By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 23, 2007; 5:42 PM
Virginia Sen. James Webb (D) tonight will deliver a blistering eight-minute response to the President's State of the Union address. Aides promised it will be an aggressive challenge to Bush's Iraq policies from the newly empowered Democratic majority in Congress.
Webb will speak live from an historic Capitol Hill meeting room and is likely to display the same pugnacious scowl and blunt manner that won over Virginia voters in November and later generated headlines in a face-to-face exchange with Bush at the White House.
In an interview this morning, Webb called Bush's new Iraq policy "an adjustment" and said "an adjustment is not a strategy. What is the end point?"
Democrats owe their newfound control of the Senate to Webb's slim and improbable victory over former Virginia Sen. George Allen (R). Webb -- a Vietnam war hero turned antiwar zealot -- also embodies his party's central message: a determination to oppose the Iraq war while still supporting the troops who are there.
And Webb has become a folk hero among liberals and bloggers for brusquely telling Bush at a White House social event that questions about Webb's Marine son serving in Iraq are "between me and my boy."
So after just three weeks as a U.S. senator, the former Republican became the choice of the Democratic leadership in the Senate and House of Representatives to carry their blunt warning about Bush's new war strategy.
"He represents to me what the new America is all about," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), as he faced about 40 reporters with Webb and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "Someone who understands what it means to go to war, what it means to have peace, what it means to work on a bipartisan basis. I think he's the perfect person to answer the president."
For the second year in a row, Democrats tonight turn to a newly-elected Virginia leader for their response to Bush. Last year, they picked Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), fresh from his victory in the conservative state, to speak for the national party.
Kaine offered an upbeat, hopeful message tinged with a few jabs at Bush. Webb, a former boxer, is expected to offer a harsher critique of the president's six years in office. With his party in control of Congress now, Webb's brief speech will be more aggressive and confident, said Paul Reagan, his chief of staff.
Even before either speech was given, Republican party officials sent out e-mails criticizing Webb as "in lock step with Defeatocrats on Iraq" and calling him "just another Dem hothead."
During the briefing with Reid and Pelosi, Webb chided Bush and the White House because "they don't have a plan."
For Webb, tonight's speech caps a remarkable year that began with an underfunded, largely dismissed campaign to unseat a leading presidential hopeful. For most of the year, his campaign was ignored by pundits and criticized by suspicious Democrats.
But his bid for office caught on even as Allen's was rocked by gaffes and scandal. After his 9,000-vote victory, Webb thrust his son's combat boots over his head, publicly taking them off for the first time since the Senate campaign began.
"To the people who have become such loyal followers of Jim, we're motivated by the fact that he's willing to fight for what he believes in," said Jim McBride, 32, who organized aspeech-watching party for 100 of Webb's most die-hard campaign volunteers at the Bailey's Pub and Grille in Arlington.
"We are waiting for the Democratic party to fight the way Jim is fighting," McBride said.
Webb began his day by spilling a cup of coffee on his blue shirt, prompting an aide to urge a change of clothes instead of just a buttoning of his jacket.
"I told him this was one of the biggest appearances he'd make in his life, so maybe we should change the shirt," said communications director Jessica Smith.
For the first time, networks planned to broadcast the State of the Union and Webb's response in high definition television. That prompted Webb's staff to hire a makeup specialist who could make sure that Webb looked good even in those crystal-clear pictures.
Aides said Webb has taken the speech seriously, vigorously rewriting the initial draft suggested by the offices of Reid and Pelosi. But like past State of the Union responders, Webb received much unsolicited advice. Asked why the speech grew from five minutes to more than eight, Smith said, "that's what happens when you have input from everyone."
Kristian Denny Todd, Webb's spokeswoman during the campaign, said the speech is a big moment for Webb, who spent much of the last two decades writing books and articles about war and its consequences.
"This is the opportunity he's wanted for four years," Todd said. "Like one of his Op-Eds, but broadcast to millions of Americans in his own voice."
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became
mass murderers.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The Bushites move full speed backward; Iran is next.
WAR FRENZY....
The LA Times says that George Bush is expected to claim during tonight's State of the Union address that Iran is deeply involved in Iraq's civil war:
For all the aggressive rhetoric, however, the Bush administration has provided scant evidence to support these claims. Nor have reporters traveling with U.S. troops seen extensive signs of Iranian involvement. During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.
The lack of publicly disclosed evidence has led to questions about whether the administration is overstating its case.
Golly. Overstating its case? The Bush administration?
This is ridiculous. I don't doubt that Iran is meddling in Iraq -- they're neighbors, after all -- but we've been watching them intensively for the past five years, we have 150,000 troops next door in Iraq, we've conducted uncounted raids on Iraqi insurgents, and the CIA and military intelligence have hundreds of analysts assigned to figuring out Iran's intentions and capabilities. And yet we've found very little. This suggests that Iranian meddling is fairly modest.
Iran is hardly a friend. They've been designated the top state sponsor of terrorism for years. They stone gays to death and support suicide attacks by Hezbollah. Their leaders support a repellant ideology of anti-semitism. It's a loathsome regime.
But that doesn't mean we ought to be at war with them, and we certainly shouldn't be at war over wildly exaggerated claims from an administration that's demonstrated conclusively that it can't be trusted with such claims. It's time for everyone to settle down.
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became mass murderers.
Cheshire Cheney: Menace On The Lamb
January 21, 2007
by the Long Island, New York Newsday
by Les Payne
Trade the grin of the Cheshire cat for a scowl and you have Vice President Dick Cheney. OK, the cat in "Alice in Wonderland" never shot a friend. Still, it is the scowl, all crooked and evil, that makes up the Cheney menace. He is arguably the most powerful vice president ever, filling the vacuum his boss leaves in the Oval Office.
During President George W. Bush's six years in office so far, Cheney has been as famous as the Cheshire cat for vanishing and suddenly reappearing. He was back out on the limb last week promoting Bush's escalation of the Iraq war. The Scowl was all over Fox TV news, rendering the clenched visage of Brit Hume downright charming by comparison.
The Cheney menace also haunted the courtroom where the jury was being picked last week for the trial of the vice president's former chief of staff. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is facing felony charges of obstruction of justice and perjury in the grand jury probe of how Valerie Plame was exposed as a CIA agent, possibly as a punitive act. Defense attorneys reportedly struggled with the daunting task of eliminating from the Libby jury those with "strongly negative feelings" about Cheney.
On the first day two such potential jurors, civic-minded we must assume, couldn't conceal their distaste for Cheney. One reportedly lasted 15 seconds, another weighed his civic duty for 15 minutes before confessing "low regard" for the sitting vice president. Cheney is scheduled as a star witness in Libby's leak case, which is on the periphery of the administration's pursuit of the Iraq war.
Cheney is very much at the heart of the war and deserves as much blame as anyone. His involvement also bears, in the opinion of more than a few, the hint of profiteering, if not conflict of interest. He has amassed great wealth and power in the all too common - and questionable - practice of shuttling between top corporate jobs and posts at the government trough. He is the former chief executive of the giant Halliburton energy and government services conglomerate that has landed multi-billion-dollar U.S. war contracts without competitive bidding.
The vice president may well have met all federal ethical requirements for severing his corporate ties before taking office. The imprint of his association with Halliburton, however, remains as strong as the Cheshire grin when the cat has disappeared. It's a fair bet that if the republic frees itself of Cheney, he is likely to benefit from Halliburton's gorging during his tenure in office.
As for the recent promotion of the troop buildup, Halliburton stands to profit handsomely from the 21,500 additional troops to be dispatched to the Iraq war zone, where its subsidiaries provide housing and food. Early on, Halliburton was accused of fleecing the government by feeding the troops spoiled food and by overcharging for the number fed. There also have been allegations some subsidiaries overcharged for fuel, transportation and other services and wasted millions due to inadequate management of personnel and war materiel.
After almost four years of such management, the new Democrat-controlled Congress may well discover that the waste by Halliburton and others is incalculable. This finding should not, of course, deter the legislative branch from re-establishing its oversight and fiduciary responsibilities. During the roar of the U.S. war machine in Iraq, the Congress, until now, has been as quiet as church mice, and just as impotent.
After 3 1/2 years of watching Bush-Cheney mismanage the war, the American people finally ran out of patience in the November elections. And so it appears particularly unseemly for Cheney to push so aggressively - and wrongheadedly - for almost dictatorial powers for himself and the president to continue budget-busting spending and escalation in Iraq.
While acknowledging Congress' attempts to adhere to the popular will and redirect the war, Bush chillingly declared, "But I've made my decision. And we're going forward" with the buildup. "You cannot run a war by committee," said Cheney. He obviously intends to increase the flow of money to Iraq.
Perhaps it's time for Cheney to vanish like the Cheshire cat, beginning with the tip of the tail and ending with the scowl, which will likely remain long after the rest of him has gone.
© 2007 Newsday
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became mass murderers.
Crusading-Crackpots Push For Armageddon
We don't tend to be anti-religion around here. At least, none of us ever have been, before.
But these last 6 years have strained everyone's patience, and caused every one of us to re-think.
Even those of us who have never spent so much as an hour in any church, recognize the good religion can do. We have seen churches take the lead on issues like AIDS, before Elizzabeth Taylor made it popular and before Ronald Reagan would even utter the word. We have seen some churches give women their rightful place among the followers of Christ, as Deacons, Priests, Ministers and such. We have seen some churches follow the true, authentic teachings of the Christ; feeding the poor, ministering to prisoners, visiting the sick and offering hope to thousands of people who were without hope of any kind, and all this without preaching, pontificating or demanding that the people they help believe in any creed or dogma.
However, the people and movement described in this article are not anything like what we have seen and value about religion. As a matter of fact, they represent everything destructive and wrong with religion and they certainly go out of their way to be anti-Christ in their teachings and actions.
While billing themselves as "pro-life," they support the death penalty and push wars that have and will kill hundreds of thousands of people directly, and millions more indirectly, through starvation and disease, while billions, which could be spent preventing such horrors, is spent on creating more.
They are anti-science, therefore threatening more life; even the life of our planet, yet they seem to have no problem with the science that created the atom bomb and, even now, is busy creating more hideous, terribly destructive weapons.
They are members of a conspiracy to force their twisted beliefs on all of us through legislation, at every level of government.
We don't see a lot of difference between groups like the Taliban and the religiously insane in this country.
There is a big difference, however, in their circumstances. Here, in the U.S., we have a system of government which forbids the formation of any national or state religion. Our founders had seen with their own eyes that national religions can and do lead to persecution of a most heinous type.
The seperation of church and state is under attack, in ways we have not seen, certainly in modern times, if not in our entire history. This poses a danger to every American, be they religious or not and, unfortunately, to the rest of the world, in this nuclear age.
Christian Zionists are dancing the hora in San Antonio.
Armageddon appears to be at hand.
As George W. Bush sets his sights on Iran, even Republicans are wondering how to constitutionally contain the trigger-happy king. But for an influential group of Christian fundamentalists -- White House allies that garner not only feel-good meetings with the President's liaisons to the "faith-based" community but also serious discussions with Bush's national security staff -- an attack on Iran is just what God ordered.
Biblical literalists, convened together through San Antonio megapastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI), are now seeing the fruits of their yearlong campaign to convince the Bush administration to attack Iran.
