What Went Wrong?

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050913/what_went_wrong.php

David Corn

September 13, 2005

David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is also the Washington editor of The Nation and is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers).

We are not safe.

It was frighteningly too easy to witness the post-disaster disaster in New Orleans and realize that the authorities—the local, state and federal governments—cannot effectively handle any of the nightmare scenarios that have seeped into our post-9/11 collective consciousness. A biological weapons attack? A nuclear detonation? An assault on a chemical weapons plant? Heck, could the government even deal with an outbreak of avian flu among humans? The mismanagement and non-management was stunning, painfully embarrassing—The Economist , on its cover, cried, "The shaming of America"—and lethal.

In the fortnight since Katrina struck and exposed the obvious fault lines of American society—race, class, environmental and public health policy—much has been said and written about the failure of the country's leaders (including the buck-passer at the top) to contend with a situation that had been accurately predicted years ago, and much comment has come on the reasons for this failure: a lack of sufficient concern for the poor of New Orleans, cronyism within the government, a misguided sense of priorities (see Iraq), general incompetence. There have been the inevitable calls for investigations. George W. Bush responded by saying that he will examine what went wrong. Congressional GOPers announced they will establish an investigation controlled by Republicans. Whatever comes out of these likely-to-be unimpressive endeavors, one conclusion is clear and needs no further evidence to support it: the Bush administration has shirked what might be called its First Response responsibilities. And that ought to be a firing offense.

Let's look at the final report of the independent and bipartisan 9/11 commission (the creation of which the Bush White House initially opposed). The chapter entitled "Heroism and Horror" opens with these lines:

Emergency response is a product of preparedness. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the last best hope for the community of people working in or visiting the World Trade Center rested not with national policymakers but with private firms and local public servants, especially the first responders: fire, police, emergency medical service, and building safety professionals.

The chapter ends this way:

Civilians and first responders will again find themselves on the front lines. We must plan for that eventuality. A rededication to preparedness is perhaps the best way to honor the memories of those we lost that day.

After Bush received the 9/11 report, he said, "I look forward to studying their recommendations, and look forward to working with responsible parties within my administration to move forward on those recommendations." But he never moved forward on the first response front. The Katrina screw-up exposed many of the problems that hindered the rescue workers of 9/11: poor communications, lousy coordination, insufficient resources. (As the Times-Picayune of New Orleans noted, if Harry Connick Jr. was able to get into New Orleans after the storm and help neighbors, why couldn't the federal government?) But the tragedy is not merely that we—by which I mean they—did not learn from 9/11, but that the warnings that came after 9/11 were not heeded by the Bush administration.

In June 2003, nearly two years after that horrible day, a task force assembled by the Council on Foreign Relations released a report with a chilling conclusion: the United States was drastically underfunding local responders and remained dangerously unprepared to deal with a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil. The task force—which included former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman, former Admiral William Crowe, former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, former Secretary of State George Shultz, and former CIA chief and past FBI director William Webster—noted:

According to data provided to the Task Force by emergency responder professional associations and leading emergency response officials from around the country, America will fall approximately $98.4 billion short of meeting critical emergency responder needs over the next five years if current funding levels are maintained.

A $100 billion shortfall? How unprepared can a nation be? Though the task force's focus was on terrorist attacks, its findings were relevant for non-terrorism catastrophes. It reported that "on average, fire departments across the country have only enough radios to equip half the firefighters on a shift, and breathing apparatuses for only one-third. Only 10 percent of fire departments in the United States have the personnel and equipment to respond to a building collapse." It noted that "most cities do not have the necessary equipment to determine what kind of hazardous materials emergency responders may be facing." (It also found that "police departments in cities across the country do not have the protective gear to safely secure a site following an attack with weapons of mass destruction.")

The Bush administration, by then mired in the quicksand of Iraq, did not mount a crash program to enhance and support first responders. In fact, it did the opposite. The following year it slashed federal funding for first responders by 30 percent, which entailed defunding entire programs, such as SafeComm, which aimed to insure that the communication systems of various responders are interoperable. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended these budget cuts and said the Bush administration had engaged in tough "balancing" of fiscal and security needs. At the same time, the Bush administration was pushing for more tax cuts that would benefit wealthy Americans.

Did the Bush administration make the right call when it came to "balancing" these needs? I'd like to see an investigative panel examine that question—as well as evaluate the Bush administration's response to the Katrina disaster. In some ways, the Katrina disaster is worse than 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. The storm was no surprise. And after 9/11, the government supposedly took steps so it could deal with a dramatic emergency. Still, failure reigned. This is an occasion when an after-action report—as well as dismissals and departures (beyond FEMA chief Michael Brown's resignation)—could come in handy. Some agency, some official has to assume responsibility for making sure that the next disaster is handled slightly less terribly.

But Bush—who underfunded first responders and who praised Brown—is hardly the fellow to review what went wrong. Earlier this week, he defended himself by claiming that he had spoken to the nation about the Katrina emergency early on August 29, the day the storm hit. But he had not yet addressed the nation at that point. If he cannot get his own story straight, how can he untangle the overall mess? As for the Republican-led joint committee, that seems a rigged endeavor. Does anyone believe congressional GOPers can investigate a Republican administration without fear or favor? After all, the Republicans have ducked investigations on Halliburton's contracts in Iraq, the Downing Street memos, Enron, the Valerie Wilson/CIA leak and other matters that might embarrass you-know-who.

In defending their proposal to place a joint House-Senate committee led by Republicans (and containing more Republicans than Democrats) in charge of the post-Katrina inquiry, Republican congressional leadership have pointed to the Iran-contra investigation of 1987. That probe was indeed conducted by a joint committee that featured more Democrats than Republicans. But the target of that investigation was a Republican administration. The best course of action in these situations is to have a bipartisan and independent commission (even if the 9/11 commission had its faults). The second best option is an investigation led by the party not responsible for the wrongdoing (even if that has the potential to lead to lead to a political witch hunt). The worst alternative is the one being peddled by the Republicans: asking the members of one party to examine the actions (or inactions) of the leader of their party.

Tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of Americans were abandoned by the Bush administration (and ill-served by their local and state officials). People died because of this. And a harsh reality was exposed: In the event of a calamity—whether caused by nature or by terrorists—we cannot expect the government to respond competently. It is scary out there. And the people of New Orleans—and the rest of us—deserve a few answers. If we are on our own, it would be better to know that now rather than later.

