"Godless" is Gutless by Greg Palast

"Godless" is Gutless

Greg Palast
June 7th, 2006

Anne Coulter says we're "Godless" -- we "liberals." And by "liberals," she means anyone who wants to keep the government out of our underpants, out of Iraq, and out of the business of helping Big Business shoplift America.

It's time someone took on the blonde bully.

Anne, I realize yesterday was special day for you, releasing your book on June 6 -- 06-06-06.

Going through it, I must, admit, is heavy going: 'Godless' is a 300-page brick of solid meanness and pin-head hatreds packaged like a fashion magazine: Big Brother wears Prada.

You accuse those who don't sign on to your list of prejudices as the Lord's enemies. That's not original, Anne: the Taliban thought of it before you and they too were partial to dressing in black.

You want to talk about Godless? OK, let's go:

Would the Lord lie us into a war?

Would the Lord let thousands drown in New Orleans while chilling at a golf resort?

Would the Lord have removed tens of thousands of Black soldiers from the voter rolls as the Republican Party did in 2004?

You talk about being "Christian" -- but with all your zeal to fire up electric chairs and Abrams tanks, you sound more like a Roman.

I suggest this, Anne: let's debate. Set the time, set the place, and I'll be there. Nose to nose, my facts versus your fanaticism.

But I know you don't have the guts to do anything but lob idiocies from your electronic Fox-hole.

Your new book is called, "Godless." Your autobiography should be called, "Gutless."

Greg Palast, winner of the George Orwell Courage-In-Journalism Prize, is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Yesterday, he released his book, Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." Order it now from www.GregPalast.com or your local book shop.

The George, Laura, and Condi Show

June 7, 2006 -- Mayflower Hotel sources in Washington, DC have gone from "neither confirm nor deny" the presence of Laura Bush there last week to conceding that if she stayed there "she would have been registered under a different name." This is standard procedure when the Secret Service wants to cover the presence of a VIP, especially the First Lady whose presence at the hotel last week was bound to fuel speculation about her rocky relationship with George W. Bush. The Mayflower Hotel is owned by Marriott Corporation and insiders report that the corporate headquarters has warned against anyone talking about the presence last week of the First Lady. Longtime employees are definitely "afraid to talk about this Mrs. Bush thing," said one source.

From a State Department source, WMR has learned that there is definitely "something to the Bush-Rice" relationship. "They definitely have something going on between them," said the source speaking on strict anonymity.

4 years after failed coup, Venezuela tallies gains

4 years after failed coup, Venezuela tallies gains

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Archive Recent Editions 2006 Editions April 22, 2006
Author: W. T. Whitney Jr.

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 04/20/06 15:02


The course of Venezuelan politics after the failed 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez contains elements of both change and continuity.

Four years later, Chavez remains the target of U.S. media disinformation. For example, on the eve of the 2002 coup attempt, Juan Forero of The New York Times wrote of Chavez's "autocratic style and left-wing policies," which "have alienated a growing number of people." Shortly after the coup Forero gave credence to the lie that the Venezuelan president had resigned, and hailed his illegitimate would-be successor as a "manager and conciliator."

Chavez, of course, was almost immediately restored to office by a mass outpouring of the Venezuelan people and with the aid of patriotic elements in the military.

Today, writing about presidential elections slated for this December, Forero heaps praise on an opposition candidate, Julio Borges of the Justice First party. While other opposition parties seem to be favoring an election boycott, Forero has Borges saying that a boycott "only adds to Mr. Chavez's power and has already made Venezuela in effect a one-party state." The suggestion is that Chavez has bought the voters’ favor, "having funneled billions of dollars in oil revenue to the poor."

The electoral opposition is frustrated and divided. After multiple election victories and a parliamentary election boycott last November, the Chavez movement has electoral politics just about to itself now.

Surveys show that almost two-thirds of the adult population is behind the president. His government gets high marks for advances in education (69.4 percent), housing (65.3 percent) and health care (65.2 percent). A Chilean survey last year showed that Venezuelans are first among Latin Americans in viewing their country as "totally democratic."

Venezuela's working people have experienced an increase in their buying power. New car sales have risen sharply, due in part to cheap gasoline, and last year shopping mall sales rose 40 percent.

On the other hand, surveys show that more than 50 percent of the people are worried about crime and corruption. Nationwide protests staged on April 6 in response to the murders of three teenage brothers and their chauffeur demonstrate that such concerns can quickly turn into more generalized anti-government agitation.

Police were apparently complicit in the crime. Leaders of the Justice First Party exploited the demonstrations for political gain. The Chavez government announced the formation of a National Institute of Police Reform and the transfer of soldiers to police duty.

U.S. government meddling remains constant. Washington had a hand in the failed coup four years ago; naval ships floated offshore and U.S. money was to the opposition was flowing.

In 2004, the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy transferred more than $50,000 to Sumate, a supposedly nonpartisan group, which organized against Chavez during that year's recall campaign. Last February, a report appeared that the U.S. "Office on Transition Initiatives" had distributed $4.5 million to opposition parties in 2005.

Tensions are high. Venezuelan officials criticized U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield for staging a provocation on April 7. His small motorcade ventured into a pro-Chavez barrio, where Brownfield handed out sports equipment. Demonstrators pounded on his car and threw eggs and tomatoes. Chavez charged the ambassador with violating diplomatic protocol and threatened to expel him.

Threats mount from neighboring Colombia, where U.S. troops and mercenaries are on the ground, a right-wing government is in power and paramilitaries are available to the highest bidder.

However, the Chavez government still enjoys support from the Venezuelan military. In April 2002, units commanded by General Raul Baduel backed the popular mobilization and were instrumental in returning Chavez to power. Speaking April 10 in Maracay, Baduel reaffirmed the army's role "in the maintenance of internal order, and active participation in national development."

atwhit@megalink.net

Return of the Petri Dish Warriors - A New Biowar Arms Race Begins in Maryland By KEVIN ZEESE

"You will do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blanketts, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race..."

- Approval by Lord Gen. Jeffrey Amherst, British Commander-in-Chief of America, for Col. H. Bouquet's suppression of Pontiac's Rebellion with smallpox laced-blankets, July 1763. The attack partially backfired when Bouquet infected his own troops.

READ ON

Noam Chomsky on Latin America's Move Towards "Independence and Integration" The United States is Terrified By Noam Chomsky

Jun062006
The United States is Terrified
By Noam Chomsky

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Noam Chomsky on Latin America's Move Towards "Independence and Integration"

Noam Chomsky - the renowned linguist and political analyst - was in New York Monday where he gave a press conference at the United Nations. Chomsky is professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of dozens of books, including his latest "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy." We go now to an excerpt of Monday's press conference. Chomsky was asked to give his take on the current political climate in Latin America.

Noam Chomsky, speaking June 5, 2006.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Now remember, the U.S. is a global power, so you can't just look at one region. You have to look at what's going on everywhere. So if we go back, say, to the last intelligence projection of the Clinton administration, National Intelligence Council, year 2000, their projection for the next 15 years, they -- just keeping to energy, but there's a lot more. They took it as a matter of course that the United States would control Middle East oil. They don't discuss that much. And then they say the United States, though it will control Middle East oil, because that’s a lever of world control, nevertheless it, itself, will rely on what were called more stable Atlantic Basin resources, meaning West African dictatorships and the western hemisphere. That's what the U.S. will rely on.

Well, what's been going on in Latin America since then significantly threatens that. For the first time in its history, first time since the Spanish colonization, Latin America is moving towards a degree of independence and also a degree of integration. The history of Latin America -- Latin America is very sharply split between a tiny rich elite and huge poverty, and the rich elite have been the only active ones politically. They were oriented towards the colonial power. So that's where they ship their capital. That's where they have their second wealthy homes, you know, send their kids to school, this whole business. Very little integration internal to Latin America. I mean, even the transportation system shows that. It's beginning to change. They are moving towards a degree of independence and towards a degree of integration.

And the United States is terrified. Just keeping to oil alone, it means that the energy resources -- I mean, the major energy producer in the hemisphere is Venezuela. The U.S. kicked the British out under Wilson, Woodrow Wilson. It’s known as Wilsonian idealism. They kicked the British out as soon as the oil age began, because they knew that Venezuela had enormous oil resources. That meant supporting a bunch of utterly brutal dictators, while Venezuela became by 1928 the leading oil exporter in the world. It’s remained very high. Venezuela is now going towards independence, and the United States is frantic. That's why you have this hysteria about Chavez. It’s not because he's attacking anyone or anything like. It's hysteria because he's not following orders. It’s kind of like Serbia, but much more serious, because this is a big energy producer.

