A truly global economy is probably impossible to achieve. In 
fact, as the Princeton political economist Robert Gilpin has 
said, "what today we call international economic interdependence 
runs so counter to the great bulk of human experience that only 
extraordinary changes and novel circumstances could have led to 
its innovation and triumph over other means of economic 
exchange." Historically, to secure international capitalism a 
dominant power must guarantee the security of other states, so 
that they need not pursue autarkic policies or form trading 
blocs to improve their relative positions. This suspension of 
international politics through hegemony has been the fundamental 
aim of US foreign policy since the 1940s. The real story of that 
policy is not the thwarting of and triumph over the Soviet 
threat but the effort to impose an ambitious economic vision on 
a recalcitrant world.

Nurturing - and Constraining - the Fragile Blossom

The overriding objective of US post-war policy toward East Asia 
was restoring Japanese economic power. To be sure, this would 
help to immunise the region against Communist expansion; but 
Acheson and the other creators of the American Century thought 
the goal itself vital, regardless of the Soviet threat. As the 
historians William Borden, Bruce Cumings, Ronald McGlothlen, and 
Michael Schaller have argued, in attempting to create a global 
economic system Washington pursued a course designed in essence 
to restore the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere - 
imperial Japan's regional economy, which the United States had 
just destroyed in the Second World War. If Japan was to help 
fuel the world economy, it would have to be, in Acheson's 
words, "the workshop of Asia." American post-war planners viewed 
the political economy that had developed in Northeast Asia from 
about 1900 to 1945 as the region's natural economy - a 
tripartite system in which Japan, given access to continental 
markets and raw materials, formed the industrial core and its 
neighbours formed the economic semi-periphery and periphery. As 
Japan advanced in the product cycle, climbing up the 
technological ladder, it spun off its low-technology and low-
wage industries to its neighbours.

In the late 1940s and 1950s the United States essentially 
restored this system; but the machine could not run by itself. 
Washington had to ensure that Japan's neighbours would feel 
secure politically in the regional hierarchy atop which Japan 
stood. Washington also had to ensure that the hierarchy did not 
develop - as it had in the past - into a Japanese-led closed 
economic bloc, which would threaten the world economy. NSC 48, 
the National Security Council's 1949 blueprint for America's 
Cold War Strategy in East Asia, summed up the chief difficulty 
facing Washington's economic goals in the region - and around 
the globe. Starting with the premise that "the economic life of 
the modern world is geared to expansion," requiring "the 
establishment of conditions favourable to the export of 
technology and capital and to a liberal trade policy throughout 
the world," NSC 48's authors went on to warn that "the 
complexity of international trade makes it well to bear in mind 
that such ephemeral matters as national pride and ambition can 
inhibit or prevent the necessary degree of international co-
operation, or the development of a favourable atmosphere and 
conditions to promote economic expansion."

The distinguished historian and diplomat George Kennan, then the 
head of the State Department's policy-planning staff, saw only 
one solution to what he described as the "terrible dilemma" 
confronting US ambitions in East Asia. Forty-seven years later 
Washington continues to pursue that course.

By providing for Japan's security and by enmeshing its foreign 
and military policies in a US-controlled alliance, Americans 
have contained their erstwhile enemy, preventing their "partner" 
from embarking on independent - and, so the thinking goes, 
dangerous - political and military policies. By restraining its 
powerful ally, Washington has, to use a euphemism favoured in 
policy-making circles, "reassured" Japan's neighbours and 
stabilised relations among the states of East Asia. The United 
States played the decisive role in promoting Tokyo's integration 
with its former colonies in Japan-centred regional trade 
networks that have been the foundation of East Asia's 
economic "miracle". South Korea and Taiwan, for example, 
overcame their fear and resentment of Japan and opened their 
doors to Japanese investment and trade.

In a series of revealing interviews published in 1970 the former 
under-secretary of state Eugene Rostoe was pressed to explain 
the motivations underlying US foreign policy generally and US 
policy toward Vietnam specifically. In doing so he betrayed the 
lingering and profound distrust that US policy makers feel 
toward any powerful state that could play a role in world 
politics more independent than the one the United States has 
assigned to it. At a time when America was involved in Southeast 
Asia ostensibly to draw a line against international communism, 
Rostow admitted, "I think the major concern - at least my major 
concern - in this miserable affair is the long-range impact a 
[US] withdrawal would have on Japanese policy." He 
explained, "After the Japanese lost the war they reached certain 
conclusions, the principal one being that it was infinitely 
better to co-operate with the United States than to follow a 
hostile, militaristic line. Now, it's greatly to our interest to 
have that judgement proved correct. If the United States 
abruptly pulled out of Vietnam, Rostow went on, "I think the 
Japanese will draw certain conclusions. And I think their policy 
will take on a much more nationalistic cast... I think the first 
thing that would happen would be that they wouldn't ratify the 
nuclear non-proliferation treaty. They would feel compelled to 
become a nuclear power." This would endanger the imperative that 
America preserve "a world of wide horizons in which we can move 
around and trade and travel on a large scale."

America as "Adult Supervisor"

America's Cold War policy is best understood not by its 
communism-containing words but by its ally-containing deeds. 
Washington committed itself to building and maintaining an 
international economic and political order based on what 
officials at the time termed a US "preponderance of power". By 
banishing power politics and nationalist rivalries, America's 
Cold War alliances in East Asia and Europe in effect protected 
the states of those regions from themselves.

The United States has not subjugated colonies but, like Great 
Britain in the nineteenth century, has built and benefited 
economically from a stable international political order. In 
this way Lenin was right: imperialism is, or allows for, "the 
highest stage of capitalism" - an open economy among the 
industrialised nations.

In explaining its global strategy in 1993, in its "post-Cold 
War" defence strategy, the Pentagon defined the creation of "a 
prosperous, largely democratic, market-oriented zone of peace 
and prosperity that encompasses more than two-thirds of the 
world's economy" as "perhaps our nation's most significant 
achievement since the Second World War" - not the victory over 
Moscow. And it declared that this global capitalist order 
required the "stability" that only American "leadership" could 
provide. Ultimately, of course, US policy makers and Lenin 
diverge. America's foreign-policy strategists have hoped to keep 
the reality of international politics permanently at bay.

Although the Cold War has ended, what National Security Advisor 
Anthony Lake calls the "imperative of continued US world 
leadership" - as exercised, for instance, in America's dominance 
of its alliances in East Asia and of NATO - remains necessary to 
maintain a global economy. The now-infamous draft of the 
Pentagon's defence plan, or the Defence Planning Guidance, which 
was leaked to The New York Times in 1992, gave the public an 
unprecedented glimpse of the thinking that informs Washington's 
security strategy, merely stating in somewhat undiplomatic 
language the logic behind America's Cold War strategy. The 
United States, it argued, must continue to dominate the 
international system and thus "discourage" the "advanced 
industrial nations from challenging our leadership or... even 
aspiring to a larger regional or global role." To accomplish 
this, America must do nothing less than "retain the pre-eminent 
responsibility for addressing... those wrongs which threaten not 
only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which 
could seriously unsettle international relations."

The United States, in other words, must provide what one of the 
Planning Guidance's authors termed "adult supervision". It must 
not only dominate regions composed of wealthy and 
technologically sophisticated states but also take care of such 
nuisances such as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and North 
Korea's dictator Kim Jong Il, to protect the interests of 
virtually all potential great powers so that they need not 
acquire the capability to protect themselves - that is, so that 
those great powers need not act like great powers. Thus, for 
instance, Washington must protect Germany's and Japan's access 
to Persian Gulf oil, because if these countries were to protect 
their own interests in the Gulf, they would develop military 
forces capable of global "power projection". No wonder the 
United States must spend more on its "national security" than 
the rest of the world's countries combined. This post-Cold War 
strategy reflects what the historian Melvyn Leffler defined as 
an imperative of America's Cold War national-security policy: 
that "neither an integrated Europe nor a united Germany nor an 
independent Japan must be permitted to emerge as a third force."

Only in this context can Washington's concerns regarding current 
developments in East Asia be properly understood. For instance, 
in 1993 Alberto Coll, then a deputy assistant secretary of 
defence, clarified US aims in East Asia. "In the future," Coll 
declared in the Washington Quarterly,

the stability of the Pacific Basin and a strong US-Japanese 
relationship will be more important to the United States than 
ever before. The US economy needs the vast markets of the 
Pacific Rim, and it benefits enormously from Japanese investment 
capital and technology and the impetus toward greater 
productivity provided by the Japanese competition.

All these benefits would be lost, according to Coll, if 
the "traditional rivalries among Asian powers... unravel into 
unrestrained military competition, conflict and aggression." In 
the same vein the author of the Clinton Administration's 
security strategy for East Asia, Joseph Nye, then the assistant 
secretary of defence, asserted last year that the US military 
protectorate is "the basis for stability and prosperity in the 
region"; if the United States were to forsake its "leadership 
role" in East Asia, "the stable expectations of entrepreneurs 
and investors [would] be subverted." Although the United States 
committed forces to Japan ostensibly to protect it from the 
Soviets, and to South Korea to protect it from the North, in 
1993 the deputy defence secretary, William Perry, declared that 
America would continue to reassure and stabilise East Asia by 
maintaining troops "permanently" in Japan and even in a future 
unified Korea.

The Domino Theory Revisited

To Washington, East Asia is still composed of dominoes ready to 
fall. "Renationalisation", a term used by the cognoscenti to 
mean the resumption of international politics, could start 
virtually anywhere and spread rapidly. In one of Aaron 
Friedberg's many nightmare scenarios one can almost hear the 
click of fallen dominoes:

The nuclearisation of Korea (North, South, or whether through 
reunification or competitive arms programs both together) could 
lead to a similar development in Japan, which might cause China 
to accelerate and expand its nuclear programs, which could then 
have an impact on the defence policies of Taiwan, India (and 
through it, Pakistan) and Russia (which would also be affected 
by events in Japan and Korea)... similar shock waves could also 
travel through the system in different directions (for example, 
from India to China to Japan to Korea).

Friedberg and other national-security analysts paint a similarly 
gloomy picture in Southeast Asia if, for example, Japan should 
undertake a military build-up in response to Korean 
reunification. Japan's reaction would alarm China - the emerging 
colossus, which US defence planners now regard as the most 
serious potential long-term threat to America's global position. 
China would speed up the development of its "power projection" 
forces. This would alarm Korea, Taiwan, and Japan - and also 
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Their defensive 
response would further alarm China.

Such developments, from Washington's perspective, would have one 
of two results, either of which would shatter the global 
economy: international anarchy, or regional dominance by China 
or Japan, which policy makers believe would lead inevitably to a 
regional trading bloc. Arguing in 1992 for the maintenance of 
America's leadership of its Cold War alliances, a high-ranking 
Pentagon official asked, "If we pull out, who knows what 
nervousness will result?" The problem, of course, is that 
America can never know. According to this logic, it must always 
stay.

