The Rag Blog

02/16/07 “ICH” — — It is always painful to watch George stumble his way through press conferences. He can’t get through a sentence without at least two-three “uhs,” his eye lids flutter up and down in what my daughter, Carly, calls the “liar’s blink” and just because it is painful that a human like that is ostensibly the leader of the free world. There is always a plethora of things that he says, does, or screws up on to write about but this time what caught my attention happened during the Q & A. George was asked if he thought the economic sanctions on Iran would work because so many European nations trade with that country.

He stopped to collect his thoughts with what he thought must’ve looked like a studied and careful demeanor, but more like someone with a sour tummy, and said: “well, let’s put it this way…money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world (I added the italics). It is always interesting with people who frequently play fast and loose with the truth, such as the liars in BushCo, once in awhile, if they talk long enough they tell a truth.

In a rebuke of a surveillance practice greatly expanded by the New York Police Department after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal judge ruled today that the police must stop the routine videotaping of people at public gatherings unless there was an indication that unlawful activity may occur.

Nearly four years ago, at the request of New York City, the same judge, Charles S. Haight Jr., had given the police greater authority to investigate political, social and religious groups.

In today’s ruling, however, Judge Haight of Federal District Court in Manhattan found that by videotaping people who were exercising their right to free speech and breaking no laws, the Police Department had ignored the milder limits he had imposed on it in 2003.

Citing two events in 2005 — a march in Harlem and a demonstration by homeless people in front of the Upper East Side home of Mayor Michael Bloomberg — the judge said the city offered scant justification for videotaping the people involved.

“There was no reason to suspect or anticipate that unlawful or terrorist activity might occur,” he wrote, “or that pertinent information about or evidence of such activity might be obtained by filming the earnest faces of those concerned citizens and the signs by which they hoped to convey their message to a public official.”

While he called the police conduct “egregious,” Judge Haight also offered an unusual judicial mea culpa, taking responsibility for his own words in a 2003 order that, he conceded, had not been “a model of clarity.”

The restrictions on videotaping do not apply to bridges, tunnels, airports, subways or street traffic, Judge Haight noted, but are meant to control police surveillance at events where people gather to exercise their rights under the First Amendment.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has arrested some 65 men suspected of being behind a deadly bombing that killed members of the elite Revolutionary Guards in a southeastern border province, the student news agency ISNA said on Friday.

It quoted the local police chief as saying the suspects had clear links to U.S. and British intelligence services. The claim comes at a time when the United States has accused Iranian groups of involvement in the war in Iraq.

A booby-trapped car blew up a bus owned by the Guards on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people in the city of Zahedan, the capital of the Sistan-Baluchestan province which has been the center of low-level unrest over the past months.

The attack was claimed by a shadowy Sunni militant group, Jundallah (God’s soldiers), which Iran has said was linked to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. Tehran has blamed Jundallah for past killings in the area bordering Pakistan.

“Security forces have arrested some 65 suspects in Zahedan … They are linked to the terrorist Jundallah group,” local police commander Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari was quoted by ISNA as saying.

Iran has accused Britain and the United States of supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in the sensitive border areas to destabilize the country.

“Our investigations clearly shows their connection to American and British intelligence organizations and also to groups opposed to the Islamic republic,” Ghafari said.

Iranian officials said on Wednesday that five of those behind the bombing, including the key suspect, were arrested by security forces.

02/14/07 “ICH” — — “As we debate this nonbinding resolution on Iraq, the Administration is preparing for the next war, in Iran. We are losing our democracy to war, massive debt, fear and fraud. The American people need Congress to surge toward the Constitution, surge toward the truth.

“Some call this resolution a first step. I would like to believe that Congress will respond to the will of the American people expressed in the November election. They expect us to take real action, to assert our constitutional power, to take America out of Iraq by refusing to provide any more funding for the war. That is our right. That is our duty. We have a duty to restrain an Administration which is conducting an illegal war. We have a duty to hold to a constitutional accounting a President and a Vice President who led us into a war based on lies.

