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Granting the right to return to Palestinian refugees like these children in the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon is one of the issues the Palestinian diaspora has criticized Mahmoud Abbas for not raising ahead of the scheduled November conference. (Matthew Cassel) |
The Louisiana politician Huey Long declared in the 1930s that “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism” and “in the name of national security.” I don’t think we’re there yet, but there are some fascist-like forces mobilizing, and they’re doing so in the name of protecting American Judeo-Christian civilization from a phantom they’ve conjured up called “Islamofascism.” (Variants include Islamo-Fascism, Islamo-fascism, Islamic fascism, etc.)
They want to make it a household word, sliding easily off the tongue, interchangeable with the more familiar “Islam” or inadequately frightening “Islamism.” (The latter alludes to specifically political Islam, including variants of it that—like the political evangelical Christianity in this country—are non-violent.) They want the media to embrace it, and politicians beginning with president Bush to routinely incorporate it into their rhetoric. They want academics to promote the concept of a specifically Muslim form of that evil phenomenon that emerged in war-exhausted Europe in the 1920s-30s and which in its principle expressions (in Italy, Germany, Spain, Hungary) had some distinctly Christian features. They’re throwing millions of dollars into a propaganda effort to popularize a concept that isn’t just politically and intellectually tendentious but calculated to vilify more targets (indeed any Muslim target) for attack.
By Gov. Bill Richardson
11/01/07 "ICH" -- -- It is a tragedy that in the midst of one failed war in Iraq, George Bush and Dick Cheney are pushing a second front of failure and gearing up to attack Iran. The "unilateral sanctions" recently imposed will hurt diplomatic progress in the region, and I find it disconcerting that so many Democrats supported President Bush in his saber-rattling.
Senator Clinton voted to enable George Bush when she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment. Senator Obama, skipped the Iran vote entirely.
Saber-rattling is not a good way to get the Iranians to cooperate and work with us for peace. But it is a tried and true method of laying the groundwork for another war -- a war that would be a disaster for the Middle East, for the United States and for the world. Saying that we're on a "path to diplomacy" while imposing these sanctions and increasing the war rhetoric only strengthens hard-line elements in the Iranian leadership and increases the risk of violence breaking out.
Further, a policy of "unilateral sanctions will actually diminish our diplomatic options. "Unilateral sanctions" are both ineffective and porous, and they will undermine the effort to get meaningful multilateral sanctions that the Iranians would possibly pay attention to.
Diplomacy continues to be the path not taken by the Bush administration.
Again and again, President Bush has shown a disdain for diplomacy and our own governmental institutions. The Democratic Congress needs to stand up to this president and prevent him from starting another needless war, which will further isolate us in the world and strengthen our enemies.
Bush's goal seems clear -- to keep ramping up the rhetoric and threats until he's managed to back us into another unwanted war. But what isn't clear to me is what Congress is going to do about it. Haven't we yet learned the lesson that if you give this president an inch on this aggression, he will take a mile?
I know this region. I spent 80 percent of my time as ambassador to the United Nations on Iraq and the Middle East issues. If we want to succeed in the region, we have to get all of our troops out of Iraq. We have to talk to the Iranians and back that up with global diplomacy to build strong support for tough sanctions. That is how we will be successful, not with the president's saber-rattling. Congress needs to stop him before he goes too far.
Of course, Congress just had a chance to stand up to Bush with an unequivocal "no war with Iran" vote. But they squandered the opportunity -- just as they, time and time again, have missed chances to stand up to Bush on Iraq.
Now is not the time for a "wait and see" attitude -- not on ending the war in Iraq and not on starting a war in Iran.
When it comes to Iraq, I want all the troops out, now. If the president won't do it, we need to convince Congress to stand up -- go to www.getourtroopsout.com to join us.
With 200-300 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, Israelis enjoy a nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep it that way, and they want the U.S. to help.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target. Her claim last week that "the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around the world" is simply too much of a stretch.
To gauge someone's reliability, one depends largely on prior experience. Sadly, Rice's credibility suffers in comparison with Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Basing his judgment on the findings of IAEA inspectors in Iran, ElBaradei reports that there is no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program there.
If this sounds familiar, it is in fact déjà vu. ElBaradei said the same thing about Iraq before it was attacked. But three days before the invasion, American nuclear expert Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert, "I think Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong."
BAGHDAD - The recent attacks by Blackwater USA mercenaries in Baghdad are far from the first — and many believe they will not be the last.
Seventeen Iraqis were killed Sep. 16, and another 27 wounded at Nisoor square in western Baghdad when mercenaries from the company opened fire on them. Dozens of witnesses said that, contrary to Blackwater claims, the mercenaries had not come under attack.
Several Kurds who were at the scene said they saw no one firing at the mercenaries at any time, an observation corroborated by forensic evidence. Kurds are one ethnic group that has been supportive of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Kurd witnesses work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square where the bloodshed occurred.
CHICAGO (AFP) - - The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday defended the administration's rendition program, in which terrorism suspects are transported to secret prisons in countries with less stringent interrogation rules.
"Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable," said General Michael Hayden, as President George W. Bush's nominee for attorney general came under fire for his position on interrogation techniques.
"The irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason why we have what I admit freely is a very controversial program," Hayden said in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The CIA has generated thousands of intelligence reports from the "fewer than 100 hardened terrorists" detained since 2002, he said.
"These rendition, detention, and interrogation programs are small, carefully run operations," he said, adding that less than a third of the detainees "have required any special methods of questioning."
The administration has come under intense scrutiny for its interrogation program and Bush's refusal to rule out the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" even as he insists that the US does not torture.
Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey on Tuesday condemned one such technique, waterboarding, as "repugnant" and possibly "over the line," but declined to explicitly rule it out as torture, saying he could not speculate on classified procedures.
He did, however, pledge to investigate interrogation techniques in a letter responding to growing criticism from leading Democrats who have threatened to block his confirmation.
Hayden said clarifying interrogation methods was a top priority when he took the helm of the CIA in May 2006.
"It was my belief -- and the agency has acted going forward -- that what it was we would do to protect the Republic had to have sustainability," he said in response to questions from the audience.
"It had to be consistent with our broad values as a nation. And so it could not stand on a single pillar of a definition of lawfulness. It had to have both policy and political legs."
The agency had intense discussions with both Congress and the Justice Department to determine exactly where the legal lines were drawn, and there is an officer present at all times to make sure the interrogation does not cross the line, he said.
"When we conduct interrogations there are officers who are responsible solely for the physical and well being of the detainee and have the authority to stop what is going on."
But when asked directly whether or not waterboarding constituted torture, Hayden gave a muddled and confusing response in which he cited domestic and international law.
"Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract," he said. "I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can even answer that."
When the US military trains soldiers to resist interrogation, it uses a torture technique from the Middle Ages, known as "waterboarding". Its use on terror suspects in secret US prisons around the world has come to symbolise the Bush administration's no-nonsense enthusiasm for the harshest questioning techniques.
Although waterboarding has been considered torture for over a century and the US military is banned from using it, controversy over its continuing use by the CIA may be about to derail the appointment of President Bush's candidate for US Attorney-General.
Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York and a veteran of several al-Qa'ida trials, was questioned by a Senate committee on Tuesday and refused to say whether waterboarding was illegal.
Instead, he called the technique "repugnant to me" and promised to investigate further if he was confirmed in the job. He explained that he could not say yet whether the practice was illegal because he had not been briefed on the secret methods of US interrogators and he did not want to put the CIA officers who used it in "personal legal jeopardy".
