Bush Seeks to Affirm a Continuing War on Terror

Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s advisers assert that many Americans may have forgotten that. So they want Congress to say so and “acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans.”

Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress.

The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months, has taken to make permanent important aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. From a new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I. investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics.

“This seems like a final push by the administration before they go out the door,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency and an expert on national security law. The cumulative effect of the actions, Ms. Spaulding said, is to “put the onus on the next administration” — particularly a Barack Obama administration — to justify undoing what Mr. Bush has done.

Mr. Bush “is trying to stir up again the politics of fear by reminding people of something they haven’t really forgotten: that we are engaged in serious armed conflict with Al Qaeda,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard and legal adviser to Mr. Obama. “But the question is, Where is that conflict to be waged, and by what means.”

“As Sept. 11, 2001, recedes into the past, there are some people who have come to think of it as kind of a singular event and of there being nothing else out there,” Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told House lawmakers in July. “In a way, we are the victims of our own success, our own success being that another attack has been prevented.”

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he wanted to make sure the Bush administration — or a future president — did not use that declaration as “another far-fetched interpretation” to evade the law, the way he believes Mr. Bush and aides like Alberto R. Gonzales, the former attorney general, did in using the wiretapping program to avoid the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“I don’t want to face another situation where we had the Sept. 14 resolution and then Attorney General Gonzales claimed that that was authorization to violate FISA,” Mr. Specter said.

For Bush critics like Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, the answer is simple: do not give the administration the wartime language it seeks.

“I do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever,” Mr. Fein said. “We have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify and indict and convict. They’re not a goliath. Don’t treat them that way.”

Read the full text here.

Should Iraq Prosecute US Soldiers?

Exemption from prosecution for U.S. soldiers abroad has a long precedent in American policy and politics, as Rice noted. For decades the Pentagon has insisted that the military's own internal judicial system is the only place U.S. troops should be tried for alleged crimes while serving overseas. While that is a politically popular stance in the U.S., it been the source of tensions at times with allies such as Japan, Italy and South Korea that host large numbers of U.S. troops. In each of those countries U.S. troops over the years have been implicated in alleged crimes ranging from involuntary manslaughter to sexual assault, in cases that have often led to public outcry over military immunity. However, Washington has shown no signs of seriously rethinking the immunity question. Indeed, the specter of U.S. military personnel appearing in a foreign court after Sept. 11 led President Bush in 2002 to withdraw the tentative U.S. support for the International Criminal Court that had been offered by President Clinton during the last year of his tenure. That stance left the United States on the same side of the issue as other nations opposed to the ICC, such as Sudan, Iran and North Korea.

Few outside the human rights activist community have challenged this seemingly nonnegotiable U.S. position. But now voices inside Iraq are beginning to question whether U.S. military immunity can be tolerated by an ostensibly sovereign nation. The U.S. military presence in Iraq since 2003 has produced, in the eyes of many Iraqis, a lengthy list of alleged crimes by U.S. troops with scant signs of justice. Episodes include the Abu Graib prison abuse scandal in 2004 and the killing of 24 civilians by Marines in Haditha in 2005. Those cases and many other lesser known ones have gone to U.S. military courts. But few Iraqis view the distant proceedings as providing adequate accountability, especially considering the high number of acquittals and the paucity of convictions to date.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki himself suggested that blanket U.S. military immunity in Iraq was not in line with Iraqi visions for a new agreement governing the American military presence in the country, making the issue perhaps the single biggest stumbling block in the ongoing negotiations.

Few outside the human rights activist community have challenged this seemingly nonnegotiable U.S. position. But now voices inside Iraq are beginning to question whether U.S. military immunity can be tolerated by an ostensibly sovereign nation. The U.S. military presence in Iraq since 2003 has produced, in the eyes of many Iraqis, a lengthy list of alleged crimes by U.S. troops with scant signs of justice. Episodes include the Abu Graib prison abuse scandal in 2004 and the killing of 24 civilians by Marines in Haditha in 2005. Those cases and many other lesser known ones have gone to U.S. military courts. But few Iraqis view the distant proceedings as providing adequate accountability, especially considering the high number of acquittals and the paucity of convictions to date.

Moreover, many Iraqis would argue that these crimes are not the average and seemingly unavoidable incidents that accompany a significant military presence on foreign soil. In other words, it's one thing to deal with the occasional U.S. serviceman, normally sequestered on a large base, who winds up implicated in a criminal incident such as drunken driving, assault or even murder. It's quite another, however, to have thousands of troops fanned out across your country running prison camps and conducting military operations in a shooting war where much of the violence plays out among the civilian population.

From Time.

The UN Convention against Torture defines the practice as:

"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity...."

US statutes leave no ambiguity on torture. Neither do international laws like The (1949) Third Geneva Convention's Article 13 (on the Treatment of Prisoners of War). It states:

They "must at all times be humanely treated. Anyunlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited....(these persons) must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation...."

The Financial Times and the “Self-Confessed Mastermind of 9/11”

By James Petras
Aug 26, 2008, 18:02

In recent days there is mounting evidence of the advance of totalitarianism in the political and media mainstream. The entire Western world, led by the United States, has embraced a Georgian regime, which invaded South Ossetia totally demolishing its capital city of 50,000 residents, assassinated 1500 men, women and children and dozens of Russian peace keepers. The US has mobilized a naval and air armada off the Iranian coast, prepared to annihilate a country of 70 million people. The New York Times published an essay by a prominent Israeli historian, which advocates the nuclear incineration of Iran. All the major mass media have mounted a systematic propaganda campaign against China, supporting each and every terrorist and separatist group, and whipping up public opinion in favor of launching a New Cold War. There is little doubt that this new wave of imperial aggression and bellicose rhetoric is meant to deflect domestic discontent and distract public opinion from the deepening economic crises.

The Financial Times (FT), once the liberal, enlightened voice of the financial elite (in contrast to the aggressively neo-conservative Wall Street Journal) has yielded to the totalitarian-militarist temptation. The feature article of the weekend supplement of August 16/17, 2008 – “The Face of 9/11” – embraces the forced confession of a 9/11 suspect elicited through 5 years of hideous torture in the confines of secret prisons. To make their case, the FT published a half-page blow-up photo first circulated by former CIA director George Tenet, which presents a bound, disheveled, dazed, hairy ape-like prisoner. The text of the writer, one Demetri Sevastopulo, admits as much: The FT owns up to being a propaganda vehicle for a CIA program to discredit the suspect while he stands trial based on confessions obtained through torture.

From beginning to end, the article categorically states that the principle defendant, Khalet Sheikh Mohammed, is the “self-confessed mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the US.” The first half of the article is full of trivia, designed to provide a human-interest feel to the courtroom and the proceedings – a bizarre mixture discussing Khaled’s nose to the size of the courtroom.