Hagee came to Washington last summer on the warpath, and many Republicans -- and even a few Democrats -- welcomed him as an alleged supporter of Israel. More than 3,500 CUFI members fanned out across the Capitol to meet with their congressional delegations. Televangelist power brokers, like rising star Rod Parsley of Ohio, who serve as directors of CUFI, now proudly display photographs of their meetings with senators, brows furrowed over the seriousness of the task at hand. But probably Hagee's most important meeting was smaller and not public, at the White House with deputy national security adviser and Iran Contra player Elliott Abrams.
Did the two men talk dispensationalism or diplomacy? That the president's top national security advisor on Middle East policy met with the popular author of a best-selling book that claims that God requires a war with Iran demonstrates just how intensely politics trumps policy (and human lives) for this unhinged administration. Emboldened, Hagee returned to San Antonio fretting that "most Americans are simply not aware that the battle for Western Civilization is engaged" and "don't want to believe that Iran would use nuclear weapons against mighty America. They will!" As the bloody fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raged last August, Hagee organized a grassroots lobbying campaign to blitz the White House switchboard with callers opposed to a cease-fire. Members were urged to call the White House to "congratulate" Bush on using the term "Islamofascists" and on his "moral clarity."
Armed with blood-red rhetoric and the hubris of the politically connected, Hagee filled his 5,000-seat church for a weekend-long event culminating in his Night to Honor Israel in October. To an eager audience preparing for the end times, analogies to Hitler and denouncement of "appeasement" were flying. Anti-Muslim rhetoric was at a fevered pitch. All of it was dressed up as love and benevolence for God's chosen people. But what masqueraded as Biblically mandated generosity toward the Jews was nothing more than a political rally for a war not just against Iran, but against Islam, and for the dominance of Christianity (Hagee's brand, of course).
By the end of the year, Hagee was warning his followers that Iran was "reloading for the next war," claiming that he had "reason to believe that Iran will face a military preemptive strike from Israel to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons," and denouncing the Iraq Study Group as "anti-Israel." Although he had spent nearly a year claiming that Iran intended to destroy Israel, Hagee, in rejecting the ISG's recommendation to diplomatically engage Iran, fumed, "America's problems with Iran have nothing to do with Israel. Iran's president has said he intends to use nuclear weapons against the United States of America. My father's generation would have considered this statement a declaration of war and bombed Iran by this time."
Bush knows Hagee's minions are locked and loaded for a war to end not only all wars, but the world. He might have already signed a secret executive order authorizing military action against Iran. But last week Bush nonetheless lamely tried to bring the rest of the country on board with his tried (but by no means true) device of uttering the words "Iran," "nuclear weapons" and "9/11" in the same breath.
His saber rattling won't work for the majority of Americans outraged by his conduct of the Iraq war and opposed to its escalation. But for his listeners gearing up for the end times -- a segment of American evangelicals increasingly united around this issue -- Bush fired up the grandiose rhetoric of a final showdown: "The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time."
Sarah Posner has covered the religious right for the American Prospect, the Gadflyer, and AlterNet. She is at work on a book about televangelists in politics.
Why Protest This Weekend?
A few times a year, thousands of people break out their tied-dyed t-shirts, collect all of their peace buttons, make snarky yet provocative posters, and hop on a bus to what has become a political and social ritual: the protest.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Not being silent has in fact become a staple of the American people's diet, and one can see that with the consistent anti-war activities that have been organized over the past four years.
On January 27, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding a massive protest against the Iraq War in Washington. We (I'm a member of the coalition's steering committee) will once again not be silent. Buses and vans are coming from at least 30 states and 111 cities packed with people who will bestow a historic welcome to the new Congress that we just helped elect and aim to change the trajectory of this war.
Since even before the war started, UFPJ and its more than 1,400 member groups have organized countless events, both nationally and locally, demonstrations large and small, have educated millions of people, and helped to mobilize and make visual the citizenry that is actively opposing this war.
The coalition has led and expanded the peace movement and provided a steady, consistent anti-war message, which has been the major force behind the swaying of public opinion from supporting this administration's decisions in the wake of 9/11, to the realization that this war was and still is illegal and immoral.
In the wake up 9/11, the president had the highest job approval rating since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at 90 percent. Today, the president's approval rating stands at lowly 34 percent. The public's approval on the Iraq War has virtually flipped from the beginning days of the war when 71 percent of the country approved of Bush's war, to now 70 percent disapproving of it.
Public sentiment is a powerful thing and the drastic change can be attributed to the constant message of the peace movement -- that this war is illegal, immoral, and destroying our country and the world.
Now that the majority of the country shares our opinion, the Jan. 27 peace march will trumpet UFPJ's unwavering message once again of "Bring All the Troops Home Now" to the streets of Washington, and we are going to make the new Congress listen.
Why March?
Most wars have two things in common: a few people make the decision to go to war and the majority of the people suffer from those decisions. There has been this divide in this country for too long, and we need to consistently fight it.
Young American soldiers are the ones who have to fight the war and die. Veterans are the ones who have to come back from war and be abandoned by their governments. Military families are the ones who day in and day out have to worry about whether their loved ones will come back. Young people are the ones who can't go to college because money for student loans has gone to pay for the war.
The people of the Gulf Coast are the ones who see everyday first hand what it looks like when their own government invests more into immoral wars than rebuilding our communities.
That is just in the United States. The Iraqis are suffering on a massive scale. An estimated 600,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the March 2003 invasion and many people across that country have no clean water or electricity. This madness has to stop.
Even if you, like most Americans, oppose this war, why march? Why protest? Why hold up signs in the middle of winter and walk around in a big circle? And how is that going to end the war?
Plenty of critics of mass peace movement mobilizations say that this practice is outdated and stale. Essentially, they are asking, "Why bother?"
Sure, it's hard to see sometimes how a public demonstration helps to achieve any political goal. But for me, a protest is not only one of the various means that activists can use to achieve a political end. It's also is something deeply and sincerely personal.
Here are the reasons, both political and personal, that I will be marching with thousands of others on January 27th. I hope you are convinced that you should be there too.
Build on political momentum: The political moment is now. After the remarkable election last November, in which people overwhelming voted for a change in Iraq and therefore a change in Congress, we as the peace movement need to build on that momentum.
Although public sentiment completely disagrees with President George W. Bush and agrees with UFPJ on ending this war, the commander-in-chief intends to send more troops into Iraq. Voting and public opinion are evidently not sufficient to change Bush's course.
We have been right all along, not the administration or the 108th and 109th Congress. We have helped to change the overall sentiment about the war in this country. We have a new Congress, which will only do something about the war if people from across this nation come to their doorstep, knock loudly and demand they end the occupation and bring the all the troops home now.
Strengthen Community: It is a truly amazing sight to see thousands of people, from every corner of this country, demonstrate for peace and justice. The endorsers of this march include everyone from the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition to Grandmothers for Peace, from religious organizations like Pax Christi to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, political organizations such as the Progressive Democrats of America and MoveOn.org.
This is, with certainty, a community of people fighting for the same thing. People save up money, take days off from work, organize buses from their towns and when they get here, they sleep on couches and floors, all for a cause bigger than their individual selves -- for peace.
We do it to build a community that consistently comes together to resist those who send ordinary young people to war. It is extremely important that this community of dissenters remains constantly visible, not only to the rest of this country -- but also to the rest of the world.
Learn from People: My father always told me the best way to learn is from other people. Whenever I go to a demonstration I meet some of the most intelligent and altruistic people I have ever met.
Literature is distributed with information that you can't read in newspapers, events are planned that you can't attend elsewhere, and bright people, eager to engage in conversation, are in abundance. From the 22-year-old Iraq veteran, to the mother who tragically lost her daughter in the war and Iraqi-Americans against this war, from the first-time protester, to veterans of the Vietnam War era protests -- it's a privilege to hear those perspectives with one's own ears. A collective grouping such as this is bound to have valuable information and ideas exchanged that will further propel this movement.
Be Part of History: Thirty-nine years ago Dr. Martin Luther King led a group of protestors in Chicago against the Vietnam War. Seventy-six years ago, Gandhi led the Salt Satyagraha where he and his followers marched to Dandi to protest the unjust taxation of salt by the British Empire. And 87 years ago Helen Keller protested by marching with actors for labor rights.
It is because of that tradition that I love to march, knowing that I am part of something much bigger than myself. The consistency of photographs of people expressing themselves in the streets is vitally important to have in our history books. When people look back at January 2007, they should remember the march on Washington as the defining moment of our time, just as Dr. King's, Gandhi's, and Helen Keller's marches did during their time.
Have Fun: Lastly, and most importantly -- it's a hell of a lot of fun. It is almost like being a rebellious kid again. You get to yell and scream, hold up signs and banners, bang on random objects -- all aimed at people in power. At the same time you have opportunities to learn, meet interesting people, be part of history, all while playing a part in the movement for peace.
Effectiveness
I believe when people question the effectiveness of these marches, they do have a point. It's hard to measure the impact of demonstrations. Immediate policy outcomes aren't the only factor. How do you measure how much thousands of people might have learned? How do you measure bonds being built and communities strengthened? How do you know how history would have unfolded if people did not consistently organize and mobilize against injustices?
Ending a war is no easy task. If one were to size it down to a simple plan, the peace movement has completed the first few steps: 1) We have helped drastically shift public opinion against the Iraq War; 2) We have helped fundamentally change the composition of Congress, which as Senators George McGovern and Mark Hatfield proved with the Vietnam War, has the power to end this quagmire.
All we have left to do is make this new Congress end this war ... now.
How is this demonstration going to help accomplish this last step?
Iraq Veterans Against the War member Geoff Millard (who served in the Army for more than eight years, and spent 13 months in Iraq) I believe answered that question best at a United for Peace and Justice organizing meeting for the demonstration, "When members of Congress say that cutting funds for this war and immediate withdrawal is 'off the table' -- they are dead wrong. They don't set the table. We set the damn plates down. We set the damn forks down. And we tell them what is for f'-ing dinner. And if thousands of people come to their door, sit down at the table, and tell them that -- they will listen."
It is because of people such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Geoff Millard that I am helping to mobilize this demonstration, and why thousands of us will march in Washington. It is because of them, and your need not to be silent, that I think you should march on January 27th too.
****
Eds. Note: For many of us who can't be present in Washington, there are other ways to amplify the message from the tens of thousands who will march and rally:
Demand that the media and politicians listen to the people. Let them know the peace movement lives in all our communities.
Media: Write letters to the editor or op-eds. Contact editorial boards, public editors, ombudsmen, reporters and columnists, radio and TV stations, producers, reporters, story suggestion boxes on media websites. Put messages on media Web sites and other blogs. Tell the media: The January 27 March speaks for me! Cover it fully and fairly!
Politicians: Call, e-mail, or put messages on their Web sites. Contact representatives and senators in Congress, and also state and local politicians. Tell the politicians: Represent the people: Vote to stop the war!
Saif Rahman is the Movements Coordinator for Institute for Policy Studies and Youth and Activism Editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is on the Steering Committee for United for Peace and Justice.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Not being silent has in fact become a staple of the American people's diet, and one can see that with the consistent anti-war activities that have been organized over the past four years.
On January 27, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) is holding a massive protest against the Iraq War in Washington. We (I'm a member of the coalition's steering committee) will once again not be silent. Buses and vans are coming from at least 30 states and 111 cities packed with people who will bestow a historic welcome to the new Congress that we just helped elect and aim to change the trajectory of this war.
