The Rag Blog

It takes a “specialist” on “Persian Gulf affairs, with special emphasis on Iran and Iraq” to get at the real reason behind the impending neocon attack on Iran.

Kenneth Katzman, who analyzes U.S. policy and legislation on the Persian Gulf region for members of Congress and their staffs, assigned to the House International Relations Committee, talks the talk across the corporate media spectrum, i.e., he is a neocon propagandist. Katzman tells us “Iran’s ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible,” that is if one “understands the Islamic republic’s many vulnerabilities,” Reuters reports.

As should be obvious by now, the neocon plan to deal with Iran’s “ascendancy” has nothing to do with nukes. It has everything to do with the fact our rulers, in particular the neocon faction, believe Iran is too big for its britches and thus will be cut down to size.

As the Clean Break boys told us a decade ago, an “effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” In this context, we can define “strategic initiative” as back-to-back bombing runs, wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, and plenty of mass murder and prolonged misery, and not simply along Israel’s northern border.

According to Wayne White, former top Middle East analyst for the State Department’s bureau of intelligence and research, the neocon plan for mass destruction will not be limited to a “surgical strike” against phantom nuke facilities.

“I’ve seen some of the planning,” claims White. “You’re talking about a war against Iran” that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years. “We’re not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We’re talking about clearing a path to the targets” by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that would undoubtedly target “commerce” (i.e., oil tankers) or U.S. warships now parked in the Gulf, patiently waiting for a new Gulf of Tonkin incident to get the World War Four ball rolling. Mr. White, no longer attached to the State Department, is “much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,” and rightfully so.

Iran’s illusory nukes, not dissimilar from Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, are simply a pretext, as the idea is to “shock and awe” the target population into submission.

“The logic of targeting civilian infrastructure appears in the book from which the Bush Administration drew its bombing strategy in 2003. Military researchers at the National Defense University wrote Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance in 1996. The text suggested applying U.S. military ‘resources to controlling, affecting, and breaking the will of the adversary to resist,’” writes William Van Wagenen. “Through Shock and Awe, the authors hoped that ‘the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese’ would result. President Bush responded enthusiastically to the concept of ‘Shock and Awe’ when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld introduced it to him in the lead up to the war…. As a war against Iran may be upon us in the coming years, we need to keep in mind the effects of U.S. military tactics on civilian populations. Targeting civilians is still terrorism, whether undertaken for the best of motives or the worst.” For the neocons, nuclear “shock and awe” is perfectly acceptable, even preferable.

Meanwhile, as “speculation over whether the American President was considering a nuclear strike against Tehran grew after his remarks in which he said that the U.S. will take any steps to halt Tehran’s alleged meddling in Iraq, Democratic leaders in Congress stepped up warning against what they said were White House plans to launch an attack against the Islamic Republic without first seeking approval from Congress,” reports Alijazeera.

Note the Democrats are not opposed to attacking Iran, but rather irked by Bush’s insistence on going it alone in solitary unitary decider fashion.

“The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat version of a warmonger, complained. Reid apparently had nothing to say about the morality or sanity of such an attack.

We’ve heard a lot about the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque lately. Bush has brought it up twice in the last week alone. It’s a critical part of the administration’s rationale for the occupation of Iraq, so we can expect to be reminded of it nearly as often as 9-11.

The destruction of the Golden-dome Mosque took place in February 2005 and has been identified as the “catalyzing event” that plunged the country into sectarian violence. That, at least, is just the official version. No one knows really what happened because the administration refused to conduct an independent investigation and the media excluded any account that didn’t square with the Pentagon’s spin on events.

What we’re left with is mere speculation.

Here’s what we know: Less than 4 hours after the explosion, the Bush public relations team cobbled together a statement that the bombing was the work of Sunni extremists or al Qaida terrorists. But, how did they know? They didn’t have witnesses on the ground in Samarra and they’ve never produced a scintilla of evidence to support their claims. It may be that the administration simply saw the bombing as an opportunity to twist the facts to suit their own purposes?

After all, the incident has been a propaganda-bonanza for the Bush team. They’ve used it to support their theory that Iraq is “the central battle in the war on terror” and that “we must fight them there if we don’t want to fight them over here”. It’s become one of the main justifications for the occupation; implying that the US military is needed as a referee to keep the warring factions from killing each other. It’s all just nonsense that’s designed to advance the administration’s political agenda.

