Psychological Torture; U.S. Policy

This is the most barbaric thing that could possibly be happening in the 21st Century.

"The mind's true liberation?"

The Bush administration has turned everything on it's ear. They are the anti-christ of the new century.

Anyone who has ordered or participated in this kind of atrocity should have the same done to them.


Lookout by Naomi Klein

A Trial for Thousands Denied Trial

[from the March 12, 2007 issue]

Something remarkable is going on in a Miami courtroom. The cruel methods US interrogators have used since September 11 to "break" prisoners are finally being put on trial.
This was not supposed to happen. The Bush Administration's plan was to put José Padilla on trial for allegedly being part of a network linked to international terrorists. But Padilla's lawyers are arguing that he is not fit to stand trial because he has been driven insane by the government.

Arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare airport, Padilla, a Brooklyn-born former gang member, was classified as an "enemy combatant" and taken to a Navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. He was kept in a 9-by-7-foot cell with no natural light, no clock and no calendar. Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones. Padilla was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. He was forbidden contact with anyone but his interrogators, who punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds. Padilla also says he was injected with a "truth serum," a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP.

Ok, I don't know what's up with this, but LSD is not truth serum, but under the oconditions Padilla was kept, it is a sure fire way to drive someone irreversibly insane. PCP? Good lord, what the hell for? PCP is not truth serum either, but it can make someone violent as hell.

According to his lawyers and two mental health specialists who examined him, Padilla has been so shattered that he lacks the ability to assist in his own defense. He is convinced that his lawyers are "part of a continuing interrogation program" and sees his captors as protectors. In order to prove that "the extended torture visited upon Mr. Padilla has left him damaged," his lawyers want to tell the court what happened during those years in the Navy brig. The prosecution strenuously objects, maintaining that "Padilla is competent," that his treatment is irrelevant.

US District Judge Marcia Cooke disagrees. "It's not like Mr. Padilla was living in a box. He was at a place. Things happened to him at that place." The judge has ordered several prison employees to testify at the hearings on Padilla's mental state, which begin February 22. They will be asked how a man alleged to have engaged in elaborate antigovernment plots now acts, in the words of brig staff, "like a piece of furniture."

It's difficult to overstate the significance of these hearings. The techniques used to break Padilla have been standard operating procedure at Guantánamo Bay since the first prisoners arrived five years ago. They wore blackout goggles and sound-blocking headphones and were placed in extended isolation, interrupted by strobe lights and heavy metal music. These same practices have been documented in dozens of cases of CIA "extraordinary rendition" as well as in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many have suffered the same symptoms as Padilla. According to James Yee, former Army Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo, there is an entire section of the prison called Delta Block for detainees who have been reduced to a delusional state. "They would respond to me in a childlike voice, talking complete nonsense. Many of them would loudly sing childish songs, repeating the song over and over." All of Delta Block was on twenty-four-hour suicide watch.

Human Rights Watch has exposed a US-run detention facility near Kabul known as the "prison of darkness"--tiny pitch-black cells, strange blaring sounds. "Plenty lost their minds," one former inmate recalled. "I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors."

These standard mind-breaking techniques have never faced scrutiny in a US court because the prisoners in the jails are foreigners and have been stripped of the right of habeas corpus--a denial that, scandalously, was just upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington, DC. There is only one reason Padilla's case is different: He is a US citizen. The Administration did not originally intend to bring Padilla to trial, but when his status as an enemy combatant faced a Supreme Court challenge, the Administration abruptly changed course, charging Padilla and transferring him to civilian custody. That makes Padilla's case unique: He is the only victim of the post-9/11 legal netherworld to face an ordinary US trial.

Now that Padilla's mental state is the central issue in the case, the government prosecutors have a problem. The CIA and the military have known since the early 1960s that extreme sensory deprivation and sensory overload cause personality disintegration--that's the whole point. "The deprivation of stimuli induces regression by depriving the subject's mind of contact with an outer world and thus forcing it in upon itself. At the same time, the calculated provision of stimuli during interrogation tends to make the regressed subject view the interrogator as a father-figure." That comes from Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation, a 1963 declassified CIA manual for interrogating "resistant sources."

