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Messages - nestopwar

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826
Newcastle Stop the War / TSWC September Meeting
« on: August 04, 2008, 10:25:30 PM »
Next meeting: September 1st at 6.30 in the Muslim Welfare House, 12, North Terrace, Claremont Road.

Items on the agenda will include the National Demonstration at the Labour Party Conference on Saturday September 20th on the Costs of War.  coach going.

Student Meeting in October

Campaign Against the Arms Trade Activities

Website and Discussion Forum

827
South Tynesde Coalition held a forum on the costs of these wars in February 15th 2006.  In the preface to the pamphlet based on the forum we pointed out that "the costs of this and other wars were incalculable and have profound and the most serious consequences for the world and to what makes us human. The forum exposed not only the huge cost in human life, the most terrrible injuries which have occurred but the consequences that are throwing the world back into a medieval anarchy."

"This was a world in which a minority of big power governments and the transnational corporation they represent were destroying human rights, destroying conflict resolving international
institutions and tearing up International Law and replacing it with the law of force, imprisonment without trial and the torture chamber of medieval times. This was a world where the big powers
manipulate the UN and other bodies fabricating any excuse to exert control and make war against which ever country they wish to annex.  In this way the US is threatening Iran, Syria, DPRK, Venezuela and many other countries, whilst Britain also had its eyes fixed on
Africa."

"The forum put these powers in the dock for flouting international law and all its terrible consequences, a cost of war that will lead to world war. The forum took up many of the aspects of the costs of war and enabled people to join in discussion on the topics and we publish
those contributions that have been made available to us. The call of the times is to facilitate our discussions to think and act like human beings and to take the high road of civilisation, to uphold
the interests of all people for new societies in which they decide and a new world where wars are a relic of the past."

Another World Is Possible! We Will Create It!"


828
Demonstrate the cost of war at Labour Conference in Manchester - 20 September 2008     
Written by Stewart office     
Monday, 30 June 2008 
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the lives of more than 200 British soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. They have also cost billions of pounds - money which could have been spent on houses, healthcare and education in this country. The war has seen the price of oil escalate, with a knock on effect on the price of food and other essentials.

It has been estimated that this war has cost £10 billion so far, without counting the cost of looking after injured soldiers for the rest of their lives. It is time we demanded that Labour spend the money on better services for all, not wars in the Middle East.

 

829
News Items / Iraq: Alarm at forced transfer of Basra union activists
« on: July 29, 2008, 12:36:09 AM »
Iraq: Alarm at forced transfer of Basra union activists
Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Friday July 25 2008

Eight Iraqi trade union leaders have been forcibly transferred from Basra to
Baghdad, where their lives are said to be at risk for opposing a planned law
in which control over oil exploration and production would be placed in
foreign hands.

The men, members of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions, IFOU, have been
moved to the capital apparently on the personal orders of Hussain al-
Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, under anti-union legislation left over from
Saddam Hussein's rule. Greg Muttitt, co-director of Platform, the human
rights, environment and oil industry watchdog, described the men's transfer
as "extremely disturbing". He met Shahristani a month ago to protest
against the move.

The Iraqi oil minister said the eight men were involved with the militias and
in criminal activities, such as smuggling. But Muttitt said: "There is
absolutely no substance in these extremely serious allegations and he
offered no evidence."

Even if there was such evidence, it should be a matter for the Iraqi judicial
authorities and the courts, he added.

British officials in Baghdad and Basra have investigated the affair, said Kim
Howells, the foreign minister. In a letter, he said Britain wanted to repeal
Saddam's "restrictive" union laws and said Anne Clywd, the prime minister's
special envoy on human rights, had recently "emphasised the fundamental
need for free and fair trade unions in Iraq".

However, he added: "It appears that the government of Iraq is tackling
illegal trade union activities with the South Oil Company."

John Hilary, executive director of War on Want, said: "The Iraqi Federation
of Oil Unions has been leading the opposition to the sell-off of Iraq's oil and
these members are clearly being targeted for their political actions. We
believe the British government should work for the safety of Iraqi trade
unionists, not be complicit in their persecution."