Since even before the war started, UFPJ and its more than 1,400 member groups have organized countless events, both nationally and locally, demonstrations large and small, have educated millions of people, and helped to mobilize and make visual the citizenry that is actively opposing this war.
The coalition has led and expanded the peace movement and provided a steady, consistent anti-war message, which has been the major force behind the swaying of public opinion from supporting this administration's decisions in the wake of 9/11, to the realization that this war was and still is illegal and immoral.
In the wake up 9/11, the president had the highest job approval rating since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at 90 percent. Today, the president's approval rating stands at lowly 34 percent. The public's approval on the Iraq War has virtually flipped from the beginning days of the war when 71 percent of the country approved of Bush's war, to now 70 percent disapproving of it.
Public sentiment is a powerful thing and the drastic change can be attributed to the constant message of the peace movement -- that this war is illegal, immoral, and destroying our country and the world.
Now that the majority of the country shares our opinion, the Jan. 27 peace march will trumpet UFPJ's unwavering message once again of "Bring All the Troops Home Now" to the streets of Washington, and we are going to make the new Congress listen.
Why March?
Most wars have two things in common: a few people make the decision to go to war and the majority of the people suffer from those decisions. There has been this divide in this country for too long, and we need to consistently fight it.
Young American soldiers are the ones who have to fight the war and die. Veterans are the ones who have to come back from war and be abandoned by their governments. Military families are the ones who day in and day out have to worry about whether their loved ones will come back. Young people are the ones who can't go to college because money for student loans has gone to pay for the war.
The people of the Gulf Coast are the ones who see everyday first hand what it looks like when their own government invests more into immoral wars than rebuilding our communities.
That is just in the United States. The Iraqis are suffering on a massive scale. An estimated 600,000 Iraqis have lost their lives since the March 2003 invasion and many people across that country have no clean water or electricity. This madness has to stop.
Even if you, like most Americans, oppose this war, why march? Why protest? Why hold up signs in the middle of winter and walk around in a big circle? And how is that going to end the war?
Plenty of critics of mass peace movement mobilizations say that this practice is outdated and stale. Essentially, they are asking, "Why bother?"
Sure, it's hard to see sometimes how a public demonstration helps to achieve any political goal. But for me, a protest is not only one of the various means that activists can use to achieve a political end. It's also is something deeply and sincerely personal.
Here are the reasons, both political and personal, that I will be marching with thousands of others on January 27th. I hope you are convinced that you should be there too.
Build on political momentum: The political moment is now. After the remarkable election last November, in which people overwhelming voted for a change in Iraq and therefore a change in Congress, we as the peace movement need to build on that momentum.
Although public sentiment completely disagrees with President George W. Bush and agrees with UFPJ on ending this war, the commander-in-chief intends to send more troops into Iraq. Voting and public opinion are evidently not sufficient to change Bush's course.
We have been right all along, not the administration or the 108th and 109th Congress. We have helped to change the overall sentiment about the war in this country. We have a new Congress, which will only do something about the war if people from across this nation come to their doorstep, knock loudly and demand they end the occupation and bring the all the troops home now.
Strengthen Community: It is a truly amazing sight to see thousands of people, from every corner of this country, demonstrate for peace and justice. The endorsers of this march include everyone from the National Youth and Student Peace Coalition to Grandmothers for Peace, from religious organizations like Pax Christi to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, political organizations such as the Progressive Democrats of America and MoveOn.org.
This is, with certainty, a community of people fighting for the same thing. People save up money, take days off from work, organize buses from their towns and when they get here, they sleep on couches and floors, all for a cause bigger than their individual selves -- for peace.
We do it to build a community that consistently comes together to resist those who send ordinary young people to war. It is extremely important that this community of dissenters remains constantly visible, not only to the rest of this country -- but also to the rest of the world.
Learn from People: My father always told me the best way to learn is from other people. Whenever I go to a demonstration I meet some of the most intelligent and altruistic people I have ever met.
Literature is distributed with information that you can't read in newspapers, events are planned that you can't attend elsewhere, and bright people, eager to engage in conversation, are in abundance. From the 22-year-old Iraq veteran, to the mother who tragically lost her daughter in the war and Iraqi-Americans against this war, from the first-time protester, to veterans of the Vietnam War era protests -- it's a privilege to hear those perspectives with one's own ears. A collective grouping such as this is bound to have valuable information and ideas exchanged that will further propel this movement.
Be Part of History: Thirty-nine years ago Dr. Martin Luther King led a group of protestors in Chicago against the Vietnam War. Seventy-six years ago, Gandhi led the Salt Satyagraha where he and his followers marched to Dandi to protest the unjust taxation of salt by the British Empire. And 87 years ago Helen Keller protested by marching with actors for labor rights.
It is because of that tradition that I love to march, knowing that I am part of something much bigger than myself. The consistency of photographs of people expressing themselves in the streets is vitally important to have in our history books. When people look back at January 2007, they should remember the march on Washington as the defining moment of our time, just as Dr. King's, Gandhi's, and Helen Keller's marches did during their time.
Have Fun: Lastly, and most importantly -- it's a hell of a lot of fun. It is almost like being a rebellious kid again. You get to yell and scream, hold up signs and banners, bang on random objects -- all aimed at people in power. At the same time you have opportunities to learn, meet interesting people, be part of history, all while playing a part in the movement for peace.
Effectiveness
I believe when people question the effectiveness of these marches, they do have a point. It's hard to measure the impact of demonstrations. Immediate policy outcomes aren't the only factor. How do you measure how much thousands of people might have learned? How do you measure bonds being built and communities strengthened? How do you know how history would have unfolded if people did not consistently organize and mobilize against injustices?
Ending a war is no easy task. If one were to size it down to a simple plan, the peace movement has completed the first few steps: 1) We have helped drastically shift public opinion against the Iraq War; 2) We have helped fundamentally change the composition of Congress, which as Senators George McGovern and Mark Hatfield proved with the Vietnam War, has the power to end this quagmire.
All we have left to do is make this new Congress end this war ... now.
How is this demonstration going to help accomplish this last step?
Iraq Veterans Against the War member Geoff Millard (who served in the Army for more than eight years, and spent 13 months in Iraq) I believe answered that question best at a United for Peace and Justice organizing meeting for the demonstration, "When members of Congress say that cutting funds for this war and immediate withdrawal is 'off the table' -- they are dead wrong. They don't set the table. We set the damn plates down. We set the damn forks down. And we tell them what is for f'-ing dinner. And if thousands of people come to their door, sit down at the table, and tell them that -- they will listen."
It is because of people such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Geoff Millard that I am helping to mobilize this demonstration, and why thousands of us will march in Washington. It is because of them, and your need not to be silent, that I think you should march on January 27th too.
****
Eds. Note: For many of us who can't be present in Washington, there are other ways to amplify the message from the tens of thousands who will march and rally:
Demand that the media and politicians listen to the people. Let them know the peace movement lives in all our communities.
Media: Write letters to the editor or op-eds. Contact editorial boards, public editors, ombudsmen, reporters and columnists, radio and TV stations, producers, reporters, story suggestion boxes on media websites. Put messages on media Web sites and other blogs. Tell the media: The January 27 March speaks for me! Cover it fully and fairly!
Politicians: Call, e-mail, or put messages on their Web sites. Contact representatives and senators in Congress, and also state and local politicians. Tell the politicians: Represent the people: Vote to stop the war!
Saif Rahman is the Movements Coordinator for Institute for Policy Studies and Youth and Activism Editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is on the Steering Committee for United for Peace and Justice.
Super Bacteria out of Iraq, spreading in Europe's Hospitals
One more god-awful side-effect of Bush's war:
A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq -- and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe -- accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq,
Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.
The full story is now available here.
The several thousand word expose is set to bring uncomfortable new light to the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii that Pentagon officials previously said was likely a product of Iraqi soil.
"By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world," the magazine reveals.
The story will go live online early Monday, newsroom sources say, and appear in February's print edition.
FULL STORY HERE.
A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq -- and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe -- accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq,
Wired Magazine will report in a massive expose on Monday, RAW STORY has learned.
The full story is now available here.
The several thousand word expose is set to bring uncomfortable new light to the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii that Pentagon officials previously said was likely a product of Iraqi soil.
"By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world," the magazine reveals.
The story will go live online early Monday, newsroom sources say, and appear in February's print edition.
FULL STORY HERE.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Dinesh D'Souza is The Very Incarnation of Retarded Evil
People like this turn moderates and independents against Conservatism. If people like this are representaive of modern American conservatism, then, in our opinion, it should die from natural causes.
At first Dinesh D’Souza considered him “a dark-eyed fanatic, a gun-toting extremist, a monster who laughs at the deaths of 3,000 innocent civilians.” But once he learned how Osama bin Laden was viewed in the Muslim world, D’Souza changed his mind. Now he finds bin Laden to be “a quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious person.” Despite being considered a friend of the Palestinians, he “has not launched a single attack against Israel.” We denounce him as a terrorist, but he uses “a different compass to assess America than Americans use to assess him.” Bin Laden killed only 3,000 of us, with “every victim counted, every death mourned, every victim’s family generously compensated.” But look what we did in return: many thousands of Muslims dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, “and few Americans seem distressed over these numbers.”
I never thought a book by D’Souza, the aging enfant terrible of American conservatism, would, like the Stalinist apologetics of the popular front period, contain such a soft spot for radical evil. But in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza’s cultural relativism hardly stops with bin Laden. He finds Ayatollah Khomeini still to be “highly regarded for his modest demeanor, frugal lifestyle and soft-spoken manner.” Islamic punishment tends to be harsh — flogging adulterers and that sort of thing — but this, D’Souza says “with only a hint of irony,” simply puts Muslims “in the Old Testament tradition.”
Polygamy exists under Islamic law, but the sexual freedom produced by feminism in this country is, at least for men, “even better than polygamy.”
And the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statement that the West has a taboo against questioning the existence of the Holocaust, while “pooh-poohed by Western commentators,” was “undoubtedly accurate.”
Unlike President Bush, who once said he could not understand how anyone could hate America, D’Souza knows why Islamic radicals attack us. “Painful though it may be to admit,” he admits, “some of what the critics or even enemies say about America and the West ... may be true.” Susan Sontag never said we brought Sept. 11 on ourselves. Dinesh D’Souza does say it.
Dreadful things happened to America on that day, but, truth be told, D’Souza is not all that upset by them. America is fighting two wars simultaneously, he argues, a war against terror abroad and a culture war at home. We should be using the former, less important, one to fight the latter, really crucial, one.
The way to do so is to encourage a split between “radical” Muslims like bin Laden, who engage in jihad, and “traditional” Muslims who are conservative in their political views and deeply devout in their religious practices; understanding the radical Muslims, even being sympathetic to some of their complaints, is the best way to win the support of the traditionalists. We should stand with conservative Muslims in protest against the publication of the Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad rather than rallying to the liberal ideal of free speech. We should drop our alliance with decadent Europe and “should openly ally” with “governments that reflect Muslim interests, not ... Israeli interests.” And, most important of all, conservative religious believers in America should join forces with conservative religious believers in the Islamic world to combat their common enemy: the cultural left.
