Cut Off All Funds for War
Building on the momentum of January 27 and more than 1000 actions on January 10-11, a number of organizations are calling for a day of local actions across the U.S. on February 17. Demonstrations are already planned in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles. The focus for the actions is the demand: No Money for War! Congress Cut the Funding Now!
People are organzing to reject the claim that cutting off funding endangers the troops. It is the war that endangers the troops and endangers the Iraqi people. The solution and just demands of the people are All U.S. Troops Home Now! No Money for War!
Congress is again being targeted as there will likely be a vote on war funding in February. Bush is expected to ask for an additional $100 billion for the occupation of Iraq and planned war in the region, with war plans against Iran already in motion.Congress has the power to stop the war by cutting off war funding and by passing a law to block war against Iran and end war in Iraq.
On February 17 in cities and towns across the U.S., activists will make it clear to Congress that we reject funds for war. We demand funds for reparations for U.S. crimes and destruction in Iraq and worldwide, we demand funds for meeting human needs, abroad and at home and we demand them now. Activists across the country are organizing pickets, rallies, sit-ins, and other forms of creative resistance and direct action.[TOP]
We Do Not Want a Pro-War Government
United for Peace and Justice, CodePink, Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), Peace Action, and many others organized anti-war actions at Congressional offices on January 29 and 30. These demonstrations were part of the broad protests that began January 27 with more than 200,000 demonstrating in DC.
On Monday and Tuesday activists went to Congressional offices, organizing banner drops, sit-ins and more. They demanded that Congress act to end the war, including voting against an upcoming appropriation request from President George W. Bush. They are telling Senators and Members of Congress to “Support Our Troops by De-Funding the War, Bring Our Troops Home Now and Take Care of Them When They Get Here.” CodePink specifically targeted presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, saying, “We want a woman for peace, not just a women.” All were firm in making clear that it is the anti-war movement that represents the people of the country, and we say, “We do not want a pro-war government!”
Military Families Travel
from 31 States to Participate
More than 150 military families, members of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), traveled to Washington, DC from 31 states to demonstrate on Saturday and protest at congressional offices Monday and Tuesday. The families came from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia, and included MFSO members from Washington, DC. MFSO is an organization of more than 3,200 military families representing all those in the military opposed to the war in Iraq.
Many other people from Gold Star Families for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and various other groups organizing in the military also participated in DC and in actions in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Last year a Zogby poll showed that 72 percent of the troops thought the U.S. should exit Iraq within a year. Just this month 1,000 active duty military personnel filed an Appeal for Redress, a petition asking Congress to “support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq.” Military families and veterans continue to be a main and increasing force in the anti-war movement.
Americans Against
Escalation in Iraq
Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a coalition of labor unions, MoveOn.org and other groups that have rallied against wars, raised $1.5 million since it was formed two weeks ago. The group is singling out Republicans and Democrats who have spoken out against the war, but who have so far declined to pledge support for a resolution denouncing Bush’s plan to increase the number of troops, the New York Times reported.
Next week, the group intends to fly Iraq veterans to the home states of Republican senators who serve on the Foreign Relations Committee and voted Wednesday against the resolution condemning the administration plan, including Senators Norm Coleman of Minnesota and John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. Television advertisements are scheduled to be shown in some of the same states in an effort to apply pressure before the Senate vote on the resolution in early February.
“The face of antiwar is not what it was in the ‘70s,” said Jon Soltz, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who is the chairman of a group called VoteVets.
According to aides to lawmakers quoted by the New York Times, if members of Congress are slowly finding their voice opposing the administration’s Iraq plan, it is in no small part because of the face-to-face lobbying campaign that is a central piece of the strategy employed by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. The group plans to spend up to $9 million, said its spokesman, Brad Woodhouse, which they expect to raise through Internet solicitations and individual donations.
According to the New York Times, “Americans Against Escalation in Iraq receives its organizational and financial muscle, at least in part, from the Service Employees International Union, the largest labor organization in the country, which wields significant influence in Democratic politics. For the first time, the union is speaking out against the plan to increase troops in Iraq.”
“There was an election that showed clear consequences,” said Andrew L. Stern, the president of the union. “It’s incumbent on Democrats to express their disagreement with the president.”