To the United States, the best change in East Asia is no change 
at all, because any alteration in the status quo could start the 
dominoes falling. And if there is to be change, Washington - not 
Tokyo or Beijing - must manage it. To permit otherwise would 
send a dangerous signal about America's diminishing ability to 
regulate, calibrate, and manipulate international politics in 
East Asia. Of course, Washington appreciates that change is 
inevitable, and its frustration comes from being unable to 
square the circle - to manage an increasingly unmanageable world.

Although the United States remains committed to preserving the 
Pax Americana in East Asia, the states in the region see US 
influence inexorably declining, and they are planning 
accordingly. South Korea, for example, is reorienting its 
military away from an emphasis on the threat from the North and 
toward projecting power against a future threat from Japan by 
means of naval and air forces, submarines, spy planes, and 
satellites. The problem is that in prudently preparing for 
similar eventualities the East Asian states may indeed, as 
Washington fears, precipitate renationalisation.

At a loss for what to do, US policy makers propose two 
contradictory solutions. On the assumption that democracies are 
inherently peaceful toward one another, one solution goes, the 
United States should tranquillise East Asia by democratising it. 
At the same time, the second solution has it, because only 
American dominance can ensure stability in the region (as in 
Europe), the United States should maintain its hegemony 
indefinitely. Leaving aside the question of whether either goal 
can be achieved, it should be clear that proposing these 
solutions is as inconsistent as simultaneously asserting, as do 
most in the US national-security community, that although 
democracies pose no danger to other democracies, America must 
continue to contain Germany and Japan.

The hope and fear with which policy makers view economic change 
in East Asia illustrates the contradictory convictions that 
animate US policy. Washington both heralds the economic dynamism 
of the Pacific Rim, hoping it will bring democracy and peace and 
worldwide economic growth, and dreads the Asian miracle. It 
knows that just as economic change endangers a shift in 
political and military power, so a particular economic order is 
jeopardised as the foundation upon which it rests - US hegemony -
 weakens. In the oxymoronic vocabulary of US diplomacy, 
strong "partners" are economically welcome and indeed necessary, 
but US "leadership" is indispensable. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who 
developed the idea of a trilateral division of responsibility 
among the United States, Japan and Europe, calls for Washington 
to develop "a more co-operative partnership" with Tokyo even as 
he asserts that America must continue to control Japan 
militarily.

Losing Ground

There is something at once poignant and obtuse in James Baker's 
comment that because President Clinton's foreign policy lacks 
consistency and firmness, "for the first time since the Second 
World War, Japan is not delivering an automatic vote for the US 
position." Sticking his head in the sand, the former Secretary 
of State claimed that such problems could be obviated "as long 
as America leads... We have to lead." Japan's actions are 
certainly related to a decline in US leadership, but that 
decline is not the fault of what Baker would characterise as 
Clinton's weak foreign policy. No matter who is in charge of US 
foreign policy, America is less and less able to lead. Baker 
seems to have forgotten that America's leadership in the Gulf 
War was possible only because its allies agreed to pick up the 
tab. Given such leadership, it is no surprise that once-
subservient "partners" are increasingly going their own way. 
Preponderance cannot simply be asserted; it must reflect a 
position based on power. When that position shifts enough, 
preponderance - "leadership" - is lost.

Lenin argued seventy-eight years ago that international 
capitalism would be economically successful but, by growing in a 
world of competitive states, would plant the seeds of its own 
destruction. Ironically, the worldwide economic system that the 
United States has fostered has itself largely determined 
America's relative decline even as it has contributed to the 
country's economic growth. Through trade, foreign investment, 
and the spread of technology and managerial expertise, economic 
power has diffused from the United States to new centres of 
growth, thus undermining American hegemony and ultimately 
jeopardising the world economy.

Nearly everyone applauds today's complex web of global trade, 
production, and finance as the highest stage of capitalism. But 
international capitalism may be approaching a crisis just as it 
is reaching its fullest flower. A genuinely interdependent world 
market is extraordinarily fragile. The emergent high-technology 
industries, for instance, are the most powerful engines of 
economic world growth, but they require a level of 
specialisation and a breadth of markets that are possible only 
in an integrated global economy. As US hegemony continues to 
weaken, renationalised foreign and economic policies among the 
industrialised powers could fragment that economy.

The future of a foreign policy designed to strengthen what the 
United States must contain and, at the same time, to maintain an 
economic order that weakens the very foundation of that order 
seems evident: it will collapse under the weight of its own 
contradictions. The United States remains caught in the dilemma 
Kennan discerned more than forty years ago: "To what 
end 'security'? For the continuation of our economic expansion? 
But our economic expansion... cannot proceed much further 
without... creating new problems of national security much more 
rapidly than we can ever hope to solve them." To escape this 
dilemma, Americans will have to understand the foreign policy 
that is conducted in their name and re-examine the requirements 
for their own security and prosperity.

WHY AMERICA THINKS IT HAS TO RUN THE WORLD
Benjamin Schwarz

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96jun/schwarz.htm

Though the Cold War is over, and America is staggering under a 
colossal debt and an accumulation of frightening social 
problems, it continues to spend billions to protect Germany and 
Japan - two rich nations whose freedom is in no apparent danger. 
Why? Here is the answer that the foreign-policy elite would give 
if it dared to speak frankly about the delicate matter of 
American efforts to assert international economic and political 
control.

Three years ago, in light of the end of the Cold War, the 
Clinton Administration undertook a "fundamental reassessment" of 
America's national-security requirements. But after six months 
of analysis Administration officials concluded that the defence 
of US global interests still demanded military spending of more 
than $1.3 trillion over the following five years and the 
permanent commitment of more than 200,000 US soldiers in East 
Asia and Europe - in other words, a strategy remarkably similar 
to that which America pursued during the Cold War. Moreover, 
rather than relinquish America's costly and risky 
responsibilities by dissolving Cold War alliances, defence 
strategists now plan to expand NATO's responsibilities eastward. 
Those who call for a more modest plan argue that US strategy 
seems to be extravagance born of paranoia, or of the defence 
establishment's anxiety to protect its budget. In fact, given 
the way the makers of US foreign policy have defined American 
interests since the late 1940s, these plans are quite prudent. 
And that is the problem.

If many Americans had been asked ten years ago why US troops 
were deployed in East Asia and Europe, they would have answered: 
To keep the Soviets out. They may have wondered, however, why 
the United States persisted in its strategy long after Japan, 
South Korea, and Western Europe had become capable of defending 
themselves. Now that the USSR itself has disappeared, why does 
Washington continue to insist that US "leadership" in East Asia 
and Europe is still indispensable?

Ask National Security Council staff members, think-tank 
analysts, or State Department policy planners about America's 
globe-girdling security commitments and they will deliver very 
different answers - ones that have not changed in forty-five 
years. They will justify the Pax Americana by invoking "the 
imperative of continued US world leadership," the need to "shape 
a favourable international environment," "reassurance of 
allies," and the ongoing need for "stability" and "continuing 
engagement". Even during the Cold War the "Soviet threat" might 
not have been mentioned.

The question that all this justification ignores is: What, 
exactly, is "leadership", and why has it been the mantra of 
foreign-policy cognoscenti for nearly fifty years? What have we 
been doing around the globe, and why?

Most Americans misunderstand their country's foreign policy. It 
seems to operate only when "danger" looms - when Iraq invades 
Kuwait, when Russian "imperialism" threatens to resurface, when 
China rattles its sabres at Taiwan. Even people who religiously 
read the newspapers fail to grasp that US foreign policy is far 
more than simply a series of responses to crises.

For instance, media coverage of recurring tensions on the Korean 
Peninsula has focused on speculation about North Korea's nuclear 
program and the prospect of a new Korean war. But when foreign-
policy officials and experts discuss the Korean crisis among 
themselves, they rapidly leave the Koreas behind to focus on the 
real players in the region: China and Japan. As far as national-
security experts are concerned, almost any immediate crisis is 
subsumed by a larger threat - in this case no less than East 
Asia's role in the potential collapse of the international 
economy that US power has sustained since the late 1940s.

It's now an axiom of the US foreign-policy establishment that 
economic, technological, and demographic changes are making East 
Asia the world's most dynamic arena, a driving force - 
increasingly the dominant force - in the international economy. 
The Pacific Century, we are told ad nauseam, has dawned. This 
transformation also means a shift in the international 
distribution of political and military power. In a typical 
evaluation of East Asia's strategic future the foreign-policy 
expert Aaron Friedberg states darkly in the journal 
International Security:

In the long run, it is Asia [rather than Europe] that seems far 
more likely to be the cockpit of great power conflict. The half 
millennium during which Europe was the world's primary generator 
of war (as well as of wealth and knowledge) is coming to a 
close. But, for better and for worse, Europe's past could be 
Asia's future.

Friedberg's assertion nicely illustrates the ambivalence with 
which the US national-security community views East Asia's 
future. He both prophesies an exhilarating Pacific Century and 
warns the West that the East may once again be up to no good.

East Asia has never been a terribly successful field for 
American diplomacy. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this, 
and surely that shortcoming for which the United States is 
continually indicted - cultural and historical myopia - has 
contributed enormously to its failures in the region. Americans 
have always seen East Asia not for what it is but for what it 
can do to them or for them: the region is either danger or 
opportunity - either a new "ground war in Asia" or a new China 
market. American understanding of Japan, for instance, is, in 
the words of the historian Bruce Cumings, caught within the 
conflicting views of Japan as "miracle and menace, docile and 
aggressive, fragile blossom and Tokyo Rose". As Friedberg's 
analysis attests, the US foreign-policy community worries that 
the fragile blossom may again bloom into a Tokyo Rose.

Pacific Century rhetoric usually describes the new era in 
a "post-Cold War" context. This is misleading, because it starts 
at the wrong place. First, the shift of economic activity has 
not been sudden. Even if East Asia rose in the American 
consciousness just as the Soviet Union receded, to define the 
economic and geopolitical transformation of East Asia as a post-
Cold War phenomenon Americanises and trivialises a development 
in international (not American) politics of far greater impact 
then the Cold War itself. Although Vietnam, China and North 
Korea were for forty years able to contain America's Cold War 
ambition to "roll back" communism, they are proving utterly 
unable to contain the juggernaut of East Asia's capitalist 
political economy. Most important, to imply that the end of the 
Cold War is of primary significance to US policy in East Asia is 
to wrench that policy out of its most important context and to 
distort its underlying aims and challenges.