The “domestic insurgents” who, in D’Souza’s view, constitute the cultural left want “America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.” “I intend to name the enemy at home,” D’Souza proclaims, and so he does. Twenty recent members of Congress, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy, are on one of his lists, and 17 intellectuals (one dead, one British) are on another, with similar numbers of Hollywood figures, activists, foreign policy experts, cultural leaders and organizations. Some of those he identifies — Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Ward Churchill — might not be surprised to find themselves here.
Others — the sociologist Paul Starr, the historian Sean Wilentz, the clergyman Jim Wallis, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum — are less obvious candidates for inclusion. (One person, Thomas Frank, is mentioned on two different lists.) All these people might charge D’Souza with “McCarthyism” for supposedly exposing them, but he accepts the challenge. McCarthy, after all, was “largely right.”
Lest one think that D’Souza exaggerates the danger the cultural left presents to America, he has an ace in the hole to back him up: Osama bin Laden himself. Bin Laden, it seems, has taken pains to identify his natural allies within the United States and regularly engages in “signaling” them through videotapes in “an effort to establish a broader political alliance.” In particular, his fall 2004 tape, generally believed to have helped George W. Bush defeat John F. Kerry, contained a secret message to the cultural left that D’Souza, and D’Souza alone, has decoded.
“Whichever state does not encroach upon our security thereby ensures its own,” bin Laden declared. Anyone who thinks bin Laden used the term “state” to mean “country” — common usage in Europe and the Middle East — is wrong. He was actually telling residents of New York and Massachusetts that if they voted for the Democrats, he would refrain from killing them. D’Souza writes like a lover spurned; despite all his efforts to reach out to bin Laden, the man insists on joining forces with the Satanists.
D’Souza has fallen on hard times lately. Political correctness and affirmative action — the issues he has addressed in inflammatory ways in the past — no longer inspire the same passion. “The Enemy at Home” is clearly designed to restore his reputation as the man who will say anything to call attention to his views; charging prominent senators and presidential candidates with treason can do that. (One can dismiss D’Souza’s claim that “I am not accusing anyone of treason or even of anti-Americanism” as either self-delusional or dishonest; my guess is the former.)
Yet despite all his heated rhetoric, D’Souza’s book is unlikely to make much of a dent. It relies on a distinction between traditional and radical Islam that even he does not take seriously; there are no theological differences between the two camps, he suggests at one point, and even the “few” political differences between them are disappearing. It is filled with factual errors (Milton Himmelfarb, not Irving Kristol, compared the voting behavior of Jews to that of Puerto Ricans; Diana Eck is not a historian, but Thomas Frank, wrongly identified as a political scientist, is). In a line D’Souza will surely wish he had never written, he brags of the “remarkable progress” in Iraq “since Hussein’s removal from power.” Some of the people he elevates to the status of major enemies of the United States — Kristine Holmgren, Robert Jensen, Glenda Gilmore — are (no offense intended) anything but household names.
At one point in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza appeals to “decent liberals and Democrats” to join him in rejecting the American left. Although he does not name me as one of them, I sense he is appealing to people like me because I write for The New Republic, a liberal magazine that distances itself from leftism. So let this “decent” liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D’Souza is.
Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. People on the left, especially those who have been subjects of D’Souza’s previous books, will shrug their shoulders at his latest screed. I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Alan Wolfe teaches political science at Boston College and is the author of “Does American Democracy Still Work?”
This jackass has no clue what he is talking about. Every point he makes is so twisted that it comes nowhere close to reality.
I would hate to think that the only way I could make a living is to stir haterd with outrageous statements of non-fact, which can only serve to tear this country further apart.
At first Dinesh D’Souza considered him “a dark-eyed fanatic, a gun-toting extremist, a monster who laughs at the deaths of 3,000 innocent civilians.” But once he learned how Osama bin Laden was viewed in the Muslim world, D’Souza changed his mind. Now he finds bin Laden to be “a quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful, eloquent and deeply religious person.” Despite being considered a friend of the Palestinians, he “has not launched a single attack against Israel.” We denounce him as a terrorist, but he uses “a different compass to assess America than Americans use to assess him.” Bin Laden killed only 3,000 of us, with “every victim counted, every death mourned, every victim’s family generously compensated.” But look what we did in return: many thousands of Muslims dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, “and few Americans seem distressed over these numbers.”
I never thought a book by D’Souza, the aging enfant terrible of American conservatism, would, like the Stalinist apologetics of the popular front period, contain such a soft spot for radical evil. But in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza’s cultural relativism hardly stops with bin Laden. He finds Ayatollah Khomeini still to be “highly regarded for his modest demeanor, frugal lifestyle and soft-spoken manner.” Islamic punishment tends to be harsh — flogging adulterers and that sort of thing — but this, D’Souza says “with only a hint of irony,” simply puts Muslims “in the Old Testament tradition.”
Polygamy exists under Islamic law, but the sexual freedom produced by feminism in this country is, at least for men, “even better than polygamy.”
And the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s statement that the West has a taboo against questioning the existence of the Holocaust, while “pooh-poohed by Western commentators,” was “undoubtedly accurate.”
Unlike President Bush, who once said he could not understand how anyone could hate America, D’Souza knows why Islamic radicals attack us. “Painful though it may be to admit,” he admits, “some of what the critics or even enemies say about America and the West ... may be true.” Susan Sontag never said we brought Sept. 11 on ourselves. Dinesh D’Souza does say it.
Dreadful things happened to America on that day, but, truth be told, D’Souza is not all that upset by them. America is fighting two wars simultaneously, he argues, a war against terror abroad and a culture war at home. We should be using the former, less important, one to fight the latter, really crucial, one.
The way to do so is to encourage a split between “radical” Muslims like bin Laden, who engage in jihad, and “traditional” Muslims who are conservative in their political views and deeply devout in their religious practices; understanding the radical Muslims, even being sympathetic to some of their complaints, is the best way to win the support of the traditionalists. We should stand with conservative Muslims in protest against the publication of the Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad rather than rallying to the liberal ideal of free speech. We should drop our alliance with decadent Europe and “should openly ally” with “governments that reflect Muslim interests, not ... Israeli interests.” And, most important of all, conservative religious believers in America should join forces with conservative religious believers in the Islamic world to combat their common enemy: the cultural left.
The “domestic insurgents” who, in D’Souza’s view, constitute the cultural left want “America to be a shining beacon of global depravity, a kind of Gomorrah on a Hill.” “I intend to name the enemy at home,” D’Souza proclaims, and so he does. Twenty recent members of Congress, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy, are on one of his lists, and 17 intellectuals (one dead, one British) are on another, with similar numbers of Hollywood figures, activists, foreign policy experts, cultural leaders and organizations. Some of those he identifies — Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Ward Churchill — might not be surprised to find themselves here.
Others — the sociologist Paul Starr, the historian Sean Wilentz, the clergyman Jim Wallis, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum — are less obvious candidates for inclusion. (One person, Thomas Frank, is mentioned on two different lists.) All these people might charge D’Souza with “McCarthyism” for supposedly exposing them, but he accepts the challenge. McCarthy, after all, was “largely right.”
Lest one think that D’Souza exaggerates the danger the cultural left presents to America, he has an ace in the hole to back him up: Osama bin Laden himself. Bin Laden, it seems, has taken pains to identify his natural allies within the United States and regularly engages in “signaling” them through videotapes in “an effort to establish a broader political alliance.” In particular, his fall 2004 tape, generally believed to have helped George W. Bush defeat John F. Kerry, contained a secret message to the cultural left that D’Souza, and D’Souza alone, has decoded.
“Whichever state does not encroach upon our security thereby ensures its own,” bin Laden declared. Anyone who thinks bin Laden used the term “state” to mean “country” — common usage in Europe and the Middle East — is wrong. He was actually telling residents of New York and Massachusetts that if they voted for the Democrats, he would refrain from killing them. D’Souza writes like a lover spurned; despite all his efforts to reach out to bin Laden, the man insists on joining forces with the Satanists.
D’Souza has fallen on hard times lately. Political correctness and affirmative action — the issues he has addressed in inflammatory ways in the past — no longer inspire the same passion. “The Enemy at Home” is clearly designed to restore his reputation as the man who will say anything to call attention to his views; charging prominent senators and presidential candidates with treason can do that. (One can dismiss D’Souza’s claim that “I am not accusing anyone of treason or even of anti-Americanism” as either self-delusional or dishonest; my guess is the former.)
Yet despite all his heated rhetoric, D’Souza’s book is unlikely to make much of a dent. It relies on a distinction between traditional and radical Islam that even he does not take seriously; there are no theological differences between the two camps, he suggests at one point, and even the “few” political differences between them are disappearing. It is filled with factual errors (Milton Himmelfarb, not Irving Kristol, compared the voting behavior of Jews to that of Puerto Ricans; Diana Eck is not a historian, but Thomas Frank, wrongly identified as a political scientist, is). In a line D’Souza will surely wish he had never written, he brags of the “remarkable progress” in Iraq “since Hussein’s removal from power.” Some of the people he elevates to the status of major enemies of the United States — Kristine Holmgren, Robert Jensen, Glenda Gilmore — are (no offense intended) anything but household names.
At one point in “The Enemy at Home,” D’Souza appeals to “decent liberals and Democrats” to join him in rejecting the American left. Although he does not name me as one of them, I sense he is appealing to people like me because I write for The New Republic, a liberal magazine that distances itself from leftism. So let this “decent” liberal make perfectly clear how thoroughly indecent Dinesh D’Souza is.
Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible. People on the left, especially those who have been subjects of D’Souza’s previous books, will shrug their shoulders at his latest screed. I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Alan Wolfe teaches political science at Boston College and is the author of “Does American Democracy Still Work?”
Sunday Gab Fests with commentary
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press WriterSun Jan 21, 5:38 PM ET
Two leading Senate Democrats sought to build support Sunday for a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's war strategy in Iraq, cautioning that division over whether it goes far enough could spell defeat.
The proposed nonbinding resolution, which is largely symbolic and would have no affect on money for troops, states that "it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq."
The proposals to limit the war vary.
Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., and Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., say they want to cut funding for new troops to prevent the deployments. Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., has a proposal that would cap troops at existing levels.
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon said he was wary of the term "escalating" in the resolution and was working with Sens. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, and Ben Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Neb., on a "constructive, nonpartisan resolution that expresses the opposition of the Senate to the surge."
On Sunday, Biden said despite the competing proposals, there was overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress against the war. He said Vice President Dick Cheney was absolutely wrong in suggesting that a resolution against the war would "embolden our enemy."
"It is wrong to put American troops in the middle of a sectarian civil war," he said. "Are we not to register our sense of where we are going in this country?"
"Let every member of the Senate express themselves," he said, saying they owe that to the American public.
Two leading Senate Democrats sought to build support Sunday for a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's war strategy in Iraq, cautioning that division over whether it goes far enough could spell defeat.
No matter what the Resolution finally turns out to be, just get everyone on record. If Bush can't be stopped now, those who block meaningful congressional action will not be in D.C. much longer.
"The worst thing we can do is to vote on something critical of the current policy and lose it," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee. "The public doesn't support his policy, a majority of Congress doesn't support his policy.
And he will be dead wrong!
The new Democratic-led Congress heads this week toward its first vote on the war, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning debate Wednesday on a resolution condemning Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and Anbar province. A vote could come as early as that same day.The proposed nonbinding resolution, which is largely symbolic and would have no affect on money for troops, states that "it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq."