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All Day Vigil Outside Fort Lewis & Events Nationwide
Stand with Lt. Ehren Watada February 5th
Buffalonians had the opportunity to speak with Lieutenant Ehren Watada’s mother back in December. She spoke out against the attacks on her son by the military and defended the rights of all soldiers to refuse and resist illegal wars like the one in Iraq. Now she and many others, including many other veterans, military families, youth against military recruiters and anti-war activists are protesting at the court martial against Lt. Watada that begins on Monday, February 5 in Fort Lewis, Washington (approx. 45 miles south of Seattle). There will be an all-day vigil, and other scheduled events, at the Interstate-5 Exit 119 gate to the Army base. Supporters are arriving early that morning (7am) to display banners in support of Lt. Watada and hold vigil as the court martial begins.
The day’s action includes:
9:00am Court Martial begins (people attending the trial)
11:30am Rally with Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), students and spoken word youth artists
12:30pm Vigil outside the Gates of Fort Lewis with IVAW
1:30 pm Political Street Theater with Giant Puppet Art, Spoken word, and DJ’s
3:00 pm Rally
4pm-6pm Vigil outside the Gates of Fort Lewis
National events in support of Lt. Watada (Feb. 2-7) include those in: Austin, Texas, Sun. 2/4 and Mon. 2/5; Chicago, Illinois, Tues. 2/6; Honolulu, Hawai’i, 2/5; Los Angeles, California, Sat. 2/3; New York City, New York, Sat. 2/3; Seattle, Washington, Mon. 2/5 Student Walkout; San Francisco, California, 5 days of events, Thur. 2/1, Sun. 2/4-Wed. 2/7, Tacoma, Washington, Sun. 2/4 Welcome Event and 3 days of Art and Puppet Making (2/1, 3 & 4).
For more information go to www.thankyoult.org and www.couragetoresist.org.[TOP]
Army Forced to Drop Subpoenas for Activist and Journalists
After surrendering earlier this week on subpoenas intended to force journalists to testify against Lieutenant Ehren Watada for his critical statements of President Bush and the Iraq War, the Army dismissed subpoenas targeting anti-war activists as well.
In December, Olympia, Washington anti-war activist Phan Nguyen, and Veterans for Peace (VFP) Seattle Chapter organizers Tom Brookhart and Gerri Haynes were ordered by the Army to appear for the prosecution in the case of U.S. v. Watada.
Tom Brookhart and Gerri Haynes came to the attention of Army prosecutors for their role in organizing the VFP National Convention in August where Lt. Watada was a keynote speaker. The Army has charged Lt. Watada with “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” for the content of that presentation. Specifically, his stand that “to stop an illegal and unjust war, the soldiers can choose to stop fighting it.”
Phan Nguyen, a member of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, was the moderator of a number of press conferences and rallies last summer in support of Lt. Watada. He introduced the pre-recorded video of Watada at a June 7 media event.
That video statement is the basis for the other remaining “conduct unbecoming” charge against Lt. Watada. “The wholesale slaughter and mistreatment of the Iraqi people with only limited accountability is not only a terrible moral injustice, but a contradiction to the Army’s own Law of Land Warfare. My participation would make me party to war crimes,” he said.
When Army prosecutor Captain Kuecker first contacted Nguyen all of his questions focused on the behind-the-scenes workings of the regional anti-war movement. “Kuecker basically demanded that I name the names of any key organizers that had anything to do with the public support campaign created to support Lt. Watada,” explained Nguyen. “They are clearly on a political fishing expedition. Unless we fight back, this could have a chilling effect on anti-war organizing at a time when we have to step up to end the war,” he said.
Last May, Nguyen had been a supporter of the mass civil disobedience at the Port of Olympia where activists attempted to block Fort Lewis-based Stryker units for shipping out to Iraq by simply placing their bodies in the streets. The “Port Militarization -Resistance” group at the time declared, “Just as soldiers have a responsibility to disobey unlawful orders, we have a responsibility to refuse to cooperate with the American Empire.” Thirty-seven were arrested. International news coverage inspired people the world over.
A couple of weeks later, Nguyen heard that a local solider — an officer no less, and from that same Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade — had decided that he would refuse illegal orders to go to Iraq. Nguyen jumped at the chance to help.
