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February 14/15, 2004
Stan Goff
Beloved Haiti
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
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/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
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10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
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Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
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Tripp
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Landau
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Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
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Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
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Whitney
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David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
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Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
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Weekend
Edition
February 14/15, 2004
A Foreign Policy Serving
Israel
Clean
Break with the Road Map
By WILLIAM JAMES MARTIN
Is there some difference in understanding and
perspecive between President George W Bush and the members of
his administration who are the dominant influences over foreign
policy? Is the President, possibly because he is generally neither
well read or well informed, a relative weak influence in his
own administration and is dominated by such highly intelligent
and forceful members of the Pentagon such as, Wolfowitz, Perle,
Feith, and others and by the Vice President? There is some evidence
for this and some reason to believe it.
The following exchange took place at
the Aqaba Summit on June 5 between Bush an Israeli defense minister
Shaul Mofaz:
According to The Guardian, Palestinian
Defense Minister, Dahlan gave a five- minute synopsis of the
Palestinian view of the security situation and the difficulties
he faces because the Israelis have destroyed much of the Palestinian
security infrastructure. At the end of the briefing, General
Mofaz, jumped in. "Well", he said, "they won't
be getting any help from us; they have their own security service."
Bush turned to General Mofaz, "Their own security service?
But you have destroyed their security service," he reportedly
said. General Mofaz remained firm. "I do not think that
we can help them, Mr President," he said. Bush replied,
"Oh, but I think that you can, and I think that you will."
A similar confrontation followed with Sharon.
According to the The Guardian story,
towards the end of the summit, Bush told Condoleezza Rice, his
national security adviser, that he liked and trusted Abbas and
Dahlan, but Sharon was "a problem".
In July President George W Bush, on the
podium with then Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, said:
"It is very difficult to develop confidence between the
Palestinians and the Israelis ... with a wall snaking through
the West Bank."
On Friday, December 12, US President
George W. Bush urged Israel to avoid measures that could block
a Palestinian state... "It's in Israel's interest there
be a Palestinian state," Bush said, adding, "It's in
the poor, suffering Palestinian people's interest there be a
Palestinian state."
A few days later, US deputy assistant
secretary of state and Bush administration envoy to the Middle
East David Satterfield said in Rome that Israel had "done
too little for far too long" to foster peace negotiations
with the PNA.
The exchange between Bush and Israeli
Defense Ministert Mofaz was striking in its singularity for it
was apparently the first time on record that there had been a
sharp disagreement between Bush and the Sharon government in
which Bush evidently understood the burden of the Palestinian
Authority's providing for Israeli security with a police force
and police installations largely destroyed by the Israeli army.
The December 12th statement expressing
an understanding of the suffering of the Palestinians is an attitude
rarely heard within the Bush administration.
If it is difficult to imagine these expressions
from Bush, it is beyond imagination to picture them coming from
civilian Pentagon officials, Wolfowitz, Perle, Douglas Feith,
or David Wurmser at State, except possibly as a prelude to condemning
Arafat.
Nor has Bush's irritaion with Israel's
"security" wall been translated into policy as the
US subsequently vetoed the UN Council Resolution declaring the
construction of the Wall to be in violation of international
law.
Indeed, Perle, Wurmser, and Feith are
on record as being commited to policies which are radically at
variance with long standing American policy and are also radically
at variance with President Bush's Roadmap.
At focus in this context is the document,
A Clean Break: a New Starategy for Securing the Realm, written
in 1996 for the incoming Natanyahu government of Israel by Richard
Perle, Douglas Feith, David and Meyrav Wurmser, James Colbert,
and Robert Loewenberg in their capacity as members of The Institute
for advanced Strategy and Political Studies' "Study Group
on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000" a Washington/Jerusalem
based think tank providing policy analyses for the government
of Israel. This document is remarkable for its very existence
because it constitutes a policy manifesto for the Israeli government
pennned by members of the current US government. Richard Perle
was, until his recent resignation chairman of the defence policy
board, and now continues to sit on the board. Douglas Feith is
currently undersecretary of defence for policy, the departments
number three man and a protege' of Perle who has worked closely
with him in the past. David Wurmser is assistent to undersecretary
for arms control, John Bolton, at the State Department, the latter
coming from the far right conservative American Interprise Institute
This document makes the following points:
1. "Israel has the opportunity to
make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy
based on an entirely new intellectual foundation..."
