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Georgia Tries out the Bush War Doctrine, Loses Badly

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Gary Brecher |

There are two basic facts to keep in mind about the smokin’ little war in Ossetia:

1. The Georgians started it.

2. They lost.

If you want to get all serious and actually study up on Ossetia, North and South, and Georgia and the whole eternal gang war that they call the Caucasus, you can check out a column I did on that school-hostage splatter in Beslan, North Ossetia, a few years back.

South Ossetia is a little apple-shaped blob dangling from Russian territory down into Georgia, and most of it has been under control of South Ossetian irregulars backed by Russian “peacekeepers” for the last few years.

The Georgians didn’t like that. You don’t give up territory in that part of the world, ever. The Georgians have always been fierce people, good fighters, not the forgiving type. In fact, I can’t resist a little bit of history here: remember when the Mongols wiped out Baghdad in 1258, the biggest slaughter in any of their conquests? Well, the most enthusiastic choppers and burners in the whole massacre were the Georgian Christian troops in Hulagu Khan’s army. They wore out their hacking arms on those Baghdadi civilians. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but it was at least 200,000 — a pretty big number in the days before antibiotics made life cheap.

So: hard people on every side in that part of the world. No quarter asked or given. No good guys. Especially not the Georgians. They have a rep as good people, one on one, but you don’t want to mess with them, and you especially don’t want to try to take land from them.

The Georgians bided their time, then went on the offensive, Caucasian style, by pretending to make peace and all the time planning a sneak attack on South Ossetia. They just signed a treaty granting autonomy to South Ossetia this week, and then they attacked. Georgian MLRS units barraged Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia; Georgian troops swarmed over Ossetian roadblocks; and all in all, it was a great, whiz-bang start, but like Petraeus asked about Iraq way back in 2003, what’s the ending to this story? As in: How do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. It declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they claim difference by being Muslims. And being different means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that crap, and their leader, a wack job named Abashidze, volunteered them to fight to the death for their independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colossus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region — like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting — like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force — and it’s a good one by all accounts — didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel. Or if you don’t trust the flyboys, send in your special forces with a few backpacks full of explosives. There are a lot of ways to cripple a tunnel. Hell, do it low-tech: Drive a fuel truck in there, with a car following, jackknife the truck halfway through with a remote control or timing fuse — truck driver gets out and strolls to the car, one fast U-turn and you’re out and back in Georgia, just in time to see a ball of flame erupt from the tunnel exit. And rebuilding a tunnel way up in the mountains is not an easy or a fast job. Sure, the Russians could resupply by air, but that’s a much, much tougher job and would at least slow down the inevitable. Weird, then, that as far as I know the Georgians didn’t even try to blast that tunnel. I don’t go in for this kind of long-distance micromanaging of warfare, because there’s usually a good reason on the ground for tactical decisions; it’s the strategic decisions that are really crazy most of the time. But this one I just don’t get.

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock and awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then, uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help. And I just saw the little creep on TV, sitting in the stands watching the U.S.-China basketball game. I didn’t even recognize Bush at first; I just wondered why they kept doing close-ups of this guy who looked like Hank Hill’s legless dad up in the stands. Then they said it was the prez. They talk about people “growing in office”; well, he shrunk.

And the more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naive because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the United States, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect, obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and iPods.

Their part of the deal was simple: They sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then, surprisingly, 2,000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than 5 million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the United States and Britain.

You might be thinking, Wow, not a good time to have so many of your best troops in Iraq, huh? Well, that’s true, and it goes for a lot of countries — like us, for instance — but at least we’re not facing a Russian invasion. The Georgians are so panicked they just announced they’re sending half their Iraqi force home, and could the USAF please give them a lift?

We’ll probably give them a ride, but that’s about all we can do. We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline is staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the U.S. Army has learned recently. Now here’s the joke. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in D.C., that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry counterinsurgency force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

The American military’s response so far has been all talk, and pretty damn stupid talk at that. A Pentagon spokesperson called Russia’s response “disproportionate.” What the hell are they talking about? They’ve been watching too many cop shows. Cops have this doctrine of “minimum necessary force,” not that they actually operate that way unless there are video cameras around. Armies never, ever had that policy, because it’s a good way to get your troops killed needlessly. The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible. If you’ve got it, you use it.