Army Dismisses All Remaining Subpoenas
After receiving a brief email January 30 from the Fort Lewis Witness Liaison Office stating that, “the government will no longer need your testimony,” Nguyen contacted Army prosecutor Captain Kuecker to verify that they had indeed backed off. Kuecker told him that “this must be a relief to those subpoenaed” and that he “never really wanted to compel us to testify,” commented Nguyen. Up until this surrender by the Army, Nguyen faced the choice of helping the Army prosecute Watada, or possibly spend six months in prison in contempt of a military court if he refused.
“The subpoenas of activists were ridiculous from the start, as ridiculous as charging Lt. Watada for reiterating what every clear-thinking person already knows — that the war on Iraq is illegal and immoral,” said Nguyen today.
In discussing her own victory in leading a campaign that forced the Army to drop the subpoenas of reporters earlier this week, independent journalist Sarah Olson noted, “I am glad the growing number of dissenting voices within the military will retain their rights to speak with reporters. But I note with concern that Lt. Watada still faces prosecution for exercising his First Amendment rights during public presentations.”
The Army will attempt to prosecute these two charges of public speech without the help of anti-war activists. Lt. Watada will face two years in prison for “missing movement,” and another two years imprisonment for public comments critical of President Bush and the Iraq War when his court martial begins February 5 at Fort Lewis, Washington.[TOP]
President George W. Bush gave his State of the Union address January 23 and again made clear U.S. preparations for aggressive war against Iran. Bush also raised the need to expand the military and create an additional “Civilian” Corps of mercenaries to try and rescue U.S. efforts at world domination. He received broad applause for both proposals. Taken as a whole, the speech reflected the exhausted character of the U.S. ruling class, which has no solutions for any problem. Instead, cornered by failure on all sides, it is desperately trying to save itself by lashing out, imposing fascism and war.
In 2007, Bush again used the justification of September 11 for U.S. crimes. He declared “The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a nation at war.” He again emphasized the plan for more aggressive wars, saying, “to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.” And, far from striving to solve any problem, he repeated the refrain that “America must not fail in Iraq.”
Despite the broad demand by the peoples to end the war now and thus contribute to solving the problem of ending aggressive wars, Bush claims that repeating, again, the use of more aggression against Iraq is the way to go. He also more broadly branded “the enemy” by basically saying any form of “extremism” and “violent radicals” are a threat. And this applied simply to people’s views. “This war is more than a clash of arms — it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance.” So those with what Bush decides is an “extreme ideology” are also enemies. In this manner the president is not only warning those he specifically named, such as the resistance movements in Iraq (including Sunnis and Shias) and Lebanon (Hizbollah), but also anyone, inside the country and out, who stands in the way. Indeed, he even cautioned Congress, saying, “We must have the will to face difficult challenges and determined enemies — and the wisdom to face them together.” Few could miss the echo of “you are with us or with the enemy.”
Bush directly targeted Iran several times. He said the U.S. faces “an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America [as al Qaeda] and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hizbollah — a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.” Hizbollah successfully led the resistance in Lebanon to U.S.-Israeli aggression and continues to do so. Bush added, “Hizbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region…” He claimed, “Radical Shia elements, some of whom received support from Iran, formed death squads [in Iraq].” He threatened that if the U.S. withdraws, “we could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda.”
Bush repeatedly attempts to claim that the cause of the violence and terrorism in Iraq is the Iraqis themselves, when it is clear that it is U.S. occupation. Now Bush is claiming Iranians are also responsible for the deaths of Americans in Iraq. No evidence of any kind has been presented. It is simply asserted over and over by the Pentagon disinformation machine that Iran is responsible for American deaths.
This emphasis on American deaths is an attempt to push the U.S. anti-war movement backward, away from its stand that Iraqis deaths and Iranian deaths and Lebanese deaths are not acceptable. The movement stands as one with the peoples of the world against all the death and destruction of U.S. imperialist wars. It also makes clear that there would be no U.S. deaths if all U.S. troops were brought home.
The Iraqis and Iranians are not the source of the problem, occupation is. The Iraqis, Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians are all capable of governing themselves and living in peace if they are left to do so by the U.S. and its client state of Israel. Respect for sovereignty and non-interference by all the big powers, the U.S. first and foremost, is necessary.