What we think of as the Cold War was merely instrumental in 
America's larger "Cold War" strategy. In "scaring hell out of 
the American people," as Senator Arthur Vandenberg said in 1947, 
the US-Soviet rivalry helped to secure domestic support for 
Washington's ambition to create a US-dominated world order. That 
same year one of Vandenberg's colleagues, the fervently anti-
Communist Senator Robert Taft, expressed a strong suspicion that 
the supposed dangers to the nation from the USSR failed to 
explain America's new foreign policy. He complained that he 
was "more than a bit tired of having the Russian menace invoked 
as a reason for doing any - and every - thing that might or 
might not be desirable or necessary on its own merits". The 
former Secretary of State Dean Acheson put things in proper 
perspective: describing how Washington overcame domestic 
opposition to its internationalist policies in 1950, he recalled 
in 1954 that at that critical moment the crisis in Korea "came 
along and saved us".

Making the World Safe for Capitalism

A fundamental aim of America's Cold War strategy was to create 
and maintain what the former Secretary of State James Baker has 
called "a global liberal economic regime" - a capitalist world 
order. After the Second World War, American statesmen believed 
that the United States, standing alone and strong in a world of 
weary nations, had a remarkable opportunity, as Acheson said, 
to "grab hold of history and make it conform." American 
statesmen seized that opportunity by creating a complex strategy 
to reify Adam Smith's dream. Washington envisioned a world 
economy in which trade and capital would flow across national 
boundaries in response to the laws of comparative advantage and 
supply and demand - an economy in which production and finance 
would be integrated on a global scale. The constricted national 
markets that were emerging in the immediate aftermath of the 
Second World War in Europe and East Asia would be combined, 
eliminating the inefficiencies of statism and self-sufficiency. 
Large-scale regional economies would in turn be integrated into 
an interdependent world economy. US policy makers knew that 
building this multinational capitalist community required the 
United States to provide Western Europe and Japan with enormous 
amounts of economic aid (through such schemes as the Marshall 
Plan, for Europe, and the Dodge Plan, its equivalent for Japan), 
so that those areas would not retreat into closed economies. 
They also knew that an open world economy demanded an even more 
ambitious American project: transforming international relations.

The greatest danger to US democracy and prosperity came, they 
believed, not from the Soviet Union but from Germany and Japan, 
whose potential strength amounted to a sort of Catch-22. Without 
a flourishing international economy, Under-Secretary of State 
Will Clayton warned in 1947, "our democratic free enterprise 
system" could not function. As late as 1960 exports accounted 
for only 3.8 percent and imports for 4.8 percent of GDP. The 
health of the international economy, in this disputable view, 
depended on Germany's and Japan's economic revitalisation. 
Germany, if its economy was resurrected, would once again be 
Europe's most efficient producer and its most avid consumer. Its 
very economic potential, however, made Germany a threat to the 
other Western European states, which, as the future Secretary of 
State John Foster Dulles explained to a closed Senate panel in 
1949, were "afraid to bring that strong, powerful, highly 
concentrated group of people into unity with them". Similarly, 
as Dulles, Acheson and other policy makers understood, a strong 
Japan was both necessary for a prosperous international order 
and intolerable to its neighbours. The problem lay in the 
inherent contradiction between capitalism and international 
politics.

Capitalist economies prosper most when labour, technology, and 
capital are fluid, so that they are driven toward international 
integration and interdependence. But whereas all states benefit 
absolutely in an open international economy, some states benefit 
more than others. In the normal course of world politics, in 
which states are driven to compete for their security, the 
relative distribution of power is a country's principal concern, 
discouraging economic interdependence. Thus 250 years ago the 
philosopher David Hume bemoaned the lack of economic co-
operation among countries, blaming the "narrow malignity and 
envy of nations, which can never bear to see their neighbours 
thriving, but continually repine at any new efforts towards 
industry made by any other nation". In its efforts to ensure the 
distribution of power in its favour and at the expense of actual 
or potential rivals, a state will "nationalise" - that is, 
pursue autarkic policies, practising capitalism only within its 
borders or among countries in a trading bloc. This circumscribes 
both production factors and markets, and thereby fragments an 
international economy.

US applying Geneva 'exceptions' in Iraq
The Bush administration has concluded for the first time that 
some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are 
not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, the 
New York Times has reported.
http://www.antiamerica.com
According to unnamed administration officials who spoke with the 
newspaper, the opinion reached in recent months holds that there 
are exceptions to prior assertions that the Geneva Convention 
applies to all prisoners taken in the Iraq war. 

The report follows another story in Sunday's Washington Post, 
which said US intelligence officials were transferring detainees 
out of Iraq for interrogation. 

In those cases, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) invoked a 
confidential Justice Department memo to justify its actions, the 
Post said. 

The report in NYT said that the legal opinion would allow the 
military and the CIA to treat at least a small number of non-
Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of 
Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or 
elsewhere. 

In such cases, the United States has said, the Geneva Convention 
does not apply. 

According to the NYT, the new opinion represented a consensus 
reached by lawyers from the Departments of State and Justice, as 
well as other agencies such as the Pentagon and the National 
Security Council. 

A Government official told the newspaper that the opinion had 
been sought by the CIA to establish the legality of its secret 
transfers of non-Iraqi prisoners, beginning in April 2003, for 
interrogation outside Iraq. 

Government officials told the NYT that the new ruling could open 
the way for additional transfers on a broader scale, because the 
status of prisoners being held in Iraq is reviewed on a case-by-
case basis. 

The administration takes the view that exceptions from the 
Geneva Convention would include suspected Al Qaeda members and 
other terror suspects, as well as foreigners who travelled to 
Iraq to join the insurgency or engage in acts of terrorism, the 
paper said. 

--Reuters
http://www.antiamerica.com
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American Exceptionalism 
October 26, 2004
Ivan Eland


Many Americans, like the citizens of dominant nations of the 
past, believe that their way of life is superior and should be 
shared with other peoples often at gunpoint. Lately, this 
American exceptionalism has assumed even more pernicious forms.

Whether called the Bush I administration s  New World Order  
or the Clinton administration s  Engagement and Enlargement  
or the Bush II administration s effort to  liberate  
Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps the entire Middle East, using 
military force to bring democracy and market economies to errant 
peoples has been a staple of both Democratic and Republican 
administrations since World War II. Similarly, the Roman, 
British, Spanish and other empires believed they were civilizing 
conquered lands with their ways of doing things.

And like the empires of old, soaring U.S. rhetoric often hides 
ulterior pursuits. For example, the United States is often the 
rhetorical champion of human rights but, during war, sometimes 
flouts them. Recently, the United States violated the Geneva 
Conventions on the treatment of prisoners by capturing prisoners 
outside the Iraqi zone of conflict, and hiding the fact from the 
International Red Cross. This behavior should not come as a 
surprise, given the Bush II administration s flagrant attempt 
to argue that the conventions did not apply to enemy fighters in 
Afghanistan. The fighters were labeled  enemy combatants  so 
that they would not get the conventions  protections for 
prisoners of war. The Afghan prisoners are to be tried in 
kangaroo military courts that fail to meet both international 
and U.S. standards of fair judicial process. 

Also, the Bush II administration s flouting of the conventions 
sent a message to some U.S. military personnel at various 
prisons, including Abu Ghraib, that abusing detainees was 
acceptable behavior. 

U.S. pretensions of moral superiority overseas are also belied 
in other ways. How does invading a sovereign Iraq and deposing 
its government differ from Saddam Hussein s invasion of a 
sovereign Kuwait in 1990? Even in the very worst case Iraqi 
possession weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear 
weapons wouldn t Saddam Hussein have had a right to defend his 
country with such armaments? Other despotic nations have been 
allowed by the United States to develop nuclear weapons the 
Soviet Union, radical Maoist China, and, most recently, 
Pakistan. 

Besides, the United States possesses the most capable nuclear 
arsenal on the planet, has threatened to attack with nuclear 
weapons on more than one occasion, and is the only nation to 
have ever used them. This double standard shows that the United 
States often runs a simplistic and hypocritical Tarzan-style 
foreign policy:  We good, you bad.  People around the world 
readily identify U.S. hypocrisy, but many Americans can t see 
that their government sometimes behaves like the empires of old.

For example, Americans would shudder at any comparison between 
U.S. behavior and that of Imperial Japan during the 1930s. Yet 
top U.S. decision-makers have alluded several times to one of 
the major goals of the militarized U.S. foreign policy in the 
Middle East access to supplies of oil. Similarly, Imperial 
Japan romped all over East Asia to gain access to raw materials, 
including oil, for its industrial economy. In both cases, many 
economists would say that simply paying the going price will 
ensure access to oil and other raw materials much more cheaply 
than paying for the military power needed to maintain the flow 
of such resources. 

Criticizing the U.S. government s militaristic actions overseas 
is not the same as denigrating America. America is exceptional. 
As conservative George Will has said, America is the only nation 
founded on an ideal. That ideal is liberty for the individual, 
both politically and economically. The people of the United 
States have enjoyed freedoms unparalleled in human history. When 
the United States crusades overseas and attempts to use force to 
bring such liberties to people who have never before experienced 
them, it rarely succeeds and even undermines those values at 
home. Conquered peoples, and the rest of the undemocratic world, 
merely associate  democracy and free markets  with foreign 
invasion, thus undermining the spread of individual political 
and economic freedoms. Meanwhile, every overseas war in which 
the United States has been embroiled has undermined individual 
liberties at home. For example, the Bush administration s war 
on terrorism has given us the draconian PATRIOT Act, which 
allows more U.S. government snooping into the lives of its 
citizens. 

Instead of conducting unnecessary, deceptive, hypocritical and 
counterproductive foreign military adventures, the United States 
should lead by example. The United States should be a beacon of 
liberty for other nations to emulate. When the Soviet bloc 
crumbled, Eastern Europe used American ideals to throw off the 
shackles of oppression. Thus, the U.S. government should be less 
insecure about a failure to spread American ideals in the 
absence of military coercion.


-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------------
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace 
& Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, 
and author of the books The Empire Has No Clothes, and Putting 
 Defense  Back into U.S. Defense Policy. 

THE EMPIRE HAS NO CLOTHES
U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed 
By Ivan Eland
Most Americans don  t think of their government as an empire, 
but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its 
control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth 
century. Now, through political intimidation and over 700 
military bases worldwide, the U.S. holds sway over an area that 
dwarfs the great empires of world history.

In The Empire Has No Clothes, Ivan Eland, a leading expert on 
U.S. defense policy and national security, examines American 
military interventions around the world from the Spanish-
American War to the invasion of Iraq. 

Eland shows that the concept of empire is wholly contrary to the 
principles of both liberals and conservatives and that it makes 
a mockery of the Founding Fathers   vision for a free republic. 
Eland also warns that in recent years,   blowback   and the 
enormous expansion of domestic federal power resulting from this 
overextended empire have begun to threaten the American homeland 
itself and curtail the very liberties these interventions were 
supposed to protect.

