War!! Hypocrisy!! US Attacks Iran: Global Community Must Respond (Suggested Response Included)

The long-rumored war between the United States and Iran has begun, but not with a radioactive bang, as some had feared. That can still come later, of course. "All options are on the table," as they say -- "they" being all the so-called "serious presidential candidates" and the statement itself being thinly veiled "diplomatic code" threatening a nuclear attack against the Iranians.

Rather than an attack with "bunker-busters", the first attack of the war was made with a "bank-buster", and it came in the form of a shot across the bow of the global banking system. The hypocrisy couldn't be clearer, not that this will matter much to the Iranian victims -- unless the truth suddenly becomes as important to the world's bankers as it is to some of the world's bloggers.

The first alleged casus belli against Iran was supposed to be its purported pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Iranian leadership has renounced any desire to obtain such weapons; the international governing body, IAEA, has inspected Iran repeatedly without finding anything resembling a program designed to develop nuclear arms, and technically sound experts such as Scott Ritter scoff at the notion that Iran is even close to developing any nuclear capability.

There's irony in the American threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran, supposedly in order to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons itself. If the subject matter were any lighter; if there were not literally millions of lives at stake immediately, and many more thereafter; the irony would almost be funny.

But it's not. It is an affront to any sensibility not tainted by "American exceptionalism": the widespread American belief that the United States is uniquely blessed with democracy and liberty and therefore has the right to dictate the foreign and domestic policies of every other country on Earth -- at the point of a weapon if feasible. In other words, everyone save Americans -- and only those blinded by the propaganda barrage -- can see that this line of "reasoning" is bogus.

But that's just the beginning. Now, apparently because of the American failure to create a credible nuke-related casus belli, they've turned to a new game -- charging Iran with laundering money, supporting terrorism, and committing financial crimes detrimental to the world's financial community.

Using little-known provisions in the "USA PATRIOT Act", the exceptional Americans are cracking down on Iran for doing what comes naturally to the Bush administration: money-laundering, supporting terrorism, and endangering the global economy.

The "PATRIOT Act" itself is exceptional: it was passed by a Congress that hadn't read it and signed by a "President" who had never been legitimately elected; it strips Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms from American citizens and at the same time it purports to give the American administration control of global systems; it's an enormous piece of legislation amending hundreds of laws which was presented to the House only a month after the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- supposedly in response to those attacks and supposedly in order to prevent future attacks.

The problem, of course, is that the attacks of September 11 were never properly investigated; the sham investigation initiated by the White House didn't even get started until a year after the "PATRIOT Act" was made law; thus there was no way for the drafters of the "PATRIOT Act" to know what changes in legal and security structures would have been needed for the United States to prevent future attacks of the kind -- assuming, of course, that the United States National Security apparatus was not already fully prepared to prevent the attacks of 9/11, and for some reason chose not to do so.

The final assumption appears to be completely unjustified, but even if it were true, the "PATRIOT Act" would still be an abomination. So it's only fitting, in an Orwellian kind of way, that it would be used to start a war of aggression against a peaceful country that has never threatened the United States.

The accusations against Iran may be true, in part. It appears that Iranian banks have altered records to obscure some transactions. And Iranians have been accused of funding terrorism in the Middle East and of providing weapons for use against the Americans in Iraq. No credible evidence has ever been presented to support the weapons charge, but for the sake of the current analysis let's pretend it's a valid allegation. Let's just add up the charges, put them in context, and see what we've got.

A couple of Iranian banks were caught pulling a couple of shifty stunts. Does anything like that ever happen with American banks? Tell the truth, now.

The American intelligence services operate with black budgets in the multi-billion dollar-a-year range; they ship and sell weapons and drugs all over the world to generate even more billions (not to mention assisting the twin scourges of murder and drug addiction); Americans shipped pallets of hundred-dollar bills to Iraq which then simply disappeared; the list of money-laundering crimes goes on and on, and the financial crime not only tolerated but in fact perpetrated by official US government agencies runs in the hundred-billion dollar-a-year range; and the US has the gall to accuse the Iranians of laundering money. Nice.

Did Iranians send weapons to Iraq to be used against the Americans? Have Americans ever sent weapons to Iraq to be used against the Iraqis? Tell the truth again. Have they sent men to fire those weapons? Let's tell the whole truth: They're using radioactive ammunition, too.

The Americans have openly spent hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the past five years to fund their attack on a defenseless nation which had not threatened them. They have shipped more than a million men and women to fight there, at least 4,000 of whom have died in Iraq. Countless others have been wounded, physically or mentally or both. And that's just the American side of the damage sheet. On the Iraqi side it's much worse -- as usual when American troops destroy a foreign country. Tell the truth; it's good for all of us.

How many countries has the United States done this to? Count invasion and occupation; count bombing and inciting terrorism; count starting civil wars and setting up death squads; count covert subversion and overt sabotage of democratic processes; count Vietnam and Guatemala and Chile and Somalia and Grenada and Haiti and Iran and ... oops! did I just mention Iran? Strike that. Trust me: it's the Iranians who are to be feared for inciting terrorism. Just ask George Bush.

Are the Iranian banks to be feared for jeopardizing the global financial system? Again you can ask the Americans, but don't mention Enron or BCCI or (fill in the blank here _____) or any of the other tips of corrupt American financial icebergs that have been floating around sinking unsuspecting voyagers on the rough waters of national and international finance. Why? Just because, that's why!!

