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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
 Thu Sep 26, 2002 2:01 pm
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Nations Vent Quietly Over U.S.
Thu Sep 26, 3:14 AM ET
By SONYA ROSS, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Germany is not alone in its irritation with the United States.
A small community of nations, strained by U.S. pressure to support war with Iraq, have been quietly taking out their frustrations on other aspects of President Bush's agenda.
Saudi Arabia turned aside U.S.-backed suggestions that the market should set the price of oil. European nations, annoyed by tax breaks given to U.S. corporations overseas, are threatening to impose $4 billion in sanctions the World Trade Organization (WTO) said it could impose on American products.
No major European allies have signed onto a U.S. request that they shield Americans from a new international criminal court for war crimes. Brazil, which flatly said it would not back unilateral U.S. action in Iraq, upped its steel exports to offset high U.S. tariffs imposed by Bush.
"They are shipping more and making less," said Jeffrey Schott, a global trade expert with the Institute for International Economics. "Nobody's going to be inclined to grin and bear it."
At the core of this resistance is a sense of powerlessness against the Bush administration's insistence that it can, and will, act alone against Baghdad if the United Nations won't.
"I think there is residual resentment," said John Hulsman, European affairs expert at the Heritage Foundation. "If they don't negotiate with the United States and reach some kind of deal, they will look impotent. That reminder of impotence, I think, has got to grate on people."
Many nations were peeved well before Bush went to the United Nations and advocated prying Saddam Hussein from power in Baghdad. They were taken aback by Bush's decided disdain for international treaties; Russia, for one, felt very let down by that, even as it was buoyed by its warm new U.S. partnership, said Anatol Lieven, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"It expected America would reach a real arms limitation. It was expected that America would move very quickly to give Russia a new relationship with NATO ," Lieven said. "All of this creates a very unfortunate impression in Russia," he said, that the United States has "disregard for other people's interests."
Determined to keep Americans beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court, the United States threatened to end U.N. peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and other hot spots, then launched an effort to strike independent agreements with nations.
So far, agreements have been reached with 12 countries. By contrast, 78 nations signed the treaty that created the court, including NATO allies Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.
The U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper, said nations "recognize this is an issue on the side" and don't link it to Iraq policy. But he also acknowledged that it could come up eventually, saying, "We do not want this as a talking point in our relations with states."
Bush made it an issue on Wednesday with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. But foreign minister Maria Carolina Barco said no new pact was necessary, because an agreement on this matter was reached 40 years ago.
"I don't think the rest of the world is about to balance against the United States, because they get too many benefits," Hulsman said. "They'll grumble, they'll sit in cafes and complain about us, but they'll continue to go along grudgingly with the order of power."
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Mech on 09-26-2002] |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Fri Sep 27, 2002 12:47 am
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The Dishonesty of This So-Called Dossier
by Robert Fisk
Tony Blair's "dossier" on Iraq is a shocking document. Reading it can only fill a decent human being with shame and outrage. Its pages are final proof – if the contents are true – that a massive crime against humanity has been committed in Iraq. For if the details of Saddam's building of weapons of mass destruction are correct – and I will come to the "ifs" and "buts" and "coulds" later – it means that our massive, obstructive, brutal policy of UN sanctions has totally failed. In other words, half a million Iraqi children were killed by us – for nothing.
Let's go back to 12 May 1996. Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, had told us that sanctions worked and prevented Saddam from rebuilding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Our Tory government agreed, and Tony Blair faithfully toed the line. But on 12 May, Mrs Albright appeared on CBS television. Leslie Stahl, the interviewer, asked: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" To the world's astonishment, Mrs Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."
Now we know – if Mr Blair is telling us the truth – that the price was not worth it. The price was paid in the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. But it wasn't worth a dime. The Blair "dossier" tells us that, despite sanctions, Saddam was able to go on building weapons of mass destruction. All that nonsense about dual-use technology, the ban on children's pencils – because lead could have a military use – and our refusal to allow Iraq to import equipment to restore the water-treatment plants that we bombed in the Gulf War, was a sham.
This terrible conclusion is the only moral one to be drawn from the 16 pages that supposedly detail the chemical, biological and nuclear horrors that the Beast of Baghdad has in store for us. It's difficult, reading the full report, to know whether to laugh or cry. The degree of deceit and duplicity in its production speaks of the trickery that informs the Blair government and its treatment of MPs.
There are a few tidbits that ring true. The new ammonium perchlorate plant illegally supplied by an Indian company – which breached those wonderful UN sanctions, of course – is a frightening little detail. So is the new rocket test stand at the al-Rafah plant. But this material is so swamped in trickery and knavery that its inclusion becomes worthless.
Here is one example of the dishonesty of this "dossier". On page 45, we are told – in a long chapter about Saddam's human rights abuses – that "on March 1st, 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, riots (sic) broke out in the southern city of Basra, spreading quickly to other cities in Shia-dominated southern Iraq. The regime responded by killing thousands". What's wrong with this paragraph is the lie is in the use of the word "riots". These were not riots. They were part of a mass rebellion specifically called for by President Bush Jr's father and by a CIA radio station in Saudi Arabia. The Shia Muslims of Iraq obeyed Mr Bush Sr's appeal. And were then left to their fate by the Americans and British, who they had been given every reason to believe would come to their help. No wonder they died in their thousands. But that's not what the Blair "dossier" tells us.
And anyone reading the weasel words of doubt that are insinuated throughout this text can only have profound concern about the basis for which Britain is to go to war. The Iraqi weapon program"is almost certainly" seeking to enrich uranium. It "appears" that Iraq is attempting to acquire a magnet production line. There is evidence that Iraq has tried to acquire specialized aluminum tubes (used in the enrichment of uranium) but "there is no definitive intelligence" that it is destined for a nuclear program"If" Iraq obtained fissile material, Iraq could produce nuclear weapons in one or two years. It is "difficult to judge" whether al-Hussein missiles could be available for use. Efforts to regenerate the Iraqi missile program"probably" began in 1995. And so the "dossier" goes on.
Now maybe Saddam has restarted his WMD program Let's all say it out loud, 20 times: Saddam is a brutal, wicked tyrant. But are "almost certainly", "appears", "probably" and "if" really the rallying call to send our grenadiers off to the deserts of Kut-al-Amara?
There is high praise for UN weapons inspectors. And there is more trickery in the relevant chapter. It quotes Dr Hans Blix, the executive chairman of the UN inspection commission, as saying that in the absence of (post-1998) inspections, it is impossible to verify Iraqi disarmament compliance. But on 18 August this year, the very same Dr Blix told Associated Press that he couldn't say with certainty that Baghdad possessed WMDs. This quotation is excised from the Blair "dossier", of course.
So there it is. If these pages of trickery are based on "probably" and "if", we have no business going to war. If they are all true, we murdered half a million Iraqi children. How's that for a war crime?
2002 Independent Uk |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Fri Sep 27, 2002 3:32 pm
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Friday, Sept. 27, 2002
Bush Faces Congress Delay on Iraq
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration's push for a congressional expression of support for disarming Saddam Hussein is being slowed by Democratic concerns about a blank check to wage war.