Public debate of the United States   role in the world has 
finally begun in earnest, and Ivan Eland delivers a penetrating 
argument in this landmark book, exposing the imperial motives 
behind interventionist U.S. policy, questioning the historical 
assumptions on which it is based and advocating a return to the 
Founding Fathers   vision of military restraint overseas.

Detailed Summary 
 
 

http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=54

I'm going to help reelect George W. Bush just to piss you off 
even further.     :)                  

A US Embassy spokesman said a diplomatic security officer was 
killed by a mortar attack on Camp Victory, a sprawling US 
military headquarters near Baghdad s international airport. 

  I mourn the loss of one of our own today in Baghdad. Assistant 
Regional Security Officer Ed Seitz was a brave American, 
dedicated to his country,   US Secretary of State Colin Powell 
said in a statement. Seitz was the first American diplomat known 
to have been killed in Iraq since last year s US-led invasion. 

A Bulgarian soldier serving with US-led multinational forces was 
killed and three others were wounded when a car bomb exploded 
near their military convoy in the southern city of Karbala, 
government and military officials said. 

Gunmen shot dead a Turkish truck driver in northern Iraq, police 
said, a day after two other truckers from Turkey were killed 
near the city of Mosul. 

US warplanes pounded targets in rebel-held Falluja, the toughest 
guerrilla stronghold, on Sunday, killing five people, witnesses 
said. Hospital officials said the dead were civilians. 
49 Iraqi troops executed, US diplomat killed 
 
 
 
FARIS AL-MAHDAWI          
 
 
Posted online: Monday, October 25, 2004 at 0050 hours IST

 
 
BAQUBA, IRAQ, OCTOBER 24: Guerrillas killed 49 unarmed Iraqi 
Army recruits in one of the bloodiest attacks on Iraq s 
fledgling security forces, while in other attacks on Sunday, a 
US diplomat and a Bulgarian soldier also died. 

Police said guerrillas disguised as police had set up a 
checkpoint on a road northeast of Baghdad and stopped three 
minibuses carrying the recruits, forcing them to leave the 
vehicles and lie face-down on the tarmac before shooting them. 

 
 
A dozen recruits tried to flee but were also shot. 

The bodies, in torn and bloodstained civilian clothes, were 
taken in the back of trucks to a National Guard base in the town 
of Mandali, near the Iranian border, where they were laid out in 
rows. Some bystanders wept. The attack was another blow to the 
US-backed interim government s efforts to build up Iraqi 
security forces to tackle a raging insurgency along with US-led 
forces. 

  They were all executed, we found them executed,   said 
Interior Ministry spokesman Adnan Abdul-Rahman. The recruits, 
based at Kirkush, some 90 km northeast of Baghdad, had been 
heading for home leave when they were ambushed late on Saturday.
 

The US military, which blames guerrilla attacks on Saddam 
Hussein supporters and foreign Islamic militants, said it had 
destroyed a known enemy command and control post in northern 
Falluja, some 50 km West of Baghdad. 

A powerful group of Sunni clerics threatened to call a boycott 
of Iraq s planned elections in January if US forces launch a 
widely expected full-scale assault on Falluja.  Reuters

US diplomat killed in Iraq attack
A US diplomat was killed in a mortar attack today at Camp 
Victory near Baghdad airport in Iraq, the State Department said. 

Ed Seitz, the assistant regional security officer at the US 
embassy in Baghdad, is believed to be the first American 
diplomat killed during the current Iraq conflict, a department 
official said. 

Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Beijing on the second leg of 
a three-nation Asian tour, called Seitz a "brave American, 
dedicated to his country and to a brighter future for the people 
of Iraq. 

"We honour Ed's devotion to country and freedom," Mr Powell said 
in a statement. 

"The enemies of peace shall not shake our will. America and a 
free Iraq will prevail. 

"This is what Ed gave his life for and this is what we will 
accomplish." 

Details of the attack on Camp Victory at about 5:00am local time 
were not immediately available. 

But a State Department official said at least one other 
American, a soldier, had been wounded. 

The mortar also caused some damage to trailers in the area. 

It was unclear what Mr Seitz was doing at Camp Victory at the 
time. 

"As far as we know this is the first State Department employee 
killed in Iraq," the department official said. 

--AFP

Oh that's right, Noam. If you can't tell the truth, try to 
distort reality with false perceptions. Good luck with your 
America envy.    

<a href=http://www.thecun.com/animeerotism/up3.html>free galleries</a>

<a href=http://www.totalsexmovies.com/cutegirl/friend01nzo.html>galleries free</a>

Bin Laden and Zarqawi's October Surprise 
    By Steve Weissman 
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective 

    Thursday 21 October 2004 
http://www.humiliateamerica.com
    Osama bin Laden finally voted for president. So did Abu 
Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of "Monotheism and Holy 
War," alleged beheader of Western hostages in Iraq, and the 
U.S. target of choice in and around embattled Fallujah. Just 
this week, the two terrorist rivals reportedly put aside their 
differences and united their groups in a marriage of 
convenience, which leading Muslims observers and U.S. 
Intelligence take as genuine. 

    Strange as it seem, no one really knows if the two leading 
figures are still alive, or where they are, or even if the 
elusive Zarqawi, who supposedly received medical treatment in 
Baghdad, has one leg or two. From the various photos of him in 
the world's press, he looks like several different people. 

    But, whether bin Laden and Zarqawi are living fugitives 
with $25 million rewards on their heads or dead martyrs now 
manipulated by others, their forces have apparently joined 
together in their name. How will American voters respond to the 
news? 

    Will Zarqawi's freshly proclaimed allegiance of "to the 
chief of all fighters, Osama bin Laden" boost Mr. Bush's 
election chances, giving the president what he could never 
before find - a pack of genuine, if newly rebranded, al Qaida 
terrorists to kill or capture in Iraq? 
http://www.humiliateamerica.com
    Or, will the news highlight all the cock-and-bull that 
Bush, Cheney, and Powell previously told us about Zarqawi, 
showing voters yet again how the war in Iraq only makes the 
terrorists stronger and more united? 

    Initially announced on a radical Islamic website, Zarqawi's 
enlistment in al-Qaida marked the start of the Islamic holy 
month of Ramadan, a time - said the statement - when "Muslims 
need more than ever to stick together in the face of the 
religion's enemies." 

    The formerly independent Zarqawi proclaimed bin Laden "the 
best leader for Islam's armies against all infidels and 
apostates." He also endorsed bin Laden's effort to "expel the 
infidels from the Arabian peninsula," removing Western 
influence from Saudi Arabia and its surrounding states. 

    So far, Team Bush has responded with caution, as if unsure 
whether an in-depth look at Zarqawi will help or hurt in the 
election campaign. White House spokesman Trent Duffy simply 
repeated the old refrain: "We always said there were ties 
between Zarqawi and al-Qaida, which underscores once again why 
Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." 

    To some, Zarqawi's present merger might suggest the 
opposite - that he was not working for al Qaida before, just as 
he was not working for Saddam when he hid out with Ansar al-
Islam in remote Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, where 
Washington had greater control than did Baghdad. As an old 
speechwriter once said, never let facts stand in the way of a 
good story. 

    To be fair to the White House spokesman, the truth offers 
far less appeal. Mr. Bush's war of choice has now forged two 
new enemy alliances. He has united the followers of bin Laden 
and Zarqawi. And, he has pushed them together with Saddam's 
former supporters in the Sunni triangle. 

    Far from bringing democracy to Iraq, our fundamentalist 
preacher president has become the prophet of radical Islamic 
unity. If he continues his ill-fated war, he will soon drive 
Iraq's Shiite majority, who formerly hated Zarqawi and the pro-
Saddam Sunnis, to join them in a common front against the 
American occupation and its handpicked Iraqi collaborators. 

    Who said Mr. Bush doesn't know how to build alliances? 

    Whether he sees any of this, maybe his handlers know. It 
might even fulfill one of his religious fantasies, creating a 
clash between Christianity and Islam that so many of his 
supporters seem to crave. Between denying reality and never 
admitting mistakes, Mr. Bush has led us into the realm of self-
fulfilling prophecy. 

    How then does the Bush campaign sell such a suicidal 
mission? 

    With fear and a mistakenly military view of how to fight 
the growth of radical Islamic terror. As spokesman Duffy added, 
bin Laden and Zarqawi's October surprise offered "proof 
positive of why the president's firm resolve to fight 
terrorists overseas so we don't face them in America's 
neighborhoods is the only clear way to prevail." 

    Vote for us ... or die! Kill them there before they kill us 
here. 

    Think about it. If Bin Laden and Zarqawi had only a finite 
number of terrorists - even in the tens of thousands, which so 
far they do not - the idea of luring them all into an Iraqi 
killing ground might have a macabre fascination. But while we 
fight a military war, bin Laden, Zarqawi, and other radical 
Islamists are waging a worldwide political struggle, using our 
killing ground in Iraq to win the support of several hundred 
million Muslims, who will provide a hundred years' supply of 
would-be martyrs. The longer we stay in Iraq, the harder we 
fight, the more we kill, the more of the world's Muslims we 
drive into the radical camp. 

    It's as if bin Laden had written the script, and poor Mr. 
Bush is playing it out to perfection. Will American voters 
catch on to where he and his simple-minded resolve are leading 
us? Or will they close their eyes and let him make it even 
worse? 



----------------------------------------------------------------
----------------
    A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New 
Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in 
London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. 
He now lives and works in France, where he writes for t r u t h 
o u t. 
http://www.humiliateamerica.comhttp://www.humiliateamerica.comht
tp://www.humiliateamerica.comhttp://www.humiliateamerica.com

Oil pipelines attacked
Saturday 23 October 2004, 16:08 Makka Time, 13:08 GMT  
Saboteurs have bombed two oil pipelines transporting crude from 
north and eastern Iraq to Baghdad's Dura refinery.

http://www.antiamerica.com
Major Ali Mahmud said National Guard forces were trying to 
extinguish a fire which damaged 150 metres of the Khana 
pipeline, northeast of Baghdad. 
http://www.antiamerica.com
He said another bomb was found on Saturday along the same line, 
and was safely defused. 

An oil official said saboteurs on Friday blew up a section of 
another oil pipeline in Mashada area, about 50km north of 
Baghdad. The pipeline feeds the same refinery which processes 
110,000 barrels per day (bpd). 

Attacks by armed fighters on Iraq's oil pipelines have 
disrupted refinery operations, and cost the US-backed interim 
government billions of dollars, including lost oil export 
proceeds and nearly $200 million a month worth of refined 
product imports. 