Because is the key word in all this; because the Americans claim to control the global financial system; because the Americans accuse the Iranians of certain crimes against that system; because Americans are exceptional and can never be held to account for obvious and egregious crimes against humanity; because of all these factors the allegations against a few Iranian banks have been spun into a threat against all Iranian banks -- and all banks which deal with Iranian banks!

The threat goes like this: the allegedly offending Iranian banks are to be isolated; all banks which do business in Iran are to be treated likewise; all banks which do business with any Iranian bank likewise as well. It's an international quarantine on Iranian banking interests, based on allegedly anti-terrorism provisions of the "PATRIOT Act". The inevitable result will be widespread poverty in Iran. The obvious intent is provoke the Iranian government into doing something that could be used as a casus belli -- a "case for war".

Two drippingly ironic facts are hidden in all this maneuvering.

First, the United States has no international legal right to quarantine Iran as it is doing -- with heavy-handed blackmail and threats of "cooperate with us or you'll be next". No nation or national bank wants to be seen as cooperating with terrorism -- and yet, in their efforts to eschew "terrorists" and cooperate with the Americans -- this is exactly what they're doing.

Secondly, by invoking these financial threats -- threats which could lead to genocidal economic blockade -- the Americans have provided the Iranians with a casus belli of their own, to be used against the United States. But Iran doesn't want war; so it doesn't need a casus belli. What it needs -- what is always needed when a schoolyard bully starts picking on a little kid -- is strength in numbers among the potential victims.

The "schoolyard bully" analogy may not be particularly apt in the context of international relations; but then again in this case it might be just perfect.

To everybody except the exceptional Americans, there appears to be one rogue state in the world. Its dubious public pronouncements are willingly swallowed by an increasingly centralized "news" media and broadcast to gullible idiots everywhere; the result is death and destruction on a scale and of a type heretofore unknown in the history of human conflict.

The residue of depleted uranium munitions will render a large chunk of the Middle East unfit for human habitation forever -- and the radioactive debris is spreading, slowly and inexorably, to the rest of the world.

But Iran is a threat! Iran must suffer sanctions! Iran must be isolated and punished! It's unbelievable -- or not -- depending on how low you think the Bush administration will stoop. (Here's a helpful hint: there's no limit!)

If the depleted uranium alone isn't enough to make the nations of the world band together against the schoolyard bully; if the Bush doctrine -- preemptive war, anywhere, anytime, based on the flimsiest lies -- is not enough; if the countries of the world are not drawn together by the enshrinement of torture and indefinite confinement as national norms in a country known (rightly or not) as a world leader for human rights; perhaps this overt act of war against Iran can provide the impetus. After all, the "justifications" used by the Americans also apply -- in every case and with overwhelming force -- to crimes committed by the Americans themselves.

Therefore, in my view, it is time for an alliance of all the life-affirming countries of the world -- an Axis Against Evil that could be based on a document as simple as the following:

WHEREAS the American use of radioactive ammunition in Iraq and Afghanistan poses an existential risk to humanity and all other forms of life all over the world,

WHEREAS the United States has nuclear weapons, has used them, and has threatened to use them again, while Iran has no nuclear weapons and no plans to develop any such weapons,

WHEREAS the United States of America has a long history of terrorism and fomenting terrorism,

WHEREAS covert agencies of the United States government regularly launder billions of dollars a year,

WHEREAS American banks are currently -- as always -- a grave threat to the global financial system,

WHEREAS America is currently and obviously guilty of all the crimes of which Iran is accused, and many more, on an unimaginably greater scale,

WHEREAS the American administration is now threatening Iran with economic destruction, allegedly to further the prevention of terrorism,

WHEREAS the blackmail tactics used by the United States in attempting to isolate Iran are reprehensible and typical, and constitute a form of terrorism in and of themselves,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that from this day forward and until all said issues are resolved to our satisfaction, we shall do NO BUSINESS with any American Business and NO BANKING with any American Bank, nor shall we enter into any transaction with any Bank or Business doing Business with any American Business or Banking at any American Bank; and we will do our coercive best to make sure that all Banks and Businesses within our jurisdiction do the very same.

[Signed]

[your name]

___________________________

[your country]

___________________________

[your position; circle one]

(King) (Queen)
(President) (Prime Minister)
(Prince) (Princess)
(Grand Poobah) (Petite Poobah)

It sounds like a crazy idea, but if we get two or three dozen of the right signatures, the American imperial project is finished.