In a letter to Howells, he said: "We would also like you to state whether the
British government in any way condones the transfer of trade unionists into
dangerous areas as a method of "tackling their activities, whether legal or
illegal".

Hassan Juma'a Awad, an IFOU spokesman, claimed the transfer was
ordered by Shahristani himself. "Those activists, through their hard work,
are well known for fighting corruption and corrupt-ministry gangs in the oil
sector," he insisted, adding that the transfer amounted to a "human rights
crime".

830
News Items / UK troops kill Afghan civilians
« on: July 26, 2008, 03:01:15 PM »
UK troops kill Afghan civilians

The incident took place in the Sangin district of Helmand

British troops in southern Afghanistan have killed four civilians and injured three others after a vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint.

Soldiers opened fire on the vehicle in the Sangin district of Helmand, suspecting that those inside were insurgents, Nato said.

The wounded Afghans were taken to a field hospital at the UK's Camp Bastion for treatment.

The International Security Assistance Force expressed regret at the incident.

However, it said the situation had been "caused by the reckless actions of the vehicle driver''.

The BBC's Alistair Leithead said it had been a "bad week" for troops at the nearby Inkerman base, where the Afghans were initially taken for treatment.

A dog handler was killed after a patrol came under attack from the Taleban and a soldier was injured when a British mortar bomb fell short.

831
Newcastle Stop the War / TSWC August Meeting
« on: July 24, 2008, 11:36:24 PM »
Next meeting: August 4th at 6.30 in the Muslim Welfare House, 12, North Terrace, Claremont Road.

832
News Items / Does Gordon Brown want a war with Iran?
« on: July 24, 2008, 11:28:41 PM »
Does Gordon Brown want a war with Iran?     
Written by Lindsey German     
Monday, 21 July 2008 
Gordon Brown is the first British prime minister to address the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

He used the occasion to launch an extraordinary attack on Iran, saying that Britain would stand beside Israel in its fight for liberty.

The fear of Brown and the Israelis is that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon.

Unmentioned in the Knesset speech was the fact that Israel, alone in the Middle East, has nuclear weapons already.

At a time when the hawks in the US have apparently drawn back, at least temporarily, from military attack on Iran in favour of increased diplomacy, Brown’s statement can only ratchet up the calls for war again and give comfort to those in Israel who want aggression against Iran.

Brown is calling for stiffer sanctions initially but implicitly signalled today that he would back unilateral action by Israel. This would plunge the region into much greater war, exacerbate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and worsen the oil crisis internationally.

The Stop the War Coalition opposes all intervention in Iran. Our prime minister could help peace in the region by pulling all British troops out and by demanding justice for the Palestinians.
 

833
For Your Information / U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq
« on: July 24, 2008, 11:03:49 PM »
U.S. Perpetuates Mass Killings In Iraq

By Prof. Peter Phillips

Global Research, July 22, 2008

The United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since the invasion five and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, a British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reports that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003 . We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000”.

The ORB report comes on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University published in the Lancet medical journal that confirmed the continuing numbers of mass deaths in Iraq. A study done by Dr. Les Roberts from January 1, 2002 to March 18 2003 put the civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. A second study published in the Lancet in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion. The 2006 study confirms that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. The now estimated 1.2 million dead, as of July 2008, includes children, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, cab drivers, clerics, schoolteachers, factory workers, policemen, poets, healthcare workers, day care providers, construction workers, babysitters, musicians, bakers, restaurant workers and many more. All manner of ordinary people in Iraq have died because the United States decided to invade their country. These are deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. The magnitude of these deaths is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces guarantees a mass death rate in excess of 10,000 people per month with half that number dying at the hands of US forces– a carnage so severe and so concentrated at to equate it with the most heinous mass killings in world history. This act has not gone unnoticed. Recently, Dennis Kucinich introduced a single impeachment article against George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. On July 15 The House forwarded the resolution to the Judiciary Committee with a 238 to 180 vote. That Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s threat to the US is now beyond doubt. Former US federal prosecutor Elizabeth De La Vega documents the lies most thoroughly in her book U.S. Vs Bush, and numerous other researchers have verified Bush’s untrue statements. The American people are faced with a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in our name. We have allowed the war/occupation to continue in Iraq and offered ourselves little choice within the top two presidential candidates for immediate cessation of the mass killings. McCain would undoubtedly accept the deaths of another million Iraqi civilians in order to save face for America, and Obama’s 18-month timetable for withdrawal would likely result in another 250,000 civilian deaths or more. We owe our children and ourselves a future without the shame of mass murder on our collective conscience. The only resolution of this dilemma is the immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Iraq and the prosecution and imprisonment of those responsible. Anything less creates a permanent original sin on the soul of the nation for that we will forever suffer.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research group. He is the co-editor with Dennnis Loo of the book Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney.