Saboteurs also hit a section of the northern oil export network 
on Thursday. Oil officials said crude kept flowing normally 
through alternative pipelines to Turkey's Ceyhan port at 
300,000 bpd. 
http://www.antiamerica.com
Iraq exports another 1.6 million bpd through two southern 
offshore terminals in the Gulf, and the flows there have been 
normal for about two months, the officials said. 

http://www.antiamerica.com

More than 800 former US soldiers have failed to comply with 
orders to get back in uniform and report for duty in Iraq or 
Afghanistan, according to the US army.



That is more than one-third of the total who were told to 
report to a mobilisation station by 17 October. 

Three weeks ago, the number stood at 622 amid talk that any who 
refused to report for duty could be declared absent without 
leave. Refusing to report for duty normally would lead to AWOL 
charges, but the US army is going out of its way to resolve 
these cases as quietly as possible.

In all, 4166 members of the Individual Ready Reserve have 
received mobilisation orders since 6 July, of which 2288 were 
to have reported by 17 October. The others are to report in 
coming weeks and months.

No-show rate

Of those due to have reported by now, 1445 have done so, but 
843 have neither reported nor asked for a delay or exemption. 
That no-show rate of 37% is roughly in line with the one-third 
rate the US army had forecast when it began the mobilisation to 
fill positions in regular and reserve units. 

Members of the Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, are rarely 
called to active duty. The last time was 1990, when nearly 
20,000 were mobilised.

 
The first IIR Marine death in Iraq
was reported earlier this week
 

IRR members are people who were honourably discharged after 
finishing their active-duty tours, usually four to six years, 
but remained in the IRR for the rest of the eight-year 
commitment they made when they joined the army.

The Marine Corps, meanwhile, said Friday that a marine killed 
in western Iraq earlier this week, Sergeant Douglas E. Bascom, 
25, was a member of the Individual Ready Reserve.

He was the first IRR Marine to die in Iraq, according to 
Gunnery Sergeant Kristine Scharber, a spokeswoman at Marine 
Corps headquarters in the Pentagon.

Under pressure

There are about 400 IRR Marines deployed in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, according to Shane Darbonne, a spokesman for the 
Marine Corps Mobilisation Command.

Army officials said they were uncertain whether any of their 
Individual Ready Reserve members have been killed in Iraq.

That the US army has had to reach so deeply into its store of 
reserve soldiers is a measure of the strain the Iraq and 
Afghanistan campaigns have put on the active-duty US army.

When the American invading force toppled Baghdad in April 2003, 
the US army thought it would be sending most of its soldiers 
home within months. Instead, it has kept 100,000 or more there 
ever since.

Gunmen kill two Turkish truck drivers in Iraq - 
MISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSION 
ACCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCOMPLISHED!!!! ha ha;) 
(http://www.thenausea.comhttp://www.thenausea.comhttp://www.then
ausea.comhttp://www.thenausea.comhttp://www.thenausea.comhttp://
) 
Gunmen kill two Turkish truck drivers in Iraq
Two Turkish truck drivers were killed and two wounded near the 
northern Iraqi city of Mosul on today, police and hospital 
officials said. 

One of the wounded drivers told Reuters they came under fire 
from gunmen while they were transporting canned juice to the US 
military in Mosul. 

Many Turkish truck drivers have been attacked or kidnapped 
along the highway from Turkey to Iraq. 

--Reuters
http://www.thenausea.com 
 

Iraqi militants behead collaborator: website
An Iraqi militant group said it beheaded an Iraqi man it 
accused of collaborating with US forces and posted pictures on 
Saturday of the killing on the Internet. 

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna said in a statement posted on its 
website that it had captured the man in the northern Iraqi city 
of Mosul where he was working at a US base. 

It showed a photograph of the man with his throat slit. 

--Reuters

Suicide bombers kill 20 Iraqi security officers
Suicide bombers killed 20 members of Iraq's fledgling security 
forces near a US marine base west of Baghdad and at a 
checkpoint north of the capital on Saturday in a spate of 
guerrilla attacks across the country. 

The surge in violence underlined the scale of the task facing 
the US military and Iraq's interim government, which have sworn 
to crush the guerrillas before elections in January. 

Hospital officials said 16 Iraqi police were killed and up to 
40 people were wounded when a suicide bomber struck an Iraqi 
police post near the marine base.

Another suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a checkpoint 
manned by Iraqi National Guards in the village of Ishaqi, close 
to the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, killing four guards. 

A policeman was killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra. 

Elsewhere across the Sunni Arab heartland of central Iraq, 
there was no let up in violence that the interim Government and 
Washington blame on Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign 
Islamic militants. 

Guerrillas killed two Turkish truckers and wounded two in an 
attack on a convoy near the northern city of Mosul, police 
said. 

Baghdad attacks

In central Baghdad guerrillas fired two mortar rounds, killing 
two civilians and wounding one, witnesses said. 

Six US soldiers were wounded when their armoured vehicle was 
hit by a bomb on a highway leading to Baghdad airport. 

Saboteurs bombed two oil pipelines transporting crude from 
northern and eastern Iraq to Baghdad's Dora refinery. Neither 
pipeline carries oil for export. 

The US military said it had captured a lieutenant of its top 
foe in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and five other suspects in 
an overnight raid on what it said was a hideout of the 
Jordanian militant's network in the south of Fallujah. 

US forces also launched a new air strike on the rebel-held 
militant stronghold city, about 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, 
killing two people and wounding three. 

US military did not name the man or give his nationality, but 
said he had once been viewed as a minor member of Zarqawi's 
militant Tawhid wal Jihad (One God and Holy war) group. 

"However, due to a surge in the number of Zarqawi associates 
who have been captured or killed by (US) strikes and other 
operations, the member had moved up to take a critical position 
as a Zarqawi senior leader," the military said in a statement. 

Fallujah assault 

It said Fallujah was a shrinking haven for Zarqawi's group, 
widely blamed for some of Iraq's bloodiest violence. 

"Zarqawi followers are starting to move to outlying areas of 
Fallujah in a continuing attempt to hide amidst the civilian 
population of Fallujah due to precision strikes against Zarqawi 
hideouts and fighting positions," the military said. 

Residents of Fallujah deny knowledge of Zarqawi's militants and 
say frequent US air strikes inflict a heavy civilian toll. 

Tawhid wal Jihad has declared loyalty to Osama bin Laden's Al 
Qaeda and has claimed responsibility for beheading several 
foreign hostages. 

It has not said it is holding Margaret Hassan, who was abducted 
on Tuesday on her way to work at the aid agency Care 
International, whose operations she headed in Baghdad. 

Ms Hassan, who holds Iraqi, British and Irish citizenship, made 
a tearful plea for her life in a video broadcast on Friday. 

Hassan's husband, Tahsin Hassan, and Care International made 
separate appeals for her release. 

"It is painful to see my wife cry. That image saddened and 
worried her friends and loved ones," Mr Hassan said on Al 
Arabiya television. 

"I ask you in the name of Islam and Arabism, and during the 
holiest Muslim month for my wife to return to me," he said. 

"Margaret is an Iraqi citizen and has lived here for over 30 
years. She considers Iraq her home and loves it and that is why 
she dedicated her life to helping her people in Iraq." 

Groups working with Care, from hospitals to water projects, 
plan a protest in Baghdad on Monday demanding Ms Hassan's 
release. 

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna militant group said it had beheaded 
an Iraqi man it accused of collaborating with US forces and 
posted pictures of the killing on the Internet. 

In the video, Ms Hassan urged Britons to press their government 
to withdraw British troops and not move them to Baghdad. 

The video surfaced a day after Britain said it would move 850 
troops from southern Iraq to an area near Baghdad, to cover for 
US forces likely to be sent to attack rebels in Fallujah. 

The US military is widely believed to be preparing for an 
assault on Fallujah, in line with a pledge by the US-backed 
interim Government to retake all rebel-held cities to enable 
all Iraqis to vote in nationwide elections scheduled for 
January. 

The interim Government said it had resumed talks with Fallujah 
leaders designed to find a peaceful solution. 

--Reuters

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Bizarro Bush 
He's the exact opposite of what a president should be  
by Justin Raimondo 
The somewhat fanciful theory that 9/11 blasted a hole in the 
space-time continuum and propelled us all into an inverted 
alternate universe   Bizarro World   where up is down, right is 
left, and the President of the United States is the most 
uninformed person on earth, was only supposed to be a joke on my 
part, a literary device designed to make the point that American 
society, or most of it, has been thrown off kilter. But I fear 
that it has become quite literally true, and the evidence, I 
submit, is Pat Robertson's recent statement to CNN's Paula Zahn:

"I met with [George W. Bush] down in Nashville before the Gulf 
war started. And he was the most self-assured man I ever met in 
my life . He was just sitting there, like, I'm on top of the 
world, and I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings 
about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. 
President, you better prepare the American people for 
casualties.'

"'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties,' Robertson 
quoted Bush as saying. 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going 
to be. . . . The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster 
and, B, messy.'"

Compared to Bush, Robertson is a member of the "reality-based 
community" so disdained by this White House. But since both 
Robertson and the president claim to have a direct line to the 
Almighty, perhaps one of them has gotten his wires crossed. In 
any case, it isn't readily apparent whether the fundamentalist 
preacher   who also claims some degree of control over the 
weather and recently threatened to start a third party if Bush 
messes with his plans for the Holy Land   is all that credible. 
Except that Robertson's claim not only fits in perfectly with 
what we already know about George W. Bush   his incoherence, his 
invincible ignorance, the cocoon-like environment in which he 
operates   it also seems to confirm my Bizarro World thesis.

In Bizarro World, water flows up, bad news is celebrated, clocks 
tick backwards   and the least qualified person in the nation is 
routinely picked to be its chief executive. 

In the real world   home base for those of us still stuck in 
the "reality-based community"   the most qualified people to 
advise the president and make policy are centered in and around 
the White House: the president has all the best, most updated 
information because he is surrounded by the Best and the 
Brightest.

But that was then, this is now. We are living in the Bizarro 
Era, a time when only obscure bloggers and other lone voices in 
the wilderness can predict the disastrous consequences of 
throwing a lighted match into the volatile Middle Eastern oil 
patch. The president, and his advisors, knew better.

Casualties? What casualties?

After all, the neocons had been whispering in the presidential 
ear that it was going to be a "cakewalk." The Iraqi people would 
pour into the streets of Baghdad and hail us as 
their "liberators," just as the French had lined the boulevards 
of Paris when the Allies took the city. In very short order we 
would find Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction," uncover 
Iraq's links to al-Qaeda, and obtain irrefutable evidence that 
the administration was right all along. The only American 
casualties of this war would be the dire predictions of the 
antiwar movement and its few supporters in the "mainstream" 
media, who would be shamed into silence in the victorious 
aftermath.

Except it didn't turn out that way.