If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is — well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”

The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies — but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, just 10 years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: The bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the United States is all tied up in that crap Iraq War; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit-for-tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naive, idiotic allies like Georgia. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the United States is weaker than it was 10 years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year, nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

Even so, the great Russian-Ossetian land grab will make great material for another few centuries of gloating, ballads, blood oaths, revenge and counter-grabs. In this part of the world, there’s always something to avenge.

This is an adapted version of an essay by Brecher that appeared on eXiled online.

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Attorney: ‘DC Madam’ left instructions if ‘ever found dead of apparent suicide’

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

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Indian police shoot dead Kashmir demonstrators

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Rahul Bedi in New Delhi | The violence followed a simmering row over the transfer of land to a Hindu organisation in the country’s sole Muslim-majority province.

Police and military personnel enforced a curfew to prevent large-scale rioting, but opened fire in the face of large crowds of stone-throwing youths, officials in the northern state’s summer capital Srinagar said.

The casualties came the day after a leading separatist Kashmiri politician and four other protesters were killed by army personnel for trying to cross the disputed frontier into Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The unrest, which has shattered several years of relative calm across the fractured province, was triggered by the provincial authorities transferring 99 acres of government land to a local Hindu pilgrimage trust, the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, in June.

The plot was to be used to erect temporary accommodation for the 450,000 pilgrims who annually trek to a shrine in a secluded mountain cave high in the Himalayas.

But protests by Kashmiri Muslims who feared the land grant was a calculated move by India’s majority Hindu community to alter the area’s demographic balance led to the provincial administration cancelling its decison. This triggered a violent reaction by Kashmir’s Hindus that has seethed for over six weeks and seen them blockade the only road connecting the Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country. In turn, Kashmiri Muslims have retaliated and held large protests that have turned increasingly volatile.

The crisis has also led to the resignation of the state’s chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, on July 7 after a coalition ally withdrew support over the land transfer issue.

The blockade of the main transport artery has caused severe shortages of essentials like medicine and food, but also prevented fruit grown in the lush Kashmir Valley from being transported elsewhere in India.

Monday’s march to Pakistani territory by thousands of locals was an attempt by the Kashmir Fruit Growers Association to cross the disputed frontier known as the Line of Control in order to market their produce in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s capital, Muzaffarabad.

“India is holding our region by force,” said Abdul Hameed, a local businessman, after the crowds were turned back by security forces.

Until the Kashmir dispute was resolved, he said, anti-India sentiments of most Kashmiris would remain.

The Line of Control divides Kashmir between the neighbouring nuclear rivals both of whom claim it in its entirety. China also controls a small part of Kasmiri territory to the east.

India and Pakistan had also fought two of their three wars and an 11-week-long border skirmish over Kashmir since independence from Britain 61 years ago.

Meanwhile, Kashmir’s turbulence has further exacerbated the prevailing crisis in the region where several Muslim separatist groups have been waging war for independence or union with Pakistan, a struggle in which over 65,000 people had died since 1989.

India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the ongoing Muslim insurgency, a claim that Islamabad denies.

In politically charged Kashmir, however, the anti-blockade protests have escalated to become pro-independence rallies, providing sustenance to insurgent and separatist groups whose influence was declining and further imperilling the troubled region’s future.

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Bloody cost of the new world order

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Lindsey German, convenor of the Stop The War Coalition |

The outbreak of war in the Caucasus over the past week has stunned the world. More fighting, more bombing, thousands dead and tens of thousands of refugees are the daily scenes on our television screens.

This is not just a “little local difficulty” between Russia and Georgia. It is part of a drive to war across the globe that has characterised the eight years of George Bush’s US presidency.

And it is intricately connected to the US-led “war on terror” which is raging in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia – and which now threatens Iran.

The hypocrisy involved in statements from George Bush and Dick Cheney beggars belief. “Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people,” says Bush. “Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century.”

Yet Bush and Cheney are the architects of a series of disastrous wars being waged around the world today. The US ignored the wishes of millions around the world in its drive to war across the Middle East.

Russia has its own imperialist ambitions. And it is still effectively run by its prime minister, Vladimir Putin, the former KGB colonel and the butcher of Chechnya. But Putin can teach the US little when it comes to invasion and war.

The US has waged its “war on terror”, not to bring peace and democracy, but to impose its power and control over increasing parts of the world.