The central point of departure for the FT’s conviction of the suspect is Khaled’s confession, his ‘desire for martyrdom’, his assumption of his own defense and his reciting the Koran. The crucial piece of the Government’s case is Khaled’s confession. All the other ‘evidence’ was circumstantial, hearsay and based on inferences derived from Khaled’s attendance at overseas meetings.

The FT’s principle source of information, an anonymous informant “familiar with the CIA interrogation program” states categorically two crucial facts: (1) How little the CIA had known about him before his arrest (my emphasis) and (2) that Khaled held out longer than the others.

In other words, the CIA’s only real evidence was extracted by torture (the CIA admitted to ‘water boarding’ – an infamous torture technique inducing near death from drowning). The fact that Khaled repeatedly denied the accusations and that he only confessed after 5 years of torture in secret prisons renders the entire prosecution a case study in totalitarian jurisprudence. Having been subjected to unspeakable torture by US judicial investigators, facing accusations based on a confession extracted through torture, it is no wonder that Khaled refused a court appointed military lawyer – a lawyer who is part of a system of secret prisons, torture and ‘show trials’. Rather than portray Khaled as a fanatic seeking martyrdom for rejecting a lawyer, we must recognize that he is completely in his right mind to at least preserve the limited space and time allocated to him to state his beliefs and to relate his willingness to die for those beliefs. Confessions extracted from torture, have no validity in any court, especially after 5 years of solitary confinement. What the FT calls “the super terrorist” based on his stated “desire for martyrdom” is the admission of an individual who has suffered beyond human endurance and looks to death to end his horrible sub-human existence.

The FT’s embrace of the CIA and military’s coerced evidence and therefore their use of torture, puts them squarely in the camp of the totalitarian state. The right-turn of the FT mirrors the European turn toward US military confrontation with Russia, and the military build-up in Poland, the Czech Republic, Kosovo, Iraq and Georgia. The FT by legitimizing torture has opened the door to making totalitarian judicial practices, arbitrary arrests, secret prisons, prolonged solitary confinement, torture, show trials and cover-up feature stories part of normal Western political life. Genteel British fascism is no less ugly than its blustery US version.

James Petras’ latest book:
Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power, (Clarity Press 2008).

Source taken from here.

"We refuse to serve in the Israeli occupation"

A group of high school graduates refusing their mandatory conscription into the Israeli army, objecting to Israel's human rights violations in the territory it occupies, recently released a statement outlining their position. Three of those who signed have been arrested upon refusing to serve. Their statement follows:

We, high school-graduate teens, declare that we shall work against the Israeli occupation and oppression policy in the occupied territories and the territories of Israel. Therefore we will refuse to take part of these actions, which are being done under our name as part of the IDF [Israeli army].

Our refusal comes first and foremost as a protest of the separation, control, oppression and killing policy held by the state of Israel in the occupied territories, as we understand that this oppression, killing and routing of hatred will never lead us to peace, and they are all contradictory to the basic values a society that pretends to be democratic should have.

All the members of this group believe in developing the value of social work. We are not refusing to serve the society we live in, but are protesting against the occupation and the ways of actions which the militaristic system holds as it is today: crushing civil rights, discriminating on a racial basis and opposing international laws.

We oppose the actions taken in the name of the "defense" of the Israeli society (checkpoints, targeted killing, apartheid roads available for Jews only, curfews, etc.) that serve the occupation and exploitation policy, annex more conquered territories to the state of Israel and trample the rights of the Palestinian population in an aggressive manner. These actions serve as a band-aid covering a bleeding wound, and as a limited and temporary solution that will accelerate and aggravate the conflict further.

We expostulate the plundering and the theft of territories and source of income to the Palestinians in exchange to the expansion of the settlements, reasoning to defend Israeli territories. In addition, we oppose any transformation of Palestinian cities and villages to ghettos without minimal living conditions or income sources, enclosed by the separation wall.

We also protest the humiliating and disrespectful behavior of the military forces towards Palestinians in the West Bank: violence towards demonstrators, public humiliations, arrests, destruction of property regardless to any safety or defense needs, all of which violate global human rights and international law.

The wall and blockades surround the Palestinian territories and serve as a halter around the Palestinian's neck. The soldiers who commit crimes under the patronage and protection of their commanders reflect the image of the Israeli society, a destructive and surprising society that is incapable of accepting its neighboring nation as a partner and not as an enemy.

In order to hold an effective dialogue between the two societies, we, the well-established and stronger society, have the responsibility of establishing and strengthening the other. Only with a more socially and financially established partner could we work towards peace rather than one-sided retaliation acts. Rather than supporting those citizens who have hope for peace, the military cast sanctions and pushes more and more people towards acts of extreme violence and escalation.

We hereby challenge every citizen who wonders if the military's policy in the occupied territories is conducive to the progression of the peace process, to discover by himself/herself the truth and to lift the veil which distorts the reality of the situation; to verify statistical data; to look for the humane side in him/her and in the society which stands in front of him/her; to disprove the myths that were routed within us regarding the necessity of the IDF's [actions] in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and to stand up against every action which he finds irrational and illegal.

In a place were there are humans, there is someone to talk to. Therefore, we ask to create a dialogue that goes beyond the power struggle, the retaliation and one-sided attrition actions; to disprove the "No Partner" myth, which is leading to a lose-lose situation of an ongoing frustration; and to move to more humane methods.

We cannot hurt in the name of defense or imprison in the name of freedom, therefore we cannot be moral and serve the occupation.

Text taken from here.

Read also - Refusing to Oppress.

Go Amnesty

Amnesty International USA, the human rights group is bringing their “live-size model of a maximum security Guantanamo Bay cell” on tour to the cities. The cell is a replica of a Camp 5 cell. It brings to life the harsh realities of illegal detention to concerned citizens and highlights the human rights violations that Guantanamo symbolizes. The cell includes a steel toilet, florescent lights and a sliding metal door. Detainees reported being held in isolation in similar cells for as long as 23 hours.

Read further news here.

Wake Up America

Former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich delivered one of the most passionate addresses Tuesday night. “Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more,” Kucinich said. “War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.”

Watch the video.

"Don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked."

Condoleezza Rice and Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorsk signed a deal to deploy part of a US missile on Polish territory Photo: AFP

"Don’t blame the mirror if your face is crooked." Vladimir Putin quoting Russian proverb.

If the Bush administration proceeds with its plan to deploy its Missile Defense System in Poland, Russian Prime Minister Putin will be forced to remove it militarily. He has no other option. The proposed system integrates the the entire US nuclear arsenal into one operational-unit a mere 115 miles from the Russian border. It's no different than Khrushchev's plan to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in the 1960s.