The theory that 9/11 ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, 
and that this tear is expanding, and coming to envelop much of 
the United States and other parts of the world, may need to be 
amended. When even a wingding like Robertson begins to notice 
that there's something screwy going on in the Bush White House, 
it is time to question the basic premises of the ever-expanding 
Bizarro universe. The shock of 9/11 was very great, but perhaps 
not so traumatic as to permanently impair our ability to 
perceive reality. Or it could be that the Bizarro Effect has 
impacted different people in diverse ways, or that, in most 
cases, the effects were only temporary. Now that the initial 
shock is beginning to wear off, and people are coming back to 
their senses, many are beginning to raise the question of 
whether the president is all there.

Quite aside from partisan attacks coming from the Kerry camp, 
the most biting critique has come from Brent Scowcroft, who 
mused to Britain's Financial Times the other day that while the 
transatlantic relationship is "in general bad," George W. Bush's 
attention is elsewhere: 

"[Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon just has him wrapped 
around his little finger. I think the president is mesmerized. 
When there is a suicide attack [followed by a reprisal] Sharon 
calls the president and says, 'I'm on the front line of 
terrorism', and the president says, 'Yes, you are. . . ' He [Mr. 
Sharon] has been nothing but trouble."

The colorful history of mesmerism and the recent evolution of 
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East do exhibit certain 
similarities. While Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer went around 
eighteenth century Paris bilking society matrons out of their 
money and the credulous out of their reason, convincing his 
patients to engage in all sorts of unlikely acts and attributing 
his quack "cures" to a superior knowledge, so our modern 
mesmerists   otherwise known as neocons   bilked the Bushies and 
a thoroughly propagandized American public, convincing the 
nation   including the Democratic nominee for president   that 
the decision to go to war was the right one. 

That, at least, is what several conservative Republicans, and 
not only Scowcroft, have been telling us: Robert Novak and Pat 
Buchanan would have us believe that the high tide of empire has 
been reached, and the troops will start coming home after Iraq's 
January elections. "This is a man who's really driven to seek re-
election and done a lot of things with that in mind," says 
Scowcroft, but "I have something of a hunch that the second 
administration will be quite different from the first." Simon 
Jenkins, writing in the London Times, agrees.

"Even the most severe critic of the occupation must accept the 
need for an exit plan. This involves half-decent elections in 
January, a declared 'victory for democracy' and withdrawal, with 
the winner left to cut his own deals with the local militias. 
For this to be plausible, the holding of some sort of election 
in Sunni territory is vital. Fallujah was turned anti-American 
by Paul Bremer's mass public sector dismissals and by the 82nd 
Airborne's brutal patrolling. Ninety per cent of the population 
has apparently fled the nightly bombardment. If the Americans 
can now take and hold Fallujah for just a few weeks, a swift 
post-election exit is at least possible."

So that explains why they're blasting Fallujah to smithereens: 
they're in a hurry to get out. I tend toward an alternate 
explanation: that Fallujah is a symbol of Arab defiance that 
must not be allowed to stand, and that the same hard-liners in 
the Pentagon who brought us Abu Ghraib   and lied us into this 
mess to begin with   are firmly in control. Jenkins, however, is 
more optimistic:

"No sensible person on either side of the Atlantic wants this 
occupation to continue much longer. The only debate concerns the 
degree of indignity attaching to departure. Iraq is not 'getting 
better' under Western occupation. Wherever politics matters, 
Iraq south of Kurdistan is getting worse: worse for women, worse 
for the middle classes, worse for slum-dwellers, worse for local 
minorities, worse for Christians, worse for aid agencies and 
worse for their beneficiaries. Only a fool could see Iraq as 
being on its way to the tolerant, pro-Israeli, secular democracy 
of neoconservative fantasy. There are no fools left within a 
thousand miles of Baghdad."

I am not quite sure of the distance between Washington and 
Baghdad, but it's surely more than a mere thousand miles. The 
point is that the Bizarro Effect seems to have had a much less 
severe impact across the Atlantic: the shockwaves did not 
totally deprive the Brits of their reason. Although they allowed 
themselves to be bullied by the more neocon-ized New Labourites 
into the role of fleas on Bush's poodle, the British people are 
beginning to wonder why their own troops must be used as 
mercenaries in America's political wars. 

As the Bizarro Effect begins to fade, Americans are starting to 
wake up to the reality that their own troops were rushed into 
war to shore up the political fortunes of Israel's Likud party. 
The Sharon government could not have long survived without the 
political support of George W. Bush, and the systematic 
reduction and elimination of Israel's regional enemies: 
including not only the invasion of Iraq but U.S. sanctions 
imposed on Syria, U.S. approval of the "security wall," and a 
looming confrontation with Iran. Israeli extremists, along with 
the Iranian mullahs and Osama bin Laden, have been empowered as 
never before. Prime Minister Sharon, seen abroad as an 
uncompromising hardliner, is denounced by members of his own 
party as a "traitor" for abandoning Gaza, which is, according to 
radical Zionist dogma, part of "Greater Israel" by rights. The 
result is that Sharon's life is in danger. 

Some pretty weird stuff is going on in Israel, which has been 
suffering from the Bizarro Effect practically since the day of 
its birth. The country we are supposed to believe is a citadel 
of democracy holding out against a wave of medieval darkness 
regularly engages in a campaign of lies and disinformation that 
would do justice to any totalitarian state. The latest example: 
a video shot by an Israeli spy drone, unveiled with great 
fanfare by the Israeli government, which purportedly showed a 
terrorist stocking up a UN ambulance with homemade missiles. In 
New York, Israel's ambassador to the UN demanded the resignation 
of the head of the UN relief agency, and this grainy black-and-
white footage was added to the litany of proof that global anti-
Semitism is on the rise. 

The whole story began to unravel when a closer look revealed 
that the object depicted in the video was too thin and too light 
to be a missile. The next day, the UN agency produced the driver 
of the ambulance, who turned out to be no suicide bomber and 
explained that the object was a rolled up stretcher: the crew 
had just returned from a false alarm. The IDF and Israeli 
foreign ministry websites quickly deleted the video "evidence" 
of UN-Palestinian perfidy, and, as the Sydney Morning Herald 
reports:

"The Israeli security establishment was in disarray, with some 
anonymous 'senior officials' briefing journalists that the UN's 
version was probably correct. Officially, a defense forces 
spokesman would yesterday only say that 'we are reviewing the 
analysis because of the questions asked.' He insisted that even 
if the defense forces has been wrong this time, it knew for a 
fact that the UN often helped terrorists in smuggling weapons 
and carrying out their missions."

Facts don't matter. Objective reality doesn't exist. Governments 
create reality, and the purpose of intelligence-gathering is to 
confirm what we already know. This is how we were bamboozled 
into war in Iraq, and it is how the Israeli people are being 
lied to by their own government in order to perpetuate the 
Israeli Right's politics of hate. 

I have warned, in the past, about the rising danger of ultra-
Zionist right-wing extremism in Israel, and, in view of 
incidents like this one, it seems somehow ironic that all too 
many American Christians of Pat Robertson's ilk are encouraging 
the growth of this dangerous phenomenon.

Of course, Robertson "knew" that our intervention in Iraq would 
be a "disaster," as he puts it, since his theology holds that 
the "end times" will be prefigured by Israel's war against a 
Satanic Middle Eastern power, the whole thing will end 
catastrophically   and that's when Jesus comes back to save the 
world. 

So, you see, a war Robertson describes as a "disaster" in his 
theology is really a good thing. Disaster brings us closer to 
the "end times," the Iraq war is hastening Armageddon, and 
that's a good thing, too, according to the Bizarro theology of 
Robertson and his mesmerized flock.

Get ready for the Rapture, my friends, and make sure you pull 
that lever and vote Republican   because if you don't, then 
we'll be spared the fulfillment of all those dire Biblical 
prophecies, and the Second Coming will be delayed. Yes, the 
Rapturists are crazed enough to believe that human intervention 
can have an effect on the timing. 

It's like a Bizarro World remake of that infamous television ad 
attacking Barry Goldwater, the one with the little girl pulling 
petals off a daisy as the countdown sounded, ending in a nuclear 
explosion. Originally meant to underscore a dire threat to the 
peace, in the Bizarro world of Robertson and his followers it 
amounts to an endorsement   because we just know that little 
girl is going to Heaven. 

I keep hearing that things can only get better. Bruce Bartlett 
assures us "If Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the 
Republican Party starting on Nov. 3." Ron Suskind's much talked 
about piece in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine opens with 
the complaints of "libertarian Republican" Bartlett, 

"Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for 
people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct 
he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea 
of what he thinks God has told him to do.

''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about al-Qaeda and 
the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill 
them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, 
driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just 
like them. . . . 

'''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with 
inconvenient facts' Bartlett went on to say. 'He truly believes 
he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms 
a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe 
things for which there is no empirical evidence.' Bartlett 
paused, then said, 'But you can't run the world on faith.'"

Buchanan and Novak are pushing this same meme, and I even wrote 
a piece speculating on the possibility that it just might be 
true: the president will pull a U-turn in Iraq if he's 
reelected, and more interventions are off the table. On second 
thought, however, this scenario seems oddly counterintuitive. If 
Bush wins, the Republican party and the "mainstream" 
conservative movement are going to be confirmed in their 
interventionism. The neocons will hail his reelection as a 
mandate for war, and a fresh wave of triumphalism will sweep 
through the GOP and embolden the War Party. The Republican civil 
war Bartlett predicts is not likely to break out until and 
unless Bush is defeated. 

In which case, it won't be confined to the GOP. If Kerry wins, 
the peaceniks who stopped demonstrating against the war to 
devote all their energies to getting him elected are going to 
demand he start delivering. That's when a civil war is going to 
break out in the Democratic party that will make Bartlett and 
his fellow libertarian Republicans green with envy   or am I 
giving antiwar Democrats too much credit? 

Will an immoral war that was started and continues to be fought 
on Israel's behalf   one that has turned into our very own West 
Bank   become Kerry's war, and therefore a holy crusade for the 
American liberal-left, just as the war to destroy Yugoslavia was 
a Clintonian jihad? It's not too hard to imagine.

Bizarro Kerry will assure his "antiwar" followers that we have 
to "win" before we withdraw, and that a war we should never have 
started must be fought to the bloody finish. Will they swallow 
it?

They'll do it because they have faith in their leader, their 
party, and their emotional attachments that transcend human 
reason. Absolute faith overwhelms the need for analysis, and 
dispenses with empirical facts   like that Israeli spokesman who 
insisted that even if the evidence wasn't what it was purported 
to be, still it illustrated an intrinsic truth. It's all 
perfectly logical   in Bizarro World.