And the United States is terrified. Just keeping to oil alone, it means that the energy resources -- I mean, the major energy producer in the hemisphere is Venezuela.

Furthermore, it influences others. The major energy producer in South America second to Venezuela is Bolivia. Well, you know what just happened there. They're moving towards independence, as well. And, in fact, the whole region from Venezuela down to Argentina is pretty much out of control, not totally, but pretty much.

The U.S. in the past has had two fundamental mechanisms for controlling Latin America: one is violence, the other is economic strangulation. They're both weakening. The last exercise of violence was in the year 2002, when in its dedication to democracy promotion the U.S. supported a military coup to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela. Well, had to back down, for one thing, because there was a popular uprising in Venezuela. But another reason was just the reaction in Latin America, where democracy is taken a lot more seriously than it is in North America and Europe and people don't think it's amusing anymore to have elected governments overthrown by a military coup. So the U.S. had to back down and turn to subversion instead, which is what’s going on now. That's the last major use of violence.

And so, the U.S. is preparing for more use of violence. If you take a look at the number of U.S. military personnel throughout Latin America, the military bases, the training of Latin American officers, that's all going up very sharply. In fact, for the first time ever, there are now more U.S. military personnel in Latin America than personnel for the major federal aid organizations. That never happened during the Cold War. Also military training for Latin American officers, and you know what that means.

Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon. That's important. The State Department is under congressional supervision, and there are conditionalities, human rights and democracy conditionalities. They're not imposed very much, but they're there, you know, and they have some effect. You switch it to the Pentagon, there's no controls. Do whatever you want. And the whole region is surrounded by bases, and I suspect there will be secessionist movements coming along in Venezuela and Bolivia and possibly Iran. So the military option has by no means been abandoned, but it’s nothing like what it was before. I mean, in the past, you just overthrew governments, you know, didn't think twice about it.

As for the economic option, that's being lost, too. The most dramatic case, perhaps, was Argentina. Argentina was the poster child for the IMF. And following IMF rules, it led to the worst economic disaster in its history, totally collapsed. Then, violating IMF rules radically, they pulled out of it and have had rapid growth. And the international investing community and the IMF, which is a branch of the Treasury Department, couldn't do anything about it, even the refusal to pay debt. And Argentina -- in fact, the president of Argentina said, ‘Well, we're ridding ourselves of the IMF.’ That means of U.S. economic strangulation. And worse, he was helped in that by Venezuela, which bought a large part of the debt. Bolivia is probably doing the same. Brazil had already done it. Well, you know, you rid yourself of the IMF, meaning the Treasury Department, that's seriously weakening the measures of economic strangulation.

And it's worse. A lot of these policies are gaining significant popular appeal. Just read a scholarly paper by a very anti-Castro Cuban American scholar, who reports -- I don't know where he got it from, but he said about 170,000 Latin Americans have been, in the last couple years, have been treated in Cuban medical facilities, and most of them restoring sight under Cuban-Venezuelan programs, where Venezuela pays for it and people -- blind people, others who need medical care in the U.S. dependencies, where they can't get it, of course -- are sent to Cuba, where they come back seeing. They were blind. You know, okay, that has its effects on countries. Called Operation Miracle.

And within Venezuela, as far as -- you can like it or hate it, but the interesting question is what Venezuelans think about it. Okay, well, a good knowledge of that. There's extensive polls taken, Latin American and North American polls. It turns out that the popularity of the government has shot way up in the last -- since 1998, and it now is the most popular elected government in Latin America; in fact, in the hemisphere, because this government is not popular. So it's the most popular elected government in Latin America, and it keeps going up. Well, reasons not too obscure, but, sure, it's driving the United States berserk. That's why you have the constant hysteria from the government and the media about the terrible things in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Venezuela Backs Plan to Sell Oil in Euros

Venezuela supports the idea of selling oil in euros instead of U.S. dollars, a proposal also supported by fellow OPEC member Iran, the country's oil minister said.

"Iran has an initiative that we support. They are going to start to do oil transactions in euros," Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said Thursday in an interview with state television.

Selling oil in euros would in theory boost world demand for the European currency at the expense of the dollar.

Analysts have said the proposal is highly unlikely to materialize but could in theory have serious consequences for the U.S. economy by undermining the value of the dollar and diminishing its status as the currency used in central-bank reserves.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is one of the U.S. government's most vocal critics on the world stage.

"If a market in euros is created, with the euro as a reference, we could send our supplies so they are sold under this (currency)," added Ramirez, who is also the president of the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA.

Ramirez spoke ahead of a meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Caracas.

OPEC president Edmund Daukoru said afterward that while some member countries have raised the possibility, "they have not formally tabled" the proposal yet to the group.

Earlier this month, Iran's oil ministry granted a license for the creation of a euro-denominated market, an idea first floated back in 2004, though just who would trade on it remains unclear.

If Iran or Venezuela were to demand payment for oil in euros, commodities experts have said it could lead central bankers around the world to convert some dollar reserves into euros, possibly causing a decline in the dollar's value.

Oil is currently denominated in dollars around the globe, through direct sales between producers and consumers or in trades made on markets in New York and London.

No Bravery - A nation blind to their disgrace

A 4 Minute Video

Produced by GlobalFreePress.com

Music by James Blunt

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he's been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

Houses burnt beyond repair.
The smell of death is in the air.
A woman weeping in despair says,
He has been here.
Tracer lighting up the sky.
It's another families' turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.

And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.

US administration "Black Op" can be behind recent attack against Russian diplomats in Baghdad

The Russian embassy in Iraq has no information about the fate and whereabouts of the Russian citizens captured in Baghdad. The embassy cooperates with local authorities, coalition forces and political parties in Iraq, but it has not been possible to collect any information about the hostages yet. The embassy is working with Iraqi security forces and other departments to find and release the Russian citizens.

Four Russian diplomats have been kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday; another officer of the Russian embassy has been killed. Experts believe that the assault has been meticulously planned. A group of Russian diplomats were traveling in a Chevrolet Suburban vehicle. They stopped the car only 400 meters far from the embassy to buy some groceries. A group of armed assaulters blocked the vehicle on the road and opened automatic fire. The next minute the attackers seized four passengers of the Chevrolet vehicle - all of them Russian embassy employees - pushed them into the minibus and took the hostages in an unknown direction. Security guard Vitaly Titov was seriously wounded during the attack, although the kidnappers left him on the scene. Titov was alive when other employees of the Russian embassy rushed to help their colleagues. The man died on the way to the hospital.

Several news agencies reported on Saturday night that the Russian hostages had been freed as a result of a special operation conducted by US and Iraqi troops. The Internal Affairs Ministry of Iraq rejected the information later.

None of the Iraqi terrorist groups have claimed responsibility for the attack against Russian citizens yet. Special services believe that the terrorists kidnapped the Russian diplomats with a view to hold them to ransom. The majority of hostage-taking incidents in Iraq have occurred because of the financial reason so far. Over 200 foreigners and 1,000 Iraqi people have been kidnapped in the war-torn country after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. However, the kidnappers have not released any statements yet, although they usually ask for money during 24 hours after the crime. Furthermore, Iraqi kidnappers prefer to attack European nationals or those coming from wealthy countries of the Persian Gulf. Russia does not fit in these two categories. That is why, special services believe, the kidnappers could have other motives for their attack.

Some specialists believe that the attack against Russian diplomats in Baghdad could be good for Washington. The US administration is particularly concerned about the Moscow-run politics in Iraq (which contradicts to Washington's goals) and the activities of Russian special services in Iraq. To crown it all, the Bush's administration dislikes the image of 'a friend of Iraq' which Russia propagandizes.

Former Iraqi Ambassador to Russia Abbas Halaf stated that the attack against the Russian diplomats had been instigated by US troops in Iraq. The official believes that the USA tries to punish Russia for its political activities in the region, especially in Iraq. It is worthy of note that US soldiers attacked a column of Russian diplomats and wounded five of them in April of 2003.

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.Ru

General Raul Baduel: The US are waging a 4th generation war against Venezuela

The role of mainstream media in military strategy
General Raul Baduel: The US are waging a 4th generation war against Venezuela
by Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Luis Báez

Division General Raul Isaias Baduel, commander in chief of the Venezuelan army, analyzes the United States' plan for subversion of Venezuela. After having attempted to overthrow President Chavez by organizing a coup d'état and having fomented his assasination in vain, they are waging a 4th generation war in which the media have become a real weapon. By manipulating information, they try to demonize the government in front of the international community and to delegitimize it in the eyes of its own people.