If there had been an investigation, it would have shown whether the perpetrators were experts or not by the placement of the explosives. There’s a good chance they would’ve found bomb-residue which could have determined the composition of the material used. Forensics experts could have easily ascertained whether the explosives came from Iraqi munitions-dumps (as suggested) or from outside the country (like the USA, perhaps?)

The incident may well have been a “false flag” operation carried out by US intelligence agencies to provoke sectarian violence and, thus, reduce the number of attacks on American troops.

In any event, as soon as the mosque was destroyed the media swung into action focusing all of its attention on sectarian violence and the prospect of civil war. The media’s incessant “cheerleading” for civil war was suspicious, to say the least.

In the first 30 hours after the blast, more than 1,500 articles appeared on Google News providing the government version of events without deviation and without any corroborating evidence; just fluff that reiterated the Pentagon’s account verbatim and without challenge.

1500! Now that’s a well-oiled propaganda system!

Most of the articles were “cookie cutter-type” stories which used the same buzzwords and talking points as all the others; no interviews, no facts, no second opinions; simple, straightforward stenography—nothing more.

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – As the Iraqi government attempts to secure a capital city ravaged by conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs, its decision to bring a third party into the mix may cause more problems than peace.

Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else’s problem.

The Iraqi army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, and most of the soldiers remain loyal to the militia.

Much as Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces across Arab Iraq, the peshmerga fill the ranks of the Iraqi army in the Kurdish region in the north, poised to secure a semi-independent Kurdistan and seize oil-rich Kirkuk and parts of Mosul if Iraq falls apart. One thing they didn’t bank on, they said, was being sent into the “fire” of Baghdad.

“The soldiers don’t know the Arabic language, the Arab tradition, and they don’t have any experience fighting terror,” said Anwar Dolani, a former peshmerga commander who leads the brigade that’s being transferred to Baghdad from the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

Dolani called the desertions a “phenomenon” but refused to say how many soldiers have left the army.

A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its bystanders. “Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run and no space to hide,” wrote the senior UN relief official, Jan Egeland, and Jan Eliasson, then Swedish foreign minister, in Le Figaro. They described people “living in a cage”, cut off by land, sea and air, with no reliable power and little water and tortured by hunger and disease and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.

Egeland and Eliasson wrote this four months ago as an attempt to break the silence in Europe whose obedient alliance with the United States and Israel has sought to reverse the democratic result that brought Hamas to power in last year’s Palestinian elections. The horror in Gaza has since been compounded; a family of 18 has died beneath a 500-pound American/Israeli bomb; unarmed women have been mown down at point-blank range. Dr David Halpin, one of the few Britons to break what he calls “this medieval siege”, reported the killing of 57 children by artillery, rockets and small arms and was shown evidence that civilians are Israel’s true targets, as in Lebanon last summer. A friend in Gaza, Dr Mona El-Farra, emailed: “I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms [a collective punishment by the Israeli air force] and artillery on my 13-year-old daughter. At night, she shivers with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. I try to make her feel safe, but when the bombs sound I flinch and scream …”

The little company in Texas with the big hope has peaked out of the woodwork again.

Here is part of the press release:

“The first commercial application of the EESU is intended to be used in electric vehicles under a technology agreement with ZENN Motors Company. EEStor, Inc. remains on track to begin shipping production 15 kilowatt-hour Electrical Energy Storage Units (EESU) to ZENN Motor Company in 2007 for use in their electric vehicles.

The production EESU for ZENN Motor Company will function to specification in operating environments as sever as negative 20 to plus 65 degrees Celsius, will weigh less than 100 pounds, and will have ability to be recharged in a matter of minutes. (clip)

I watched the performance, and I had the strong impression of a man reading a text from a Teleprompter and, who, having never seen it before being pushed to the podium, was attempting to understand it while reading it for the first time, and was quietly horrified, to the extent he understood anything at all about its implications. It was like a child being handed a Mapquest printout and told to open it and read it for Daddy, once the family is on the road. He starts reading it as the car backs out of the driveway and does so, knowing Daddy has his meal ticket. But as he’s reading, he’s thinking, ” ‘Then right turn off of road into Hell, arrive in Hell…..two-tenths of a mile.’ Is that a GOOD place, Daddy? We’re going straight to Hell?”

Bill’s bicycle whisked through city traffic, mounted the first countryside hill and glided to La Julia in Batabano municipality.