The manual was based on the findings of the agency's notorious MK Ultra program, which in the 1950s funneled about $25 million to scientists to research "unusual techniques of interrogation." One of the psychiatrists who received CIA funding was the infamous

Ewen Cameron of Montreal's McGill University.

Cameron subjected hundreds of psychiatric patients to large doses of electroshock and total sensory isolation and drugged them with LSD and PCP. In 1960 Cameron gave a lecture at the Brooks Airforce Base in Texas in which he stated that sensory deprivation "produces the primary symptoms of schizophrenia."

There is no need to go so far back to prove that the US military knew full well that it was driving Padilla mad. The Army's field manual, reissued just last year, states, "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior," as well as "significant psychological distress."

If these techniques drove Padilla insane, that means the US government has been deliberately driving hundreds, possibly thousands, of prisoners insane around the world. What is on trial in Florida is not one man's mental state. It is the whole system of US psychological torture.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Europe is Wavering on Bush Eternal Wars

European capitals are wavering over how to approach the final two years of a US administration saddled with inconclusive wars.

By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

PARIS

The resignation of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi underscores the difficulty in Europe of governments trying to support US foreign policy on terror while at the same time pleasing their own publics.

Mr. Prodi, who has been in office less than a year, stepped down Wednesday after he was unable to convince his parliament of the "profound difference" between sending Italian troops to Afghanistan and sending them to Iraq. Italy currently deploys 1,950 troops in Afghanistan as part of a NATO mission of some 30,000 soldiers from European states.

The Prodi drama came hours after Britain and Denmark announced the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq – a blow to the White House as it deploys an additional 21,000 soldiers to stabilize Baghdad. In a further departure from perfect alignment with US policy in the Middle East, British prime minister Tony Blair also said this week that he will consider dealing with the Palestinian group Hamas as part of a new "national unity" government in the occupied territories.

European capitals are wavering over how to deal with a US administration in its final two years, one saddled with multiple inconclusive wars and battles against terror.

Yet despite the crisis in Italy, and general dislike in Europe for US tactics in fighting terrorism, a fairly clear distinction continues to exist in elite circles between US-led Iraq and Afghan ventures.

Those distinctions have both practical and legal foundations: While a defeat of the US in Iraq might be troubling for the West, an accompanying defeat in Afghanistan would be "catastrophic," says a Brussels-based European diplomat.

"The war in Afghanistan is seen by Europeans as having a real basis in the events of 9/11, under UN rulings of the right of self-defense," says Adam Roberts, a professor at Oxford University, "and this is seen as different from the war in Iraq.

"In Afghanistan, efforts at transformation are multilateral, as distinct from Iraq," he adds. "In Afghanistan, 2 million refugees have returned, whereas in Iraq, 2 million refugees have left. There is still a strong tendency to draw these distinctions, despite European concern over US policy, which is very widespread."

The center-left Prodi government in Rome was always fragile, a nine-party coalition whose main agreement was its dislike of the previous center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi. Prodi decided to resign, it appears, after he was unable to achieve supporting votes from within his coalition for Italy's troops in Afghanistan or to follow through on a two-year-old deal with Washington to expand a military base in Vicenza.

Still, growing negative perceptions in Italy over the US enterprise in the Middle East has been eroding many distinctions in the public mind between the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, according to French analyst Bernard Getta. Such perceptions deepened last week when a judge ordered that 25 suspected CIA operatives stand trial in Milan for kidnapping an Islamist cleric in 2003 and sending him to Egypt. On Feb. 18, tens of thousands of Italians marched in Vicenza.
In Britain, Mr. Blair's announcement Wednesday that he would forces in Basra by 1,600 as part of what may be a complete drawdown by the end of 2008 reflects a broad consensus about Iraq.
Blair emphasized the difference between relatively safer conditions in Basra and those in Baghdad, suggesting that British forces had played their part, and that "the next chapter ... will be written by Iraqis." But the Iraq deployment is increasingly less popular. Blair spoke with his heir apparent, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, sitting to his left; Mr. Brown is regarded as willing to take a more independent position vis-à-vis the White House.