Bush rejects withdrawal of all U.S. troops as the solution for success and instead outlines the U.S. plan for revenge against the Iraqi resistance, focused on Baghdad. Increased U.S. troops will be organized as gangs to go into neighborhoods to “find the terrorists and clear them out,” and then “hold” the neighborhood. Using the U.S.-Israeli model in Palestine and that of Falluja and elsewhere, this can only mean more mass civilian killings, destruction of housing, hospitals and civilian infrastructure, terrorizing the population, especially women and children, and then making the neighborhoods prisons, with checkpoints, restricted movement and dusk to dawn curfews. This is what U.S.-style democracy looks like in Iraq.
Plan for Expanded Military & Civilian Corps
It is well known and admitted by the Pentagon that U.S. military forces are already stretched thin and are losing in Iraq. Yet Bush plans to escalate the war to Iran and elsewhere. To do so, he is demanding to increase the Army and Marine Corps — the occupying ground forces in any war — by 92,000 troops, over the next five years. But it is clear this is not enough, especially given the increasing resistance among the youth to be cannon fodder for imperialist war. So Bush is also calling for a “Civilian Reserve Corps.”
According to Bush, this Civilian Corps “would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. It would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time.” This is an effort to entice yet more youth into war, while claiming to do otherwise. It very likely will also be directed toward undocumented immigrant youth, with the promise of citizenship for “civilian service.” It could also be used to justify hiring “civilians with critical skills,” from other countries.
This Corps would be in addition to the existing mercenary army in Iraq, utilizing forces like Blackwater, Inc. There are an estimated 100,000 private “contractors” in Iraq, including at least 48,000 soldiers. Blackwater, with hundreds of millions in government contracts already, also provided mercenaries to occupy New Orleans after Katrina.
The government mercenaries in Iraq have been responsible for torture and other crimes. They are considered outside any law and have not been subject to any punishment for known crimes. Given this existing reality, it is very likely that such a Civilian Corps, once established, would serve to create a private army directly controlled by the president. It likely will not come under the authority of Congress, or even the military. And it could be used as a fascist force of the executive inside the country as well. It represents a significant and dangerous development in government arrangements.
Alongside the call for this Civilian Corps, Bush proposed what he called a Congressional “advisory council.” Emphasizing the power usurped by the Office of the President that reduces Congress to a consultative body, Bush said “Both parties and both branches should work in close consultation. It’s why I propose to establish a special advisory council on the war on terror, made up of leaders in Congress from both political parties. We will share ideas for how to position America to meet every challenge that confronts us. We’ll show our enemies abroad that we are united in the goal of victory.”
The proposal for an “advisory council,” if implemented, represents an effort by the president to complete new arrangements of governance whereby Congress and the Courts have only an advisory and consultative role, and all power resides with the president. Bush emphasizes that he, and he alone, is the “decision-maker,” and that Congress cannot stop him. He has made the decision about sending more troops to Iraq. By implication, he will also decide about bombing Iran.
A serious clash is underway on this matter. But Bush and the ruling circles generally do not want an open constitutional fight if it can be avoided. An advisory council is a possible means to do this. It could serve to keep Congress as an elected body, but essentially eliminate any power it has. It could also eliminate the current role of Congressional committees and concentrate them in this “advisory council” of top leaders. This select few would be in on the deal making and decision-making and the rest would simply be consulted with. It is a significant proposal that bears watching, especially as the current battles over bills and resolutions on Iraq and Iran unfold.
Americans met Bush’s speech with a massive outpouring on January 27, demanding an end to the war now. The action also put Congress on notice. Americans do not want a pro-war government. The failure by Congress to act, like Bush’s failure, will be met with determined resistance, including working step by step to create an anti-war government of the people themselves.[TOP]
Tell Bush and Congress: Hands Off Iran!
StopWaronIran.org
We must act now to stop another war. In the months since the launch of StopWarOnIran.org, we have made significant steps towards helping to build an international grassroots movement against a U.S. invasion of Iran.
We have gathered more than 20,000 signers on the Stop War on Iran petition, including: Bishop Thomas Gumbleton; Bishop Filipe C Teixeira; author Michael Parenti; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; author and historian Howard Zinn; George Galloway, MP; Tony Benn, MP; Denis J. Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General; Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature; Margarita Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece; and many more. We have sent nearly half a million copies of the petition to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, members of the House and Senate, and the board of directors of Halliburton.
