Mr. de president, slaap zacht!

[Barst]

VN / Republikeinen geven Bolton niet zomaar op


Aanhoudend negatieve verhalen over de beoogde Amerikaanse VN-ambassadeur John Bolton brengen de regering-Bush steeds verder in verlegenheid.


De Republikeinen hopen vandaag de rangen gesloten te houden en de benoeming van John Bolton tot VN-ambassadeur door de senaatscommissie van buitenlandse zaken te loodsen. Dan zou Bolton zeker zijn van zijn nieuwe baan, want de officiële goedkeuring door de voltallige Senaat is een formaliteit.

Voor de Republikeinen moet de stemming, die vorige week werd uitgesteld, echt vandaag komen. De partij gaat zich steeds ongemakkelijker voelen omdat er elke dag nieuwe verhalen opduiken over Boltons vermoedelijke wangedrag. Bolton was de afgelopen vier jaar onderminister voor buitenlandse zaken. De verhalen brengen de regering-Bush meer en meer in verlegenheid.

Critici zeggen al lang dat het Witte Huis informatie over de geheime wapens van de verdreven Iraakse leider Saddam Hoessein opgeklopt, verdraaid of selectief gebruikt heeft om de oorlog te kunnen voeren die ze al lang plande. Het Witte Huis heeft dat steeds ontkend. Het zette de centrale inlichtingendienst CIA nooit onder druk. Die zou zelf de plank helemaal misgeslagen hebben.

Het eindrapport van de onderzoekscommissie naar het falen van de geheime diensten bij Irak enkele weken geleden, leek de regering in het gelijk te stellen. De commissie zei geen bewijs te hebben gevonden dat de regering geheim agenten ooit dwong analyses te veranderen. Net toen het Witte Huis de vlag buiten gehangen had, blies de benoeming van Bolton die oude verhalen nieuw leven in.

Bolton zou, zo getuigden leden van de geheime dienst van buitenlandse zaken in een hoorzitting, zijn uiterste best hebben gedaan om informatie over massavernietigingswapens naar zijn hand te zetten. Agenten die zijn alarmerende kijk op vooral Cuba en Syrië betwistten, probeerde hij ontslagen te krijgen. Hij was een serial abuser, iemand die stelselmatig kritisch personeel uitschold en vernederde.

The Washington Post berichtte gisteren ook dat Bolton vaak informatie over Iran, Irak en Noord-Korea achterhield voor minister Colin Powell en diens opvolger, Condoleezza Rice. In de hoop het beleid in neoconservatieve richting bij te sturen. Hij zou daarvoor ook een eigen achterdeurtje naar de CIA hebben geopend.

Republikeinse senator Chuck Hagel waarschuwde afgelopen weekend dat er geen grote nieuwe onthullingen bij moesten komen. Anders zou hij tegenstemmen. Dan zouden de stemmen in de commissie staken en was de benoeming van de baan.

Maar de Republikeinse voorzitter bleef optimistisch dat de Republikeinen als blok vóór zouden stemmen. ,,Ik denk niet dat het oordeel van leden verandert -ook als er nieuwe informatie naar buiten komt.''


Trouw, 19-04-2005

[Barst]

There is no war on terrorism


04/27/05 "SMH" - The so-called global war on terrorism does not exist, a high-ranking army officer has declared in a speech that challenges the conventional political wisdom.


In a frank speech, Brigadier Justin Kelly dismissed several of the central tenets of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, saying the "war" part is all about politics and terrorism is merely a tactic.

Although such wars were fuelled by global issues, they were essentially counter-insurgent operations fought on a local level. This would result in Australian soldiers fighting in increasingly urban environments.

Speaking at a conference on future warfighting, Brigadier Kelly, the director-general of future land warfare, also suggested that the "proposition you can bomb someone into thinking as we do has been found to be untrue".

His speech appears to fly in the face of a comment by the Prime Minister, John Howard, last year that the "contest in Iraq represents a critical confrontation in the war against terror ..."

The brigadier said populations were being cut off from their traditional roots, giving them "aspirations that cannot be immediately met", and fuelling a search for identity.

Terrorists were exploiting local issues - such as ethnic wars - to pursue global ends. From a military point of view, the job was now one of counter-insurgency, he said.