  Justin Raimondo
 

Three US soldiers and their interpreter have been seriously 
injured following a roadside bomb explosion in southern 
Afghanistan. - "seriously injured" - This Is Serious Mum!!! (A 
US Chinook clears up the remains of a previous attack - 
http://www.jesusisacunt.com-------------yes he 
is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 
Three US soldiers and their interpreter have been seriously 
injured following a roadside bomb explosion in southern 
Afghanistan.

http://www.jesusisacunt.com
The US military confirmed on Thursday that the blast also 
destroyed two Humvees in which the four were travelling.
http://www.jesusisacunt.com
The attack occured in the Neka district of Paktika province on 
Afghanistan's southeastern border with Pakistan. 
http://www.jesusisacunt.com
One of the soldiers was in critical condition, according to a US 
spokesman in Kabul.
http://www.jesusisacunt.com
The wounded have been evacuated to Salerno Fire Base in the 
neighbouring Khost province. The third soldier and the 
interpreter were both reported to be stable. 
http://www.jesusisacunt.com
There has been no claim of responsibility, but Taliban and other 
groups opposed to the US military presence are active in 
Afghanistan's southern provinces.
http://www.jesusisacunt.com
Rocket attacks and improvised explosive devices are their most 
common forms of attack.
A US Chinook clears up the remains of a previous attack 
 

Stocks Tumble As Oil Tops $55 Per Barrel - 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~$55!!!! (again)! (hahahha CUNTS) 
Stocks Tumble As Oil Tops $55 Per Barrel
Oct 22, 5:44 PM (ET)

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ
NEW YORK (AP) - Worried investors sent stocks tumbling Friday as 
crude oil futures topped $55 per barrel and tepid earnings from 
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and the Coca-Cola Co. offset Google Inc. 
(GOOG)'s strong third-quarter report. The Dow Jones industrials 
fell nearly 108 points, while the Nasdaq composite index dropped 
2 percent. The major indexes finished the week mixed.
http://www.boycottusa.org
Oil prices again pressured the market, casting doubt not only on 
fourth-quarter earnings, but also on the health of the economy 
as a whole. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $55.17, up 70 
cents, on the New York Mercantile 
Exchange.http://www.boycottusa.org

"These oil prices are really going to bite the consumer at some 
point. Heating oil is up, it's supposed to be a very cold winter 
in the Northeast, and lower and middle income people are going 
to pay," said Russ Koesterich, U.S. equity strategist at State 
Street Corp. (STT) "Combine that with a total lack of 
fundamentals in the big name stocks, and there are very few 
places left to hide for investors."
http://www.boycottusa.org
Shares of Google surged in early trading as the online search 
giant doubled both revenues and profits from a year ago. Like 
its initial public offering two months ago, Google was one of 
the few bright spots in an otherwise depressed market.

http://www.boycottusa.org


The Dow Jones industrial average fell 107.95, or 1.1 percent, to 
9,757.81, setting a new low for the year to date and posting its 
lowest reading since Nov. 24.

Broader stock indicators also were substantially lower. The 
Nasdaq composite index lost 38.48, or 2 percent, to 1,915.14, 
its biggest one-day drop since Aug. 6. The Standard & Poor's 500 
index was down 10.75, or 1 percent, at 1,095.74, its lowest 
close since Aug. 23.

The Dow and S&P 500 lost ground for the third straight week, as 
the continued rise in oil prices and middling earnings reports 
again sapped confidence from investors. A wait-and-see attitude 
also pervaded the market, with major economic reports, including 
the first reading of the third quarter's gross domestic product, 
and the presidential election looming.

However, the Nasdaq managed a slim gain as technology earnings 
outpaced those of other sectors.

For the week, the Dow lost 1.77 percent, and the S&P dropped 
1.12 percent, while the Nasdaq gained 0.19 percent.

http://www.boycottusa.org

Google's earnings impressed analysts, with Prudential raising 
the company's target stock price to $200 early Friday. Google 
skyrocketed $23.05, or 15.4 percent to $172.43, but other major 
technology stocks stole any momentum Google might have 
generated. 
 
You've got one darling here surrounded by a bunch of less-than-
hopefuls, and that's not going to boost anything other than the 
darling," said Bryan Piskorowski, market analyst at Wachovia 
Securities. "With oil up and nobody really stepping out with 
earnings other than Google, we're sliding here."

Dow component Microsoft slipped 82 cents to $27.74 after beating 
Wall Street estimates by 2 cents per share before one-time 
charges. Analysts were concerned about a dropoff in long-term 
contract revenues, a possible sign that demand for the company's 
software was waning as companies waited for a long-delayed 
update of the Windows operating system.

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) missed its third-quarter 
earnings forecasts by a penny per share, even as the company saw 
its profits triple from a year ago. A disappointing 2005 sales 
outlook further disappointed investors. Amazon.com tumbled 
$4.87, or 12.3 percent, to $34.60.

Coca-Cola, also a Dow component, slid 58 cents to $38.90 after 
posting a 24 percent drop in quarterly profits on flat revenues. 
However, the soft-drink giant managed to beat reduced Wall 
Street estimates by 3 cents per share.
http://www.boycottusa.com
Fast-food operator Wendy's International Inc. (WEN) posted a 4 
percent rise in its third-quarter profits, but issued a lower 
outlook for its full 2004 results. Wendy's was up 93 cents at 
$32.73.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 9 to 5 on the 
New York Stock Exchange, where preliminary consolidated volume 
came to 1.84 billion shares, compared with 2.06 billion on 
Thursday.
http://www.boycottusa.com
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was down 8.89, or 
1.5 percent, at 567.77.

Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average rose 0.63 percent. In 
afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 closed down 0.04 percent, 
France's CAC-40 lost 0.01 percent for the session, and Germany's 
DAX index gained 0.03 percent.

---http://www.boycottusa.com

The Dow Jones industrials ended the week down 175.57, or 1.77 
percent, finishing at 9,757.81. The S&P 500 index fell 12.46, or 
1.12 percent, to close at 1,095.74.
http://www.boycottusa.com
The Nasdaq gained 3.64, or 0.19 percent, during the week, 
closing Friday at 1,915.14.

The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller company stocks, 
closed the week 1.64, or 0.29 percent, lower at 567.78.
http://www.boycottusa.com
The Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index - an index that 
measures 5,000 U.S. based companies- ended the week at 
10,748.04, off 90.63 points from last week. A year ago, the 
index was 9,983.50.

---

On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.boycottusa.org

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.boycottusa.com

Parents: Teacher Made Kids Smell Urine

The Associated Press
October 22, 2004


Email this story. 

A group of parents has accused a teacher at Fairdale Elementary 
School of forcing their sons to go into the classroom bathroom 
and take deep breaths because there was urine on and around the 
toilet. "She wanted them to see how bad it smelled," said parent 
Shelley Howerton.

Howerton and other parents claim the unidentified teacher 
violated the boys' rights. Ten parents and three children, 
including Howerton and her son Atrayo, protested outside the 
school on Thursday.

"This made me sick," said parent Jamie Harvey.

Atrayo said he was embarrassed by the alleged incident.

School officials said the parents' allegation is being 
investigated.

"We're going to do what's best for these young children," said 
Miller Hall, Raleigh County director of pupil services. "This is 
an issue we are going to investigate, but right now it's all 
hearsay."

"Some kids have said it didn't happen. ... We have to get 
evidence, talk to witnesses and follow due process. Then we have 
to look at the policy, and if there was any wrongdoing, we will 
deal with it accordingly. ... But (the teacher is) innocent 
until proven guilty."

---

Information from: The Register-Herald,

Hey you sick fuck,

I LOVE Israel, so fuck off and die.       

"Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," 
Scowcroft told London's Financial Times. "I think the president 
is mesmerized." - Ex-Security Adviser Rips Bush Diplomacy - And 
blackmailed. Don't forget the blackmail. 
(http://www.truthout.orghttp://www.truthout.orghttp://www.truthou
t.orghttp://www.truthout.orghttp://www.truthout.orghttp://www.t) 
Ex-Security Adviser Rips Bush Diplomacy 

Sun Oct 17, 6:53 AM ET 

http://www.truthout.org
WASHINGTON - The national security adviser under the first 
President Bush (news - web sites) says the current president 
acted contemptuously toward NATO (news - web sites) and Europe 
after Sept. 11 and is trying to cooperate now out of desperation 
to "rescue a failing venture" in Iraq (news - web sites) and 
Afghanistan (news - web sites). 
http://www.truthout.org


Brent Scowcroft, a mentor to the current national security 
adviser, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), also said in an 
interview published in England that Bush is inordinately 
influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web 
sites). 

http://www.truthout.org
"Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," 
Scowcroft told London's Financial Times. "I think the president 
is mesmerized." http://www.truthout.org


Scowcroft said the Bush administration's "unilateralist" 
position was partly responsible for the post-Sept. 11, 2001, 
decline of the trans-Atlantic relationship. 
http://www.truthout.org


"It's in general bad," he said. "It's not really hostile, but 
there's an edge to it." 

http://www.truthout.orghttp://www.truthout.org
Early on, he said, "We had gotten contemptuous of Europeans and 
their weaknesses. We had really turned unilateral." 


Although slightly diminished since then, the unilateralist 
policies remain fundamentally little changed, Scowcroft said. 
Recent overtures to cooperate in Afghanistan and Iraq with the 
United Nations (news - web sites) and NATO were "as much an act 
of desperation as anything else ... to rescue a failing 
venture." 


On Israel and Sharon, the former security adviser said Sharon 
calls Bush after strongly retaliating for a Palestinian suicide 
attack and says: "`I'm on the front line of terrorism,' and the 
president says, `Yes, you are.'" 


Scowcroft said Sharon "has been nothing but trouble."
 
 

CUNT OFF!

So you think that "oil for food" has made the world any better 
off?                     

Annan: World not safer after Iraq war

http://www.boycottusa.org
Monday 18 October 2004, 2:28 Makka Time, 23:28 GMT
The US-led war in Iraq has not made the world any safer, UN 
Secretary-General Kofi Annan says.
http://www.boycottusa.org


"I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence 
around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist 
attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq," 
Annan told the British ITV network on Sunday.

"We have a lot of work to do as an international community to 
try and make the world safer," he said.

Annan has previously described the US-led war that toppled 
Saddam Hussein as "illegal".

He told ITV that Iraq was on track to hold elections at the end 
of January and said he would speak out if he was not satisfied 
with the way they were conducted.

"If that sort of judgment or any decision which is made which we 
think detracts from the credibility and viability of the 
elections, we will be duty bound to say so," he said.

Nations not bought
http://www.boycottusa.com
Annan also dismissed any suggestion that France, Russia and 
China had been prepared to ease sanctions on Iraq in return for 
oil contracts. 
http://www.boycottusa.org
"I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence 
around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist 
attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq" 

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
 

The US-led Iraq Survey Group said earlier this month that Iraq 
tried to manipulate foreign governments by awarding contracts - 
and bribes - to foreign companies and political figures in 
countries that showed support for ending sanctions, in 
particular Russia, France and China.

