ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, No. 473

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ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 473,  November 30, 2003 -

FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!

I have no evidence that the United States intervened militarily as a
conscious means of maintaining control over the global drug traffic.
However, conscious decisions were definitely made, time after to time, to
ally the United States with local drug proxies. ... Furthermore, drugs from
regions where the CIA has been active have tended to migrate through other
countries of CIA penetration, and more importantly through and to agencies
and groups that can be classified as CIA assets. In the 1950s opium from
Indochina traveled through Iran and Lebanon to the Corsican Mafia in
Marseilles and the Sicilian Mafia under Lucky Luciano. In the 1980s
mujahedin heroin was reaching the Sicilian Mafia via the Turkish Gray
Wolves, who "worked in tandem with the Turkish Army's Counter-Guerrilla
Organization, which functioned as the Turkish branch of the CIA's
multinational 'stay behind' program." The routes shifted with the politics
of the times, but the CIA denominator remained constant. Peter Dale Scott,
Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and
Indochina [Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003] p. 43.

Contents: Number 473

01. INFO-TURK [Brussels]: Government, State, Islamic Violence!
02. PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE [San Francisco]: CIA Training of Islamists Haunts
GIs in Iraq.
03. LE FIGARO [Paris]: Al-Qaeda, the Mythic Enemy.
04. THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA [Palestine/U.S.]: What Has Failed in Palestine,
Will Fail in Iraq.
05. COUNTERPUNCH [Petrolia, CA]: Vietnam and Iraq: Has the U.S. Learned
Anything?
06. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [Oak Park, MI]: The "War on Terror" and
American Democracy - Some Ominous Warnings.
07. NEW HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE [Portsmouth]: "Bush-Nazi Dealings Continued Until
1951" - Federal Documents.
08. THE MOSCOW TIMES: Naked Gun.

* * *

INFO-TURK
53 rue de Pavie
1000 Bruxelles, Belgium
Tel: (32-2) 215 35 76
Fax: (32-2) 215 58 60
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.info-turk.be
Chief Editor Dogan Ozguden
Responsible editor/Editrice responsable: Inci Tugsavul
- Monday, 24 November 2003 -

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GOVERNMENT, STATE, ISLAMIC VIOLENCE!
____________________________________________________________________

Ertugrul KURKCU
http://www.info-turk.be/index.html#A%20Deadly%20Alliance%20Forged%20in%20Hometow
n,%20Bingol

The Recent Islamic Violence Roots Are in Turkey

Info-Turk Editor's Introduction: The recent inquiries have proven that all
of the suicide bombers are Turkish and the roots of the this Islamic
violence are not in al-Qaida, Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan, but just in
Turkey. In fact, the Islamic violence had started in Turkey in the years 60
and culminated in the years 90 with the support of the Turkish Armed Forces
and the governments.

It was on Bloody Sunday of 1969 that the Turkish Islamists attacked and
massacred the progressive people demonstrating against the arrival of the
US Sixth Fleeth to Istanbul. At that time, Turkish Islamists, and the
fascist Grey Wolves, were among the most loyal supporters of the United
States in Turkey.

It was the Turkish Islamists near to the Prime Minister Erdogan's former
political party, Welfare Party (RP), that assassinated by burning 37
Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals for their solidarity with the Alevite
community in 1993 in Sivas.

In the following years, it was the Hezbollah, armed by the Turkish Army,
that assassinated hundreds of Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals and
political activists simply for their solidarity with the Kurdish people's
claims for equal rights.

It was the Turkish military aircraft that were throwing in the Turkish
Kurdistan the tracts calling the people to join the Jihad (holy war)
against "non-fidel Kurds" by the side of the "last powerful army of Islam".

To deepen this point of view, we are reprinting large extracts of the
analysis of a distinguished Turkish journalist, Ertugrul Kurkcu on the
Turkish Government's hypocrisy. (Info-Turk, November 23, 2003)

* * *

Government, State, Islamic Violence!

By Ertugrul Kurkcu

"Hopes" and prayers were in vain. The Turkish government had hoped that the
suicide bombers, who carried out attacks to two Istanbul synagogues
Saturday, were Arabs, or Afghans, or if not, at least Pakistanis. But the
reality is clear: The suicide attackers were Turkish citizens.

The roots of the attacks run too deep and wide to be connected to external
currents by saying they are "barbaric attacks by al-Qaida. Although
al-Qaida has reportedly "claimed responsibility," the roots of the
attackers are here, in the southeastern province of Bingol. Bingol,
Hezbollah's country.

Bingol is one of the birthplaces of Hezbollah. You will recall Hezbollah
from a series of operations in 2000, in which its leader Huseyin Velioglu
was killed and the "tomb houses," were discovered. Hezbollah aims to set up
an Islamic tate in Turkey. After splitting into two under the names
"Science," and "Range," the "scientists" started wiping out those belonging
to the "Range," in the form of serial killings, tied them in a "pig ties,"
style and buried them in these tomb houses.

You will remember one more thing: Hezbollah, that essentially organizes the
Islamist Kurds, attacked with chopper knives the Kurdish rebels of PKK in
the provinces of Bingol, Diyarbakir, Van and Batman and committed over 500
homicides.

Writer Hasan Cemal of the Milliyet newspaper had quoted Liutenant General
Hasan Kundakci, who was a commander at the time of the bloody clashes.

"As we went after PKK with full force, they saved their power. This is the
main principle of the strategy. We were aware of Hezbollah. They first
tried to seize the mosques that were in the hands of PKK. After seizing
them, they became active around the mosques. But they did not try to
confront us."

Human resource of Islamic violence

So what happened to Hezbollah's human resource? What happened to this human
resource's devastating potential?

The following is a "police investigation" which had been published in
newspapers: "An investigation conducted by security officials on the filed
information on 2,000 Hezbollah members shows that the terrorist
organization is mostly made up of youngsters between the ages of 15-24. Two
percent of the organization is made up of people between the ages 35-65.
Two and a half percent of the organization is made up of children between
the ages of 10-14."

"40.5 percent of the Hezbollah members are high-school graduates; 1.5
percent of the terrorists are illiterate, 19 percent are elementary school
graduates, 14 percent are middle school graduates, and 22 percent are
university graduates."

"Hezbollah conducts 97.5 percent of its activity in the city centers. 27
percent of the militants are students, 28.5 percent are self-employed, 14
percent are workers, and 1.1 percent are farmers. Civil servants make up
one percent of the militants, and women make up 2.5 percent."

Tolerating Islamic violence

Are the suspects of the synagogue bombings any different from this profile?

All are high-school graduates. They could not continue with their
education, and they are between the ages of 20-25. All of them have turned
to cults and organizations as a result of their hopelessness. All of them
took up a religious mission and joined activities outside of Turkey under
state protection or direction.

