THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
January 2007
Week Three
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- January 15: The Iraqi government executes two of Saddam Hussein's closest senior aides, Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, in a brutal hanging that resulted in the severing of Ibrahim's head.
Iraq war and occupation
Sunni Muslims are incensed at the brutality of Ibrahim's death. A government video of the hangings shows Ibrahim's head being sliced off by the hanging rope, falling to the floor, and rolling several yards before coming to a stop, still covered in a black hood. The decapitation appears inadvertent, and Iraqi officials are anxious to dodge accusations that they mutilated Ibrahim's remains. Ibrahim and al-Bandar were both convicted of war crimes related to the killing of 148 Shi'ites in Dujail, north of Baghdad, in 1982, following a failed assassination attempt against Hussein. Ibrahim, Hussein's half-brother, once ran the feared Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. At least 3,000 angry, weeping Sunnis gather to witness the burials of the two men in the small town of Ouja, near Tikrit, very near Hussein's burial site. "Where are those who cry out in demands for human rights?" demands one mourner. "Where are the UN and the world's human rights organizations? Barzan had cancer. They treated him only to keep him alive long enough to kill him. We vow to take revenge, even if it takes years." Ibrahim's son-in-law, Azzam Saleh Abdullah, says, "We heard the news from the media. We were supposed to be informed a day earlier, but it seems that this government does not know the rules." Abdullah says the executions reflect what he calls the Shi'ite-led government's hatred of Sunnis. "They still want more Iraqi bloodshed," he says. "To hell with this democracy." - Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi says he should have been consulted before the executions were staged, because he and the two other members of Iraq's presidential council -- President Jalal Talabani and Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi -- had asked for the hangings to be delayed.
- The execution video was shown to reporters Monday in an apparent attempt to prove that Ibrahim's corpse was not intentionally mutilated after death, but unlike the government video of Hussein's execution, which was broadcast worldwide, the video of this pair of executions will not be released. According to government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh, there were no taunts and demonstrations of ill will at this execution, unlike the spectacle during the Hussein execution. "No one shouted slogans or said anything that would taint the execution," he says. "None of those charged were insulted." This is difficult to confirm because no audio was available on the videotape.
- Many Iraqis, particularly Sunnis, view the hangings as another calculated insult, another effort by the al-Maliki government to humiliate Hussein's followers and all Iraqi Sunnis. "We knew that he would be executed and would join a parade of heroes, but Maliki, why did you behead him?" asks Salam al-Tikriti, a relative of Ibrahim. "Why did you insult his body? Are you still afraid of him even after he is dead? We will cut your heads the same way that you are cutting the heads of the heroes of Iraq." Celebrations by Shi'ites and angry denunciations by Sunnis roll throughout the nation in response to the hangings. (AP/Yahoo! News, Washington Post)
- January 15: While Condoleezza Rice has repeatedly said that the Bush administration is refocusing on the long-abandoned "road map to peace" between Palestine and Israel, experts on the region consider the Bush peace plan dead.
Bush's foreign policies
The Israeli government is openly advertising for bids on the construction of 44 homes in the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, a direct violation of pledges by Israel to Washington to halt construction under the "road map." Palestinian militants regularly fire rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, breaking their own agreement with Washington. Now the White House has announced that Rice will host a three-way meeting with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas within the next month. Olmert broke his own promise to Abbas, made in December, to ease restrictions at security checkpoints in the West Bank. And Abbas has made it clear to Rice that he rejects a proposal to establish a temporary Palestinian state within temporary borders, fearing that Israel's security wall would become a de facto frontier if permanent status negotiations fail. And Abbas's leadership is in serious question, with factional disputes between Abbas's Fatah and the more revolutionary Hamas threatening to erupt into a civil war. Both Israel and the US want to shore up support for Abbas and weaken Hamas, whose electoral victory last year halted Western funding for the Palestinian territories because of its refusal to recognise the Jewish state. (London Times) - January 15: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, representing an administration which has overthrown two governments in the Middle East in the name of implementing democracy, and has loudly decried the human rights abuses in those two countries, visits Egypt.