Well, not shit, Sherlock! Everyone with more than three neurons firing and who hasn't been in a coma or ideologically brain-damaged for the past 4 years, knows that.
It has generated some division among Democrats who want to go farther by cutting funding for new troops, moderates in both parties who want softer language and Republican leaders who have vowed to filibuster.Anyone who filibusters any Resolution against this criminal war, must be targeted for defeat in 2008, if not worse; like standing along side Bush and Cheney in the dock for their crimes against humanity.
On Sunday, Levin and Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., who sponsored the resolution along with Republicans Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe (news, bio, voting record) of Maine, called their proposal a first step that would send a "powerful message" that Bush must change course.Does anyone really believe he will hear any such message? Get real. He was sent a damned strong message by the electorate last November. He sure as hell hasn't heard that message!
Other congressional steps, such as limiting federal appropriations for the war, could come later if Bush were to continue pushing forward with additional troops in defiance of the resolution, they said.How much later? How many deaths later? How many billions later?
Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, downplayed the notion that support could splinter over how far lawmakers should go to restrain the president's power to wage war. He said he expected the half-dozen competing proposals to oppose the war each would get an airing.As well they should. The last thing we need is more lock-step congress. Besides, we want everyone on record.
"I don't think there's any muddled message here," Biden said. "They'll all get a chance to be voted on, with some discussion."The proposals to limit the war vary.
Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., and Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., say they want to cut funding for new troops to prevent the deployments. Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., has a proposal that would cap troops at existing levels.
Republican Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record) of Oregon said he was wary of the term "escalating" in the resolution and was working with Sens. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, and Ben Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Neb., on a "constructive, nonpartisan resolution that expresses the opposition of the Senate to the surge."
I find it hard to imagine that senators are now going to squabble over semantics while people die and are maimed in an unnecessary, criminal war! I thought that Senator Smith was at the "end of his rope." when someone is really at the end of their rope, they don't get bent out of shape about a word.
Besides, unlike troop level increases in the past (which haven't worked), this one is being announced as a new stratgey, a change in policy. It is, therefore, an escalation, against the will of the people, as clearly expressed.
Collins and Nelson, alongside Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., were expected to announce the details Monday.This is going to be some version of Baker-Hamilton, we expect.
And the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats say they would introduce legislation this week calling for greater accountability on how Iraq war funds are spent.That's nice. It should have been done years ago. Do you guys have a plan to get the wasted funds back, or are you just going to whine about it?
Bush, meanwhile, was expected to address the Iraq war in his State of the Union address Tuesday and renew his calls to work together with Democrats on a bipartisan way forward.Bullshit, By working together, Bush means going along with every nutty plan he comes up with.
Earlier that day, the Senate Armed Services Committee will also hear from Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, a former division commander in Iraq, who was tapped by Bush to replace Gen. George Casey as the top American commander in Iraq.On Sunday, Biden said despite the competing proposals, there was overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress against the war. He said Vice President Dick Cheney was absolutely wrong in suggesting that a resolution against the war would "embolden our enemy."
Or it could have just the opposite effect. It might be seen as the first sign of Democracy in this country in over 7 years.
Does Cheney believe that the criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq didn't embloden "our enemy? Does he understand that the invasion actually created far more enemies, even among our old allies?
"Every single person out there, that is of any consequence, knows the vice president doesn't know what he's talking about. I can't be more blunt than that," Biden said. "He is yet to be right one single time on Iraq."Our favorite comment of the day.
Hagel suggested there may be more Republican support than is generally known for seeking a vote in Congress toward ending the war in Iraq."It is wrong to put American troops in the middle of a sectarian civil war," he said. "Are we not to register our sense of where we are going in this country?"
"Let every member of the Senate express themselves," he said, saying they owe that to the American public.
Hagel is right-on! By all means, let our elected officials express themselves. We can't wait!
"We have anarchy in Iraq," he said. "It's getting worse."Much more of Bush, Cheney and their slack-jawed followers and there is going to be anarchy here!
Biden and Levin spoke on "Fox News Sunday," and Hagel was on CBS' "Face the Nation.Sunday, January 21, 2007
Where is the NIE on troop escalation?
Can they get by with another mere White-paper, if Congress is given, even, that, in place of a real NIE?
Have you noticed?
Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq.
This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq. Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none. Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance.
Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned “surge” in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been “almost ready” for months.
For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do.
With “sham-dunk” former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,5000 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.
From Mushroom Cloud to Lead Balloon
The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House’s warnings of a made-in-Iraq “mushroom cloud,” remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Tom Fingar, is a State Department professional not given to professionally selling out. And his boss, John Negroponte, is too smart to end his government career by following the example of his servile predecessors in conjuring up “intelligence” to please the president—not even for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Unvarnished NIEs sent to the White House by the Negroponte/Fingar team have not shied away from unwelcome conclusions undercutting administration claims, and have gone over like proverbial lead balloons. An estimate on Iran completed in early 2005, for example, concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before “early to mid-next decade,” exposing Cheney’s fanciful claims of more proximate danger. And an NIE produced in April ‘06 on global terrorism concluded that the invasion of Iraq led to a marked increase in terrorism, belying administration claims that the invasion and occupation had made us “safer.”
Worse still from the administration’s point of view, patriotic truth-tellers (aka leakers) inside the government apparently decided that administration rhetoric on both of these key issues had deliberately misled the American people, who were entitled to know the truth. The two unwelcome estimates meant two strikes on Negroponte.
Then the White House learned of an impending strike-three—this one an NIE assessing the future in Iraq and apparently casting doubt on the advisability of U.S. escalation. In a classic Cheneyesque pre-emptive strike, the estimate was put on hold; Negroponte was given a pink slip and assigned back to the State Department. There are rumors that Fingar is clearing out his desk as well. NIEs Can Be Important National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative genre of analytical product, embodying substantive judgments on key national security issues. They are coordinated throughout the 16-agency intelligence community and then signed by the Director of National Intelligence in his statutory capacity as chief intelligence adviser to the president.
In times past, presidents and their senior advisers actually read them and often took their judgments into account in the decision making process. There have been good estimates, and bad ones. In the latter category, an NIE of Sept. 19, 1962, entitled “The Military Build-Up in Cuba” estimated that the Soviet Union would not introduce strategic offensive missiles into Cuba (even while such missiles were en route). Embarrassing, but an honest mistake.
The NIE issued on Oct. 1, 2002, 10 days before the congressional vote on the war, was dishonest from the get-go. It was prepared by spineless functionaries eager to please their boss (Tenet) and his boss (Bush) by parroting the faith-based analysis of senior analyst Dick Cheney. It is by far the worst NIE ever produced by the U.S. intelligence community.
But, hey, it achieved its primary purpose of scaring Congress into approving a war of aggression. In the wake of that debacle, few of us intelligence alumni harbored much hope that honesty could be re-introduced into the estimative process any time soon. Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner went so far as to tell a TV host that he thought the CIA should be “dismantled.” Thus, it was a very welcome surprise to learn, thanks to patriotic truth-tellers, of the gutsy judgments of more recent NIEs—and to discover that a remnant of analysts of the old truth-to-power school have been able to ply their trade unencumbered under Fingar and Negroponte.
Some History:
Estimates on Vietnam.
As one of the intelligence analysts watching Vietnam in the sixties and seventies, I worked on several of the NIEs produced before and during the war. All too many bore this title: “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to North Vietnam.” Typical of the kinds of question the president and his advisers wanted addressed: Can we seal off the Ho Chi Minh Trail by bombing it? If the U.S. were to introduce X thousand additional troops into South Vietnam, will Hanoi quit? Okay, how about XX thousand? Our answers regularly earned us brickbats from the White House for not being “good team players.” But in those days we labored under a strong ethos dictating that we give it to policymakers straight, without fear or favor. We had career protection for doing that. And—truth be told—we often took a perverse delight in it. Our judgments (the unwelcome ones, anyway) were pooh-poohed as negativism; and policymakers, of course, were in no way obliged to take them into account. The point is that they continued to be sought.
Not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would be likely to decide on a significant escalation without seeking our best guess as to how U.S. adversaries would likely react to this or that escalatory step
What About Now? As noted above, an intelligence estimate on Iraq has been in process for months—and months—and months. It is not that the analysts are slower these days; it is that the White House has decided that, for political reasons, no estimate at all is better than an unwelcome one. The White House thought process seems to be this: With Fingar and Negroponte and their benighted ideas about fact-based, rather than faith-based, intelligence analysis, it is far better to duck the issue altogether—at least for as long as the congressional oversight committees continue to slumber.
Besides, if Cheneyesque pressure were again to be applied to intelligence analysts, there is a growing risk that this might turn some of them into patriotic truth-tellers. Besides, we already have the needed authorization—and even enough funding to send 21,500 additional troops. It seems quite clear that the additional troop decision was made without any formal input from the intelligence community. There would be no NIE on “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to Iraq”—no formal paper that could make the president’s decision appear highly questionable. Let the on-again-off-again NIE on prospects for Iraq languish. And let former CIA director, now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pretend, as he did on Jan. 12 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he is “unaware” of the existence of an NIE draft on prospects for Iraq. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., raised the subject with Gates, saying that Negroponte had assured him the NIE would be issued at the end of the month. Don’t hold your breath.
Ray McGovern chaired NIEs and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.
© 2007 Tom Paine
Have you noticed?
Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq.
This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq. Why no intelligence justification this time around? Because there is none. Having successfully cooked intelligence four years ago to get authorization for war, the Bush administration has zero incentive to try a repeat performance.
Nor is there any sign that the new Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees will even think to ask the intelligence community to state its views on the likely effect of the planned “surge” in troop strength. This, even though an NIE on Iraq has been “almost ready” for months.
For the Bush administration, it has been difficult enough whipping its fickle but ultimately malleable generals into line. The civilian intelligence chiefs have proven more resistant. So the White House is playing it safe, avoiding like the plague any estimate that would raise doubts about the wisdom of the decision to surge. And that is precisely what an honest estimate would do.
With “sham-dunk” former CIA director George Tenet and his accomplices no longer in place as intelligence enablers, the White House clearly prefers no NIE to one that would inevitably highlight the fecklessness of throwing 21,5000 more troops into harm’s way for the dubious purpose of holding off defeat for two more years.
From Mushroom Cloud to Lead Balloon
The NIE, which leaned so far forward to support the White House’s warnings of a made-in-Iraq “mushroom cloud,” remains the negative example par excellence of corrupted intelligence. The good news is that Tenet and his lackeys were replaced by officers who, by all indications, take their job of speaking truth to power seriously. Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, Tom Fingar, is a State Department professional not given to professionally selling out. And his boss, John Negroponte, is too smart to end his government career by following the example of his servile predecessors in conjuring up “intelligence” to please the president—not even for a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Unvarnished NIEs sent to the White House by the Negroponte/Fingar team have not shied away from unwelcome conclusions undercutting administration claims, and have gone over like proverbial lead balloons. An estimate on Iran completed in early 2005, for example, concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before “early to mid-next decade,” exposing Cheney’s fanciful claims of more proximate danger. And an NIE produced in April ‘06 on global terrorism concluded that the invasion of Iraq led to a marked increase in terrorism, belying administration claims that the invasion and occupation had made us “safer.”