The models created by those who joined the terrorist groups in Chechnya or
Bosnia, those who lost their lives there, those who kidnapped ships,
occupied hotels, and at the same time, those who were treated like heroes
by the state officials, kissed on their foreheads, and released or allowed
to "run away."

Three countries in one country

Turkish commentators, looked at suicide bombers in Palestine, the Middle
East, or elsewhere, as a "different type of people" who did not have alikes
in Turkey.

"A suicide bomber" could only be an Arab or someone from the Middle East.

We forget easily...We forget easily that Turkey is not a homogenous
society, that people in Turkey are drifting away from each other also with
the pressure of globalization, that many countries with separate "worries,
sorrows and prides," are being created within this country.

We forget that Turkey has never been the country of tolerance between
cultures that our politicians take pride in. We forget that non-Muslims had
to pay "protection money and head taxes" for centuries, forced to
"emigrate," required to pay "property taxes," sent to "working camps," and
lived through the September 6-7, [1955] looting.

We forgot the "Bloody Sunday," and the "Sivas," "Maras," and "Corum"
massacres. We forgot the Madimak [Sivas] slaughter. We forgot the "Kurdish
War," that killed 30,000 people...And we shout all together, "These cannot
be Muslims, these cannot be Turkish Republic's citizens, ours would not
attack synagogues."

It would be good if we did not forget where we live. We are citizens of a
state that deploys Islamists in secret operations against leftists, Kurds
and Alevites. We should not forget that we live in a land where an Islamic
movement, that sees "jihad" as legitimate to seize power, is growing. We
should not forget that we are individuals of an intolerant society. If we
don't forget these, we will not be surprised.

Our prime minister will not be surprised either. The Islamist militant who
yesterday was shouting, "minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets,
mosques are our barracks," may have become a sensible today with the crown
he is wearing. But he should not forget that he is among those who pushed
these young people, whose one and only hope was to be martyrs by blowing
the world up, to chose "jihad."

But not every Islamist is the same. If Tayyip Erdogan's pro-globalization
"moderate Islam" does not reflect the rage of the poor, are the poor to
blame, or is the inequality, injustice, poverty, intolerance and cruelty
also going on in Tayyip Erdogan's government to blame.

This is partly why the government saw the synagogue attacks as attacks
against itself. Because it can see that it no longer has authority over
those whom it encouraged for "jihad" yesterday. And because it understood
that: The same way anti-Jewish Erbakan had to be the one to cooperate with
Israel, the same way anti-Kurd Bahceli had to be the one to lift Ocalan's
death sentence, and the same way anti-Europe Ecevit had to be the one
seeing Turkey become an EU candidate, the system is now leaving it up to
Tayyip Erdogan, who is pro-Islamic law, to clean up Islam!

Erdogan will either go along with this, or give up.

Copyright ) 2003 Info-Turk

*****
____________________________________________________________________

CIA TRAINING OF ISLAMISTS HAUNTS GIs IN IRAQ
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PACIFIC NEWS SERVICE
Commentary
November 26, 2003
http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=596adeec77f4e13479
9a1f540d6af825
Peter Dale Scott

Editor's Note: A technique to shoot down helicopters that CIA operatives
taught to mujahideen and Arab Islamists in Afghanistan in the 1980s is
being used in guerrilla attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

The recent downing of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in Iraq is yet another
example of how the aid supplied by the CIA to Islamist terrorists in the
1980s has contributed to the escalation and spread of terrorism everywhere
in the world.

At least two of the U.S. Black Hawk helicopters that crashed in Iraq
recently were brought down by the same sophisticated technique -- by taking
out the ship's vulnerable tail rotor with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).
As right-wing columnists and Web sites have been quick to point out, this
is exactly the technique that brought down three Black Hawks in Mogadishu,
Somalia, in October 1993. Three weeks after this devastating attack, the
United States pulled out of Somalia, an event Osama bin Laden has cited as
proof that America can be defeated.

But no one to date has pointed out what Mark Bowden, author of the best
account of that battle, "Black Hawk Down," reported: that the Somalis on
the ground had been trained by Arabs who had fought against the Soviets in
Afghanistan. As Bowden wrote, it was these Arabs who taught that the best
way to bring down a helicopter with an RPG was to shoot for the tail rotor
(which keeps the helicopter from spinning by countering torque from its
main rotor).

We now know that the Arab trainers of the Somalis were members of al Qaeda.

In his book on al Qaeda, "Holy War," Peter Bergen said of the Mogadishu
battle: "A U.S. official told me that the skills involved in shooting down
those helicopters were not skills that the Somalis could have learned on
their own." In other words, the training that the United States supplied to
Islamists in the Afghan War in the 1980s, when the emphasis was on bringing
down Soviet helicopters, is still coming back to haunt the United States
today. That training, according to author George Crile, author of "Charlie
Wilson's War," about the CIA's arming of Islamists during the Afghan War,
even included "urban terror, with instruction in car bombings, bicycle
bombings, camel bombings, and assassination."

One trainer of the Somalis, Egyptian-born Ali Mohamed, was also a veteran
of U.S. Special Forces and the CIA. While allegedly still on the U.S.
payroll, Mohamed had been recruiting and training Arabs for the
U.S.-supported Afghan War, at the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. This
served as the main American recruiting center for the network that after
the war became known as al Qaeda.

In 1993, the year of Mogadishu, Mohamed was picked up by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police in Canada in the company of an al Qaeda terrorist. Almost
certainly he would have been arrested; but Mohamed insisted that the RCMP
put in a phone call to his FBI handler. The call quickly secured his
release.

The Toronto daily Globe and Mail later concluded that Mohamed "was working
with U.S. counter-terrorist agents, playing a double or triple game, when
he was questioned in 1993." Mohamed, who was implicated along with al-Kifah
veterans in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was arrested again
after the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Escaping trial by
a negotiated plea, he was in a U.S. prison as late as 2001. His service to
al Qaeda is clear and admitted; it is not clear that he has done anything
to benefit the United States.

It is now over 10 years since the first U.S. Black Hawks were downed by
hits on the tail rotor with RPGs. U.S. pilots have developed
countermeasures, by quickly cutting off their engines to avoid a fatal
spin. But in March 2002 the same technique was used again effectively by al
Qaeda and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan. In Operation Anaconda of that
month, RPGs, by hitting the tail rotors, incapacitated several U.S. Air
Force Apache helicopters.

It is of course easy in retrospect to challenge the wisdom of having
imparted such skills to jihad-waging Islamists. These were extremists who,
even at the time, made it clear they despised the West almost as much as
they did the Soviet Union. But what remains is the dangerous system whereby
small numbers of policy-makers, acting at the very highest levels of
secrecy, are able to make ill-considered decisions that will have
long-term, tragic effects worldwide.