Russia is experiencing a Renaissance. 20 million people have been raised from poverty since Putin took office 8 years ago. The Russian economy has been growing by 7% a year, real incomes are growing by an astonishing 12% per year and Moscow has become a thriving center of global trade. Oil and natural gas have restored Russia to its formal role as one of the great world's great powers. The last thing Putin wants is a nuclear standoff with the United States. But he will not shirk from his responsibilities either. If the Missile Defense system is deployed, Putin will be forced to raise the stakes and send warplanes over the construction site. That is the logical first-step that any responsible leader would take before removing the site altogether.

Bush should consider very carefully whether he wants to go ahead with this game of nuclear chicken or not. Putting a knife to Moscow's throat is an act of aggression equal to invading Iraq, only this time the victim has the ability to fight back

Read further the article Nuclear Chicken in Poland: Putin Can't Afford to Back Down by Mike Whitney

Peace protest boats arrive in Gaza

British-born activist Yvonne Ridley stands in front of a Free Gaza banner aboard the Liberty protest ship. Photograph: Andreas Lazarou/AP

Two boats being sailed by international peace activists on a mission to defy the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid reached their destination today.

Hundreds of Palestinians gathered to greet the group of 46 activists, who undertook the two-day journey despite Israel saying it would stop the mission, which it described as a "provocation".

Earlier today, Israel said it would permit the boats to dock in Gaza after determining that they were carrying humanitarian equipment.

Those on board accused officials of sabotaging their communications equipment.

The mission is intended to challenge the economic blockade imposed by Israel and deliver a cargo of 200 hearing aids for a deaf school and 5,000 balloons.

The activists on the boat included an 81-year-old Catholic nun, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley and Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of  Tony Blair.

Earlier, Israel warned that an attempt by peace activists to sail two boats to the Gaza Strip was a "provocation" and said it would consider "all options" to prevent them reaching their destination. In a statement issued as they departed today, the activists said they would lodge a legal protest against any attempt by the Israelis to arrest them.

"If Israel chooses to forcibly stop and search our ships, we will not forcibly resist," they said. "If we are arrested and brought to Israel, we will protest and prosecute our kidnapping in the appropriate forums ... It is our purpose to show the power that ordinary citizens of the world have when they organise together to stand against injustice."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday welcomed two boats that sailed from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip in efforts to break the Israeli-imposed blockade on the Palestinian territory, saying that the arrival of the boats signaled the end of the siege. He urged the head of the Arab League Amr Moussa to come to Gaza and called on Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing, which the Egyptians closed in 2007 when Hamas violently seized control over the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also lauded the activists, who docked at Gaza City's tiny port Saturday evening, receiving a warm welcome from thousands of jubilant Palestinians after a two-day journey marred by communications troubles and rough seas.

Israel has led an international boycott of the Gaza Strip since the militant Muslim group Hamas seized power of the territory in June 2007. Israel closed its trade crossings with the coastal territory, while neighboring Egypt sealed its passenger crossing, confining Gaza's 1.4 million residents. Israel has allowed little more than basic humanitarian supplies into Gaza, causing widespread shortages of fuel, electricity and basic goods. Only some people are allowed to leave Gaza for medical care, jobs abroad and the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

The Book They Can’t Stop!

The Prosecutor and the President

Vincent Bugliosi wants George W. Bush prosecuted for murder. There are others who are complicit in the crime, namely the Vice President and Condoleezza Rice, but Bush is the target of this famed former Los Angeles prosecutor (the Charles Manson case) and best-selling author (Helter Skelter and The Betrayal of America as two examples). He is undeterred by the virtual major media blackout on interviews and advertising. He’s taking his case directly to the people through alternate media and the internet.

Read further here.

DU Shells Used by U.S. Worse Than Nuclear Weapons

The use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by the U.S. military may lead to a death toll far higher than that from the nuclear bombs dropped at the end of World War II. DU is a waste product of uranium enrichment, containing approximately one-third the radioactive isotopes of naturally occurring uranium. Because of its high density, it is used in armor- or tank-piercing ammunition. It has been fired by the U.S. and British militaries in the two Iraq wars and in Afghanistan, as well as by NATO forces in Kosovo and the Israeli military in Lebanon and Palestine.

Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has estimated that 50 tons of DU dust from the first Gulf War could lead to 500,000 cancer deaths by the year 2000. To date, a total of 2,000 tons have been generated in the Middle East.

In contrast, approximately 250,000 lives were claimed by the explosions and radiation released by the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991,” said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. “The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive.”

Because DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, the Middle East will, for all practical purposes, be radioactive forever.

The two U.S.wars in Iraq “have been nuclear wars because they have scattered nuclear material across the land, and people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity,” said anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott.

Since the first Gulf War, the rate of birth defects and childhood cancer in Iraq has increased by seven times. More than 35 percent (251,000) of U.S. Gulf War veterans are dead or on permanent medical disability, compared with only 400 who were killed during the conflict.

Text taken from here.

The Mastermind of Iraq Invasion

New documents from within the Bush administration and US intelligence community during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq reveal that the White House began assembling a case for war before it had compiled the intel that ostensibly formed the basis of that case. 

A new report on the documents from George Washington University's National Security Archive also presents compelling evidence that the Bush administration pressured the CIA and other intelligence agencies to tailor their reports to back-up Bush's desire to invade. The report suggests the bulk of this effort was run out of Vice President Dick Cheney's office, backing up numerous other post-war examinations of the path to invasion that saw Cheney as the mastermind of the plan to oust Saddam Hussein.

The Archive published a July 2002 draft of a CIA "White Paper" on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. The draft was prepared months before a National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam's regime, which Congress did not demand until September, although the final "White Paper" released in October purportedly summarized that very NIE.

Read further the article "Documents Reveal PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intel Findings".

The Loves Hate Series

The Bush administration is making rosy-eyed claims that the Arab world is unified behind its anti-Iran campaign. One of the White House spin shops last week bragged about "growing agreement among regional leaders regarding Iran's challenge to peace and security." But in fact, the Middle East is far from unified behind White House positions, and the U.S. is losing. U.S. allies are refusing to toe Washington's dangerous line of "no negotiations with anyone we say is a bad guy."

From Baghdad to Beirut, from Ramallah to Ankara and Cairo to Tel Aviv, U.S.-backed governments are talking to, even signing agreements with those Washington loves to hate - those allied with Iran. The occupation-backed Iraqi government is rebuffing the Bush administration's anti-Iran crusade. The Gulf Cooperation Council - the Saudi-led union of pro-U.S. Arab petro-states - welcomed Iran as a neighboring participant and potential trading partner at their annual meeting last month. The pro-U.S. Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is engaged in backroom unity talks with Hamas, and Israel is quietly negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, with both processes led by the U.S.-backed government of Egypt. The U.S.-backed government in Beirut just signed a formal agreement with the elected Hezbollah-led parliamentary opposition, giving Hezbollah significant new power and allowing the election of a new president not known for pro-U.S. views. Bush's high-profile "talking equals appeasement" speech in the Israeli Knesset failed to persuade Tel Aviv not to talk to Syria, and Turkey announced it has been hosting Syrian-Israeli negotiations. One unnamed Bush administration official called the new peace talks "a slap in the face."