In the case of the Palestinian territories, the US has said it won't deal with a unity government unless it abides by conditions set last year by the Quartet mediating group – Russia, the US, the EU, and the UN – that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel.
In Denmark, which will bring home all 460 ground troops from Iraq by summer, public opinion generally distinguishes between Iraq and Afghanistan, says Mogens Jakobsen, who runs Epinion, a polling firm in Copenhagen.

As in Britain, the Iraq war is losing traction among Danes.

"The British withdrawal gave the Danish government a window of opportunity to get out," Mr. Jakobsen says. "Popular support ... is dropping, and it is more difficult for the government to explain to the people why they are there. So the British action was a kind of fig leaf for the Danes."

In the past year, some Danes have become skeptical of their Afghan role. Mostly, this is over tensions with the US created by a Danish policy not to turn over Afghan prisoners to US forces. A perception exists that US troops have sometimes tortured prisoners in Afghanistan. But "the Afghan war is not ... high on the agenda of opposition," Jakobsen says.

Europe's pushback stems partly from frustration that until recently the US had not worked closely with its allies on the Continent. Yet most European foreign ministries, from Britain to Germany to France, are working closely with US allies on Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear question, and the Middle East, and are now considering a controversial US missile-shield for central Europe.

Italy has had 61 governments in 62 years; its parliamentary system is rife with squabbling parties that often take uncompromising positions. It remains unclear whether the government will disband, leading to new elections. That would pave the way for another run by Mr. Berlusconi.

Thursday, however, President Giorgio Napolitano began polling parties to determine whether a new government can be formed in the immediate future.

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Oh, Jeebus, It's All So Damned Insane!

It all comes down to control

Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author and foreign policy expert. On February 9, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in US policy toward Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Venezuela. 02/21/07 "FPIF" -- - Michael Shank:

With similar nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, why has the United States pursued direct diplomacy with North Korea but refuses to do so with Iran?

Noam Chomsky: To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the [Bill] Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn't do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress. So when [George W] Bush came into the presidency, North Korea had enough uranium or plutonium for maybe one or two bombs, but then very limited missile capacity. During the Bush years it's exploded.

The reason is, he immediately canceled the diplomacy and he's pretty much blocked it ever since.

They made a very substantial agreement in September 2005 in which North Korea agreed to eliminate its nuclear programs and nuclear development completely.

In return, the United States agreed to terminate the threats of attack and to begin moving toward the planning for the provision of a light-water reactor, which had been promised under the framework agreement.

But the Bush administration instantly undermined it. Right away, it canceled the international consortium that was managing the the light-water-reactor project, which was a way of saying we're not going to agree to this agreement.

A couple of days later they started attacking the financial transactions of various banks. It was timed in such a way to make it clear that the United States was not going to move toward its commitment to improve relations.

And of course it never withdrew the threats. So that was the end of the September 2005 agreement.

That one is now coming back, just in the last few days. The way it's portrayed in the US media is, as usual with the government's party line, that North Korea is now perhaps a little more amenable to accept the September 2005 proposal. So there's some optimism.

If you go across the Atlantic, to The Financial Times, to review the same events they point out that an "embattled George W Bush administration", it's their phrase, needs some kind of victory, so maybe it'll be willing to move toward diplomacy. It's a little more accurate, I think, if you look at the background. But there is some minimal sense of optimism about it. If you look back over the record - and North Korea is a horrible place, nobody is arguing about that - on this issue they've been pretty rational.

It's been a kind of tit-for-tat history. If the United States is accommodating, the North Koreans become accommodating. If the United States is hostile, they become hostile. That's reviewed pretty well by Leon Sigal, who's one of the leading specialists on this, in a recent issue of Current History.

But that's been the general picture, and we're now at a place where there could be a settlement on North Korea. That's much less significant for the United States than Iran. The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons, frankly.

Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons - nor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after World War II, it's been a US preserve.

That's been an axiom of US foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access, as people often say. Once the oil is on the seas, it goes anywhere. In fact if the United States used no Middle East oil, it'd have the same policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it'd keep the same policies.

Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it: the issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power. [Vice President] Dick Cheney declared in Kazakhstan or somewhere that control over a pipeline is a "tool of intimidation and blackmail".

When we have control over the pipelines it's a tool of benevolence. If other countries have control over the sources of energy and the distribution of energy, then it is a tool of intimidation and blackmail, exactly as Cheney said.