PNS contributor Peter Dale Scott ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a
former Canadian diplomat and professor of English at UC Berkeley. His most
recent book is "Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan,
Colombia, and Indochina" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). His Web site is
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott.

Copyright ) Pacific News Service

*****
____________________________________________________________________

AL-QAEDA, THE MYTHIC ENEMY
____________________________________________________________________

LE FIGARO
Commentary
Monday 24 November 2003
http://truthout.org/docs_03/112603C.shtml
By Richard Labeviere

There's no terrorist attack in the world today that is not automatically
attributed to al-Qaeda, an organization considered operational at the
transnational, if not at the planetary level, and, in consequence,
necessitating a planetary response: the war against terror, dear to
American neo-conservatives. Bad analyses very obviously invite bad
responses. This is so true that ever since this global war on terrorism has
been launched, it has not really improved either world peace or world
security. On the contrary, the precipitate action supplied by the
American-British occupation of Iraq and the calamitous management of the
Israeli-Palestinian confrontation only reinforce the Muslim-Arab world's
menace and resentment against the new "Crusaders" of a West that decides
the standard of good for all civilizations.

The misunderstanding, or contradiction, goes back to the interpretation of
the September 11, 2001 attacks, which some thought it right to analyze as
an historic rupture as important as the end of the Cold War: the old world
ended, a new one began.To this optical illusion, a correction of
perspective must be opposed. In September 2001, while the aerial attacks
were taking place on New York and Washington, fundamentalist-inspired
jihadist groups (influenced by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi
Wahabites) had already been slaughtering people for over a decade in
Algeria, Egypt, the Horn of Africa, and South East Asia. The first attack
against the World Trade Center dates to February 1993; sixty-three Western
tourists were slaughtered in Luxor in November 1997; August 1998 attacks
pulverized the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In response to
American soldiers' continued stationing in Saudi Arabia in the vicinity of
Islam's holy sites, fundamentalist groups attack Western interests and
advocate the restoration of a mythic Caliphate and the establishment of a
universal ummah. Revived by an old sectarian and satanic filiation, the Bin
Laden movement incarnates the ultimate face of this activism that came to a
head in the September 2001 attacks. Those attacks are all the more
indicative of the end of a cycle in that the Taliban regime which sheltered
and armed Bin Laden was destroyed in December 2001.

The Afghanistan campaign opens a second period during which the Bin Laden
movement and its Arab Afghans reconstitute and find sanctuary in the
Afghani-Pakistani cauldron, especially in the harbor metropolis of Karachi.
The fundamentalist groups profit from several welcoming structures there:
some 300 madrassahs (Koranic schools) which daily teach hatred of the West
to several hundred thousand "students", numerous Islamist parties
recruiting for holy war in Kashmir, and the ISI, the Pakistani army secret
services, who have protected and trained the Arab Afghans since the
Afghanistan War against the Russians (1979-1989). Nearly all the attacks
committed since December 2001, notably the assassination of the Journalist
Daniel Pearl in Karachi (January 2002), the attack against the Djerba
synagogue (11 April 2002), then against the French technicians of the Naval
Construction Management (DCN) May 8 2002 go back one way or another to the
Karachi epicenter.

Finally, a third phase sees a new generation of activists emerge. Educated
and trained by Arab Afghans, these neo-fundamentalists, who have never set
foot in either Afghanistan nor in Pakistan, are recruited from the Islamist
movements that incarnate the opposition to the families and the regimes in
place in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Indonesia, and now, Turkey. For them, Osama
Bin Laden has become an icon and al-Qaeda, a symbolic, if not political,
reference point. The authors of the Bali attack (October 2002) were trained
by the Indonesian army. After the East Timor episode when they had not
obtained the realization of the economic and political promises the
Indonesian generals had dangled in front of them, they turned against their
former leaders. Those responsible for the murderous May 2003 explosions in
Morocco, all came from the slums of Casablanca or Tangiers, where over half
the population is a victim of illiteracy, and where an exponentially
growing and ever less controllable lumpen-proletariat demands a better
distribution of tourist revenues. In Saudi Arabia, the authors of the May
2003 attacks, as well as of those perpetrated two weeks ago against the
al-Mohaya residential complex, are, for the most part, sons of Saudi
bourgeois families of Yemenite origin, a group that makes the country
function and aspires to responsibility. These new activists are careful not
to aim at Saudi targets, thus prudently avoiding setting off local or
tribal vendettas.

With regard to the latest attacks in Istanbul, the Turkish police almost
immediately arrested about twenty local activists duly known to the
intelligence services, even if it is politically more profitable for the
Turkish Prime Minister to condemn the ancestral Arab enemy and foreign
plots.

>>From then on the demonization of al-Qaeda is very practical. A superb media
invention, security haute couture label, consensual poster for the
bounty-hunters of another age, a crude, but effective, propaganda: if
al-Qaeda didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Since September 11,
2001 the al-Qaeda label has surreptitiously slid from designating a
criminal band with Bin Laden at their head, to specifying a high-tech
organization, to finally qualifying a planetary network: al-Qaeda has
"CNNized" itself, like the al-Jezira channel which serves its
communications. Al-Qaeda is everywhere, therefore, nowhere. Just as the
hidden Imam, Bin Laden, simultaneously dead and alive, is behind every
unexplained bomb explosion. Fortunately, his organization is there to give
sense to all the world's disorders.

The phantasm of a planetary, pyramidal al-Qaeda, that of a new
orchestration or of an International similar in all respects to
Comintern's, is in the process of justifying the biggest American
military-strategic redeployment effected since the end of the Second World
War. The endless war against terror has replaced the war against the
Communist monster. Consequently, it's not surprising to see old U.S.S.R.
experts redeploying their old scholasticism on the pretext of an Islamist
violence about which they know nothing, applying anachronistic Kremlinology
schemas to it. These American neo-conservative ideological go-betweens
stand guard on the old continent. For the American Empire, it's important
that the al-Qaeda mythology persist. To survive, the empire needs an enemy
to its measure and to make war on: endless war.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorialist at Radio France Internationale (RFI). His
latest book to come out: Les Coulisses de la terreur (Behind the Scenes of
Terror), Grasset, 2003.