The impact of all these developments remains uncertain. Some of these new initiatives may fail, and some (particularly the current version of an Israeli-Syrian rapprochement) may create serious dangers even if they succeed. But what is clear is that it hasn't been a good season for the war buffs of the Bush administration. Perhaps in response to this increasingly public Middle East repudiation of the U.S. "isolate Iran" strategy, some key Bush administration officials are for the moment backpedaling away from some of their earlier rhetoric. Even as Hillary Clinton speaks of "obliterating" Iran (presumably including its 70 million people), Bush's favorite general David Petraeus now claims that in dealing with Iran, he favors diplomacy as a first choice. At least for the moment.

Read further the article Middle East still at war: the US is losing but the winners are unclear

The Moral Standing - The Georgia Case.

While the international community has solid grounds to challenge Russian aggression, however, the United States has lost virtually all moral standing to take a principled stance.

For example, the brutally punitive and disproportionate response by the Russian armed forces pales in comparison to that of Israel's 2006 attacks on Lebanon, which were strongly defended not only by the Bush administration, but leading Democrats in Congress, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Russia's use of large-scale militarily force to defend the autonomy of South Ossetia by massively attacking Georgia has been significantly less destructive than the U.S.-led NATO assault on Serbia to defend Kosovo's autonomy in 1999, an action that received broad bipartisan American support.

And the Russian ground invasion of Georgia, while a clear violation of international legal norms, is far less significant a breach of international law as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, authorized by a large majority in Congress.

This doesn't mean that Russia's military offensive should not be rigorously opposed. However, the U.S. contribution to this unfolding tragedy and the absence of any moral authority to challenge it must not be ignored.

Rice Doing some Mathematics...

“This is an agreement that, of course, will establish a missile defense site here in Poland, a missile defense site that will help us to deal with the new threat to the 21st century of long-range missile threats from countries like Iran or from North Korea,” Rice said yesterday at the Polish presidential palace in Warsaw.

“I frankly think that anybody who can do the math would know that 10 interceptors in Poland is not going to do anything to a Russian deterrent that has thousands of warheads,” she added.

The United States and Poland signed a deal Wednesday to place a U.S. missile defense base just 115 miles from Russia - a move followed swiftly by a new warning from Moscow of a possible military response.

Hours after the signing, Russia's Foreign Ministry warned that Moscow's response would go beyond diplomacy. The system to be based in Poland lacks "any target other than Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles," it said in a statement, contending the U.S. system "will be broadened and modernized."

"In this case Russia will be forced to react, and not only through diplomatic" channels, it said without elaborating.

Russia interprets the construction of missile defense facilities on Polish soil as a hostile act. And rightly so — clearly the only possible adversary such a system could be aimed against is Russia. The Bush administration, however, not only believes in the missile shield but believes in pretending it’s not an anti-Russian gesture.

As Spencer Ackerman wisely points out the idea of a North Korean missile attacking Poland is laughable and of an Iranian missile doing so only very slightly less so. The countries that Poland worries about are Russia and Germany; the countries with substantial missile arsenals are the United States and Russia; the country that this would defend Poland against if it worked (which it doesn’t) is Russia.

Rice: Military power is ‘not the way to deal in the 21st century.’»

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sharply criticized Russia for relying on its “military power” to accomplish its goals. Ironically, she said that it “is not the way to deal in the 21st century.” From her remarks yesterday en route to Belgium:

But I just want to emphasize again, Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used, that will make it – that – when it wishes to deliver a message, and that’s its military power. That’s not the way to deal in the 21st century. And if Russia wishes to make a different strategic choice, as President Medvedev said, this is a bad way to start.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald responds to Rice’s remarks:

“Just during the time Rice has served in the Bush administration, we bombed, invaded and occupied Afghanistan; did the same to Iraq; repeatedly bombed Somalia, killing all sorts of civilians; fed bombs to Israel as they invaded and bombed Lebanon; top political officials (led by John McCain and Joe Lieberman) have repeatedly threatened, and advocated, that the same be done to a whole host of other countries, including Iran and Syria.”

Text taken from here.

Why Not Simply Abolish NATO?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a relic of the Cold War. It was created on April 4, 1949 as a defensive alliance of Western Europe countries plus Canada and the United States to protect the former countries from encroachments by the Soviet Union.

Regarding NATO, the plan is to turn it into an aggrandized offensive imperial U.S.-dominated political and military alliance against the rest of the world. According to plan, NATO would be enlarged in the Central-Eastern European region to include not only most of the former members of the Warsaw Pact (Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Hungary) and many of the former republics of the Soviet Union (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia and Ukraine), but also in Asia to include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and possibly admit Israel in the Middle East. Today the initially 12-member NATO has mushroomed into a 26-member organization. In the future, if the U.S. has its way, NATO could be a 40-member organization.

In the United States, both the Republicans and the Democrats see the old NATO transformed into this new offensive military alliance as a good (neocon) idea to promote American interests around the world, as well as those of its close allies, such as Israel. It is not only an idea actively promoted by the neocon Bush-Cheney administration, but also by the neoconservative advisers to both 2008 American presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. Indeed, both 2008 presidential candidates are enthusiastic military interventionists, and this is essentially because both rely on advisers originating from the same neocon camp.

For instance, the rush with which the Bush-Cheney recklessly promised NATO membership to the former Soviet republic of Georgia and American military support and supply is a good example of how NATO is viewed in Washington D.C. by both main American political parties. For one, Republican presidential candidate John McCain envisages a new world order built around a neocon-inspired "League of Democracies" that would de facto replace the United Nations and through which the United States would rule the world. Secondly, Sen. Barack Obama's position is not that far from Sen. McCain's foreign policy proposals. Indeed, Sen. Obama advocates the use of U.S. military force and multilateral military interventions in regional crises, for “humanitarian purposes”, even if by so doing, the United Nations must be bypassed. Therefore, if he ever gains power, it is a safe bet that Sen. Obama would not have any qualms about adopting Sen. McCain's view of the world. For example, both presidential candidates would probably support the removal of the no “first strike” clause from the NATO convention. It can be taken for granted that with either politician in the White House, the world would be a less lawful and a less safe place, and would not be more advanced than it has become under the lawless Bush-Cheney administration.

Read the full article by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay here. Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal. Visit his blog site here.