When was it that in your life as member of the Venezuelan army you began to distance yourself from the American military doctrine?

General Raul Baduel: Since we were in the Military Academy we used to have serious discussions on the military exchange between the American and the Venezuelan armies. Obviously, that relationship was aimed at recruiting, co-opting and subordinating our Armed Forces officers to the interests of the United States, pushing the interest of our country to the background. That was evident, particularly in the higher-ranking officers, and the past years have proved we were right. As time past by links between Venezuelan officers and the Unites States Army and Security Agencies were more evident.

All this was quite evident during the April 2002 coup d'état. In addition, I belong to a generation sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution and its emblematic figures -Fidel, Che. Even when we could not share its ideological positions we did agree with its ideals of dignity, which have not often been welcomed in other parts of the world though such ideals are the most important things for us and when I say us I mean not only the Venezuelan, but this cosmic race made up of the Latin American and Caribbean people. Those who can not understand this can not properly analyze the threatening hegemonic pressures the United States makes on our countries.

How were you influenced by the School of the Americas?

During year 1993, I took a course on Command and General Staff at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. The school has its terrible story but, to be fair, I did not notice the gorillalike instruction environment people said it had, and it probably did. Its most sinister time was when it was located in Panama, when it served as the American penetration door in our armies. I remember the days I spent there very well; the continual protests in front of the school whose facade was even marked with blood (red ink).

Of course, it was the year in which the report of the United Nations Truth Commission was made public, where the names of dozens of Central American officers involved in the terrible crimes in El Salvador were included. More than a third of the officers mentioned were graduated from the School of the Americas.

By then, a huge debate was taking place and we followed it. But to be fair, during the year I spent there I did not see anything that would make me think that officers were being trained to torture or to practice other criminal acts. What I can say for sure is that almost at the end of the course some American comrades with whom I had a good friendship told me I had been watched during the whole year for my record as a rebel officer related to the Bolivarian Movement.

A regional block power

A proposal on the possibility of a military integration in a Regional Block Power has been presented in certain alternative circles. Do you think it can be viable?

That is Heinz Dietrich's project, a friend who has invited me to some international events I have not been able to attend, and who has been working with Ecuadorian General Rene Vargas Pazos. He writes to me quite often. I have said to him I think this kind of integration is necessary though leaving aside all militaristic conceptions which may represent an assault on the dignity of other peoples. The integration must be based on what is stipulated in our Constitution, regarding issues such as National Security which goes beyond strictly military affairs and has to do with the existence of the very same Nation State.

It is already said that 51 out of the 100 biggest economies of the world are not countries, but corporations. That is why corporative crime and corporative predators are topics dealt with in the context of a trend which no longer recognizes the sovereignty of nations or legitimates the nationalistic feelings. That is the reason why taking the right steps for the economic, political, social, cultural, scientific, environmental, geographical and military integration is necessary.

Wouldn't it be more prudent to focus on the economic integration of our peoples, by supporting ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for The Americas), a promising and viable project to improve the social conditions of our countries?

It's obvious. I think a debate must take place to define our priorities. I think the struggle for our economic independence linked to political and social issues must be our main goal. The human being is our most valued capital and our priority.

Many of our serious problems come from the lack of or a poor education. That is why educating the people is what will help us to find the solutions to our problems. This is a crucial issue and I am not saying it in the spirit of arguing with friend Heinz.

The assassination of the president: an option?

The news is the possibility of an assassination in Venezuela.

We have analyzed the present scenario, in which our process is being developed and we are convinced assassination is an option the United States might use. Maybe, it is the only option they have not applied in a context in which all possible resources have been used to damage the Security and the Defense of the country.

What are the other options they have applied or that they are still applying?

First, "the fourth generation war." In the future, when we analyze what happened in our country since 1999 we’ll see more clearly that we suffered from this kind of war encouraged and financed by the United States...

... where the methods applied were already implemented during the Latin America "dirty war" ...

That's right. A war where two sides with conventional weapons facing each other in the theater of operations is no longer necessary. The history of Venezuela over the past six years has been a panoplied one, what has also been called an "asymmetric conflict" which is not a new concept though we have seen it here very clearly: not only the media can become an operative weapon, more powerful than the armed divisions, but the distinction between war and peace, the fronts and the battlefields are not longer defined.

This is the reason why a joint responsibility precept between the State and the society regarding the Defense of the nation was included in our Constitution.

Another scenario we have analyzed is the coup d'état. Sometimes, I act sarcastically when I talk about this and I say the rulings of the Court regarding the events of April 2002 placed us in a particular position: we have to invent a new theory of Law to describe such actions with a highly innovative glossary of terms because according to the ruling the coup d'état was not a coup d'état.

And despite this, the evidence of the United States interference in the indescribable events of April 11 is overwhelming. In the 42 Paratrooper Infantry Brigade in Maracay we gathered a lot of evidences that show the American interference during and after the events because many people believed we were a proper channel to establish contacts with the coup-plotters and they gave us information. Here, in Tiuna Fort we have enough evidences to show the entrance to the barracks and the participation of American military attaches in Caracas...

The names of some were published: Lieutenant Colonel James Rodgers, assistant military attache, and Colonel Ronald McCammon, intelligence officer, celebrated the "victory" with the military coup-plotters in the Headquarters of the Army the very same April 11. However, the United States has denied this categorically...

Yes, but there are the records of the incoming and outgoing document register of Fort Tiuna. That can not be erased; besides, we have the testimony of those who saw them. There are evidences also of the presence of American ships and airplanes in Venezuelan territory. Those who know about radars know these records can not be made up and our radars were installed by the United States. They know perfectly well what we are talking about and we are not lying. Look, there is a joke about all this: Why has the United States never had a coup d'état? Because they don't have an American embassy there.

If we analyze closely what happened on April 2002 in Venezuela, it could be affirmed that the assassination attempt was already implemented.

Of course. The first purpose of every coup is to overthrow the President violently. If we take a look at the Latin America history we'll see many examples where the United States has been succeedingly involved. Sometimes they killed the president but there are times in which it is not necessary to physically murder the Head of State to politically destroy him.

Killing a president is not a crime

The executive order signed by President Bush after September 11 in which he granted CIA agents the legal and executive authorization to kill the "terrorist" leaders by virtue of the United States "National Security" is public. I remember the statements that then American ambassador to Caracas, Charles Shapiro, made to AP press agency in October 2003: "Killing a president is not necessarily a crime"...

This is a very particular practice and moral of the American elite. We perfectly know the differences between the American government and the American people, which is a noble people and I can prove it because I have good memories of American friends, especially some paratroopers. But, undoubtedly, such a practice reminds us of Ortega and Gasset's phrase: "The United States of America preach a moral they don't practice."

This has to do with a third scenario we have analyzed regarding the United States: the possibility of inciting a regional war as an extension of the internal conflicts of the neighboring countries, Colombia, in particular. We had and we have reasons to say to international organizations that Venezuela sees as a cause of concern the overwhelming support and imbalance regarding the combat power the United States has created and encouraged even more in Colombia, especially after the passing of the USA Patriot Act.

The fact that Venezuela has bought weapons arose a satanization campaign against the Bolivarian government in the United States and some analysts think the submittal of a bill authorizing the Department of State to increase the global efforts to eliminate and control conventional weapons is not casual.

Fortunately, some judicious voices have been raised too in Colombia and they have said they understand that Venezuela protects its borders. The American discourse about the militarization of Venezuela is very cynical though not new. During my course at the School of the Americas, I remember an Afro-American woman, a three-stars General and adviser to President Clinton on Security issues, who gave us a lecture in which she described as the region in unacceptable terms. In year 1993, that lady was saying the same things they are saying now. I was forced to reply.

What did you say?

Her conclusion was something like this: "poor Colombia which is next to Venezuela and can not move out." For instance, she said that tensions in the Venezuelan-Colombian border were mainly due to the fact that our country was a great supplier of weapons to violence-generating elements in Colombia, the guerrilla in particular, whom we were giving refuge. When she talked about drug trafficking, she also mentioned Venezuela as the great supplier of the chemical elements necessary for the traffic, despite being a paradise for dollars-laundering and a privileged via to send the drug to other countries, in particular, the United States. She also said the position of Venezuela regarding the guerrilla was not clearly defined. Of course, I stood up and rejected that, though I specified I was not speaking on behalf of the government of my country. I said we regretted the internal problems in Colombia; that by taking into account the historical links of our two peoples, we wanted the conflict to be ended, but that was the responsibility of the Colombians people.