Article Courtesy of TruthOut.org., http://www.truthout.org.
Translation: Truthout French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

Copyright ) 2003 by Le Figaro and TruthOut.org

*****

THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
A Resource for Countering Myth, Distortion and Spin from the Israeli Media
War Machine
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: http://www.electronicIntifada.net
Fax: (559) 851-9186
- Wednesday, 26 November 2003 -

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____________________________________________________________________

WHAT HAS FAILED IN PALESTINE, WILL FAIL IN IRAQ
____________________________________________________________________

By Ali Abunimah
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1219.shtml

Just as many senior Israeli military officials are openly criticizing their
government's tactics in the occupied Palestinian territories, the United
States is repeating in Iraq many of Israel's worst mistakes. This will doom
efforts to stabilize Iraq and restore its independence.

"In a tactic reminiscent of Israeli crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza,"
reported the Detroit Free Press on November 18, "the U.S. military has
begun destroying the homes of suspected guerrilla fighters in Iraq's Sunni
Triangle, evacuating women and children, then leveling their houses with
heavy weaponry...Family members at one of the houses, in the village of al
Haweda, said they were given five minutes to evacuate before soldiers
opened fire."

This is precisely the tactic for which human rights organizations and even
the U.S. government have repeatedly condemned Israel.

Near the Iraqi town of Dhulaiya, U.S. forces reenacted another scene
familiar to Palestinians. "The bulldozers worked for 10 days, methodically
clearing the date palms and citrus groves as 200 soldiers sealed off the
area," according to a November 5, report in Newsday. "Townspeople looked on
helplessly, while jazz music blared from speakers mounted atop the
soldiers' trucks," the report said, adding, "Iraqis are quick to make a
comparison with Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories, where
Israeli forces regularly clear fields as a security measure - and as a form
of communal punishment."

In The Independent, Phil Reeves reported that the town of Awja, near
Tikrit, "is the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but transported to Iraq." Reeves,
a long-time Palestine/Israel correspondent, described a town "imprisoned by
razor wire. The entrance is guarded by soldiers, protected by sand bags,
concrete barricades and a machine-gun nest. Only those people with an
identification card issued by the occupation authorities are allowed in or,
more importantly, out." (18 November 2003)

Other aspects of life in Palestine are creeping into Iraqis' daily
experience. The Los Angeles Times reported that due to the insecurity felt
by the U.S. occupation forces, "body searches have become a constant of
daily life." Times reporter Alissa Rubin observed that, "ordinary residents
now may have their bodies patted down, pockets turned inside-out, and the
contents of purses, briefcases and grocery bags scrutinized several times a
day. A trip to the hospital, attendance at a university class, entrance to
a government office or a stop to pray at a major mosque involve highly
physical encounters with total strangers." (25 November 2003)

The growing similarities between Iraq and Palestine are due in part to the
inexorable logic of military occupation, which in order to maintain control
(or avoid losing it totally), must draw ever greater numbers of innocent
people into the net of oppression. But worryingly, some of the American
tactics in Iraq are deliberately copied from Israel.

The Los Angeles Times reported on November 22, that

"Facing a bloody insurgency by guerrillas who label it an 'occupier,' the
military has quietly turned to an ally experienced with occupation and
uprisings: Israel." In the last six months, the report adds, "U.S. Army
commanders, Pentagon officials and military trainers have sought advice
from Israeli intelligence and security officials on everything from how to
set up roadblocks to the best way to bomb suspected guerrilla hide-outs in
an urban area."

Americans should be alarmed that their government is seeking advice on how
to run the occupation of Iraq from an Israel whose bloody methods have not
only failed for thirty-six years to bring "security" and end resistance to
the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but have
been often condemned by human rights organizations such as Amnesty
International as "war crimes."

Rather than taking catastrophically bad advice from Israel, the U.S. ought
to listen to those top Israelis who increasingly acknowledge that these
kinds of repressive measures have only stiffened all Palestinians' resolve,
while Israeli civilians are less secure than ever before from suicide
bombings by Palestinian extremists.

Israel's hard-line military chief of staff, Major General Moshe Ya'alon
sparked uproar last month when he told journalists that Israel's repressive
tactics against the Palestinian population were generating explosive levels
of "hatred and terrorism."

Four former chiefs of Israel's internal security service, Shin Bet , echoed
Ya'alon's views. One ex-Shin Bet chief, Avraham Shalom, told Israel's
Yediot Aharonotnewspaper, "we must once and for all admit there is another
side, that it has feelings, that it is suffering and that we are behaving
disgracefully...this entire behavior is the result of the occupation."

Brig. Gen. Yiftah Spector, one of Israel's most decorated fighter pilots,
said of his country's occupation of the Palestinians, "We're in a more
serious situation than the U.S. was in Vietnam."

While the Bush administration says its actions are for the welfare and
freedom of the Iraqi people, the administration's desire to highlight
"progress," and the media's focus on U.S. casualties, is making the
suffering the occupation is causing for Iraqis all but invisible. Civilians
are regularly killed and maimed by jittery U.S. soldiers. Although it's
hard to get numbers, since the U.S. hasn't tried to count Iraqi casualties,
Boston Globereporter Charles Sennott told NPR's Fresh Air program that he
recently visited Baghdad hospital wards full of civilians shot by American
soldiers.

A leaked CIA report earlier this month predicted that harsher military
tactics would drive more Iraqis to the insurgents' side. While the bleak
situation prompted the Bush administration to hastily seek a quicker
handover of power to Iraqis, it also launched a broad new military
campaign, "Operation Iron Hammer," that may nullify all the political
efforts to win the confidence of Iraqis. In effect, the administration has
two contradictory policies.

Americans should also be aware that in the wider Arab and Muslim worlds,
the strikingly similar images of both occupations, feed the mounting anger
and fear about United States foreign policy, and in the worst case fuel the
extremism the U.S. says it wants to fight.

This policy confusion is not surprising, since Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld still seems to be in denial about the reality in Iraq. In an
interview with Japan's NHK network on November 15, Rumsfeld said the
security situation in Iraq could be roughly compared with the crime levels
in Tokyo or Chicago, and asserted that all in all, the occupation is "doing
very well." Rumsfeld, unable or unwilling to admit the devastating impact
of the policies in occupied Iraq on world public opinion, has also resorted
to blaming the messenger -- once again lashing out at the Arabic-language
Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya satellite networks who bring the images into
millions of Arab homes. Rumsfeld even approved of a recent decision by
Iraq's U.S.-created "Governing Council" to shut down Al-Arabiya's offices
in Iraq. So much for a free media.

With such attitudes prevailing, it is no wonder Marco Calamai, the senior
Italian member of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
resigned a week after the November 12 bombing in the Iraqi city of Nasiriya
that killed thirty-one people including nineteen Italians. Calamai told
Italy's Unita newspaper that the CPA's woeful failure to understand Iraqi
society had created "delusion, social discontent and anger" and had allowed
terrorism to "easily take root." He added that the only way to save the
situation is for the U.S. to hand over power to a U.N.-led interim
authority.