Bush's foreign policies
While there, Rice never mentions the concept of democracy except in the most broad and general terms, and never complains about Egypt's horrendous human rights violations of its citizens. For the last few days, Egyptian newspapers have been rife with stories of civilians beaten, tortured, raped, sodomized, and killed for daring to speak out against the government of Hosni Mubarak. Rice mentioned none of this in her meetings with Mubarak and with Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Instead, she praised Egypt for supporting American aims in the Middle East. According to Egyptian political commentators, aides, and human rights advocates, it is clear that Rice and the US have decided that stability, not democracy, is its priority. Egypt had in earlier years come under some polite criticism from the Bush administration for its horrific human rights policies, even as the CIA routinely ships suspected terrorists to Egypt for torture and interrogation. "The former pressure was an illusion and the lack of any pressure now will push the crisis between the people and their rulers to the edge," says Ibrahim Eissa, the editor of Al Dustoor, a weekly independent newspaper in Egypt that is critical of the government. That eliminates "all false appearances that the Arab regimes are against the United States in defense of their independent sovereignty and that the United States is supporting democracy when it is in strict alliance with the oppressive regimes," says Eissa. (New York Times)
"In all fairness, I see Condoleezza Rice -- she goes on a plane, she gets off a plane, she waves, she goes there to meet some dictator. ...They talk, she leaves, she waves, the plane takes off. Nothing happens, it's a joke, nothing ever happens." -- Donald Trump on Condoleezza Rice and her lack of effectiveness as Secretary of State, January 14
- January 15: A spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Association, a hardline Iraqi Sunni clerical group, says Bush's plans for a 21,500-troop "surge" has already inflamed passions among Iraq's Sunni minority, and in response, many Sunnis have joined insurgent cells and demonstrated against the US.
Iraq war and occupation
"Iraq is like a fire," says Mohammed Bashar Faidi. "Instead of putting water on the fire, Bush is pouring gasoline." The MSA represents thousands of Sunni clerics throughout Iraq, and though it reflects some of the aims of the Sunni insurgents, also represents the views of a significant segment of the Sunni Arab population, which has largely turned to Islamic political ideologies since the downfall of the secular Arab nationalism represented by Saddam Hussein's regime. - Like many Sunnis, Faidi welcomes the idea of open warfare with Iraq's Shi'ites. He wants US troops to withdraw and leave his nationalist Sunnis to "rout" the Shi'ite militias and political groups, leaving the Sunnis and the Kurds in joint control of the country. Faidi's ideas may be unrealistic, considering how badly the Sunnis are outnumbered and the ill will harbored against them by both Kurds and Shi'ites, but his willingness for war is telling. "It would be a civil war," Faidi says. "But we believe the militias and the [current] Iraqi army [are] not fighting for an ideology or their nation but for Iran. The resistance is fighting for their nation and its beliefs. We would bring [civil war] to an end and restore order in three to four months. At the end things will be calm, better than living for four years under the American government and the Iranians."
- Faidi's superior, Harith Dhari, the most influential Sunni religious figure in Iraq, has dismissed the current Shi'ite-led government as a puppet of Iran. Both Dhari and Faidi currently live in Amman, Jordan; if Dhari returns to Iraq, he will be arrested on charges of collaborating with the insurgency. The al-Maliki government charges that the MSA justifies acts of sectarian violence and colludes with foreign extremists; Faidi says the MSA is barely able to resist the pressure from rank-and-file Sunnis to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, calling upon young men throughout the Muslim world to join the struggle in Iraq should the US military increase operations in Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad. Faidi says that would be playing into the hands of Islamic terrorists: "This is exactly what al-Qaeda wants, which we don't want."
- Faidi calls the US escalation "another adventure" that will cause "more bloodshed, more dislocated families, and more distrust" between Iraqis. "It will not solve problems," he says. "It will increase the complexities." Instead of escalating the US troop presence in Iraq and increasing reconstruction spending, Faidi says, Bush should "start from zero" by scrapping the current Iraqi security forces and restoring the Hussein-era army, dismantling the government elected in December 2005, discarding the constitution approved in an October 2005 referendum and shifting the US alignment to Sunnis, who dominated under Hussein, instead of Shi'ites. "Give the Sunni its place back," he says. Naturally, this idea has almost no support among anyone in the US, either on the left or the right.
- But Faidi's views are not representative of all Iraq's Sunnis. Some Sunnis grudgingly welcome the prospect of more American troops if their deployment will help guarantee their safety against the predations of Shi'ite death squads, and will help decrease what they see as undue Iranian influence in the Iraqi government. (Los Angeles Times)
- January 15: The New Yorker's Steve Coll notes on the subject of the US escalation of forces in iraq, that the opposition of most US generals and ground commanders -- including the top two commanders in the Middle East, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey, both of whom were recently removed from their commands for disagreeing with Bush's policy, as well as of the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff -- is based in historical precedent.