As a result, Australia's future soldiers would fight increasingly close to populations, with the enemy "continuing to retreat into complex terrain".

While success in battle was critical, it would not of itself deliver victory - that would come by winning over the hearts and minds of the local people.

The war of the future would be "out of human control". There was "no alternative" but to engage the population and "convince them of your rightness".

"Our proximity to populations enables us to influence and control the populations, [it] enables us to dominate the environment, generate intelligence and eventually bring the conflict to a resolution," the brigadier told the conference last week.

To fight such a war, a new kind of soldier was needed - one not only proficient in the latest technologies, but who had been educated in "cultural understanding" and sensitivity.

Brigadier Kelly said modern war could be defined as "conflict, using violent and non-violent means, between multiple actors and influences, competing for control over the perceptions, behaviour and allegiances of human population groups".

He said he found it interesting that "if you take out violence out of the first line, it's a description of politics".

Copyright © The Sydney Morning Herald, 27-04-2005.

[Barst]

Ex-UN envoy: U.S. feared discovery of prison abuse

By Deborah Horan
Tribune staff reporter

Cherif Bassiouni, the DePaul University law professor who last week lost his post as UN human-rights investigator in Afghanistan, said Thursday he believed the U.S. pushed him out to hide abuses in American-run prisons in the country and the possible transfer there of as many as 200 prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"They have two groups of people they want to hide--the people in Afghan prisons and the people they transfer from Guantanamo," Bassiouni said in an interview. "The bigger exposure is the transfer of about 200 people from Guantanamo."

Bassiouni said he had heard reports the U.S. plans to transfer prisoners to Afghanistan from Guantanamo before opening the prison in Cuba to international inspectors.

He called the move part of a "well-known game" that governments around the world use to ease prison conditions and hide torture victims before allowing human-rights inspectors into facilities.

"The U.S. can say, `Oh, we released them,'" Bassiouni said. "Where? They'll probably fudge on the answers."

Bassiouni, who took up his post in April 2004, was informed last Friday via e-mail that his two-year mandate would not be renewed. The e-mail came the same day that he submitted a 24-page report that criticized the United States and other countries for not allowing him and other inspectors into coalition forces' facilities. (...)


Chicago Tribune, 29-04-2005

[Barst]

New Evidence : Terror Alerts Were Used As Electoral Weapons

by Chris Bowers

05/11/05 - Remember the chart that showed the relationship between Bush's approval rating and terror alters? (http://img57.exs.cx/img57/7638/aprov...lert_chart.gif) The chart clearly suggested that terror alerts were used more frequently during times of unpopularity for Bush. Now, new evidence, from Tom Ridge himself, suggests that there was indeed massive outside pressure on the department on homeland to security to often raise the terror alert despite flimsy evidence:

The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.

His comments at a Washington forum describe spirited debates over terrorist intelligence and provide rare insight into the inner workings of the nation's homeland security apparatus.

Ridge said he wanted to "debunk the myth" that his agency was responsible for repeatedly raising the alert under a color-coded system he unveiled in 2002.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "

Combined with what Ridge has said, and the chart linked above, can there be any doubt that the Bush administration was frequently raising the terror alerts to help his election chances and increase his political capital rather than to signal actual threats? As Parker says, Howard Dean was right. Terror alerts have undoubtedly been used as a electoral weapon rather than as a safety measure.


Zie Parker's Diary, 11-05-2005; For more on this subject, JuliusBlog.

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`America kept in dark' - U.S. TV accused of ignoring situation - Iraq on brink of civil war, analysts say


05/14/05 "Toronto Star" - - WASHINGTON—When the man in the white van slowed, the group of labourers from Kut, southeast of Baghdad, approached him in the hope they would be offered work. Instead he offered death.


As the workers approached, the man blew up his van, killing himself and the men who had tentatively moved to him in trust, sending body parts hurtling through the sky and, according to witnesses, turning the nearest hospital into a blood-stained shrine of futility, overwhelmed by the number and severity of the casualties.

The scene was played out many times over in Iraq this week, where a spike in insurgent violence has placed the country on the precipice of civil war.

More than 450 Iraqis have been slaughtered in the past two weeks in a direct challenge to a new Iraqi government, making those heady days of the January election seem like something from the distant past. The euphoria of the purple thumb, the symbol of the bravery of voters, has given way to a river of blood-red in some of the worst violence in the post-Saddam era.