The break up of the former Soviet Union nearly 20 years ago led to an era of new imperialism. The US intervened against Iraq in 1991, then in the Balkans in the late 1990s, and since 2001 through the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the process, it has aimed to win new allies from among the former Eastern Bloc states as a means of putting pressure on its weaker rival Russia. It has used Nato to extend its influence. The Kosovo war of 1999 took place under a Nato umbrella, as does the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan today.

This military alliance lost its original role at the end of the Cold War – but it has reinvented itself as an instrument of US policy in lands distant from its original remit of the North Atlantic.

Georgia is ruled by one of the most pro-Western regimes among the former Soviet states. It has feverishly been trying to join Nato, which has already extended to a number of eastern European countries.

Georgia has been encouraged in its ambitions by the US and its allies. It is likely to have been given the green light from the US for its attack on South Ossetia.

This strategic realignment is underpinned by concern over the region’s resources. Oil and gas pipelines are routed through Georgia to Turkey, another key Western ally.

So the war between Georgia and Russia – supposedly about the future of South Ossetia and Abkhazia – is the latest development in the rivalry between imperial powers.

Gordon Brown has backed the US and its policies.

The anti-war movement in Britain needs to campaign against this escalation of a war in which those who suffer are the peoples of the region.

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Hypocrite Bush: “Unacceptable in the 21st Century”

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Matthew Rothschild | Just back from mugging for the cameras with the bikini-clad U.S. Olympic volleyball team, Bush put his serious face on in Washington and denounced Russia’s incursion into Georgia.

Bush called it “unacceptable in the 21st century.”

He’s right, but who is he to talk?

Let’s see.

If invading a sovereign country that posed no threat to you is “unacceptable in the 21st century,” then Bush himself has acted in an unacceptable way, obviously, for invading Iraq.

And what about kidnapping people?

Or holding people in solitary confinement for years at a time, prior to any trial?

Or imprisoning people for six years without ever letting them see a judge?

What about parading them around naked?

Or about putting hoods over their heads?

Or making them hang by their arms?

Or depriving them of sleep for days at a time?

Or holding them in freezing or roasting temperatures?

Or blasting music at them at ear-splitting volume?

Or putting them in cramped little boxes?

Or sexually humiliating them?

Or intimidating them with dogs?

Or waterboarding them?

These are all actions that ought to be “unacceptable in the 21st century,” but Bush himself is responsible for them.

He’s no one to throw stones.

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Memo to the President

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

It’s basically what you would expect: Appoint a national cyber security advisor, invest in math and science education, establish standards for critical infrastructure, spend money on enforcement, establish national standards for securing personal data and data-breach disclosure, and work with industry and academia to develop a bunch of needed technologies.

I could comment on the plan, but with security the devil is always in the details — and, of course, at this point there are few details. But since he brought up the topic — McCain supposedly is “working on the issues” as well — I have three pieces of policy advice for the next president, whoever he is. They’re too detailed for campaign speeches or even position papers, but they’re essential for improving information security in our society. Actually, they apply to national security in general. And they’re things only government can do.

One, use your immense buying power to improve the security of commercial products and services. One property of technological products is that most of the cost is in the development of the product rather than the production. Think software: The first copy costs millions, but the second copy is free.

You have to secure your own government networks, military and civilian. You have to buy computers for all your government employees. Consolidate those contracts, and start putting explicit security requirements into the RFPs. You have the buying power to get your vendors to make serious security improvements in the products and services they sell to the government, and then we all benefit because they’ll include those improvements in the same products and services they sell to the rest of us. We’re all safer if information technology is more secure, even though the bad guys can use it, too.

Two, legislate results and not methodologies. There are a lot of areas in security where you need to pass laws, where the security externalities are such that the market fails to provide adequate security. For example, software companies who sell insecure products are exploiting an externality just as much as chemical plants that dump waste into the river. But a bad law is worse than no law. A law requiring companies to secure personal data is good; a law specifying what technologies they should use to do so is not. Mandating software liabilities for software failures is good, detailing how is not. Legislate for the results you want and implement the appropriate penalties; let the market figure out how — that’s what markets are good at.

Three, broadly invest in research. Basic research is risky; it doesn’t always pay off. That’s why companies have stopped funding it. Bell Labs is gone because nobody could afford it after the AT&T breakup, but the root cause was a desire for higher efficiency and short-term profitability — not unreasonable in an unregulated business. Government research can be used to balance that by funding long-term research.