Venezuela does have the right to claim not to be the target and victim of the actions perpetrated by violent groups. I once heard President Uribe recognize that Colombia had the duty -and I think it was fair- to protect the corridors through which violence reached Venezuela. Our country must protect itself too and this is what we are doing. What is surprising is why our right to protect our sovereignty is so questioned, and the reason is known: this conflict can be used as a casus bellis to intervene in our country.

This is very dangerous. I have heard the same discourse in American official entities during the last ten years as well as the call to get involved in that conflict which I think would be a serious mistake. I repeat: we defend the peoples' self-determination and sovereignty principles. Colombia is our neighbor and we are sorry for its situation but only Colombians must solve it.

The Granda Case is an example of how the United States can generate a conflict, yes or not?

Yes, absolutely. God helps us from getting involved in such a perverse game!

"Fictitious Enemy"

Once Chavez' denounced the United States attempt to kill him, right wing sectors inside and outside Venezuela have reacted by saying that the government has created a fictitious enemy to gain political benefits and that the debate on the possible intervention is nothing but paranoia. What's your opinion?

Among other hostile scenarios, we have also considered the possibility of a military intervention. It is not paranoia. The examples of military interventions led by the United States and its coalition are just there in the Middle East, in a context in which international organizations are not a contentious factor. A mandate from the UN Security Council to intervene anywhere in the world is not necessary.

When I listen to those puppets repeating what others say -for instance, that we are going towards militarism- I ask them to check the texts written by the experts in the field, such as Samuel Huntington, Noam Chomsky, John Berger and many other theorists who have studied the concept of militarism and pretorianism. Read what these prestigious professors -most of them are Americans- have written and compare it with the Venezuelan situation and you will clearly see who the militarists and pretorianism supporters are, if those of us who do our work or if those who one day went to a public place to demand the conciliation with the American positions in the name of freedom and democracy. This is what the fourth generation war is all about: neutralizing the population through the media by convincing our people and the world that the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez has become an outlaw state.

I don’t know if I already said that during the events of April 2002, a French journalist went to interview me in Maracay. He worked for a television station and was a war correspondent expert who had reported from several military scenarios. He told me he had left France convinced that here he was going to find a country in the middle of a civil war and showed me the reports in which it was said that I, General Baudel, was massacring the people. They also mentioned paratroopers attacking military units and the civil population. He vehemently told me: what I have seen here is the opposite, the people demanding the return of the President of the Republic, the people going into the barracks and who are not repressed at all.

Unfortunately, not everybody can come to Venezuela to see with his own eyes what is actually happening here.

Domestically speaking, we are more politically stabilized today and the revolution is more powerful. The very same opposition has acknowledged its defeat. However, American authorities have begun year 2005 by saying Venezuela is a "regional threat", an "unstable government", an "insecure oil supplier."

Due to the fact that I am an active soldier I must be careful with what I say for my opinions might have a political impact. But as a soldier who has the honor of commanding the Venezuelan Army, we have to analyze the threats the supreme interests and purposes of the Venezuelan State might face. We agree with what President Hugo Chavez has said as the Head of State and Commander in Chief of the National Armed Forces, a post the people have legitimately given to him.

By the end of last year, the President presented a new strategic plan for the development of the Venezuelan State and there he outlined an objective that has to do with us directly and it is the formation of a new Venezuelan military strategy where we have three main strategic lines: strengthening the Army -that does not mean we are going to get involved in an arms race-, strengthening the civil-military ties and the reserve.

This is a mandate the people has given to us, stated in Article 328 of our Constitution. There, the people gave us 'a what for' which means to guarantee the sovereignty and independence of the nation and to secure the integrity of the geographical space.

It also gave us a 'how': the military defense, the cooperation and maintenance of the internal order and the active participation in the national development. These three missions must have a dynamic balance and I can guarantee that as soldiers we see ourselves not only as the administrators of legal and legitimate violence of the State of Venezuela but as promoters of peace and social safety.

The Venezuelan Army and the other closed forces are not a threat to the region. The American government knows it perfectly well. In any case, they would just be a contention wall against those who might attempt to subvert the sacred objectives our people have entrusted to us.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Luis Báez

Chavez appreciates mil-tech cooperation with Russia

CARACAS, June 4 (Itar-Tass) - President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has highly appreciated military cooperation with Russia when addressing the activists of student organisations on Saturday.

In view of the embargo that the US administration imposed in May on the supply of armaments to Venezuela, Chavez pointed out that the delivery of the first batch of 30,000 Russian-made AK-103 submachine-guns frustrated US attempts at weakening and disarming the Venezuelan Army.

Chavez referred to the AK-103, which were brought to Puerto Cabello on the same day aboard a Russian ship, as the most up-to-date small arms. In all, according to contracts signed, the Rosoboronexport organisation is to deliver 100,000 automatic rifles of the latest generation to Venezuela before the end of this year.

The Venezuelan president also announced plans to buy SU-30 jetfighters from Russia and gave the highest appraisal of the flying and technico-tactical characteristics of the combat aircraft. The planes and the already purchased Russian military helicopters will raise the operational effectiveness of Venezuela's Air Force, Chavez emphasised.

Resist this US backlash against Cuba by Ian Gibson

Faced with a loss of influence in Latin America as a result of the shift to the left, the US government has been furiously lobbying sympathetic European states to create political leverage on Washington's behalf. As a partner in a "special relationship", Whitehall is a prime target.

The first test of the new US strategy towards its recalcitrant neighbours will come next week when the EU meets to agree a united approach to relations with Cuba. The "common position" will set out a policy for engagement with the Havana administration and is binding on member states. The threat is of a shift towards a diplomatic freeze, or even sanctions against the Caribbean island.

Those of us who have observed Cuba's social system remain perplexed by the following contradiction: that the determination to "make poverty history" attracts strong support from the EU in principle, yet when a country takes steps to ensure the concept becomes reality, a disapproving silence ensues. This has been demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and even Argentina.

Cuba is the only country in Latin America that does not receive assistance from international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are supposed to contribute to the development of third world countries. It is also the only nation on the continent with whom the EU has not signed a cooperation agreement. Yet social advances continue, underpinned by moderate but consistent economic growth.

The UN recently announced that Cuba is the only country in Latin America that has no malnutrition. The World Health Organisation reports that the Cuban doctor-patient ratio is 1:170, better than the US average of 1:188. In addition, WHO has commended Cuba for outstanding literacy levels and rates of infant mortality and life expectancy that outstrip Washington DC - despite 45 years of an illegal economic blockade imposed by successive US administrations. Cuba's international activities also deserve recognition. It is operating humanitarian missions in 68 countries and, in 2005 alone, 1,800 doctors from 47 developing countries graduated in Cuba under a free scholarship scheme.

Yet western governments - including our own - offer little acknowledgement of these achievements. The Foreign Office explains it "cannot have normal relations with Cuba" due to human-rights concerns. Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails, an allegation rejected by the Cuban government, which argues that all were tried and found guilty of being in the pay of an enemy power - the US. The International Red Cross has meanwhile reported that up to 40,000 people are detained by coalition forces in Iraq without charge.

If we are to promote the eradication of poverty and greater global cohesion, there must be a sense of justice and mutual respect. Our government should promote exchanges with nations like Cuba and see what we can learn from one another. Scope exists for cooperation in biotechnology. Vaccine exports from Cuba doubled last year and clinical trials in several countries established Cuba as a world leader in cancer research and treatment.

It must be hoped that the EU will resist US pressure, despite the tendency of countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to rush to do Washington's bidding. More than 170 MPs have signed a Commons motion calling for an independent positive approach to Cuba in the Brussels negotiations. They recognise that there is much to gain from cooperation with Latin America but, as recent history reminds us, much to be lost from policies of isolation.

