Daffy Does Doom

By Maureen Dowd

"Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as 'delusional.'

"It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.

"Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn't begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

"Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he's right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

"It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America's reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran's power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

"Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

"You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq's civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works ...

"Mr. Cheney has turned his perversity into foreign policy.

"He assumes that the more people think he's crazy, the saner he must be. In Dr. No's nutty world-view, anti-Americanism is a compliment. The proof that America is right is that everyone thinks it isn't.

"He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet ..."
NY Times (subscription)

Tagged: usa, cheney, war+on+terror, iraq

Moscow's assault on the Vatican

Lt. General Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, He writes:

"The Soviet Union was never comfortable living in the same world with the Vatican. The most recent disclosures document that the Kremlin was prepared to go to any lengths to counter the Catholic Church’s strong anti-Communism.

"In March 2006 an Italian parliamentary commission concluded 'beyond any reasonable doubt that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla,' in retaliation for his support to the dissident Solidarity movement in Poland. In January 2007, when documents disclosed that the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, had collaborated with Poland’s Communist-era political police, he admitted the accusation and resigned. The following day the rector of Krakow’s Wawel Cathedral, the burial site of Polish kings and queens, resigned for the same reason. Then it was learned that Michal Jagosz, a member of the Vatican’s tribunal considering sainthood for the late Pope John Paul II, has been accused of being a former Communist secret police agent; according to the Polish media, he had been recruited in 1984 before leaving Poland for an assignment to the Vatican. Currently, a book is about to be published that will identify 39 other priests whose names have been found in Krakow secret police files, some of whom are now bishops. Moreover, this seems to be just scratching the surface. A special commission will soon start investigating the past of all religious servants during the Communist era, as thousands more Catholic priests throughout that country are believed to have collaborated with the secret police. And this is just Poland — the archives of the KGB and those of the political police in the rest of the former Soviet bloc have yet to be opened on the subject of operations against the Vatican.

"In my other life, when I was at the center of Moscow’s foreign-intelligence wars, I myself was caught up in a deliberate Kremlin effort to smear the Vatican, by portraying Pope Pius XII as a coldhearted Nazi sympathizer ..."
National Review

Tagged: ussr, cold+war, religion, christianity, communism

Cash-for-honours twist with secret computer claim

"Detectives involved in the cash-for-honours investigation have uncovered a secret computer network in Number 10 from which crucial emails appeared to have been deleted, it was claimed last night.

"Downing Street issued a swift denial to the allegations, made by ITV News, which claimed the existence of a second IT system in the building was revealed to police by a witness in recent weeks.

"The information reportedly led to the arrest and release last week of one of Tony Blair's closest aides, director of Government relations Ruth Turner."
The Northern Echo

Cash for honours: Downing Street denies a ‘secret’
Cash for honours and No10's deleted e-mails
No10 denies secret email claims in honours inquiry
Manchester Evening News -:: Politics.co.uk :: all 59 news articles »

Tagged: uk, blair, crime, law, legal

Dems and Repubs oppose Bush escalation in Iraq

"Leading Republican lawmaker, John Warner, former head of the Senate Armed Services committee, is ... preparing to introduce a motion condemning Bush's plan in what could be a sharp setback to the president."
South News

Tagged: usa, iraq, bush, war+on+terror

British MPs given "antiseptic tour" of Guantanamo

"(British) MPs who have visited Guantanamo Bay have called on the government to help the US find ways to close the camp.

"Seven Foreign Affairs Committee members visited the detention centre for 'enemy combatants' in Cuba in September ...

"The report was described as 'disappointing' by opposition MPs and human rights groups ...

'Missed opportunity'
"Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, who represents a 10-year-old constituent whose father is being held at the camp, said the committee appeared to have been given 'the VIP antiseptic tour'.

"'The committee were given no direct access to prisoners, and they do not appear to have taken evidence either from former detainees, or lawyers or families of current detainees,' she said.

"Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all party Parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said the report did not address the main issue, 'which is whether US detention policy, whether in Guantanamo or elsewhere, is making the US, UK and the West more secure or less'.

"Amnesty International said the report was a 'missed opportunity'.

"'We would have liked to have seen the committee unequivocally backing Amnesty International's long-standing call for Guantanamo to be closed immediately,' said the organisation's UK director Kate Allen.

"'We do not share the committee's apparent confidence that abuse is unlikely to be taking place now,' she added.

"Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of charity Reprieve which represents 38 prisoners at the base, said the report was 'full of factual errors' and largely based on a 'show tour'."

Tagged: guantanamo, usa, torture, human+rights, uk, civil+rights, rendition

Activist challenges US Iraq policies in Supreme Court

SEATTLE, Washington - January 10 - Bert Sacks was fined $10,000 for traveling to Iraq to bring medicines to needy children. Through his fine he is challenging US policies on Iraq with a question to the Supreme Court: Was it legal for the US to have knowingly caused the deaths of Iraqis, especially the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children who died from unsafe water during sanctions?

On Tuesday, January 16th, in a press conference from 1 to 2 pm at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, he will discuss his petition to the court, filed January 8th.

His petition to the Supreme Court details the results of bombing Iraq's electrical plants in 1991, followed by 12 years of economic sanctions. The petition itself is posted at BertOnIraq.blogspot.com. It is hard to imagine a topic more relevant to considerations of future US actions than the impact of so many deaths caused by previous US actions.

Sacks will be introduced by Denis Halliday, a 34-year veteran of the UN who resigned his positions as UN Assistant Secretary General and Chief UN Relief Coordinator to protest the sanctions in 1998, after heading the Iraq oil-for-food program for 13 months.

The press conference will take place on the 16th anniversary of the start of the 1991 Gulf War. This date marks 16 years of war, occurring in three different forms, which the Iraqi people have suffered through. There have certainly been well over a million Iraqi deaths.

It will also take place one day after Martin Luther King Day. In his famous Riverside Church address speaking about Vietnam Dr. King said, "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese …. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat."

Might not the same be said today about our calculations regarding Iraq? The news conference will provide evidence that the preceding years of sanctions are not ancient history for Iraqis. To choose wise actions today, it is necessary to understand those years.

As British foreign journalist Robert Fisk put it, "The sanctions that smothered Iraq for almost thirteen years have largely dropped from the story of our Middle East adventures. Our invasion of Iraq in March 2003 closed the page - or so we hoped - on our treatment of the Iraqi people before that date, removed the stigma attached to the imprisonment of an entire nation and their steady debilitation and death under the UN sanctions regime. When the Anglo-American occupiers settled into their palaces in Baghdad, they would blame the collapse of electrical power, water-pumping stations, factories and commercial life on Saddam Hussein … [Sanctions] were "ghosted" out of the story."

Media release

US bill could silence bloggers

"Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate, would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K Street lobbyists. Section 220 would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. For the first time in history, critics of Congress will need to register and report with Congress itself.

"The bill would require reporting of ‘paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying,’ but defines ‘paid’ merely as communications to 500 or more members of the public, with no other qualifiers.

"On January 9, the Senate passed Amendment 7 to S. 1, to create criminal penalties, including up to one year in jail, if someone ‘knowingly and willingly fails to file or report.’"
Source via Maryannaville

Tagged: usa, liberty, civil+rights, blogs, internet

Guantanamo is a US torture camp

Evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo is overwhelming - and it hasn't made anyone safer

"It would be the ideal spot for a beachside birthday party. Surrounded by a turquoise sea, palm trees and white sand, the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba was five years old yesterday. Tony Blair calls it an 'anomaly', but the evidence is overwhelming. Camp Delta, which still houses 470 men never convicted of any crime, is a torture camp. That should be the starting point of any debate about what is acceptable in the west's fight with Islamist extremists. More than 750 men have passed through the camp, with nearly half being released. Many prisoners, past and present, have given consistent and repeated testimony of serious abuses and ill treatment. There is also significant evidence from US officials and government documents of widespread abuse at the camp.

"The British detainees known as the Tipton Three allege they were repeatedly beaten, shackled in painful positions for long periods and subjected to sleep deprivation. They were also subjected to strobe lighting, loud music and extremes of hot and cold - all meant to break them psychologically. Other detainees have suffered beatings, sexual assaults and death threats. At least one man has been 'water boarded' - tied to a board and placed under water so that he had the sensation of drowning.

"According to the Red Cross, the regime at Guantánamo causes psychological suffering that has driven inmates mad, with scores of suicide attempts and three inmates killing themselves last year.