We have brought Stop War on Iran banners, placards, and literature to rallies, pickets, and progressive events across the U.S. At last Saturday’s national antiwar march in Washington DC, our Stop War on Iran contingent in the march distributed thousands of broadsheets.
What we do in the next few weeks and months may be decisive. We know that once again using the pretext of “weapons of mass destruction,” the U.S. is moving the forces into place in preparation for a possible attack. The USS Eisenhower strike force, with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS Stennis, is now steaming toward the region. The London Telegraph reported this spring that “a major American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would kill up to 10,000 people and lead to war in the Middle East.”
In addition to moving military forces into place, the U.S. pushed through United Nations [Security Council] Sanctions on December 23 intended to cut off vital technology and funds to the people of Iran.
History teaches us that we cannot trust politicians in Washington to stop this new war. In 2002, both Democrats and Republicans rushed to vote for war against Iraq and they have voted every year to fund that war.
Over the next few months, the Stop War on Iran campaign is gearing up to organize more meetings, speakouts, and teach-ins to help build a movement to stop the drive to war. We will also be preparing “Stop War on Iran” placards, banners, and leaflets to bring to antiwar and progressive activities, including the national antiwar march on March 17, the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
The only force that will stop this war is a grass roots movement, and we need your help now to help stop a new brutal war in the Middle East.[TOP]
Support the Growing Effort to Stop War On Iran
Peace Action
Even as the U.S. Senate debates resolutions on the Iraq war and President George W. Bush’s planned troop buildup, resistance to his equally disastrous military designs on Iran is also building in Congress.
As virtually every expert and commentator outside of President Bush’s increasingly small circle of friends has declared, a war with Iran would be catastrophic — for attempts to end violence in Iraq, for peace in the Middle East, and for our relationship with the rest of the world. Such an attack would, like the war in Iraq itself, increase the terrorist threat against the U.S. rather than decrease it.
We are keeping maximum pressure on Congress to end the Iraq war, but now we also need to build momentum to prevent any attack against Iran. Bush has repeatedly refused to use diplomacy to address Iran’s nuclear program. Now, since his January 10 speech in which he said he would “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks that he claimed were supporting attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, his administration has been clearly and methodically moving toward military confrontation.
A second aircraft carrier group is now on its way to the Persian Gulf, and air missile defenses are being sent to our allies in the region - neither of which is necessary or useful to stop the violence in Iraq
• Bush has repeatedly warned Iran, in virtually every recent speech and interview, not to “meddle” in Iraq
Bush has given an order for U.S. troops to kill Iranian “operatives” they find in Iraq
Claims of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents are suddenly circulating in the mainstream media, citing “unnamed” administration sources, of course, and providing no evidence whatsoever (did the media learn nothing from Iraq?)
Congress must stop Bush’s march to war with Iran. Representatives Walter B. Jones and Peter DeFazio have introduced resolutions to do just that. Send your Representatives an email today and demand that they support these efforts!
It is hard to imagine that, given the current circumstances, President Bush would actually start a war with another country in the Middle East. But he has proven himself again and again to be impervious to facts and reality, and one cannot argue with the clear steps he has been taking to build first-strike U.S. forces in the area, to build a “rationale” for an attack on Iran, and to goad them into a military confrontation with other provocative acts.
People in the Middle East, Europe and around the world are horrified by the prospect of another war. An enlarging military conflict in the Middle East could easily grow into a world war, or the “clash of civilizations” Bush’s most ardent supporters might actually want. Yet Mr. Bush brushes aside Iranian attempts at dialogue, and moves forward incessantly to confrontation.
This President must be stopped from attacking Iran. H.J. Res. 14, introduced by Rep. Jones (R - SC 3), and H.Con.Res. 33, introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D - OR 4) would do just that. Send a message to your Representative and let him or her know — in no uncertain terms — no war with Iran![TOP]
The U.S.-Israeli Nuclear War on Iran
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research
The world is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The U.S. has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war,” which threatens the future of humanity. At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable: a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East.
There is mounting evidence that the Bush administration in liaison with Israel and NATO is planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran, ironically, in retaliation for its nonexistent nuclear weapons program. The U.S.-Israeli military operation is said to be in “an advanced state of readiness”.