834
Obama in Iraq underscores his commitment to US militarism

World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org

WSWS : News & Analysis : Middle East : Iraq

By James Cogan 23 July 2008

Back to screen version | Send this link by email | Email the author

The visit of US presidential candidate Barack Obama to Iraq on Monday underscores once again that the opposition to militarism among millions of American workers and youth has been completely disenfranchised by the Democratic Party. The Illinois senator used the trip to make clear his commitment to the indefinite occupation of Iraq, as well as to agitate further for his policy of redeploying troops from the Middle East in order to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Obama took every opportunity to be photographed and filmed in the company of military commanders and personnel. The trip was primarily aimed, however, at trying to manufacture a shift in the political calculus within the presidential campaign. Until now, the tenuous character of the so-called successes of the Bush administration’s “surge” of troops last year–a reduction in the rate of US casualties and ebb in the overall level of violence inside Iraq–has been used by the White House and Republican candidate John McCain as evidence that no timetable can be placed on the withdrawal of US combat troops from the country.

Obama sought to turn the argument on its head. As he left a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he told journalists he was “pleased with the progress taking place”. In his statement on the visit, he declared he had found “a strong, emerging consensus” that sufficient progress had been made to begin planning “to refocus our foreign policy on the many other challenges around the world starting with the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan”.

Obama made particular use of the endorsement of his policies by the Iraqi government. Obama asserted that Maliki “said that now is an appropriate time to start to plan for the reorganisation of our troops in Iraq” and had “stated his hope that US combat forces could be out of Iraq in 2010”. Obama declared that Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi–a favourite of the Washington establishment–had noted that “the quality of American engagement matters more than the quantity”.

Obama’s statements demonstrate that he holds no principled opposition to the Iraq war. Rather, his presidential candidacy is the vehicle for sections of the financial and corporate elite who consider the 2003 invasion to have been a strategically reckless use of American military power that has only aggravated the decline of US global influence. The reorientation to Afghanistan is primarily aimed at asserting US interests in Central Asia and disrupting the economic, political and military alignments emerging between powers such as China, Russia, Iran, India and western European states.

At the same time, the Democratic candidate is seeking to reassure the ruling elite that he would be a reliable defender of US imperialist interests in Iraq and the Middle East. The withdrawal of “combat troops” is a code word for the shared plans of both the Republicans and the Democrats that would retain a force numbering anywhere up to 60,000 in Iraq in remote and heavily fortified bases such as Balad, Al Asad, Talil and Taji. Iraq will remain an American client state, with the massive US embassy in Baghdad serving as the real centre of political power.

The Obama camp feels confident in advancing calls for a withdrawal timetable due to the current situation in Iraq. After more than five years of bloody occupation, a degree of stability has been achieved. Moreover, the puppet Iraqi government has finally begun to implement policies aimed at allowing foreign companies to take stakes in Iraq’s massive oil and gas reserves–one of the key motives for the war.

During his visit, Obama made no mention of either the illegal character of the 2003 invasion or how the “surge” has somewhat stabilised Iraq under US domination. The truth is that consolidation of the occupation has been accomplished by wholesale killing, collective punishment against civilians supporting resistance and mass detentions. Throughout 2006 and 2007, the occupation unleashed death squads and fomented sectarian tensions in order to trigger pogroms and ethnic cleansing.