Worse still from the administration’s point of view, patriotic truth-tellers (aka leakers) inside the government apparently decided that administration rhetoric on both of these key issues had deliberately misled the American people, who were entitled to know the truth. The two unwelcome estimates meant two strikes on Negroponte.
Then the White House learned of an impending strike-three—this one an NIE assessing the future in Iraq and apparently casting doubt on the advisability of U.S. escalation. In a classic Cheneyesque pre-emptive strike, the estimate was put on hold; Negroponte was given a pink slip and assigned back to the State Department. There are rumors that Fingar is clearing out his desk as well. NIEs Can Be Important National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative genre of analytical product, embodying substantive judgments on key national security issues. They are coordinated throughout the 16-agency intelligence community and then signed by the Director of National Intelligence in his statutory capacity as chief intelligence adviser to the president.
In times past, presidents and their senior advisers actually read them and often took their judgments into account in the decision making process. There have been good estimates, and bad ones. In the latter category, an NIE of Sept. 19, 1962, entitled “The Military Build-Up in Cuba” estimated that the Soviet Union would not introduce strategic offensive missiles into Cuba (even while such missiles were en route). Embarrassing, but an honest mistake.
The NIE issued on Oct. 1, 2002, 10 days before the congressional vote on the war, was dishonest from the get-go. It was prepared by spineless functionaries eager to please their boss (Tenet) and his boss (Bush) by parroting the faith-based analysis of senior analyst Dick Cheney. It is by far the worst NIE ever produced by the U.S. intelligence community.
But, hey, it achieved its primary purpose of scaring Congress into approving a war of aggression. In the wake of that debacle, few of us intelligence alumni harbored much hope that honesty could be re-introduced into the estimative process any time soon. Former CIA Director Stansfield Turner went so far as to tell a TV host that he thought the CIA should be “dismantled.” Thus, it was a very welcome surprise to learn, thanks to patriotic truth-tellers, of the gutsy judgments of more recent NIEs—and to discover that a remnant of analysts of the old truth-to-power school have been able to ply their trade unencumbered under Fingar and Negroponte.
Some History:
Estimates on Vietnam.
As one of the intelligence analysts watching Vietnam in the sixties and seventies, I worked on several of the NIEs produced before and during the war. All too many bore this title: “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to North Vietnam.” Typical of the kinds of question the president and his advisers wanted addressed: Can we seal off the Ho Chi Minh Trail by bombing it? If the U.S. were to introduce X thousand additional troops into South Vietnam, will Hanoi quit? Okay, how about XX thousand? Our answers regularly earned us brickbats from the White House for not being “good team players.” But in those days we labored under a strong ethos dictating that we give it to policymakers straight, without fear or favor. We had career protection for doing that. And—truth be told—we often took a perverse delight in it. Our judgments (the unwelcome ones, anyway) were pooh-poohed as negativism; and policymakers, of course, were in no way obliged to take them into account. The point is that they continued to be sought.
Not even Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would be likely to decide on a significant escalation without seeking our best guess as to how U.S. adversaries would likely react to this or that escalatory step
What About Now? As noted above, an intelligence estimate on Iraq has been in process for months—and months—and months. It is not that the analysts are slower these days; it is that the White House has decided that, for political reasons, no estimate at all is better than an unwelcome one. The White House thought process seems to be this: With Fingar and Negroponte and their benighted ideas about fact-based, rather than faith-based, intelligence analysis, it is far better to duck the issue altogether—at least for as long as the congressional oversight committees continue to slumber.
Besides, if Cheneyesque pressure were again to be applied to intelligence analysts, there is a growing risk that this might turn some of them into patriotic truth-tellers. Besides, we already have the needed authorization—and even enough funding to send 21,500 additional troops. It seems quite clear that the additional troop decision was made without any formal input from the intelligence community. There would be no NIE on “Probable Reactions to Various Courses of Action With Respect to Iraq”—no formal paper that could make the president’s decision appear highly questionable. Let the on-again-off-again NIE on prospects for Iraq languish. And let former CIA director, now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pretend, as he did on Jan. 12 before the Senate Armed Services Committee, that he is “unaware” of the existence of an NIE draft on prospects for Iraq. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., raised the subject with Gates, saying that Negroponte had assured him the NIE would be issued at the end of the month. Don’t hold your breath.
Ray McGovern chaired NIEs and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during his 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C.
© 2007 Tom Paine
Will Congress STOP Bush from attacking Iran, or stand guilty of crimes against humanity?
I know what the answer had damned well better be. Just accpeting this presidents word isn'y good enough. He has made it very clear that he cannot be trusted; not by the people and not by our other elected offficials.
He and Cheney have made this abundantly clear from day one.
Congress has the power to stop him and they had better damn well act now.
If Bush uses nukes, it will not only be a crime against humanity and a war crime of the highest magnitude;, it will also destroy this nation. I am not talking years from now, but very quickly.
Published on Saturday, January 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack - Or be Complicit in Nuclear War Crimes
by Jorge Hirsch
President Bush is invoking his "commander in chief" authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the President its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: it has the constitutional authority to make the "nuclear option" against Iran illegal. In so doing, it would stop the relentless drive to war against Iran dead in its tracks.
Notwithstanding Joe Biden's threat of a "constitutional confrontation" if Bush attacks Iran without Congressional authorization, the fact is that such an attack would be perfectly legal: the War Powers Act gives the US President legal authority to wage war against any country for 60 days. It would also be legal for Bush to order nuclear strikes against Iran: under NSC-30 of 1948, "the decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive". Neither Congressional "resolutions" nor votes to withold funding will have any effect on preventing such events.
However, Congress could pass a law making a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear nation in the absence of Congressional authorization illegal. In so doing, Congress would effectively be preventing Bush from launching any attack against Iran without its authorization, thus reclaiming its broader constitutionally assigned duties. Because Bush will not dare putting 150,000 American lives in Iraq at risk of Iranian retaliation without having the nuclear option on the table. By removing the nuclear option from the Bush toolkit, Congress would be forcefully imposing its will and that of the American people on an administration gone mad.
If Congress chooses not to face the fact that US military action against Iran is likely to lead to the first US use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki, each one of its members will share responsibility for the nefarious chain of events that is likely to follow, and should be preparing to face his/her very own nuclear Nuremberg trial.
Preparations for the Iran attack
The following recent events have led to widespread suspicions that a US/ Israeli attack on Iran is imminent:
How Congress can act?
Congress can pass a law that will have a real, immediate and historic effect: outlaw the US use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states . Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 14 of the US constitution empowers Congress to regulate the Armed Forces. Congress cannot micromanage the conduct of war, that is up to the President, the Commander in Chief. But Congress can outlaw broad war practices, such as torture, or the use of nuclear weapons in any or all circumstances, by regulating what US Armed Forces can and cannot do. An example of such a bill, vetted by prominent constitutional law experts, is given here.
Critics will say that nuclear weapons may be necessary against countries on the verge of acquiring them. The law can allow for it: it should specify that Congress has the authority to designate any country it chooses as a "nuclear weapon state", not subject to this restriction.
Congress could even outlaw the US "first use of nuclear weapons" against anybody without "the prior, explicit authorization of Congress". Such legislation was considered and voted down by the US Senate in 1972, and it was considered again in hearings in the House of Representatives in 1976: "First use of nuclear weapons: preserving responsible control". We are suggesting here a much milder restriction on presidential authority.
Would the passage of such a law implicitly condone a conventional attack on Iran?
In no way. On the contrary, it would instantly bring the drive to attack Iran to a screeching halt, because Bush will not dare attacking Iran without having his "nuclear option" on the table. Such a law will absolutely constrain the choices the President has. No matter how much "Commander in Chief" power President Bush thinks he has, he would not be able to ignore such a law without committing an impeachable offense. If Congress decides that attacking Iran is a good idea, Congress can vote to declare that Iran is a nuclear-weapon state, subject to US nuclear attack, putting the nuclear option back on the table (and by showing its determination, making the "nuclear option" a more credible "deterrent"). The President, however, would be forced to bring his case to Congress.
Would the passing of such a law "embolden" Iran?
Not likely. Iran has not been deterred from continuing enrichment by US threats, UN sanctions, nor statements that the "nuclear option" is on the table. A forceful statement by the US that it will use overwhelming conventional force against Iran if necessary, and reserving the right to declare Iran a nuclear country subject to US nuclear attack at any time, should be more than enough to keep Iran in check.
Such a bill would put the momentous decision to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states in the hands of Congress, closer to the American people, where it belongs, rather than at the sole discretion of an Executive gone mad. More sweeping measures such as "abolishing nuclear weapons" are unrealistic and have no chance of succeeding, hence they are counterproductive.
Majority vote of both chambers, then overturning the presidential veto: a mere 2/3 of Congress willing to avert a course of action that would bring humanity to the brink, is all that's needed. Which Congressperson will have the courage to step up to the plate and get the ball rolling? Dennis Kucinich? Ron Paul? Robert Byrd? Chuck Hagel? Russ Feingold? John Murtha? Jim Webb?
Or, Congressmembers can choose to continue the posturing, make lofty speeches, write letters to the President, pass "sense of Congress" resolutions, even cut funding, all the while balancing their individual aspirations for 2008. None of it will stop this administration.
US nuclear weapons use
This column and others have been exposing for many months the evidence that this administration has been carrying out a deliberate plan to set up the conditions that will lead to the US use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and its motivations for it [1], [2], [3].
Congress is on notice and cannot claim ignorance.
The President has publicly refused to take the "nuclear option" against Iran off the table. US nuclear weapons policies have undergone sweeping changes in the last 6 years, laying the doctrinal foundations that invite US nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries under a variety of easily satisfied conditions. Military command structure and Pentagon guidelines have been "transformed" by Rumsfeld for that purpose. The B61-11 nuclear bunker busters are in the stockpile, ready to be used. The President has sole full authority to order their use, Congress has no say.
Congress knows full well what this President is capable of doing. By not acting, Congress is condoning this state of affairs, effectively putting its seal of approval on what is about to happen. America will hold each member of Congress fully responsible for it.
The German Reichstag in 1933 formally voted to transfer its powers to the Executive, thus avoiding being complicit in the impending war crimes. The US Congress has not had such good sense, even while abdicating its powers in practice, and it will face the consequences of its inaction. Time is running out.
Crimes against humanity
Using nuclear weapons against Iran, even just destroying one Iranian underground facility with nuclear bunker busters, with minimal "collateral damage", is a crime against humanity because:
It will break the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Once a nuclear weapon is used again, it will invite use by others. There is no sharp line dividing small from large nuclear weapons, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting humans, civilians or military.
Iran is years away from the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons by any estimate, hence it is a "non-nuclear-weapon state" (NNWS).
A US or Israeli use of a nuclear weapon against a NNWS will instantly destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and lead to widespread nuclear proliferation.
" Weight for weight, the energy produced by a nuclear explosion is millions of times more powerful than a conventional explosion". So is the number of people it kills.
With no NPT and many more nuclear countries the potential for escalating nuclear war will be exponentially enhanced.
Nuclear war can lead to hundreds of millions of deaths, to the destruction of civilization and to the destruction of all life on earth.
The American Physical Society, representing the community of scientists that brought nuclear weapons into existence, has recently for the first time in its history issued a statement of deep concern about "the possible use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states" and its consequences for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and some of America's most eminent scientists recently wrote to President Bush that such action would be "gravely irresponsible" and lead to "disastrous consequences".