Spread those research dollars wide. Lately, most research money has been redirected through DARPA to near-term military-related projects; that’s not good. Keep the earmark-happy Congress from dictating how the money is spent. Let the NSF, NIH and other funding agencies decide how to spend the money and don’t try to micromanage. Give the national laboratories lots of freedom, too. Yes, some research will sound silly to a layman. But you can’t predict what will be useful for what, and if funding is really peer-reviewed, the average results will be much better. Compared to corporate tax breaks and other subsidies, this is chump change.

If our research capability is to remain vibrant, we need more science and math students with decent elementary and high school preparation. The declining interest is partly from the perception that scientists don’t get rich like lawyers and dentists and stockbrokers, but also because science isn’t valued in a country full of creationists. One way the president can help is by trusting scientific advisers and not overruling them for political reasons.

Oh, and get rid of those post-9/11 restrictions on student visas that are causing so many top students to do their graduate work in Canada, Europe and Asia instead of in the United States. Those restrictions will hurt us immensely in the long run.

Those are the three big ones; the rest is in the details. And it’s the details that matter. There are lots of serious issues that you’re going to have to tackle: data privacy, data sharing, data mining, government eavesdropping, government databases, use of Social Security numbers as identifiers, and so on. It’s not enough to get the broad policy goals right. You can have good intentions and enact a good law, and have the whole thing completely gutted by two sentences sneaked in during rulemaking by some lobbyist.

Security is both subtle and complex, and — unfortunately — doesn’t readily lend itself to normal legislative processes. You’re used to finding consensus, but security by consensus rarely works. On the internet, security standards are much worse when they’re developed by a consensus body, and much better when someone just does them. This doesn’t always work — a lot of crap security has come from companies that have “just done it” — but nothing but mediocre standards come from consensus bodies. The point is that you won’t get good security without pissing someone off: The information broker industry, the voting machine industry, the telcos. The normal legislative process makes it hard to get security right, which is why I don’t have much optimism about what you can get done.

And if you’re going to appoint a cyber security czar, you have to give him actual budgetary authority. Otherwise he won’t be able to get anything done, either.

This essay originally appeared on Wired.com.

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Boris Johnson pulls out of Mayors for Peace

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Kate Hudson | Last month, Boris Johnson announced the withdrawal of London’s membership of the global ‘Mayors for Peace’ initiative. This was founded by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1982, in an effort to prevent any other city going through similar suffering.

In 1945, atom bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US air force, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the devastating consequences of radiation poisoning affecting subsequent generations. Since that time, mayors of those cities have felt a responsibility to make sure people understand the consequences: ‘to prevent any repetition of the A-bomb tragedy, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have continually sought to tell the world about the inhumane cruelty of nuclear weapons and have consistently urged that nuclear weapons be abolished.’

Mayors for Peace is hardly an extremist organisation. There are currently 2,277 member cities in 129 countries, including Paris, Berlin, Rome, Ottawa, Los Angeles and Sydney. Members are drawn from across the political spectrum. Tadatoshi Akiba, the Mayor of Hiroshima, believes that the role of city mayors in raising awareness of nuclear weapons is key, given that cities are the targets of nuclear weapons.

We were aware when Boris Johnson was elected that he supported Britain’s nuclear weapons system Trident, as well as the war on Iraq, but there is no reason for him to reject participation in an international body committed to the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

Every Conservative government has supported Britain’s participation in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the goal of which is global nuclear disarmament. This decision suggests that Boris Johnson is retreating from that common goal.

This decision is insulting to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the work of their mayors for global peace, and goes against the views of the majority of the British people, who support global nuclear disarmament.

So why has Boris Johnson pulled out? Does he have no concern for peace? Mayors for Peace was established so that cities and their residents need no longer fear nuclear annihilation — that cities should no longer be the targets of nuclear weapons. Is Boris Johnson giving up on that goal?

Johnson’s approach is in marked contrast to that of the former mayor, Ken Livingstone. Ken is a strong supporter of the peace movement and was a staunch ally during his terms in office and his moral commitment to peace and disarmament helped to work towards a culture of peace in London. This was demonstrated in many ways, not only on the nuclear issue, but also on the anti-war issue and — drawing this more widely — on building constructive and harmonious relationships between London’s many communities. In all of these areas, I believe he was in line with the majority opinions of London’s residents and working in their best interests. As Tadatoshi Akiba says, it is the residents of cities that suffer most in war.