POPCORN TIME YET?!?!?

BALTIMORE SUN CALLS FOR BUSH OUSTER!!

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.administration08sep08,1,1222575.story

After Katrina fiasco, time for Bush to go

By Gordon Adams

September 8, 2005

WASHINGTON - The disastrous federal response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence, misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to serious doubts that the Bush administration should be allowed to continue in office.

When taxpayers have raised, borrowed and spent $40 billion to $50 billion a year for the past four years for homeland security but the officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot find their own hands in broad daylight for four days while New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast swelter, drown and die, it is time for them to go.

When funding for water works and levees in the gulf region is repeatedly cut by an administration that seems determined to undermine the public responsibility for infrastructure in America, despite clear warnings that the infrastructure could not survive a major storm, it seems clear someone is playing politics with the public trust.

When rescue and medical squads are sitting in Manassas and elsewhere in northern Virginia and foreign assistance waits at airports because the government can't figure out how to insure the workers, how to use the assistance or which jurisdiction should be in charge, it is time for the administration to leave town.

When President Bush stays on vacation and attends social functions for two days in the face of disaster before finally understanding that people are starving, crying out and dying, it is time for him to go.

When FEMA officials cannot figure out that there are thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention center - where people died and were starving - and fussed ineffectively about the same problems in the Superdome, they should be fired, not praised, as the president praised FEMA Director Michael Brown in New Orleans last week.

When Mr. Bush states publicly that "nobody could anticipate a breach of the levee" while New Orleans journalists, Scientific American, National Geographic, academic researchers and Louisiana politicians had been doing precisely that for decades, right up through last year and even as Hurricane Katrina passed over, he should be laughed out of town as an impostor.

When repeated studies of New Orleans make it clear that tens of thousands of people would be unable to evacuate the city in case of a flood, lacking both money and transportation, but FEMA makes no effort before the storm to commandeer buses and move them to safety, it is time for someone to be given his walking papers.

When the president makes Sen. Trent Lott's house in Pascagoula, Miss., the poster child for rebuilding while hundreds of thousands are bereft of housing, jobs, electricity and security, he betrays a careless insensitivity that should banish him from office.

When the president of the United States points the finger away from the lame response of his administration to Katrina and tries to finger local officials in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., as the culprits, he betrays the unwillingness of this administration to speak truth and hold itself accountable. As in the case of the miserable execution of policy in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Karl Rove always have some excuse for failure other than their own misjudgments.

We have a president who is apparently ill-informed, lackadaisical and narrow-minded, surrounded by oil baron cronies, religious fundamentalist crazies and right-wing extremists and ideologues. He has appointed officials who give incompetence new meaning, who replace the positive role of government with expensive baloney.

They rode into office in a highly contested election, spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to undermine the federal government in every way but defense (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and sheer profiteering behind it.

It is time to hold them accountable - this ugly, troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich lawyers, ideologues, incompetents and their strap-hangers should be tarred, feathered and ridden gracefully and mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves, clubs in hand.

Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was senior White House budget official for national security in the Clinton administration.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

*********************
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<>

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag, carrying a cross." --Sinclair Lewis (1935)

The destruction of New Orleans represents a confluence of many
of the most pernicious trends in American politics and culture:
poverty, racism, militarism, elitist greed, environmental abuse,
public corruption and the decay of democracy at every level." --Chris Floyd/Counterpunch.org

"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." - Aldous Huxley

This is the real pits:

Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded

By DAVID S. CLOUD

Published: September 7, 2005

PENSACOLA, Fla., Sept. 6 - Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety.

Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast.

"I felt it was a great day because we resupplied the people we needed to and we rescued people, too," Lieutenant Udkow said. But the air operations commander at Pensacola Naval Air Station "reminded us that the logistical mission needed to be our area of focus."

The episode illustrates how the rescue effort in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina had to compete with the military's other, more mundane logistical needs.

Only in recent days, after the federal response to the disaster has come to be seen as inadequate, have large numbers of troops and dozens of helicopters, trucks and other equipment been poured into to the effort. Early on, the military rescue operations were smaller, often depending on the initiative of individuals like Lieutenants Shand and Udkow.

The two lieutenants were each piloting a Navy H-3 helicopter - a type often used in rescue operations as well as transport and other missions - on that Tuesday afternoon, delivering emergency food, water and other supplies to Stennis Space Center, a federal facility near the Mississippi coast. The storm had cut off electricity and water to the center, and the two helicopters were supposed to drop their loads and return to Pensacola, their home base, said Cmdr. Michael Holdener, Pensacola's air operations chief.

"Their orders were to go and deliver water and parts and to come back," Commander Holdener said.

But as the two helicopters were heading back home, the crews picked up a radio transmission from the Coast Guard saying helicopters were needed near the University of New Orleans to help with rescue efforts, the two pilots said.

Out of range for direct radio communication with Pensacola, more than 100 miles to the east, the pilots said, they decided to respond and turned their helicopters around, diverting from their mission without getting permission from their home base. Within minutes, they were over New Orleans.

"We're not technically a search-and-rescue unit, but we're trained to do search and rescue," said Lieutenant Shand, a 17-year Navy veteran.

Flying over Biloxi and Gulfport and other areas of Mississippi, they could see rescue personnel on the ground, Lieutenant Udkow said, but he noticed that there were few rescue units around the flooded city of New Orleans, on the ground or in the air. "It was shocking," he said.

Seeing people on the roofs of houses waving to him, Lieutenant Udkow headed in their direction. Hovering over power lines, his crew dropped a basket to pick up two residents at a time. He took them to Lakefront Airport, where local emergency medical teams had established a makeshift medical center.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Shand landed his helicopter on the roof of an apartment building, where more than a dozen people were marooned. Women and children were loaded first aboard the helicopter and ferried to the airport, he said.

Returning to pick up the rest, the crew learned that two blind residents had not been able to climb up through the attic to the roof and were still in the building. Two crew members entered the darkened building to find the men, and led them to the roof and into the helicopter, Lieutenant Shand said.

Recalling the rescues in an interview, he became so emotional that he had to stop and compose himself. At one point, he said, he executed a tricky landing at a highway overpass, where more than 35 people were marooned.