Trouble brewed for the administration at the United Nations, as well. There, a tough resolution prepared by the United States and Britain to threaten Iraq faces stiff opposition from France, Russia and China, who hold veto power in the U.N. Security Council.
``We are a long way from getting an agreement, but we are working hard,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as he stepped up U.S. diplomacy internationally.
On the home front, three Democratic senators, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, told Powell the White House was asking Congress for unprecedented backing.
The senators did not question a need to get tough with Iraq for blocking U.N. weapons inspections for nearly four years and refusing to disarm.
But they said the congressional resolution the president proposed was far too broad.
For instance, Sarbanes said, it would authorize force against Iraq for refusing to return Kuwaiti prisoners held since the Persian Gulf war in 1990-91.
Kerry told Powell ``you are asking for blanket authority'' and Feingold said ``we are hearing shifting justifications for using force in Iraq.''
Powell tried to placate them, saying the Bush administration was unlikely to use force except if Iraq continued to refuse to get rid of weapons of mass destruction.
In an op-ed article in Friday's New York Times, House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt criticized Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans for injecting politics into the debate on Iraq.
Gephardt said that earlier this week the president ``went so far as to say that the Democrat-led Senate is 'not interested in the security of the American people.'''
Gephardt also said it was wrong that some Republicans would question Democrats' patriotism for insisting that Congress fully discuss the administration policy. He was also critical of Cheney for saying the country's security efforts would be stronger with more Republicans in Washington.
Democrats, he said, are committed to working with the administration to produce a final measure that will have broad bipartisan support.
``But the statements by the president and vice president only serve to weaken that process, undermine trust and thwart cooperation,'' he wrote. If Republicans ``continue to use the war as a political weapon, our efforts to address the threat posed by Iraq will fail.''
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said the Senate would begin its debate next week, but he said the White House proposal was unacceptable.
A resolution giving the president the authority to go to war should be backed by the broadest coalition possible, Daschle said after meeting with Senate Democrats. ``We've come some distance. We've got a long way to go before that can be achieved,'' the South Dakota Democrat said.
Senate Republicans said they strongly backed the proposal offered by the White House and felt the president had gone far enough in meeting Democratic concerns about its scope. ``Any further erosion, I think, is going to be a problem,'' Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said.
On the international front, Powell sent Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman to Paris and Moscow to try to persuade France and Russia to agree to the proposed U.S.-British resolution.
Powell met with Chinese officials and telephoned the foreign ministers of France, China and Russia and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as part of the difficult U.S. campaign.
``We expect there will be an agreement on a number of elements and disagreement on others,'' Powell said.
France, Russia and China, as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have the right to kill any resolution by vetoing it.
All three countries are inclined to take up Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on his offer to admit weapons inspectors before threatening military action.
Hinting that the administration was willing to compromise to some extent, Powell said the United States and Britain wanted a single resolution that told Iraq what it must do and warn of consequences if it refused.
But French President Jacques Chirac has proposed two resolutions - the first calling for new and unfettered inspections of suspect weapons sites and only threatening force in a second resolution if Iraq was still defying the Security Council.
As the administration built its case against Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said there was evidence senior members of the al-Qaida terror network had been in Baghdad ``in recent periods.''
And Powell told the Senate committee that there was evidence of linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida. He said there was ``no smoking gun'' that linked Iraq to the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.
``But we cannot dismiss the possibility,'' Powell said. He told the senators defectors and other source were still providing additional information on the relationship. |
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Nirvana
Joined: 01 Nov 2001
Posts: 180
Location: Seattle, WA |
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Fri Sep 27, 2002 7:49 pm
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[Edited 11 times, lastly by Nirvana on 09-27-2002] |
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Dan Rockwell
Joined: 10 Dec 2001
Posts: 1988
Location: Stamford, CT, USA |
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Fri Sep 27, 2002 9:40 pm
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 Ahhhhhhhhh yesssssssssss!!! The Pentalawn. - Thank you Mark. I was looking for pictures of the lawn.
BTW, could there be a link here?
 NESARA
____________________________________________________________________
Report: U.S will need 40,000 troops in post-Saddam Iraq
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, September 27, 2002
The United States will require at least 40,000 troops to ensure its war aims in a post-Saddam Iraq, according to a new report by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
The report said that the troops would not help rebuild Iraq but would be required to ensure that neither President Saddam Hussein nor his supporters would try to seize power, Middle East Newsline reported.
The United States would require 100,000 troops to topple the Saddam regime, the report said. A post-Saddam U.S. military presence would require 40,000 U.S. troops. Such a force would need to be bolstered by allied troops.
"The post-combat U.S. military presence augmented by allied forces should require roughly 40,000 U.S. troops to destroy the terrorist networks and cells, eliminate Iraq's WMD arsenal and infrastructure, protect its energy resources, and block Iranian hegemony in the region," the report said.
"The post-war military force in Iraq would be tasked primarily with confronting any remnant elements of Saddam's deposed regime and deterring other regional powers from exploiting the situation for purposes injurious to the interests of the United States and its allies."
Authors Baker Spring and Jack Spencer asserted that the U.S. force would require up to 5,000 special operations troops to locate and destroy Iraqi's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
Another 30,000 troops would be required to be deployed to protect Iraq against neighoring Iran.Washington must also plan for the deployment of an additional 5,000 troops and another 5,000 allied forces to protect Iraq's energy infrastructure. Such a force must be capable of turning from a combat to a police force.
"The U.S. contribution to the post-war effort should include two divisions, one light and one heavy [armored], with the ability to patrol Iraq's border with Iran, along with other specialized units for destroying Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and securing its energy sector," the report said.
The report said U.S. military planners must maintain any post-war military presence on securing war aims rather than turn into a peacekeeping force.
Such post-war activities in Iraq should not be subject to what the report termed "arbitrary deadlines."
"However, the administration should avoid making the U.S. military presence appear to be indefinite. Specific end goals for the U.S. military should be established and, once they are achieved, U.S. forces should be pulled out to enable them to prepare for other contingencies."
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/front_2.html |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:54 am
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Bush Pushes Homeland Security Issue
Saturday September 28, 2002 1:40 AM
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - Ending a vigorous week of daily fund-raising that dumped nearly $15 million in Republican coffers, President Bush on Friday sought to drive a wedge between Senate Democrats and their labor allies on a new homeland security department.
Bush blasted union leaders, arguing they have already hindered the administration's post-Sept. 11 efforts to ramp up border security. The Senate has been considering Bush's proposal to create a superagency for weeks, but is stalemated because of a dispute over worker protections that many Democrats favor but the president has refused to accept.
Previously, Bush has taken the Senate to task for failing to enact the measure, in language that provoked counteraccusations from Democratic leaders that he was politicizing the war on terror and the situation in Iraq.
On Friday, he dropped that tactic.
Instead, Bush looked to expose the flaws in the Democratic proposal by criticizing union protests of Customs Service efforts to get emergency contact numbers for its workers and require those inspecting shipping containers at the nation's 301 ports to wear radiation detectors.