Iraq war and occupation
It took three decades for peace to "break out" in Northern Ireland. The Russians are still mired in conflict in Chechnya over ten years after rebellion first broke out there. And, Coll notes, "these are examples involving the sovereign territory of the occupying army, not some distant land conquered by an expeditionary force." Though the stabilization of Bosnia by NATO is cited as a recent success, that happened largely because all the warring factions had agreed to renounce violence before the occupying forces arrived, and NATO forces were much larger in comparison to the size of the local population than US forces are in comparison to the Iraqi citizenry. Coll writes, "By none of the common measures of counterinsurgency doctrine -- ratios of force size, the strength of local political agreements, or the credibility of the occupying army -- does the President's plan look convincing." - Coll writes that Bush's choice to lead combat operations in Iraq, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, "has a record of either misreading the war or glossing over its difficulties." Odierno, who is replacing Casey, said in the summer of 2003 that the Sunnis were "not close to guerrilla warfare" and that the enemy had no will to fight. Early in 2004, he declared at a news conference that the insurgents he was facing were a "fractured, sporadic threat" who had been reduced to just a "handful of cells." He said, "We see constant improvement. And so it is getting better."
- Coll writes, "In a competitive democracy, it is difficult to rescue a war built on distortions and illusions, because, to protect falsehoods proffered to voters in the past, a president and his advisers may find it tempting to manufacture more of them. It does not require a cynic to see that even an implausible escalation plan has the virtue of putting domestic political opponents back on their heels. This was the advice given by McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson in a memo dated February 7, 1965, concerning an escalation plan for Vietnam that Bundy thought might have as little as a 25% chance of success: 'Even if it fails, the policy will be worth it. At a minimum it will damp down the charge that we did not do all that we could have done, and this charge will be important in many countries, including our own.' The Bush Administration is now reworking this sad axiom, and, once again, American soldiers will be asked to give their lives for its assumptions. Under the Constitution, only Congress can prevent this from occurring, but its members have exhibited little evidence in the past that they possess the skill or the will to do so." (New Yorker)
- January 15: Outgoing director of national intelligence John Negroponte has told Congress that the threats from terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are on the rise, but outgoing State Department terror coordinator Henry Crumpton believes that because of the US's failures in Iraq and elsewhere, the US is almost certain to be hit even harder by Islamic fanatics than it was on 9/11.
Islamist terrorism
"Certainly, we haven't made any progress," Crumpton says. "In fact, we've lost ground." Crumpton cites the war in Iraq as the biggest cause for the rise in resentment and aggression against the US. Crumpton notes some successes, such as improved joint efforts with foreign governments and a weakening of al-Qaeda's leadership structure, but he warns of future attacks. "We don't want to acknowledge we're going to get hit again in the homeland, but we are," he says. "That's a hard, ugly fact. But it's going to happen." Crumpton cites no specific intelligence, but says he and his agency worries most about lone operatives who slip into the country and take directions through cyberspace. "How do you penetrate that?" he asks. Crumpton says he is leaving office because of family financial pressures; State may not move to replace him for the time being. (MSNBC) - January 15: Liberal blogger and commentator Arianna Huffington says that Bush's "new way forward" has "split the GOP into three camps: the Triumphalists, the Just-Becausers, and the Realists."
Iraq war and occupation
According to Huffington's analysis, the "triumphalists" are Bush and his most loyal followers. She writes, "They are convinced that saying something is so can somehow make it so, and that any acknowledgment of reality is defeatist, cowardly, and un-American. The use of rah-rah pep-talk nonsense is at the heart of the triumphalists' playbook. The president has told us again and again...that he believes we can succeed in Iraq. Despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite the fact that all he's offering are the same failed strategies. He -- like all other triumphalists -- has clearly abandoned concrete thinking and moved on to the political equivalent of clapping your hands for Tinkerbell. ...Yes, Bush is finally admitting mistakes. But only because, politically, he realizes he has to if he's going to be allowed to continue making more mistakes. And even then, his admissions are strangely detached, like when he told 60 Minutes [on January 14]: "No question, decisions have made things unstable." And who, pray, made those decisions? Wasn't it the Decider? The rest of the triumphalists are in lockstep with their triumphal leader. "I believe that the war is still winnable," Sen. John McCain told the American Enterprise Institute. Boolah-boolah." As for triumphalist Dick Cheney, his plan for victory is simply: "We have to prevail, and we have to have the stomach for the fight, long term." Huffington writes, "So the plan to prevail is to... prevail? Gotcha." Huffington adds independent Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, who she terms a "de facto Republican," who himself told the neoconservatives at the AEI, "Senator McCain has shown the way to forge and advance a new strategy that will lead us to victory in Iraq and to victory in a larger war against terrorism." For sheer boneheaded simple-mindedness, no one can beat Lieberman's January 14 assertion on Meet the Press: "My own sense of history tells me that in war, ultimately, there are two exit strategies. One is called victory; the other is called defeat." Huffingto has no patience with such claptrap: "It's shameful that this is the level of thinking that's sending American men and women into harm's way." - The second group, the "just becausers," are the ones whom Huffington dismisses as the "dutifully self-lobotomized." She includes Republican senator Jon Kyl, who recently blithered, "Everyone suggested we needed a new strategy. The president agreed with that, and he's now announced a new strategy." Huffington writes, "For Kyl and his ilk, it doesn't matter if the new strategy is good or bad, just that there is one. Asking for anything more than that is just defeatist." She adds Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to list of good little GOP robots, who recently told CNN, "I think we ought to give the president a chance to succeed so we can have a victory there." To this, Huffington writes, "I guess over three years, over $400 billion, and over 3,000 lives doesn't qualify as giving the president a chance. When asked by Blitzer why he believed the president's plan would succeed, McConnell paused for a considerable amount of time (so long, in fact, I wondered if CNN had lost the feed), then repeated 'I think we ought to give it a chance,' adding, 'The president believes it will succeed. He believes he's going to have the cooperation of the Iraqis that he needs.' In short, despite all the reasons not to trust what Bush believes, McConnell wants us to support the president and believe in what he believes...just because."