And that's been understood as far back as [late US adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian] George Kennan and the early postwar days when he pointed out that if the United States controls Middle East resources, it'll have veto power over its industrial rivals. He was speaking particularly of Japan, but the point generalizes.

So Iran is a different situation. It's part of the major energy system of the world.

Shank: So when the United States considers a potential invasion you think it's under the premise of gaining control? That is what the United States will gain from attacking Iran?

Chomsky: There are several issues in the case of Iran. One is simply that it is independent and independence is not tolerated. Sometimes it's called successful defiance in the internal record.

Take Cuba. A very large majority of the US population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time, with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it too. But the government won't allow it. It's attributed to the Florida vote, but I don't think that's much of an explanation. I think it has to do with a feature of world affairs that is insufficiently appreciated. International affairs is very much run like the mafia.

The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience, otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places. If you look back at the record, what was the main reason for the US attack on Vietnam?

Independent development can be a virus that can infect others. That's the way it's been put, [former secretary of state Henry] Kissinger in this case, referring to [Salvador] Allende in Chile. And with Cuba it's explicit in the internal record. Arthur Schlesinger, presenting the report of the Latin American Study Group to incoming president [John] Kennedy, wrote that the danger is the spread of the [Fidel] Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands, which has a lot of appeal to others in the same region that suffer from the same problems.

Later internal documents charged Cuba with successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years - to the Monroe Doctrine - and that can't be tolerated. So there's kind of a state commitment to ensuring obedience.

Going back to Iran, it's not only that it has substantial resources and that it's part of the world's major energy system, but it also defied the United States.

The United States, as we know, overthrew the parliamentary government, installed a brutal tyrant, was helping him develop nuclear power. In fact the very same programs that are now considered a threat were being sponsored by the US government, by Cheney, [Paul] Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others in the 1970s, as long as the shah was in power. But then the Iranians overthrew him, and they kept US hostages for several hundred days. And the United States immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein and his war against Iran as a way of punishing Iran.

The United States is going to continue to punish Iran because of its defiance. So that's a separate factor. And again, the will of the US population and even US business is considered mostly irrelevant. Seventy-five percent of the population here favors improving relations with Iran, instead of threats. But this is disregarded. We don't have polls from the business world, but it's pretty clear that the energy corporations would be quite happy to be given authorization to go back into Iran instead of leaving all that to their rivals.

But the state won't allow it. And it is setting up confrontations right now, very explicitly. Part of the reason is strategic, geopolitical, economic, but part of the reason is the mafia complex. They have to be punished for disobeying us.

Shank: Venezuela has been successfully defiant, with President Hugo Chavez making a swing towards socialism.

Where are they on our list?

Chomsky: They're very high. The United States sponsored and supported a military coup to overthrow the government. In fact, that's its last, most recent effort in what used to be a conventional resort to such measures.

Shank: But why haven't we turned our sights more toward Venezuela?

Chomsky: Oh, they're there.

There's a constant stream of abuse and attack by the government and therefore the media, who are almost reflexively against Venezuela. For several reasons. Venezuela is independent. It's diversifying its exports to a limited extent, instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States.

And it's initiating moves toward Latin American integration and independence. It's what they call a Bolivarian alternative, and the United States doesn't like any of that. This again is defiance of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine.

There's now a standard interpretation of this trend in Latin America, another kind of party line. With rare exceptions, Latin America is all moving to the left, from Venezuela to Argentina, but there's a good left and a bad left.

The good left is [Peruvian President Alan] Garcia and Lula [Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva], and then there's the bad left, which is Chavez, [Bolivian President Evo] Morales, maybe [Ecuadorean President Rafael] Correa. And that's the split. In order to maintain that position, it's necessary to resort to some fancy footwork.

For example, it's necessary not to report the fact that when Lula was re-elected in October, his first foreign trip and one of his first acts was to visit Caracas to support Chavez and his electoral campaign and to dedicate a joint Venezuelan-Brazilian project on the Orinoco River, to talk about new projects and so on. It's necessary not to report the fact that a couple of weeks later in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the heart of the bad guys, there was a meeting of all South American leaders.

There had been bad blood between Chavez and Garcia, but it was apparently patched up. They laid plans for pretty constructive South American integration, but that just doesn't fit the US agenda. So it wasn't reported.