While declaring himself in favor of workers' rights and collective bargaining, Bush said union demands for negotiations over those new worker requirements have delayed such ``sensible'' steps. That, he suggested, only benefits those still plotting to harm Americans.
``We don't have a year to resolve issues like that,'' the president told a $1.7 million dollar luncheon in Denver for Colorado GOP House candidate Bob Beauprez. ``We're in a different time in America.''
With November's elections set to decide which party controls Congress for the rest of his term, Bush has ramped up his already record-breaking campaign money chase, in which he has now scooped up over $130 million this year. He has raised so much cash in so many places - with six appearances in four cities over five days - that even he seemed to lose track of his schedule on Friday.
``I want to thank the folks who've organized this dinner, or lunch, however you want to call it,'' he said at midday.
Friday found him changing time zones three times as he crisscrossed the West in search of money for fellow Republicans. He stumped for his party's contenders in two tossup congressional contests - Beauprez in Colorado and Rick Renzi in Arizona - and one tight gubernatorial race.
From Colorado, Bush flew to Flagstaff to rally Republican faithful alongside Renzi - who, like Beauprez, had transported himself to the previous stop in order to be seen emerging with the president from Air Force One on home turf. But White House organizers' hopes for a picturesque mountain backdrop for the outdoor event were ruined by a near-constant, freezing rain.
``Well, we're working on the drought,'' Bush quipped.
Later at a Phoenix civic center - where the temperature hovered around 100 - Bush headlined a $2.1 million early-bird dinner to benefit Renzi, the Arizona GOP and Matt Salmon, the party's choice for governor. He then headed back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a weekend respite.
``I want to thank the host of the dinner for organizing an early dinner,'' Bush said, clearly looking forward to the weekend at his central Texas spread. ``I'm going to spend a little quality time on the ranch.''
Mindful that more friendly statehouses would make his re-election bid in 2004 that much easier, Bush has spent significant time helping gubernatorial candidates like Salmon - especially in states such as Arizona that he barely won in 2000. Bush's schedule next week includes more money-raising for Republican governor hopefuls in Maryland and Massachusetts.
The four-day Western trip allowed the president to escape Washington, its downtown streets filled for the weekend with thousands of protesters railing against meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
But Bush didn't escape protesters. In downtown Denver, at least 2,000 people rallied against a possible war in Iraq and marched to the hotel where Bush spoke, though only a smattering of demonstrators could be seen from his motorcade. In Flagstaff, a woman shouted, ``What's your reason, Mr. President? Oil money,'' during his remarks. She was escorted from the fairgrounds as the audience waved small flags and cheered.
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Seig Heil
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Mech on 09-27-2002] |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 1:59 am
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WE ARE HERE TO HELP..........
IN THE INEVITABLE TAKEOVER.
Hundreds Arrested at D.C. Protest
Thousands protest Bush war agenda and neoliberalism in Wasington, DC
Saturday September 28, 2002 1:40 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Protesters opposed to war, capitalism and global trade policies clashed with police Friday as finance ministers from around the world began a weekend of meetings. More than 600 people were arrested, and one protester was slightly injured.
The protesters had threatened to shut down the nation's capital but caused only minimal disruptions to the morning rush as they snaked through the city on foot and on bicycles, waving signs that said ``End Corporate Greed'' and ``Drop Bush not bombs.'' Police Chief Charles Ramsey estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 people participated in the rolling demonstrations.
``The whole world is watching,'' some protesters chanted as they were being arrested.
All the protests occurred blocks away from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings, where meetings began inside a cocoon of fences, closed streets and police.
Of the 649 demonstrators taken into custody, five were charged with destruction of property; the rest were charged with failing to obey a police officer or parading without a permit, Ramsey said.
Police on motorcycles and horses corralled hundreds of protesters in a grassy area a few blocks from the White House. Demonstrators and legal observers said police made no effort to disperse the crowd and refused to let people leave before beginning the arrests. ``They took out not just activists, they took out bystanders, they took out tourists,'' said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer with the Partnership for Civil Justice, which sued the city over police tactics during demonstrations two years ago.
Among those arrested was the executive director of Greenpeace, John Passacantando, who said he was just riding his bicycle to work near the demonstration. Passacantando spoke Thursday at an environmental rally outside the World Bank.
Ramsey said the arrests were justified. ``We gave warnings,'' he said. ``We followed everything by the book.''
Other demonstrators were arrested after windows were broken at a downtown Citibank office.
In the afternoon, a dozen protesters stripped to their underwear while standing on the stump of a redwood tree they had placed across from a Gap store in Washington's Georgetown district. The self-described ``Gaptivists'' chanted ``we'd rather wear nothing than wear Gap'' and accused the company's owners of being involved in logging and running sweatshops.
``There are injustices going on all around the world, and the Gap and the IMF and the World Bank are all a part of it,'' said Anna Gennari, 21, from St. Louis. ``It would be worth getting arrested if the message came across.''
Gap Inc. did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday.
Patrick Reinsborough, an organizer with the Mobilization for Global Justice, said plans were moving forward for a larger rally and march Saturday. The group wants the financial institutions to cancel Third World debt and end economic policies they say harm the poor.
``We've called for peaceful, dignified, nonviolent, creative actions,'' Reinsborough said.
Ramsey said officials were expecting 10,000 to 20,000 demonstrators Saturday.
Many commuters heeded officials' advice to avoid driving into the downtown area Friday, leaving many streets empty and silent.
At one downtown intersection, protesters chained themselves together to block traffic. Other demonstrators danced in the street with mud and leaves smeared on their hair and clothes. Firefighters put out a few tires set ablaze on the outskirts of town. Police also contended with a barrage of fake 911 calls.
In April 2000, police arrested about 1,300 people during demonstrations opposing the financial institutions and their policies.
Guardian Newspapers 2002
[Edited 3 times, lastly by Mech on 09-27-2002] |
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Dan Rockwell
Joined: 10 Dec 2001
Posts: 1988
Location: Stamford, CT, USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 2:50 am
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Now this is really disturbing.
China’s Military Planners Took Credit for 9/11
John O. Edwards
Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2002
Soon after the horrific attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, two high-ranking Chinese military planners took credit for the 9/11 attacks – and were even hailed as national heroes in China.
In fact, three years before 9/11, the Chinese colonels had proposed the attacks and cited Osama bin Laden by name in their book "Unrestricted Warfare.”
The authors of "Unrestricted Warfare” are Senior Cols. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, and in 1999 they wrote that an attack by bin Laden on the World Trade Center would be just the type of "unrestricted warfare” that could bring down America.
The book was published by China’s People’s Liberation Army and had the endorsement of the Chinese government. "Unrestricted Warfare” makes clear its purpose: offering China and other "weak” countries a strategy to destroy the U.S. without a full-scale invasion, using unusual or "asymmetrical” warfare.
NewsMax has recently obtained the CIA translation of this astounding book and has made it available with an introduction by Al Santoli, editor of the prestigious China Reform Monitor. The importance of this book was highlighted soon after 9/11, when the Chinese colonels were treated as national heroes.