- Huffington finds some hope in the third group of Republicans, the "realists." These are the ones who understand the realities of the situation in Iraq and have the guts to break away from the sheep and speak out. Foremost of these is, of course, senator Chuck Hagel, who has been sharply critical of the entire "surge" strategy and is not shy about termind the situation in Iraq a civil war. Hagel is joined by two other hardline conservatives, fellow senators Gordon Smith and Sam Brownback, who recently said, "I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer. Iraq requires a political rather than a military solution." Smith recently said, "This is the president's Hail Mary pass. We are extending an ineffective tactic to further the status quo." Huffington looks to the GOP realists to bring a badly needed dose of sanity to the crazed triumphalists and the doe-eyed just-becausers, writing, "We need to clear the political landscape of rah-rah Pollyanna policies, hold that ground, then build an Iraq strategy that acknowledges reality. Now that's a 'clear and hold and build' plan I can get behind." (Huffington Post)
- January 15: On his Fox News talk show The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly sinks to a new low in sheer sewer-level posturing, by claiming that kidnap victim Shawn Hornbeck, captured at age 11 and apparently sexually abused for four years before being located just days ago and returned to his parents, didn't escape because he enjoyed his captivity.
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
O'Reilly says to guest Greta van Susteren, a Fox legal analyst, "You know the Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it, I never bought it, I don't think it happened in the Patty Hearst Case. I don't think it happened here...." Van Susteren tries to head off O'Reilly, but O'Reilly has a head of steam up. Apparently, from his commentary, which is not fully reprinted here but available at the links below, his prime evidence of Hornbeck's complicity in his own kidnapping is Hornbeck's several body piercings. "Authorities actually say that he taunted his own parents on his website," O'Reilly says, an allegation that is not established. "He's got these piercing. This is a troubled kid in my opinion." Again, van Susteren tries to interject some sanity into the discussion, but O'Reilly isn't having any. "The situation here with this kid is looks to me to be a lot more fun then when he had under his own parents. He didn't have to go to school, he could run around and do what he wanted." Van Susteren again interjects, "Some kids like school --" but O'Reilly, thundering in his slander and his ignorance, says without basis of fact, "Well I don't believe this kid did. And I think when it all comes down what's going to happen is there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances. ...The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." On the January 16 broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly added, "I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because" his kidnapper "made things easy for him. No school, play all day long." - The outrage to O'Reilly's incredible accusation is immediate. Conservative blogger Steve Huff writes, "It takes a lot to nauseate me. To render me speechless, at least for a moment. But reading the exchange above did both. Reading what the loudest mouth in cable news said about the biggest crime story of the first half of the year, in reference to a 15-year-old boy...I was stunned, and deeply disgusted. ...O'Reilly has been in the news for 30 years or more, covering all sorts of stories, and he's never heard of preferential pedophiles? He's never heard of brainwashing or complete intimidation? He can't do the math where a 6'4", 300-lb pedophile with a violent temper against a slightly-built boy from rural Missouri equals one having complete control of the other? This broadcast by Bill O'Reilly stands alone. Bill O'Reilly's statements above make Rush Limbaugh ridiculing Michael J. Fox's Parkinsons Disease symptoms during the last elections look like a mild jab from Limbaugh to Fox, a joke that was just a little tasteless. O'Reilly has outed himself, once and for all, as the bully and blowhard he truly is. As the narcissist he surely must be -- because only a first-class narcissist could possibly think that tossing off statements like the ones made above would either not be noticed or not found offensive, even by his most loyal fans. If this isn't the final straw for O'Reilly in the court of public opinion, it should be." Journalist Larisa Alexandrovna writes, "I suggest anyone with any sense of decency demand that Fox be shut down finally, for pandering to pedophiles and child abusers by blaming the victim, in this case, the child." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, a longtime critic of O'Reilly's, says somberly on January 18, "We've all gotten a lot of amusement from O'Reilly's baseline idiocy [before now], but this is reprehensible. It reeks of perversity and inhumanity. Simply put, Mr. O'Reilly no longer deserves any place on the public stage."