An estimated 1.2 million Iraqis have lost their lives and over five million turned into refugees or displaced. One factor in the ebb in the anti-occupation insurgency is large numbers of resistance fighters are either dead, seriously injured, traumatised to the point where they cannot fight, or not in the country any more. In the process, over 4,100 American soldiers have lost their lives, with tens of thousands more wounded or harmed in some way.

The so-called “political progress” that was praised by Obama on Monday has consisted of a policy of dividing the country along sectarian and ethnic lines. Behind the façade of Maliki’s “national unity” government, the US occupation has presided over the carving out of Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni spheres of influence, creating numerous fault lines that could trigger civil war or regional wars in the Middle East.

The fragility of the situation inside Iraq goes to the heart of the continuing opposition to Obama’s policies in US ruling circles, including the increasingly blatant attempts by sections of the US military hierarchy to influence the outcome of the election in favour of Republican candidate John McCain. Opponents of a major reduction in troop numbers in Iraq fear that it will create a vacuum that Iran and potentially other powers will intervene to fill, at the expense of US interests. They insist that any decision about reducing the US footprint in Iraq has to be based on the “conditions on the ground”.

The WSWS has commented on the explicit rejection of a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq by Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an interview Sunday with Fox News. Attacking Obama’s policies as “dangerous,” Mullen declared: “I’d worry about any kind of rapid movement out and creating instability where we have stability.” He indicated this position was shared by the key US commanders in Iraq, General David Petraeus and General Raymond Odierno.

Obama again demonstrated the subservience of the Democrats to the military top brass during an interview yesterday with CBS’s Katie Couric. Asked whether he would proceed with troop withdrawals in the face of opposition from Mullen and Petraeus, Obama refrained from making any criticism of the admiral’s statements or condemning the military for its political intervention. Instead, he stated, “I will always listen to the commanders on the ground” although Iraq was just one “security problem” that had to be dealt with, alongside Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

Couric repeatedly hammered Obama over a statement the previous day that in hindsight he would still have voted against the surge of US troops in Iraq. Asked again and again why he refused to give any credit to the “surge” for reducing violence in Iraq, he ultimately backed away, saying “of course I have”.

Obama’s political cowardice was used by McCain, whose campaign has been overshadowed this week by the attention on Obama’s world tour, to denounce the Democratic candidate as a defeatist. In an interview with Couric that followed Obama’s, the Republican candidate openly associated his policies with the views of the military.

McCain said: “Senator Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign... I will not do what the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said would be very dangerous. We will have a stable Iraq that we won’t have to return to because we have succeeded in the strategy and we will come home with victory and honor and not in defeat.”

The presidential campaign has evolved into a foreign policy conflict between sections of the American ruling elite, with the Republicans and Democrats debating the best means for maintaining the US military presence in Iraq while dealing with an escalating war in Afghanistan. The desire of millions of Americans for an end to the Bush administration’s neo- colonial wars will be given no expression within the two-party system.

To describe Obama as “antiwar,” in any sense, is an exercise in either deception or self-delusion. His visit to Iraq makes clear that he speaks for those who believe that a tactical reorientation of US strategy is required to re-direct American military forces to deal with challenges to US strategic and corporate interests elsewhere.

835
News Items / US and NATO Strikes Exact Heavy Toll In Afghanistan
« on: July 24, 2008, 10:56:40 PM »
US and NATO Strikes Exact Heavy Toll In Afghanistan

Published on Monday, July 21, 2008 by The International Herald Tribune

by Carlotta Gall

KABUL - U.S. and NATO missile strikes continued to exact a heavy toll in Afghanistan, with at least 13 Afghans killed in two incidents over the weekend that Afghan officials said were mistakes.0721 05 1

One NATO soldier was also killed in the eastern province of Khost. Although NATO did not give the nationality of the soldier, U.S. forces are deployed in Khost.