This, not military escalation, remains the best of a bad set of options.
But on current performance it seems the Bush administration has neither the
inclination nor the international credibility to seize it while it is still
available.

Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of Electronic Iraq and The Electronic Intifada
websites.

Contact/Support Electronic Iraq and The Electronic Intifada:
http://electronicintifada.net/contact/index.shtml

*****

COUNTERPUNCH
'Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
Business Office
P.O. Box 228
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Web: http://www.counterpunch.org
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- Friday, November 28, 2003 -

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____________________________________________________________________

VIETNAM AND IRAQ
Has the U.S. Learned Anything?
____________________________________________________________________

By GABRIEL KOLKO
http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko11282003.html

There are great cultural, political, and physical differences between
Vietnam and Iraq that cannot be minimized, and the geopolitical situation
is entirely different. After all, the U.S. encouraged and materially
supported Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran throughout the 1980s because
it feared a militantly Shiite Iran would dominate the Gulf region. It still
does, and if the Shia majority takes over the Iraqi government next
June--the date Washington has promised to transfer nominal power to Iraqi
authority--Iran is more likely than ever to attain its regional
geopolitical ambitions. But putting this fundamental paradox in the
American position aside, which makes the transfer of power to the Iraqi
Shias and real democracy highly unlikely, the U.S. has ignored the lessons
of the traumatic Vietnam experience and is today repeating many of the
errors that produced defeat.

In both places successive American administrations slighted the advice of
its most knowledgeable intelligence experts. In Vietnam they told
Washington's decision-makers not to tread where France had failed and to
endorse the 1955 Geneva Accords provisos on reunification. They also warned
against underestimating the Communists' numbers, motivation, or their
independent relationship to China and the Soviet Union. But America's
leaders have time and again believed what they wanted, not what their
intelligence told them.

The Pentagon in the 1960s had an uncritical faith in its overwhelming
firepower, its modern equipment, mobility, and mastery of the skies. It
still does, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believes the military has
the technology to "shock and awe" all adversaries. But war in Vietnam, as
in Iraq, was highly decentralized and the number of troops required only
increased even as the firepower became greater. When they reached a
half-million Americans in Vietnam the public turned against the President
and defeated his party.

Wars are ultimately won politically or not at all. This is true in every
place and at all times. Leaders in Washington thought this interpretation
of events in Vietnam was bizarre, and they ignored its experts whenever
they frequently reminded them of the limits of military power. The
importance of Vietnamese politics was slighted, escalations followed, and
the "credibility" of American military power--the willingness to use it and
win no matter how long it took--became their primary concern.

In both Vietnam and Iraq the public was mobilized on the basis of cynical
falsehoods which ultimately backfired, causing a "credibility gap." People
eventually ceased to believe anything Washington told them. The Tonkin Gulf
crisis of August 1964 was manufactured, as the CIA's leading analyst later
admitted in his memoir, because "the administration was seeking a pretext
for a major escalation." Countless lies were told during the Vietnam War
but eventually many of the men who counted most were themselves unable
separate truth from fiction. Many American leaders really believed that if
the Communists won in Vietnam the "dominoes" would fall and the Chinese and
Soviets would dominate all Southeast Asia. The Iraq War was initially
justified because Hussein was purported to have weapons of mass destruction
and ties to the Al-Quaeda; no evidence whatsoever for either allegation has
been found.

There are 130,000 American troops in Iraq now--twice the number that Bush
predicted would remain by this month--but, as in Vietnam, their morale is
already low and sinking. Bush's ratings in the polls have fallen
dramatically--especially as he has run up huge budget deficits and ignored
domestic issues, such as health insurance, which may ultimately determine
how people vote in the 2004 election. He needs many more soldiers in Iraq
desperately and foreign nations will not provide them. The Army is already
planning for 100,000 troops in Iraq until 2006 but, depending on the
resistance, the number may be larger and they may remain even longer. In
Vietnam, President Nixon tried to "Vietnamize" the land war and transfer
the burdens of soldiering to Nguyen Van Thieu's huge army. But it was
demoralized and organized to maintain Thieu in power, not win the victory
that American forces failed to attain. "Iraqization" of the military
required to put down dissidents will not accomplish what has eluded the
Americans, and in both Vietnam and Iraq the U.S. underestimated the length
of time it would have to remain and cultivated illusions about the strength
of its friends.

The Iraqi army was initially disbanded but now is being partially
reconstituted by utilizing Hussein's officers and enlisted men. The idea
that it will be loyal to America's nominal goals or be militarily effective
is quixotic. As in Vietnam, where the Buddhists opposed the Catholics who
comprised the leaders America endorsed, Iraq is a divided nation regionally
and religiously, and Washington has the unenviable choice between the risks
of disorder which its own lack of troops make likely and civil war if it
arms Iraqis. Elections are likely to exacerbate these differences, not
resolve them. The Shias make up three-fifths of the Iraqi population and
their leaders have their own political agendas, and their taking over the
army or politics will also strengthen Iranian influence and its power in
the region. Despite plenty of expert opinion to warn it, the Bush
Administration has scant perception of the complexity of the political
problems it confronts in Iraq. Afghanistan looms as a reminder of how
military success depends ultimately on politics, and how things go wrong.

Rumsfeld's admission in his confidential memo last October 16th that "we
lack the metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on
terror" was an indication that key members of the Bush Administration are
far less confident of what they are doing than they were early in 2003. But
as in Vietnam, when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ceased to believe
that victory was inevitable, it is too late to reverse course and now the
credibility of America's military power is at stake.

Eventually, domestic politics takes precedence over everything else. It did
in Vietnam War and it is very likely in the case Iraq also. By 1968 the
polls were turning against the Democrats and the Tet Offensive in February
caught President Lyndon Johnson by surprise because he and his generals
refused to believe the CIA's estimates that there were really 600,000
rather than 300,000 people in the Communist forces. Nixon won because he
promised a war-weary public he would bring peace with honor. Bush declared
last October 28 that "we're not leaving" Iraq soon, but his party and
political advisers will probably have the last word as American casualties
mount and his poll ratings continue to decline. Vietnam proved that the
American public has limited patience. That is probably still true.

The real lessons of Vietnam have yet to be learned.

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author
of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914
and Another Century of War?. He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Copyright ) 2003. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the
Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.

*****

WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Thursday, 27 November 2003 -

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____________________________________________________________________

THE 'WAR ON TERROR' AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY - SOME OMINOUS WARNINGS
____________________________________________________________________

News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/warn-n27.shtml
By Patrick Martin

Three commentaries published recently in the US media, all by
well-connected observers of the US military, have suggested that a major
new terrorist attack within the United States could disrupt the 2004
elections and even result in military intervention on the streets of
America as well as the suspension of the Constitution.