Shank: How is the political deadlock in Lebanon impacting the US government's decision potentially to go to war with Iran? Is there a relationship at all?

Chomsky: There's a relationship.

I presume part of the reason for the US-Israel invasion of Lebanon in July - and it was US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it that - I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential US-Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, ie rockets. And the goal, I presume, was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran.

That's at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the invasion can't be taken seriously for a moment. That's the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades Israel has been capturing and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages.

It's been going on for decades - has anybody called for an invasion of Israel? Of course, Israel doesn't want any competition in the region. But there's no principled basis for the massive attack on Lebanon, which was horrendous. In fact, one of the last acts of the US-Israeli invasion, right after the ceasefire was announced but before it was implemented, was to saturate much of the south with cluster bombs. There's no military purpose for that; the war was over, the ceasefire was coming. UN de-mining groups that are working there say that the scale is unprecedented. It's much worse than any other place they've worked: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, anywhere. There are supposed to be about 1 million bomblets left there.

A large percentage of them don't explode until you pick them up, a child picks them up or a farmer hits it with a hoe or something. So what it does basically is make the south uninhabitable until the mining teams, for which the United States and Israel don't contribute, clean it up.

This is arable land. It means that farmers can't go back; it means that it may undermine a potential Hezbollah deterrent.

They apparently have pretty much withdrawn from the south, according to the UN. You can't mention Hezbollah in the US media without putting in the context of "Iranian-supported Hezbollah". That's its name. Its name is "Iranian-supported Hezbollah". It gets Iranian support. But you can mention Israel without saying US-supported Israel. So this is more tacit propaganda. The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very dubious.

It's not accepted by specialists on Iran or specialists on Hezbollah. But it's the party line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, ie "Syrian-supported Hezbollah", but since Syria is of less interest now, you have to emphasize Iranian support.

Shank: How can the US government think an attack on Iran is feasible given troop availability, troop capacity, and public sentiment?

Chomsky: As far as I'm aware, the military in the United States thinks it's crazy. And from whatever leaks we have from intelligence, the intelligence community thinks it's outlandish, but not impossible. If you look at people who have really been involved in the Pentagon's strategic planning for years, people like [retired US Air Force colonel] Sam Gardiner, they point out that there are things that possibly could be done. I don't think any of the outside commentators, at least as far as I'm aware, have taken very seriously the idea of bombing nuclear facilities. They say if there will be bombing it'll be carpet bombing. So get the nuclear facilities but get the rest of the country too, with one exception.

By accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in Shi'ite-dominated areas. Iran's oil is concentrated right near the Gulf, which happens to be an Arab area, not Persian.

Khuzestan is Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with Iran, not Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War. This is a potential source of dissension. I would be amazed if there isn't an attempt going on to stir up secessionist elements in Khuzestan.

US forces right across the border in Iraq, including the surge, are available potentially to "defend" an independent Khuzestan against Iran, which is the way it would be put, if they can carry it off.

Shank: Do you think that's what the surge was for?

Chomsky: That's one possibility. There was a release of a Pentagon war-gaming report, in December 2004, with Gardiner leading it. It was released and published in The Atlantic Monthly.

They couldn't come up with a proposal that didn't lead to disaster, but one of the things they considered was maintaining troop presence in Iraq beyond what's to be used in Iraq for troop replacement and so on, and use them for a potential land move in Iran - presumably Khuzestan, where the oil is.

If you could carry that off, you could just bomb the rest of the country to dust. Again, I would be amazed if there aren't efforts to sponsor secessionist movements elsewhere, among the Azeri population, for example. It's a very complex ethnic mix in Iran; much of the population isn't Persian.

There are secessionist tendencies anyway and almost certainly, without knowing any of the facts, the United States is trying to stir them up, to break the country internally if possible. The strategy appears to be: try to break the country up internally, try to impel the leadership to be as harsh and brutal as possible. That's the immediate consequence of constant threats.

Everyone knows that.

That's one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the US threats, that it's undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that's presumably its purpose. Since it's an obvious consequence, you have to assume it's the purpose. Just like in law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for intention. And here it's so obvious you can't seriously doubt it.