“I led the effort against the Iraq War resolution. With unanimous consent I ask to put into the record an analysis of the President’s war resolution which was given to members of Congress back in October of 2002. It pointed out that there was no proof that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, anything to do with 9/11, anything to do with Al-Qaeda’s role in 9/11. It is not as if Congress had no idea the war was based on untruths.

“Now we must tell the truth, not just about escalation, but about the occupation: We are illegally occupying Iraq. We attacked a nation which did not attack us. We must recognize the wrong that has been done and move to right it.

“Instead of debating the end of the war, Congress is ironically preparing to give the war a new beginning. Some have made it clear long before this particular resolution that they will continue to vote to fund the war by approving the upcoming supplemental appropriation, even though money exists to bring the troops home now.

“When we equate funding the war with supporting the troops we are dooming thousands of young Americans who are valiantly following the orders of their Commander in Chief. If we truly cared about the troops, we would not leave them in the middle of a civil war. If we truly cared about the troops, we would not leave them in a conflict for which there is no military solution.

“The war is binding. The resolution is not. This resolution will not end the war. It will not bring our beloved troops home. It will not even stop the Administration from sending more troops. That is because this resolution is non binding.

“The war is binding. The resolution is not. 3,100 U.S. troops are bound in death. 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians are bound in death.

“The war is binding the resolution is not. American taxpayers are bound in debt. The war could cost $2 trillion. We are borrowing money from Beijing to fight a war in Baghdad. Worse, each and every time Congress votes to fund the war, it votes to reauthorize the war. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but there are weapons of mass destruction here at home: Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction, lack of education is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. We must find and disarm those weapons of mass destruction which threaten the security of our own nation. But first Congress must take responsibility.

“The Federal Court has made it abundantly clear that once a war is well underway, Congress’ real power is to cut off funds. Funding the war is approval of the war.

“The American people are waiting for us to provide real leadership to show the way out of Iraq. My 12-point plan responds to that demand. This plan, drafted with the help of experts in international peace-keeping. Specialists with UN experience and veteran military advisers, creates a peace process which will enable our troops to come home and stabilize Iraq.

The Kucinich Plan to End the War in Iraq includes the following:

BAGHDAD, 14 February 2007 (IRIN) – Militia fighters and insurgents responsible for much of the internecine violence in Iraq are also offering humanitarian assistance to their own communities to fill a vacuum left by the government and aid agencies.

“It is the minimum that we can do as the Iraqi government is weak. Some people need medical assistance, others food and since they are our followers, we have to support them,” said Ali Jalil, a spokesman for the Mahdi Army, commanded by religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr and the most powerful Shia Muslim militia in the country.

Because of the high levels of insecurity in Iraq, most international aid agencies have left the country – the United Nations moved its agencies to Jordan in August 2003 following two deadly attacks on its Baghdad compound.

Now, the Iraqi Red Crescent is the only aid agency working throughout the country, and even they have had their operations hampered by violence and it is becoming increasingly difficult for aid workers to gain access to the needy.

In recent months, fighters have been offering all kinds of assistance to their respective sectarian groups, from the provision of food supplies, clothes and blankets to physical security.

“We have been looking for this assistance from different countries and organisations, which I prefer not to name as the [Iraqi] government might think they are supporting us with arms,” Jalil said. “Mainly, we get assistance from all over Iraq, from thousands of donation boxes that are stuffed with cash every week after Friday prayers in mosques.”

Assistance only for supporters

It is clear that such assistance is given only to those families who have relatives supporting a particular militia group, as was explained by Umm Hassan, 53, from Sadr city, a suburb of Baghdad controlled by the Mahdi Army.

“One of my sons was hit by US troops and on the same day my other son had serious convulsions. I went to one of [Muqtadar]al-Sadr’s offices in our district seeking help. The first question they asked me was if my boys were fighting under the name of the Mahdi Army. When I said they were, they gave me everything I wanted,” Umm Hassan said.

At the Morgue.

We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over. The young men of the family, as was customary, rose to go.

“NO!” cried his mother. “Isn’t my son enough?? Must we lose more of our youth?? You know there are unknowns who wait at the Morgue to either kill or kidnap the men who dare reach its doors. I will go.”

So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I.

I was praying all the way there.