In very stark contrast recently, was the different experiences of the two visits of President Bush, firstly in 2003, and secondly just a few weeks ago. In 2003, Mayor Livingstone supported our protests against Bush’s visit, and he welcomed the disabled US Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic to City Hall, to pay tribute to his work for peace. Our rally and demonstration proceeded peacefully and unimpeded. During Bush’s recent visit, the anti-war movement was prevented from demonstrating in Whitehall — signalling unnecessary restrictions on our right to protest — and a number of protestors were on the receiving end of police brutality. It is to be hoped that these incidents are not symptomatic of a new attitude in London, contemptuous of those who struggle for peace and disarmament, and cavalier with our right to peaceful protest.

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More than 115,000 detainees released under pardon law

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Voices of Iraq | The number of detainees released under the general amnesty law, launched by the government in February, reached 115615, the official spokesman for the Higher Judicial Council said on Monday.

“A total of 115615 prisoners from different Iraqi provinces have been freed since the pardon law came into effect,” Judge Abdul Sattar al-Berqadar told Aswat al-Iraq - Voices of Iraq - (VOI).

“The number of detainees who are not included in the pardon law are 28041,” he added.

The Iraqi presidential council had approved on February 22 the general pardon law no. 19 of 2008 in a bid to enhance reconciliation in Iraq.

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Chinese intelligence alerts travelers to cyber spies

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Kathryn Muratore | This past week, the head of the Chinese National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) held a press conference noting that “Somebody with a wireless device in the US should expect it to be compromised while he’s there.”

Oh wait, no, that didn’t happen.

In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the US NCIX told Americans traveling abroad that their electronic devices (such as laptops and cell phones) could be compromised by foreign spies.

Curiously, there was no mention of the domestic spying conducted every day by a plethora of US intelligence agencies.

And while the PRC may indeed be tracking your movements and attempting to spy on your online activity, the current US administration has no moral high ground to stand on, as it has:

- created a militarized cyber command to conduct covert espionage on digital properties, both foreign and potentially domestic
- used the NSA and other intelligence agencies to intercept all electronic communication
- enacted dozens of anti-privacy statutes including the PATRIOT Act and REAL ID
- amended FISA to immunize companies that operate wiretapping stations and retroactively legalize any potential illegalities
- compiled an ever increasing dragnet dubiously called the “No Fly List” which has more than a million suspects
- continued to operate and upgrade ECHELON listening stations domestically and overseas

Last year Judge Napolitano discussed these intrusions in length at the summer FFF convention, noting then that the NSA is also provided a backdoor to track and monitor all cellular devices.

And not content with strip searching you in public a new Homeland Security policy allows the US government to confiscate (indefinitely) and search any electronic device at any port of entry.

Thus, ignoring star chambers, detention camps, extraordinary rendition, and PLA torture techniques, no amount of foreign borrowing could prop up the insolvent nature of the US administrations moral bankruptcy and brazen disregard for individual privacy.

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Report: US using ‘money as a weapon’ in Iraq

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

US program has spent $2.8 billion using ‘money as a weapon’ in Iraq

A U.S. Army program in which soldiers pay cash to Iraqis to help with expenses, large and small, has spent $2.8 billion in five years, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The Post reviewed records of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, which was intended for short-term humanitarian relief and reconstruction. The field manual laying out the guidelines for the program is called “Money as a Weapon System,” pointing up the effectiveness of cold hard cash in winning over the hearts and minds of Iraqi civilians.

The largest sum of CERP money, $596.8 million, was spent on water and sanitation projects, the Post reported. Three other categories each received more than $300 million: electricity, protective measures (such as fencing and guards), and transportation and roads.

But the Army also spent lesser sums on smaller acts of largesse, including $48,000 for children’s shoes; $50,000 for 625 sheep; $100,000 for dolls; and $500,000 for action figures designed to look like Iraqi security forces, the Post reported.

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The Cover-up of the Impeachment Coverage

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Chris Stevenson | A 7/31/08 report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) shows even the most token coverage of the impeachment hearings as receiving no respect: “CNN’s Election Center program devoted a July 25 report to mocking a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee investigating White House abuses of power. ‘Believe it or not, there was a congressional hearing today about impeaching the president,’ scoffed host Campbell Brown, who added: ‘It was all stagecraft, though.’ Brown went on to introduce the report by CNN correspondent Erica Hill by saying, ‘Tell us about this piece of Kabuki theater, Erica.’’ According to FAIR Brown is married to Dan Senor; a former deputy. press secretary for Bush.