· Ian Gibson is the Labour MP for Norwich North and chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Cuba

gibsoni@parliament.uk

The Real Meaning of Haditha By Tom Engelhardt

Collateral Damage

The "Incident" at Haditha
By Tom Engelhardt
First news stories about the My Lai massacre (picked up from an army publicity release), March 1968: The New York Times labeled the operation a significant success: "American troops caught a North Vietnamese force in a pincer movement on the central coastal plain yesterday, killing 128 enemy soldiers in day-long fighting." United Press International called it an "impressive victory," and added a bit of patriotic color: "The Vietcong broke and ran for their hide-out tunnels. Six-and-a-half hours later, ‘Pink Village' had become ‘Red, White and Blue Village.'"

The New York Times, November 21, 2005: "The Marine Corps said Sunday that 15 Iraqi civilians and a Marine were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. The bombing on Saturday in Haditha, on the Euphrates in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, was aimed at a convoy of American Marines and Iraqi Army soldiers, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman. After the explosion, gunmen opened fire on the convoy. At least eight insurgents were killed in the firefight, the captain said."

Knight Ridder, March 21, 2006: "Questions about the incident [at Ishaqi] focus on diverging U.S. military and Iraqi police accounts of the raid, which happened around 2:30 a.m. on March 15 on a house about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Both sides and neighbors agree that U.S. troops were involved in a firefight with a suspected member of al-Qaida in Iraq. But the U.S. account gave the death toll as four and said the house collapsed from the heavy fire it took during the fighting. The al-Qaida suspect was found alive in the rubble and arrested, the U.S report on the incident said. Iraqi police, however, contend that U.S. troops gathered 11 people in the house into a single room and executed them, before destroying the house as they left the area."

Charlie Company, which had suffered 28 casualties in its first months in the area without ever seeing the Vietnamese enemy, was bent on revenge when, on March 16, 1968, it entered the sub-hamlet of My Lai 4, known to the soldiers as "Pinkville," on the Battambang Peninsula in Quangnai Province. Looking for the reputed "headquarters" of the 48th Vietcong Battalion, they found only women, children, infants, and old men, none resistant, many finishing breakfast. Almost all were slaughtered, upwards of 500 human beings.

At Haditha, we know that, in the phrase of the soldier who first reported the My Lai massacre, "something rather dark and bloody" –- and, it seems, criminal -- happened. It started with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, a "feral" unit, living in a "Lord of the Flies" encampment (as described by British journalist Oliver Poole who paid it a frightening visit), on its third tour of duty in Iraq. It had already been in some of the darkest, bloodiest, most feral fighting of the counterinsurgency war -- the destruction of much of the city of Fallujah in November 2004. After watching a company member die from a roadside bomb that November day a year later, some of the unit's soldiers evidently massacred 24 Iraqi civilians who happened to be living nearby in the town of 90,000 in the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. A My Lai-style cover-up followed.

Other than revealing just how overstretched the American military is in Iraq, such an "incident" (as American officials liked to call such horrors back in the Vietnam era and still do today) is also a kind of confession -- of failure. If, as a soldier, you feel you are protecting anyone in an area, you do not simply slaughter random civilians, no matter how you may "snap." To commit such acts, these Marines must have concluded in the most visceral way that there simply were no Iraqis to protect in Haditha, perhaps in the Sunni provinces of Iraq altogether, perhaps in the whole country. You only slaughter the helpless face-to-face when even small children have become aliens, the enemy, so tainted by evil, by the killing of your people, that there's no hope for them. Think of it as on-the-ground military democracy, the grimmest sort of popular vote on whether you or the insurgents are winning the war.

It's a small enough step in such circumstances from the knowledge that the enemy might be anywhere to the thought that the enemy is everywhere, and then to the feeling that every Vietnamese/Iraqi is an enemy -- or, as the slaughtered were termed in the initial military indictment of My Lai's Lieutenant William Calley, every "Oriental human being" a "VC." Even a baby sucking at its mother's breast might, as one My Lai defendant claimed, be helping to conceal a hidden grenade.

The process by which all human beings in a region transmogrify into the hated and feared enemy works in reverse as well. As in the case of My Lai, the dead by some strange process can change back into aunts, grandfathers, children, babies. It can happen on the spot. As Ryan Briones, the first Marine from Kilo Company to speak out (though evidently not one of the killers), described the scene: "They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart."

Such "incidents" were far more common than we care to imagine in Vietnam and are undoubtedly more common in Iraq as well. Think of this as an endless feedback loop, the ultimate self-fulfilling prophesy. Scholar Juan Cole at his Informed Comment blog speculates "that the number of Iraqis in Anbar Province who said it was all right to attack US troops doubled to 80 percent in 2006 from 40-odd percent in January of 2004. Doubled. And Ishaqi and Haditha and lots of similar such incidents are the reason for this doubling."

Just this week, the U.S. military concluded a rather hurried investigation of the "rather dark and bloody" events in the town of Ishaqi, also in the Sunni heartland -- and despite protests from the Iraqi government that this represented an unreasonable "rush to judgment" -- described the "incident" in the following way: "The [American] forces, upon arrival, began taking direct fire from the building. As the enemy fire persisted, the ground force commander appropriately reacted by incrementally escalating the use of force from small arms fire to rotary wing aviation, and then to close air support, ultimately eliminating the threat… The investigating officer concluded that possibly up to nine collateral deaths resulted from this engagement but could not determine the precise number due to collapsed walls and heavy debris. Allegations that the troops executed a family living in this safe house, and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false."

Note that, under challenge, the al-Qaeda member and three "terrorist" associates in the initial Ishaqi report multiplied. There are now nine extra "collateral deaths," just as those "insurgents" in the initial military report from Haditha, according to the Time Magazine piece that broke the story, had already turned into civilian "collateral damage" in the first Marine probe of what happened there. ("[T]he deaths were the result of ‘collateral damage' rather than malicious intent by the Marines…") The Iraqi police, who identified the deaths in Ishaqi as execution-style murders beg to disagree with the American conclusions, but let's leave aside the issue of criminal intent. What else do the "incidents" at Ishaqi, Haditha, and My Lai have in common?

"A Big Public Relations Problem"

As a start, you would never have learned about them from the U.S. military. My Lai took almost a year to make its way out of elaborate layers of cover-up via a then-unknown journalist named Seymour Hersh, and into major newspapers as well as -- in full photographic horror -- Life Magazine. Abu Ghraib took months to make it into full digital-photo horror on Sixty Minutes II and into the New Yorker magazine, thanks again to Seymour Hersh. Haditha took almost four months to make it into Time. (Knight Ridder -- a rarity -- reported the Iraqi and American versions of Ishaqi at once.) Imagine what realities may lie behind all the other news reports taken from military press releases or press conferences of "insurgent" or "terrorist" deaths in places no western journalist can venture in Iraq (or Afghanistan).

The American military's mode of response to any "incident" almost invariably turns out to be a long journey from the truth. The dead are always initially "insurgents" or "terrorists" (or "Vietcong" in the Vietnam era). When, for instance, you see reports of the deaths of "insurgents" in bombing attacks, whether on urban neighborhoods in Iraq or villages in southern Afghanistan -- "Airstrike kills up to 80 Taliban, U.S. officials say" -- there is every reason simply not to believe them, not without knowing who counted and how they identified the dead as the enemy.

Carnage is always portrayed by the military as justified and the death of civilians, if finally admitted, invariably as "accidental" in pursuit of the enemy; hence, "collateral damage." When Iraqis or Afghans (or once upon a time, Vietnamese) claim otherwise, such claims are invariably rejected on the spot by Pentagon spokesmen. On the face of it, the natives are never reliable or objective witnesses to killings in their own country -- the police in Ishaqi, to give but one example, might be infiltrated by or working with the insurgents. American reporters, once they cross certain lines, are no less unreliable. "Time Magazine, which first began making inquiries about the [Haditha] incident in January, reported that when one of its staff members asked [Marine spokesman Jeffrey S.] Pool about the allegations, he accused the journalist of being duped by terrorists. ‘I cannot believe you're buying any of this,' the magazine said the officer wrote in an e-mail. ‘This falls into the same category of any aqi [al-Qaeda in Iraq] propaganda.'" Pool was the Marine spokesman who made the initial, fraudulent announcement about Haditha in November 2005.

In fact, to the Pentagon, there is only one objective, reliable investigator of potential U.S. military crimes to be called upon -- and that's the military itself. No genuine outside investigators can ever be brought into such a case. (Recently, the Iraqi prime minister demanded that the U.S. turn over its "investigative files" on the Marines in Haditha, so that his people could pursue their own investigation. Small piece of advice, Mr. Maliki: Don't hold your breath.)

