ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, No. 583
Tom Burghardt
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
___________________________________
- AFIB No. 583, December 26, 2004 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
As heavily-armed US and NATO troops enforced the peace in Bosnia, the press
and politicians alike portrayed Western intervention in the former
Yugoslavia as a noble, if agonizingly belated, response to an outbreak of
ethnic massacres and human rights violations. In the wake of the November
1995 Dayton accords, the West was eager to touch up its self-portrait as
savior of the Southern Slaves and get on with "the work of rebuilding" the
newly "sovereign states." ... Lost in the barrage of images and
self-serving analyses are the economic and social causes of the conflict.
The deep-seated economic crisis, which preceded the civil war, had long
been forgotten. The strategic interests of Germany and the US ion laying
the groundwork for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned, as does
the role of external creditors and international financial institutions. In
the eyes of the global media, Western powers bear no responsibility for the
impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people. -- Michel
Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order [Shanty
Bay, ON, Global Outlook, 2003] p. 257.
Contents: Number 583
01. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [Oak Park, MI]: The Power Struggle in Ukraine
and America's Strategy for Global Supremacy.
02. COUNTERPUNCH [Petrolia, CA]: Will There be a Hollywood Ending?
Ukraine's Real Underdog.
03. ASIA TIMES ONLINE [Hong Kong]: Mosul Attack "An Inside Job."
04. VENEZUELA ANALYSIS [Caracas]: National Endowment for Death Squads? The
AFL-CIO and the NED.
05. THE MOSCOW TIMES: Poison Pen.
* * *
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: edi...@wsws.org
- Thursday, 23 December 2004 -
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____________________________________________________________________
THE POWER STRUGGLE IN UKRAINE AND AMERICA'S STRATEGY FOR GLOBAL SUPREMACY
____________________________________________________________________
News & Analysis: Europe: Russia & the former USSR
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/ukra-23d.shtml
By Peter Schwarz
In 1997, former US security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski published a book
entitled The Grand Chessboard that attracted considerable attention and
treated America's strategy for global supremacy. By chessboard, Brzezinski
meant Eurasia, the enormous land mass comprising two continents and
containing the majority of the world's population.
According to the core thesis of the book, "America's capacity to exercise
global primacy" depends on whether America can prevent "the emergence of a
dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power." Brzezinski then concluded:
"Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy
continues to be played."
One should recall these lines in the course of studying the events of the
last weeks in Ukraine. Should the Western-oriented Viktor Yushchenko--a man
bound to the US by a myriad of political and economic ties--succeed in
becoming president, then the US would occupy a strategically important,
possibly crucial position on Brzezinski's global chessboard.
If one regards American foreign policy towards Russia over the last 15
years in its entirety, then one finds one noteworthy constant. Independent
of the ups and downs of bilateral relations--at times close, on other
occasions strained--the US has worked systematically to contain the
collection of states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For more than four decades, the Soviet Union had formed the most important
obstacle to the unrestricted world domination of American imperialism--now
the US was at pains to ensure that under no circumstances could Russia ever
play a remotely comparable role.
The first Iraq war in 1991 already undermined to a large extent the
influence of Moscow in the Middle East. The same process took place in the
Balkans following the war on Serbia in 1999 in the Balkans. In 2001, in the
context of the Afghanistan invasion, the US established military bases for
the first time in former Soviet republics and emerged as a presence in
Central Asia. Since then, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and to some
extent Azerbaijan have allied themselves to the US. One year ago, they
helped lift a rabidly pro-Western regime to power in Georgia. In Europe,
most members of the former Warsaw Pact, including the former Baltic Soviet
republics, have now joined NATO and the European Union. Should Ukraine now
switch to the Western camp, Russia would be largely isolated.
In his book of seven years ago, Brzezinski had already referred in this
respect to the relevance of Ukraine. Its secession, he wrote, would
drastically curtail Russia's geopolitical options. "Even without the Baltic
states and Poland, a Russia that retained control over Ukraine could still
seek to be the leader of an assertive Eurasian empire.... But without
Ukraine and its 52 million fellow Slavs, any attempt by Moscow to rebuild
the Eurasian empire was likely to leave Russia entangled alone in
protracted conflicts with the nationally and religiously aroused non-Slavs,
the war with Chechnya perhaps simply being the first example."
The Stratfor news web site, which has close links to the American
intelligence apparatus, revived this analysis following the recent struggle
for power in Ukraine. In an analysis of recent events, Stratfor concludes
that the secession of Ukraine not only weakens Moscow with regard to
foreign policy, but also, "without Ukraine, Russia's political, economic
and military survivability are called into question." The Stratfor report
continues: "To say Russia is at a turning point is a gross understatement.
Without Ukraine, Russia is doomed to a painful slide into geopolitical
obsolescence and ultimately, perhaps even non-existence."
With nearly 50 million inhabitants, Ukraine is, after Russia, by far the
biggest of the successor states of the Soviet Union. Russia has about three
times as many inhabitants. Ukraine is connected to Russia not only by a
lengthy common history, extending back to the Kiev Rus in the ninth
Century, but also close economic relations. Russia is by far its largest
trading partner. During the past 300 years, the largest part of today's
Ukraine was either Russian or Soviet national territory, or both. During
this period a considerable exchange of population took place. Seventeen
percent of the Ukrainian population are of Russian descent and nearly half
the population speaks Russian. The heavy industry of the Eastern Ukraine,
developed under the Soviet regime, is closely linked with its Russian
counterpart. The dissolution of these links would have damaging
consequences for both countries.
An additional factor is the strategic significance of Ukraine. Eighty
percent of Russian gas and oil exports to Europe--its most important source
of foreign exchange--flows through Ukrainian pipelines. The main base of
the Russian Black Sea fleet, Sebastopol, is also situated on Ukrainian
national territory.
"It would not take a war to greatly damage Russian interests, simply a
change in Ukraine's geopolitical orientation. A Westernised Ukraine would
not so much be a dagger poised at the heart of Russia as it would be a
jackhammer in constant operation," according to Stratfor. A possible
consequence, according to the news service, is a more aggressive foreign
policy on the part of Russia as well as powerful domestic shocks in the
course of which "millions of people could die."