The word Kabuki derives from the verb Kabuku; “to lean” or “to be out of the ordinary” as in avant-garde or bizarre theater. Attributing the word to the Kucinich hearings is a shot at his lack of coverage and political support. Hill explained: “The Democratic leadership made it clear impeachment is not on the table at this hearing today for two reasons. Not only is there not enough time left in President Bush’s term, but also they know any real impeachment hearings at this point could cause a major backlash.” This goes deeper than partisan issues, when any firm bombards their colleges and clients with corruption, there will be those who’ll find ways to defend it. What the Bush administration has done is inspire or give license to all the difficult personalities within various sectors of government and secular industry from civil rights divisions to law inforcement, to oil, real estate etc., to play fast and loose with the public’s rights, liberties and priviledges just by their watching him.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holzman who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during Richard Nixon’s impeachment proceedings, is the author of HR 23 which is the article to remove Bush for a similar crime as Nixon; wiretapping. I say forget the time issue and why let all that writing go to waste? Democrats.com said a couple years ago that Conyers took impeachment off the table because he was afraid “Fox News” would attack him permanently and at that time he needed 218 votes. I wondered then if he and Pelosi thought this was going to be easy.

FAIR continued: “The report closed with Hill assuring voters that George W. Bush was not threatened by any of this: ‘As for the president today, clearly, not too worried about this hearing. He was in Peoria, Illinois. As you can see here, kissing babies, smiling, taking pictures.’” Sadly Bush can afford to relax, the efforts to remove him have obviously been sporadic.

A recent interview by Katrina vanden Heuvel; the editor of “The Nation” with Nancy Pelosi on why she dropped the impeachment issue, instead of admitting she got cold feet, she hinted this would risk national unity. “When I interviewed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about her new book, Know Your Power, I asked her the question all of us have been asking for two years: how could she take impeachment ‘off the table’? Her answer: she wants Democrats to control the House… and in order to stop the wealthiest 1% from “sucking the money out of the middle class” and creating a “caste system.”

According to Democrats.com , “Many progressives disagree with Speaker Pelosi because they believe holding this administration accountable for its staggering abuse of power is essential for preserving our Constitution. They also believe the American people would reward those who defend the Constitution.” Since I take it personally when the right-wing is trying to push W as one of the all-time great presidents, this in itself should be enough incentive to oust the one whom even Reagan called “shiftless” looking. Bush needs impeachment on his permanent record; a record his Daddy can’t expunge. Like I said, the impeachment movement needs players, not acclimated zombies who went from disregard to indoctrination due to over-exposure to corruption.

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~Chip’s note: Fact checking on Holtzman & HR 23 in process.

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This War Report Has Been Approved by Your Government

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Dave Lindorff | We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any independent American corporate news media these past few days as the coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of Georgia.

In the first case, we had the completely pointless if prurient airing of Edwards’ sordid extra-marital affair. Pointless because Edwards at this time is a has-been politician. If there were any point to the coverage it should have been, as Alex Cockburn pointed out in his journal Counterpunch, the abject failure of those same reporters and “news” organizations to cover the story back last fall, when it might have mattered. Back then, when the only paper covering the story was the National Enquirer, Edwards was still a viable candidate for the presidency, or a possible contender for vice president again. It’s not that his personal sex-life has any news value in and of itself. The point is that had he won the nomination, or been picked as a vice presidential running mate, its inevitable exposure later during the general election would have destroyed any Democratic presidential chances. And the corporate media knew back then all about this story. They just weren’t pursuing it (and the current blitz of stories proves that they weren’t holding back out of principle!).

We read that President Bush condemned the Russian invasion of another nation and called for an immediate ceasefire. Yet there was not one word of astonishment or challenge from reporters or commentators or editorial writers at this stunningly cynical statement coming from a leader who himself is responsible for the blatantly illegal and much more destructive invasion of another nation. And remember, while Georgia is on Russia’s border, and was at least possibly guilty of oppressing and attacking and perhaps even killing members of the Russian minority in two of its provinces (Georgia bombed the biggest town in the secessionist province of Ossetia, killing perhaps 1000 civilians, before Russia invaded), Iraq is half a world away from America and was minding its own business, not threatening Americans in any way. Russia, thus far, has at most killed a few thousand Georgians. America has, by most accounts killed hundreds of thousands and perhaps as many as 1.2 million Iraqis, very few of them combatants.