So it could be that one strain of the policy is to stir up secessionist movements, particularly in the oil-rich regions, the Arab regions near the Gulf, also the Azeri regions and others. Second is to try to get the leadership to be as brutal and harsh and repressive as possible, to stir up internal disorder and maybe resistance. And a third is to try to pressure other countries, and Europe is the most amenable, to join efforts to strangle Iran economically. Europe is kind of dragging its feet, but they usually go along with the United States.

The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores [President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated.

They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn't have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader [Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali] Khamenei.

But they don't report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love it when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn't exist, but they don't like it when Khamenei right afterward says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I'm aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei's more conciliatory positions in The Financial Times, but not here. And it's repeated by Iranian diplomats, but that's no good.

The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement, which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for 30 years. And that's not a good story, so it's either not mentioned or it's hidden somewhere. It's very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they're deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with, but now they're desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history, and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history.

They can't control it, and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded. We're supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would've liberated them anyway.

It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea!

Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can't be true.

Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi'ite-dominated, at least if it's minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn't want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi'ite population, probably a majority. Moves toward sovereignty in Iraq stimulate pressures first for human rights among the bitterly repressed Shi'ite population but also toward some degree of autonomy.

You can imagine a kind of a loose Shi'ite alliance in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the United States. And much worse, although Europe can be intimidated by the United States, China can't.

It's one of the reasons, the main reasons, why China is considered a threat. We're back to the Mafia principle. China has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his fist.

That's scary. In particular, it's dangerous in the case of the Middle East. China is the center of the Asian energy-security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq.

I'm sure that these issues are discussed in internal planning. It's inconceivable that they can't think of this. But it's out of public discussion, it's not in the media, it's not in the journals, it's not in the Baker-Hamilton report. And I think you can understand the reason.

To bring up these issues would open the question why the United States and Britain invaded. And that question is taboo. It's a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons.

It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically noble. And if you bring in normal moderate, conservative, strategic, economic objectives, you threatening that principle. It's remarkable the extent to which it's held. So the original pretexts for the invasion were weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda that nobody but maybe Wolfowitz or Cheney took seriously.

The single question, as they kept reiterating in the leadership, was: Will Saddam give up his programs of weapons of mass destruction? The single question was answered a couple of months later, the wrong way. And quickly the party line shifted. In November 2003, Bush announced his freedom agenda: our real goal is to bring democracy to Iraq, to transform the Middle East. That became the party line, instantly. But it's a mistake to pick out individuals because it's close to universal, even in scholarship.

In fact you can even find scholarly articles that begin by giving the evidence that it's complete farce but nevertheless accept it.

There was a pretty good study of the freedom agenda in Current History by two scholars, and they give the facts. They point out that the freedom agenda was announced on November 2003 after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, but the freedom agenda is real even if there's no evidence for it. In fact, if you look at our policies, they're the opposite. Take Palestine.

There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way.

So instantly, the United States and Israel, with Europe tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election.

That's accepted here in the West as perfectly normal.

That illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among Western elites, so deep-seated they can't even perceive it when it's in front of their eyes.

You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election.

There's a pretext for that too, repeated every day: Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those.

They obviously don't recognize Palestine, they certainly don't withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it - in fact they insist on it - and they don't accept past agreements, including the roadmap. I suspect one of the reasons why Jimmy Carter's book has come under such fierce attack is because it's the first time, I think, in the mainstream, that one can find the truth about the roadmap. I have never seen anything in the mainstream that discusses the fact that Israel instantly rejected the roadmap with US support.

They formally accepted it but added 14 reservations that totally eviscerated it. It was done instantly.

It's public knowledge -


I've written about it, talked about it, so have others, but I've never seen it mentioned in the mainstream before. And obviously they don't accept the Arab League proposal or any other serious proposal. In fact they've been blocking the international consensus on the two-state solution for decades.

But Hamas has to accept them. It really makes no sense. Hamas is a political party, and political parties don't recognize other countries.

And Hamas itself has made it very clear, they actually carried out a truce for a year and a half, didn't respond to Israeli attacks, and have called for a long-term truce, during which it'd be possible to negotiate a settlement along the lines of the international consensus and the Arab League proposal.