Having rejected on-the-spot claims by locals and asserted that nothing out of the ordinary has happened, should challenges nonetheless persist, official military spokesmen fall back to secondary positions, conforming, at least minimally, to whatever embarrassing information is emerging. If the problem threatens to settle in, an "investigation" will be announced and then allowed to fade into the woodwork. Who, for instance, remembers the results of the investigation into the bombing of a wedding party in the village of Mukaradeeb near the Syrian border back in May 2004 which resulted in 42 deaths, including (according to those who were there) 27 in one extended family, 14 children in all? The U.S. military claimed initially that a "suspected foreign fighter safe house" had been hit. Later, Major General James Mathis asked: "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?" Baghdad military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit finally admitted festivities were ongoing in this fashion: "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

If the "incident" or "incidents" won't go away, then not one, but multiple military investigations ensue; the fatter their findings, the better. There have already been three on Haditha, two still underway; perhaps twelve on Abu Ghraib. The affair then drags out, growing ever more detailed and murkier until, once again, attention fades or the spotlight shifts elsewhere. Already on Haditha, we are being told by all and sundry in official positions not to "prejudge," but to wait until the Naval Criminal Investigative Service finishes its investigation sometime this summer. This is American fairness in action -- though nobody mentions that the whole investigatory process is the equivalent of a corrupt police department being empowered to investigate, charge, and try itself.

If an incident simply won't go away, as at Abu Ghraib, then small fry are generally indicted and, under pressure, prosecuted. (Indictments for My Lai only made it up to First Lieutenant Calley; at Abu Ghraib, a single Lieutenant Colonel is finally to be charged in military court.) These are, of course, the "few bad apples," as President Bush termed them.

Another similarity between the My Lai moment and today is the degree to which language is policed by those in authority in order to separate whatever atrocity is under investigation from the war-fighting around it. So President Nixon was quick to call My Lai an "isolated incident," particularly when compared to the "250,000 churches, pagodas, and temples" he claimed the Marines alone had built "for the people of Vietnam" (just as the Bush administration cites those schools we've constructed or repainted, and other kinds of "good news" the media supposedly refuses to report). When, back in My Lai days, General William R. Peers, heading the official Army investigation of the killings, had a press conference to present his findings, the Pentagon ordered him not to use the word "massacre"; only on threat of walking out was he allowed to refer to a "tragedy of major proportions." After that, the common term, as with Haditha today, would simply be "incident."

Back then, Army Secretary Resor claimed My Lai was "wholly unrepresentative of the manner in which our forces conduct military operations in Vietnam," sentiments regularly seconded by the media. In the case of Haditha, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace commented: "Clearly the individuals involved -- if they are responsible for the things they are being accused of -- have not performed their duty the way that 99.9% of their fellow marines have." And that figure of 99.9% has been repeated across the spectrum of the American high command, civilian and military.

Another then-and-now similarity: Responsibility never goes far up the chain of command, since all investigators are functionally sent down from that same chain of command. In fact, we know from My Lai that trials, if necessary, are well-planned out with media impact in mind. After all, cases like these are, as the Washington Post recently quoted a congressional aide saying, "a big public relations problem."

In the My Lai case, the military command, with many potential defendants, made every effort to avoid the spectacle of "two dozen or more American soldiers, including generals, lined up in the dock like a little Nuremberg." In discussions with the Justice Department, Pentagon officials emphasized that a "mass trial" was not an option. Instead, the accused were assigned to bases across the country where trial decisions would be made locally by each base commandant. A similar approach seems to have been taken for the scattered Abu Ghraib prosecutions. Above all, in the damage-control phase of such "incidents," what is being avoided is the phrase "war crimes."

The Language of Noncombatant Death

Perhaps, however, what the "incidents" have in common -- and what they really tell us about the war in Iraq (as in Vietnam long ago) -- is this: In both Haditha and Ishaqi, the dead were largely or all civilian noncombatants: an aged amputee in a wheelchair holding a Koran, small children, grandparents, students, women, and a random taxi driver all died. These were the "collateral deaths" and what they held in common was simply their civilian-ness, and how civilian -- and so criminal -- war itself has become.

We need a new language for this. "Collateral damage" is, of course, a Pentagon euphemism for unintentional or incidental destruction of property, facilities, or noncombatants that crept into our language in the Vietnam years and never left. Collateral means "of a secondary nature" or "subordinate," and "damage" is a description you would apply to wrecked or destroyed property, but not normally to the human body. Who, after all, would say, as a woman lay on the ground, shot through the head, that she had been "damaged."

But there's a far deeper problem with the term. Since March 2003, almost 2,500 American soldiers, just over 200 troops from allied forces, and several hundred private contractors or mercenaries have died in Iraq. We have no idea how many insurgents, Iraqi soldiers, or militia members have died in that same period, though the number must be large indeed. But we do know one thing. In modern wars, especially those conducted in part from the air (as both Iraq and Afghanistan have been), there's nothing "collateral" about civilian deaths. If anything, the "collateral deaths" are those of the combatants on any side. Civilian deaths are now the central fact, the very essence of war. Not seeing that means not seeing war.

The lack of decent media coverage of the use of air power in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as in South Vietnam -- as well as artillery, tanks, cluster bombs, and the like, helps obscure both the widespread nature and the centrality of indiscriminate civilian death. At least we do see something of the odd brutal Haditha or My Lai or Ishaqi, when, sooner or later, it rises to the level of media attention. Killing civilians from the air, which automatically seems to fall into the category of "collateral" or "accidental," and never the criminal (no matter how often civilians die from it), is actually far more destructive and so far worse. It should, of course, be obvious that, if you are going to destroy what you believe to be a "terrorist safe house" in the middle of an urban neighborhood, noncombatants who just happen to be living in the environs will be "damaged."

The massacre at Haditha, which just made the covers of Time and Newsweek, is one of those singular stories of our 24/7 moment that briefly fills the frame of the screen (and the cover), sucking up all attention. In this way, the needs of our media, as presently organized, fit with the damage-control efforts of the Pentagon (although Donald Rumsfeld and his associates would surely be a good deal happier if the "incidents" at Haditha and Ishaqi had never surfaced in the first place).

If those horrific murders in Haditha become the mother of all "incidents," however, Iraq may not make more sense, but less. So let's widen the Iraq frame and take another look. Those 24 dead noncombatants are not, in fact, an "incident" at all, nor "isolated," nor -- another of those then-and-now terms -- an "aberration." Make no mistake, they are the essence of this war. From the beginning, the continual slaughter of civilians, as well as the destruction of civilian property and livelihoods, has been the modus operandi of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. That most of it didn't happen eyeball-to-eyeball with revenge on the brain certainly made little difference to the many victims, nor should it make too much difference to us.

In the Line of Fire

To be even more accurate, Iraqi civilians were dying long before the invasion of Iraq. Though exact numbers have been much argued about, there can be no question that the unsuccessful American (and British) strategy of strangling Saddam Hussein's regime via severely imposed UN sanctions caused the death rates of Iraqi children to soar before 2003.

On March 20th of that year, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld chose to begin the invasion of Iraq with a "shock and awe" campaign of American missile and air wizardry over Baghdad. He meant to shock and awe a waiting world of potential enemies with the news that we were to be the dominatrix of all history. At the same time -- all things for all men -- in one fell swoop the U.S. would also "decapitate" Saddam's regime in downtown Baghdad (and elsewhere). The results: Of fifty "decapitation attacks," as the slaughter that passed for war began, not a single one killed an Iraqi leader of even the most minor sort, but scores of Baghdadi civilians died. In just four of these attacks that Human Rights Watch was able to investigate, 42 noncombatants were killed and many more wounded. One early missile attack was on "a civilian Baghdad restaurant where faulty U.S. intelligence suggested that Hussein might be having dinner," reports journalist Robert Parry. "As it turned out, Hussein was not there, but the attack killed 14 civilians, including seven children." Not quite Haditha numbers, but close enough; and this would set the tone in "accidental" death for the "liberation" of Iraq that was to follow. It simply never ended.

The invasion itself was largely a military slaughter (as, for anyone who remembers the Highway of Death out of Kuwait, Gulf War I was too). Cluster bombs and depleted-uranium weaponry were left in our wake. We took Baghdad and then let Iraqis loot the city's infrastructure without raising a finger except to guard the Oil Ministry. American troops stood idly by while, at the National Museum and Baghdad's grand libraries and archives, untold national treasures burned to a crisp and art work of every sort from the origins of humankind was stolen or destroyed. (This represented, of course, cultural death.)