Please Mr. President, Dont Make Promises to Fools

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it."
- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Aug. 14, 2008

While Russia has adopted the more traditional and pragmatic international strategy of trying to ensure neighboring states are either weak or friendly and has given up trying to convert the world to communism, the United States has now become a slave to ideology. The U.S. seeks to spread and sustain democracy around the globe, by force if necessary, and has military bases in many nations to facilitate this goal. Ironically enough, while using violence to effect radical social and political change may be new to U.S. foreign policy, it was an idea warmly embraced by Leon Trotsky, one of the creators of the Soviet state, back in 1917.

What convinced Saakashvili that attacking South Ossetia made sense? That the United States had just completed joint maneuvers with the Georgian army and was paying 40 percent of Georgia's military budget? That Georgia had strong links to Israel, which had contractors in the country training Georgia's ground forces and upgrading its air force? That George Bush had come to Tbilisi in May of 2005 and said, "And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you … the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia must be respected by all nations"? That Georgia had Sen. John McCain's principal foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann on its payroll?

Before any American president goes abroad and promises grandly that "the American people will stand with you," he ought to consider what military and political consequences might proceed from his pledge. He ought to ask himself whether he is implicitly committing the United States to come to the aid of a nutjob like Saakashvili, whose attack on Russian forces will undoubtedly establish itself as the new gold standard of recklessness.

Read further the article by John Taylor here.

But is it making the United States safer?

Surveying more than 100 top U.S. foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the Foreign Policy / Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to poll the highest echelons of the country’s national security establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror.

Rising energy costs, the subprime mortgage implosion, and other domestic imperatives now monopolize the national conversation. In a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Americans ranked terrorism as the country’s 10th-most important priority—behind healthcare, education, and the federal budget deficit. But even as attentions shift, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the longest U.S. military engagements in a century, with the exception of Vietnam.

On issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to Iran to U.S. energy policy, they find worrisome trends. Perhaps nowhere is this truer than with regard to the war in Afghanistan. Eighty percent of the experts say that the United States has focused too much on the war in Iraq and not enough on the war in Afghanistan. A majority, 66 percent, continues to say that the war in Afghanistan is having a positive impact on U.S. national security, but that figure is down 27 points from two years ago. The U.S. government’s efforts to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan have been judged to be below average. Eighty-two percent of the experts say that the threat posed by competition for scarce resources is growing, an increase of 13 percentage points from last year. More than 8 in 10 experts say that the current U.S. policy toward Iran is having a negative impact on national security. A large bipartisan majority agrees that creating peace between Israelis and Palestinians is important to addressing the threat of Islamist terrorism, they grade U.S. efforts at working toward that goal to be just 3.3 on a 10-point scale.

So why not withdraw from Iraq?

Neocons Now Love International Law

It’s touching how American neoconservatives who have no regard for international law when they want to invade some troublesome country have developed a sudden reverence for national sovereignty.

The United States attacking Grenada or Nicaragua or Panama or Iraq or Serbia is justified even if the reasons sometimes don’t hold water or don’t hold up before the United Nations, The Hague or other institutions of international law.

However, when Russia attacks Georgia in a border dispute over Georgia’s determination to throttle secession movements in two semi-autonomous regions, everyone must agree that Georgia’s sovereignty is sacrosanct and Russia must be condemned.

U.S. newspapers, such as the New York Times, see nothing risible about publishing a statement from President George W. Bush declaring that “Georgia is a sovereign nation and its territorial integrity must be respected.”

No one points out that Bush should have zero standing enunciating such a principle. Iraq also was a sovereign nation, but Bush invaded it under false pretenses, demolished its army, overthrew its government and then conducted a lengthy military occupation resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The invasion of Iraq also wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, Bush proclaimed an exceptional right of the United States to invade any country that might become a threat to American security or to U.S. global dominance.

When asked questions about international law, Bush would joke: “International law? I better call my lawyer.”

Read further here article written by Robert Parry.

US, allies contemplating action against Russia

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to her motorcade after appearing on the Sunday morning television talk shows to discuss the crisis in Georgia, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008, in Crawford, Texas. President Bush warned Russia on Saturday against trying to pry loose two separatist regions in Georgia and said Moscow must end military operations in the West-leaning democracy that once was part of the Soviet empire. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The White House is struggling to figure out the best way to penalize Russia. It doesn't want to deeply damage existing cooperation on many fronts or discourage Moscow from further integrating itself into global economic and political institutions. At the same time, U.S. officials say Russia can't be allowed to get away with invading its neighbor.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who briefed President Bush on the fast-changing crisis over the weekend at his Texas ranch, said, "There's no doubt there will be further consequences" to Russia.

She said. "Russia will pay a price."

Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration Saturday that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered" was seen by some experts as the first salvo of what could be a new battle over administration policy.

"The last thing Russia wants is a war with the West. If they came eye to eye with NATO warplanes, they would retreat," David L. Phillips, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. said.

Some Bush administration officials are likely to press for kicking Russia out of the Group of 8, which includes the seven major industrial countries and Russia, and blocking its admission to the World Trade Organization. The U.S. also could pledge to rebuild the Georgian military and cut Russia out of discussion over the missile defense system in Europe.

Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO who worked to expand the alliance's relationship with Russia in the 1990s, said that although Moscow may have provoked Georgia into a fight, the fact that Saakashvili took the bait by moving his forces into South Ossetia last week is a clear sign that the Georgian president believed he would have Washington's backing.

"Saakashvili thought he had room to play," Hunter said. "I would have rather the Russians hadn't responded, but Saakashvili sure . . . did it, and he did it in the mistaken belief, I believe, that he had friends in [the Bush administration's] court."

The Russians say they're going to take their time in leaving the South Carolina-sized democracy that declared its independence in 1991.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday slammed the statement made by U.S. President George W. Bush on the conflict between Russia and Georgia, saying facts mentioned in the speech are untrue, Russian news agencies reported.

"I listened to George Bush's statement -- and was surprised -- the facts he cited are untrue," Lavrov was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying. He flatly denied the claims of the U.S. president that Russian troops had blocked Georgia's Black Seaport of Poti.

The Russian top diplomat said Bush did not mention the arming of Georgia in recent years, including by the United States, which trained Georgian troops.

"No mention was made about what happened on Aug. 8, when Western leaders fell silent while Tskhinvali was shelled and bombed," Lavrov said, adding that there was also no mention of Russia's efforts to broker a ceasefire deal between Tskhinvali and Tbilisi.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said Russian forces will be out of Georgia "sooner or later," but how much time it takes depends on how Georgia behaves.