But Annan said it was "inconceivable" Saddam's activities could 
have influenced policy in the countries concerned.

"I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese 
governments would allow itself to be bought," the UN chief said.
http://www.boycottusa.org
"I think it's inconceivable. These are very serious and 
important governments. You are not dealing with banana 
republics."
http://www.boycottusa.org

CONTROVERSY ERUPTS AS VOTING BEGINS IN FLORIDA: DNC/KERRY BALLOT 
COLLECTION CALLED 'UNLAWFUL'

**Exclusive**

As early voting begins Monday in the sunburn state of Florida 
controversy has already developed around a Democratic National 
Committee/Kerry-Edwards election manual. 

The election manual titled -- "FLORIDA VICTORY 2004" -obtained 
by the DRUDGE REPORT, advocates an apparent unlawful "BALLOT 
PICKUP" drive by campaign volunteers.

The DNC Kerry/Edwards manual states: 

"In Florida, it is legal to handle ballots. This means it is 
possible for the campaign to canvass base neighborhoods, pick up 
completed ballots and deliver them to Early Vote locations. We 
will incorporate these deliveries into our Early Vote canvassing 
program."

But Florida State election law - as detailed at: 
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/absenteevoting.shtml - is in 
sharp contrast and conflicts with the Dem plan. 

"A designee may pick up an absentee ballot for a voter on 
election day or 4 days before election day. A designee may only 
pick up two absentee ballots per election, other than his or her 
own ballot or ballots for members of his or her immediate 
family. Designees must have written authorization from the 
voter, present a picture I.D. and sign an affidavit. Candidates 
may pick up absentee ballots only for members of their immediate 
family."

It is not clear as this transmits, if any Dem operatives have 
yet collected ballots. A legal challenge will be filed to stop 
any action, top Republican sources tell DRUDGE.

Dem officials point to difference between blank and completed 
ballots. 

The exhaustive how-to FLORIDA VICTORY 2004 manual runs 26 pages 
with an 18 page appendix. It is signed by the DNC, Kerry 
Edwards, Florida Democrat Party, Kerry Edwards Campaign Chair, 
Florida Victory 2004, Florida AFL-CIO, Florida Education 
Association, Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, and Florida SEIU.
http://www.robert-fisk.com

General Reported Shortages In Iraq
Situation Is Improved, Top Army Officials Say

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page A01 

The top U.S. commander in Iraq complained to the Pentagon last 
winter that his supply situation was so poor that it threatened 
Army troops' ability to fight, according to an official document 
that has surfaced only now. 

The lack of key spare parts for gear vital to combat operations, 
such as tanks and helicopters, was causing problems so severe, 
Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez wrote in a letter to top Army 
officials, that "I cannot continue to support sustained combat 
operations with rates this low." 
Senior Army officials said that most of Sanchez's concerns have 
been addressed in recent months but that they continue to keep a 
close eye on the problems he identified. The situation 
is "substantially better" now, said Gary Motsek, deputy director 
of operations for the Army Materiel Command. 
http://www.humiliateamerica.com
Sanchez, who was the senior commander on the ground in Iraq from 
the summer of 2003 until the summer of 2004, said in his letter 
that Army units in Iraq were "struggling just to maintain . . . 
relatively low readiness rates" on key combat systems, such as M-
1 Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, anti-mortar radars 
and Black Hawk helicopters. 

He also said units were waiting an average of 40 days for 
critical spare parts, which he noted was almost three times the 
Army's average. In some Army supply depots in Iraq, 40 percent 
of critical parts were at "zero balance," meaning they were 
absent from depot shelves, he said. 

He also protested in his letter, sent Dec. 4 to the number two 
officer in the Army, with copies to other senior officials, that 
his soldiers still needed protective inserts to upgrade 36,000 
sets of body armor but that their delivery had been postponed 
twice in the month before he was writing. There were 131,000 
U.S. troops in Iraq at the time. 

In what appears to be a plea to top officials to spur the 
bureaucracy to respond more quickly, Sanchez concluded, "I 
cannot sustain readiness without Army-level intervention." 

Sanchez, who since has moved back to his permanent base in 
Germany, did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages 
seeking comment. 

His letter of concern has surfaced after repeated statements by 
President Bush that he is determined to ensure that U.S. troops 
fighting in Iraq have all that they need to execute their 
missions. "I have pledged, as has the secretary of defense, to 
give our troops everything that is necessary to complete their 
mission with the utmost safety," he said in May. Earlier this 
month in Manchester, N.H., he said, "When America puts our 
troops in combat, I believe they deserve the best training, the 
best equipment, the full support of our government." 
Christianson said Sanchez sent only one such statement of 
concern from Iraq. "It's the only one we received from Rick that 
had anything to do with readiness," he said. He said he had not 
been shocked by the letter because Army logisticians were aware 
of the problems, agreed with Sanchez's assessment of them and 
already were taking steps to remedy them. 
http://www.antiamerica.com
Motsek said the readiness of ground combat systems such as tanks 
and Bradley Fighting Vehicles remains a concern but no longer 
must be handled on an "emergency" basis, with tracks and other 
heavy parts being shipped by air. "We are now at the point where 
we can routinely ship tracks" by sea, which is far less 
expensive, he said. That is mainly because the manufacturing 
capacity to produce tracks has expanded to meet the unexpected 
surge in demand caused by fighting in Iraq, he said. 
A copy of Sanchez's letter was given to The Washington Post by a 
person familiar with the situation who was dismayed that front-
line troops had not been adequately supplied. That person also 
disagrees with the Bush administration's handling of Iraq, but 
said that was not part of the motivation in providing the 
document. 
http://www.bushandcheneysuck.com
The disclosure of Sanchez's concerns also follows recent 
comments by former ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Sanchez's civilian 
counterpart in running the U.S. occupation of Iraq, that he 
believed more troops were needed in Iraq and had asked the Bush 
administration to send them. 

Lt. Gen. Claude V. Christianson, the senior logistics officer on 
the Army staff at the Pentagon, said the readiness problems in 
Iraq peaked last fall but largely have been addressed. He said 
they were caused by a combination of problems in the supply 
pipeline and an unexpectedly high pace of combat operations as 
the Iraqi insurgency flared last year. 

"All of a sudden, at the end of July [2003], the insurgency 
started to do that IED business all over Iraq," he noted, using 
the acronym for "improvised explosive device," the military's 
term for roadside bombs. In response, the pace, or "operating 
tempo," for U.S. troops jumped, causing them to use their tanks 
and other armored vehicles at much higher rates than had been 
expected. 

"The tanks are operating at 3,000 to 4,000 miles a year," 
Christianson said, which he noted is about five times the rate 
they are driven while being used for training at their home 
bases. The readiness rate for M-1 Abrams tanks fell to 78 
percent last October, he said, compared with an Army standard of 
90 percent. Because of the intensity of recent operations, said 
Motsek of the Army Materiel Command, the readiness rate for the 
tanks recently dropped from 95 percent to 83 percent. 

Readiness rates also generally dipped last spring when 
insurgents destroyed seven bridges along the main supply route 
from Kuwait to Baghdad, Christianson said. In some cases, he 
said, supplies were cut off for "several days." 

But he said the supply situation has improved since then, even 
as the pace of U.S. combat operations has remained intense. The 
waiting period for critical spare parts in Iraq is now about 24 
days, about half of what it was when Sanchez wrote his letter, 
Christianson said. 

The body armor problem -- which had become a hot-button issue 
with Congress after some families bought protective armor 
privately and shipped it to their relatives in the Army in Iraq -
- was solved sooner, Christianson noted, with all troops in Iraq 
equipped with updated gear by the end of January, about seven 
weeks after Sanchez wrote his letter. 

Sanchez's letter was sent after the most intense insurgent 
offensive the U.S.-led occupation force had seen up to that 
point. In a series of attacks that coincided with the start of 
the Muslim holy month of Ramadan near the end of October last 
year, 87 U.S. service members were killed. Under Islam's lunar 
calendar, Ramadan this year began a few days ago. 
http://www.antiamerica.com
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report. 

Crude Oil Price Surges Past $55
 http://www.robert-fisk.com

Oct 18, 12:46 AM (ET)

By YEOH EN-LAI
 http://www.robert-fisk.com
 
 
http://www.robert-fisk.com
 
http://www.robert-fisk.com

SINGAPORE (AP) - Crude oil prices surged past an unprecedented 
$55 per barrel Monday as uncertainty swirls over production, 
high demand and tight global supplies.
http://www.robert-fisk.com
Crude for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange 
hit $55.33 per barrel around noon in Asia, up 40 cents from its 
Friday settlement price.

The prices are the highest in a generation and while oil is more 
than 70 percent higher than a year ago, they are still around 
$25 below the peak inflation-adjusted price reached in 1981.

Crude prices have skyrocketed more than $10 in the past month, 
primarily over production delays in the Gulf of Mexico, where 
Hurricane Ivan hit mid-September.

 
(AP) April Boomhower stretches to watch the cost of filling her 
vehicle pass the $40.00 mark Tuesday...
Full Image 
 
 
Now that the $55 barrier has been surpassed, analysts are 
looking toward $60 a barrel, with some saying it may reach that 
mark by the end of the year - smack in the middle of the 
northern hemisphere winter.

"We hit the new milestone and we're looking at $60," said Victor 
Shum, oil analyst at Texas-headquartered energy consultants 
Purvin & Gertz. "$60 is certainly feasible."

Declines in U.S. distillate stocks just before the Northern 
Hemisphere winter are the latest in a line of supply factors to 
rattle the market.

The U.S. Energy Department said in its weekly petroleum supply 
report last week that commercially available supplies of heating 
oil declined by 1.2 million barrels for the week ending Oct. 8, 
falling to 50.0 million barrels, or 10 percent below year-ago 
levels.

Diesel and kerosene are used for heating oil. Demand for jet 
fuel - kerosene with additives - also rises in the winter as 
flights increase during the Christmas season.

 
(AP) A Petro-Canada employee enters the oil producer's Oakville 
Refinery on Tuesday, September 28, 2004....
Full Image 
 
 
In the Gulf of Mexico, over 20 million barrels of crude remain 
shut in as recovery efforts continue to get production levels 
back to normal, the U.S. federal Minerals Management Service 
said on its Web site.

But with the amount of excess capacity - immediate surplus 
supply - at about 1 percent of daily demand, now estimated to be 
above 82 million barrels, any supply outage is expected to 
factor into prices.

Market players have been fixated on potential disruptions in 
production, such as the just-concluded oil workers' strike and 
threats of rebel attacks in Nigeria, Africa's largest producer, 
and sporadic attacks by militants on Iraqi pipelines.

Unrest in the world's largest producer, Saudi Arabia; the tax 
battle between the Russian government and oil giant Yukos