Before the invasion was over, civilian journalists started dying from coalition "accidents." From early on, checkpoints were set up, manned by jumpy, ill-trained American troops, convinced that Iraq was indeed a land of al-Qaeda terrorists -- talk about self-fulfilling prophesies -- and Iraqi civilians started dying at them. Just last week at a checkpoint in Samarra, Nahiba Husayif Jassim, pregnant, in labor, and being rushed to a hospital by her brother, as well as her cousin Faliha Mohammed Hassan were shot and killed at such a checkpoint. "The U.S. military is investigating..." Each "incident," another "accident."

As the President prepared to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier off San Diego and declare "major combat operations ended," American soldiers occupying a school in Fallujah, fired into an angry crowd, killing 10 to 13 people and wounding perhaps 75. Another "incident." (The Americans claimed they had been fired upon.) Just last week, American troops in our other war in the capital of Afghanistan fired into a similarly angry crowd after an out-of-control American vehicle ploughed into cars and killed at least one Afghan. (Typically, American spokesmen first claimed that the Americans had fired over, not into, the crowd in Kabul; then, under the press of evidence, reversed themselves.) From 2003 to now, it's been all accidents all the time.

Soon enough, American troops launched extensive urban raids to root out a growing insurgency in which doors were busted in and civilians killed. All of them unfortunate "incidents." Tens of thousands of liberated Iraqis were soon arrested, put into squalid jails, some tortured and humiliated in especially gruesome ways; a few were murdered -- by oversight or accident. We destroyed three-quarters of the city of Fallujah and regularly loosed our air force on the downtowns and neighborhoods of largely Sunni cities from Ramadi to Samarra as well as the Shiite city of Najaf and Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad. Sometimes these were proclaimed "targeted" strikes, with smart bombs being used on "terrorist safe houses." Civilians who nonetheless insisted on dying did so accidently.

We reconstructed the country by deconstructing it. We were unable to deliver potable water, or significant electricity, or repair sewage systems already badly damaged by Gulf War I and the sanctions that followed. More civilians got sick, more died. We couldn't deliver jobs and tried to cut down on Saddam-era state-delivered rations. More childhood malnutrition, more deaths. Unemployment remained sky-high. Less money, less ability to care for families, more deaths.

In the process, a raging insurgency as well as a jihadi car-bombing campaign of Zarqawi-style terrorism grew in Sunni areas, while death-squad-style torture-and-execution murders of vast numbers of Sunnis and Shiites signaled a growing civil war.

This finally brings us to the 24 dead noncombatants in Haditha (and any of the other Hadithas that haven't made it into the news). Yet more "incidents," yet more death.

Civilian Casualty Counts

The upshot of all of this is the central fact of the war: a staggering civilian death toll impossible to calculate. Early on, a group of Iraqi academics and political activists tried to study the question of civilian casualties, consulting with hospitals, gravediggers, and morgues, and came up with the figure of 37,000 civilian deaths just between March 2003 and October 2003.

A careful study published in the British medical journal the Lancet in October 2004 suggested a figure of 100,000 or more civilian "excess deaths." Iraq Body Count, an organization which relies largely on Western media reports of civilian casualties for its count, now offers 38,000-42,000 as a conservative but confirmed range of noncombatant deaths ("civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq" including in "insurgent and terrorist attacks").

But what does any of this mean when most of Iraq is beyond the view of the media, when many deaths may never be reported at all. Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times, for instance, reports that this May, "1,398 bodies were brought to the central morgue [in Baghdad], according to Ministry of Health statistics, 243 more than April." In other words, the two-month total for Baghdad's central morgue alone was 2,553 victims of "shootings, stabbings and other violence." And note that this doesn't include either dead Iraqi soldiers or dead civilians who were victims of explosions (including suicide bombings)! Put another way, "since 2003, at least 30,240 bodies have been brought to the morgue, the vast majority of them shot by gunmen who are seldom caught or prosecuted." And remember, that's just certain categories of death in Baghdad.

Though there is no way to know the real figures on invasion and occupation-related civilian deaths in Iraq, they are the essence of what's happened. They are both modern war and a crime. Given the history of war (and of American warfare) in the last half of the last century, they were largely predictable. They represent neither a set of isolated incidents, nor collateral damage, nor -- over three years later -- can they be ascribed to accident. Neither can Haditha.

Under the pressure of a strengthening Sunni insurgency which has gained some control over large parts of al-Anbar province, the Bush administration, instead of drawing down American forces, has just called in reinforcements -- the 1,500 troops of the 1st Armored Division, kept in reserve in Kuwait. Let me suggest that, if these troops garrison Ramadi or move on Haditha or Ishaqi or Tal Afar or any other rebellious community, certain things are predictable -- and there will be nothing accidental about them: More IEDs will go off under American vehicles; more Americans will die without eyeballing the enemy; more angry, frustrated, increasingly feral troops on their third, fourth, or fifth tours of duty, with a sense that every Iraqi anywhere in sight is an enemy, will act accordingly. We already know what will happen. More civilian bodies, more atrocities, more horrors, and Ramadi, Haditha, Ishaqi and other such communities will not be subdued in the process.

The only thing that can possibly alter this course of events isn't to send our soldiers back to morals school for Intro 101B in "core warrior values" -- at the next Haditha, maybe they'll just send in the planes -- but to begin to end the hapless American occupation of Iraq, to ratchet the war down, not up.

Our President, in March 2003, just couldn't resist opening the Pandora's Box of Iraq. Since then, from that box has emerged every horror with which we are now familiar. Unlike in Greek myth, however, at the bottom of the box wasn't Hope, but another H-word: Haditha.

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Sidebar: Talking about Haditha Talking Points

Post-Haditha Math

The Bush administration ran its numbers quickly after the Haditha story broke big-time in the media -- and word of those numbers went around fast. In fact, in the last week, was there a major military or civilian Pentagon figure who didn't manage to use them? Here's a sampling:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "We know that 99.9 percent of our forces conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. We also know that in conflicts things that shouldn't happen, do happen."

Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, commander of multinational forces in Iraq: "The allegations of Haditha are troubling to all of us… [but] out of those 150,000 soldiers, I'd dare to say that 99.9 percent of them are doing the right thing."

Army Brig Gen. Donald Campbell, chief of staff for Multi-National Corps-Iraq: "While the bulk of our forces, 99.9 percent, serve with honor, there are a small number of individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Peter Pace: "Clearly the individuals involved -- if they are responsible for the things they are being accused of -- have not performed their duty the way that 99.9% of their fellow marines have."

Marine Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee: "Praised the ‘99.9%' of Marines who follow their training not to fire on civilians."

MNFI (Multinational Forces) spokesman in Iraq: "Defended the record of the US-led troops in Iraq, saying that ‘99.9 per cent of all men and women' in the forces adhere to the highest standards and any violations will be punished."

Okay, but that's where they all stop. Now, let's do the rest of the math for them. If Rumsfeld and others are right, then only .1% of American forces in Iraq have not conducted themselves in "an exemplary manner," did not do "the right thing," serve "with honor," or "adhere to the highest standards." Let's assume, despite Lt. Gen. Chiarelli's figure above, that there are actually about 135,000 American troops in Iraq at the moment. That means that only 135 of them are not doing "the right thing," etc. If it's only the Marines, who make up less than one-quarter of our troops in Iraq, the figure is obviously far lower. It seems the military won't need to invest in many teachers for that "core warrior values" retraining of theirs, given such numbers.

Prejudgment at Haditha

"[T]he Marine Corps issued a directive to its generals telling them not to discuss details of the Haditha case because such comments could compromise ‘the integrity of the investigative and legal processes…'"

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Peter Pace: "I understand it's going to be a couple of more weeks before those investigations are complete and we should not prejudge the outcome."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: "We don't know what -- quite what happened there [at Haditha] yet, and it strikes me that it's appropriate to get the facts and see what took place. We in the United States hold our forces to a very, very high standard, and it's proper that we should. And General Hagee is out meeting with the Marines and talking to them about this subject. And I don't know that I could add anything else. Furthermore, it's not proper for me to discuss these types of things since I'm in the chain of command, and there is a legal phrase called ‘command influence,' which if I say something by mistake, it could adversely affect the outcome of a trial, for example, in one way or another, either favorably to a defendant or unfavorably to a defendant. And I wouldn't want to be involved in anything like that, so I am not going to get beyond what I've suggested."