Echoing Bush's call to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq depending on conditions on the ground, Kosachev said: "If I would ask you ... `How fast the American forces can leave Iraq?' ... the answer would be, as soon as we have guarantees for peace and security there

"The same answer would be toward this situation: as soon as we are assured that Georgians will not continue to use military force against South Ossetians and against Abkhazians" _ residents of two separatist areas of Georgia now overrun with Russian troops and abandoned by Georgian soldiers.

Read further here.

Watch the video on war of words between U.S. and Russia.

Arab World Sees Bush's Response to Georgia-Russia Crisis as Hypocritical

"Why should Bush care what Russia does to Georgia unless he or his administration has an interest in the issue to start with?" said Mohammed Abdullah, an Iraqi electrician. "The news is saying that the Americans trained the Georgians and apparently wanted them to join NATO. I can't blame the Russians for doing what they're doing. There's a threat in their immediate vicinity and they decided to take care of it.

Bush should be "too ashamed to speak about the occupation of any country, he is already occupying one," said Mohammed Sayed Said, editor in chief of the Egyptian independent daily Al Badeel. "U.S. forces have been in Iraq for five years and they still fight in an unacceptable manner that violates human rights conventions. Bush had better talk about his own occupation of Iraq."

What would the United States do if suddenly Mexico became an Iranian or Russian ally? They'd crush every last Mexican one way or another.

Read further here.

The World Is Not Buying It

President Bush warned Russia against trying to pry loose two separatist regions in Georgia and said Moscow must end military operations in the West-leaning democracy that once was part of the Soviet empire.

Bush told reporters at his Texas ranch that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's signing of a cease-fire plan with Georgia was "a hopeful step." But Russia's vision of Georgia without the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was a nonstarter, the president said.

McCain declared: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations." In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain's claim that nations don't invade other nations. If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as "nations don't invade other nations".

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

Despite significant U.S. and Georgian culpability in the crisis in Georgia, most U.S. politicians and media painted Russia as the diabolical "evildoer". As if the Russian military incursions into Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia – the latter two are autonomous regions of the former that do not want to be part of that country – happened out of the blue, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice implied that Russia was attempting to bring back the Cold War.

Because Georgia is a U.S. friend, however, U.S. politicians, in a huff to heap blame on the resurgent Russian bear, forgot to mention that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili recklessly first invaded South Ossetia to try to reclaim one of the two regions, which both have had long-standing autonomy and populations who want it to stay that way. He did this in part because the U.S. had helped build up his military, leading him to overestimate U.S. backing in any crisis.

Russia is not bringing back the Cold War. In fact, it never ended. After the Soviet Union fell, the United States deliberately took advantage of a weakened Russia to incorporate its former allies and even some former Soviet republics into the NATO alliance. The U.S. even sought and won access to military bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia. At the time, Russia could do nothing about this perceived hostile alliance moving right up to its current borders. More recently, a stronger Russia – reacting to NATO's flirtation with Ukraine and Georgia for eventual alliance membership and plans for installing U.S. missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic – tightened its relationship with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Ever more to the point, why is Georgia so important to the United States? The answer is that it is not. Although Russia is unfortunately moving back to autocracy and Georgia is an imperfect democracy, Georgia is a small, weak country not even remotely close to the United States, its sphere of influence, or anything important to the United States.

Some would say that oil pipelines running from the Caspian Sea oil basin through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean matter, but even this argument has been vastly overstated. Caspian Sea oil accounts for only less than four percent of the world's proven oil reserves. But even in the worst case, if Russia would get control of the Georgian portions of these pipelines – in addition to controlling its own pipelines carrying Caspian Sea oil – the Russian economy remains oil-based and in dire need of lucrative revenues from oil transport. Thus, although the Russians might raise the price of transporting Caspian Sea oil through these pipelines, Russia would be unlikely to halt the long-term flow of the petroleum to the world market. As bad as this crisis is, it could have been worse if Georgia had already been admitted to NATO. This crisis should be a wake-up call that admitting Georgia, Ukraine, or other non-strategic nations in the Russian sphere of influence into NATO could needlessly make Russia even more hostile and start a new, dangerous, and unnecessary Cold War.

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia's membership in NATO.

The many years of lies – 9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, "the United States doesn't torture," the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children's soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated "terrorist plots," the determined assault on civil liberties – have taken their toll on American credibility. 

The world is not buying it anymore.

References

Crisis in the Caucasus
This Time, the World Is Not Buying It.

Russia-Georgia Conflict Fueled by Rush to Control Caspian Energy Resources

Well, I believe that this is what really underlies the conflict, and it has to do with the fact that the US has eyed the Caspian Sea, which lies just to the east of Georgia, as an energy corridor for exporting Caspian Sea oil and gas to the West, bypassing Russia. And this was the brainchild of Bill Clinton, who saw an opportunity, when the Soviet Union broke apart, to gain access to Caspian oil and gas, but he didn’t want this new energy to flow through Russia or through Iran, which were the only natural ways to export the energy.

So he anointed Georgia as a bridge, to build new pipelines through Georgia to the West. And it was he who masterminded the construction of the BTC pipeline, which is now the outlet for this oil, with new pipelines supposedly following for natural gas. And he chose Georgia for this purpose and also built up the Georgian military to protect the pipeline, and Russia has been furious about this ever since. And I think that’s the reason that they have clung so tightly to Abkhazia and South Ossetia ever since.

Read further the interview with Michael Klare here.

Michael Klare is the author of thirteen books, including Blood and Oil and Resource Wars. His latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. He is the defense analyst for The Nation and the director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst.

The U.S. Government and News Media Are Lying, Again

By Pavel Yakovlev, Ph.D, the Department of Economics and Quantitative Sciences at Duquesne University in Pittsburg

I lost all faith in the American democratic system and its media when President Bush initiated a false war against Iraq and got away with it. This time, the U.S. media and Bush Administration are lying about a different war — the one between Georgia and Russia. To understand the complex nature of this conflict, a brief review of history is necessary.

Throughout its long history, Georgia, the country, has had difficult relations with Russia and its other neighbors, including the ethnically different Ossetians. Georgians and Ossetians did not always get along. In one instance, Georgian leaders asked the Russian tsar for permission to enslave the Ossetians. The answer was no. During the Russian Revolution, Georgia seceded from the Russian Empire and sided with Mensheviks (tsarists), thereby starting a conflict with the Ossetians and killing about 5,000 of them until Bolsheviks intervened and forcefully returned Georgia under Russia’s control. During Stalin’s rule, Georgia (Stalin’s homeland) was assigned some of the Ossetian and Abkhazian territory together with their historic inhabitants. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate in the early 1990s, Georgia declared its independence without any resistance from Russia. However, when South Ossetia and Abkhazia tried to declare their independence from Georgia, they were greeted by a brutal military campaign aimed at keeping these tiny regions under Georgian control. Unfortunately for Georgia, it had to live with their de-facto independence due to strong resistance from these breakaway regions and Russia’s intervention. Long story short, Russia became the only third party peacekeeper, albeit a biased one, in this conflict until now.