In one interview with the Chinese government-owned Ta Kung Pao newspaper in Hong Kong, the colonels offered little sympathy for the Americans killed in 9/11. They told the paper, "The series of attacks taking place in the United States were very dreary and terrifying, but they must not be viewed from a single perspective” – that is, the U.S. as victims. The colonels then added coldly that the Americans "were victims of U.S. foreign policy.”
The colonels were quick to take credit for the attacks on the World Trade Center, telling the paper their strategy had worked and that "September 11, 2001 very likely is the beginning of the decline of the United States, as a superpower."
Qiao and Wang offer in "Unrestricted Warfare” several new methods for destroying the U.S. – from manipulating U.S. media, to homicide-suicide bombing, to using immigrants as a fifth column, and even employing cyber attacks to destroy America’s critical infrastructure.
Both colonels agreed that the unconventional attacks of 9/11 were right from the pages of their book, and they demonstrated their theory works. "The attacks demonstrated the United States' fragility and weakness and showed that essentially it is unable to stand attacks. ...
The United States, a giant tiger, has been dealing with mice; unexpectedly, this time it was bitten by mice – it has been wielding a large hammer but has been unable to find the flea.
"From a short-term perspective, the attacks in the United States will very likely have some effect on China's economy – they might affect China's economic growth. However, from a long-term viewpoint, they could be favorable to China."
"Unrestricted Warfare” has set off alarm bells among several high-ranking U.S. officers. Adm. Thomas Moorer, former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, warns, "
'Unrestricted Warfare' reveals China’s game plan in its coming war with America.” He adds ominously, "China thinks it can destroy America by using these tactics.” Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, former chief of staff of U.S. Forces Korea, shares Adm. Moorer’s view.
"The 9/11 attacks may just be the beginning. Many terrorist nations and groups will try to imitate this operation,” Gen. Singlaub said, noting "China’s war book 'Unrestricted Warfare' will be their text.”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/24/143618.shtml
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 3:05 am
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"........... in the first place, I put forth a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."—Thomas Hobbes, LEVIATHAN
"............His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
—George Orwell, 1984
THE FATAL FREEDOM
by Jay Hanson
Exploit: To employ to the greatest possible advantage.
There is now scientific consensus that humanity is "unsustainable," and may have less than 35 years before the "functional integrity" of its life-support system is destroyed. [1] Despite this staggering evidence of its colossal stupidity, humanity remains firmly committed to a paradoxical struggle against itself. Moreover, caught by an insatiable drive for power [2]—like a school of sharks caught in a feeding frenzy—humanity resorts to self-deception and is conspicuously unable to rationally question its own premises. In this essay, I endeavor to point out the fatal flaw inherent in capitalism [3]: the fatal freedom to exploit the commons.
GENETIC ROOTS OF EXPLOITATION
A few million years ago, our ancestor Homo Habilis developed a hierarchical social life based on hunting and gathering. Habilis males and females shared meat and produce, dividing jobs by gender: child care and gathering to females, fighting and hunting to males. Habilis originated the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that was to last for millions of years until the invention of settled agriculture.
Hunter-gatherers exploited an area until it was exhausted and then moved on to a new one. For millions of years, exploitation contributed to survival of the species and evolution selected for the best exploiters.
The transition to settled agriculture began around 12,000 years ago and was primarily subsistence in nature. Farmers generally grew only enough food to feed themselves and their families. Approximately 7000 years ago, the inventions of the plow and irrigation allowed food supplies to increase by dramatically increasing the power of farmers to exploit nature. Instead of just exhausting an area and moving on like the hunter-gatherers did, now farmers could totally devastate an area. And then move.
"Some 4,400 years ago, the city-states of ancient Sumer in modern-day Iraq faced an unsettling dilemma. Farmland was gradually accumulating salt, the byproduct of evaporating irrigation water. Almost imperceptibly, the salt began to poison the rich soil, and over time harvests tapered off.
"Until 2400 BC, Sumerians had managed the problem of dwindling yields by cultivating new land, thereby ensuring the consistent food surpluses needed to support their armies and bureaucracies. But now they had reached the limits of agricultural expansion. And over the next three centuries, accumulating salts drove crop yields down more than 40 percent. The crippled production, combined with an ever-growing population, led to shrinking food reserves, which in turn reduced the ranks of soldiers and civil servants. By 1800 BC, Sumerian agriculture had effectively collapsed, and this once glorious civilization faded into obscurity." [4]
We knew that irrigation "inevitably leads to the salinization of soils and waters" [5] that long ago?! But we have been doing it ever since?! Have we been deceiving ourselves for over 4000 years?
GENETIC ROOTS OF SELF-DECEPTION
In the late 50s, the social scientist Erving Goffman made a stir with a book called THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE, that stressed how much time we all spend on stage, playing to one audience or another. Goffman marveled that sometimes a person is "sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality."
What modern evolution theory brings to Goffman's observation is an explanation of the practical function of self-deception: we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better. In his foreword to Richard Dawkins' THE SELFISH GENE, Robert Trivers noted Dawkins' emphasis on the role of deception in animal life and added, in a much-cited passage, that if indeed "deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray—by the subtle signs of self-knowledge—the deception being practiced." Thus, "the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution." [6]
For about 40,000 years, self-deception also contributed to survival and social evolution selected for the best self-deceivers! [7] Indeed, self-deception and exploitation certainly seem to be what we do best.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS
A "commons" is any resource used as though it belongs to all. In other words, when anyone can use a shared resource simply because one wants or needs to use it, then one is using a commons. For example, all land is part of our commons because it is a component of our life support and social systems.
A commons is destroyed by uncontrolled use—neither intent of the user, nor ownership are important. An example of uncontrolled use is when one can use land (part of our commons) any way one wants.
The inevitable outcome of self-deception and exploitation is brilliantly illustrated in Garrett Hardin's classic, THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS (1968). The "commons" refers to the common resources that are owned by everyone. The "tragedy" occurs as the result of everyone having the fatal freedom to exploit the commons.
Hardin's essay goes something like this: Visualize a pasture as a system that is open to everyone. The carrying capacity of this pasture is 10 animals. Ten herdsmen are each grazing an animal to fatten up for market. In other words, all the grass that the pasture can produce is now being consumed by the 10 animals.
Harry (one of the herdsmen) will add one more animal to the pasture if he can make a profit. He subtracts the original cost of the new animal from the expected sales price of the fattened animal and then considers the cost of the food. Adding one more animal will mean less food for each of the present animals, but since Harry only has only 1/10 of the herd, he has to pay only 1/10 of the cost. Harry decides to exploit the commons and the other herdsmen, so he adds an animal and takes a profit. Shrinking profit margins force the other herdsmen either to go out of business or continue the exploitation by adding more animals. This process of mutual exploitation continues until overgrazing and erosion destroy the pasture system, and all the herdsmen are driven out of business.
Although Hardin describes exploitation in an unregulated public pasture, the pasture also serves as a metaphor for our entire society. Our communities are the commons. Our schools are the commons. Our roads, our air, our water; we ourselves are the commons!