The parallels to the Balkans are obvious here. The break-up of Yugoslavia
left the country in ruins, wracked by continuous ethnic tensions and
hatred, which regularly erupt into violence. Corrupt regimes with
connections to organised crime predominate, and bitter poverty and
unemployment are widespread. Germany and the US went to considerable
lengths to promote the downfall of Yugoslavia, by supporting the
independence of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. The mini-states, which
resulted from the break-up of Yugoslavia, are incapable of independent
economic or political existence, but can, however, be manipulated and
controlled by the Great Powers as desired.
The war against the remnants of Yugoslavia served to finally smash the last
remaining political structure in the region that retained a certain
political independence--notwithstanding the reactionary character of the
Milosevic regime. It is characteristic that the movement, which eventually
brought the pro-European Union and US regime to power in Belgrade, now
serves as a model for the opposition in Kiev.
Asserting influence on Ukraine
For a long time, the aim of American foreign policy has been to drive a
wedge between Russia and Ukraine and draw the latter into NATO. (I will not
deal here with the role of European powers; that requires its own article.)
In 1997, Brzezinski referred in his book to "[T]he growing American
inclination, especially by 1994, to assign a high priority to help Ukraine
sustain its new national freedom."
In January 2003, the US Ambassador in Kiev, Carlos Pascual, gave a lecture
to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on
American-Ukrainian relations. He posed the question: "Should Ukraine belong
in the Euro-Atlantic community?" and answered without reservation in the
affirmative.
John Herbst, who replaced Pascual as ambassador in September 2004, made the
same point at his confimation hearing before a US Senate committee. He
stated that "Ensuring the integration of Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic
community" was a critical foreign policy goal.
Herbst promised, "If confirmed, I will make it a priority to do what I can
to ensure that the Ukrainian authorities allow for a level playing field
for presidential candidates and that election preparations and the election
itself are carried out in a free and fair manner. Having an electoral
process that meets OSCE [Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
Europe] standards and a result that reflects the will of the people is
vital to the success of Ukraine's ambition to join NATO and to move closer
to the European Union."
The irony of these remarks can scarcely have been lost on the assembled
senators. At the time of the hearing, Herbst represented the US as
ambassador to Uzbekistan, whose autocratically dominant president, Islam
Karimov, a former secretary of the Communist Party, maintains friendly
relations with Washington. Despite the fact that Uzbek elections do not
correspond in the slightest to OSCE standards and opposition parties have
been banned for 10 years, Karimov receives several hundred million dollars
annually from America. In return, he put a military base at the disposal of
the US for its war against neighbouring Afghanistan. When Herbst left his
post shortly after the senate hearing in Tashkent, Karimov awarded him the
"Order of Friendship," while the departing ambassador praised the president
as "a very strong and wise person."
While Herbst's references to "free and fair" elections were nothing more
than empty rhetoric, his promise to interfere with all his might in the
Ukrainian elections was meant with utter seriousness. In the past two years
alone, the American government has spent more than 65 million dollars to
help the Ukrainian opposition to power. This has been confirmed within the
past few days by government representatives. Additional millions came from
private donators such as the Soros Foundation, and European governments.
Naturally, these funds flowed indirectly to political parties. As the US
government stresses, they were made available to serve in general the
"promotion of democracy." It is an open secret that such funds benefited
the opposition almost exclusively. The money went to institutes and
non-governmental organisations that advise the opposition, assist it with
the most modern technical aids and advertising techniques, and train
election helpers. Visits paid by opposition leader Yushchenko to American
politicians were also financed with these funds. Also funded in the same
manner were the voter opinion polls, which were then held up as proof of
election fraud by the government camp.
As well as exercising a general influence in the elections ,these funds
also serve to deepen corruption. Even if one excludes direct bribery, such
sums in a country where average monthly wages are between $30 and $100 must
have a corrupting effect. Whoever has access to the financial means
available to the opposition is able to ascend socially. Yushchenko was able
to profit personally from this process. He sits on the supervisory board of
the International Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank financed by US
government funds.
How the change of power in Ukraine was prepared
While the US has sought for a long time to remove Ukraine from the sphere
of Russian influence, its support for the opposition around Viktor
Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko is of more recent origin. More precisely,
this opposition only developed when serious tensions emerged between the US
government and long-time Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma.
Kuchma, who replaced Leonid Kravchuk in 1994 as president, was quite
prepared to work closely with the US and the European Union. He cooperated
fully with the International Monetary Fund, expressed himself in favour of
European Union membership and even lodged a formal request in May 2002 for
NATO membership. Ukraine also sent its own troops to Iraq, to support the
American occupation of the country.
Kuchma was always forced, however, to maintain a difficult balancing act.
On the one hand, he worked against the break-up of Ukraine into an eastern
region oriented to Russia and a western half of the country that looked to
the West--a threat that hung in the air continuously after Ukraine
established its independence. On the other hand, he had to take into
account the country's strong economic dependence on Russia. In particular,
the Ukrainian power supply depends nearly completely on Russian oil and
gas.
Kuchma made absolutely clear, however, that he was determined to maintain
the independence of Ukraine, which is the guarantor of the wealth of the
national elite. The dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had been sealed
by Kuchma's predecessor Kravchuk together with the Russian president Boris
Yeltsin and Belarus's Stanislav Shushkevic at the end of 1991, created the
conditions for the concentration of social wealth in the hands of a few
clans of oligarchs. This policy of "unrestrained privatisation" swept
through Ukraine and Russia during the 1990s and was unreservedly supported
by the Great Powers.
Kuchma is closely connected with the oligarch clan of his hometown
Dnipropetrovsk, which is led by his son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk. Pinchuk is
regarded as the boss of the oligarch clans of Donetsk and is the
second-richest man in of the country after Rinat Achmetov.
The leader of the opposition, Viktor Yushchenko, stood loyally at the side
of Kuchma during the period of privatisation. In 1993, he took over as
president of the Ukrainian central bank and acted as the country's contact
man for international finance. In 1999, he was appointed prime minister by
Kuchma. The second leading figure in the opposition, Yulia Tymoshenko,
followed in the wake of Kuchma's Dnipropetrovsk clan into high government
office. She was a member of the Yushchenko government and made millions
through dealing in natural gas.
Kuchma dismissed Yushchenko in April 2001. His policy of opening the
country up to international capital through reform of the energy sector
encountered resistance from the clans of oligarchs in the east of the
country. After a temporary solution, Kuchma finally appointed the scion of
the Donetsk clan, Viktor Yanukovich, as prime minister.
Nevertheless, the US still refused to exclude any and all cooperation with
Kuchma and Yanukovich. In the autumn of 2003, both men visited the US.