"Even US officials are shocked. Last week FBI documents revealed that an inmate's head had been wrapped in tape for quoting from the Qur'an. Another was humiliated for his religious beliefs and "baptised" by a soldier posing as a Catholic priest ..."
Guardian

Tagged: guantanamo, usa, torture, human+rights, civil+rights

How Scientology found its way into British politics

"The controversial Scientology sect was accused of trying to inflitrate British politics ... after it emerged that they paid thousands of pounds to both the Labour and Tory parties.

"Members of Labour's ruling executive committee, on which Tony Blair sits, approved the payment from a charity which is closely linked to the Church of Scientology, which boasts Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its members.

"Labour allowed the charity, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), to pay between £3,500 and £13,500 for a stall at the party's annual conference in Manchester.

"Tory bosses also sanctioned a stand at their annual gathering in Bournemouth ..."
This London

Tagged: religion, uk

Humiliation at the end of a rope

Ghada Karmi writes in The Guardian: " ... Saddam was held in US custody right up to the end and handed over to the Iraqis only for the distasteful deed, his body whisked away immediately afterwards by a US helicopter for a hasty burial. Yet this was billed as an independent decision of a 'sovereign state', as if any such thing were possible under occupation. The fact that this was the act of an Iraqi Government dominated by Saddam's Shiite enemies made the final outcome a foregone conclusion. Yet the Arab states stood by, swallowing their humiliation in silence and letting US/Iraqi 'justice' take its course, hoping no one would notice how some of them had supported Saddam's war on Iran in the '80s, fought to a large extent on their behalf.

"But the West should also be ashamed of what was a clear miscarriage of justice, carried out in the face of its strident demands of the Arabs for democracy and the rule of law. The trial judgement was not finished when sentence was pronounced. Saddam's defence lawyers were given less than two weeks to file their appeals against a 300-page court decision. Important evidence was not disclosed to them during the trial, and Saddam was prevented from questioning witnesses testifying against him. Several of his lawyers were threatened or actually assassinated, and the trial was subjected to continuous political interference.

"Any pretence that this was an exercise of due process is farcical. Of course, Saddam himself was a brutal tyrant, but the kangaroo court that tried him lacked any serious legal credibility. Yet no Western leader (or Arab one, for that matter) was prepared to say so, or exert any pressure to have the defendant tried by an international court ..."

Tagged: iraq

Iraq's PM longs to leave office

"Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has made clear he dislikes being the country's leader and would prefer to leave the job before his term ends.

"In an extensive interview with a US newspaper, Mr Maliki said he would certainly not be seeking a second term.

"A compromise choice, his tenure has been plagued by factional strife within both the country and government, and rumours the US has no faith in him.

"'I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term,' he said.

"'I didn't want to take this position,' he told the Wall Street Journal. 'I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again.'"
BBC News

Tagged: iraq

Malaysia's Mahathir slams Saddam's execution as barbaric, sadistic

The Associated Press Monday, January 1, 2007 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia

Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, on Monday slammed the execution of Saddam Hussein as barbaric, sadistic and a public murder.

"If we support human rights and justice, we must condemn this barbaric lynching of Saddam Hussein," Mahathir, a vocal critic of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, said in a statement issued through national news agency Bernama.

He said the "sadistic act" of broadcasting the former Iraqi president's execution to the world was a travesty of justice designed to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States.

The broadcast served as a warning that people must either bow to the dictates of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration or face the consequences of a public lynching, he said.

"There can be no excuse whatsoever for this injustice under any circumstances," said Mahathir, who stepped down as prime minister in 2003.

Mahathir, who is also a member of the International Committee for the Defense of Saddam, said his execution was also an insult to all Muslims as it occurred during an Islamic festival when Muslims devote themselves to prayer and forgiveness.

"It is all too clear that the war criminal Bush has no sensitivities whatsoever for Muslims on their pilgrimage to Mecca. This barbaric act is a sacrilege," he said.

He said the entire Saddam trial process was a mockery of justice. "Yet, we are told that Iraq was invaded to promote democracy, freedom and justice," he said.

He noted that over 500,000 Iraqi children died during the years of U.N. economic sanctions after the first Gulf War in 1991, and that findings by the medical journal, Lancet, revealed that over 650,000 Iraqis had died since the U.S. invasion. Mahathir blamed the deaths on Bush.

"If President Saddam Hussein is guilty of war crimes," then the world must find Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard "equally guilty," he said, urging the International Criminal Court to "prosecute these war criminals."