Does Iran share responsibility?
Iran is pursuing a civilian nuclear program, allowed under the NPT. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, only "suspicions". It is always possible to interpret any action by Iran in a negative way. If Iran slows down its enrichment activity, the press reports that "diplomats in Vienna began to worry that there was so little activity at Iran's main nuclear site that perhaps work had started on a secret site elsewhere in the country". (Of course no mention on who those "diplomats in Vienna" are). If Iran accelerates its enrichment activity, "Iran heightened international concerns by announcing April 11 that it had enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges".
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Saddam Hussein "chose war" by not being able to allay "concerns" that he didn't have the weapons he didn't have.
Vice-President Cheney stated last Sunday on national TV "There's no reason in the world why Iran needs to continue to pursue nuclear weapons". This is the same Vice-President that stated in 2002 "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." His statements then were as categorical and as unsubstantiated as his statements today, and the 2002 statements were proven categorically false.
Why doesn't Congress demand that Cheney substantiate his statements today or else shut up or else step down? Isn't lying on matters of national security an impeachable offense?
Iran bears no responsibility for the rising tensions. When Cheney states "Iran's a problem in a much larger sense. At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day. So the threat that Iran represents is growing, it's multi- dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region" he is candidly stating the Bush administration agenda, just as he did in 2002.
And Fox news' Chris Wallace is happy to spell it out: "In fact, it was the basis of the Bush doctrine: You will not allow the world's most dangerous powers to get access to the world's most dangerous weapons. Can you pledge that, before you and the president leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?" Cheney's ominous answer: "I think we're working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem", as America is massing up its military power in the Persian Gulf, just like it did at this same time of the year in 2003.
On March 6, 2003, when asked whether or not the US would attack Iraq, President Bush answered "we're days away from resolving this issue at the Security Council", and "we're working with Security Council members to resolve this issue at the Security Council". 14 days later the US attacked Iraq, without Security Council's approval. Watch for a similar script in the weeks ahead.
Congress' guilt
Each member of Congress knows that the US President has full legal authority today to launch a nuclear attack against any country in the world. Each member of Congress knows that the Constitution assigns Congress the responsibility to regulate the Armed Forces, and that Congress has the authority to regulate the use of nuclear weapons. Each member of Congress knows the sweeping changes in US nuclear weapons policies and planning undertaken during this administration.
Any private assurances that Bush may have given to members of Congress that he will not order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran without congressional authorization are worthless. He can legally do it, and he will.
Any arguments the administration may put forth that legislating over nuclear weapons use will have a detrimental effect on the diplomatic effort vis-a-vis Iran will be as disingenuous as the arguments in September 2002 that Congress should authorize the use of force against Iraq so that diplomacy could succeed: "I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace"; "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's -- this will be -- this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about."
Crimes of omission are punishable under international [1] and US domestic law. Principle VII of the Nuremberg tribunal stated "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
If Congress doesn't legislate on the US use of nuclear weapons, and President Bush orders the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, he will be doing it in the name of each and every member of the 110th Congress.
The United States will have instantly offered the world 535 new defendants for future war crimes tribunals. Nuclear weapons are million-times more powerful than conventional weapons. If 535 million people die in ensuing nuclear conflicts, each member of the 110th Congress will have 1 million human lives on his/her own personal account.
Saddam Hussein and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti went to the gallows for a mere 148.
Jorge Hirsch is a Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He recently organized of a recent petition, circulated among leading physicists, opposing the new nuclear weapons policies adopted by the US in t
he past 5 years. He is a frequent commentator on Iran and nuclear weapons.
He and Cheney have made this abundantly clear from day one.
Congress has the power to stop him and they had better damn well act now.
If Bush uses nukes, it will not only be a crime against humanity and a war crime of the highest magnitude;, it will also destroy this nation. I am not talking years from now, but very quickly.
Published on Saturday, January 20, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack - Or be Complicit in Nuclear War Crimes
by Jorge Hirsch
President Bush is invoking his "commander in chief" authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the President its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: it has the constitutional authority to make the "nuclear option" against Iran illegal. In so doing, it would stop the relentless drive to war against Iran dead in its tracks.
Notwithstanding Joe Biden's threat of a "constitutional confrontation" if Bush attacks Iran without Congressional authorization, the fact is that such an attack would be perfectly legal: the War Powers Act gives the US President legal authority to wage war against any country for 60 days. It would also be legal for Bush to order nuclear strikes against Iran: under NSC-30 of 1948, "the decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive". Neither Congressional "resolutions" nor votes to withold funding will have any effect on preventing such events.
However, Congress could pass a law making a nuclear attack on a non-nuclear nation in the absence of Congressional authorization illegal. In so doing, Congress would effectively be preventing Bush from launching any attack against Iran without its authorization, thus reclaiming its broader constitutionally assigned duties. Because Bush will not dare putting 150,000 American lives in Iraq at risk of Iranian retaliation without having the nuclear option on the table. By removing the nuclear option from the Bush toolkit, Congress would be forcefully imposing its will and that of the American people on an administration gone mad.
If Congress chooses not to face the fact that US military action against Iran is likely to lead to the first US use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki, each one of its members will share responsibility for the nefarious chain of events that is likely to follow, and should be preparing to face his/her very own nuclear Nuremberg trial.
Preparations for the Iran attack
The following recent events have led to widespread suspicions that a US/ Israeli attack on Iran is imminent:
- Additional aircraft carriers deployed to the Persian Gulf.
- US Patriot missiles just deployed to the Persian Gulf.
- F16 fighter planes just deployed to the Incirlik base in Turkey.
- Increased number of US nuclear submarines in Persian Gulf.
- Admiral Fallon named Centcom commander.
- Israeli pilots training for Iran bombing mission.
- Increased rethoric and provocations against Iran. The F-16's can deliver B61-11 nuclear
- bunker busters, and there may be such bombs at Incirlik.
How Congress can act?
Congress can pass a law that will have a real, immediate and historic effect: outlaw the US use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states . Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 14 of the US constitution empowers Congress to regulate the Armed Forces. Congress cannot micromanage the conduct of war, that is up to the President, the Commander in Chief. But Congress can outlaw broad war practices, such as torture, or the use of nuclear weapons in any or all circumstances, by regulating what US Armed Forces can and cannot do. An example of such a bill, vetted by prominent constitutional law experts, is given here.
Critics will say that nuclear weapons may be necessary against countries on the verge of acquiring them. The law can allow for it: it should specify that Congress has the authority to designate any country it chooses as a "nuclear weapon state", not subject to this restriction.
Congress could even outlaw the US "first use of nuclear weapons" against anybody without "the prior, explicit authorization of Congress". Such legislation was considered and voted down by the US Senate in 1972, and it was considered again in hearings in the House of Representatives in 1976: "First use of nuclear weapons: preserving responsible control". We are suggesting here a much milder restriction on presidential authority.
Would the passage of such a law implicitly condone a conventional attack on Iran?
In no way. On the contrary, it would instantly bring the drive to attack Iran to a screeching halt, because Bush will not dare attacking Iran without having his "nuclear option" on the table. Such a law will absolutely constrain the choices the President has. No matter how much "Commander in Chief" power President Bush thinks he has, he would not be able to ignore such a law without committing an impeachable offense. If Congress decides that attacking Iran is a good idea, Congress can vote to declare that Iran is a nuclear-weapon state, subject to US nuclear attack, putting the nuclear option back on the table (and by showing its determination, making the "nuclear option" a more credible "deterrent"). The President, however, would be forced to bring his case to Congress.
Would the passing of such a law "embolden" Iran?
Not likely. Iran has not been deterred from continuing enrichment by US threats, UN sanctions, nor statements that the "nuclear option" is on the table. A forceful statement by the US that it will use overwhelming conventional force against Iran if necessary, and reserving the right to declare Iran a nuclear country subject to US nuclear attack at any time, should be more than enough to keep Iran in check.
Such a bill would put the momentous decision to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states in the hands of Congress, closer to the American people, where it belongs, rather than at the sole discretion of an Executive gone mad. More sweeping measures such as "abolishing nuclear weapons" are unrealistic and have no chance of succeeding, hence they are counterproductive.
Majority vote of both chambers, then overturning the presidential veto: a mere 2/3 of Congress willing to avert a course of action that would bring humanity to the brink, is all that's needed. Which Congressperson will have the courage to step up to the plate and get the ball rolling? Dennis Kucinich? Ron Paul? Robert Byrd? Chuck Hagel? Russ Feingold? John Murtha? Jim Webb?
Or, Congressmembers can choose to continue the posturing, make lofty speeches, write letters to the President, pass "sense of Congress" resolutions, even cut funding, all the while balancing their individual aspirations for 2008. None of it will stop this administration.
US nuclear weapons use
This column and others have been exposing for many months the evidence that this administration has been carrying out a deliberate plan to set up the conditions that will lead to the US use of nuclear weapons against Iran, and its motivations for it [1], [2], [3].
Congress is on notice and cannot claim ignorance.
The President has publicly refused to take the "nuclear option" against Iran off the table. US nuclear weapons policies have undergone sweeping changes in the last 6 years, laying the doctrinal foundations that invite US nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries under a variety of easily satisfied conditions. Military command structure and Pentagon guidelines have been "transformed" by Rumsfeld for that purpose. The B61-11 nuclear bunker busters are in the stockpile, ready to be used. The President has sole full authority to order their use, Congress has no say.
Congress knows full well what this President is capable of doing. By not acting, Congress is condoning this state of affairs, effectively putting its seal of approval on what is about to happen. America will hold each member of Congress fully responsible for it.
The German Reichstag in 1933 formally voted to transfer its powers to the Executive, thus avoiding being complicit in the impending war crimes. The US Congress has not had such good sense, even while abdicating its powers in practice, and it will face the consequences of its inaction. Time is running out.
Crimes against humanity
Using nuclear weapons against Iran, even just destroying one Iranian underground facility with nuclear bunker busters, with minimal "collateral damage", is a crime against humanity because:
It will break the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Once a nuclear weapon is used again, it will invite use by others. There is no sharp line dividing small from large nuclear weapons, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting humans, civilians or military.
Iran is years away from the capability of acquiring nuclear weapons by any estimate, hence it is a "non-nuclear-weapon state" (NNWS).
A US or Israeli use of a nuclear weapon against a NNWS will instantly destroy the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and lead to widespread nuclear proliferation.
" Weight for weight, the energy produced by a nuclear explosion is millions of times more powerful than a conventional explosion". So is the number of people it kills.
With no NPT and many more nuclear countries the potential for escalating nuclear war will be exponentially enhanced.
Nuclear war can lead to hundreds of millions of deaths, to the destruction of civilization and to the destruction of all life on earth.
The American Physical Society, representing the community of scientists that brought nuclear weapons into existence, has recently for the first time in its history issued a statement of deep concern about "the possible use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states" and its consequences for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and some of America's most eminent scientists recently wrote to President Bush that such action would be "gravely irresponsible" and lead to "disastrous consequences".
Does Iran share responsibility?