Otherwise we are.

~~~

NOTES: My main computer has been down for the past several hours; I wrote this post on a machine that is not much more than a typewriter. It's a lovely discipline, for sure, but the piece is not as well-annotated as usual, nor does it quote any sources. Therefore:

[1] If you didn't click the links above, please do so now:

John McGlynn: The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran

Chris Floyd: Worried Just a Bit? Bush Launches Economic 'Shock and Awe' on Iran

[2] If you are a world leader, you are invited to sign the declaration above. Otherwise, please bring it to the attention of your leader(s).

Ebb Tide VI: Does Gwynne Dyer Have A Crystal Ball?

Another time, another planet: Years ago and miles away, I used to read Gwynne Dyer as much as possible. He wasn't always easy to find, but I did my best. That was before Dyer spoke his mind about 9/11.

Now a local weekly in my area carries his column, and they give it away for free! But it's worth the price, so I don't usually read any of it.

I made an exception recently, though, having caught a glimpse of Dyer's headline on the way to the recycling box. For some reason, I couldn't avoid peeking at what he had to say about "Obama and Iraq".

Here's the column in its entirety; my comments follow.

Obama and Iraq | by Gwynne Dyer | February 23, 2008

I knew the US presidential race was over last week when my son preemptively announced that he had lost his bet with me: Hillary Clinton was not going to be the Democratic candidate. The question of whether Barack Obama can beat John McCain is still open, according to the opinion polls, but it probably won't stay open long once the two men go head to head. McCain has many attractive qualities, but he is 71 and Obama is 46.

McCain is also a Republican in a year when the US is heading into a recession after eight years of a Republican administration. Even more importantly, he is committed to continuing a war in Iraq that most Americans just want to leave behind. Curiously, this means that the two men with the greatest potential influence on McCain's political future are Osama bin Laden and Moqtada al-Sadr.

The one thing that could swing the 2008 election in favour of the Republicans is another large-scale terrorist attack on the United States. If al-Qaeda has any ability to provide that attack, it will certainly do so, for Osama bin Laden is well aware that his greatest recruiting tool in the Arab world is the American military presence in Iraq. But it is unlikely that al-Qaeda has any significant presence within the United States.

Moqtada al-Sadr is a more interesting case. He is the leader of the Mahdi army, the biggest Shia militia in Iraq, and he has just extended his unilateral ceasefire against American troops and rival militias for another six months. His two main objectives in life are to evict the US from Iraq and to gain control of the Iraqi government, and the first is a necessary preliminary to the second.

So long as the US presidential election promises to result in an administration pledged to withdraw from Iraq, he doesn't have to lift a finger. But if by August it looks like McCain has a chance of winning, then Moqtada al-Sadr has every incentive to end his ceasefire and launch a mini-Tet offensive against US troops. The point would not be to win. It would be to remind American voters that Iraq is a quagmire that they should leave really soon.

So one way or another, Barack Obama is almost certain to be the president of the United States by January of next year. He has hedged his commitment to withdraw American troops from Iraq in various ways from time to time, but there is little doubt in most people's minds that he really intends to do it. What will the Middle East look like after the Americans are gone?

Not just gone from Iraq, either. There are currently US military bases of one sort or another in almost every country along the south-western (Arab) side of the Gulf, but with Iran emerging as the new great power of the region, many of the host countries will soon be asking the Americans to leave. They don't fear invasion by Iran; they fear internal destabilisation if Iran incites their own Shia minorities against them. So keep Tehran happy by sending the Americans home.

Iraq, contrary to all the predictions of disaster, will probably be all right after the withdrawal of US troops. It will never again be the secular, female-friendly society of the past, and it will take at least a decade to recover from the economic devastation of the embargo, the invasion and the occupation, but it won't break up.

Most of the smaller ethnic and religious minorities have fled from Iraq or been killed, and the larger groups -- Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds -- have mostly retreated into homogeneous districts and neighbourhoods, so there's not much left to fight about except along the boundary between Arab Iraq and Kurdistan. It's even possible that the more or less democratic system imposed by the US occupation will survive the departure of the Americans.

Iran will indeed emerge as the new paramount power of the Gulf, but its actual influence even over predominantly Shia Iraq will be quite limited. Farther afield, the notion of a dangerously radical "Shia crescent" running through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is sheer nonsense: Shias are a minority in Lebanon, and a very small minority in Syria. It is mainly the US State Department that promotes this fantasy, with the aim of scaring Sunni Arab states into a new, US-dominated alliance against Iran.

The real fall-out from the US invasion of Iraq is the greatly heightened prestige of Islamist revolutionaries throughout the Arab world. Whether this will ever result in a successful Islamist revolution in a major Arab country remains to be seen -- they have been trying and failing for thirty years now -- but the odds have probably shifted somewhat in that direction.

And the big loser of this decade's events is Israel, which must now deal with a strengthened Iran, a Gaza Strip under Islamist control, and a United States in retreat from the Middle East. It still faces no serious military threat from its neighbours, but its political options are significantly narrower than they were.

It's not much of a headline: "Small, Nasty War in Iraq Ends; Middle East Largely Unaffected." But then, history often works like that. The equivalent headline in 1975 would have read: "US Defeated in Vietnam; No Wider Consequences."

Small, nasty war? No wider consequences? History often works like that? Is it just me .. or is this utterly beyond refutation? I don't mean "irrefutable"; I mean "worthless".

In order to take this analysis seriously, you would have to believe that the Democratic nomination brawl is over. Nobody else thinks that, as far as I can tell. The only two things that are certain, to my knowledge, are that it's too soon to tell, and that Hillary Clinton will fight tooth and nail, way down and very dirty, for as long as the outcome is in doubt. But Gwynne Dyer knows what will happen, because his son said so -- a month ago. One sure sign of a great journalist is reliable sources.