On Friday, November 21, the right-wing web news service Newsmax.com
published an account of the interview given by General Tommy Franks to the
lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado,
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml

Franks said that a terrorist attack employing a weapon of mass destruction
and causing mass casualties, either in the United States or against an
ally, would likely result in replacing the American Constitution with a
military government.

As the commander of CentCom, Franks led US forces in the conquest of
Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq earlier this year, before
retiring during the summer. In his magazine interview, he outlined this
scenario:

"It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist,
massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world--it may be
in the United States of America--that causes our population to question our
own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a
repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then
begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very
important."

Frank remains a fervent supporter of the Bush administration, describing
Bush as "a very thoughtful man," and declaring, "Probably we'll think of
him in years to come as an American hero."

But according to Franks, it may be under the administration of this "hero"
that "the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and
that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in
this grand experiment that we call democracy."

The retired general placed the responsibility for this possible turn to
dictatorship on "our population," and was silent on what role the military
leadership or the Bush administration would play in its establishment. The
American media has apparently failed to ask him anything about it since.

Terrorism and the 2004 election

The same theme was touched on in the Outlook section of the Washington
Post, the main daily newspaper in the US capital, in a column published
Sunday, November 23, under the headline "Terrorist Logic: Disrupt the 2004
Election,"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5269-2003Nov21.html.

The author was David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official
now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a major Washington
think tank.

Rothkopf outlines the possibility of a terrorist campaign of suicide
bombings during next fall's election campaign that leads to a full-scale
military mobilization. "History suggests that striking during major
elections is an effective tool for terrorist groups," he writes.

As a representative of the Democratic wing of the ruling elite, Rothkopf is
clearly concerned that such an event would profit the Bush administration.
He cites examples such as the Israeli elections in 1996, when suicide
bombings contributed to the victory of right-wing Likud candidate Binyamin
Netanyahu, and the 2000 Russian elections, won by Vladimir Putin after a
series of bombings in Moscow and other cities--attributed to Chechen
terrorists but widely believed to have been carried out or at least
permitted by Putin's KGB.

Rothkopf notes the politically symbiotic relationship between the
terrorists and the hard-liners: "Hard-liners strike back more broadly,
making it easier for terrorists as they attempt to justify their causes and
their methods." He could have added that the terrorists are a godsend for
the hard-liners, providing a pretext for dictatorial methods.

More important than his argument--essentially restating the Democratic
appeal for a more coordinated international approach to terrorism--is what
Rothkopf reveals about the expectations in official Washington and
corporate America. At one point he notes: "Recently, I co-chaired a meeting
hosted by CNBC of more than 200 senior business and government executives,
many of whom are specialists in security and terrorism related issues.
Almost three-quarters of them said it was likely the United States would
see a major terrorist strike before the end of 2004. A similar number
predicted that the assault would be greater than those of 9/11 and might
well involve weapons of mass destruction. It was the sense of the group
that such an attack was likely to generate additional support for President
Bush."

This is a remarkable assertion. Rothkopf describes this elite audience as
"serious people, not prone to hysteria or panic--military officers,
policymakers, scientists, researchers and others who have studied such
issues for a long time." The vast majority of them, he says, believe that a
terrorist attack worse than September 11--that is, killing thousands or
even tens of thousands of Americans--will take place in the course of the
2004 election campaign, and that this attack will benefit the political
fortunes of George W. Bush.

Military action inside the US

The role of the military in domestic policing was the subject of a column
published November 23, written by William Arkin, a well-connected military
analyst for the Los Angeles Times,
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-arkin23nov23%2C1%2C453152
0.story.

It was Arkin who last year revealed the Bush administration's decision to
revise US military strategy to target seven countries--Iraq, Iran, North
Korea, Libya, Syria, China and Russia--for possible nuclear attack.

The column was headlined, "Mission Creep Hits Home, American armed forces
are assuming major new domestic policing and surveillance roles." It
examines the role of the Pentagon's Northern Command, the newly established
center for controlling all US armed forces within the continental US,
Canada and Alaska, and includes an interview with its commander, Air Force
General Ralph E. Eberhart.

According to Arkin, the Northern Command has defined three categories of
operations, with increasing levels of activity: temporary, emergency and
extraordinary. He writes: "It is only in the case of 'extraordinary'
domestic operations that the unique capabilities of the Defense Department
are deployed. These include not just such things as air patrols to shoot
down hijacked planes or the defusing of bombs and other explosives, but
also bringing in intelligence collectors, special operators and even full
combat troops."

Arkin reveals that the Northern Command is "already working under the
far-reaching authority that goes with 'extraordinary operations.'" This
includes the activation of a series of intelligence-gathering operations
directed against the American people. These include:

* A decision by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to expand the mission of
the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), established last year to
protect "critical infrastructure," authorizing it to maintain "a domestic
law enforcement database that includes information related to potential
terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense."

* The assigning of military special agents to 56 FBI Joint Terrorism Task
Force operations at FBI field offices, investigating potential threats to
the military in local communities inside the United States.

* The decision by Eberhart to transform Joint Task Force Six, a
drug-enforcement unit of 160 soldiers at Ft. Bliss, Texas, into a
counterterrorism force called Interagency Task Force North. Congress
originally authorized joint Task Force Six in 1996, in the first exception
to the Posse Comitatus Law, which bars the US military from assuming
domestic police functions.

* The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, another little-known body,
is gathering an "urban data inventory" combining unclassified and
classified data on 133 cities, as well as US border crossings and seaports,
to create a national "spatial data infrastructure." This information, which
Arkin describes as "down to the house level," could be used either for
surveillance or military targeting.

According to Arkin, the CIFA has been given a domestic "data mining"
mission as well: "figuring out a way to process massive sets of public
records, intercepted communications, credit card accounts, etc., to find
'actionable intelligence.'" This amounts to reviving in another form the
Total Information Awareness program, headed by Admiral John Poindexter of
Iran-Contra fame, which was supposedly shut down earlier this year by
Congress after a public outcry.

Arkin concludes: "Outside the view of most of the public, the government is
daily expanding military operations into areas of local government and law
enforcement that historically have been off-limits. And it doesn't seem
far-fetched to imagine that those charged with assembling 'actionable
intelligence' will slowly start combining databases of known terrorists
with seemingly innocuous lists of contributors to charities or causes, that
membership lists for activist organizations will be folded in, that names
and personal data of anti-globalization protesters will be run through the
'data mine.' After all, the mission of Northern Command and other Pentagon
agencies is to identify groups and individuals who could potentially pose
threats to Defense Department and civilian installations."