All of this is obvious, it's right on the surface, and that's just one example of the deep hatred of democracy on the part of Western elites. It's a striking example, but you can add case after case. Yet the president announced the freedom agenda, and if the dear leader said something, it's got to be true, kind of North Korean-style.

Therefore there's a freedom agenda even if there's a mountain of evidence against it. The only evidence for it is in words, even apart from the timing.

Shank: In the 2008 US presidential election, how will the candidates approach Iran?

Do you think Iran will be a deciding factor in the elections?

Chomsky: What they're saying so far is not encouraging. I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran.

It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that's really desperate would resort to that.

But if the Democratic candidates are on the verge of winning the election, the administration is going to be desperate. It still has the problem of Iraq: can't stay in, and can't get out.

Shank: The Senate Democrats can't seem to achieve consensus on this issue.

Chomsky: I think there's a reason for it.

The reason is just thinking through the consequences of allowing an independent, partially democratic Iraq.

The consequences are non-trivial. We may decide to hide our heads in the sand and pretend we can't think it through because we cannot allow the question of why the United States invaded to open, but that's very self-destructive.

Shank: Is there any connection to this conversation and why we cannot find the political will and momentum to enact legislation that would reduce carbon-dioxide emission levels, institute a cap-and-trade system, etc?

Chomsky: It's perfectly clear why the United States didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Again, there's overwhelming popular support for signing - in fact it's so strong that a majority of Bush voters in 2004 thought that he was in favor of the Kyoto Protocol, it's such an obvious thing to support. Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.

After all, that's the administration's constituency. I remember 40 years ago talking to one of the leading people in the government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms-control measures, detente, and so on. He's very high up, and we were talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially as a joke he said, "Well, it might succeed if the high-tech industry makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons-related research and production. If we get to that tipping point, maybe arms control will work." He was partially joking, but there's a truth that lies behind it.

Shank: How do we move forward on climate change without beggaring the South?

Chomsky: Unfortunately, the poor countries, the South, are going to suffer the worst according to most projections - and that being so, it undermines support in the North for doing much. Look at the ozone story. As long as it was the Southern Hemisphere that was being threatened, there was very little talk about it.

When it was discovered in the north, very quickly actions were taken to do something about it.

Right now there's discussion of putting serious effort into developing a malaria vaccine, because global warming might extend malaria to the rich countries, so something should be done about it. Same thing on health insurance.

Here's an issue where, for the general population, it's been the leading domestic issue, or close to it, for years. And there's a consensus for a national health-care system on the model of other industrial countries, maybe expanding Medicare to everyone or something like that.

Well, that's off the agenda, nobody can talk about that. The insurance companies don't like it, the financial industry doesn't like and so on. Now there's a change taking place. What's happening is that manufacturing industries are beginning to turn to support for it because they're being undermined by the hopelessly inefficient US health-care system.

It's the worst in the industrial world by far, and they have to pay for it. Since it's employer-compensated, in part, their production costs are much higher than those competitors who have a national health-care system.

Take GM [General Motors].

If it produces the same car in Detroit and in Windsor across the border in Canada, it saves, I forget the number, I think over $1,000 with the Windsor production because there's a national health-care system in Canada, it's much more efficient, it's much cheaper, it's much more effective. So the manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national health care. Now it's beginning to put it on the agenda.

It doesn't matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country - another thing we're not allowed to say but it's obvious - if part of that sector becomes in favor, then the issue moves on to the political agenda.

Shank: So how does the South get its voice heard on the international agenda? Is the World Social Forum a place for it?

Chomsky: The World Social Forum is very important, but of course that can't be covered in the West. In fact, I remember reading an article, I think in The Financial Times, about the two major forums that were taking place. One was the World Economic Forum in Davos and a second was a right-wing forum in Herzeliyah in Israel. Those were the two forums. Of course there was also the World Social Forum in Nairobi, but that's only tens of thousands of people from around the world.

Shank: With the trend toward vilifying the G77 at the UN, one wonders where the developing world can effectively voice its concerns.

Chomsky: The developing-world voice can be amplified enormously by support from the wealthy and the privileged, otherwise it's very likely to be marginalized, as in every other issue.

Shank: So it's up to us.

Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Shank is the policy director for the 3D Security Initiative.


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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.