Kuchma met with President George W. Bush, while Yanukovich was received by
Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials. A year before, a
meeting of ministers in Prague had agreed upon a timetable for Ukraine's
admission into NATO.
However, tensions developed that finally pushed Kuchma more closely in the
direction of Moscow and were crucial in the decision by the US to give
substantial support to the opposition candidate.
First, there was the so-called Kolchuga affair. Two years ago, Washington
accused Kuchma of personally certifying sales of the early warning system
Kolchuga to Iraq.
In contrast to conventional radar systems, the Ukrainian early warning
system works passively and cannot be located by the airplanes it has
detected. With a range of 800 kilometres, it is considered to be the most
effective of its kind. Iraqi defence batteries would have been able to
detect oncoming US planes without giving away their own location.
Supported by the US accusations, a Kiev judge launched an investigation
into Kuchma's activity on suspicion of corruption, misuse of power and arms
trafficking with Iraq. He was supported by the Ukrainian opposition. The
supreme court, however, intervened to stop the procedure.
Kuchma always rejected the accusations made by the US government, and no
proof was ever found that the Kolchuga system was supplied to Iraq.
Nevertheless, relations between Ukraine and the US deteriorated in 2002 as
a result of the affair. Kuchma tried once again to improve relations in the
following year by dispatching Ukrainian troops to Iraq--a decision that met
with broad popular opposition.
Oil and gas
A second point at issue is the control and use of Ukraine's oil and gas
pipelines. For Russia, Ukraine is the most important transit country for
its oil and gas exports. The large pipelines, built since the 1970s,
linking Soviet oil and gas fields and western Europe, make their way across
Ukrainian territory. For their part, the US and the European Union have
sought for some time to establish a transportation route for oil from the
Caspian region that bypasses Russia, using Ukraine for this purpose.
A pipeline has been built extending from Odessa to Brody, connecting the
Black Sea to the Polish border. Caspian oil can now be pumped through
Georgia to the Black Sea, and after a short transit by sea directly to
Polish refineries, and from there to Europe. Both Russia and the bottleneck
represented by the Bosporus strait are bypassed en route.
The pipeline, 674 kilometres in length, was completed in May 2002, with the
support of the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown, and has since then
stood empty. The pipeline is waiting for oil from the Caspian region as
well as the connecting pipeline in Poland, which still has to be built.
Eventually, the Ukrainian government negotiated with Russian oil companies
over use of the pipeline in the reverse direction. Russian oil could
thereby be shipped from Odessa over the Black Sea and exported to the world
market. For a period of five months, a section of the pipeline was actually
used for this purpose. Then alarm bells began to ring in Washington. Cheney
personally pressed Yanukovich during his visit to Washington to refuse to
agree to the use of the pipeline in the opposite direction. In February of
this year, the cabinet in Kiev finally passed an appropriate resolution.
Since then, the pipeline has been inoperative.
The influence of Russian energy companies in Ukraine is also regarded with
concern by Washington. Two years ago, ambassador Carlos Pascual sharply
criticised the Gazprom company (which has links to the Russian state) at a
meeting of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. One has the
impression, he said, that Russian companies received investment
possibilities "without paying the full value of the assets that they are
investing in, which is not good for Ukraine."
Herbst went on: "[T]here are a couple of examples recently that, I think,
are to Ukraine's strategic disadvantage, particularly in the gas and oil
sector. In the recent agreement that was signed between Gazprom and
Naftogaz [Ukraine's national gas and oil company] on the development of an
international consortium, that agreement...specifically states that those
two companies together must decide on any management proposals for an
international consortium to control Ukraine's international gas transit
system. In other words, Gazprom has a veto over what Ukraine wants to do in
the management of its gas transit system. Gazprom cannot be happier: This
has been one of the things that they have been seeking to get since 1992."
There can be no doubt that Washington's interests will be better protected
by Yushchenko than by Yanukovich, who is supported by Moscow. In addition,
Yushchenko has emphasised his attachment to the values of "the rule of law"
and the free-market economy--shorthand for security and guarantees for
foreign investment funds.
Conflicts between the Great Powers
US ambitions for global supremacy are encompassing ever-larger parts of the
globe. In the course of the struggle for the Ukrainian presidency, American
and Russian interests have clashed in a manner and sharpness that vividly
recall the period of the Cold War. Following the bloody conflict in the
Balkans and the forcible subjection of Iraq, Ukraine and Russia itself
threaten to become the scene of violent struggles.
European--and above all, German--interests are also directly affected by
the change of power in Ukraine, and, in the longer term, the two rising
Asiatic great powers, China and India, are also involved. In addition to
purely geostrategic criteria, another issue just as important for the world
economy of the twenty-first century lies at the heart of this
conflict--control of the worldwide power supply of oil and gas. In this
respect, the significance of the issues fought out in Ukraine recall the
conflicts that erupted in Europe at the start of the twentieth century over
control of mineral resources.
If one considers the fact that the European Union receives nearly 20
percent of its oil and 44 percent of its gas imports from Russia, with 80
percent of these products passing through Ukrainian pipelines, then the
significance of the balance of power in Ukraine for the economic future of
Europe becomes clear.
As is well known, conflicts over the mineral ore reserves of Lorraine and
the coal of the Ruhr district contributed largely to the outbreak of the
First World War. The situation with regard to international energy and
transport routes is just as explosive today. For the time being, the
disputes are still being conducted on a political level, characterised by
manoeuvres and tactical shifts. But all the conditions for a further
escalation are present. America's strategy for supremacy threatens to
plunge mankind into a maelstrom that will make the current Iraq war appear
relatively benign.
Copyright 1998-2004 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
COUNTERPUNCH
'Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
Business Office
P.O. Box 228
Petrolia, CA 95558
Tel: 1 (800) 840-3683
Web: http://www.counterpunch.org
E-mail: counte...@counterpunch.org
- Friday, December 24, 2004 -
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____________________________________________________________________
Will There be a Hollywood Ending?
UKRAINE'S REAL UNDERDOG
____________________________________________________________________
By CHAD NAGLE
http://www.counterpunch.org/nagle12242004.html
Kiev, Ukraine -- With only a couple of days before Ukrainians go to the
polls for the third time in two months (i.e., f.or the presidential
election's repeat second round), outside observers might be worried that
the "notorious regime" in Kiev will try to "rig" the poll again on behalf
of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, declared winner from the Nov. 21 vote.