I cycled the 50 kilometers by noon so intent was I on taking a break from noisy Havana and the many Yankee T-shirt-clad unconscionable people. I especially looked forward to revisiting the farm where I had often volunteered in the first half of the 1990s.

GIA-2 was the state collective (granja) nomenclature before it became Colonel Mambi Juan Delgado contingente, later changed to the José A Fernández UBPC (Basic Units of Production Cooperation) cooperative.

Hungry farmers milled before the camp kitchen. Benito, the tall lanky Microjet drummer, approached me. Microjet was the irrigating system—hoses fixed in the air or on the ground from which comes a fine spray. Benito had been a contingent member, who had formed the Microjet band with other volunteers.

“The Microjets are gone, Ron. I’m the only one remaining. But others you knew are still here and most have their houses. I’m way down on the list since I am single. But Edgardo and Guillermina got theirs.

“The camp is improved. We are fewer here now so we can share a room with only one person instead of six. And we got rid of that fucking sex restriction. Now we can have a woman in bed,” old Benito grinned.

I biked the kilometer to the concrete-block housing compound, which I witnessed started with four houses. As I gazed at the identical grey structures, a woman walked out of one. Despite her sombrero, I recognized the muscular Guillermina Montero. Surprised lit up her face. After embracing, we walked into her house to see her husband, Edgardo Rochet. They insisted I stay for lunch.

Most workers have their own houses now, and those who have no longer eat at the camp cafeteria. If they do eat there, a meal costs 50 centavos. Guillermina and Edgardo showed me their home and insisted I stay with them. They have plenty of space: four rooms, bathroom and kitchen. Since they live alone, one room is used to store fresh harvested foods and three unused bicycles, all lacking tires and tubes, “which cannot be found”, lamented Edgardo.

Their kitchen is charred black from an accident with the kerosene cooking apparatus.

“We should use gas but it is not as available as is kerosene. We are all to get the new electric plates this month, and then I’ll `find´ some paint to brighten up the kitchen,” Edgardo said.

“The state says it will be making refrigerators available to us also,” interjected Guillermina enthusiastically. “We haven’t had one for years since ours broke down and there were no parts.”

The bathroom light burns constantly because of a broken fixture, which will soon be replaced with the new energy-saving filaments and bulbs. The sink is broken. More often than not there is no running water for showering or flushing the toilet. Buckets are kept filled for both functions. The residential compound gets its water from the well at the nearby countryside school, but there are no set times for water flow. Since many of the couples both work, it is often a house-wife neighbor who fills up empty buckets for others.

The living room is the centre of attention, because of the Chinese Atec-Panda television set, which Guillermina “won” for being voted destacada (distinguished) worker many times. She is paying half price (4000 pesos) on a three-year time plan without interest. Her average wage is 500 pesos a month, which supplements her 262-peso retirement. Guillermina retired last year. At 56, she is the oldest woman worker.

“I like to work and helping out the banana plantation crews, plus we put away a little extra for some future event,” the broad-faced woman said, showing youthful white teeth. After lunch, she returned to her bananas.

“Now, that we have specific work responsibilities, I’ve decided to take the afternoon off. I’m caught up with weeding our papayas,” explained Edgardo. He wanted to talk with me while cleaning house and preparing for dinner.

Edgardo, now 50 years old gets 700 pesos monthly. These “wages” are advances based upon the previous year’s income. The crews earn according to the product results they cultivate. All workers spend some time on the libreta (rations) crops like potatoes plus their own designated crops.

At the end of each season, sales are divided amongst the workers after the cooperative takes its cut for maintenance, administration and new investments. Last year, Edgardo earned 8000 pesos over the advance monthly “wage”. Workers in the more demanding guayaba fruit plantation earned twice that. Some crops require less work and bring in less income.

“We can feel the differences, Ron. We are more comfortable since share-profiting was introduced and since we got our house, in 1997. We’re earning three times what we did when you were here. We pay a pittance for the house until we own it outright (they can’t be thrown out by law), and nothing for gas, water or electricity.

“Of course, not all is roses. They didn’t come near their promise of housing construction and we still don’t have more say running things but the system is more open. So I decided to join the party. I’m now a militant.”

Guillermina came in with a small chicken in one hand and a bottle of my name in the other. She had taken off work early to buy her favorite meat at 60 pesos, and a cheap rum at 30 pesos.