- Hornbeck's own parents are equally outraged at O'Reilly's ravings. "Can you really be that simple-minded?" says Hornbeck's stepfather, Craig Akers. "Our son was 11 when he was abducted. A child that age can be mentally manipulated in a very short time. Hearing him say what he said absolutely infuriates me. I can hardly even express how mad it makes me to hear that." Akers has a simple explanation of why the child did not leave for four years. "Shawn's actual words to us were that he had been terrified," Akers says. "We didn't ask him about that, but he brought it up after seeing something on the news about how he had had all these opportunities to get away. He said he was simply terrified."
- Two days later, responding to an irate e-mail from a viewer, O'Reilly denies saying anything untoward. To an e-mail reading, "O'Reilly, I wanted to give you another chance to rectify the awful remarks you made about Shawn Hornbeck. However, your arrogance is never ending," O'Reilly says, "I made no awful remarks, madam -- just asked questions." He will later claim, again, that he is merely the target of left-wing demonizers, saying on his Fox Web site, "The far-left smear Web sites have vilified me for raising questions about the situation...." (Fox News/True Crime Blog, At-Largely, MediaMatters, MSNBC/NewsHounds [link to video], Time, Fox News)
- January 15: White students at Texas's Tarleton State University "honor" Martin Luther King Jr. Day by throwing a party that mocks black stereotypes. Attendees, many dressed in Afro wigs and wearing fake gold and silver teeth, nosh on fried chicken and swill malt liquor.
Conservative hate speech and intolerance
Many come in faux gang apparel. One photo, posted on a Facebook account, shows students mocking African-American step shows. Another shows a student wearing an Aunt Jemima costume and carrying a gun. "I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," says Donald Ray Elder, president of the TSU chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "That upsets me," Elder says of the photo of the student carrying a gun. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence." The school plans to investigate the party. A university-sponsored forum held to discuss the divide between black and white students, held after the party, "escalated into a shouting match," says Elder. The university president, Dennis McCabe, calls the photos reprehensible: "I am personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed that Tarleton students have demonstrated such insensitivity." (AP/My Way News)
- Mid-January: Despite increasing pressure from the Senate, the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, still refuses to provide a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Negroponte has been blocking a new NIE since at least July of 2006; he has ignored a Senate bill demanding that a new one be prepared.
Iraq war and occupation
The level of frustration in Congress is mounting. The last NIE on Iraq was released in late 2004. During a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, when senators are prepared to hear briefings on the new NIE from an intelligence official, senators are thunderstruck when the official turns up empty-handed. The official tells the senators that the intelligence community hadn't been able to complete the NIE because it had been dealing with the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq. He then said that not all of the relevant agencies had contributed to the NIE, which has made it impossible to put together a finished product. Together all of this makes up what reporter Ken Silverstein calls a "dog ate my homework" alibi. Both Democrats and Republicans on the committee believe that Negroponte is stalling on the completion of the NIE because it will likely be grim to a degree unmatched by any of its predecessors. Silverstein writes, "Given the Bush Administration's 'surge' policy and the extraordinary danger faced by US troops in Iraq (27 U.S. servicemembers died there this weekend), the need for a new NIE is urgent. The intelligence community is doing the nation a disservice by making Congress wait for the truth." (Harpers)
Peace agreement between Israel and Syria reported; Israel says no such agreement reached
- January 16: The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports that Israel and Syria have reached a secret peace agreement after a series of meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006.