You'd have to believe that the American voters will actually choose the next president. We're 0 for 2 since 2000. What makes you think this time will be any different?

You'd also have to believe that Barack Obama, who couldn't even muster the cojones to deflect a stupid smear attack against his pastor, could withstand the barrage of slime that would come at him if he actually pulled all the American troops out of Iraq -- and you'd have to believe that he would react to the barrage by withdrawing all the rest of the American troops from all the rest of the Middle East!

Welcome to Gwynne Dyer's fantasy world ... in which Iraq -- with more than a million dead, more than four million displaced, and under a ceaseless cancerous and mutagenic attack from countless tons of depleted uranium -- is not regarded as "the big loser". That honor goes to Israel, even though Dyer freely admits that even if every American GI left the Middle East tomorrow, Israel would not face any serious military challenges -- but its "political options" would be "narrower". Well, what's a million dead bodies, and four million refugees, compared to narrower political options?

Everyone has his or her own opinion. In my opinion, to even imagine a headline like "Small, Nasty War in Iraq Ends; Middle East Largely Unaffected", you would have to be grossly misinformed and/or deliberately spinning. I'm not putting my money on the former.

Nominations for the "Stupidest Or Most Deceitful Political Analysis Of The Year" award are still open, but the competition is getting awfully stiff.

Speaking of stiff, I wonder what Gwynne Dyer's been drinking, and whether I should try some.

Probably not.

Get Ready To Rumble: Petraeus Blames Iran for Green Zone Attack

Chris Floyd's site has been hacked too much; it's up again at the moment but who knows for how long?

In event of emergency, Chris will post at his original blogspot site, Empire Burlesque Now dot blogspot dot com. In the meantime I will try to mirror some of his work here, just in case.

Here's the latest from Chris, by kind permission, as always.

Still Not Worried? Petraeus Blames Iran for Green Zone Attack

Yesterday, we noted the story that the Saudi government is now preparing plans to deal with "any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards" that may arise from an attack on Iran's nuclear reactors. This was reported by a top Saudi newspaper, Okaz, and relayed by a leading German news service, dpa -- one day after Dick Cheney paid a visit to the kingdom. As we noted, no one knows exactly what was said at that confab of allied authoritarians -- but something sure lit a fire under the Saudis, and convinced them that urgent action is needed to brace for the lethal overspill from a strike on Iran.

Now today comes word that the sainted General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq -- and recepient of perhaps the most copious bipartisan tongue bath ever given to a serving military officer by the U.S. Congress -- has blamed Iran for the multiple mortar attack on Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday. As the BBC reports:

The most senior US general in Iraq has said he has evidence that Iran was behind Sunday's bombardment of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets.

He said Iran was adding what he described as "lethal accelerants" to a very combustible mix.

That's not all. After praising himself for his brilliant "counterinsurgency" masterstroke of paying Sunni insurgents and violent religious extremists to kill other Iraqis instead of Americans for awhile -- while also arming, training and funding the Shiite extremists now in charge of the Iraqi army and security forces to kill and torture other Iraqis -- Petraeus went on to blame Iran for being the main cause of violence in Iraq. (For a true picture of what Petraeus and the vaunted "surge" has actually wrought in Iraq, see Michael Schwartz's detailed and devastating report, "The Battle of Bagdhad."). From the BBC:

In an interview with BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, Gen Petraeus said violence in Iraq was being perpetuated by Iran's Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guards.

"The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example... were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force.

"All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."

The Iranians, of course, have deep, intricate and longstanding ties to the "Iraqi leaders" whom Petraeus is now helping maintain in "power" -- if that's the word for the operations of a gang of brutal kleptocrats whose residence in office is sustained wholly by the foreign military forces who invaded their country at the order of another gang of brutal kleptocrats in Washington. But Petraeus -- and the White House kleptos -- have continually pushed the line that Iran is attacking a government led by their ideological and religious allies, in order to....what, exactly? Replace them with,er, ideological and religious allies? Well, logic has never been the strong suit of the Crawford Caligula and his courtiers, who believe they can "create their own reality" by the assertion of imperial will -- and by the expenditure of human cannon fodder. (Petraeus' remarks came on the day that the American military death toll in Iraq reached 4,000.)

Actually, of course, these charges aren't meant to make logical or geopolitical sense. They are simply being tossed out there, week after week, month after month, to "catapult the propaganda" for war with Iran "at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing," to quote Bush's doctrine of preemptive war in the official "National Defense Strategy of the United States." Or as I noted here last year about an earlier round of charges:

[Petraeus] is asserting as unassailable fact accusations which have never been substantiated, not even by the Regime's own intelligence agencies -- whose bar for "confirming" provocative intelligence is, as we all know, preternaturally low. Petraeus doesn't intend for his words to be taken seriously -- that is, not in the real world, where military attacks by one nation on another lead to an immediate response. No, his words are intended for the media echo chamber, where they will bounce around in the midst of all the other mind-obliterating noise, with a few key scraps falling into the mix: "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods" -- "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods." That's all they want -- and that's all they need -- to get across. They certainly don't want anyone to pay close attention to the details of the patter they're putting out. They just want a few keywords to filter into the battered public consciousness, because these are the elements they will invoke when the time comes to launch their own unprovoked military agression against Iran: "Iran's Qods Force is killing Americans, and we must, reluctantly, retaliate. Therefore, tonight I have ordered a series of air raids on Qods Force bases in Iran...."