“We celebrate your return, Ron. Cheers,” and we downed a tingling shot.

Guillermina caressed our dinner with a large callused hand. Its eyes closed peacefully and she twisted its neck in one motion. Not a pip. It took Guillermina just minutes to pluck and cut up the chicken. As it simmered in a pan, and as the sweet potatoes, rice and beans were cooking—which Edgardo had prepared along with a fresh green and tomato salad—the loving couple took a bucket bath together. Edgardo had heated the water with a Chinese spiral electrical heater.

Dinner was delicious and festive.

Virginia could become one of the first states to require parents to either get their middle-school daughters vaccinated against viruses that can cause cervical cancer or apply for an exemption.

Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, has introduced a bill that would add the human papillomavirus vaccine to the list of immunizations needed for school attendance.

Hamilton said pharmaceutical company representatives approached him about submitting the bill, probably because he chairs the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions. Drug companies have been among the largest contributors to Hamilton’s election campaigns.

The House panel is scheduled to review HB1914 on Tuesday.

Under Hamilton’s bill, the first of the three-dose vaccine series – which protects against a sexually transmitted disease – would need to be taken before girls’ entry into middle school.

Although health providers have hailed the vaccine as a major breakthrough in the prevention of cervical cancer, there has been an undercurrent of concern about young girls being vaccinated against a sexually transmitted disease.

Hamilton said parents who objected to their daughters having the vaccine would be exempted from the requirement if they reviewed material about the vaccine and filled out a form. Children also could be exempted by parents and guardians for religious or medical reasons. The requirement would take effect in September 2008.

Traditional conservative, William F. Buckley was once asked how he would describe a “liberal.” He thought for moment, his snake-like tongue darting about just behind open lips, then spoke.

“A liberal is someone who over-waters their house plants.”

Ouch! That hurt. Because he was right. I knew exactly what he meant. Why would a liberal over-water a house plant? Because they were mean? No. Quite the opposite. They were just trying to help. Because liberals are nice people – sometimes too nice. Liberals have over-developed empathy glands. When a liberal tells you he or she “feels your pain,” they mean it — even if at that particular moment you’re not feeling it.

Now, before you jump all over me, I’m a liberal. (Well, a social liberal anyway, though I tend to be more conservative when it comes to things like balancing the federal checkbook.) But on social issues I’m right there – choice for women, equality for everyone and more than a little suspicious about what the domestic Axis of Evil — corporate/political/media nexus – are up to.

But, just as conservatives always go too far with their proclivities, so too do liberals. And for both, that is always their downfall. We are coming to the end – whew! — of a conservative cycle and just beginning the next liberal cycle. Be assured, it too will inevitably end in excess. But maybe we can avoid some obvious mistakes early on.

Which is why I am risking the ire of the liberal/progressive community to speak frankly about immigration reform. I know the war in Iraq is currently consuming almost all the available attention – and rightfully so. But there are other festering wounds on America’s body-politic that require immediate attention, and one of the biggest is immigration.

But before I put the war aside for a moment, we should all remind ourselves that it took the Democrats were also on the wrong side of that issue – and for way too long. And, though they seem to have now gotten it right, it’s too late. The damage is done, and it’s irreversible. Simply put, Democrats were snookered, bamboozled and herded like sheep to the slaughter by conservatives on the war.

And now they are now being led to the slaughter again, by the same bunch, on immigration reform.

Yes the Neocons are at it again. On the war they played on Democrat’s fear of being seen as sissies. This time Neocons are playing on liberal empathy for the very real plight of illegal immigrants from Mexico. But as laudable as that empathy is, it’s a trap and Democrats have taken the bait – again.

By falling in step with the Bush administration’s so-called “comprehensive immigration reform,” Democrats are driving a dagger into the hearts of working class Americans, particularly those struggling to survive at the bottom of the income scale. In other words, they are about to screw the very people they claim should vote Democrat because only Democrats will help them.

(01-18) 04:00 PST Baghdad — Even before bombings at a university killed at least 65 students this week, officials said Iraq’s higher education system was on the verge of collapse.

Faced with the lingering war and unrelenting sectarian violence, students by the thousands have been leaving campuses to return home or enroll at universities in other countries. Enrollment fell by more than half at some colleges in the past year alone, education officials said.