Lieutenant Udkow said that he saw few other rescue helicopters in New Orleans that day. The toughest part, he said, was seeing so many people imploring him to pick them up and having to leave some.

"I would be looking at a family of two on one roof and maybe a family of six on another roof, and I would have to make a decision who to rescue," he said. "It wasn't easy."

While refueling at a Coast Guard landing pad in early evening, Lieutenant Udkow said, he called Pensacola and received permission to continue rescues that evening. According to the pilots and other military officials, they rescued 110 people.

The next morning, though, the two crews were called to a meeting with Commander Holdener, who said he told them that while helping civilians was laudable, the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission of delivering supplies. With only two helicopters available at Pensacola to deliver supplies, the base did not have enough to allow pilots to go on prolonged search and rescue operations.

"We all want to be the guys who rescue people," Commander Holdener said. "But they were told we have other missions we have to do right now and that is not the priority."

The order to halt civilian relief efforts angered some helicopter crews. Lieutenant Udkow, who associates say was especially vocal about voicing his disagreement to superiors, was taken out of the squadron's flying rotation temporarily and assigned to oversee a temporary kennel established at Pensacola to hold pets of service members evacuated from the hurricane-damaged areas, two members of the unit said. Lieutenant Udkow denied that he had complained and said he did not view the kennel assignment as punishment.

Dozens of military aircraft are now conducting search and rescue missions over the affected areas. But privately some members of the Pensacola unit say the base's two available transport helicopters should have been allowed to do more to help civilian victims in the days after the storm hit, when large numbers of military helicopters had not reached the affected areas.

In protest, some members of the unit have stopped wearing a search and rescue patch on their sleeves that reads, "So Others May Live."

Another From Claudia:

Open Letter to the President

From the Times-Picayune:

Found at: http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_09_04_atrios_archive.html#112584571096257169

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

Contributed by Claudia:

Times-Picayune http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/print076556.html Saturday, September 03, 2005 Bush visit halts food delivery By Michelle Krupa Staff writer Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said. The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea. “We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon. The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

Copyright 2003 NOLA.com. All Rights Reserved.

Claudia found this one:

A Declaration of War

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050831/a_declaration_of_war.php

By Phyllis Bennis
Tompaine.com

Wednesday 31 August 2005

The Bush administration has declared war on the world.

The 450 changes that Washington is demanding to the action agenda that will culminate at the September 2005 United Nations summit don't represent UN reform. They are a clear onslaught against any move that could strengthen the United Nations or international law.

The upcoming summit was supposed to focus on strengthening and reforming the UN and address issues of aid and development, with a particular emphasis on implementing the UN's five-year-old Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most assumed this would be a forum for dialogue and debate, involving civil society activists from around the world challenging governments from the impoverished South and the wealthy North and the United Nations to create a viable global campaign against poverty and for internationalism.

But now, there's a different and even greater challenge. This is a declaration of US unilateralism, uncompromising and ascendant. The United States has issued an open threat to the 190 other UN member states, the social movements and peoples of the entire world, and the United Nations itself. And it will take a quick and unofficially collaborative effort between all three of those elements to challenge the Bush administration juggernaut.

The General Assembly's package of proposed reforms, emerging after nine months of negotiations ahead of the summit, begins with new commitments to implement the Millennium Development Goals - established in 2000 as a set of international commitments aimed at reducing poverty by 2015. They were always insufficient, yet as weak as they are, they have yet to be implemented. The 2005 Millennium Plus Five summit intended to shore up the unmet commitments to those goals. In his reform proposals of March 2005, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called on governments north and south to see the implementation of the MDGs as a minimum requirement. Without at least that minimal level of poverty alleviation, he said, conflicts within and between states could spiral so far out of control that even a strengthened and reformed United Nations of the future would not be able to control the threats to international peace and security.

When John Bolton, Bush's hotly contested but newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations announced the US proposed response, it was easy to assume this was just John Bolton running amok. After all, Bolton, a longtime UN-basher, has said: "There is no United Nations." He has written in The Wall Street Journal that the United States has no legal obligation to abide by international treaties, even when they are signed and ratified. So it was no surprise when Bolton showed up three weeks before the summit, demanding a package of 450 changes in the document that had been painstakingly negotiated for almost a year.

But, in fact, this isn't about Bolton. This Bush administration's position was vetted and approved in what the US Mission to the UN bragged was a "thorough interagency process" - meaning the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and many more agencies all signed off. This is a clear statement of official US policy - not the wish-list of some marginalized extremist faction of neocon ideologues who will soon be reined in by the realists in charge. This time the extremist faction is in charge.

The US proposal package is designed to force the world to accept as its own the US strategy of abandoning impoverished nations and peoples, rejecting international law, privileging ruthless market forces over any attempted regulation, sidelining the role of international institutions except for the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and weakening, perhaps fatally, the United Nations itself.

It begins by systematically deleting every one of the 35 specific references to the Millennium Development Goals. Every reference to concrete obligations for implementation of commitments is deleted. Setting a target figure of just 0.7 percent of GNP for wealthy countries to spend on aid? Deleted. Increasing aid for agriculture and trade opportunities in poor countries? Deleted. Helping the poorest countries, especially those in Africa, to deal with the impact of climate change? Deleted.

The proposal puts at great risk treaties to which the United States is already a party, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The UN Summit draft referred to the NPT's "three pillars: disarmament, non-proliferation and the peaceful use of nuclear energy." That means that states without nukes would agree never to build or obtain them, but in return they would be guaranteed the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful use. In return recognized nuclear weapons states - the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia - would commit, in Article VI of the NPT, to move toward "nuclear disarmament with the objective of eliminating all such weapons." The proposed US changes deleted all references to the three pillars and to Article VI.

The US deleted the statement that: "The use of force should be considered as an instrument of last resort." That's also not surprising given the Bush administration's "invade first, choose your justifications later" mode of crisis resolution.

Throughout the document, the United States demands changes that redefine and narrow what should be universal and binding rights and obligations. In the clearest reference to Iraq and Palestine, Washington narrowed the definition of the "right of self-determination of peoples" to eliminate those who "remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation."