If such a plan were to be launched, the war would escalate and eventually engulf the entire Middle-East Central Asian region. The war could extend beyond the region, as some analysts have suggested, ultimately leading us into a World War III scenario.
In this regard, the structure of military alliances is crucial. China and Russia have entered into far-reaching military cooperation agreements with Iran. The latter have a direct bearing on the conflict. Iran possesses an advanced air defense system as well as capabilities to target U.S. and allied positions in Iraq and the Gulf States, as documented in recent military exercises.
The U.S.-led naval deployment (involving a massive deployment of military hardware) is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel. Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade of a UN peacekeeping mission. In this context, the war on Lebanon last summer must be viewed as a stage of the broader U.S.-sponsored military road map. The naval armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under U.S. command, with the participation of Canada.
The naval buildup is coordinated with the air attacks. The planning of aerial bombings of Iran started in mid-2004, pursuant to the formulation of CONPLAN 8022. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remain classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the stockpiling and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.
Despite Pentagon statements that describe tactical nuclear weapons as “safe for the surrounding civilian population,” the use of nukes in a conventional war theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust. The resulting radioactive contamination, which threatens future generations, would by no means be limited to the Middle East.
In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) to draw up a contingency plan “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States.” The presumption was that if such a 9/11 type event were to take place, Iran would, according to Cheney, be behind it, thereby providing a pretext for punitive bombings, much in the same way as the U.S. sponsored attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001, allegedly in retribution for the alleged support of the Taliban government to the 9/11 terrorists.
More recently, several analysts have focused on the creation of a “Gulf of Tonkin incident”, which would be used by the Bush administration as a pretext to wage war on Iran. […]
To reverse the tide of war requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a U.S.-sponsored war which contemplates the use of nuclear weapons. The message should be loud and clear: It is not Iran that is a threat to global security but the United States of America and Israel. […]
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No Evidence for IED Charge
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service
For 18 months now, the George W. Bush administration has periodically raised the charge that Iran is supplying anti-coalition forces in Iraq with arms. But in the past, high administration officials have always admitted that they have no real evidence to support it. Now, they are going further. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on her current Middle Eastern trip, “I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs [improvised explosive devices] that are endangering our troops, and that’s going to be dealt with.” However, Rice failed to provide any evidence of official Iranian involvement.
The previous pattern had been that U.S. and British officials suggest that Iranian government involvement in the use by Sunni insurgents or Shiite militias of “shaped charges” that can penetrate U.S. armored vehicles is the only logical conclusion that could be drawn from the facts. But when asked point blank, they admit that they have no evidence to support it.
That charge serves not just one administration objective but two: it provides an additional justification for aggressive rhetoric and pressures against Tehran and also suggests that Iran bears much of the blame for the sectarian violence in Baghdad and high levels of U.S. casualties from IEDs.
The origins of the theme of Iranian complicity strongly suggest that it was a propaganda line aimed at reducing the Bush administration’s acute embarrassment at its inability to stop the growing death toll of U.S. troops from shaped charges fired at armored vehicles by Sunni insurgents.
The U.S. command admitted at first that the Sunnis were making the shaped charges themselves. On June 21, 2005, Gen. John R. Vines, then the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that the insurgents had probably drawn on bomb-making expertise from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s army.
A Pentagon official involved in combating the new IEDs also told the New York Times that the first such bombs examined by the U.S. military had required considerable expertise, and that well-trained former government specialists were probably involved in making them. The use of infrared detonators was regarded as a tribute to the insurgents’ “resourcefulness”, according to the Pentagon source.
But sometime in the next six weeks, the Bush administration made a decision to start blaming its new problem in Iraq on Tehran. On August 4, 2005, Pentagon and intelligence officials leaked the story to NBC and CBS that U.S. troops had “intercepted” dozens of shaped charges said to have been “smuggled into northeastern Iraq only last week”.
The NBC story quoted intelligence officials as saying they believed the IEDs were shipped into Iraq by Iranian Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah, but were “convinced it could not have happened without the full consent of the Iranian government.”
These stories were leaked to coincide with public accusations by then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad that Iran was meddling in Iraqi affairs. A few days after the stories appeared, Rumsfeld declared that these shaped charges were “clearly, unambiguously from Iran” and blamed Tehran for allowing the cross-border traffic. But the administration had a major credibility problem with that story. It could not explain why Iran would want to assist the enemies of the militant Shiite parties in Iraq that were aligned with Iran.