Meanwhile, Iraqi professors continue to be targeted for assassination and intimidation. According to Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry, insurgent and militia groups have killed at least 280 academics since 2003, and 3,250 others have fled the country. The violence also has caused as many as 40 percent of Iraq’s professionals to flee the country since the U.S.-led invasion nearly four years ago, according to the Brookings Institution, an independent research group in Washington.

But education officials say they are determined to carry on.

“It would be a big blow against all Iraq if universities closed down now,” Basil Al-Khaleeb, 55, spokesman for the Higher Education Ministry, said before Tuesday’s bombings at the largely Shiite Al-Mustansirya University. “We didn’t stop during the past two wars, and we’re working to continue during this war.”

Iraq’s higher education system was once considered the most advanced in the Middle East. Tuition is free at 20 government-run public universities, such as Baghdad University, and 47 technical institutes. Private colleges charge between $114 and $305 annually. But the system has declined dramatically in the past 20 years.

Twin car bombs near the gates of Al-Mustansirya University on Tuesday killed at least 65 students, mostly women, a university official said. Images of bloodstained notebooks and a burned-out minivan that students had been getting into were shown on satellite TV news stations.

Sais Hussein, 21, a junior majoring in geography at Baghdad University’s School of Arts, said now he is unlikely to finish the school year.

“My mother was crying today because she saw the dead students and imagined I could be one of them,” Hussein said in a telephone interview. “I would like to continue my classes, but my parents decided it’s too dangerous for me to return to school. I don’t know what to do.”

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.

Responding to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, Gonzales argued that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly bestow habeas corpus rights; it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales’s remark left Specter, the committee’s ranking Republican, stammering.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter said.

While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.

For instance, the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

You can read all about the nasty business of washing war crimes at the Washington Post. They start with fixing the headline. “Death in Haditha” – not ‘mass murder in Haditha’ or ‘Another American Atrocity in Iraq.’ Next, forget the damning details, screw the truth and give the perpetrators all the room in the world to blame their conduct on ‘mistakes’ made in the heat of battle amidst the fog of war.

There never was any mystery about what happened in Haditha. Four of the victims were students and the fifth was a taxi driver giving them a lift back from school. One of the Marines involved in the executions later urinated on the bodies. The same company of marines continued their killing spree by butchering twenty other civilians, including women and children. As usual, the Pentagon managed to cover up the story for a few months. Fortunately, in this instance, the survivors got to tell their story.

Remember the name of the rotten excuse of a journalist who covered the story for the Washington Post – Josh White. After giving an obligatory sanitized version of the facts, he speculates that “the accounts provide evidence that as the Marines came under attack, they responded in ways that are difficult to reconcile with their rules of engagement.” Really! Is that it? Maybe we should throw the book at this death squad attired in Marine uniforms for the crime of “breaching the rules of engagement.” That should at least qualify as a misdemeanor of some sort.

As it turns out, the accounts provided no such ‘evidence.’ In fact, the Associated Press explicitly contradicted Josh White. It noted that “U.S. criminal investigators found no evidence to support the claim of Marines charged in the deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians that five were shot after trying to flee the scene of a roadside bombing that killed one Marine. Investigators determined that all five Iraqis were shot within arm’s length of each other and no more than 18 feet from the white taxi they were ordered to exit by members of a Marine squad in the western Iraqi town of Haditha.”

It’s a matter of historical record that the Post was instrumental in marketing the war of choice in Mesapotamia. Its reporters and neo-con commentators were among the elite shock troops that conspired with the Office of Special Plans to perpetrate the WMD hoax against the American public. Spreading the canard that the pre-meditated murders in Haditha took place in the heat of battle – as “the Marines came under attack” – is exactly the kind of coverage one should expect from the likes of Josh White.

Haditha is a carbon copy of the slaughter at My Lai. And just like My Lai – it is but a representative sample of hundreds of war crimes that have been committed by the American occupation army against the Iraqi people. The policy of dismissing civilian casualties as ‘collateral damage’ has become nothing more than a grant of immunity to each and every ‘coalition’ combatant.

Do the rules of engagement that govern the behavior of troops in Iraq encourage this kind of atrocity? Were Rumsfeld’s rules legal? Do they comply with international law governing the conduct of an occupation army? Is Haditha really an exception? How many Haditha type incidents took place in the sieges of Fallujah, Tel Afar or Ramadi? Is the conduct of our troops part of the reason for the insurgency? The Haditha story stayed buried for two months. How high up did the cover-up go?