We watch and read voluminous reports on this relatively small Russian war against its neighbor and former domestic province (Georgia was one of the SSRs in the old USSR), and meanwhile there is almost nothing being reported about the continuing five-year-old war launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. And certainly, over the course of five years we have gotten no visual depiction of that war even approaching the scenes that were on display from the front in Georgia.

Apparently, in the view of our corporate news editors and managers, it is important for Americans to fully witness the bloody horrors of war when that war is being fought by Russia, but we are to be carefully protected from seeing such things when they are being perpetrated by our own centurions. We aren’t even allowed to see the grievous injuries and death being suffered by our own troops.

And, of course, don’t feel to good about the quality of the coverage of the Russian/Georgia conflict either. This too is biased. Indeed one reason we are shown all the carnage is that the US government has been backing Georgia, and there is evidence that the US even encouraged the Georgian attacks on ethnic Russians which provoked the invasion. The US also has obligingly airlifted Georgian troops back from Iraq to Georgia.

This is not news. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

American corporate news media broadcasts and articles should include a disclaimer: “This report was approved by the media managers of the Bush/Cheney administration.”

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US planes make secret landings in Kenya

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

Press TV | US military planes have been making secretive landings in Kenya in what is feared to be an effort to move terror suspects.

The night landings by US military planes at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport, carrying Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives, have raised suspicion among both local security agents and aviation authorities.

The planes belonging to the Prescott Support Group, which has been accused in other parts of the world of being involved in the rendition of terror suspects and having strong links with the CIA, were allowed to operate in Kenya two months ago, even after the country’s aviation authorities questioned the move.

Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) Director-General Chris Kuto said the planes were only involved in “aerial mapping operations”.

“We did give them a license yes but only to carry out mapping activities in Northern Kenya. I am not aware of any other secret activities they are involved in,” Kuto told Press TV correspondent in Kenya on Sunday.

The issue raises concerns especially at a time when Kenya security forces are in a frantic search for terror suspect, Fazul Abdullah Mohamed, accused of masterminding the August 1998 attack on the US Embassy in Nairobi which left more than 200 people dead and 5,000 others seriously injured.

Leaked CIA reports cite suspects being arrested, shackled, blindfolded and sedated, after which they are transported, usually by private jet, to other countries like Ethiopia where torture is used to force them into submission.

Human rights groups in Kenya have voiced concern over the mistreatment of terrorism suspects and the harassment of Muslims in the country under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

Kenya has previously handed over more than 15 terror suspects to the US and Ethiopian authorities in an exercise that angered many Muslim leaders.

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Bush escalates confrontation with Russia over Georgia

Tuesday, August 12th, 2008

By Barry Grey | In a provocative statement delivered from the White House Rose Garden on Monday, President George W. Bush escalated the confrontation between the United States and Russia over the current fighting in Georgia.

Bush denounced what he called Russia’s “dramatic and brutal” military escalation and demanded that Moscow agree to an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of its troops from the Caucasian country on its border. He accused Russia of planning to bomb the Tbilisi airport and charged that Moscow was seeking to overthrow the pro-US government of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Bush reiterated US statements about the inviolability of Georgian sovereignty and territorial integrity—diplomatic language supporting the efforts of the government in Tbilisi to reestablish control over the breakaway pro-Russian republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Bush’s remarks followed a statement Sunday by Vice President Dick Cheney, who said Russian “aggression” could not go unanswered. Cheney’s intervention suggested the existence of a faction within the Bush administration that is pushing for a more aggressive US response to the Russian intervention in Georgia.

The statements from the White House express a staggering level of hypocrisy. The US government issued no protest when Georgian military forces attacked South Ossetia last Thursday night, indiscriminately targeting apartment blocs in the capital of Tskhinvali with tank cannon and mortars. It is estimated that the Georgian invaders killed 2,000 civilians, a bloodletting that accounts for the vast bulk of civilian deaths to date.

It was only when the Russian military responded to the Georgian attack with a rapid and massive counteroffensive, crushing the much smaller Georgian force, that Washington became alarmed.