Middle East peace process
A formal peace agreement will be signed between the two countries once both sides fulfill their commitments to one another. Israel agrees to withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remains open: Syria wants the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel wants the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years. The border area will be demilitarized in Israel's favor, helping to ensure Israel's security. And perhaps most importantly, Syria will agree to end its support for both Hezbollah and Hamas, and will distance itself from Iran. The document is described as a "non-paper," a document of understandings that is not signed and lacks legal standing -- its nature is political. It was prepared in August 2005 and has been updated during a number of meetings in Europe. The meetings were carried out with the knowledge of senior officials in the government of former prime minister Ariel Sharon. The last meeting took place during last summer's war in Lebanon. The Syrians have asked for help in improving their relations with the United States, and particularly in lifting the American embargo on Syria. In return, Syria would exercise its influence for a solution to the conflict in Iraq, through an agreement between Shi'a leader Moqtada al-Sadr and the Sunni leadership, and in addition, would contribute to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the refugee problem. The Israeli government has officially denied, thus far, that any such agreement exists. - A day later, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert says that no Israeli government officials were involved in any such meetings with Syria. Instead, Olmert says, "It was a private initiative on the part of an individual who spoke with himself. From what I read, his interlocutor was an eccentric from the US, someone not serious or dignified." The Syrian Foreign Ministry also rejected the report. "No negotiations took place, the Ha'aretz report is completely false," says a Syrian Foreign Ministry official. An Israel cabinet minister calls the story "a bluff," and adds, "We don't know about this, and if this had happened, we would have known about it. This is not serious. It's possible that there were contacts on the level of academics, it's possible that there were reports to officials on a low level. But it did not reach higher than that." Israeli officials point to Syrian involvement in Lebanon, where Israelis accuse Syria of trying to destabilize the Siniora government. Both Israel and the US consider the Lebanese government an ally. An Israeli official says, "Syria is trying to topple the Siniora government in Lebanon, a government which the United States is trying to aid. Syria streams terror elements to Iraq, where they operate against the United States military, Syria fosters [Damascus-based Hamas leader] Khaled Meshal, it transfers arms to Hezbollah, hosts headquarters of terror organizations, supports Hamas, and, in general, undermines any attempt to reach a [peace] agreement."
- But further information obtained by Ha'aretz indicates that not only did the meetings take place and the tentative agreement reached, but US vice president Dick Cheney and other senior American officials were regularly informed of the meetings and the progress of the talks. This is confirmed by Syrian representative Ibrahim Suleiman, who was one of the Syrian representatives at the meetings, and by Nimrod Novik, a former political advisor to Vice Premier Shimon Peres. Novik disseminated a letter last October to members of the Council for Peace and Security which said that Washington knew about the talks. "While the administration is taking care not to broadcast a U-turn in its approach as long as the president has not given it an explicit green light, the signs of a change in direction are multiplying," Novik wrote. "During the fighting in Lebanon, former senior [US] officials were authorized to speak with Damascus, within a narrow mandate, while Pentagon and State Department officials support a change in the policy toward Hamas and quote the president in this context." And Geoffrey Aronson, of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who helped arrange the secret meetings, also participated last year in meetings organized by Alastair Crooke, the European Union's former security envoy to the territories, with key Hamas and Hezbollah members. These meetings, which took place in Beirut, were also attended by two former senior CIA officials. Ha'aretz reported at the time that Cheney also know about the existence of these meetings, and received regular reports from the American participants. (Ha'aretz, Ha'aretz [full text of draft agreement], Ha'aretz, Ha'aretz)
- January 16: The Pentagon is responsible for allowing fighter jet parts and other restricted military gear to be sold to Iran and China, according to federal investigators.
Military-industrial complex
One case cited by investigators involves a Pakistani arms broker who had been convicted of exporting US missile parts to Iran, and who resumed his business after his release from prison. He was soon ferrying Chinook helicopter engine parts to Iran from a US company that bought them at a Pentagon surplus sale. These "surplus sales" often prove bonanzas to arms dealers. "Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value Solutions for America's Warfighters," the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself "the place to obtain original US Government surplus property." Although such material is supposed to be demilitarized, too often it is not. Iran is particularly interested in parts for its aging fleet of F-14 "Tomcat" fighters purchased from the US in the 1970s. In another case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again -- customs evidence tags still attached -- to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran. With the recent retirement of the F-14 from the US military, thousands of valuable parts are headed for the surplus bins. Iran is the only other nation flying F-14s. - "That would be evidence of a significant breakdown, in my view, in controls and processes," says Greg Kutz, the Government Accountability Office's head of special investigations. "It shouldn't happen the first time, let alone the second time." But according to Defense Department official Fred Baillie, the DOD was doing nothing but following procedures -- and the instances actually prove the process works. "The fact that those individuals chose to violate the law and the fact that the customs people caught them really indicates that the process is working," says Baillie, the Defense Logistics Agency's executive director of distribution. "Customs is supposed to check all exports to make sure that all the appropriate certifications and licenses had been granted." But the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found it alarmingly easy to acquire sensitive surplus. Last year, its agents bought $1.1 million worth -- including rocket launchers, body armor and surveillance antennas -- by driving onto a base and posing as defense contractors. "They helped us load our van," Kutz says. Investigators used a fake identity to access a surplus Web site operated by a Pentagon contractor and bought still more, including a dozen microcircuits used on F-14 fighters. Investigators have found the Pentagon's inventory and sales controls rife with errors. They say sales are closely watched by friends and foes of the United States. Republican House member Christopher Shays calls the cases "a huge breakdown, an absolute, huge breakdown." He continues, "The military should not sell or give away any sensitive military equipment. If we no longer need it, it needs to be destroyed -- totally destroyed. The Department of Defense should not be supplying sensitive military equipment to our adversaries, our enemies, terrorists." (AP/Yahoo! News)
- January 16: The Senate votes 98-0 to force senators to disclose the defense contracts, tax breaks, water projects, and other hidden "pet" projects routinely buried in legislation.