And hey: "Qods" sounds a lot like "al Qaeda," doesn't it? That gives you extra traction in the echo chamber -- more bang for the propaganda buck.

Let's be clear about this. This is an administration that claims the right to go to war on the merest suspicion that some evil foreign entity might attack Americans at some time in some way. This is an administration that has already acted on this deranged -- but oh-so-war-profitable -- "national defense strategy." This is an administration that specifically named Iran as a dire threat to the nation in the most recent version of this official strategy.

And now, we have Petraeus' j'accuse -- the culmination of more than a year of statements by U.S. officials accusing Iran of direct involvement in attacking and killing American personnel in Iraq. By the morally demented but consistent "principles" enunciated and acted upon by the Bush Administration (principles which of course include the use of manufactured evidence and knowing deception to launch wars in the name of "national security"), the White House has already established an iron-clad case for attacking Iran. Indeed, by their own lights, they have actually been criminally negligent and weak-kneed for not having attacked Iran long ago -- as the most vociferous wingnuts and con-jobs out there keep insisting.

As we said last week, the groundwork for the attack has already been laid. When and if a strike comes, it will almost certainly come quickly, without warning. There will be no new major PR campaign, just a "surge" in the same "mind-obliterating noise" of lies and accusations that has barraged us for so long. And no doubt we will see the redoubtable Petraeus take the lead in this surge against the American people -- with the same slickness and vigor with which he has perpetrated the murderous ethnic cleansing of Baghdad -- when he comes to Congress for another tongue-bath next month.

Note: Petraeus has been an eager dissembler for L'il Boots since the beginning, as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in this remarkable compendium of spin, waffle and flim-flam. For more on the saint's progress on the road to glory see: The Imperator Reports: Let the Blood Flow On; Killers and Extremists in the Pay of Petraeus; and Shotgun Wedding: The Saint, the Insurgents, and the Surge's "Success."

Plus: Winter Patriot tells us of another success story of the "humanitarian intervention" in Iraq: Fallujah.

Tom Toles: How Smart?

"Return" To "Iraqi" Values: Fallujah Has Been "Reconstructed" As "A Big Jail"

According to Baghdad Bureau Chief Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post:

Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered, and police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities, each with its own joint security station staffed by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. It also has been buying the loyalties of former Sunni insurgents, paying them $180 a month to join a neighborhood force that works with the police.
...

Shops stay open longer, streets are clogged with traffic, and soccer fields brim with children and young men. But for many residents, Fallujah remains a shadow of its former self. "The city is like a big jail," said Abu Ahmed, a well-known doctor who asked that his nickname be used because he has treated people who were brutalized by [police].
...

The police headquarters, built with U.S. funds, sits inside a large compound ringed by layers of blast walls in the heart of Fallujah.
...

What [police chief Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie] wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

"When the Americans leave the city," he said, "I'll be tougher with the people."

What is happening here? Fallujah has been turned into a prison; isolated from the rest of Iraq, and divided into nine walled-off security zones called "gated communities". Just to travel across the city, people have to go through choke-points where mercenaries -- former insurgents now making $180 a month each for work with the Iraqi-American "security services" -- check every car and register every visitor.

Their boss says things like: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

How did we come to this?

According to the Washington Post, it's "Peace Through Brute Strength".

The "Iraqi City's Fragile Security Flows From Hussein-Era Tactics".

No kidding. It's a return to the past. Or so Sudarsan Raghavan tells us [same article; alternate link]:

The story of Zobaie and his police force opens a window onto the Iraq that is emerging after five years of war.

American ideals that were among the justifications for the 2003 invasion, such as promoting democracy and human rights, are giving way to values drawn from Iraq's traditions and tribal culture, such as respect, fear and brutality.

Oh!! So that's what's happening!! I should have known all along, I suppose. How could I have forgotten?

American Ideals such as Promoting Democracy and Human Rights

The trouble in Fallujah started back in 2003, as described by Chris Hughes in the UK's Daily Mirror [original link broken, archived here]

IT started when a young boy hurled a sandal at a US jeep - it ended with two Iraqis dead and 16 seriously injured.

I watched in horror as American troops opened fire on a crowd of 1,000 unarmed people here yesterday.

Many, including children, were cut down by a 20-second burst of automatic gunfire during a demonstration against the killing of 13 protesters at the Al-Kaahd school on Monday.

They had been whipped into a frenzy by religious leaders. The crowd were facing down a military compound of tanks and machine-gun posts.

The youngster had apparently lobbed his shoe at the jeep - with a M2 heavy machine gun post on the back - as it drove past in a convoy of other vehicles.

A soldier operating the weapon suddenly ducked, raised it on its pivot then pressed his thumb on the trigger.

Mirror photographer Julian Andrews and I were standing about six feet from the vehicle when the first shots rang out, without warning.

We dived for cover under the compound wall as troops within the crowd opened fire. The convoy accelerated away from the scene.

Iraqis in the line of fire dived for cover, hugging the dust to escape being hit.

We could hear the bullets screaming over our heads. Explosions of sand erupted from the ground - if the rounds failed to hit a demonstrator first. Seconds later the shooting stopped and the screaming and wailing began.

One of the dead, a young man, lay face up, half his head missing, first black blood, then red spilling into the dirt.

His friends screamed at us in anger, then looked at the grim sight in disbelief.

A boy of 11 lay shouting in agony before being carted off in a car to a hospital already jam-packed with Iraqis hurt in Monday's incident.

Cars pulled up like taxis to take the dead and injured to hospital, as if they had been waiting for this to happen.

A man dressed like a sheik took off his headcloth to wave and direct traffic around the injured. The sickening scenes of death and pain were the culmination of a day of tension in Al-Fallujah sparked by Monday's killings.