There is nothing remotely progressive in the military actions taken by the Putin regime. The Russian ruling elite is pursuing its own predatory aims in the Caucasus, a region that was ruled for two centuries by Moscow before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Moreover, the eruption of war in the Caucasus underscores the tragic consequences of the dissolution of the USSR. It has exposed the masses of the former Soviet Union, including Russia and the other Soviet republics, to the dangers of war and the predations of the major imperialist powers. For the peoples of the former USSR, the answer is to be found not in the nationalist and militaristic policies of Putin, but rather in the internationalist program of socialist revolution.

Notwithstanding the reactionary aims of the Russian regime, no objective observer can contest the fact that Washington’s provocative policy toward Russia—aimed at supplanting Russia in its long-time spheres of influence—is the primary factor behind the eruption of war between Russia and Georgia.

The media has been virtually silent on the visit just one month ago of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Georgia. Rice held talks with Saakashvili and gave a press conference at which she denounced Russia, backed Saakashvili’s efforts to reassert Georgian control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and reiterated US support for Georgia’s incorporation into NATO.

Russia has made clear that it considers the entry of former Soviet republics such as Georgia and Ukraine into NATO an intolerable threat to its security. Were Georgia already a part of NATO, as Moscow is well aware, the alliance’s member states would be legally bound to intervene military in Georgia’s support.

It is inconceivable that Saakashvili did not review in detail with Rice his plans for a military assault on South Ossetia. Georgia—which is totally dependent on US military, diplomatic and financial support—could not take such a portentous action without informing Washington in advance and securing American sanction.

Preparations for the attack would have been far advanced when Rice met with Saakashvili a month ago. The Georgian military, moreover, is dominated from top to bottom by US military advisers.

The United States has been pouring military aid into Georgia ever since the US-led air war against Serbia in 1999, and the pace and scale of American military aid have accelerated since Washington engineered the so-called “Rose Revolution” that brought Harvard-educated Saakashvili to power in early 2004.

An article in Monday’s New York Times describes “a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia’s forces from bottom to top.” The article states: “At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.

“Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition.”

As for the principle of national sovereignty and territorial integrity, the US is highly selective when it comes to its application. No one in either political party or in the establishment media has sought to explain why Serbia’s military intervention against Kosovan separatists was a war crime, while Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was legitimate.

The Bush administration was the prime mover behind Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia last February, on grounds indistinguishable from those claimed by anti-Georgian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Moreover, the US encouraged and financed the forces that sought to effect the secession of Chechnya from Russia in the 1990s.

Since the United States was clearly involved in the Georgian assault on South Ossetia, one must ask what were its intentions. It is difficult to believe that US policy makers believed Russia would take no action in response to such an immense provocation. Why then, would they support a move that would bring Russia into a direct conflict with one of Washington’s principal allies in the Caucasus—a region that constitutes a bridgehead between the resource-rich Caspian Basin and Western Europe and houses critical oil and gas pipelines?

The only plausible answer is that the United States is deliberately seeking a major escalation of tensions between Russia and the West. Even if the current conflict does not spiral immediately into a wider conflagration, the fate of “little Georgia” will be invoked by the United States to justify a far more aggressive and confrontational stance toward Russia.

The demands being raised by the Bush administration, the European Union, the United Nations and others for a return to the “status quo ante” in Georgia are drenched in hypocrisy. They all know very well that the US is not about to abandon what it has come to see as a critical prop to its position in the Caucasus and its long-term perspective of reducing Russia to a semi-colonial status.

The resumption of something akin to the Cold War underscores the real motives that underlay the decades of confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. American imperialism considered the Soviet Union—and continues to view Russia—as an obstacle to its geo-strategic aim of securing hegemony over Eurasia.

There is undoubtedly a domestic political component to the US-backed provocation against Russia as well. The Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, want the November elections to take place under conditions of immense international crisis. They calculate that an environment of fear and insecurity will strengthen McCain’s chances, since a major prop of his campaign is his supposed foreign policy experience and national security expertise.

Obama, predictably and pathetically, is responding by seeking to assert his own militaristic credentials. Within minutes of Bush’s threatening statement against Russia on Monday, Obama issued his own denunciation of Russia in terms almost identical to those of Bush and McCain.

The immensely dangerous implications of the eruption of war in the Caucasus leave no doubt about where the drive of imperialism to carve up the world is leading. US imperialism intends to let nothing stand in the way of its goal of establishing global hegemony. It is dragging the American working class and the world into a catastrophe.

The only force that can stop it is the revolutionary mobilization of the American and international working class.

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