In 2008, the United States and Europe recognized Kosovo’s independence from Serbia despite Russian and Serbian opposition. Russia warned the United States that this is a dangerous precedent that could ignite the old conflict between Georgians and Ossetians, who might seek independence according to the Kosovo’s scenario. Meanwhile, Georgia being lead by charismatic, pro-Western president Mr. Saakashvilli sought to join NATO and the EU. However, Georgia’s unresolved territorial disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia formally precluded its membership in NATO. Mr. Saakashvilli could resolve this conflict in two ways: (a) officially recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s de-facto independence from Georgia or (b) drive out or physically exterminate all Ossetians and Abkhazians because they would never again want to live peacefully under Georgia’s control.

On August 8 of this year, Mr. Saakashvilli, probably inspired by his famous countrymen, Joseph Stalin (who allegedly said “no people, no problem”) chose plan (b) by secretly launching the blitzkrieg-styled, all-out offensive on South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers. The date of the attack was chosen strategically — right before the Olympic Games. Judging by captured Georgian military maps, Saakashvilli hoped to capture most of South Ossetia in one day and make Russia’s military response (if any followed) look contrary to the peaceful spirit of the Olympiad. According to numerous Georgian statements quoted even in the U.S. media, they were assured to receive American military support in the case of Russian military retaliation. This raises an important question. What did Bush promise to Saakashvilli so as to embolden him to carry out a military attack that would likely provoke a retaliatory response from a giant, nuclear-armed, Russian military?

As we learned from the Iraq debacle, the U.S. news media is not interested in asking uneasy questions. On the contrary, U.S. news channels neglect to mention that the Georgian attack has cost over 1,600 Ossetian lives and prefer to give the bulk of attention to Georgian claims without checking them for accuracy. The Ossetian accounts of Georgian atrocities, such as carpet bombing of the Ossetian capital, raping, execution of civilians by running them over with tanks, and throwing grenades in the basements where civilians were hiding, failed to make it in to the U.S. news reports as well. The fact that Mr. Saakashvilli has a spotty democratic record and that the U.S. government has spent over $40 million of American taxpayers’ money on arming and training Georgia’s military has also escaped the American news reports. On the contrary, Russia’s military response to Georgia’s initial offensive on the South Ossetian population is instead portrayed as an aggression against a small, democratic, and piece loving nation of Georgia that also happens to be an American ally. Even worse, a statue of Joseph Stalin still proudly stands in the main square of the city of Gori in Georgia, reminding all of us whose bloody legacy Presidents Saakashvilli and Bush are really carrying out. While the American media acts as the propaganda tool for the U.S. and Georgian presidents known for their dishonesty, the regular people of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Georgia, Russia, and the United States have much to lose from this conflict.

It would be nice if the violence in Georgia ended as soon as possible, but it will not end until the United States puts pressure on Georgia to recognize South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence from Georgia as the United States did for Kosovo. Until then, the Russians are forced to defend Abkhazians and Ossetians militarily by weakening Georgia as much as possible in order to preempt any future attacks from Georgians. Any attempt by the U.S. government to back Georgia militarily may provoke a war between nuclear armed Russia and the United States. So, how many of you are willing to die in a nuclear holocaust for yet another blunder committed by the Bush Administration and left unquestioned by the American media?

Text taken here.

Bush Takes A Stand Against Imperialism

U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion, in this day and age, countries don't invade one another -- when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations -- does little to alleviate that negative perception.

'Unacceptable' Behavior - Bush Statement

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state, and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century," he said.

The United States and its allies are pressing Russia to accept an immediate cease-fire with Georgia and agree to international mediation over the crisis in Georgia's separatist areas.

Bush called on Russia to "be true to its word and to act to end this crisis" but cautioned that it had already damaged its international reputation.

"Russia's actions this week have raised serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region," Bush said. "These actions have substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world. And these actions jeopardize Russia's relations with the United States and Europe."

Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow's actions -- with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration's condemnations of Russia ring hollow.

Read also Israeli Arms Sales to Georgia Raise New Concerns

Veiled athletes proud to be part of Beijing Olympics

THE women in Roqaya Al Ghasara's home town in Bahrain are so proud of their pioneering Olympic sprinter that some of them got together to design and sew a set of tailor-made aerodynamic veils for her to run in.

Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal, a third-timer at the Olympics, will don Islamic headgear in Beijing for the first time. She says it is a sign she is come of age and she feels more empowered than ever.

This year's Games will see a sizable sprinkling of veiled athletes who are determined to avoid offending devout Muslims back home while showing skimpily dressed rivals there is nothing constricting about wearing "hijab".

Two of them, Bahrain's Roqaya Al Ghasara and veiled Iranian rower Homa Hosseini, won the honour of being flag bearers for their countries at the opening ceremony's parade of athletes.

"The hijab has never been a problem for me. In Bahrain you grow up with it," said Al Ghasara, wearing a white baseball cap over a black veil that covers her hair and neck. Her baggy running gear exposes only her face and hands.

"There are more women in sport all the time from countries like Qatar and Kuwait. You can choose to wear the hijab or not. For me it's liberating," added Al Ghasara, whose close-fitting running veils come in red or white, the Bahraini colours.

Since they first started appearing a few decades ago, veils at the Olympics have always drawn stares.

At this year's Beijing Olympics an unprecedented half a dozen Egyptian athletes, three Iranians, an Afghan and a Yemeni will compete with covered heads like Al Ghasara. They say they want to inspire other women in their countries to break away from Muslim stereotypes.

Did U.S., Israel Provocateur S. Ossetia Conflict?

by Kurt Nimmo, August 9, 2008

Dead civilians in South Ossetia. But you will not hear much about it on CNN or Faux News. Because they are too busy reporting ad nauseam about the extramarital shenanigans of CFR darling John Edwards.

In order to find out what’s really going on in Georgia, you have to read the international press on the internet. Bush, McCain, and Obama may cast blame on Russia, but reading the international press you get a different perspective.

Russia accuses U.S. of orchestrating conflict

“Russian officials believe that it was the USA that orchestrated the current conflict. The chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security, Vladimir Vasilyev, believes that the current conflict is South Ossetia is very reminiscent to the wars in Iraq and Kosovo,” reports Pravda, the Russian newspaper.

Recall the CIA admitting it “helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia,” according to The Sunday Times. The KLA is a perfect outfit for the CIA. “Known for its extensive links to Albanian and European crime syndicates, the KLA was supported from the outset in the mid-1990s by the CIA and Germany’s intelligence agency, the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND). In the course of the 1999 war, the KLA was supported directly by NATO,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “The KLA had extensive links to Al Qaeda, which was also involved in military training. Mujahideen mercenaries from a number of countries integrated the ranks of the KLA, which was involved in terrorist activities as well as political assassinations.” Of course, “links to Al Qaeda” translate into links to the CIA.