There is no "technological" solution to this fatal flaw in capitalism. A "political" solution is theoretically possible: prohibit freedom in the commons. But with capitalism serving as our political system (one-dollar-one-vote), there is no political solution either! [8]
Most importantly, Hardin illustrates the critical flaw of freedom in the commons: all participants must agree to conserve the commons, but any one can force the destruction of the commons. Thus, as long as we are free to exploit the commons, we are locked into a paradoxical struggle against ourselves—a terrible struggle that must end in universal ruin.
HOBBES' PERMANENT WAR OF ALL AGAINST ALL
Three-hundred years before Hardin, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes anticipated the inevitable outcome of freedom in the commons in LEVIATHAN (1651):
"And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man . . . "
"To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues."
Every social phenomenon, according to Hobbes, is based upon a drive for power that emerges when individuals compare themselves to other individuals. The result is that the objects one seeks to obtain are not pursued for their own sake, but because someone else also seeks to obtain them.
"Scarcity" is the relationship between unlimited desire and limited means. For Hobbes, scarcity is a permanent condition of humanity caused by the continuous, innate drive for power.
Society becomes a lifeboat in which all the passengers are fighting each other. In order to escape universal ruin, men will create a great Leviathan, a semi-absolute state that controls its subjects and prevents permanent scarcity from developing into a war of "all-against-all."
LOCKE'S TEMPORARY WAR OF ALL AGAINST NATURE
From Plato to our present society, we can trace the faith in human reason through the ideas of Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and especially the English philosopher John Locke. In his SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT (1690), Locke argued that there is a natural law governing humans and that it can be known by human reason: "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it . . . that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
Locke did not accept Hobbes' idea that scarcity results from an innate drive for power. Locke said it was the invention of money that caused scarcity. Prior to money, it was solely the usefulness of things that counted, and every man should have only as much property as he needed. [9] Money caused scarcity by enabling a man "to enlarge his possessions" more than he needed. [10] Although Locke saw money as the source of the problem, he also saw that "improving" the earth could help to alleviate scarcity. [11] Moreover, improving the earth didn't harm anyone because there was still plenty of land left: "Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use."
So rather than attack the source of the problem as Hobbes did, Locke chose instead to treat the symptoms by attacking nature. No doubt the great moralist would have followed Hobbes for social reform if all the land had been taken. Thus, Locke's temporary—till the land is gone—answer to the scarcity caused by money was to exploit the earth, and Hobbes' permanent war of "all-against-all" was reflected in Locke's temporary war of "all-against-nature."
Locke's ideas legitimized colonialism as a quest to alleviate scarcity. For example, America was an empty continent that could be exploited to help alleviate the effects of scarcity in Europe. Cecil Rhodes, a well-known imperialist of the last century, even wrote about the necessity of an ongoing exploitation of the universe: "I would annex the planets if I could." More recently, former president Reagan in a speech after the failure of the Challenger, told the American people that we have to conquer space in order to overcome war, scarcity, and misery on earth. His argument for more exploitation is exactly the same as that given by Locke in the seventeenth century.
Both Hobbes and Locke knew that scarcity originates in human relations and that people trying to escape scarcity would inadvertently spread and propagate it to the ends of the earth. Even into outer space.
From the beginning, rationality has never held a prominent place in our society. In the final analysis, the call for endless economic growth is rooted in a hidden, insatiable drive for power; rational debate rarely manages to bring this fact out into the open, let alone confront it. Modern society remains a crumbling monument to self-deception and exploitation.
DEAD END
"Every man . . . is left perfectly free to pursue his own interests in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men."—Adam Smith (1776)
"We human beings are being led into a dead end—all too literally. We are living by an ideology of death and accordingly we are destroying our own humanity and killing the planet. Even the one great success of the program that has governed us, the attainment of material affluence, is now giving way to poverty. The United States is just now gaining a foretaste of the suffering that global economic policies, so enthusiastically embraced, have inflicted on hundreds of millions of others. If we continue on our present paths, future generations, if there are to be any, are condemned to misery." —Daly and Cobb (1989)
It is now obvious to anyone brave enough to look, that our continuing self-deception and exploitation no longer contribute to the survival of the species. If we are to survive, we must now recognize the necessity of giving up the fatal freedom to exploit the commons. Locke's temporary war of all-against-nature must now come to an end.
When a society is free to rob banks, it is less free, not more so. When individuals mutually agreed (passed laws) not to rob banks—gave up the freedom to rob banks—they became more free, not less so. Only by giving up our fatal freedom can we free ourselves from the inexorable, deadly logic of the commons. Only then can we become free to establish a new organizing principle for humanity.
We've known for 4000 years that freedom in the commons brings ruin to all. . . . What are we waiting for?
[1] In 1992, the two most prestigious scientific institutions in the world, the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society, issued POPULATION GROWTH, RESOURCE CONSUMPTION, AND A SUSTAINABLE WORLD which ended with: "The future of our planet is in the balance. Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial."
Also in 1992, a WARNING TO HUMANITY was issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists that began: "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about." This warning was signed by over 1,500 members of national, regional, and international science academies. Sixty-nine nations from all parts of Earth are represented, including each of the twelve most populous nations and the nineteen largest economic powers. It was also signed by 99 Nobel Prize winners.
And finally, in 1993, THE GROWING WORLD POPULATION, a joint statement by 58 of the world's scientific academies said: "In our judgement, humanity's ability to deal successfully with its social, economic, and environmental problems will require the achievement of zero population growth within the lifetime of our children."
[2] The drive for power is the process by which we seek predictability as a means of avoiding or reducing anxiety. The more we feel in control, the more we can relax. The more power we have been granted or won or achieved, the more we generally assume we will be able to maintain control.
[3] Here when I use the term "capitalism", I refer to American capitalism. From an ecological point of view, capitalism may be seen as an organized process to ingest natural, living systems (including people) in one end, and excrete unnatural, dead garbage and waste (including wasted people) out the other. From a thermodynamic view, capitalism may be seen as the conversion of low-entropy matter/energy into high-entropy matter/energy. From an economic view, capitalism may be seen as the high-speed depletion of natural capital. From a political view, capitalism may be seen as the world's dominant political system—one-dollar-one-vote.
[4] p. 5, SHRINKING FIELDS: Cropland Loss in a World of Eight Billion, Gary Gardner; Worldwatch Institute, Paper #131, July 1996. Worldwatch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036, Phone: 202-452-1999; FAX: 202-296-7365, wwpub@igc.apc.org, http://www.worldwatch.org/
INNATE EXPLOITATION
"Some years ago, I read of a species of tiny woodland wasp that lives on mushrooms. It seems that when a wandering female wasp chances upon the right kind of mushroom in the forest, she deposits her eggs within it. Almost immediately, the eggs hatch and the tiny grubs begin literally to eat themselves out of house and home. The little maggots grow rapidly, but soon something very odd happens. The eggs in the larvaes' own ovaries hatch while still inside their immature mothers. This second generation of parthenogenic grubs quickly consumes its parents from within, then breaks out of the empty shells to continue feeding on the mushroom. This seemingly gruesome process may repeat itself for another generation. It doesn't take long before the entire mushroom is over-filled by squirming maggots and fouled by their bodily wastes. The exploding population of juvenile wasps consumes virtually its entire habitat which is the signal for the largest and most mature of the larvae to pupate. The few individuals that manage to emerge as mature adults then abandon their mouldering birthplace, flying off to begin the whole process over again.