I never thought a day would come when it was the women of the family, who would be safer on the roads. All the men are potential terrorists it seems, and are therefore to be cut down on sight. This is the logic of today, is it not? To kill evil before it even has a chance to take root.

When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. “We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We don’t know what he looks like.”

Now begins a horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned .We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and EVERYWHERE body parts.

We were asked what we were looking for, “ upper half” replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. “Over there”. We looked for our boy’s broken body between tens of other boys’ remains’; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.

We found him millennia later, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.

HOUSTON, TX, United States (UPI) — Former Iraq Oil Minister Issam Al-Chalabi paints a bleak picture for the future of Iraq`s oil industry, panning the result of the U.S.-led war, its insistence on passing an oil law, and the situation aboveground hampering development of the resources below it.

‘Iraq offers nothing but misery and mystery,’ Chalabi told a plenary this week during an international energy conference in Houston.

He drew his dire picture and prediction of Iraq during sessions on both global upstream oil and gas issues and Middle East geopolitics and energy at the Cambridge Energy Research Associates CERA Week conference.

‘I was in this hall exactly four years ago … and people realized by then the war was inevitable,’ Chalabi said. ‘So where do we stand today?’

The global energy information firm Platts reports Iraq`s production in January dropped to an average 1.66 million barrels a day from nearly 1.9 million in December.

Around 96 percent of Iraq`s budget comes from selling oil, and exports dropped to about 1.2 million barrels, Chalabi said.

Iraq has around 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, the third-most in the world, and analysts say much more have not been discovered.

Iraq has a capacity to produce nearly 3 million barrels per day but violence, a lack of electricity and the poor condition of the infrastructure is blamed for keeping production numbers well below the 2.6 million bpd pumped before the war.

‘They can`t increase; the only way is for production to go down,’ said Mohamed Zine, regional manager of the Middle East for energy analyst firm IHS.

‘There`s been no improvement, nothing,’ said Zine, whose views on the situation in Iraq are often less dramatic than Chalabi`s. ‘It`s getting worse.’

The northern oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan, Turkey, is attacked enough to render it mostly inoperable. Most of the oil produced and exported is from fields in the south.

The January downturn is attributed to that violence, plus bad weather and stoppage for repairs.

Without naming names, Chalabi (no relation to Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite whose faulty intelligence on Saddam Hussein was relied on to make the case for war) took digs at those who said or still say the Iraq war and occupation has been a success.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled the U.S. Congress when she said last week that she had not seen a 2003 Iranian proposal for talks with the United States, a former senior government official said on Wednesday.

Flynt Leverett, who worked on the National Security Council when it was headed by Rice, likened the proposal to the 1972 U.S. opening to China. He said he was confident it was seen by Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell but “the administration rejected the overture.”

Speaking at a conference on Capitol Hill, Leverett said “this was a serious proposal, a serious effort” by Iran to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.

“The Bush administration up to and including Secretary Rice is misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran proposal,” he said.

Testifying before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee last week, Rice told lawmakers who asked about Leverett’s previous public comments and writings on the Iranian proposal: “I don’t know what Flynt Leverett’s talking about.”

She faulted him for not telling her, “We have a proposal from Iran and we really ought to take it.”

At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said: “What she said is she has no recollection of having seen it. She has said that repeatedly.” he said the accusation that she had misled Congress was “just absolutely 100 percent false.”

Leverett and others have represented the proposal as a missed opportunity that could have defused tensions with Iran which have grown to the point that the U.S. administration has been forced to deny it plans military action against Tehran.

Leverett said he deserved an apology from Rice for calling his competence into question.

He said he had left the National Security Council, which advises the president on security issues, in March 2003 before the Iranian proposal was received. He returned to the CIA where he previously worked and soon after that left government.

Hence, he wasn’t in a position to made this case directly to Rice, nor was it his responsibility, he said.

But among other things, Leverett said that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a discussion about the Iranian proposal, told him he “couldn’t sell it at the White House.” This was evidence it had been discussed there, he said.

The proposal was transmitted to the White House in May 2003 by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, who represented U.S. interests there. Washington has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.