Nine Afghan policemen were killed and five others wounded in a case of friendly fire in western Afghanistan when a joint convoy of Afghan and U.S. forces called in airstrikes on a group they thought to be militants. Separately, at least four people were killed when two mortars fired by the NATO-led force in Afghanistan went astray.

The U.S. military announced it was beginning an investigation into the first incident. The joint Afghan and U.S. force came under attack in the province of Farah from an unknown force while conducting nighttime operations in Ana Dara District, a statement issued from Bagram Air Base said. Coalition forces returned fire and then called in airstrikes on the group firing at them.

The presidential spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, said the strikes had been a case of friendly fire. Among those wounded was the police chief of the district, the deputy provincial governor said, according to Reuters.

A NATO statement said that at least four civilians had been accidentally killed, and four other civilians wounded, in mortar strikes by the NATO-led force, ISAF, in the eastern province of Paktika.

The incident took place Saturday night at Barmal, on the border with Pakistan in an area where militants frequently cross from Pakistan’s tribal regions.

The wounded civilians were brought to a NATO base and were evacuated by helicopter to a medical facility, the alliance said. “ISAF deeply regrets this accident, and an investigation as to the exact circumstances of this tragic event is now under way,” NATO said in its statement.

The latest casualties came as Senator Barack Obama was on his first visit to Afghanistan with a congressional delegation.

The British humanitarian organization, Oxfam, used the opportunity to warn against the growing human cost of the war in Afghanistan.

“The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated, with an alarming increase in civilian casualties,” Oxfam said. “All parties to the conflict must do everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians.”

“Unless the next American president, whether it is Senator Obama or Senator McCain, builds on the existing commitments to help lift the Afghan people out of extreme poverty and protect civilians, it will be impossible for the country to achieve lasting peace,” it said.

The organization also urged the U.S. government to stop spending assistance funds on expensive foreign contractors and instead find more creative and sustainable ways to assist the people directly, especially in rural development.

Meanwhile, a group of American lawyers who are in Kabul to work on cases of Afghans detained in the American base at Bagram called on the U.S. government to end the legal “black hole” in which hundreds of detainees are held.

The lawyers from the International Justice Network raised the case of Jawed Ahmad, an Afghan journalist detained for nearly nine months at Bagram along with some 650 other Afghan detainees. None of the detainees has been charged and none is allowed lawyers, according to Tina Foster, the director of the organization, and Barbara Olshansky, a human rights professor from Stanford University.

© 2008 International Herald Tribune

836
CASMII Press Release

15 July 2008

Israel threatens to wage illegal, pre-emptive military attack on Iran

On Monday July 14th Israel's senior defence official, General Amos Gilad
during an interview with BBC Radio four's Today programme said that
Israel is preparing itself to take military action against Iran and that
it would do so if diplomacy fails. The statement came only a day after
the Sunday Times revealed that "President George W Bush backs Israeli
plan for strike on Iran".

These threats are being made following reports of Israeli aerial
military exercise in the first week of June which involved over 100 F-15
and F-16 fighters and was described by a senior Pentagon official as a
dress rehearsal for a military strike on Iranian nuclear plants. In the
same week, Shaol Mofaz, Israel's deputy prime minister publicly stated
that if Iran continues with its nuclear programme, Israel "will attack
it".

All of Iran's nuclear plants are under Safeguards agreements with the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which after over five years
of intrusive inspections has found no evidence of any diversion into a
weaponisation programme. In mid June, Dr ElBaradei, the Agency's
Director General threatened to resign if there is any attack on Iran.

Israel's threats against Iran are in gross violation of the UN Charter
which clearly states in Article 2 that "All Members shall refrain in
their international relations from the threat or use of force against
the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in
any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

The Nuremberg Tribunal, which brought Nazi leaders to justice for their
wars of aggression, confirmed
<http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/09-30-46.htm> that "War is
essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the
belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war
of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

In relation to the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Benjamin Ferencz, a
former chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials who worked on the U.S.
legal team and successfully convicted 22 Nazis, stated
<http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/38604/> that "The United Nations
charter has a provision which was formulated by and agreed to by the
United States after World War II. It says that from now on, no nation
can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council.
They can use force in connection with self-defence, but a country can't
use force in anticipation of self-defence." Israel is neither under
attack nor threat of immediate attack by Iran.