"We wrote this book in the belief that the bizarre life-cycle of the mushroom wasps may offer a lesson to humankind. The tiny wasps' weird reproductive strategy has apparently evolved under extreme competitive pressure. Good mushrooms—like good planets—are hard to find. Natural selection therefore favored those individual wasps and reproductive traits that were most successful in appropriating the available supply of essential resources (the mushroom) before the competition had arrived or became established." OUR ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT, Wackernagel and Rees; New Society Pub., 1996; ISBN 0-86571-312-X Phone: 800-253-3605 http://www.newsociety.com/
[5] http://www.ussl.ars.usda.gov/salinity.htm
[6] pp. 263-264, THE MORAL ANIMAL, Robert Wright; Pantheon, 1994; ISBN 0-679-40773-1.
[7] leedean@ix.netcom.com says:
"If you subscribe to the idea that religious or spiritual beliefs contain self-deceptive aspects, then the first archeological evidence of self-deception occurs in Western Europe approximately 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. A profound change in behavior took place at this time. In fact, this segment of human development has been referred to as 'the creative explosion' or 'cultural takeoff.' In addition to evidence of ritualized religious behavior, art, music, jewelry for personal adornment, trappings of status, and even the concept of inherited status, suddenly appears in the archeological record.
"We have physically evolved very little in the past one hundred thousand years—and certainly not in the past 30,000. So I would have to say that self-deception had little or nothing to do with our physical evolution. Self-deception, no doubt, played a substantial role in our cultural evolution.
"Humans are the only animals known to self-deceive. There is no evidence to suggest that any other species besides our own possesses this capability. At a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 1991, Washington University anthropologist Robert Sussman said, 'Self-deception is what separates us qualitatively from all other animals and even early hominids.'
"Hierachies certainly exist within animal groups. But, a hierachial system does not need deception or self-deception to exist. Science generally recognizes two types of thinking. Concrete thinking—thought that occurs within the realm of the senses—is the form of thinking found in most animals. Concrete thinking is a linear progression like beads on a string or rungs on a ladder.
"Abstract reasoning is the second form of thinking and is found in only a few species: humans, chimps, gorillas, dolphins, etc. Since an intentional lie is an abstraction, only animals with brains complex enough for abstract reasoning can intentionally deceive. A chimpanzee is a notorious liar. But it takes the even more complex brain of a human to self-deceive. Self-deception is a relative newcomer on the behavioral scene. It didn't help make us human. Self-deception didn't exist until human brains reached their current level of complexity. In short, self-deception had no part in making us—we made self-deception."
[9] ". . . what portion a man carved to himself, was easily seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed."
[10] ". . . there is land enough in the world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger possessions, and a right to them . . ." Locke continues, "Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known. Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his possessions."
[11] "God and his reason commanded [man] to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life . . ." Locke said that the earth needs improving because nature herself is nearly worthless: "I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expences about them, what in them is purely owing to nature, and what to labour, we shall find, that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour." Hobbes Locke and Smith are available several places on the web. See, for example: http://dorit.ihi.ku.dk/~peterr/histphil.html
What is our alternative to war, starvation and disease?
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Mech on 09-27-2002] |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 3:25 am
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AMERICA'S WAR ON TERROR -- AND HISTORY
By Richard Reeves
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's declaration, "The National Security Strategy of the United States," stands as one of the more amazing, depressing and self-deluding documents ever written by the governors of the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is, in fact, too American by half, reading more like the warning cry of crazed missionaries than the reasoned or tolerant arguments of a free and democratic people.
The 33 pages submitted to Congress last Friday should be read to music: Onward American soldiers, marching as to war! We will save the world whether it wants to be saved or not, and those who will not be saved will be destroyed in the fires of new technologies. It seems that we are a beleaguered people, surrounded by an encroaching jungle of danger, persecuted from all sides for our goodness, our decency, our generosity. Or, to be more precise, we are better than other people, and they will become like us -- or else.
It is hard to imagine these pages of the national strategy were written inside the comfortable walls of the White House in this sunny capital. The Cold War, it seems, has passed, and things are even worse now with thunder crashing around the world as evildoers gather in the darkness at our borders. It is not the strategies and policies of the document that I find so amazing. It is the tone, or as younger people might say, "the attitude," that is so disturbing, and in some ways, so foreign.
Are we really so afraid of everyone else? Do we no longer believe that it is morning in America?
Here are some of the thoughts and words from the final draft of the document, which says, among other absurdities, that nationalism is internationalism and victory is defeat:
"The United States' national security strategy will be based on a distinctly American internationalism that reflects the union of our values and our national interests. The aim of this strategy is to help make the world not just safer but better ...
"We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few. We must defeat these threats to our nation, allies and friends ...
"Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom's triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission ...
"By making the world safer, we allow the people of the world to make their own lives better. We will defend this just peace against threats from terrorists and tyrants ...
"Now, shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technologies against us. To defeat this threat we must make use of every tool in our arsenal ...
"The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed. We will build defenses against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery. We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain and curtail our enemies' efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. ... We must be prepared to defeat our enemies' plans."
In the plan, we are at the center of "lonely defenders of liberty" -- and we are ever ready to "look outward for possibilities to expand liberty."
There is a great deal of political boilerplate in the document, with sections promoting everything from better intelligence to entrepreneurial energy and, of course, lower taxes. But there is also willful deception or delusion about how we got to the point that suicidal terrorism is the greatest threat to our messianic dominance of the world.
The administration praises itself for "supporting moderate and modern government, especially in the Muslim world." But our friends out there are military dictators (Pakistan) and monarchies (Saudi Arabia). The history of the Cold War, written by people who were ready to launch war against the Soviet Union, now reads: "We faced a generally status quo, risk-adverse adversary."
It is a very depressing document, describing a dark, stormy view from a slightly hysterical White House ready to declare war on both the world and reality. |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 3:29 am
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FBI WARNED D.C. IT WAS A TARGET
By BRIAN BLOMQUIST
September 25, 2002 -- WASHINGTON - A Minnesota FBI agent investigating Zacarias Moussaoui testified yesterday that he notified the Secret Service weeks before Sept. 11 that a terror team might hijack a plane and "hit the nation's capital."
The FBI agent said that evidence in the case pointed to a broader hijack attack, but added that investigators were largely in the dark because they were blocked from getting access to Moussaoui's computer and handwritten notes.
"We needed to get into those individual handwritten notes to determine if there were other conspirators identified, if there were battle plans that existed that we didn't know," the agent said yesterday at a pre-9/11 intelligence hearing in Congress.
The FBI and INS arrested Moussaoui on Aug. 15, 2001, and jailed him for overstaying his visa.
The Minnesota agents said they continued to investigate Moussaoui while he was in jail, although they were rebuffed by FBI lawyers when they asked to search his computer and notes.
The French-Moroccan Moussaoui first raised suspicions at a Minnesota flight school by trying to fly sophisticated Boeing 747s before getting rudimentary pilot training.
