In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Administration’s sup­port for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resis­tance to an imme­di­ate cease-fire and its staunch sup­port of Israel have made it more dif­fi­cult for [US “Sec­re­tary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with other nations, includ­ing some Amer­i­can allies, as they search for a for­mula that will end the vio­lence and pro­duce a durable cease-fire.…
Sev­eral State Depart­ment offi­cials have pri­vately objected to the administration’s empha­sis on Israel and have said that Wash­ing­ton is not talk­ing to Syria to try to resolve the cri­sis. Dam­as­cus has long been a sup­porter of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and pre­vi­ous con­flicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shut­tle diplo­macy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are caus­ing irrepara­ble harm to the U.S. image in the Mid­dle East. High-sounding words about democ­racy ring hol­low when we for­sake diplomacy.

Shortly after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion took office, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney held a series of secret meet­ings in the White House that have guided America’s energy pol­icy over the last four years. The White House has refused repeated requests for a list of par­tic­i­pants at the “task force” meet­ings. All we’ve known for sure is who wasn’t invited: eniron­men­tal­ists and any­one else who might bring a per­spec­tive crit­i­cal of America’s depen­dence on fos­sil fuels.
We’ve long sus­pected that Cheney’s spe­cial guests were top oil com­pany exec­u­tives and that these con­sul­tants largely wrote the energy guide­lines that came out of the meet­ing. The pol­icy strong favor the eco­nomic inter­ests of “Big Oil” over envi­ron­men­tal or national secu­rity con­cerns. The oil com­pa­nies have repeat­edly denied being at the meet­ings: Just last week, oil indus­try offi­cials from Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Cono­coPhillips tes­ti­fied at a joint hear­ing of the Sen­ate Energy and Com­merce com­mit­tees that their employ­ees had been part of Cheney’s energy task force.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
The Wash­ing­ton Post has obtained a White House doc­u­ment that exec­u­tives from Big Oil did indeed meet with the energy task force in 2001. Inves­ti­ga­tions are in order. Sen­a­tor Frank Laut­en­berg of New Jer­sey said “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meet­ings secret, and now oil exec­u­tives may be lying to Con­gress about their role in the Cheney task force.” This issue is impor­tant not only to Wash­ing­ton Belt­way insid­ers but to all of us. Dis­as­ters like Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina and the ongo­ing quag­mire in iraq are fueled by Amer­i­can energy needs. As long as we have Big Oil dic­tat­ing our energy pol­icy we will con­tinue to have these wars and cli­mate tragedies. Peo­ple will die, lives will be ruined and we will all be taxed for our oil misadventures.

Pres­i­dent Bush has nom­i­nated a “foe of the United Nations to be its U.S. ambassador”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. Ten years ago he declared: “There’s no such thing as the United Nations,” and went on to say “If the U.N. sec­re­tary build­ing in New York lost 10 sto­ries, it wouldn’t make a bit of dif­fer­ence.” This is a fel­low who called his role in with­drawl­ing the U.S. sig­na­ture on the treaty rat­i­fy­ing the Inter­na­tional Crim­i­nal Court “the hap­pi­est moment of my gov­ern­ment service”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13790-2005Mar7.html. The Guardian reports that “fought arms con­trol agree­ments, a strength­en­ing of the bio­log­i­cal weapons con­ven­tion and the com­pre­hen­sive test ban treaty”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1432701,00.html?gusrc=rss. With his nom­i­na­tion, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues its course of uni­la­te­ri­al­ism and open con­tempt for the world com­mu­nity. Not a good way to build a last peace.

