, backed up the President.

“We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference. But I’ve also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table.”

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, on FOX News, August 14, 2005, said the same.

“For us to say that the Iranians can do whatever they want to do and we won’t under any circumstances exercise a military option would be for them to have a license to do whatever they want to do … So I think the president’s comment that we won’t take anything off the table was entirely appropriate.”

But it’s not just Republicans. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, in a speech in Herzliyah, Israel, echoed Bush.

“To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.”

Although, Edwards has said, when asked about this statement, that he prefers peaceful solutions and direct negotiations with Iran, he has nonetheless repeated the “all options on the table” position – making clear that he would consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but without using the fateful words.

Hillary Clinton, at an AIPAC dinner in New York, said,

“We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.”

On 29 June 1934, Chancellor Adolph Hitler, accompanied by the Schutzstaffel (SS), arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested the leader of the Strum Abteilung (SA), Ernnst Roehm.

During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Roehm because of his past service to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Roehm should die. At first Hitler insisted that Roehm should be allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Roehm was shot by two SS men. (Spartacus.schoolnet.co)

Later, Hitler delivered a speech at the Reichstag in which he justified the murders of his rivals saying, “If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it ‘The Night of the Long Knives.’ Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot.”

The Night of the Long Knives is seen by many as the turning point where Hitler made it clear that he was above the law and the supreme leader of the German people.

Operation FALCON: Blueprint for removing dissidents and political rivals

The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.

Operation FALCON is the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration is fine-tuning its shock troops so it can roll up tens of thousands of people at a moment’s notice and toss them into the newly-built Halliburton detention centers. This should be a red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.

Operation FALCON was allegedly the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his counterpart in the US Marshal’s office, director Ben Reyna. But its roots go much deeper into the nexus of right-wing Washington think tanks where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history. The name, FALCON, is an acronym for “Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.” It relates to the more than 960 state, local and federal agencies which are directly involved in the administration’s expansive criminal dragnets.

Typically, law enforcement agencies are protective of their own turf and wary of outside intervention. The FALCON program overrides these concerns by streamlining the information sharing processes and setting up a chain of command structure that radiates from the Justice Department. This removes many of the traditional obstacles to agency interfacing. It also relocates the levers of power to Washington, where thy can be manned by members of the Bush administration.

Dictatorships require strong centralized authority and the FALCON program is a logical corollary of that ambition. It creates new inroads for Bush to assume greater control over the nationwide police-state apparatus. That alone should be sufficient reason for alarm.

The first Operation FALCON took place during the week of April 4 to April 10, 2005. According to the US Marshal’s official website, “The emphasis centered on gang related crimes, homicides, crimes involving use of a weapon, crimes against children and the elderly, crimes involving sexual assaults, organized crime and drug related fugitives, and other crimes of violence.” More than 10,000 criminal suspects were arrested in a matter of days. It was the largest criminal sweep in the nation’s history and, according to U.S. Marshall chief Ben Reyna, “produced the largest number of arrests ever recorded during a single initiative.” The Washington Times noted, “The sweep was a virtual clearinghouse for warrants on drug, gang, gun and sex-offender suspects nationwide.”

The emphasis was clearly on quantity not quality.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration will unveil a proposal Friday to sell up to 200,000 acres of national forest land in “isolated parcels” ranging from a quarter of an acre to 200 acres, much of it in California.

The sale is part of a National Forest Service plan to raise $800 million over the next five years to pay for rural schools in 41 states, offsetting shrinking revenues from sale of timber from national forests. The Bureau of Land Management also plans to sell federal lands to raise an estimated $182 million over five years.

Environmentalists charge that the short-term gain would be more than offset by the loss of public land. Congress would have to approve the land sales, but it has rejected similar recent proposals.

“I am outraged, and I don’t think the public is going to stand for it for one minute,” said Wilderness Society policy analyst Mike Anderson. “It’s a scheme to raise money at the expense of the national forests, the wildlife, recreation and all the other values that Americans hold dear. It’s the ultimate threat to the national forest.”

Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the proposed land sales make sense.

“Private property will end up in the possession of those who value it the most,” Taylor said. “That is an iron law of economics.”

Details about what plots of land would be put up for sale are expected to be revealed at a noon press conference by Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. The Forest Service owns 193 million acres of land and plans to sell about 175,000 to 200,000 acres, according to Forest Service spokeswoman Heidi Valetkevitch.

“They could be theoretically from every national forest,” Valetkevitch said. “California has a lot on the list, I understand.”

The lands in question aren’t environmentally sensitive wilderness or protected scenic areas, Valetkevitch said. “It could be something that’s in a neighborhood that people don’t even know is forest land,” she said.

The Bush-Cheney regime is America’s first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America’s moral reputation along with the infrastructures of two Muslim countries and countless thousands of Islamic civilians. Plans have been prepared, and forces moved into place, for an attack on a third Islamic country, Iran, and perhaps Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well.

This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues – principally Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Lewis Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Philip Zelikow, and Attorney General Gonzales. These are the main operatives who have controlled policy. They have been supported by their media shills at the Weekly Standard, National Review, Fox News, New York Times, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and by “scholars” in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

The entirety of their success in miring the United States in what could become permanent conflict in the Middle East is based on the power of propaganda and the big lie.

Initially, the 9/11 attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden, but after an American puppet was installed in Afghanistan, the blame for 9/11 was shifted to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who was said to have weapons of mass destruction that would be used against America. The regime sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to tell the lie to the UN that the Bush-Cheney regime had conclusive proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Having conned the UN, Congress, and the American people, the regime invaded Iraq under totally false pretenses and with totally false expectations. The regime’s occupation of Iraq has failed in a military sense, but the neoconservatives are turning their failure into a strategic advantage. At the beginning of this year President Bush began blaming Iran for America’s embarrassing defeat by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents in Iraq.

Bush accuses Iran of arming the Iraqi insurgents, a charge that experts regard as improbable. The Iraqi insurgents are Sunni. They inflict casualties on our troops, but spend most of their energy killing Iraqi Shi’ites, who are closely allied with Iran, which is Shi’ite. Bush’s accusation requires us to believe that Iran is arming the enemies of its allies.

On the basis of this absurd accusation – a pure invention – Bush has ordered a heavy concentration of aircraft carrier attack forces off Iran’s coast, and he has moved US attack planes to Turkish bases and other US bases in countries contingent to Iran. In testimony before Congress on February 1 of this year, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said that he expected the regime to orchestrate a “head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.” He said a plausible scenario was “a terrorist act blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran.” He said that the neoconservative propaganda machine was already articulating a “mythical historical narrative” for widening their war against Islam.