The reality is that Yanukovych is the underdog, not because he lacks
popular support relative to opponent Viktor Yushchenko - all indicators
show Yanukovych's support to be heavy in all major population centers
except Kiev. Rather, it is because the administrative machinery of the
state is now almost entirely in the hands of the "orange revolutionaries,"
backing Yushchenko.
About two weeks ago, Nina Karpachova, human rights ombudsman in the
Ukrainian parliament, submitted a complaint to Speaker Vladimir Litvin
about infringements of voters' rights in a new package of reforms to the
election law. The new law restricts the right of citizens to appeal to
territorial election commissions (TECs) about exclusion from electoral
registers. The ability of voters to lodge appeals with TECs had been a
major plus of the system in the first round, and an orderly redress of
grievances was not only possible but the norm. Karpachova also complained
about curtailment of home-voting rights as potentially disenfranchising the
disabled and elderly, and urged Litvin to introduce appropriate amendments.
The law will disproportionately affect pro-Yanukovych voters. Of the 11
million pensioners in Ukraine who have benefited under the Yanukovych
government, it is estimated that up to four million may be effectively
immobile. The mobile ballot box is their only hope. Suspiciously, the law
is designed to lose force after the December 26 election.
Litvin ignored Karpachova's complaints, and on the same day received the
Order of the State and the title of "Hero of Ukraine," awarded by President
Kuchma, for "extraordinary personal services to Ukraine and the development
of the state, reform of the Ukrainian political system, and consolidation
of the ideals of civic unity and reconciliation in society."
Just about every state institution, it seems - from the parliamentary
leadership to the Central Election Commission (CEC) to the foreign ministry
- has effectively lined up behind the "Orange Revolution," making
Yanukovych's public condemnations of the "traitorous" and "double-dealing"
authorities in Kiev far from mere bluster. On December 8, parliament, with
pro-Yanukovych MPs abstaining, approved a new formulation for the CEC,
giving pro-Yushchenko representatives an clear majority. All pro-Yanukovich
nominees were rejected.
The international election-observing apparatus on December 26 will likewise
be controlled by the Yushchenko-ites and active in eastern Ukraine, despite
increasing evidence that Yanukovych supporters in western Ukraine are
threatened and persecuted. On December 16, student unions from Britain, the
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Hungary and other Western countries jointly
announced an "international student action" to observe the election on the
26th, using some 480 Ukrainian and 120 foreign students members of "mobile
rapid-reaction groups" in southern and eastern regions of Ukraine. These
areas, they said, were reportedly where "mass falsification of the vote"
was carried out in favor of Yanukovych. The "Action HQ," it was announced,
would cooperate closely with the office of the National Salvation Committee
of Ukraine, an overtly pro-Yushchenko group, but so would the joint mission
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (the main
international election-monitoring body), the Council of Europe and the
European Union. The OSCE, relying exclusively on opposition sources for
information on polling day, said it would send more than 1,000 observers to
the election, the OSCE's "largest mission ever" according to the OSCE
website.
It can be little wonder that the West has been so vocal in support of
Yushchenko when Ukraine's foreign minister himself has been an ally of the
"Orange Revolution" leader for years. On December 18, Foreign Minister
Konstantin Grishchenko publicly announced his approval of the November 23
foreign ministry statement that the entire Ukrainian diplomatic corps
supported Yushchenko. The senior civil servant added that this was "in line
with the requirements of patriotism and professionalism." Transport
Minister Georgi Kirpa had made his pro-Yushchenko sentiments known publicly
even earlier, and the tide of rats leaving the sinking ship has only
accelerated.
As Yanukovych has witnessed one after another of the members of Ukraine's
political elite turn against him, he has redoubled his efforts. "I will
never let you down," he yelled to a crowd in Donetsk on December 8. "I
would rather die than let them break me. You must know that!" Western media
and governments have badly distorted the picture of the Ukrainian election
from the beginning, painting Yushchenko as the disadvantaged candidate who
must sweep to power on a popular wave of "freedom" if Ukraine is to have a
happy Hollywood ending. The reality is the opposite, and in the American
tradition I tend to instinctively sympathize with the underdog. That
underdog is Viktor Yanukovych.
Chad Nagle is an American lawyer, accredited as an international observer
of the Ukrainian election. He writes from Kiev.
Copyright ) 2004. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the
Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
MOSUL ATTACK 'AN INSIDE JOB'
____________________________________________________________________
ASIA TIMES ONLINE
Middle East
December 25, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FL25Ak01.html
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
The deadly suicide attack on a US military base in Mosul this week was an
"inside job" carried out by insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed
forces, Asia Times Online has been told.
Sources said a strong nexus between Iraqi forces and the resistance is what
allowed them to carry out the most devastating attack on US troops since
the beginning of the invasion. US forces have imposed a curfew in Mosul and
have launched a military operation in the city, but, the sources say, this
will have little effect on the problem, for the simple reason that the
US-trained Iraqi military is heavily infected with people loyal to the
resistance groups.
Responsibility for the suicide bombing in the US mess tent was claimed by
Islamist resistance organization Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (JAAS).
While various analysts ponder the insurgents' strategy in the lead up to
next month's elections, and opine that their primary goal is to disrupt
those elections, the resistance says it has a different agenda. In a
message to Asia Times Online from the Netherlands, Nada al-Rubaiee, a
member of the central committee of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, a group
that is part of the Iraqi national resistance movement both inside and
outside Iraq, said, "Everything in the resistance movement is clear ...
There is agreement on one issue; that is, getting freedom from foreign
occupying forces and their handymen. It is agreed that only Iraqi people
would decide the course of government in the post-liberation era."
The architects of the Iraqi resistance movement have engineered a guerrilla
strategy such that today it is very difficult to identify who the
"resistance" is. For instance, before the recent Fallujah operation, a US
military spokesperson portrayed that city as a hotbed of Islamic groups
connected with al-Qaeda. However, during the operation, Iraqi Prime
Minister Iyad Alawi, Iraq's interior minister, and the US military
spokesperson all admitted that they were fighting with Saddam Hussein
remnants.
Exactly what role more than 3 million members of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party are
playing from Kirkuk to Basra is very hard to determine, but sources
maintain that one particular aim of the resistance is very clear, and that
is "recruiting new jihadis".
Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, organized demoralized Turkish
troops by holding a sword in one hand and a holy book in the other and
raising the slogans of jihad against the invading Western armies, and the
secular, socialist and Arab-nationalist Ba'ath Party members have the same
strategy. JAAS and other groups are a manifestation of this. However, the
real forces behind the Iraqi national resistance movement are what the
Iraqi interior minister recently referred to as "Saddam loyalists and the
remnants of the Ba'ath Party", whose political wings are active abroad
while its security committees and militant wings exist in Iraq and are
fanning the flames of resistance.
With the passage of time it has become clear that the Iraqi insurgency is
being fought under a single command and control, though different pockets
of Islamic groups exist. Eventually, these pockets become part of the
mainstream resistance movement, although they sometimes independently carry
out operations. Thanks to the Iraqi tribal structure, they are inevitably
known to one another, and thus forced to coordinate their strategies to
minimize contradictions.
Apart from the broader parameters of the Iraqi resistance movement, there
are other minor but prominent social factors that play an important role in
its ability to obtain support on the basis of nationalism, rather than
secularism, an added woe for US forces in Iraq.
The foremost is Iraq's tribal structure. Any Iraqi national guard, army,
police or paramilitary force would obviously consist of local Iraqis. In
cities such as Samarra, Tikrit and Mosul, which are heavily tied to tribal
traditions, it is impossible for any individual to join the Iraqi forces
and keep himself and his family protected from popular anti-US sentiment.
But if the US-backed interim government of Iraq instead brings in forces
from the country's Kurdish areas, as it did for the Fallujah operation, it
will only fuel more hatred against the US and its supporters. Therefore,
whichever way it is viewed, this will pose problems for the US. If the
government employs local soldiers, their loyalties will automatically go
with the resistance, but if it brings soldiers from Kurdish areas, a fierce
reaction emerges.
At the same time, it was the Iraqi tribal structure that managed to hide
the many obvious contradictions within the resistance. For instance, when
the resistance took up arms, different Salafi groups and tribal leaders had
their reservations - particularly Kurds and Islamists - about accepting
former Saddam regime members. But after a lot of discussion, it was agreed
that the 3 million former Ba'ath Party members could not be secluded from
the Iraqi resistance. However, it was decided that former regime members
would be kept away to hold the control in the mainstream of the movement
and those who were only Ba'ath Party members and not part of Saddam
Hussein's regime would be given responsibilities in the mainstream of the
resistance.
Meanwhile, Nada claims that the number of casualties from the Mosul attack
is far higher than what was admitted by the US, 22 people. "In the [dining
tent] where the attack took place, there were at least 500 US soldiers. The
number of casualties given by the occupation forces always excludes private
contractors [non-official soldiers/unregistered soldiers-agents]. We expect
the number [is] a lot higher than the announced one."
According to Nada, the attack was very organized - so much so that a video
of the bombing was even prepared and will soon be released.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is bureau chief, Pakistan, Asia Times Online. He can be
reached at saleem_sh...@yahoo.com.
Copyright ) 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
National Endowment for Death Squads?
THE AFL-CIO AND THE NED
____________________________________________________________________
VENEZUELA ANALYSIS
Opinion & Analysis
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
http://venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1340
By Jon Quaccia, Against the Current
Few tax payers familiar with the National Endowment for Democracy, a
publicly funded yet privately owned organization operating in at least
forty countries. NED's mission? To help the United States set up capitalist
economies around the world, backed by regimes that are friendly to U.S. big
business.
With no interference from the public or congress, the NED is free to
accomplish its goals by manipulating and buying elections, starting
political as well as economic turmoil, funding counter-insurgency material
to right-wing groups, and using other tactics that would be considered
illegal in the United States.
Equally disturbing, yet more surprising, is the role that leaders of the
U.S. labor federation, the AFL-CIO, play in carrying out the NED's dirty
work. The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center is at work in twenty-eight countries,
discouraging radical organizing among workers and promoting privatization
by assisting unions and labor groups that support private enterprise.
A glimpse into this NED constituent's predecessor organization shows a
history of collusion with Central Intelligence Agency terrorism since the
early sixties.
The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center's predecessor, the American Institute for
Free Labor Development (AIFLD), was one of the four government-funded labor
institutes created during the cold war to prevent foreign countries from
establishing independent economic systems. AIFLD was instrumental in the
overthrow of democratically elected leftist governments in Guyana in 1963,
Brazil in 1964, the Dominican Republic in 1965, and Chile in 1973.
By the late 1970s, the CIA was exposed for its sabotage of governments and
labor movements around the world. Corrupt dictatorships in Central America,
backed by local death squads armed and trained by the CIA, massacred
hundreds of thousands of peasants during popular insurgencies in Nicaragua,
El Salvador and Guatemala.
With these scandals fresh in the public's mind, the Reagan Administration
created the National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 to take care of its
unfinished business. As an NED founder, Allen Weinstein, stated in 1991, "A
lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
Some of the NED's political accomplishments include the successful
manipulation of elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996, and
the overthrow of democratically elected candidates in Bulgaria in 1990 and
Albania in 1991-2. By indirectly contributing "soft money" to the campaigns
of candidates friendly to U.S. business, the NED is able to successfully
buy elections in poor countries with only a few hundred thousand dollars.
With a 2004 budget of $40 million, and a 2005 budget of $80 million
requested by President Bush, the NED will be capable of buying quite a few
elections in the coming years.
>From 1983 to 1994, the NED was funded exclusively by congress, at which
point it began accepting private donations. These sources include several
oil companies and defense contractors--Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Texaco and
Enron among its 2001 contributors. Its funding is a very controversial
subject, and its opponents frequently cite the inherent contradiction of a
publicly funded organization charged with executing foreign policy, while
remaining exempt from nearly all political and administrative controls.
Octopus Arms
The NED works through multiple constituencies: The International Republican
Institute, The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the
Center for International Private Enterprise, the Free Trade Union
Institute, and American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS),
better known as the Solidarity Center.
Among its strongest U.S. supporters is the Heritage Foundation, a right
wing think tank which has been very influential in policy issues. Each
constituent is given almost five million dollars, which they issue as
grants to organizations or political parties all over the world. The
remainder of the NED's budget is also given out as grants.
In her study of the NED, Barbara Conry, associate policy analyst for the
free-market advocacy CATO Institute, states: "NED, which has a history of
corruption and financial mismanagement, is superfluous as best and often
destructive. Through the Endowment, the American taxpayer has paid for
special-interest groups to harass the duly elected governments of friendly
countries, interfere in foreign elections, and foster the corruption of
democratic movements..."