White House spokesman Tony Snow: "Because the Marines are actually conducting an inquiry and it's a very vigorous one. I would ask you to suspend any judgment about what happens. I mentioned this morning that there are two tracks. Number one is what happened with the reporting of the incident, and what happened. And the Marines are taking both of those very seriously and they're proceeding very aggressively. So I think rather than trying to prejudge it -- the second thing, and this is equally important, is that when you have an ongoing criminal proceeding, to try to characterize it on my part or anybody within the chain of command within the Department of Defense could very well prejudice and injure any attempts to engage in a prosecution should it be necessary. So you've got to be very careful about how you do this."

Baker Spring, a military expert at the Heritage Foundation. "If soldiers [or Marines] are acting inconsistently with these requirements, there's no doubt the military will take disciplinary action…. It's always wrong to prejudge the outcome of this procedure."

This sampling of restatements of essential American fairness in the face of a judicial process should actually be amended for the sake of accuracy to read in the following way: When any "incident" is first reported, American military spokespeople should always immediately prejudge the outcome by denying in the strongest possible terms that any account other than the military one is in any way accurate. The fallback position, once that "incident" won't go away, is that judgment should be suspended and no prejudging should go on until, hopefully, it fades from sight.

The Commander-in-Chief Presidency Takes a Walk

George Bush wanted to be "commander-in-chief" and, with the help of his Vice President and fervent followers, to create a commander-in-chief presidency. Now he has something approaching that and, it seems, he wants out of the mix.

"Q Have you gotten updates on the [Haditha] situation?

"THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm not involved with the investigation, and you shouldn't expect me to be. I expect this investigation to be conducted independent of the White House, with a full and thorough investigation."

The Truth about bisexual George W. Bush

Here you will find out the little known truth concerning President George W. Bush, Victor Ashe, the current American ambassador to Poland (formerly mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee and Exec. V.P.; C.F.O. of Fannie Mae), and their adulterous-bisexual relationship with a Las Vegas woman in 1984.

This situation took place in 1984 in the State of Tennessee. It concerns a 41 year old woman [currently residing in Las Vegas], Victor Ashe and George Bush's encounter in 1984 during the senate debates between Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. She was invited to come to Tennessee by Victor Ashe. While attending one of these debates she spoke briefly with Ed McAteer (Senatorial candidate in 1984 who debated alongside Al Gore, Jr. and Victor Ashe, and was responsible in part for the emergence of the Religious Right).

Members of the mainstream media (CNN, FOX/news, Chicago Tribune) have known about this Las Vegas woman [well known in the BDSM underground] since September of 2003 yet they have done little if anything to get to the bottom of it. Like Bush's national guard service records they've given him a free pass concerning the what, where and when of his participation in the Texas Air National Guard.

We believe if the whereabouts and war-time behavior of Senator Kerry during his tour in Vietnam in the early 70's are matters of importance to the American people [according to Sinclair Broadcasting and Swift Boat Vets for Truth] then the past behavior of this President and his involvement in a homosexual situation with another man in the mid 80's is of equal importance.

When this Las Vegas woman told us about her conversation with Ed McAteer we thought it was something that should be looked into. He was being treated for cancer so we had to move quickly to open a dialogue. We believed obtaining a death bed declaration [if it came down to that] of a man of Ed McAteer's stature in the Christian community [he was called the Godfather of the Religious Right] would have held tremendous weight.?Ed [finally] coming forward to say what he witnessed or knew concerning this matter would have been unimpeachable. Ed was a staunch supporter of the state of Israel and quietly lobbied for the post of U.S. ambassador to Israel back in 2001 but was turned down for the position by none other than George W. Bush. It seems in George W. Bush's isolated bubble, ambassadorships are rewards set aside for friends and lovers only.

We initially contacted Mr. McAteer back in May of this year. He mentioned at that time Victor Ashe's sexual shenanigans were no secret in Tennessee. He seemed resentful of his party's choice to back a 'sodomite' which is why he ran as an independent. Ed was on chemotherapy and it was extremely difficult for him to talk so we deferred until late August at which time his wife [Faye] informed us he wanted to talk further but was under doctors orders to refrain from all strenuous activity. Sadly, Ed McAteer passed away on Oct. 5, 2004, before we could do a follow-up interview, he was 78. For Ed's sake [and that of his family] we hope his departure was natural [God's will], however, the timing of it all seems rather untimely in our opinion.?It bares looking into by the Tennessee authorities.?

When he passed way another writer contacted Faye and she imparted to him that Ed seemed upset upon returning from the debate in Chattanooga back in 1984. Was Ed aware of Victor Ashe and George W. Bush's bisexual behavior? Perhaps that is what upset him so.

Unfortunately he didn't get the chance to tell us what he witnessed that night that upset him or if he remembered talking with the Las Vegas woman.

The Las Vegas woman was paid $15,000 to arrange sexual liaisons involving bisexual men for George W. Bush (then private citizen) and Victor Ashe (then a Tennessee State Senator). These adulterous bisexual affairs (3 encounters in all-3 different cities) took place in the state of Tennessee during the 1984 senate debates between, Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. An African-American woman was invited to participate in this adulterous sexual encounter with George W. Bush and Victor Ashe immediately following the Chattanooga senatorial debate. This woman was paid $1,500. A few years later the Las Vegas woman was detained in Washington D.C. with Victor Ashe by the Metro D.C. police. She was released but Victor was taken into custody.

So confident was this woman that Ed would have remembered her [and their meeting] she had finally come forward and was prepared to tell it all. She will swear to the authenticity of what is being imparted here, which is the reason that we built this website so we could get this information out to you.

Bush & Co. will no doubt tell the world she's insane, politically motivated thus concocting this for smear reasons. She is of sound mind and body and welcomes all inquires from the mainstream media. This woman deeply laments not having come forward back in 2000 when then Governor Bush was running for the highest office in the land against [ironically] Vice President Al Gore, Jr.

Disclosure of George W. Bush's adulterous bisexual behavior will only happen if the American public demand answers. Contact your local news organizations demanding that this truth be revealed and not go the way of his Texas Air National Guard records.

Direct all media inquires to thetruthaboutbushin84@yahoo.com

UPDATE June 5, 2006 The woman in question is Leola McConnell. She is the Liberal Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada in 2006 (see below)

June 4, 2006 -- More on George W. Bush's "Sanctity of Marriage" gay marriage constitutional ban.

George W. Bush's marital problems have just taken another turn for the worse. Apparently, Mr. Bush has not only engaged in an extra-marital affair with a member of the opposite sex who is also a senior member of his Cabinet, but also a member of the same sex. WMR received the following release this morning from Leola McConnell, Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada (who has been endorsed by WMR). McConnell is a one-time professional dominatrix.

"President Bush's speech to the nation Monday. If he doesn't say he's a gay American or at the least a bisexual one then he shouldn't be making one at all. And the notion that it would be in regards to writing bigotry into our nation's Constitution is reprehensible. Too bad it isn't me doing the rebuttal because in 1984, I watched him perform (with the enthusiasm of homosexual male who had done this many times before) a homosexual act on another man, namely Victor Ashe. Victor Ashe is the current Ambassador to the nation of Poland who should also come out like former Governor McGreevey of New Jersey and admit to being a gay American. Other homo-erotic acts were also performed by then private citizen George Bush because I performed one of them on him personally.

I am the woman this website (http://bushssecretlifein84.tripod.com/) speaks of that has been posted on the net nearly two years now. None of this would be the business of anyone but President Bush's little ruse to save his failed presidency by using DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] to divide Americans one from the other has to be exposed as the act of a desperate closeted homosexual man. The only crime in being GLBT is in the hiding. The President needs to come clean with the American people about his own past sexual behavior before he tries to besmirch the humanity of people in search of sincerely committing to the same bonds of matrimony he's afforded. He violated his own vows of monogamy having a homosexual affair with a long time family friend of whom his wife had no knowledge. His hypocrisy seems to know no bounds.

I had planned to run for governor of Nevada without going into any of this but his planned nationally televised address to the nation makes it necessary for me to address his attempt at division in as public a way as he picked to try this Bushification of reality regarding same sex marriages.

Sincerely,
Leola McConnell
Liberal Democratic candidate for Governor of Nevada"

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The editor (Wayne Madsen) was asked what sort of relationship George W. Bush could be having with Condoleezza Rice? His reply was that it was likely aberrant and involved something like the relationship King Edward VIII had with Wallis Simpson, who was rumored to have had androgen insensitivity syndrome.