The baying crowd had marched 500 yards from the school to a local Ba'ath party HQ. We joined them, asking questions and taking pictures, as Apache helicopters circled above.

The crowd waved their fists at the gunships angrily and shouted: "Go home America, go home America."

But America was not about to go home. And the events of the day were not over.

Values drawn from Iraq's Traditions and Tribal Culture

We rounded a corner and saw edgy-looking soldiers lined up along the street in between a dozen armoured vehicles. All of them had automatic weapons pointing in the firing position.

As the crowd - 10 deep and about 100 yards long - marched towards the US positions, chanting "Allah is great, go home Americans", the troops reversed into the compound.

On the roof of the two-storey fortress, ringed by a seven-foot high brick wall, razor wire and with several tanks inside, around 20 soldiers ran to the edge and took up positions.

A machine gun post at one of the corners swivelled round, taking aim at the crowd which pulled to a halt.

We heard no warning to disperse and saw no guns or knives among the Iraqis whose religious and tribal leaders kept shouting through loud hailers to remain peaceful. In the baking heat and with the deafening noise of helicopters the tension reached breaking point.

Julian and I ran towards the compound to get away from the crowd as dozens of troops started taking aim at them, others peering at them through binoculars.

Tribal leaders struggled to contain the mob which was reaching a frenzy.

A dozen ran through the cordon of elders, several hurling what appeared to be rocks at troops.

Some of the stones just reached the compound walls. Many threw sandals - a popular Iraqi insult.

A convoy of Bradley military jeeps passed by, the Iraqis hurling insults at them, slapping the sides of the vehicles with their sandals, tribal leaders begging them to retreat.

The main body of demonstrators jeered the passing US troops pointing their thumbs down to mock them.

Then came the gunfire - and the death and the agony.

After the shootings the American soldiers looked at the appalling scene through their binoculars and set up new positions, still training their guns at us.

An angry mob battered an Arab TV crew van, pulling out recording equipment and hurling it at the compound. Those left standing - now apparently insane with anger - ran at the fortress battering its walls with their fists. Many had tears pouring down their faces.

Still no shots from the Iraqis and still no sign of the man with the AK47 who the US later claimed had let off a shot at the convoy.

I counted at least four or five soldiers with binoculars staring at the crowd for weapons but we saw no guns amongst the injured or dropped on the ground.

A local told us the crowd would turn on foreigners so we left and went to the hospital.

There, half an hour later, another chanting mob was carrying an open coffin of one of the dead, chanting "Islam, Islam, Islam, death to the Americans".

All this trash-talk!

"Islam, Islam, Islam"?? Isn't that just a bit old?

"Death to the Americans"?? How dare they?

Respect, Fear and Brutality

We sacrificed to liberate these ungrateful wretches, and now they speak like this to us?

Nobody who heard those words could possibly bear it.

The retribution came in November of 2004.

Maps of War dot com: The Recapture of Fallujah

After the fall of Baghdad in April of 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom transformed from a conventional war into a murky struggle against a multi-faceted insurgency. Nothing was more emblematic of this new phase than the city of Fallujah.

In November of 2004, American forces launched Operation Phantom Fury to recapture Fallujah, a heroic and harrowing story which is best told in Bing West's book No True Glory. Military officials recounted the battle as "some of the heaviest urban combat Marines and Army infantry soldiers have been involved in since Vietnam." All told, it was one of the most decisive moments in the history of the war.

The Fallujah invasion was a classic 'hammer and anvil' strategy. The bridges, highways, and other periphery choke-points were captured first in order to corner the enemy (anvil), then the secondary force moved in with a direct frontal assault (hammer). The weakness of this tactic is that it encourages the enemy to fight more fiercely since escape is made impossible.

American Ideals such as Promoting Democracy and Human Rights

Another "weakness" of this "tactic" became apparent shortly after the "heroic and harrowing" battle, when it turned out that -- because the long-rumored destruction of Fallujah had been delayed until after the so-called Presidential election -- the insurgents had already escaped!

Chris Floyd for the Moscow Times [see original for copious links]:

Eight weeks of relentless bombing was followed by a cut-off of the city's water, electricity and food supplies. More than two-thirds of the residents fled the coming inferno; those who remained were considered fair game in the house-by-house ravaging that followed. Among the Americans' first targets were the city's medical centers, as U.S. officers freely admitted to The New York Times. They were destroyed or shut down, with medical staff killed or imprisoned, to prevent bad publicity about civilian casualties from reaching the outside world, the officers said. Later, an investigation by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government found strong evidence of the use of chemical weapons against the city. Up to 6,000 people were killed in the attack, most of them civilians.

The few hundred Fallujah-based insurgents who had been the ostensible target of the assault had escaped long before the onslaught began. Thus there was no real military purpose to the city's destruction, which had been ordered by the White House; it was instead an act of reprisal, a collective punishment against the Iraqi people as a whole, noncombatants included, for the armed resistance to the coalition conquest.

Values drawn from Iraq's Traditions and Tribal Culture

Chris Floyd again, from Empire Burlesque 1.0 [and again, the original is heavily annotated]:

"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."

This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. Unlike the first attack on Fallujah last spring, there was to be no unseemly footage of gutted children bleeding to death on hospital beds. This time – except for NBC's brief, heavily-edited, quickly-buried clip of the usual lone "bad apple" shooting a wounded Iraqi prisoner – the visuals were rigorously scrubbed.

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.

Respect, Fear and Brutality

Trevor Royle, Diplomatic Editor of "The Herald" at Information Clearinghouse:

Soldiers call them bogey weapons -- nasty pieces of military hardware which kill or maim as efficiently as any other type of armament but in so doing push the victim into a vortex of agony and suffering. White phosphorus, or Whiskey Pete, comes into that category. On one level it's a legal military weapon. Provided that it is used against enemy soldiers as a smokescreen or battlefield illuminator, it is a useful addition to an arsenal one reason why it is available to British and US forces in Iraq. On another level, deployed as an offensive weapon and usually in secret, it causes severe blistering of the skin and mucous membranes, and if inhaled can do dreadful damage to internal organs. When US forces fired WP shells in the battle to break into the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November they knew exactly what they were doing. Combat outside daylight hours always causes problems for the attacking side. Darkness brings the kind of confusion which favours the defenders. Fired as an artillery shell, WP explodes in the air creating a bright artificial light and providing a useful smokescreen for the attacking infantry soldiers. After the battle for Fallujah the Bush administration admitted [sic] that WP had been used sparingly and had only been fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions, not at enemy fighters.

Like so much that has happened in this long, drawn-out and increasingly dirty counter-insurgency war, the use of WP was not what it seemed. Last week an Italian television documentary, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre sounded the first blast on the whistle when it claimed that WP had been used in a massive and indiscriminate way not only against the insurgents but also against civilians. Some Iraqi doctors claimed that the victims had melted skin or that white phosphorus had burned through body tissue to leave bones exposed.

Jeff Englehart, an experienced US marine interviewed in the documentary gave a chilling account of what happens when WP is unleashed It doesn't necessarily burn clothes, but it will burn the skin underneath clothes. And this is why protective masks do not help, because it will burn right through the mask . It will manage to get inside your face. If you breathe it, it will blister your throat and your lungs until you suffocate, and then it will burn you from the inside. It basically reacts to skin, oxygen and water. The only way to stop the burning is with wet mud. But at that point, it's just impossible to stop.

Denials came thick and fast from Washington but these were given short shrift when a semi-official US army publication, Field Artillery Magazine, published a damning article claiming the exact opposite. What gave the article substance was that it was based on an official army account which has been seen by the Sunday Herald: a Memorandum for Record prepared on December 1, 2004 by the FSE (fire support element) of the US Task Force's 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, 3rd Brigade Combat Team. In the paper the US artillery commanders, two officers and a sergeant, admitted that WP had been used in an offensive capacity against Iraqi positions: We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes. We fired "shake and bake" missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE [high explosive] to take them out.

American Ideals such as Promoting Democracy and Human Rights

Graphic video from the Italian news service RAI: Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre

Values drawn from Iraq's Traditions and Tribal Culture

Iraqi blogger Riverbend at Baghdad Burning:

People in Falloojeh are being murdered. The stories coming back are horrifying. People being shot in cold blood in the streets and being buried under tons of concrete and iron... where is the world? Bury Arafat and hurry up and pay attention to what's happening in Iraq.

They say the people have nothing to eat. No produce is going into the city and the water has been cut off for days and days. Do you know what it's like to have no clean water??? People are drinking contaminated water and coming down with diarrhoea and other diseases. There are corpses in the street because no one can risk leaving their home to bury people. Families are burying children and parents in the gardens of their homes. WHERE IS EVERYONE???
...

Iraqis will never forgive this -- never. It's outrageous -- it's genocide and America, with the help and support of Allawi, is responsible. May whoever contributes to this see the sorrow, terror and misery of the people suffering in Falloojeh.

Respect, Fear and Brutality

Fadhil Badrani, "an Iraqi journalist and resident of Falluja who reports regularly for Reuters and the BBC World Service in Arabic", in English, via the BBC:

A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks are left.

The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire.

From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled.

There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable.

Smoke is everywhere.

A house some doors from mine was hit during the bombardment on Wednesday night. A 13-year-old boy was killed. His name was Ghazi.

I tried to flee the city last night but I could not get very far. It was too dangerous.

I am getting used to the bombardment. I have learnt to sleep through the noise - the smaller bombs no longer bother me.

Without water and electricity, we feel completely cut off from everyone else.

I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children lying on the streets.

People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever.

Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens.

Reprise

Baghdad Bureau Chief Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post:

Fallujah today is sealed off with blast walls and checkpoints. Residents are given permits to enter the city. All visitors and their weapons are registered, and police check every car. The U.S. military has divided the city into nine gated communities, each with its own joint security station staffed by U.S. troops and Iraqi police. It also has been buying the loyalties of former Sunni insurgents, paying them $180 a month to join a neighborhood force that works with the police.
...

Shops stay open longer, streets are clogged with traffic, and soccer fields brim with children and young men. But for many residents, Fallujah remains a shadow of its former self. "The city is like a big jail," said Abu Ahmed, a well-known doctor who asked that his nickname be used because he has treated people who were brutalized by [police].
...

What Zobaie wants is for the U.S. military to hand over full control of Fallujah. He believes Iraq's current leaders are not strong enough. Asked whether democracy could ever bloom here, he replied: "No democracy in Iraq. Ever."

"When the Americans leave the city," he said, "I'll be tougher with the people."

It was done in our name but without our consent. So there! You see how well the system works!

It was paid for with our money -- and our blood. We are suffering because of it; we will suffer much more before we're finished.

But our suffering is nothing compared to what we have inflicted on the people of Iraq -- innocent victims of "American ideals such as promoting democracy and human rights".

Ebb Tide V: Robert Parry Looks At Barack Obama And Sees Michael Douglas