“The things that were happening in Kosovo, the things that were happening in Iraq – we are now following the same path. The further the situation unfolds, the more the world will understand that Georgia would never be able to do all this without America. South Ossetian defense officials used to make statements about imminent aggression from Georgia, but the latter denied everything, whereas the US Department of State released no comments on the matter. In essence, they have prepared the force, which destroys everything in South Ossetia, attacks civilians and hospitals. They are responsible for this. The world community will learn about it,” Vasilyev told Pravda.

Indeed, the world will learn about it, but not by way of America’s corporate media, more interested in the entirely meaningless baby-making of Clay Aiken and Jaymes Foster. Bread and circuses shall suffice in America.

U.S. loads up Georgia with weapons to fight “al-Qaeda”

The Federation of American Scientists website reveals that Georgia

is the most recent recipient of U.S. weapons and aid, receiving 10 UH-1H Huey helicopters (four for spare parts only) and $64 million in military aid and training to fight Arab soldiers with alleged ties to Al Qaeda that have been participating in the Chechen war and are now taking refuge in the Pankisi Gorge region in northern Georgia. Like many of the recent aid recipients, claims that Georgia has become an al Qaeda sanctuary are dubious at best.

“The rapid increase in US strategic influence in the Caucasus has alarmed Russian policy planners. Moscow is keen to take steps to shore up its eroding position in the region. However, Russian officials have limited options with which to counter US moves while at the same time maintaining cordial relations with Washington,” Eurasia.net reported on April 8, 2002. “The most prominent US moves in the Caucasus are the decision to dispatch military advisers to Georgia and a March 29 State Department announcement on the lifting of an arms embargo imposed on Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both actions have the potential to tilt the military establishments of all three Caucasus nations away from Russia and towards NATO.”

Imagine Canada decided to enter a military and diplomatic alliance with Russia and Canada began arming itself to the teeth with Russian weapons and training with Russian military advisers. Can you guess what the reaction of Bush and the neocons would be?

It doesn’t take much imagination.

CIA engineered Georgia’s Rose Revolution

The Rose Revolution was not a simple uprising but was aided by the CIA and Ambassador Richard Miles.

Of course, this al-Qaeda presence is not so dubious when one considers the well documented fact the supposed Islamic terror group is a CIA contrivance. As well, this absurd concern for al-Qaeda’s presence under Georgian beds helped make possible Georgia’s so-called Rose Revolution. “The Rose Revolution was not a simple uprising but was aided by the CIA and Ambassador Richard Miles (think Serbia). From early 2002 onwards the CIA had been operating in Georgia, supposedly to combat Al Qaeda,” explains researcher James Schneider.

It appears the CIA has worked behind the scenes for quite a while in Georgia. Back in 1993, for instance, CIA agent Fred Woodruff was assassinated by unknown assailants outside of Tbilisi. “Spokesmen for the State Department and the C.I.A. declined to confirm that Mr. Woodruff was working for the intelligence agency. But high-ranking Administration officials said he was, adding that he was not spying on Georgian officials but was training Mr. [Eduard] Shevardnadze’s security forces,” the New York Times reported at the time. So tight was the CIA with the former president of Georgia, they engineered the “bloodless” Rose Revolution and pitched him out on his ear.

In the wake of Georgia’s much vaunted — by the U.S. corporate media — “revolution,” the installed government of autocrat Mikheil Saakashvilli wasted little time imposing “democracy” neocon-style, resulting in violent suppression of opposition political rallies. “Georgia was rocked by opposition rallies for six days last November as protesters occupied central Tbilisi demanding Saakashvili’s resignation over allegations of corruption and increasing authoritarianism,” reported RIA Novosti. “The Georgian leader responded by sending in riot police to crack down on protesters on November 7. Over 500 people were injured according to Human Rights Watch as police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to break up the demonstrations.” In addition, Saakashvilli’s goons used “non-lethal” weapons of the sort developed by the Pentagon.

Watch the video.

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U.S. military holds “exercises” in Georgia immediately prior to conflict

Last month, Aljazeera reported that “a total of around 1,650 soldiers form the US, Georgia and several other East European countries, have begun exercises on the formerly Russian-controlled Vaziani base, the Georgian defense ministry said.”

Now Public reported on July 17

US officials insist the long-planned wargames have nothing to do with the recent dispute between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But they give Washington a chance to support pro-west Tbilisi at a critical time.

If you believe this, I have a bridge for sale.

In fact, these “long-planned wargames” were so important the State Department packed up and shipped off Condi Rice to Georgia. Her arrival was nicely timed to coincide with “a deadly firefight between Georgian troops and separatists in a Russian-backed breakaway region.... Ahead of Rice’s arrival, a senior State Department official who did not want to be identified told reporters that unchecked conflict in the region could lead to catastrophe. The official also said Moscow should realize its Soviet empire is gone.”

Catastrophe, indeed, although Russia’s response to Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia demonstrated Russia’s resolve to reclaim its supposedly evaporated empire.

Israel gets in on the act

Let’s not forget America’s junior partner in chaos and mass murder, Israel.

“In addition to the spy drones, Israel has also been supplying Georgia with infantry weapons and electronics for artillery systems, and has helped upgrade Soviet-designed Su-25 ground attack jets assembled in Georgia, according to Koba Liklikadze, an independent military expert based in Tbilisi. Former Israeli generals also serve as advisers to the Georgian military,” reports the International Herald Tribune.

No wonder the horrific photos emerging from South Ossetia have that Lebanon invasion look about them. Israel has over fifty years of experience in invading small countries and has consistently specialized in murdering and tormenting civilians.

Blind eyes all around

As Lavrov explains it, the

“Georgian administration has found the use to its arms, which they have been purchasing during the recent several years… We have repeatedly warned that the international community should not turn a blind eye on massive purchases of offensive arms, in which the Georgian administration has been involved during the recent two years.”

Unfortunately, the international community will likely “turn a blind eye” to the U.S. and Israel arming, training, and obviously orchestrating the current conflict, same as they by and large turned a blind eye to Israel’s criminal invasion of Lebanon back in 2005 and the U.S. invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq. In regard to the latter, the “international community” — indeed, the whole of the American people — are so disorganized and demoralized they cannot address the simple fact the neocons lied a nation into war. Nixon was bounced for far less.

It looks like Russia will be obliged to deal with Georgia’s treachery on its own. Regrettably, Russia’s response will entail even more murder of innocents and wholesale destruction, as this is how government historically deals with threats – real, imagined, or provocateured.