Much of the US effort aims to undermine the power of the UN in favor of absolute national sovereignty. On migration, for instance, the original language focused on enhancing international cooperation, linking migrant worker issues and development, and the human rights of migrants. The US wants to scrap it all, replacing it with "the sovereign right of states to formulate and enforce national migration policies," with international cooperation only to facilitate national laws. Human rights were deleted altogether.

In the document's section on strengthening the United Nations, the US deleted all mention of enhancing the UN's authority, focusing instead only on UN efficiency. Regarding the General Assembly the most democratic organ of the UN system - the United States deleted references to the Assembly's centrality, its role in codifying international law, and, ultimately its authority, relegating it to a toothless talking shop. It even deleted reference to the Assembly's role in Washington's own pet project - management oversight of the UN secretariat - leaving the US-dominated and undemocratic Security Council, along with the US itself (in the person of a State Department official recently appointed head of management in Kofi Annan's office) to play watchdog.

The Bush administration has given the United Nations what it believes to be a stark choice: adopt the US changes and acquiesce to becoming an adjunct of Washington and a tool of empire, or reject the changes and be consigned to insignificance.

But the United Nations could choose a third option. It should not be forgotten that the UN itself has some practice in dealing with US threats. President George W. Bush gave the UN these same two choices once before - in September 2002, when he threatened the global body with "irrelevance" if the UN did not embrace his call for war in Iraq. On that occasion, the United Nations made the third choice - the choice to grow a backbone, to reclaim its charter, and to join with people and governments around the world who were mobilized to say no to war. It was the beginning of eight months of triumph, in which governments and peoples and the UN stood together to defy the US drive toward war and empire, and in doing so created what The New York Times called "the second super-power."

This time, as before, the United States has threatened and declared war on the United Nations and the world. As before, it's time for that three-part superpower to rise again, to defend the UN, and to say no to empire.

---

Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, is the author of the forthcoming Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power (Interlink Publishing, Northampton MA, October 2005.)

Contributed by Claudia:

YEP! IT'S BUSH AGAIN!

Why the Levee Broke
By Will Bunch, Attytood
Posted on September 1, 2005, Printed on September 1, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/

Even though Hurricane Katrina has moved well north of the city, the waters
continued to rise in New Orleans on Wednesday. That's because Lake
Pontchartrain continues to pour through a two-block-long break in the main
levee, near the city's 17th Street Canal. With much of the Crescent City
some 10 feet below sea level, the rising tide may not stop until until it's
level with the massive lake.

There have been numerous reports of bodies floating in the poorest
neighborhoods of this poverty-plagued city, but the truth is that the death
toll may not be known for days, because the conditions continue to frustrate
rescue efforts.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct
hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with
state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major
hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm
in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana
Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying
out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping
stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in
crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin
increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to
subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a
trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures
of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time
as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles
in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq
as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The
Times-Picayune Web site, reported: "No one can say they didn't see it
coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious
questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush
proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for
Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans
CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection
project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete
due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists
of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank
of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson
parishes.
The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the
president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.
"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got
at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the
levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now
I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them
interest."
On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson
Parish, Louisiana, told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has
been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war
in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that
the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the
case that this is a security issue for us."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went
before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially
begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay
for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is
sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we
can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have
isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so
that we can't raise them."
The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up
another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had
sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property
taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not
paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of
Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the
federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in
hurricane- and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of
the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials
said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from
$36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs. According to New
Orleans CityBusiness this June 5:

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve
levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson
and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item
called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7
million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay
salaries but little else.
"We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to
go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the
field, and that's the problem," Naomi said.
There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was
needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4
or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the
Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost
about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi.
About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year
budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount.
But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New
Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no
longer includes the needed money, he said.
The Senate was seeking to restore some of the SELA funding cuts for 2006.
But now it's too late. One project that a contractor had been racing to
finish this summer was a bridge and levee job right at the 17th Street
Canal, site of the main breach on Monday. The levee failure appears to be
causing a human tragedy of epic proportions: "We probably have 80 percent of
our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as
20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio
interviewer.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, "The
Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to
dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed
by the White House. ... In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a
significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane
protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local
officials say they need."

Washington knew that this day could come at any time, and it knew the things
that needed to be done to protect the citizens of New Orleans. But in the
tradition of the riverboat gambler, the Bush administration decided to roll
the dice on its fool's errand in Iraq, and on a tax cut that mainly
benefitted the rich. Now Bush has lost that gamble, big time.

The president told us that we needed to fight in Iraq to save lives here at
home. Yet -- after moving billions of domestic dollars to the Persian Gulf
-- there are bodies floating through the streets of Louisiana. What does
George W. Bush have to say for himself now?

Will Bunch is a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News and author of
the blog Attytood.


© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/24871/

And another sent in by Claudia:

New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers faces

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20050606/ai_n14657367

Deon Roberts

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.

It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said.

I've been here over 30 years and I've never seen this level of reduction, said Al Naomi, project manager for the New Orleans district. I think part of the problem is it's not so much the reduction, it's the drastic reduction in one fiscal year. It's the immediacy of the reduction that I think is the hardest thing to adapt to.

There is an economic ripple effect, too. The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

Money is so tight the New Orleans district, which employs 1,300 people, instituted a hiring freeze last month on all positions. The freeze is the first of its kind in about 10 years, said Marcia Demma, chief of the Corps' Programs Management Branch.

Stephen Jeselink, interim commander of the New Orleans Corps district, told employees in an internal e-mail dated May 25 that the district is experiencing financial challenges. Execution of our available funds must be dealt with through prudent districtwide management decisions. In addition to a hiring freeze, Jeselink canceled the annual Corps picnic held every June.

Congress is setting the Corps budget.

The House of Representatives wants to cut the New Orleans district budget 21 percent to $272.4 million in 2006, down from $343.5 million in 2005. The House figure is about $20 million lower than the president's suggested $290.7 million budget.

It's now up to the Senate. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-New Orleans, is making no promises.

It's going to be very tough, Landrieu said. The House was not able to add back this money ... but hopefully we can rally in the Senate and get some of this money back.

Landrieu said the Bush administration is not making Corps of Engineers funding a priority.

I think it's extremely shortsighted, Landrieu said. When the Corps of Engineers' budget is cut, Louisiana bleeds. These projects are literally life-and-death projects to the people of south Louisiana and they are (of) vital economic interest to the entire nation.