The National Endowment for Democracy and its constituents call their
actions "supporting democracy," but the governments and movements they
target know them as "destabilization."
One Empire, One Development Model
U.S. business could not destabilize or overthrow as many foreign
governments as it does without the cover and aid of conservative,
"old-guard" unions and labor groups who disorient, counter, and generally
undermine radical unions and militant labor leaders. Union leaders, in
turn, couldn't enjoy six figure salaries without an approval of capitalism,
without seeing labor and business along with government as "partners" in
political and economic development.
On September 11, 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende, along with
thousands of Chilean workers, students and political activists were killed
in a particularly bloody military coup that ended a brief experiment in
democratic socialism. It was the culmination of a campaign by the Nixon
Administration, working covertly with ITT, Kennecott Cooper, and other U.S.
multinational corporations to destroy the Chilean economy and punish
Allende for nationalizing industries in which U.S. corporations held major
stakes. The goal, in Nixon's unforgettable words, was to "make the economy
scream."
While no direct link exists between the AIFLD and the CIA's actions in
Chile, the AIFLD's program was synchronized closely with the CIA's plan to
create social unrest by sowing divisions within the labor movement and
financing middle-class and professional organizations leading the
opposition to Allende's populist program.
Unable to divide and weaken Chile's largest labor federation, the
one-million-member, communist led, Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT), the
AIFLD channeled millions of dollars into right-wing unions and political
parties that opposed CUT and Allende's socialist agenda as a whole.
In the fall of 1973, widespread social unrest and a paralyzed economy
provided the pretext for General Pinochet's violent coup, and justification
for his seventeen-year dictatorship. Pinochet saw all unions, not just
leftist, as the enemy, and one of his first acts after seizing power was to
outlaw CUT. In the months that followed September 11th, hundreds of trade
unionists, including some who had worked with AIFLD, were rounded up, many
never to be heard from again.
>From 1971 until the mid-eighties, the AFL-CIO, despite its pledge never to
>support government controlled unions, financed and supported the
>Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), with full knowledge of the
>government's penetration. A government puppet, the FKTU's activities were
>restricted by law, leaving it no real power.
In the late seventies, U.S. religious and human rights organizations began
calling attention to the appalling treatment of South Korean workers. They
were particularly concerned with the brutality directed at young women
laborers in the textile and garment industry, and the lack of response by
the FKTU.
Rather than denouncing the repression in South Korea, or severing its ties
with the FKTU, the AFL-CIO tried to whitewash the violence, blaming it on
"differing ethnic standards of Koreans," amongst other things.
When Korean industrial workers finally organized the Korean Confederation
of Trade Unions as an alternative to the FKTU, it wasn't officially
recognized by the AFL-CIO until 1997. Just recently, pilots represented by
KCTU protested its government's decision to deploy 3,000 troops to Iraq by
refusing to transport any troops or equipment there, and engaged in street
demonstrations against the war.
ACILS: Reforming Or Restructuring?
In 1995, John Sweeney was elected AFL-CIO president with the support of a
broad coalition of union leaders who broke with the former president, Lane
Kirkland, over foreign policy. In particular, they disagreed with the
AIFLD's support for U.S. policy in Central America and hoped to get rid of
what they believed was a cold war relic, a pro-corporate anti-communist
extension of the McCarthyism still dominating U.S. foreign policy.
Two years after taking office, Sweeney reorganized the four labor foreign
policy institutes into a single organization, the American Center for
International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), better known as the Solidarity
Center. Although the Solidarity Center has retained a few staff members
from its predecessor labor institutes, it claims to represent a fresh start
at building a stronger labor movement abroad by focusing on solidarity
rather than intervention. Some of the Solidarity Center's goals in the past
six years include facilitating an organizing campaign in Honduras that led
to a viable maquila union in the free trade zone, helping set the stage for
a labor law reform campaign in Ecuador by working with Bonita banana
workers, and playing a crucial role in convincing a GAP supplier to finance
the reopening of a plant shut down due to union activity.
While many union leaders are hopeful about the reforms in U.S. labor's
foreign policy, as well as its accomplishments to date, a great deal of
skepticism remains. Much of this skepticism revolves around the Solidarity
Center's funding; three quarters of its $18 million budget still comes from
government sources. It receives annual grants from the State Department,
the Agency for International Development, the Labor Department, and the
NED.
Requests for a complete list of donors, including private foundations, and
the amount of their contributions have been repeatedly denied by the
AFL-CIO. While Congress no longer dictates the Center's policies, a lack of
independent funding makes a truly autonomous global labor movement
impossible.
Meddling in Venezuela
Critics also point to the Solidarity Center's recent operations in
Venezuela, which they feel are dangerously reminiscent of the AIFLD's
actions in Chile. In Venezuela, the world's fifth largest oil producer, the
Solidarity Center funds a corrupt union amalgam, the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV). CTV organizes destabilizing strikes and works
with oil company management, the Catholic Church, and right-wing military
officers to create opposition to the populist elected president Hugo
Chavez. How the Center's largest, $150,000 contribution to the CTV was
spent is unclear. Stan Gacek, assistant director for the AFL-CIO's
International Affairs Department, says it was for internal union elections,
but the CTV's Institute director, Jesus Urbieta, says the money was used
for conducting training courses. In 2001 the Solidarity Center invited CTV
leader Carlos Ortega to Washington, to discuss strategies to oust Chavez
with U.S. government officials and representatives of the State Department.
A series of widespread strikes orchestrated by the CTV paved the way for an
insurrection on April 11th, 2002, that killed over a dozen citizens and
injured hundreds more. Pedro Carmona, a pro-U.S. businessman, was selected
to run the country. He immediately dissolved the National Assembly, but
only two days later Chavez was swept back into power by the military and a
flood of support from working people and the poor, much to the shame of the
Solidarity Center, the State Department and the White House. Not
surprisingly, the NED tripled its annual Venezuela budget to almost
$900,000 in the weeks and months leading up to the attempted coup.
While the CTV was disbanded after the attempted coup and replaced by the
leftist Unione Nationale Trajabadores, Chavez's opposition hasn't given up.
The NED is currently handing out grants totaling more than a million
dollars to organizations it feels can be useful in getting rid of Chavez.
From September 2002 to March 2004, the Endowment contributed $116,000 to
the Solidarity Center every three months for this purpose.