Military-industrial complex
The vote comes five days after Democrats won a compromise victory to pass legislation bringing more transparency and disclosure to the practice of "earmarks," riders tucked into legislation that provide funding for various pet projects for individual lawmakers. The Senate agreed to follow the more stringent definition of "earmarks" as recently passed by the House. In a turnabout, Democrats found themselves challenged by Republicans to expand and broaden the definition of "earmarks." The concept of "earmarks" became notorious after former GOP House member Randy Cunningham, convicted of fraud, bribery, and corruption, used his position to gain some $70 to $80 million in "earmarks" that helped his friends and business colleagues. (AP/WVEC-TV) - January 16: The ethics bill being debated in the Senate is being opposed by a friend and former business colleague of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and an amalgamation of Christian conservative and anti-abortion groups.
Jack Abramoff scandal
The groups say that proposed restrictions and regulation of what they call "grassroots lobbying" would put heavy burdens on citizen groups wanting to lobby Congress. They worry that the section in question defines a constituent contacting a lawmaker as "grassroots lobbying." Of course, their idea of "grassroots lobbying" centers around money-flush, well-connected K Street lobbyists. The National Right to Life Committee says, in an e-mail to its supporters, that the purpose of the ethics bill is an attempt to curtail freedom of speech, targeting groups such as the NRLC and Focus on the Family. The American Family Association claims, "Senators favoring this bill are simply tired of hearing from you. That is the bottom line. They don't want to hear from you. They don't want you to be informed. They want to silence you. How? By simply keeping you from receiving information that AFA provides." Former Abramoff colleague Grover Norquist, who runs the influential and corrupt Americans for Tax Relief, has joined the Christian conservatives in opposing the ethics legislation. Abramoff was proven, in his criminal trial, of using such "grassroots lobbying" of illegally funneling millions of dollars to ATR and other conservative organizations. ATR served as a conduit for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. As the money passed through, Norquist's organization kept a cut. A second group Norquist was involved with, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, received about $500,000 in Abramoff client funds; the council's president has told Senate investigators that Abramoff often asked her to lobby a senior Interior Department official on his behalf. The committee report said the Justice Department should further investigate the organization's dealings with the department and its former deputy secretary, Steven Griles. (Seattle Times) - January 16: The conservative smear campaign against Democratic senator and prospective presidential candidate Barack Obama continues.
Conservative smear campaigns
In one of the most overtly racist pronouncements of her despicable career, conservative pundit Ann Coulter says, in an interview on Sean Hannity's syndicated radio show, that the only reason Democrats support the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama is because "they're just stunned to find a black man who can walk and talk." (Of course, she says that it is Democrats who are the real racists, not herself.) Coulter tells Hannity, "When Gerald Ford died a few weeks ago, all of the coverage kept saying, you know, coyly suggesting that he was a mediocrity, that he had never passed any major legislation, never passed any major legislation -- which, you know, on one hand, we're Republicans; we don't want them passing legislation, we want them repealing legislation -- but leaving that point aside, I mean, everything they were saying to point out how little qualified Ford was as this accidental president is surely true, you know, tenfold in the case of Obama. And I do think it does show -- it further confirms my point that Democrats are racist, and they're just stunned to find a black man who can walk and talk. And, you know, not being a racist, I'm not really that impressed with a black man who can walk and talk. I knew that." (MediaMatters) - January 16: One of the co-hosts of the Fox News morning show, Fox and Friends, bursts into spontaneous applause when Republican Tom Tancredo announces on the show that he is forming an exploratory presidential committee for 2008.