The Corps' budget could still be beefed up, as it is every year, through congressional additions. Last year, Congress added $20 million to the overall budget of the New Orleans district but a similar increase this year would still leave a $50 million shortfall.

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district's budget is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes. SELA's budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.

The project manager said there would be no contracts awarded with this $10.4 million, Demma said.

The construction portion of the Corps' budget would suffer if Congress doesn't add money. In 2005, the district received $94.3 million in federal dollars dedicated to construction. In 2006, the proposal is for $56 million.

It would be critical to this city if we had a $50 million construction budget compared with the past years, Demma said. It would be horrible for the city, it would be horrible for contractors and for flood protection if this were the final number compared to recent years and what the city needs.

Construction generally has been on the decline for several years and focus has been on other projects in the Corps.

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

We'll do some design work. We'll design the contracts and get them ready to go if we get the money. But we don't have the money to put the work in the field, and that's the problem, Naomi said.

The Appropriations Committee in Congress will ultimately decide how much the New Orleans district will receive, he said.

Obviously, the decisions are being made up there that are not beneficial to the state, in my opinion, Naomi said. Let's put it this way: When (former Rep.) Bob Livingston (R-Metairie) was chairman of the Appropriations Committee, we didn't have a monetary problem. Our problem was how do we spend all the money we were getting.

Copyright 2005 Dolan Media Newswires
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Sent in by Claudia:

The Daou Report

The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength

http://daoureport.salon.com/synopsis.aspx?synopsisId=8d187cda-6e7c-46bc-af30-fcb819c848a1

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - Matthew 16:26

The unbridgeable divide between the left and right’s approach to Iraq and the WoT is, among other things, a disagreement over the value of moral and material strength, with the left placing a premium on the former and the right on the latter. The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left's protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader.....

War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first" crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can't kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they've done irreparable harm to America.

The antiwar critique of Iraq is that it is an immoral war and every resulting death is a wrongful one. Opponents of the war view the invasion and occupation as a dangerous and shameful violation of international law. Iraq saps our moral strength and the sooner we leave the better. Opposing the invasion on the grounds that the administration lied its way into it, they see every subsequent death, American or foreign, as an ethical travesty and a stain on America's good name.

They have held this view consistently since 2002. Millions marched down the streets of our cities before the invasion, believing that the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein constituted a dire and imminent threat to the US was absurd on its face (whether or not the exact word ‘imminent’ was used is a semantic exercise, the implication was clear). Where the hawks screamed that Saddam gassed his own people, the war's opponents countered that there is no shortage of murderous tyrants. Where the hawks said that Saddam wouldn't hesitate to arm terrorists, the war's opponents argued that there’s no lack of regimes that will help terrorists obtain lethal weapons.

For the less gullible among us, the administration’s alarmist rhetoric in 2002 was a grim farce, and the unfolding of the nightmare we see today was a foregone conclusion. Saddam was no greater or immediate a threat – and arguably a lesser one – than North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. Hindsight has proven these war critics correct. Few dispute that the threat from Saddam was over-stated - to put it mildly. And evidence continues to mount that the invasion was a fait accompli by 2002 if not 2001. Calling for an immediate pullout from Iraq has nothing to do with capitulation and everything to do with righting a moral wrong and undoing the damage done to America's moral standing.

Yet to many of Bush’s supporters, anything short of ‘victory’ is a weakening of America in the eyes of its enemies. They believe we are "taking the fight to the enemy," with the word 'enemy' defined so over-broadly as to conflate Iraq and the attacks of September 11th. It’s the “kicking ass and taking names” mentality, moral justifications be damned. Revenge for being attacked is rationale enough. Material strength trumps moral strength.

Bush plays to the basest instincts of this crowd, but he and his handlers know it’s not enough. If the left values moral strength over material strength and the right values material strength over moral strength, the common ground between the two, and the place where Bush would find his widest base of support, is a case where material strength is put to use for a moral cause. Bush et al want desperately to prove that Iraq satisfies both conditions. That’s why the Sheehan-Bush battle revolves around the words “noble cause.”

Faced with the disintegration of the original rationale for war, Bush and his supporters are scrambling to find the elusive moral ground to undergird America’s presence in Iraq. But when you’re on the record invading a country because it was a grave threat and the threat never materializes, you’re left with little but a means-ends argument to justify it. In the eyes of the war’s opponents, Bush and his apologists are mired in an ethical swamp trying to justify the mess they created. Judging from recent polls, what they’ve come up with so far is inadequate:

MORAL JUSTIFICATION #1: Bush and his administration may have knowingly exaggerated the threat but still had a hidden, righteous agenda: the removal of a murderous dictator, liberating the oppressed, etc. They simply used the most "marketable" story to gain the support of the American public.

This borders on the absurd. I'm no fan of slippery slope arguments, they're easy and ubiquitous, but this leads to the slipperiest of slopes: if it's OK to fib the country into war as long as the fibber has "good" intentions, then it's OK to lie about any policy so long as the president believes he or she is aiming for some secret "good.”

MORAL JUSTIFICATION #2: Ends justify means. In other words, pick and choose your preferred version of the following argument: “Despite the shifting rationales and lack of WMD, removing Saddam ... free elections ... an Iraqi constitution ... spreading freedom and democracy justifies the death and destruction.”

This point is often made in the form of a challenge: "Would you rather Saddam still be in power?" But rhetorical questions can go both ways. Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties range from the low tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. Taking 50,000 as an arbitrary number, who tells those 50,000 families that they have to suffer and die to prevent 100,000 other families from suffering and dying under Saddam? Are Iraqi lives fungible? Who plays God? Without an iron-clad moral justification for war, aren’t we callously and capriciously toying with matters of life and death?

Again, why Iraq? If the hyped up threat was bogus - which we now know it was - and it wasn't about self-defense, why are we there? What is it about the Iraqi people that requires Cindy Sheehan to give her child for their freedom? Why not liberate the people of Darfur or North Korea? Who tells them that an Iraqi deserves liberation but not them? Bush crows about "progress" in Iraq as though Americans had some unique obligation to ensure progress in that particular country. But if it's simply a matter of "doing good," why not spend $200 billion on cancer research or alleviating poverty or educating the uneducated or boosting safety and security at home so young girls don't get raped and buried alive?