Between September 2003 and September 2004, Sumate, a Venezuelan company
that worked to organize a referendum to recall President Chavez, was
granted over $50,000 from the NED. Sumate released a poll just before the
vote claiming Chavez was sure to lose. To the chagrin of Sumate and the
NED, Chavez won 59% of the vote.
Iraq and Beyond
On November 6, 2003, President Bush gave a speech commemorating the NED on
its 20th anniversary, and placing it at the center of the "democratization"
of Iraq. For the Bush Administration, the NED and the Solidarity Center,
democratization is synonymous with privatization, as is evidenced in their
attempts to hold the largest state liquidation sale since the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
A key strategic aim of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East is to break
state control over oil production and reserves and open them up to the
direct control of U.S. based energy conglomerates. The first act of L. Paul
Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003 until his
early departure on June 28, 2004, was to fire 500,000 state workers
including teachers, doctors, nurses, publishers and printers.
Next he opened Iraq's borders to unrestricted imports, declaring it "open
for business." Enacting a radical set of laws unprecedented in their
generosity to multinational corporations, Bremer allowed foreign companies
to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside the natural resource sector, and
to take all of these profits out of the country tax free with no obligation
to reinvest in Iraq. The only remnant from Saddam Hussein's economic policy
was--a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining!
Rather than creating an economic boom, these policies instead fueled a
resistance that has ultimately made reconstruction impossible. Labor
relations reached a bloody peak under Bremer's occupation; faced with job
loss, workers feared starvation, and managers in turn feared their workers,
making privatization far more complicated than the Bush Administration
anticipated.
Violent protests have kept investors out, and forced Bremer to abandon many
of his central economic policies. Several state companies have been offered
up for lease, and thousands of the state workers fired by Bremer have been
rehired.
Nonetheless, the Bush Administration's plans to "democratize" Iraq are
still underway. In January, 2004, Bush requested to double the NED's Middle
East budget, putting it at $40 million. According to Abd al-Wahhab al
Kabsi, the NED's program officer for the Middle East, the NED's involvement
is "expanding and we expect it to continue to expand."
In the months before the Bush Administration invaded Iraq, the AFL-CIO for
the first time in its history openly challenged a U.S. decision to go to
war. However, once the invasion began, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney
shifted his antiwar stance, declaring that the federation would "support
fully" the Bush Administration's war goals.
Within two days of Bush's request for an increased NED budget in the Middle
East, Sweeney said that "training and other kinds of support from the
international trade union movement should be encouraged" in Iraq. Since
then, he has applied for $3-5 million in grants from the NED. The money
will be used to counter independent labor organizing by leftist groups like
Union of the Unemployed in Iraq (UUI), which has sponsored and supported
strikes and demonstrations for jobs and against U.S. occupation.
The NED and Solidarity Center have chosen to support the General Federation
of Trade Unions in Iraq, a discredited Ba'athist union formation sitting on
the U.S. appointed Iraqi Governing Council. According to the UUI, its
history "is as gloomy and bloody as the history of the Ba'athist regime."
The Reform Movement
Given the Solidarity Center's actions in Venezuela and Iraq, many unionists
are concerned about its true motives, and what it is doing around the world
in its more covert operations. Over the past four years, labor councils and
grassroots labor activists on the West Coast have been pressing AFL-CIO
leadership to come clean about its past and set a more honorable course for
the future by opening its archives, which include material from the Reagan
era that remains off-limits to researchers. They also wish to create a
truth commission to analyze and publicize the contents.
Resolutions passed in 2000 by the San Francisco and South Bay labor
councils in California, and in 2001 by the Washington State AFL-CIO, asked
the federation to renounce what it did in Chile, the Philippines, and other
places in the name of labor, and allow union members and independent
researchers to make a full accounting of the past.
In 2002 the South bay AFL-CIO Labor Council submitted its "Clear the Air"
resolution to the two million member (with over one sixth of the AFL-CIO's
members) California Federation of Labor. The resolution was withdrawn in
favor of a substitute resolution, submitted by the Federation leadership,
which simply asked the AFL-CIO to meet with the California Federation and
its affiliates to open a dialogue about its government-funded foreign
affairs activities, both past and present, and to affirm a policy of
genuine global solidarity in pursuit of economic and social justice.
It was clearly understood that if the meeting failed to resolve the issues,
the leadership of the Federation would fall back to support the "Clear the
Air" resolution.
In March, 2004 the California Federation of Teachers unanimously passed a
resolution at its annual convention calling for the AFL-CIO to accept no
government funding for its work in Iraq and elsewhere, claiming this would
be the first step in achieving true global solidarity. That resolution was
submitted to the July 13-14, 2004 Convention of the California Federation
of Labor.
It took 15 months to organize the meeting on foreign policy called for in
the resolution passed by the California Federation in 2002. Not satisfied
by the October 2003 meeting, the Plumbers Local 393 and the Labor Councils
of the South Bay, San Francisco and Monterey Bay passed a resolution for
"Unity and Trust among Workers Worldwide," and submitted it to the
California Federation of Labor 2004 convention.
The "Unity and Trust" resolution and the CFT resolution were combined by
the convention's resolutions committee to become a more strongly worded
version of the 2002 "Clear the Air" resolution. The new resolution, passed
unanimously by the convention delegates, urges the AFL-CIO to "exercise
extreme caution in seeking or accepting funding from the U.S. government,
its agencies and any other institutions which it funds such as the NED for
its work in Iraq or elsewhere, and to accept these funds only to further
the goals of honest international labor solidarity, not to pursue the
policies of Corporate America and the United States government."
Fred Hirsch, vice president of Plumbers and Fitters Local 393 in San Jose,
played an important role in getting both resolutions before the Federation.
"We expect tremendous resistance from the AFL-CIO to having their power
base removed, and being forced to seek more funds from their affiliates,
rather than the government," says Hirsch. "This will also force them to be
more accountable to their affiliates by giving them total freedom of
information on their actions abroad."
Resisting Disclosure
Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO archives remain firmly closed. Under the
archives rules, documents can only be released twenty years after their
creation, which means that material about controversial AFL-CIO activities
during the eighties, such as support for the Nicaraguan contras and
cooperation with U.S.-backed counterinsurgencies in El Salvador and the
Phillipines, remains classified.