British troops in Shiite southern Iraq, where the shaped charges were apparently used by Shiite militias, had an equally embarrassing problem with the IEDs penetrating their armoured vehicles. An unnamed senior British official in London told BCC on October 5, 2005 that the shaped charges that had killed British troops in southern Iraq had come from Hezbollah in Lebanon via Iran.
The following day, British Prime Minister Tony Blair took the occasion of a joint press conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to declare that the circumstances surrounding the bombs that killed British soldiers “lead us either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.” But Blair conceded that he had no evidence of such a link.
Privately British officials said that the only basis for their suspicions was that the technology was similar in design to the shaped charges used by Hezbollah in its war to drive Israel out of southern Lebanon in the 1980s.
Anthony Cordesman, a highly respected military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, explained why the story line blaming Iran for the IED problem in Iraq didn’t hold water. “A lot of this is just technology that is leaked into an informal network,” he told Associated Press. “What works in one country gets known elsewhere.”
The Blair government soon dropped that propaganda line. The Independent reported January 5, 2006 that government officials acknowledged privately that there was no “reliable intelligence” connecting the Iranian government to the more powerful IEDs in the south.
However, the U.S. administration continued to push that accusation, and Bush himself raised the theme for the first time at a press conference March 13, 2006. “Some of the most powerful IEDs we’re seeing in Iraq today,” he said, “came from Iran.”
Bush quoted the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, as testifying, “Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to building improvised explosive devices.”
No reporter has followed up on what Negroponte meant by providing the “capability” to build such devices or why the militias would need to go outside Iraq to find that know-how.
The day after Bush’s press conference, General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted at a Pentagon news conference that he had no evidence of the Iranian government sending any military equipment or personnel into Iraq. Rumsfeld, appearing with Pace, said, “All you know is that you find equipment in a country that came from the neighboring country.”
Last November, as the release of the Iraq Study Report approached, administration officials again planted the story of intercepted Iranian-made weapons and munitions it had leaked in mid-2005. ABC news reported November 30 that a “senior defence official” had told them of “smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand new weapons fresh from Iranian factories.”
The new twist in the story was that the weapons allegedly had manufacturing dates in 2006. The story continued, “This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market.”
The assumption underlying the anti-Iran defence department spin that a private market for weapons or, more likely, components, could not move them from Iran across the porous border to Iraq in a few months is far-fetched.
At about the same time Bush apparently gave orders that the U.S. military should seize any Iranians in the country in an effort to get some kind of evidence to use in support of its propaganda theme. The first such operation came in central Baghdad just before Christmas, and a second raid against Iranian diplomats in Erbil was carried out to coincide with the president’s speech last Wednesday.
These raids, presented to the public as part of a campaign against targets supposedly identified through good intelligence, were clearly aimed at trying to substantiate an anti-Iran line for which the administration has no credible evidence. Those raids now create a requirement to produce something new to justify them.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst[TOP]
We Must Stop Moves Toward War Against Iran
Patrick McElwee, CommonDreams.org
American public opinion has turned strongly against the war in Iraq. After a strong anti-war vote in the November midterm elections, politicians from both major parties are under pressure to oppose an aggressive foreign policy. Yet, the world still stands on the brink. The United States and Israel may be about to start a wider war in the Middle East by attacking Iran, sparking more of the violence that CIA Director Michael Hayden called “almost satanic.”
After the Republican defeat at the polls last November, it seemed unlikely that President Bush would be able to escalate the wars he started. Foreign policy realists within Republican ranks seemed to win an advantage over neo-conservatives. Donald Rumsfeld was out as defense secretary; his replacement Bob Gates had advocated dialogue with Iran. The Iraq Study Group, headed by Bush family friend James Baker, advocated a steady withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iran.
Yet over the past week, foreign policy observers have been abuzz with indications that the White House may be planning an attack on Iran soon. In his prime time speech last week, the president accused Iran of supporting attacks against U.S. forces and promised to “seek out and destroy” support networks, though administration officials have provided no evidence of this claim. Around the same time as the speech, in a raid condemned by the Iraqi government, U.S. Marines stormed an Iranian diplomatic post in northern Iraq and captured five Iranians. This could be aimed at creating an incident similar to the Gulf of Tonkin that would be used to justify war.