Why spend precious lives and money in Iraq? If the answer is freedom and democracy for the Middle East, one could easily argue that a cure for cancer would be infinitely more beneficial to humanity. Spending $200 billion to find a cure for cancer may be a long shot, but judging from the news, there's a distinct possibility that our $200 billion experiment in Iraq may leave it in a worse state than when we invaded. Wouldn't it make more sense to apply those resources to research that could potentially save tens of millions of lives? And we'd have thousands less Americans killed and wounded, and tens of thousands less Iraqis slaughtered.

The problem with the Bush apologists' reasoning is that using an infinite time horizon - which they are so fond of - virtually any action, no matter how egregious, can be shown to lead to some positive results. It’s the bastardization of utilitarianism; asserting a causal relationship between a pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation and all future good developments in Iraq and the Middle East may swell the hawks' breasts with pride, but it's a dubious and dangerous way to conduct foreign policy.

Which is precisely why we need to adhere so strictly to the rule of law, to basic moral precepts, and to established principles of international relations, something that this administration has failed to do, and that the administration's supporters can dance around but can't justify.

While bumper-sticker patriotism may have anodyne effects on Bush and his followers, the retroactive ethical justifications for the invasion and occupation of Iraq are flimsy at best. And for so many on the left, the undermining of America's moral strength under this administration is more of a "grave and gathering danger" to America than Saddam Hussein ever was.

BUSH CAVES IN TO ISLAMIST CONSTITUTION FOR IRAQ -- AND THE U.S. PRESS MISSES THE STORY

by Doug Ireland
Senior Contributing Editor



He is a longtime radical political journalist and media critic and a former columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Observer, New York magazine, the Parisian daily Libération and other papers, and writes for a variety of publications on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as being a contributing editor of Poz magazine and In These Times

If the Bush administration brokered a deal in Occupied Iraq to enshrine Islamic law as the guiding principle of the new Iraqi Constitution, you'd think it would be headline news in the U.S. media, wouldn't you? Well, that's what has happened -- yet you can search the Sunday papers in vain to find this sell-out to the Islamists clearly portrayed -- or, in some cases, even mentioned.

In a dispatch that Reuters moved at 1:33 P.M. on Saturday (August 20), the headline reads, "U.S. concedes ground to Islamists on Iraqi law." "U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure," Reuters reported. "Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

"But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam 'the,' not 'a,'main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test. 'We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want.'"

Under the soporific headline, "Iraqi Talks Move Ahead on Some Issues," The Sunday New York Times did report, under an August 20 Baghdad deadline, that "Under a deal brokered Friday by the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, Islam was to be named "a primary source of legislation" in the new Iraqi constitution, with the proviso that no legislation be permitted that conflicted with the 'universal principles' of the religion. The latter phrase raised concerns that Iraqi judges would have wide latitude to strike down laws now on the books, as well as future legislation. At the same time, according to a Kurdish leader involved in the talks, Mr. Khalilzad had backed language that would have given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women's rights, as they are enunciated in Iraq's existing laws, could be curtailed. Finally, according to the person close to the negotiations, Mr. Khalilzad had been backing an arrangement that could have allowed clerics to have a hand in interpreting the constitution." But because of the way the Times presented the story, it's doubtful that anyone bothered to pay attention to it or wade into the body of the story to find this revealing detail.

The Washington Post also put a snooze of a headline on its Sunday story: "Kurds Fault U.S. on Iraqi Charter," said the Post header -- but it's not until the story's fifth paragraph that one gets to the meat, when the paper reports that, "The working draft of the constitution stipulates that no law can contradict Islamic principles. In talks with Shiite religious parties, Kurdish negotiators said they have pressed unsuccessfully to limit the definition of Islamic law to principles agreed upon by all groups. The Kurds said current language in the draft would subject Iraqis to extreme interpretations of Islamic law. Kurds also contend that provisions in the draft would allow Islamic clerics to serve on the high court, which would interpret the constitution. That would potentially subject marriage, divorce, inheritance and other civil matters to religious law and could harm women's rights, according to the Kurdish negotiators and some women's groups."

Moreover, the Post devalued the impact of this information by relying solely on Kurdish sources. But the Reuters dispatch also cited one of the main Sunni negotiators on the Constitution confirming the U.S. sell-out to the Islamists: "Sunni Arab negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak also said a deal was struck which would mean parliament could pass no legislation that 'contradicted Islamic principles. A constitutional court would rule on any dispute on that, the Shi'ite official said," Reuters reported, further quoting the Sunni's Mutlak as saying "The Americans agreed...."

Given the way the two national U.S. dailies -- which set the TV news agenda -- played this story, it's hardly surprising that little George Stephanopolous, on this morning's ABC political chat show "This Week," didn't even bother to raise the question of the U.S. cave-in to an Islamic Constitution, neither when quizzing several U.S. Senators (Republicans Allen and Hagel) and Gov. Bill Richardson on Iraq, nor in the round-table discussion with journalists which followed.

The Reuters dispatch also contained this useful and highly relevant reminder, absent from both the Times and Post reports: that Bush's ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad, "helped draft a constitution in his native Afghanistan that declared it an 'Islamic Republic' in which no law could contradict Islam." And the Post story, way down, quoted the Sunni's Mutlak as saying of Khalilzad, "'His main interest is to push the constitution on time, no matter what the constitution has in it,'' said Salih Mutlak, a Sunni delegate who has been outspoken against some compromise proposals. 'No country in the world can draft their constitution in three months. They themselves took 10 years,' Mutlak said, referring to the United States. 'Why do they wish to impose a silly constitution on us?'" Meanwhile, the AP reports this morning that the Sunnis say they've been left out of the negotiations over the Constitution.-- a sure prescription for more violence in Iraq.