Here, then, is a glimpse of the real state of affairs in the United States
on the eve of the 2004 election year. Ruling circles widely anticipate a
massive terrorist strike that would boost the flagging political standing
of the Bush administration or even lead to a suspension of the elections
and the establishment of military rule. The US military is actively
preparing for this possibility by readying troops for use in domestic
policing and by assembling a database of likely political opponents.

The obvious question is: given the expected consequences, is it not in the
political interests of the Bush administration or sections of the
military/intelligence apparatus to engineer such a terrorist attack? Or at
least to insure that it takes place, by looking the other way, on the model
of September 11?

Copyright 1998-2003 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.

*****
____________________________________________________________________

'BUSH-NAZI DEALINGS CONTINUED UNTIL 1951' - FEDERAL DOCUMENTS
____________________________________________________________________

THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE
National News
Vol. 248, No. 3, November 7, 2003
http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bu
sh_Nazi_2
By John Buchanan and Stacey Michael

After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on
behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather
of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen
"enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951,
newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.

Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely
attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.

Bush's partners in the secret web of Thyssen-controlled ventures included
former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and his younger brother, E.
Roland Harriman. Their quarter-century of Nazi financial transactions, from
1924-1951, were conducted by the New York private banking firm, Brown
Brothers Harriman.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Although the additional seizures under the Trading with the Enemy Act did
not take place until after the war, documents from The National Archives
and Library of Congress confirm that Bush and his partners continued their
Nazi dealings unabated. These activities included a financial relationship
with the German city of Hanover and several industrial concerns. They went
undetected by investigators until after World War Two.

At the same time Bush and the Harrimans were profiting from their Nazi
partnerships, W. Averell Harriman was serving as President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's personal emissary to the United Kingdom during the toughest
years of the war. On October 28, 1942, the same day two key
Bush-Harriman-run businesses were being seized by the U.S. government,
Harriman was meeting in London with Field Marshall Smuts to discuss the war
effort.

Denial and Deceit

While Harriman was concealing his Nazi relationships from his government
colleagues, Cornelius Livense, the top executive of the interlocking German
concerns held under the corporate umbrella of Union Banking Corporation
(UBC), repeatedly tried to mislead investigators, and was sometimes
supported in his subterfuge by Brown Brothers Harriman.

All of the assets of UBC and its related businesses belonged to
Thyssen-controlled enterprises, including his Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, the documents state.

Nevertheless, Livense, president of UBC, claimed to have no knowledge of
such a relationship. "Strangely enough, (Livense) claims he does not know
the actual ownership of the company," states a government report.

H.D Pennington, manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and a director of UBC
"for many years," also lied to investigators about the secret and
well-concealed relationship with Thyssen's Dutch bank, according to the
documents.

Investigators later reported that the company was "wholly owned" by
Thyssen's Dutch bank.

Despite such ongoing subterfuge, U.S. investigators were able to show that
"a careful examination of UBC's general ledger, cash books and journals
from 1919 until the present date clearly establish that the principal and
practically only source of funds has been Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart."

In yet another attempt to mislead investigators, Livense said that $240,000
in banknotes in a safe deposit box at Underwriters Trust Co. in New York
had been given to him by another UBC-Thyssen associate, H.J. Kouwenhoven,
managing director of Thyssen's Dutch bank and a director of the August
Thyssen Bank in Berlin. August Thyssen was Fritz's father.

The government report shows that Livense first neglected to report the
$240,000, then claimed that it had been given to him as a gift by
Kouwenhoven. However, by the time Livense filed a financial disclosure with
U.S. officials, he changed his story again and reported the sum as a debt
rather than a cash holding.

In yet another attempt to deceive the governments of both the U.S. and
Canada, Livense and his partners misreported the facts about the sale of a
Canadian Nazi front enterprise, La Cooperative Catholique des Consommateurs
de Combustible, which imported German coal into Canada via the web of
Thyssen-controlled U.S. businesses.

"The Canadian authorities, however, were not taken in by this maneuver," a
U.S. government report states. The coal company was later seized by
Canadian authorities.

After the war, a total of 18 additional Brown Brothers Harriman and
UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act,
including several that showed the continuation of a relationship with the
Thyssen family after the initial 1942 seizures.

The records also show that Bush and the Harrimans conducted business after
the war with related concerns doing business in or moving assets into
Switzerland, Panama, Argentina and Brazil - all critical outposts for the
flight of Nazi capital after Germany's surrender in 1945. Fritz Thyssen
died in Argentina in 1951.

One of the final seizures, in October 1950, concerned the U.S. assets of a
Nazi baroness named Theresia Maria Ida Beneditka Huberta Stanislava Martina
von Schwarzenberg, who also used two shorter aliases. Brown Brothers
Harriman, where Prescott Bush and the Harrimans were partners, attempted to
convince government investigators that the baroness had been a victim of
Nazi persecution and therefore should be allowed to maintain her assets.

"It appears, rather, that the subject was a member of the Nazi party,"
government investigators concluded.

At the same time the last Brown Brothers Harriman client assets were
seized, Prescott Bush announced his Senate campaign that led to his
election in 1952.

Investigation Investigated?

In 1943, six months after the seizure of UBC and its related companies, a
government investigator noted in a Treasury Department memo dated April 8,
1943 that the FBI had inquired about the status of any investigation into
Bush and the Harrimans.

"I gave 'a memorandum' which did not say anything about the American
officers of subject," the investigator wrote. "(Another investigator)
wanted to know whether any specific action had been taken by us with
respect to them."

No further action beyond the initial seizures was ever taken, and the
newly-confirmed records went unseen by the American people for six decades.

What Does It All Mean?

So why are the documents relevant today?

"The story of Prescott Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman is an introduction
to the real history of our country," says L.A. art book publisher and
historian Edward Boswell. "It exposes the money-making motives behind our
foreign policies, dating back a full century. The ability of Prescott Bush
and the Harrimans to bury their checkered pasts also reveals a collusion
between Wall Street and the media that exists to this day."

Sheldon Drobny, a Chicago entrepreneur and philanthropist who will soon
launch a liberal talk radio network, says the importance of the new
documents is that they prove a long pattern of Bush family war profiteering
that continues today via George H.W. Bush's intimate relationship with the
Saudi royal family and the bin Ladens, conducted via the super-secret
Carlyle Group, whose senior advisers include former U.S. Secretary of State
James A. Baker III.

In the post-9/11 world, Drobny finds the Bush-Saudi connection deeply
troubling. "Trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy," he says.
"That's the relevance of the documents and what they show."

Lawrence Lader, an abortion rights activist and the author of more than 40
books, says "the relevance lies with the fact that the sitting President of
the United States would lead the nation to war based on lies and against
the wishes of the rest of the world." Lader and others draw comparisons
between President Bush's invasion of Iraq and Hitler's occupation of Poland
in 1939 - the event that sparked World War Two.