2. The previous Israeli government's
pursuit of a peace process which was responsive to "supranational
over national sovereignty... undermined the legitimacy of the
nation and lead Israel to strategic paralysis." That peace
process obscured the evidence of an "eroding national critical
mass -- including a palpable sense of national exhaustion --
and forfeited strategic initiative. The loss of national critical
mass was illustrated best by Israel's efforts to draw in the
United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree
to negotiate sovereignty over its capital...."
3. Israel should "work closely with
Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some
of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from
the slogan "comprehensive peace" to a traditional concept
of strategy based on balance of power."
4. Israel should "change the nature
of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the
right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas
and [should nuture] alternatives to Arafat' exclusive grip on
Palestinian society" [itallics mine].
5 "While previous governments, and
many abroad, may emphasize "land for peace" -- which
placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political,
diplomatic, and miilitary retreat -- the new government can promote
Western values and traditions. Such an approach ... includes
"peace for peace", "peace through strength"
and self reliance : the balance of power."
6. "Displaying moral ambivalence
between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to
annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not
secure "peace now." Our claim to the land -- to which
we have clung for hope for 2000 years -- is ligitimate and noble..."[itallics
mine]..
7. "Only the unconditional acceptance
by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimensions,
"peace for peace," is a solid basis for the future."
The breathtaking import of this program
should not be obscured. The rejection of "land for peace",
indeed the identification of withdrawal from territory with "annihilation"
of the state of Israel, the pursuit of the "unconditional
acceptance" of Israel's rights (apparently including the
right to expand its borders) by the Arab states is a complete
rejection and a radical departure from 36 years of American Middle
East Policy which embraces UN Resolution 242 and all subsequent
Security Council Resolution on the Middle East. It is also at
radical variance with the Roadmap which embodies the two state
solution and calls for the establishment of a "viable and
contiguous Palestinian state."
Under the subheading, Securing the Northern
Border:
8. "Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese
soil."
9. Israel should engage Hezbollah, Syria,
and Iran, as the principle agents of aggression in Lebanon by:
10. striking Syrian military targets
in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select
targets in Syria proper.
11. "Given the nature of the regime
in Damascus, it is natural and moral that Israel abandon the
slogan "comprehensive peace" and move to contain Syria,...
rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights."
Under the subheading, Moving to a Traditional
Balance of Power Strategy:
12. "Israel can shape its strategic
environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan by weakening,
containing, and even rolling back Syria."[itallics mine]
13. "This effort can focus on removing
Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq -- an important strategic objective
in its own right -- as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."
14. "Damascus fears that a "natural
axis" with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on
the other,and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach
Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, it would be a prelude
to redrawing the map of the Middle East....
15. Iraq's future could affect the strategic
balance in the Middle East profoundly.
It is amazing how much of this program,
though written for the Israeli government of Natanyahu of 1996,
has already been implemented, not by the government of Israel,
but by the Bush administration. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein
in Iraq, the two year old house arrest of Arafat and the attempt
to cultivate a new Palestinian leadership, the complete rejection
by Sharon of the land for peace agreement on the Golan Heights,
with little US demurral, and the bombing inside of "Syria
proper" with only the response from Bush, "Israel has
a right to defend itself". In the complete rejection, de
facto if not de jure, of the Roadmap, Sharon is well aware that
he is strongly supported by those inside of the Bush administration
to such an extent that Bush can well be ignored.
After interviewing CIA officials including
George Tenant, U.S. diplomats, and Syrian President, Bashar Assad,
investigative journalist, Seymour Hirsh, writing in the New Yorker
under the title, The Syrian Bet, has described how American official
burned Syrian source of intelligence on Al Qaeda largely because
of Syrian support for Hesbollah in southern Lebanon and also
because the government has allowed Hamas and the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad to maintain offices in Damascus.
Because the secular Syrian government
had been at war for more than two decades with the Syrian Muslim
Brotherhood based in Alleppo, with close ties to Al Qaeda, Syria
had complied hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, including dossiers
on the men who participated in the September 2001 attack on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Syrian had also penetrated
Al Qaeda cells throughout the Middle East and in Arab exile communities
throughout Europe. Many of the airline hijackers of the September
2001 attack had operated out of cells in Hamburg and Aachen.