CASMII calls on all the international community, the UN, the US
Congress, the EU, in particular the UK, France and Germany as well as
Russia and China to condemn Israel's threats of military action against
Iran. We call on the US to enter into immediate, direct, unconditional
and comprehensive negotiations with Iran on all points of dispute so
that a catastrophic war and a major conflagration in the Middle East and
beyond can be averted and the present stand-off can be resolved in a
peaceful manner.

For more information or to contact CASMII visit
http://www.campaigniran.org

837
News Items / US suffers heavy Afghan losses
« on: July 13, 2008, 07:51:21 PM »

US suffers heavy Afghan losses


Nine US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan in clashes with Taleban militants.

US commander Daniel Dwyer told the BBC the soldiers had been killed in clashes in the north-east of the country.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says it is one of the biggest single losses in a day for the coalition since the start of military operations there.

838
News Items / Airstrike 'killed 47 civilians'
« on: July 11, 2008, 07:48:04 PM »
Airstrike 'killed 47 civilians'

 Airstrike 'killed 47 civilians'The head of an Afghan government commission investigating a US military airstrike in Nuristan province this week said it killed 47 civilians travelling to a wedding.
The airstrike on Sunday in Deh Bala district also wounded nine civilians, said Burhanullah Shinwari, the deputy chairman of the Senate, who led the delegation.
The US military on Sunday denied any civilians were killed in the incident.
At the time officials said 27 civilians had been killed.
US coalition spokesman First Lieutenant Nathan Perry said that "any loss of innocent life is tragic".
Mr Shinwari said that 39 of those killed in the airstrike were women and children, including the bride.
Last Updated: Friday, 11 July 2008, 16:20 GMT

839
News Items / New Local Cost of War Numbers Now Available
« on: July 09, 2008, 09:46:47 PM »
New Local Cost of War Numbers Now Available

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 3, 2008 12:44 PM

CONTACT: National Priorities Project (NPP) Pamela Schwartz, Communications Director 413-584-9556 (o); 413-219-5658 (cell)

- July 3 - On June 30th, President Bush signed into law a $162 billion War Supplemental spending bill, providing an additional $130 billion for the Iraq War alone. This new funding brings the total allocated for the Iraq War to $656.1 billion.

NPP has updated its local cost of war numbers to reflect this new total, also showing what this war funding could buy local communities if it was spent on domestic needs instead. Click here to get the numbers for each state, congressional district, county, city or town.

The National Priorities Project (NPP) is a 501(c)(3) research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent. Located in Northampton, MA, since 1983, NPP focuses on the impact of federal spending and othe policies at the national, state, congressional district and local levels. For more information, go to http://nationalpriorities.org.

840
For Your Information / Scott Ritter Interview
« on: July 09, 2008, 09:44:09 PM »
Scott Ritter Interview

By Matthew Rothschild, July 2008 Issue

Scott Ritter has traveled an odd career path. An intelligence officer in the Marine Corps, he was gung-ho on the Gulf War and was an aide to General Norman Schwarzkopf. Then he was one of the leading U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He resigned because he didn’t think the United States was acting aggressively enough to combat the threat from Iraq.

But he opposed overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And when George Bush and Dick Cheney were ginning up the case for war, this former Marine became a chief critic. He famously said that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And these days, he is warning loudly about the likelihood that Bush and Cheney will bomb Iran.

Ritter is the author of several books, including Iraq Confidential, Target Iran, and Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement.

I caught up with him in Madison, Wisconsin, in mid-April, where he delivered a public talk and then went drinking with some Iraq War vets.

I asked him if any of his old Marine Corps buddies resent his outspokenness. “No, they love me,” he said, adding that he is able to say out loud many of the things that they agree with but are forbidden from mentioning.

Q: I was amazed at how far out on a limb you went before the Iraq War started in declaring flat-out that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Why were you so certain?