"We were sensitive to the fact that this could have been a much larger conspiracy - and we were not satisfied that having Mr. Moussaoui in custody dampened the possibility of a terrorist attack," the Minnesota agent said.
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Dan Rockwell
Joined: 10 Dec 2001
Posts: 1988
Location: Stamford, CT, USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 3:53 am
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Russia, China and France have economic interests in Iraq.
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 4:08 am
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The Most Dangerous Person on Earth
It's Not Who Bush Would Like You To Think It Is
by Jack M. Balkin
When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, his basic strategy was to stake out a position and refuse to budge, hoping to bully others into acquiescing. Only when met with strong opposition did he back down and compromise. We are seeing the same strategy in his policy over Iraq. In the past weeks, the president has attempted to bully the United Nations and now Congress into allowing him to attack Iraq and depose its leader. He is likely to get his wish. But the larger problem is not what will happen if no one stands up to Saddam Hussein. It is what will happen if no one stands up to the president and his vision of moral clarity.
Our Constitution left the power to declare war to Congress because of the fear that if the president could act unilaterally, he might seek to aggrandize himself by taking the country into one war after another. Although the president could always defend the nation if attacked, he could not initiate hostilities without Congress' approval. In the 20th century, Congress' role has receded of necessity, so the president's power to make war has been hemmed in largely by domestic politics, the threat of nuclear reprisal and international law.
The Bush administration's new policy of pre-emptive attacks is a dangerous addition to this mixture, creating a host of bad incentives. Simply by announcing future threats that deserve pre-emptive action, presidents can seize control of the political stage. A president who takes the country to war pushes aside all other concerns. By shifting the nation's forces from one military offensive to another, he can divert attention from domestic failures and foreign policy blunders. The more often the president attacks other countries pre-emptively, the more likely it becomes that our country will be attacked in turn. The president can then justify additional military action in response, and no patriotic American will oppose it.
In this way, the president can effectively govern through war, with disastrous consequences for the nation and for the world. Armed with the doctrine of military pre-emption, the perpetual political campaign perfected by our last president might well become the perpetual military campaign of future presidents.
President Bush had good reason to take us to war after Sept. 11. Still, he has not accomplished his stated goal of eliminating al Qaeda or capturing Osama bin Laden. With victory not achieved and Afghanistan still unstable, he has now attempted to shift our attention to a new war with Iraq. Again, he may well have excellent reasons for doing so. But we must pay attention to the larger picture. Members of Congress debating authorization for an attack on Iraq should ask the president tough questions about what future military actions he is considering. The way the president's foreign policy is proceeding, Iraq may not be the last war he asks us to fight.
The president is right about one thing, however. Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president.
2002 The Hartford Courant |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 4:12 am
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TAIWANGATE?
Allegations that a past president of Taiwan illegally set up a $100 million secret slush fund to pay for overseas intelligence, propaganda, and influence operations are causing ripples that have reached into the Bush Administration.
At the end of March, Next, a Hong Kong magazine, and the China Times, a daily newspaper in Taiwan, reported that classified documents indicated Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's president in the late 1990s, established a secret account in the National Security Bureau to underwrite various activities, including running spy networks in China and elsewhere. The articles, which noted the NSB had made payments to Japanese officials (including former prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto) and which identified Taiwanese intelligence officials stationed abroad, detonated a scandal in Taiwan.
The government did not challenge the veracity of the reports, and the Taiwanese news media reported Taiwan's security services were recalling personnel from outposts around the world, including those in the United State, Japan, France and China. The Next magazine reporter who broke the story, Hsieh Zhong-liang, was charged with breaching national security and banned from leaving the country; his magazine's office was raided by the police. Hsieh wouldn't reveal the source who provided the documents, but other journalists speculated the information had come from a former National Security Bureau finance officer who is on the run and alleged to have embezzled $5.5 million. The leaks embarrassed the current government, which is controlled by the Democratic Progressive Party, for the DPP is allied with the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a pro-independence party led by ex-President Lee. Amid all the fuss, Lee called off a trip to the United States.
The scandal has tainted two senior Bush appointees in the State Department. Sing Tao Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that Lee used the secret account--which had not been approved by Parliament--to pay Cassidy and Associates, one of Washington's largest lobbying firms, to work for Taiwan, and the newspaper said the slush fund had covered the costs of trips made to Taiwan by Carl Ford Jr., a Cassidy and Associates consultant. Ford is now assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research.
Sing Tao, citing the classified documents, also reported James Kelly, whom Bush last May appointed assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, received money from this fund when he headed the Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based think tank that is an arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which is based in Washington, DC. Sing Tao maintained Lee drew $100,000 from the clandestine account in February 1999 to pay the Pacific Forum to support former Japanese Vice-Defense Minister Masahiro Akiyama's study at Harvard University.
Both Ford and Kelly are significant players in crafting Bush Administration policy on Taiwan. Ford is a longtime expert on Chinese affairs. He was a China analyst with the CIA in the 1970s and the CIA's National Intelligence Officer for East Asia in 1985. He has been a Capitol Hill staffer, a Pentagon official, and a prominent advocate of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan. Kelly was director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration. He also served in the Pentagon in the early 1980s.
In 1999 and 2000, Ford was indeed a consultant to Cassidy and Associates, according to Justice Department records and a spokesman for the firm. During this time, Cassidy and Associates was mounting a vigorous campaign on Taiwan's behalf, lobbying Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the White House and producing pro-Taiwan media materials, including a website, position papers, and a newsletter. (This was a joint effort with its sister company, Powell Tate.) Ford wrote op-eds, letters-to the editor and testified before Congress in support of Taiwan's positions, usually identified as a consultant to the Taiwan Research Institute, a think tank based in that country and associated with Lee's party. In the spring of 2000, as the Clinton administration was pondering whether to sell Aegis destroyers to Taiwan, Ford circulated a memo in Washington arguing that a leaked Pentagon report showed Taiwan needed the "Aegis and other systems to offset Beijing's ballooning arsenal."
A spokesman for Cassidy and Associates says the firm was paid for its pro-Taiwan efforts by the Taiwan Research Institute. Justice Department records show that Cassidy and Associates received $3.2 million from 1997 to 2000 for this work. "It was our understanding that the TRI money came from private sources," says the Cassidy and Associates spokesman. "TRI, to us, was a private, nongovernmental think tank. They engaged us and they paid us."
But perhaps the money was part of an undercover government effort to influence politics and policy in the United States. Which would mean that Cassidy and Associates, whether it realized it or not, was fronting for a secret propaganda operation conducted by a foreign leader. Does it make any difference to Cassidy and Associates that the payments may have come from a slush fund, funneled through a research institute? "That's a metaphysical question," the spokesman replies. "I'm not sure it makes any sense for me to respond." Did Ford take trips to and from Taiwan as part of his work on Cassidy and Associate's Taiwan account? "We really don't get into that sort of information on our contacts with clients," the Cassidy and Associates spokesman says. (If you're wondering why the Cassidy and Associates spokesman is not named here, it's because the person said he would talk only if I agreed not to identify him.)