According to Michael Merill, director of the archives, there is no
consistent policy on what to do when someone wants to open the books
sooner. Any request to shorten the twenty-year waiting period, he added,
would have to be approved by the senior leadership of the AFL-CIO.
It is highly unlikely that this will occur without a great deal of pressure
from the AFL-CIO's constituents. Since Sweeney and several members of his
executive council were board members of the AIFLD and the other institutes,
they are likely to be uncomfortable with an open record.
This also applies to the Solidarity Center's current head, Harry Kamberis,
a former State Department employee who worked with the Asian American Free
Labor Institute (AAFLI), the AIFLD counterpart for Asia, while the
institutes were known to be in collusion with the CIA. His endeavors with
AAFLI include donating six million dollars to a corrupt labor federation
allied with right-wing death squads in the Philippines throughout the
eighties.
In order to put pressure on the AFL-CIO, it is important for resolutions
like the "Unity and Trust" to be passed in locals, then moved to statewide
labor federations, and eventually, national and international affiliates of
the AFL-CIO.
While the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), who passed
anti-war resolutions at their national conventions in late June, are
already having an impact on the AFL-CIO's executive council, it is unlikely
to open the books or significantly change its policies without pressure
from a larger portion of its affiliates.
"To counter corporate globalization, we need labor globalization," says
Hirsch. "But we can't embark on a path of genuine solidarity, nor can labor
unions overseas trust us, until we own up to the past and divorce ourselves
from those actions and the government funding which made us a pawn of U.S.
foreign policy."
To let Harry Kamberis, executive director of the Solidarity Center, know
you would like to see the AFL-CIO own up to its past actions and embark on
a path of genuine global solidarity rather than act as a pro-corporate tool
of U.S. foreign policy, call him at (202) 778 4503. John Sweeney can also
be reached at feed...@aflcio.org.
Copyright ) 2004 Venezuela Analysis
*****
____________________________________________________________________
POISON PEN
____________________________________________________________________
THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
Friday, December 24, 2004
http://www.context.themoscowtimes.com/story/138919/
By Chris Floyd
According to agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, President
George W. Bush has signed a secret executive order approving the use of
torture against prisoners captured in his "war on terror" -- including
thousands of innocent people rounded up in Iraq and crammed into Saddam
Hussein's infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
FBI documents, obtained in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union
and reported this week in the Los Angeles Times, detailed the agents'
"disgust" at the "aggressive and improper" methods used by military
interrogators and civilian contractors against prisoners, and the
widespread, ongoing pattern of "serious physical abuses" they found at the
American concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Iraq.
Most of the offences occurred long after the initial public scandal over "a
few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib. For example, in June 2004, an FBI agent
informed top officials in Washington that he had witnessed such torture
techniques as "strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes
into the detainees' ear openings." The agent added that military officials
"were engaged in a coverup of these abuses."
Also in June, the FBI reported that a prisoner in Abu Ghraib was cuffed,
trussed up in a "stress position," then "doused with cold water, dropped
onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach."
In August 2004, the date of the latest reports, an FBI agent reported that
detainees in the Guantanamo concentration camp were often kept chained in
"stress positions" on the floor, "with no chair, food or water. Most of the
times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left for
18-24 hours or more." One detainee was found "almost unconscious on the
floor, with a pile of hair next to him," said the agent. "He had apparently
been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."
The Guantanamo abuses occurred in front of FBI witnesses at what is
considered the showcase of the new worldwide prison system Bush has
established to process his captives in the "terror war." But there are a
number of "secret prisons" -- including a special enclosed facility at
Guantanamo itself -- where "special" interrogations are carried out by the
CIA without any outside witnesses, The Washington Post reports. By
presidential order, the CIA does not have to say who these prisoners are,
how or why or where they were taken prisoner, or what happens to them
behind the impenetrable walls.
According to the official documents, FBI agents said that military
interrogators and their corporate mercenaries in Guantanamo and Iraq
routinely went "far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions
prohibiting torture," but were acting under an executive order signed by
Bush authorizing the use of dogs and other aggressive physical and
psychological techniques on prisoners.
Bush officials denied such an executive order exists; they say the agents
confused it with an earlier order for "aggressive techniques" issued by
Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, which was then supposedly rescinded and
softened in March 2003 after complaints from military lawyers. But the
abuses described in the new FBI memos occurred long after the first
Rumsfeld order was invalidated. Thus the Administration's denial is based
on a clear falsehood.
What's more, the FBI papers state repeatedly and unequivocally that Bush
himself had authorized the aggressive techniques. They also note that in
May 2004, after the scandal at Abu Ghraib, Bush had specified that "certain
techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted." Thus
some of the most disturbing abuses -- actions which the interrogators
nonetheless felt comfortable enough to commit in front of FBI agents --
have been carried out with direct White House or Pentagon approval.
Earlier this year, a cache of White House memos was uncovered revealing a
systematic effort to provide "legal" underpinning for the abrogation of the
Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners and support for a deliberate
policy of disregarding U.S. laws forbidding torture, kidnapping,
assassination and indefinite detention, The Washington Post (and many
others) report. These memos also claimed an unprecedented extension of
presidential powers, arguing that the "Commander-in-Chief" cannot be
constrained by any law whatsoever in the prosecution of a war. One main
goal of this legal analysis, the memos admitted, was to help Bush and his
top officials avoid prosecution for war crimes, since the actions being
recommended by Bush and the Pentagon were clearly criminal under
international and U.S. law.
When the memos surfaced, the White House declared that the Bush
Administration would never do anything illegal. However, they never
directly repudiated the memos -- which, after all, argue that nothing a
president orders in wartime, including torture, is actually illegal. As the
documentation of prisoner abuse grows larger and larger with each passing
month, it is obvious that such a system of widespread -- and ongoing --
atrocities could not be sustained without approval at the very highest
levels.
Now FBI agents, in official reports, have traced the responsibility for
these crimes directly to the pen of George W. Bush. Despite the patently
false White House denials, the torture directive cited by the FBI not only
echoes the legal briefs cited above, it also perfectly complements Bush's
earlier executive orders allowing the secret execution of anyone on earth,
including American citizens, whom Bush or his designated agents arbitrarily
declares a "terrorist" -- without charges, evidence or trial. These orders
were first reported in November 2001 by The Washington Post and have been
repeatedly confirmed by Administration officials.
The evidence is credible, compelling and abundant. The lines of authority
are clear. The blood of the tortured is on Bush's hands.
Copyright ) 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
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