Scott Ritter: I don’t view it as going out on a limb. Having investigated Saddam’s WMD programs from 1991 to 1998, I was simply pointing out the fact that if you’re relying on a data set that’s derived from that experience, there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein would have these massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that the Bush Administration claimed were being possessed.

Unless someone could demonstrate that the Iraqis had reconstituted their manufacturing base for WMD, simple science takes over. You don’t have to be brave to point out that anthrax as produced by the Iraqis has a shelf life under ideal circumstances of three years. The last known batch rolled out in January 1991. One cannot state that any anthrax that may have been hidden at that time is still viable in 2002 unless there was a new anthrax facility put in play. And the Bush Administration never said that. What the Bush Administration said was that 9/11 has caused us to reevaluate the intelligence data that existed up until 1998. That’s why I knew I had them because I was intimately familiar here with the intelligence information up to 1998, and there was nothing in that data set that would support what the Bush Administration was asserting. So I wasn’t going out on a limb. I was simply stating a fact.

Q: Do you think Bush Administration top officials were surprised not to find weapons of mass destruction once they got there, or did they just not care?

Ritter: It’s even more simple than this. Some of the key members of the Bush Administration knew they weren’t there. Remember, Scott Ritter is not the only one who was familiar with this data set. The CIA was familiar with this.

Q: But George Tenet says in his autobiography that he was as surprised as the next guy that we couldn’t find any of these weapons.

Ritter: Tenet himself knows that there was no hard intelligence that sustained the Bush Administration’s claims. It might have been wishful thinking on his part. But my experience with George Tenet is one of a man who publicly says one thing and privately says another. I don’t believe George Tenet for a second that he was surprised. George Tenet knew that he was selling the President a bill of goods. George Tenet knew that the intelligence support for the President’s claim was based on stovepiping and cherry picking, not on a comprehensive review of all the available data.

Q: Was he selling the President a bill of goods, or was he selling the President the goods the commander in chief had ordered?

Ritter: You’re right to point that out. This isn’t George Tenet trying to convince the President to do something. This is the President saying, “I’m going to war against Iraq. The vehicle that will facilitate this is the WMD issue, and I want George Tenet basically to cook the books so that the data is available that sustains my allegations.” And that’s exactly what Tenet did; Tenet delivered that which the President demanded.

Q: Where are we now in the war in Iraq?

Ritter: It’s an unmitigated disaster. We’ve lost the war. And we don’t have a collective recognition of our defeat yet, so we continue to stumble along trying to achieve some nebulous definition of victory that no one can define. Our politicians seem more inclined to seek a “solution” in Iraq that is derived not by the reality on the ground in Iraq but rather that which can be sold to the American people, sold to the Congress. We have a problem. We’re not defining it correctly. Therefore, any solution we embark on is a solution to nowhere.

Q: Good people in this country who agree Bush shouldn’t have gone into Iraq and that he and Rumsfeld made hash of the situation are reluctant to say the U.S. should withdraw. They cite humanitarian grounds, arguing that things could get worse, or that there could be a genocide. How do you respond to that?

Ritter: Well, how much worse could it get? I don’t understand the benchmark that’s being applied here. You know, people talk about a humanitarian disaster. There is a humanitarian disaster in play right now. It’s called the American occupation. People talk about a moral imperative. The moral imperative must be to get the problem out. The problem is the American occupation. You know I’ve been in Iraq for many, many years. And I have enough respect for the Iraqi people to understand that they are capable of resolving their own internal problems. The hubris of the white man’s burden, that only the United States can solve the problem of Iraq, is extreme and dangerous. We need to understand it’s a problem we made. It’s a problem we can’t solve. And we need to liberate the Iraqi people by withdrawing our troops so they can resolve their own problems.

Q: For several years now, you’ve been warning of the possibility that the Bush Administration will attack Iran. What do you think the likelihood is now in the waning months of the Bush Administration?

Ritter: I think we’ve never been at a greater risk of American military action against Iran.

Q: Really? Why do you say that?