Jay Farrar, a spokesman for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says his think tank has examined its financial records and found no transactions between any Taiwanese government entity and the Pacific Forum or the CSIS that correspond to the allegations in the Asian media. He asserts there was no evidence "in our records" of any payment made by Pacific Forum or CSIS to Harvard University. CSIS has received general support funding from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office ($250,000 or more in 2001), Farrar says. But he notes this is a governmental office that routinely makes grants overseas. "We don't see any funds from the NSB," he adds. Farrar does note CSIS and Pacific Forum employees are free to do outside consulting: "Jim Kelly had that same opportunity when he was at Pacific Forum; he may have taken advantage of that." But Farrar says that CSIS has no knowledge whether Kelly did and that CSIS has not had any "formal contact" with Kelly regarding the Taiwan allegations. Has CSIS asked the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office if the money it gave CSIS may have come from Lee's secret slush fund? No, says Farrar, remarking, "It's an interesting prospect to go back and ask people who gave you money, is this legal or not?"
Neither Ford nor Kelly will address the media reports from Asia. A woman answering the phone in Ford's office said he has "no comment" and would not take questions on the subject. Kelly's office referred me to a spokesman at the State Department who said, "There will be no response from my office. This has nothing to do with the State Department."
Shouldn't the State Department have some response? To recap: news reports in Taiwan and Hong Kong, citing classified government records, say that as part of ex-President Lee's covert campaign to win friends and influence governments around the world, key members of the pro-Taiwan lobby in the United States received money, wittingly or not, from a slush fund. And two alleged to have done so are currently high-level U.S. government officials.
During the campaign finance scandal of the Clinton administration, there was much huffing--mostly among Republicans--about a supposed Chinese campaign to shape politics in the United States. The more rabid rightwingers accused Bill Clinton of selling out the United States to Beijing. But several of the so-called Chinese connections tracked back to Taiwan, not China, and firm evidence of a Chinese plot never fully materialized. (There were hints.) With the recent media reports out of Taiwan, there is a much stronger case that it was Taiwan that utilized illegal and covert funds to influence U.S. policy--as well as policy in other nations. But there has yet been no outrage here. The U.S. media has not caught on to the story, and Ford, Kelly and the State Department have been able to get away with their no-comments-at-all response.
Perhaps the say-nothing strategy will work. But the story might not be over. Professor Wu Yu-shan of the National Taiwan University tells the BBC that he expects the leaks will "go on and on."
NOW FOR AN UPDATE:
Two days after saying that CSIS had no records of any transactions involving the Pacific Forum, Harvard University and Masahiro Akiyama (the former Japanese defense official), Jay Farrar called to note that a "more fulsome search" found that the Pacific Forum did provide money to Harvard on behalf of Akiyama.
In December 1999, according to a statement produced by Farrar, the Pacific Forum "was asked" to help find Akiyama a fellowship, and the think tank agreed to do so. Subsequently, the Pacific Forum received $50,000 from the Taiwan Transportation Machinery Corporation, via the firm's president R.T. Peng. The forum sent $40,000 to Harvard and kept the remaining $10,000 in its general administration fund.
In June 2000, R.T. Peng and the his company contributed another $50,000 to the Pacific Forum to support its work, according to the CSIS statement. And Peng and the Taiwan Transportation Machinery Corporation made $25,000 donations to the Pacific Forum's general fund in 1998 and 1999.
According to Farrar, CSIS does not know who requested the Pacific Forum assist Akiyama. He says that the CSIS still has not asked Jim Kelly anything about this arrangement. Has CSIS spoken to Peng about the source of the funds used to pay for Akiyama's Harvard fellowship? "No," replies Farrar. Will CSIS be conducting an additional inquiry into the matter? "We don't have any reason to," Farrar says.
The CSIS statement does not note that Peng sits on the board of the Pacific Forum and has been a close adviser to former President Lee, helping him particularly in diplomatic matters concerning Japan. The news accounts out of Taiwan and Hong Kong and CSIS's accounting records raise the possibility a board member of the Pacific Forum served as a conduit for money from a government slush fund used by Lee to do an underhanded favor for a former senior-level Japanese government official. That ought to merit further attention from CSIS. And was Kelly aware he was being used in this fashion? His involvement--and Carl Ford's connection to the scandal--should prompt a State Department inquiry.
AND THE LATEST UPDATE:
On April 5, The Washington Post published a front-page story, "Secret Taiwan Fund Sought Friends, Influence Abroad," that covered most of what The Nation reported above. The piece, by John Pomfret, a Beijing correspondent for the paper, provided additional information. Pomfret, who interviewed past and present officials in Taipei, reported that the secret slush fund was divided into seven components, and one called Mingde ("Clear Virtue," in English) handled projects involving the United States and Japan. One Taiwanese official told Pomfret that Taiwan regularly funded research by U.S. academics on Taiwan, subsidized conferences conducted by U.S. think tanks (such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute), and paid for trips to Taiwan taken by congressional aides. But the story does not indicate if all of this activity was supported by the secret slush fund. This official remarked, "We know there is a revolving door in Washington. So we follow the careers of people and hope we can cooperate."
One success on this front for the Taiwanese involved John Bolton, now undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. During his confirmation hearing last year, Bolton, a hawk who has for years championed Taiwan, said that in the mid-1990s he received $30,000 from the Taiwan government to write three research papers on how Taiwan might win its way back into the United Nations. Bolton defended the payments and said they would not affect his judgment in office. According to the Post, the money for these reports came from the slush fund. During the period he was receiving these payments, Bolton twice testified before Congress in favor of Taiwan's readmission into the U.N.
It's not likely that Bolton pushed ardently pro-Taiwan positions because of the payments. Taiwan was, more probably, rewarding a right-wing ally already on its side. But Bolton should be asked what he understood about the source of the money for these reports, and he ought to be questioned about any other institutional ties he has had with Taiwan. Does it compromise the political system to have foreign policy experts testifying before Congress who have been paid via the slush fund of an overseas government? But Bolton would not talk to the Post.
The Post article noted that the Mingde project targeted other Americans to befriend, including Paul Wolfowitz, now the deputy defense secretary, and Kurt Campbell, a deputy assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration. But there's no evidence slush fund money went to either, and a Wolfowitz spokesman said Wolfowitz did not know of any connection between himself and the Taiwan fund.
Beyond the United States, Lee and his lieutenants spread the secret money to win support. Pomfret reports Panama's government was given $11 million for hosting Lee in 1997, Nicaragua was slipped $10 million to build a palace for its president, and that about $20 million was passed to the African National Congress in South Africa to help it repay campaign debts.
To date, three top Bush appointees in the State Department have been tarred by the scandal. When will these officials and the State Department feel compelled to address the controversy? Were other American hawks on Taiwan's secret payroll, knowingly or not? Will Congress become interested enough to examine Taiwan's extensive covert influence campaign? How far will the slush spread?
The Nation 2002 |
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Dan Rockwell
Joined: 10 Dec 2001
Posts: 1988
Location: Stamford, CT, USA |
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Sat Sep 28, 2002 4:13 am
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