Iran is pursuing a civilian nuclear program, allowed under the NPT. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, only "suspicions". It is always possible to interpret any action by Iran in a negative way. If Iran slows down its enrichment activity, the press reports that "diplomats in Vienna began to worry that there was so little activity at Iran's main nuclear site that perhaps work had started on a secret site elsewhere in the country". (Of course no mention on who those "diplomats in Vienna" are). If Iran accelerates its enrichment activity, "Iran heightened international concerns by announcing April 11 that it had enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges".
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Saddam Hussein "chose war" by not being able to allay "concerns" that he didn't have the weapons he didn't have.
Vice-President Cheney stated last Sunday on national TV "There's no reason in the world why Iran needs to continue to pursue nuclear weapons". This is the same Vice-President that stated in 2002 "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." His statements then were as categorical and as unsubstantiated as his statements today, and the 2002 statements were proven categorically false.
Why doesn't Congress demand that Cheney substantiate his statements today or else shut up or else step down? Isn't lying on matters of national security an impeachable offense?
Iran bears no responsibility for the rising tensions. When Cheney states "Iran's a problem in a much larger sense. At the same time, of course, they're pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. They are in a position where they sit astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20 percent of the world's supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day. So the threat that Iran represents is growing, it's multi- dimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region" he is candidly stating the Bush administration agenda, just as he did in 2002.
And Fox news' Chris Wallace is happy to spell it out: "In fact, it was the basis of the Bush doctrine: You will not allow the world's most dangerous powers to get access to the world's most dangerous weapons. Can you pledge that, before you and the president leave office, you will take care of the threat of Iran?" Cheney's ominous answer: "I think we're working right now, today, as we speak, on key elements of that problem", as America is massing up its military power in the Persian Gulf, just like it did at this same time of the year in 2003.
On March 6, 2003, when asked whether or not the US would attack Iraq, President Bush answered "we're days away from resolving this issue at the Security Council", and "we're working with Security Council members to resolve this issue at the Security Council". 14 days later the US attacked Iraq, without Security Council's approval. Watch for a similar script in the weeks ahead.
Congress' guilt
Each member of Congress knows that the US President has full legal authority today to launch a nuclear attack against any country in the world. Each member of Congress knows that the Constitution assigns Congress the responsibility to regulate the Armed Forces, and that Congress has the authority to regulate the use of nuclear weapons. Each member of Congress knows the sweeping changes in US nuclear weapons policies and planning undertaken during this administration.
Any private assurances that Bush may have given to members of Congress that he will not order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran without congressional authorization are worthless. He can legally do it, and he will.
Any arguments the administration may put forth that legislating over nuclear weapons use will have a detrimental effect on the diplomatic effort vis-a-vis Iran will be as disingenuous as the arguments in September 2002 that Congress should authorize the use of force against Iraq so that diplomacy could succeed: "I've asked for Congress' support to enable the administration to keep the peace"; "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's -- this will be -- this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about."
Crimes of omission are punishable under international [1] and US domestic law. Principle VII of the Nuremberg tribunal stated "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."
If Congress doesn't legislate on the US use of nuclear weapons, and President Bush orders the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, he will be doing it in the name of each and every member of the 110th Congress.
The United States will have instantly offered the world 535 new defendants for future war crimes tribunals. Nuclear weapons are million-times more powerful than conventional weapons. If 535 million people die in ensuing nuclear conflicts, each member of the 110th Congress will have 1 million human lives on his/her own personal account.
Saddam Hussein and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti went to the gallows for a mere 148.
Jorge Hirsch is a Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He recently organized of a recent petition, circulated among leading physicists, opposing the new nuclear weapons policies adopted by the US in t
he past 5 years. He is a frequent commentator on Iran and nuclear weapons.
Published on Saturday, January 20, 2007 by Inter Press Service
Swiss Glaciers Melting Rapidly
by Mattias Creffier
BRUSSELS - Receding Alpine glaciers are appearing a sure telltale of global warming. In Switzerland, 84 out of 85 glaciers under observation became shorter in 2006.The hot summers and the lack of precipitation in recent years will accelerate the melting process even more, scientists say. Glaciers are large masses of snow, ice and rock debris that accumulate in great quantities and begin to flow downwards under pressure of their own weight. They are formed when yearly snowfall in a region far exceeds the amount of snow and ice that melts in a given summer, like in the Swiss Alps. The results published by the Swiss Academy of Sciences confirm the measurements of previous campaigns, which clearly showed that Swiss glaciers are shrinking.
Approximately three-quarters of the observed shrinkage in 2006 is between one and 30 metres. On top of the list this year was the small Suretta glacier in the canton of Graübunden, which lost 725 metres of its length. This is due to the fact that since last year the ice tongue has been broken up in separate patches that melt more rapidly. The 24-km long Aletsch glacier in the canton of Wallis, Europe's biggest glacier and part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage, receded 114 metres. "The Aletsch has been receding steadily over the past 150 years," Swiss glaciologist Andreas Bauder of the Zürich-based Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) told IPS. "The smaller glaciers have shrunk and then grown again, but in the last 20 years they are all getting smaller."
The measurements clearly show the sensitivity of Alpine ice masses to global warming, though with a certain delay depending on their length. "A big glacier like the Aletsch gives you the long-term picture and will remain unaffected by a series of hot summers. A smaller glacier will react more quickly to climate changes, which makes them more vulnerable," Bauder said. Two variables enter into the glacier equation: temperature and precipitation. "Typically you would expect rising temperatures to lead to more precipitation, because warmer air can contain more water," Bauder said. "We do measure a bit more rain and snowfall, but apparently not enough to compensate for the rising temperatures." To get an immediate feedback on the weather pattern of the last year, the survey teams also measured the "mass balance". The measurement reflects the balance between the fresh snow the glacier receives from the surrounding area and the ice that melts away in a given year, and thus gives an idea of the state of health of a glacier.
The three glaciers under examination show a negative mass balance for several years in a row, which leads to expectation of a further recession. Last year was particularly bad because of little snowfall in the winter of 2005/2006. The Basodino glacier on the southern slopes of the Alps lost even more of its mass than after the extremely hot summer of 2003. In Switzerland, glaciers play an important role as water reservoirs for hydro-power production (generating half of all electricity). They are a vital source of water, and without them summer water levels in Europe would drop substantially. Moreover, they are frequently associated with natural hazards endangering humans and infrastructure. Steep glaciers are prone to ice avalanches, like the one from the Gutz Glacier in Grindelwald in 1996, which affected road infrastructure and injured tourists. Glacier retreat can lead to the formation of lakes, typically in the recently de-glaciated area in front of a glacier. Such lakes are often dammed by large moraines consisting of loose glacial sediments. The potential instability of moraine dams makes the lakes prone to water outbursts, with potentially devastating effects on the steep yet densely populated Alpine valleys. Scientists of the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glacioloy of the ETH Zürich have compiled a list of 82 glaciers which in the past have inflicted damage on persons or property.
Fifty-one of these are expected to cause new damage within the next 10 to 20 years.
The lower Grindelwald glacier already made the headlines in 2006. On Jul. 13 500,000 cubic metre of rock crashed down because it was no longer supported sideways by glacier ice, which had receded. The rockslide had been announced in advance, which allowed spectators on the terrace of a mountain hut on the opposite slope to watch the spectacle having coffee and cake. Research using satellite images by the University of Zürich indicates that Switzerland's glaciers lost 18 percent of their surface between 1985 and 2000, at a rate seven times faster than between 1850 and 1973. Small glaciers contributed disproportionately to the total loss of glacier area: they represent 18 percent of total glacier area but 44 percent of the losses incurred. By 2025, scientists expect a glacier area loss of 30 percent.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
Swiss Glaciers Melting Rapidly
by Mattias Creffier
BRUSSELS - Receding Alpine glaciers are appearing a sure telltale of global warming. In Switzerland, 84 out of 85 glaciers under observation became shorter in 2006.The hot summers and the lack of precipitation in recent years will accelerate the melting process even more, scientists say. Glaciers are large masses of snow, ice and rock debris that accumulate in great quantities and begin to flow downwards under pressure of their own weight. They are formed when yearly snowfall in a region far exceeds the amount of snow and ice that melts in a given summer, like in the Swiss Alps. The results published by the Swiss Academy of Sciences confirm the measurements of previous campaigns, which clearly showed that Swiss glaciers are shrinking.
Approximately three-quarters of the observed shrinkage in 2006 is between one and 30 metres. On top of the list this year was the small Suretta glacier in the canton of Graübunden, which lost 725 metres of its length. This is due to the fact that since last year the ice tongue has been broken up in separate patches that melt more rapidly. The 24-km long Aletsch glacier in the canton of Wallis, Europe's biggest glacier and part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage, receded 114 metres. "The Aletsch has been receding steadily over the past 150 years," Swiss glaciologist Andreas Bauder of the Zürich-based Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) told IPS. "The smaller glaciers have shrunk and then grown again, but in the last 20 years they are all getting smaller."
The measurements clearly show the sensitivity of Alpine ice masses to global warming, though with a certain delay depending on their length. "A big glacier like the Aletsch gives you the long-term picture and will remain unaffected by a series of hot summers. A smaller glacier will react more quickly to climate changes, which makes them more vulnerable," Bauder said. Two variables enter into the glacier equation: temperature and precipitation. "Typically you would expect rising temperatures to lead to more precipitation, because warmer air can contain more water," Bauder said. "We do measure a bit more rain and snowfall, but apparently not enough to compensate for the rising temperatures." To get an immediate feedback on the weather pattern of the last year, the survey teams also measured the "mass balance". The measurement reflects the balance between the fresh snow the glacier receives from the surrounding area and the ice that melts away in a given year, and thus gives an idea of the state of health of a glacier.
The three glaciers under examination show a negative mass balance for several years in a row, which leads to expectation of a further recession. Last year was particularly bad because of little snowfall in the winter of 2005/2006. The Basodino glacier on the southern slopes of the Alps lost even more of its mass than after the extremely hot summer of 2003. In Switzerland, glaciers play an important role as water reservoirs for hydro-power production (generating half of all electricity). They are a vital source of water, and without them summer water levels in Europe would drop substantially. Moreover, they are frequently associated with natural hazards endangering humans and infrastructure. Steep glaciers are prone to ice avalanches, like the one from the Gutz Glacier in Grindelwald in 1996, which affected road infrastructure and injured tourists. Glacier retreat can lead to the formation of lakes, typically in the recently de-glaciated area in front of a glacier. Such lakes are often dammed by large moraines consisting of loose glacial sediments. The potential instability of moraine dams makes the lakes prone to water outbursts, with potentially devastating effects on the steep yet densely populated Alpine valleys. Scientists of the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glacioloy of the ETH Zürich have compiled a list of 82 glaciers which in the past have inflicted damage on persons or property.
Fifty-one of these are expected to cause new damage within the next 10 to 20 years.
The lower Grindelwald glacier already made the headlines in 2006. On Jul. 13 500,000 cubic metre of rock crashed down because it was no longer supported sideways by glacier ice, which had receded. The rockslide had been announced in advance, which allowed spectators on the terrace of a mountain hut on the opposite slope to watch the spectacle having coffee and cake. Research using satellite images by the University of Zürich indicates that Switzerland's glaciers lost 18 percent of their surface between 1985 and 2000, at a rate seven times faster than between 1850 and 1973. Small glaciers contributed disproportionately to the total loss of glacier area: they represent 18 percent of total glacier area but 44 percent of the losses incurred. By 2025, scientists expect a glacier area loss of 30 percent.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
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