Some of these members worked for a German firm called Tatex which
was infiltrated by Syrian intelligence during the eighties.
Hirsh states that just after the September
2001 attacks, the Syrian government began allowing the CIA and
FBI to operate in Alleppo, and on one occasion provided the U
S with advanced knowledge of an Al Qaeda plot to fly a glider
loaded with explosives into a building at the U S Navy's 5th
Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Syria also provided the US with
advanced knowledge of a plot against an American target in Ottawa.
American intelligence and State Department
told Hirsh that by 2002 Syria had become one of the most effective
sources of intelligence and one of the most important allies
in the fight against Al Qaeda. After the September 11 attacks,
Syria provided a flood of information to American operatives
which only ended with the onset of the Iraq war.
With the invasion of Iraq, came the constant
threats from Rumsfeld, Condeleez Rice and members of the Pentagon
along with the accusation that Syria is harboring some of the
Iraqi Baathist leadership as well as having stashed Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction. It is a poorly kept secret that the neo-conservatives
members of the Pentagon want to see the fall of the Syrian government
and that it is their next target after Iraq
In June 2003, the American army attacked
several vehicles inside the Syrian border, killing about 80 people
and detained several members of Syrian security personnel who
spent several days in interrogation. Evidently, Rumdsfeld believed
that this small caravan of cars was carrying Saddam Hussein or
other high ranking Iraqi officials to sanctuary in Syria. It
turned out to be little more than people smuggling gasoline.
In early October, after a suicide bombing
in Israel, two Israeli Airforce F16 fighter jets attacked a position
10 miles from Damascus which Israel said was a terrorist training
camp and which Islamic Jihad said had not been used for two years.
In either case, the point was made. In Washington, a senior administration
official said, "We have repeatedly told the government of
Syria that it is on the wrong side in the war on terror and that
it must stop harboring terrorists."
Givern the constants threats to the Syrian
government of Bashar Assad, son of the late President Hafez Assad,
including attacks by both the United States and by Israel inside
of Syrian territory it is little wonder that intelligence on
Al Qaeda provided by Syrian intelligence has ceased.
One sees, in the case of the Syrian relation,
a conspicuous instance of Israeli interest eclipsing American
interest. Al Qaeda, not Islamic Jihad or Hames is a threat to
the United States. Islamic Jihad and Hamas threaten Israel, not
the United States.
In February of 2002, the Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah advanced what became known as the Saudi initiative
in which Arab states would offer normal diplomatic relations
including peace agreements which would recognize Israel's right
to exists within secure borders in return for Israel withdrawal
to its 1967 borders including withdrawal from East Jerusalem.
When, in April, the Crown Prince was the guest of the President
at his ranch near Crawford, Tx., he found that the Bush was barely
aware of the plan and had not been briefed on it. Bush has said
on one occasion that he does not independently keep up with the
news but rather relies on his staff for briefings.
In fact, there is little motivation within
the administration for briefing Mr Bush on a proposal centered
around the "land for peace" formula which has been
forthrightly rejected by the major foreign policy players of
this administration.
The major players of foreign policy,
Perle, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Feith, Wurmser, are not the only sources
of action within the administration; there is Powell, there is
the President himself. But the authors of A Clean Break have
had dramatic success in shaping foreign policy to their conceptuallization.
The following conclusions can be drawn
with considerable confidence:
1. The Middle East policies driving the
American government's Middle East policy are delineated in the
document, A Clean Break, and are are only partially congruent
with the attitudes of the President. Much of the program of this
document has already become reality and has eclipsed President
Bush's Roadmap which embodied a two state solution.
2. The authors of A Clean Break, those
driving American policy, derive their concepts based on Israeli
security and Israeli interest so that American foreign policy
under the Bush administration is primarily serving the interest
of Israel and secondarily that of the United States.
3. The invasion of Iraq for the purpose
of overthrowing Saddam Hussein was undertaken for the interest
of Israel though paid for with American capital and with American
and Iraqi <lives.Statements> made by David Kay, chief US
weapons inspector in Iraq that Iraq almost certainly possessed
no weapons of mass destruction on the eve of the American invasion
of Iraq destroyed any justification for the claim that Iraq posed
an immediate threat to the United States.
William James Martin is a visiting Instructor of Mathematics at the
University of Central Florida, Orlando. He can be reached at:
martinw@email.unc.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for February 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
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