However, others see an even larger significance.

"The discovery of the Bush-Nazi documents raises new questions about the
role of Prescott Bush and his influential business partners in the secret
emigration of Nazi war criminals, which allowed them to escape justice in
Germany," says Bob Fertik, co-founder of Democrats.com and an amateur 'Nazi
hunter.' "It also raises questions about the importance of Nazi recruits to
the CIA in its early years, in what was called Operation Paperclip, and
Prescott Bush's role in that dark operation."

Fertik and others, including former Justice Department Nazi war crimes
prosecutor John Loftus, a Constitutional attorney in Miami, and a former
Veterans Administration official, believe Prescott Bush and the Harrimans
should have been tried for treason.

What Next?

Now, say Fertik and Loftus, there should be a Congressional investigation
into the Bush family's Nazi past and its concealment from the American
people for 60 years.

"The American people have a right to know, in detail, about this hidden
chapter of our history," says Loftus, author of The Secret War Against the
Jews. "That's the only way we can understand it and deal with it."

For his part, Fertik is pessimistic that even a Congressional investigation
can thwart the war profiteering of the present Bush White House. "It's
impossible to stop it," he says, "when the worst war profiteers are George
W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who operate in secrecy behind the vast powers of
the White House."

John Buchanan is a journalist and magazine writer based in Miami Beach. He
can be reached by e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Stacey Michael is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of
Religious Conceit. His most recent book is Weapons of Mass Dysfunction: The
Art of "Faith-Based" Politics, due in early 2004. He can be reached by
email at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Founded in 1756, The New Hampshire Gazette is The Nation's Oldest
Newspaper, combining independent thought with a commitment to freedom of
the press and featuring the popular Republican Chickenhawks Database.The
Gazette is proud to be an alternative news source for America and anyone
else who cares to read.

Copyright ) The New Hampshire Gazette, 2003. All rights reserved.

*****
____________________________________________________________________

NAKED GUN
____________________________________________________________________

THE MOSCOW TIMES
Global Eye
Friday, November 28, 2003. Page XII
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/11/28/120.html
By Chris Floyd

Don't kid yourself -- and don't let them kid you. When they come at you
with that pious sugar, telling you how they're going to protect you, secure
you, keep you free, you better run and check the back door -- because
that's where their goons will be breaking in.

Last week, the U.S. Congress approved an expansion of FBI powers that will
allow Attorney General John Ashcroft's federal police to arbitrarily seize
records from a range of private businesses without bothering a judge or
grand jury with any silly-billy nonsense about evidence or even suspicion
of criminal intent. All Ashcroft's boys have to do is say, "Boo!
Terrorism!" and they can take whatever they want.

This expansion of Patriot (sic) Act powers was smuggled into the funding
bill for the Bush Regime's security organs. Although the FBI is technically
under the supervision of the Judiciary committees, Bushist bagmen in
Congress routed the measure through the secret sessions of the intelligence
committees to avoid any public debate, Wired Magazine reports.

As usual, the power grab was accompanied by earnest pledges that it would
only be used in the most extreme cases of genuine terrorist danger. This
was also the line given out when the Patriot (sic) Act was first passed in
2001. Ashcroft -- who is so holy that he had his daddy pour cooking oil
over his head after his 1994 election to the Senate to signify that he,
like King David, had been anointed with the Lord's "dominion over men" --
solemnly swore that the draconian measures would never be applied to
anything but dire threats to the national security.

This was, of course, the usual load of mule manure we've come to expect
from the incontinently mendacious Regime. Witness the scene in Las Vegas
this month, where Ashcroft's agents invoked the Patriot (sic) Act's
anti-terrorism powers to run roughshod over due process in a local probe of
a lap-dancing joint. The club owner was suspected of offering bribes to
Vegas officials to win approval of a law allowing a more hands-on approach
between dancers and customers, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. While
the case had nothing to do with terrorism, obviously the very thought of
naked flesh being fondled constituted a dire threat to the national
security in Ashcroft's oily mind. And obviously, nothing will prevent
Ashcroft and his minions from using the Act to pursue any other personal
bee that's buzzing in their fully armed federal bonnets.

While Ashcroft's sexual anxieties are mildly amusing (last year he
installed an $8,000 curtain to hide the wantonly bare breast of a statue at
his Washington headquarters), there's a far more sinister side to this
corrosion of America's few remaining liberties. For the very day after the
Congressional rubberstamps gave their Viagra-like boost to the FBI's reach,
another legislative committee released its report on "one of the greatest
failures in the history of federal law enforcement" -- the FBI's eager
participation in Mob murders, carried out with the full knowledge and
approval of the highest levels of government, The New York Times reports.

It began in the heyday of J. Edgar Hoover, the cross-dressing martinet who
reigned supreme in Washington for decades, blackmailing presidents,
wiretapping dissidents (his sex tapes of Martin Luther King Jr. were said
to be a particular favorite) and generally playing merry hell with American
liberties all across the board. In the 1960s, the FBI formed a partnership
with a Boston gangland outfit, using its hitmen as informants to finger
other gangs. It was a sweet deal for both parties: the Bureau got
high-profile collars for its PR mill, and the gangsters got to knock off
their enemies with the blessing -- and cover -- of the biggest "roof"
around: the U.S. government.

Not only did the FBI cover for its pet killers; agents actually allowed
four men to be convicted (two of them sentenced to execution) for a murder
that Hoover knew had been committed by one of his "informants." Two of the
innocent men died in prison; the others were freed after serving 30 years
of hard time. In all, the FBI's informants murdered more than 20 people in
Boston -- "often with the help of FBI agents," noted the Congressional
report. And lest you think this blood work was just something from the "bad
old days," consider this: the FBI-Mob death squad was still operative at
least as late as 1995, when a helpful fed tipped off Boston's top mobster,
Whitey Bulger, before he could be arrested by some nonmobbed cops. Whitey
is still at large -- and presumably still enjoying the shelter of his
trusty "roof."

And by the way, not a single FBI agent has ever been arrested -- or even
disciplined -- for their part in this murderous enterprise.

So don't kid yourself that these new powers won't be abused. They will.
Power -- the armed power of the state, the power over life, death and the
liberty of the individual -- will always go just as far as you let it. It
will trample every ethical and moral boundary, pour itself into every nook
and cranny of life, public and private, seeking dominance at every level --
unless you maintain a rigorous system of checks and balances to balk the
flow of power, frustrate it, channel it, disperse it, subject it to reason,
humanize it.

But in the militarized, one-party state of Bushist America, where law is
scorned and reason has fled, those restraints are being swept aside. The
back door is wide open.

Copyright ) 2003, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved.

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