The president has ordered another group of warships into the Persian Gulf, specifically targeting Iran. The naval force includes anti-Patriot missile batteries, which have no conceivable use against insurgents in Iraq. Their deployment only makes sense as a defense for Arab Gulf states against missiles launched by Iran in response to an attack.
Once again, the public case for war is bogus. The CIA’s best estimate is that Iran could not develop a nuclear weapon for another ten years, assuming it wants to. No evidence that Iran is providing support to Iraqi insurgents has been made public. And now it has been reconfirmed that Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed an Iranian offer of peace in 2003, with the Iranians offering the same concessions that the White House now claims to be seeking.
Iran is not like Iraq was before the 2003 invasion. Iraq had been stripped of any ability to defend itself through war and 12 years of regular bombing and sanctions. (Those sanctions also killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis by devastating public health infrastructure.)
Iran could defend itself. Any attack from the U.S. or Israel would consist of bombing and missile attacks, rather than ground troops. The immediate number of people killed would certainly be in the thousands. Iranian retaliation could increase that number and create economic shockwaves throughout the world.
The war could easily escalate, especially if U.S.-supported dictatorships like Egypt and Pakistan are toppled by their angry populations. Hundreds of thousands or millions more people could be killed in the regional conflagration. (Hundreds of thousands have already died in Iraq, according to the best scientific study of casualties there.)
In the face of such a threat, our movement to compel a better foreign policy, end war and recognize the sovereignty of other peoples, must build on recent victories. The protest planned for Washington, DC, on Saturday, January 27, can provide one focus of our energy. That event will include a day of citizen lobbying to confirm that we expect this Congress to fulfill the mandate given it by voters last November.
Congress is increasingly reading the writing on the wall. The day after President Bush’s prime time speech in which he threatened war with Iran, Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee took Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to task. Chairman Joe Biden said that an unauthorized attack on Iran would create a “constitutional confrontation.” Republican Senator Chuck Hagel compared an attack to Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and condemned it.
Yet President Bush, who never has to face another election, has made it clear that he will push ahead despite Congressional opposition. So Congress must take real action to bar an attack on Iran.
Two pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the House of Representatives deserve much more support than they have so far received. Republican Walter Jones and Democrat Peter DeFazio have introduced resolutions stating that the president needs to seek congressional authority before taking military action against Iran. Grassroots pressure on Congress is needed to get more co-sponsors on both bills.
The next month or two may be crucial to prospects for world peace for decades to come. The United States, together with its ally Israel, might attack Iran, risk sparking a wider war, and fuel a cycle of violence. Or the American public, by compelling Congress to act, could prevent an attack on Iran, stop a surge of troops into Iraq, and eventually force an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Patrick McElwee is a national organizer with Just Foreign Policy and former legislative assistant at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.[TOP]
Government Mercenaries in Iraq
Jeremy Scahill
As President Bush took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina called Blackwater USA.
The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Falluja — two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Falluja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.
Now Blackwater is back in the news providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.”
Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war’s privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.
“Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,” Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory.
Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest “force” in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What’s more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.
The president’s proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatized version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005 Prince, a major bankroller of the president and his allies, pitched the idea at a military conference of a “contractor brigade” to supplement the official military. “There’s consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army,” Prince declared. Officials “want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier.” He added: “We could do it certainly cheaper.”
And Prince is not just a man with an idea; he is a man with his own army. Blackwater began in 1996 as a private military training camp “to fulfill the anticipated demand for government outsourcing.” Today, its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. It has secured a status as the elite Praetorian Guard for the global war on terror, with the largest private military base in the world, a fleet of 20 aircraft and 20,000 soldiers at the ready.
From Iraq and Afghanistan to the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans to meetings with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger about responding to disasters in California, Blackwater now envisions itself as the FedEx of defense and homeland security operations. Such power in the hands of one company, run by a neo-crusader bankroller of the president, embodies the “military-industrial complex” President Eisenhower warned against in 1961.
Further privatizing the country’s war machine — or inventing new back doors for military expansion with fancy names like the Civilian Reserve Corps — will represent a devastating blow to the future of American democracy.
Jeremy Scahill is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and the author of the forthcoming “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.” He can be reached at jeremy@democracynow.org.[TOP]