Veteran journalist Robert Parry has done fantastic work on a number of important fronts; see, for instance, Iraq War As A War Crime (Part One), and don't forget (Part Two).

But he frustrates me because he won't talk about 9/11 in any terms other than the official story, he never mentions any issues relating to election integrity, and his take on the Democratic nomination process has been bizarre -- and increasingly so.

Bob Parry quite rightly points out deceit and gamesmanship when it comes from Hillary Clinton. But he seems to have a blind spot when the same tactics come from Barack Obama -- who has never quite managed to make me stand and cheer. But when Bob Parry looks at Obama, he sees ... Hollywood!

Thus, "Obama's 'Michael Douglas Moment'"

Barack Obama’s speech on race – both laying out the nation’s multi-sided racial resentments and pointing to a path beyond them – might be called his “Michael Douglas moment,” reminiscent of the speech near the end of “The American President.”

In the climactic scene of that 1995 movie, the President (played by Douglas) responds to political attacks against his girlfriend over an old photograph of a burning American flag and to insinuations about his own alleged lack of patriotism reflected in his American Civil Liberties Union membership.

After weeks of political maneuvering in his pursuit of a second term – and finally fed up with the attack politics of his opponent, Bob Rumson – the President bursts into the press room to denounce the smears and to renounce his own politics of equivocation.

“We have serious problems to solve,” Douglas says, “and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-age, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character, and you wave an old photo of the President’s girlfriend and you scream about patriotism. …

“We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.”

Well, that's just about the way I saw it ...

Except that Obama didn't get serious -- he changed the subject!

And he didn't denounce the smears -- he capitulated to them!

And he didn't renounce his equivocation -- he wallowed in it!

Other than that, Bob Parry's analysis is ... well ... let's just say his introduction didn't contain any misdirection.

I left him a long comment at his blog, and since it took me quite a while to compose it, and since it lays out my thoughts a bit better than any of my recent posts here, I thought I might share it with you.

It makes me sad to say this, Mr. Parry, but I cannot understand how an observer as intelligent and as experienced as you could fall for this.

I do understand that we all see things differently and we all form our own opinions. But to me it seemed as if Obama played his "race cards" for just long enough to put everyone in a warm and fuzzy mood, but not quite asleep, and then while nobody was looking he threw the truth under the bus.

Facts are facts, are they not?

Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001, Chicago:

“I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see or hear him? He was on FOX News, this is a white man, and he was upsetting the FOX News commentators to no end. He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said America's chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

What in the name of heaven is wrong with this? Is there a single assertion of fact here that is incorrect? If anything, Reverend Wright's list is too short. He left out Guatemala. He left out Vietnam. He left out death squads in El Salvador. On and on it goes.

Barack Obama, March 18, 2008, Philadelphia:

the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

This is one lie after another; let's look at only the last of them:

Do "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" emerge from a cosmic void? Can the United States really continue to bomb and invade and destroy one foreign country after another without ever releasing any "chickens" that might someday "come home to roost"?

Operation Cyclone

Beginning in 1979, Americans working secretly through the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, as well as some other Middle Eastern allies, recruited and trained terrorists; armed and funded them; motivated them with extremist Islamic propaganda; and infiltrated them into Afghanistan via Pakistan.

The object was to hassle the Soviets, to lure them into invading Afghanistan. The American-trained terrorists were known as "mujahadeen" at the time, and in the USA they were called "freedom fighters". Their modern offshoots have names like "Taliban" and "al Qaeda".

The damage these groups have done is almost immeasurable. We hear about al Qaeda all the time although they don't attack here. That's because they attack in Pakistan. And elsewhere. In Pakistan alone in 2006 there were more than 600 terrorist attacks in which more than 900 people were killed. In 2007 the numbers were even higher. That's just one country. We think we know about terrorism. We know nothing.

Operation Cyclone was started during the Carter administration. It was a brainchild of Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Carter, Brzezinski, and the other supposedly "pro-human rights" Democrats thought nothing of fomenting terrorism in one foreign country, exporting it to another and using it to attack a third.

Is this not a war crime of the highest magnitude?

Zbigniew Brzezinski is now a foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama. So tell me: How much hypocrisy does it take for Barack Obama to say what he has said about the conflicts in the Middle East? How can he dismiss America's long and gruesome record of crimes against humanity so easily?

How can we possibly hope for peace or justice or unity in the face of such mendacity?

Barack Obama essentially wasted 37 minutes of our time telling us how unfortunate it was that Jeremiah Wright was an older black man who grew up harboring certain resentments that are no longer relevant, or something to that effect.

He turned the whole story into an issue of race, when the basic question was "Why did you sit through his sermons? Why did you stay in his church?" and the correct answers would have been "Because he's a good man who loves God and his country, and because was telling us the truth!"

"Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism."

Barack Obama should have repudiated his foreign policy advisor, not his pastor.

Horrifying: Obama's Brilliant Speech Of Hope And Unity Scares Me Half To Death

The Sermon Obama Repudiated Was One We All Needed To Hear

My comment has not produced a response. As far as I know, it hasn't even caused a single mouse to click. If that changes, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I'll continue to read Consortium News. But when it comes to the Democratic primaries, I'll be getting my "independent investigative journalism" elsewhere.

~~~

fifth in a series

Excerpt From Jeremiah Wright's "God Damn America" Sermon

Barack Obama listened to sermons like this for 20 years; now he rejects the point of view expressed here ... by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for the record.