"We are on the edge of civil war," said Noah Feldman, a New York University professor and chief U.S. adviser to Iraq on the writing of the country's new constitution.

Yet, somehow this sharp surge in deadly bombings, assassinations and kidnappings in Iraq has occurred largely under the radar in the United States.

No public figures have risen this week to decry this most recent carnage, no one is breaking into regular programming on cable news shows.

Perhaps Americans have simply become numb to the background hum of Iraqi violence. Perhaps the lack of graphic images on television mean that medium doesn't know how to cover the story. Perhaps, more cynically, Iraqis killing Iraqis is not as compelling a story.

The left-leaning American Progress Action Fund said in a statement yesterday America's most important foreign policy venture is teetering on the edge of civil war, but it is being ignored by television networks.

"Television media — still the primary source of news for most Americans — is failing miserably," it said. "America is being kept in the dark."

While American TV viewers turn to runaway brides, fast-food fingers and the daily Michael Jackson aberration, they are missing the story of an increasingly massive foreign policy failure.

The number of car bomb attacks in Iraq jumped from 64 in February to 135 in April, a record, according to U.S. military statistics. Insurgents are reported to have stockpiled car bombs and the attacks are becoming more brazen as Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters try to provoke civil war with the Shiite majority.

"There is an apparent free flow of suicide bombers into Iraq," a Western diplomat told the London-based Guardian newspaper.

The U.S. death toll is at 1,611 and U.S. legislators this week approved funding which pushes the cost of the Iraq war beyond $250 billion (U.S.)

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, called again this week for patience.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
`The only thing that can stop civil war is to bring this insurgency under control.'

Noah Feldman, U.S. adviser to Iraq

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"One thing we know about insurgencies is that they last from, you know, three, four years to nine years," he said. "These are tough fights. And in the end, it's going to have to be the Iraqis that win this.

"If there was a magic bullet, then Gen. (George) Casey and Gen. (John) Abizaid or I, or somebody on the staff more likely, would have found it."

While U.S. authorities say they believe most of the jihadists are foreign fighters — and have launched a major offensive near the Syria border to try to choke off the influx — J. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defence Intelligence Agency, told National Public Radio this week that he believed the insurgents are 90 per cent home-grown.

He said they're a mix of former military, intelligence, police personnel and Baath party functionaries taking directions from a government-in-exile.

David Phillips of the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations and author of Losing Iraq: Inside the Postwar Reconstruction Fiasco, said the spike in the insurgency can be blamed on three factors.

He said the delay of Iraqis in convening a new government to validate the January elections, the preponderance of Shiites and Kurds in the government plus the intensification of the de-Baathification process simply backed the Sunni view that there is no role for them in the new government.

But, Phillips also points to statements from the White House that U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had intervened to try to break the cabinet stalemate as another spark.

"It reinforced the view in Iraq that (Prime Minister Ibrahim) Jaafari was merely a proxy for those people in Washington," he said.

The damage done by a decision to give Sunnis a small representation in the cabinet unveiled last month seems to have been exacerbated with the decision to appoint only two Sunnis to the 55-member committee chosen to write Iraq's permanent constitution.

It will only play to the sense of despair and disenfranchisement among Sunnis, many analysts say.

Feldman said the Shiite population in Iraq has shown patience of historic proportion in not retaliating against the Sunni attacks.

"The reason I say we are on the edge of civil war is that you can't have one if only one side is attacking," he said. "But the truth is, Shiites are only human and they will run out of patience," he said. "The only thing that can stop civil war is to bring this insurgency under control."

But to do so, he said, Iraqi security forces have to convince Sunnis that violence will not work and they should join the political process.

Sunni fighters, however, are convinced they can hasten the departure of some 139,000 American troops by starting a civil war, Feldman wrote.

Conversely, he said, should U.S. troops depart, civil war is guaranteed.

Phillips is even more pessimistic. When asked about the chances that the brakes could be put on the insurgency in the short term, he answered: "None. This insurgency will go on for years and years, regardless of what the U.S. does."

The insurgency can never be defeated by military force, he said. Instead, Iraqis have to believe that their institutions are worth defending and that defence has to come from Iraqi troops.


Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, 14-05-2005

[Barst]

Rechterhand Bush sprak over CIA-agente


WASHINGTON - Twee jaar lang heeft het Witte Huis in alle toonaarden ontkend dat Karl Rove, de naaste medewerker van president George Bush, iets te maken had met het uitlekken van de identiteit van geheim agente Valerie Plame. Nu er bewijzen opduiken dat Rove wel een rol speelde, weigert Bush op vragen te antwoorden.


Omdat de identiteit van een geheim agente bekendmaken een misdaad is, werd een onderzoek geopend naar de dader(s) (DS 1 juli) . Plame is getrouwd met ex-ambassadeur Joseph Wilson die naar Niger trok om na te gaan of Saddam Hoessein daar uranium had proberen te kopen. Na zijn reis meldde Wilson aan de CIA dat het verhaal een kwakkel was. Toen Bush het in een toespraak toch aanhaalde om te bewijzen dat Saddam gevaarlijk was, beschuldigde Wilson hem openlijk van leugens. Hij beschouwde de bekendmaking van de naam van zijn vrouw als wraak van het Witte Huis voor zijn kritiek.

Het magazine Time besliste om documenten van zijn journalist Matthew Cooper over te dragen aan de onderzoeker. Uit een van Coopers e-mails, die in handen kwamen van Newsweek , bleek dat Cooper met Rove had gesproken. Cooper schrijft aan zijn chef dat Rove hem had verteld dat het niet vice-president Dick Cheney was die Wilson naar Niger had gestuurd, maar dat het ,,Wilsons vrouw was, die blijkbaar voor de CIA werkt''.

In september en oktober 2003 ontkende de woordvoerder van het Witte Huis, Scott McClellan, met klem dat Rove bij de zaak betrokken was. Rove zelf was altijd iets voorzichtiger. Hij zei vorig jaar: ,,Ik kende haar naam niet en ik heb haar naam niet laten lekken.''

Na het uitlekken van de e-mail in Newsweek weigerde McClellan te antwoorden op vragen. Roves advocaat Robert Luskin verzekerde gisteren dat Rove de naam Plame niet liet uitlekken en dat het niet zijn bedoeling was haar identiteit te onthullen. Hij weigerde evenwel te zeggen hoe Rove te weten kwam dat Wilsons vrouw voor de CIA werkte en dat zij het was die de reis naar Niger organiseerde. Volgens Luskin was het de bedoeling van Rove om journalist Cooper ervan te overtuigen geen verkeerde informatie te verspreiden over Cheney - namelijk dat hij Wilson opdracht had gegeven naar Niger te gaan - en niet om iets over Plame of Wilson te zeggen. De advocaat weigerde te zeggen of Rove wist dat Plame een geheim agente was, zelfs als hij haar naam niet kende.

Rove bouwt zijn verdediging blijkbaar op rond de letter van de wet, die zegt dat het vrijgeven van vertrouwelijke informatie over nationale veiligheid een misdaad is als ze wetens en willens wordt gelekt. Juristen menen echter dat Rove toch schuldig kan worden bevonden, ook al sprak hij over Plame zonder haar naam te noemen.

President Bush zei in oktober 2003 dat ,,als er vanuit zijn regering werd gelekt, de schuldige de gevolgen zal dragen''. De Democratische oppositie eist dat hij die belofte nakomt. Gisteren weigerde Bush op vragen over Rove te antwoorden.


13/07/2005 (esn)

©Copyright De Standaard

[Barst]

Bush benoemt VN-hater tot... VS-ambassadeur bij de VN


John Bolton, de nieuwe VS-ambassadeur van de VN.De Amerikaanse president George W. Bush heeft vandaag bij decreet de uiterst rechtse politicus John Bolton -voormalig vice-minister van buitenlandse zaken- benoemd tot VS-ambassadeur bij de Verenigde Naties.

De "recess appointment" -het benoemen van Bolton tijdens het zomerreces van het Congres om aldus een stemming over de benoeming te vermijden- was een aangekondigde ingreep. Binnen de Senaat bleek de oppositie tegen Boltons benoeming (van zowel de Democraten als Republikeinse "dissidenten") immers te groot.

Boltons naam is gelieerd aan een aantal schandalen. Voorts heeft de man de reputatie niet diplomatisch aangelegd én VN-hater te zijn. (Belga)


Weblog HLN, 01/08/05 16u07