Why is the Bush administration strong-arming the Iraqis into rushing through a new Constitution with so little time to do craft it? Two reasons: Bush desperately wants to score a p.r. victory in "the war on terror," in which his administration continues to insist that Iraq is the main front (even though it is the U.S. occupation of Iraq that is now the main motuivator for terrorist-style violence); and because failure to achieve a new Constitution on time would undoubtedly cause new elections in Iraq -- and the Bushies are terribly afraid of the Iraqi voters, fearing that discontent in the country with the U.S. occupation and its failure to bring either security from violence or to deliver basics -- like water and electric power-- would lead to the election of a government less maleable by Washington, thus creating further U.S. domestic backlash against the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. That short-sighted desire for achieving something that could be sold by Bush's spinmeisters to the American people as 'progress" in Iraq is what's driven Bush's man to break arms on behalf of an Islamist Constitution for Iraq.

The Reuters report cited above is reinfoced by the coverage in the daily Al-Hayat, cited by Middle East expert Prof. Juan Cole this morning on his excellent blog, Informed Content. Cole writes: "In one of the major disputes outstanding between the Kurds and the Shiites, on whether Islamic law will be the fundamental source or only one of the sources of Iraqi law, the Shiite religious parties appear to have won out. AFP reports that the reason for this is that the United States has swung around and begun to support the primacy of Islamic canon law.

"Al-Hayat writes, 'Also, an agreement was reached that Islam is the religion of state, and that no law shall be enacted that contradicts the agreed-upon essential verities of Islam. Likewise, the inviolability of the highest [Shiite] religious authorities in the land is safeguarded, without any allusion to a detailed description. The paragraph governing these matters will specify that Islam is 'the fundamental basis' for legislation, though there will be an allusion to the protection of democratic values, human rights, and social and national values. A Higher Council will be formed to review new legislation to ensure it does not contravene the essential verities of the Islamic religion.' Personal status law, concerning marriage, divorce, alimony, inheritance, and so forth, will be adjudicated by religious courts in accordance with the religion or sect to which the individual belongs." Prof. Cole also extensively quotes the text of the Islamic Constitution which U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad godfathered in Afghanistan. It makes for chilling reading, especially as an omen of what Khalilzad is cooking up in Iraq, and you can read it by clicking here.
In a related development, "The Army is planning for the possibility of keeping the current number of soldiers in Iraq — well over 100,000 — for four more years, the Army’s top general," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, said on Satuday in an interview with AP.


Originally published on Sunday August 21, 2005.

Copyright © 2005 PageOneQ. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050818/iraqs_secondclass_citizens.php

Iraq's Second-Class Citizens

Yifat Susskind
August 18, 2005


Yifat Susskind is associate director of MADRE, an international women's human rights organization.

This week’s constitutional crisis in Baghdad demonstrates again that the Bush administration’s drive to recreate the Middle East in its own image is producing theocracy, not democracy, in Iraq. On Bush’s watch, Iraq’s once-secular government has been delivered to religious parties (Dawa and the Prime Minister’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) that want Iraq to be ruled by Islamic law. In the provinces they control (which make up roughly half the country), Islamists have already imposed severe restrictions on the rights of women and religious minorities. Now, they are fighting to ensure that Iraq’s new constitution paves the way for the creation of an Islamic state.

Like religious fundamentalists in the United States and around the world, these parties use religion as a means of asserting a reactionary political agenda that begins with the subjugation of women within the family. That’s why the first battle over the new constitution concerns family status laws governing marriage, divorce and women's inheritance and property rights. The Islamists are pushing to replace Iraq’s current statutes—among the most progressive in the Middle East—with language that would subordinate women’s human rights to arbitrary interpretations of Islamic law.

The Bush administration bears direct responsibility for this crisis. Prior to the U.S. invasion in March 2003, Iraqi women in exile warned that religious extremists would step into any political vacuum created by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But rather than support Iraq’s formidable women’s movement and other democratic forces, the United States chose the politically expedient route of courting right-wing extremists. In summer 2003, Bush appointee Paul Bremmer—who headed the U.S. administration in Iraq—hand-picked several reactionary Muslim clerics to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, empowering leaders with a stated commitment to restricting women's rights. Then, in the period leading up to this year’s election of the National Assembly, Bremer derailed a series of demands by Iraqi women's organizations, including calls to create a women's ministry; appoint women to the drafting committee of Iraq's interim constitution; guarantee that 40 percent of U.S. appointees were women; and pass laws codifying women's rights and criminalizing domestic violence, which has skyrocketed under U.S. occupation.

The administration’s decision to trade women's rights for support from religious conservatives has left Iraqi women worse off today under U.S. occupation then they were under the notoriously repressive regime of Saddam Hussein. The Ba'ath Party utilized women's rights only to consolidate its own power. Yet, for all its brutality, Saddam Hussein’s government guaranteed women’s rights to education, employment, freedom of movement, equal pay for equal work and universal day care, as well as the rights to inherit and own property, choose their own husbands, vote and hold public office. Ironically, these fundamental rights stand to be abolished in an Iraq “liberated” by the United States in the name of (among other things) promoting democracy.

Like all internationally recognized rights, women’s human rights are non-negotiable. That they have become a political football signals disaster not only for women, but for all Iraqis. Indeed, after two and a half years of U.S. occupation, it is doubtful that any rights at all will be protected by the new Iraqi government, which this week reinstated executions by hanging and now stands accused of torturing prisoners.

Despite the grim reality, the Bush administration’s rhetoric remains right on target: Last month, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, came out strongly against the attempt to roll back women’s rights in the constitution. But his very next move was to try and railroad the drafting process, demanding conformity to the arbitrary, U.S.-imposed August 15 deadline over any meaningful democratic process. This failure to recognize the interdependency of women’s rights and genuine democracy is a clear indication that the Bush administration is committed to neither.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050803/king_fahd_founder_terror_inc.php

King Fahd: Founder, Terror, Inc.

I don't normally like to gratuitously copy and paste from other bloggers, but this post by Juan Cole, timed with the memorial services for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, is just an excellent summary of the long history of twisted policies that the United States has promoted in the Middle East and South Asia.

Indeed, when someone, like say, the 9/11 Commission, argues that Islamic extremists both exist and hate the United States because of our policies, and do not hate us for our freedoms, this is what they are talking about.

King Fahd, rest in peace.

Fisking the "War on Terror"

by Juan Cole

Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of the US Republican Party.

Reagan increased the budget for support of the radical Muslim Mujahidin conducting terrorism against the Afghanistan government to half a billion dollars a year.

One fifth of the money, which the CIA mostly turned over to Pakistani military intelligence to distribute, went to Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a violent extremist who as a youth used to throw acid on the faces of unveiled girls in Afghanistan.