Conservative media slant
Tancredo is a virulent opponent of immigration and is basing his presidential platform on that agenda. Fox and Friends hosts Brian Kilmeade, Steve Doocy, and Gretchen Carlson often indulge in the same kinds of attacks on immigrants. "Thanks for picking our venue," Kilmeade simpers; Doocy then prompts Tancredo to speak about his need to raise money and give out his Web site address. Carlson leads the news break with the announcement of Tancredo's intention to run for president; within moments, Doocy makes the celebratory announcement that he has just received an e-mail from a viewer who sent Tancredo a $100 donation. (Democrat Barack Obama also announces the same morning that he intends to run for president; the Fox hosts make no mention of this event.) The slobbering, cheerleading treatment of Tancredo takes place minutes after the show features Fox talk show host Bill O'Reilly, who attacks NBC as a "left-leaning" network and then holds up Fox as "fair and balanced." "This is the only place you can get it fair and balanced," says Doocy; "We try and other places don't," responds O'Reilly. (Fox News/NewsHounds [link to video]) - January 16: Author and columnist Ian Williams writes that he was correct in 2002 when he predicted the US would attack Iraq, and he fears he is correct now in predicting the US will attack Iran.
Iraq war and occupation
"Iran will be attacked. And it will be a disaster," he writes. "It may also be that the famous 'surge' is actually in preparation for Iran rather than Iraq." Williams calls it "deja vu all over again. In the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the steady drum beat from the NeoCons and quasi-Likudnik Israel supporters, and the statements from the Bush administration showed that they were intent on doing it. And of course there was the matter of military resources being diverted away from Afghanistan towards Iraq. ...History shows that George W. Bush, executioner in chief of Texas, does not need a long rope to lose his head. And now he supports continuing the war in Iraq from the safety of the White House and even when he is on his frequent vacations in his ranch in Texas. He is not going to give up on this war, no matter how many people die to exorcise whatever deep personal 'Rosebud' the Deserter-in-Chief has impelling him forward to match his father's genuine war record." - There is some evidence besides the troop escalations, the carrier groups now patrolling the Persian Gulf, the increasingly belligerent rhetoric from Bush, the same kinds of unsubstantiated claims from Bush officials about Iran's "imminent threat," and Bush's own arrant cowardice and apparent sociopathy. There is the almost unanimous support from Israel and its American lobby for wiping out the only Arab nation in the region that poses any sort of real threat to Israel's continued existence.
- Williams looks to the American neoconservatives for illumination. He writes sardonically, "The Neocons certainly are vociferous supporters of Israel, but to be fair, they also have other ideological motives. As the (far removed) ideological descendants of Trotskyist schisms in New York, they genuinely believed that the US Army could take democracy to the Middle East on the bayonets of the US Army, in the same way that Leon Trotsky thought he could take socialism to Warsaw on the bayonets of the Red Army. The Neocons could also call upon a group of idealist liberal interventionists, including Tony Blair, who genuinely, and correctly, thought that Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty tyrant, but who, patently incorrectly, thought that his removal would make all well. To win these over, the Neocons had to hold their noses while the administration and Blair invoked the UN and the resolutions that Saddam was defying. That paper trail of resolutions was crucial in giving the attack some residual legitimacy to persuade some over-scrupulously legalistic types, like Britain's Attorney General."
- The same scenario is playing itself out yet again. The US has twisted the UN Security Council to secure a resolution that Iran is bound to reject, "giving Bush (and maybe even Blair) a UN-blue figleaf of a legal justification for action." Iran is being blamed for the setbacks in Iraq, though much blame must rest on the Iranian-leaning Shi'a government in Baghdad who, at the moment, are Bush's bosom pals. Wild accusations are flying that allege Iran is behind al-Qaeda; never mind that Iran is Shi'ite and al-Qaeda extremist Sunni. Bush and his officials continue to storm about Iran's "weapons of mass destruction," ignoring the reports from the IAEA that Iran has none. Just recently, Bush announced that American forces have a "green light" to attack Iranian forces in -- or near -- Iraq. And Bush has not forbidden, or even publicly discouraged, Israel in that country's talk of bombing Iran, perhaps even with tactical nuclear weapons.
- Williams writes, "One suspects that if the US is encouraging the Israelis, the purpose of the US forces in the region is to contain Iranian retaliation, and that the 'surge' also has this in mind. This was, after all, the administration that took resources chasing after bin Laden in Afghanistan and diverted them to Iraq. However the real effect of the 'surge' will be to provide a lot more targets for the Shi'a militia who are presently not attacking coalition forces but definitely will be. The effects of the attack will be much more profound than the attack on Iraq, and it is all down to the president. He is the catalyst that unites all the various factors in this deranged enterprise." He concludes, "To exorcise the ghosts of George W. Bush's cowardice during Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of American and US troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf will be put at risk -- along with the world's oil supplies, the dollar and the world economy. And that could pale into insignificance at the future consequences of a complete collapse of nuclear non-proliferation efforts if Israel crosses the nuclear threshold with, or indeed even without, American complicity. It is, of course, all totally irrational -- but this White House is on the record as thinking that reality can be moulded to its desires. It is also on the record, most recently from the 'surge' in seeing that it learns nothing from its demonstrable failures." (Deadline Pundit)