Ritter: Because the Bush Administration has made it clear that it seeks to resolve the Iranian problem before it leaves office. It has defined the Iranian problem in quite stark terms. It’s a nation pursuing an illegal nuclear weapons program. It’s a nation that retains the status, according to the United States, as the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world today. And it’s the nation solely responsible for all that ails the United States in Iraq today.

The American people need to understand that when we speak of conflict between Iran and the United States, we’re not talking about a repeat of Operation Iraqi Liberation, later known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. We’re talking about a limited military strike, at least initially. We’re talking about a five- to seven-day aerial bombardment that can be extended to thirty days.

Q: How limited would that be? Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker says this could involve many hundreds of targets. Then things could spin out of control. The Atlantic magazine did a war games exercise on this, and the thing just spun and spun and spun. So it won’t be just a simple seven-day or two-week or three-week affair.

Ritter: I concur with these assessments. But the Bush Administration continues to live under the illusion that it can limit this conflict. I was always trained in the military that the enemy has a vote. When you start something, you’ve suddenly lost control. No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.

Q: What are some of the predictable negative consequences?

Ritter: The easiest one is that the Iranians won’t roll over and play dead, and the Iranian people won’t rise up and embrace the United States for bombing them. The Iranians aren’t stupid. They know the region better than we know it, and they are planning, as we speak, appropriate retaliatory measures. If they shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which they can do, if they intervene into Saudi oil production in the eastern oil fields, if they shut down Kuwaiti oil production, if they unleash the hounds of war in southern Iraq and shut down oil production there and tie down American troops there, if they fire ballistic missiles against the state of Israel, thereby prompting an Israeli retaliation–all of these things are well within the realm of the possible, I would even say probable. But all of them will create a massive escalation of the conflict.

Q: How will Bush be able to get away with this?

Ritter: Well, he’s already gotten away with it. There’s no constitutional impediment to prevent the President from launching a military strike against Iran.

Q: There’s Article 1, Section 8, which says Congress has to declare war.

Ritter: Congress has declared war. Congress has given this President two standing war powers resolutions that clearly link the use of military force to the global war on terror. And the President has successfully defined Iran as the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today. The United States Senate has gone further, giving the President a de facto target list by naming the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Command as a terrorist organization.

Q: This is the Lieberman bill, right?

Ritter: Kyl-Lieberman.

Q: Some members of Congress tried to pass a bill requiring Bush to come to Congress first before attacking Iran. But that bill died.

Ritter: It died for some of the most curious reasons, too. Nancy Pelosi opposed this legislation because she did not want to tie the President’s hands when it came to securing the national security interests of–and now we can have a drum roll–Israel. Here we have an elected American official willing to push the Constitution of the United States aside not for American interests, which I would still disagree with, but for the interests of a non-American entity, in this case, the state of Israel. I find this as repulsive as can possibly be.

Q: You’ve written a book about the peace movement. What’s your critique of the peace movement, and what should we be doing?

Ritter: This book was a product of my frustration out of the 2006 elections. Democrats got control of Congress, and a lot of people in the anti-war movement were claiming victory, saying, we’ve reversed the trend, and a majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq. But the people are against the Iraq War not because we went to war under false pretenses but because we’re losing the war. The other thing is, what anti-war movement are we speaking of? There is no anti-war movement in America. There are grassroots organizations across the country that can’t even organize themselves to do anything meaningful. I do a lot of traveling. I have nothing but the highest respect and regard for these true patriots who are out there doing the job of a citizen. But to say this is a movement of a national scale is misleading. We can’t even get two of the big organizations to sit down and talk with each other. You get ANSWER to sit down with United for Peace and Justice–it won’t happen. If you call yourself an American who believes in the principles set forth in the Constitution, who believes in citizenship, who believes in the rule of law–that’s what the anti-war movement should be, not anti-war, but pro- America, pro-Constitution. We’re the real American movement. But you need to understand that there’s an element out there that’s against you. They’re engaged in ideological warfare. And unless you’re organizing yourself to wage war, you’re going to continue to get beat.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.

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