Not content with creating a vast terrorist network to harass the Soviets,
Reagan then pressured the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to match US
contributions. He had earlier imposed on Fahd to give money to the Contras in Nicaragua, some of which was used to create rightwing death squads. (Reagan liked to sidestep Congress in creating private terrorist organizations for his foreign policy purposes, which he branded "freedom fighters," giving terrorists the idea that it was all right to inflict vast damage on civilians in order to achieve their goals).

Fahd was a timid man and resisted Reagan's instructions briefly, but finally gave in to enormous US pressure.

Fahd not only put Saudi government money into the Afghan Mujahideen networks, which trained them in bomb making and guerrilla tactics, but he also instructed the Minister of Intelligence, Turki al-Faisal, to try to raise money from private sources.

Turki al-Faisal checked around and discovered that a young member of the fabulously wealthy Bin Laden construction dynasty, Usama, was committed to Islamic causes. Turki thus gave Usama the task of raising money from Gulf millionaires for the Afghan struggle. This whole effort was undertaken, remember, on Reagan Administration instructions.

Bin Laden not only raised millions for the effort, but helped encourage Arab volunteers to go fight for Reagan against the Soviets and the Afghan communists. The Arab volunteers included people like Ayman al-Zawahiri, a young physician who had been jailed for having been involved in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat. Bin Laden kept a database of these volunteers. In Arabic the word for base is al-Qaeda.

In the US, the Christian Right adopted the Mujahideen as their favorite project. They even sent around a "biblical checklist" for grading US congressman as to how close they were to the "Christian" political line. If a congressman didn't support the radical Muslim Muj, he or she was downgraded by the evangelicals and fundamentalists.

Reagan wanted to give more and more sophisticated weapons to the Mujahideen ("freedom fighters"). The Pakistani generals were forming an alliance with the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islam and beginning to support madrasahs or hardline seminaries that would teach Islamic extremism. But even they balked at giving the ragtag Muj really advanced weaponry. Pakistan had a close alliance with China, and took advice from Beijing.

In 1985 Reagan sent Senator Orrin Hatch, Undersecretary of Defense Fred Iklé and others to Beijing to ask China to put pressure on Pakistan to allow the US to give the Muslim radicals, such as Hikmatyar, more sophisticated weapons. Hatch succeeded in this mission.

By giving the Muj weaponry like the stinger shoulder held missile, which could destroy advanced Soviet arms like their helicopter gunships, Reagan demonstrated to the radical Muslims that they could defeat a super power.

Reagan also decided to build up Saddam Hussein in Iraq as a counterweight to Khomeinist Iran, authorizing US and Western companies to send him precursors for chemical and biological weaponry. At one point Donald Rumsfeld was sent to Iraq to assure Saddam that it was all right if he used chemical weapons against the Iranians. Reagan had no taste in friends.

On becoming president, George H. W. Bush made a deal with the Soviets that he would cut the Mujahideen off if the Soviets would leave Afghanistan. The last Soviet troops departed in early 1989. The US then turned its back on Afghanistan and allowed it to fall into civil war, as the radical Muslim factions fostered by Washington and Riyadh turned against one another and used their extensive weaponry on each other and on civilians.

In the meantime, Saddam, whom the US had built up as a major military power, invaded Kuwait. The Bush senior administration now had to take on its former protégé, and put hundreds of thousands of US troops into the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. The radical Muslim extremists with whom Reagan and Bush had allied in Afghanistan now turned on the US, objecting strenuously to a permanent US military presence in the Muslim holy land.

From 1994 Afghanistan was increasingly dominated by a faction of Mujahideen known as Taliban or seminary students (who were backed by Pakistani military intelligence, which learned the trick from Reagan and which were flush from all those billions the Reagan administration had funneled into the region). In 1996 Bin Laden came back and reestablished himself there, becoming the leader of 5,000 radical Arab volunteers that Reagan had urged Fahd to help come to Afghanistan back in the 1980s.

In the meantime, the US had steadfastly supported Israeli encroachments on the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the gradual complete annexation of Jerusalem, the third holiest city to Muslims.

Since the outbreak of the first intifada, Israeli troops had riposted with brutality. Even after the Oslo accords were signed, the size of Israeli colonies in the Palestinian West Bank and around Jerusalem doubled.

A steady drumbeat of violence against Palestinians by Israelis, who were stealing their land and clearly intended to monopolize their sacred space, enraged the Muslim radicals that had been built up and coddled by Reagan.

In 1998, al-Qaeda and al-Jihad al-Islami, two small terrorist groups established in Afghanistan as a result of the Reagan jihad, declared war on the United States and Israel (the "Zionists and Crusaders"). After attacks by al-Qaeda cells on US embassies in East Africa and on the USS Cole, nineteen of them ultimately used jet planes to attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The Bush administration responded to these attacks by the former proteges of Ronald Reagan by putting the old Mujahideen warlords back in charge of Afghanistan's provinces, allowing Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to escape, declaring that Americans no longer needed a Bill of Rights, and suddenly invading another old Reagan protégé, Saddam's Iraq, which had had nothing to do with 9/11 and posed no threat to the US. The name given this bizarre set of actions by Bush was "the War on Terror."

In Iraq, the US committed many atrocities, including bombing campaigns on civilian quarters of cities it had already occupied, and a ferocious assault on Fallujah, and tortured Iraqi prisoners.

In the meantime, the Bush administration put virtually no money or effort into actually combatting terrorist cells in places like Morocco, as opposed to putting $200 billion into the Iraq war and aftermath. As a result, a string of terrorist attacks were allowed to strike at Madrid, London and elsewhere.

Fred Ikle, who had been part of the Reaganist/Chinese Communist effort to convince Muslim fundamentalist generals in Pakistan--against their better judgment-- to allow the US to give the radical Muslim extremists even more sophisticated weapons, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal urging the nuking of Mecca.

Then in July, 2005, General Richard Myers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that there was not actually any "War on Terror:" ' General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." ' (Question: Does this mean we can have the Bill of Rights back, now?)

The American Right, having created the Mujahideen and having mightily contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda, abruptly announced that there was something deeply wrong with Islam, that it kept producing terrorists.

--Patrick Doherty | Wednesday 12:14 PM