Appar­ently the U.S. is pres­sur­ing “Qatar to sell the Al Jazeera TV network”:www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30jazeera.html The best line in the New York Times arti­cle:
bq. Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald H. Rums­feld, Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleezza Rice, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Colin L. Pow­ell and other Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have com­plained heat­edly to Qatari lead­ers that Al Jazeera’s broad­casts have been inflam­ma­tory, mis­lead­ing and occa­sion­ally false, espe­cially on iraq.
So I sup­pose Cheney, Rums­feld, Rice and Pow­ell have never given out mis­lead­ing or occa­sion­ally false infor­ma­tion about iraq?
Al Jazeera is watched by 30 mil­lion to 50 mil­lion view­ers. It’s cov­er­age has been inflam­ma­tory and I’m not going to defend that, but it’s the most impor­tant media source in the Mid­dle East and should not be shut down by Amer­i­can pres­sure. Qatar is only con­sid­er­ing sell­ing it, but poten­tial buy­ers for the financially-strapped net­work are few. And the Cheney team wouldn’t be involved if they weren’t inter­ested in mak­ing it’s con­tent more U.S. friendly.

While the images of U.S. solid­ers tor­tur­ing iraqi pris­on­ers at Al Grahib Prison in Badg­dad have been broad­cast around the world, US offi­cials have fre­quently reas­sured us that con­di­tions at the U.S. deten­tion camp in Guan­ta­mano Bay, Cuba, were accept­able and in accord with the Geneva Convention’s rules for treat­ment of pris­on­ers. As proof the Pen­ta­gon and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion have fre­quently cited the fact that the Inter­na­tional Red Cross reg­u­larly inspects prison con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano. They for­got to tell us what they’ve seen.
A con­fi­den­tial report pre­pared by the Inter­na­tional Red Cross this sum­mer found that con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano Bay were “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” Strong words from a cau­tious inter­na­tional body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made avail­able to the pub­lic but instead pre­sented to the accused gov­ern­ment, in the hope that they will cor­rect their prac­tices. In pred­i­ca­ble fash­ion, the Bush Admin­stra­tion pri­vately denied any wrong­do­ing and kept the IRC find­ings secret. In a dis­play of incred­i­ble audac­ity it then defended itself _from other accu­sa­tions of torture_ by cit­ing the IRC’s pres­ence at Guan­tanamo, con­ve­niently omit­ting the IRC’s strongly-worded crit­i­cisms. Amaz­ing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its find­ings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recently inter­viewed British pris­on­ers who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guan­tanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure was mak­ing unco­op­er­a­tive pris­on­ers strip to their under­wear, hav­ing them sit in a chair while shack­led hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forc­ing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loud­speak­ers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to max­i­mum lev­els.
It’s not nee­dles under fin­ger­nails or elec­trodes to the pri­vates, but it is indeed “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” While it was hard to believe these pris­on­ers’ sto­ries when they were first pub­lished a few months ago, they become much more cred­i­ble in light of the IRC con­clu­sions.
We still don’t know about what’s hap­pen­ing in the camp. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has the power, not to men­tion the duty, to imme­di­ately release Inter­na­tional Red Cross reports. But the United States has cho­sen to sup­press the report. No tor­tur­ing gov­ern­ment has ever admit­ted to its actions. Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self denied wrong­do­ing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for tor­ture. We rely on bod­ies like the Inter­na­tional Red Cross to keep us hon­est.
There are those who defend tor­ture by appeal­ing to our fears, many of which are indeed grounded in real­ity. We’re at war, the enemy insur­gents are play­ing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of inter­na­tional con­ven­tions when he sent air­lin­ers into the World Trade Cen­ter. Very true. But the United States has a mis­sion. I believe in the ide­al­is­tic notion that we should be a bea­con to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world com­mu­nity to join us. We haven’t been doing that lately. Yes it’s eas­ier to fol­low the lead of some­one like Sad­dam Hus­sein and just tor­ture any­one we sus­pect of plot­ting against us. But do we really want him as our role model?

More on the “myth that is ‘Pri­vate Jessica’”:www.guardian.co.uk/iraq/Story/0,2763,1081207,00.html, a media cre­ation born of pro­pa­ganda and racism. I feel sad for the real Jes­sica Lynch caught up in all this. else­where Paul Krug­man point out how the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion isn’t “sup­port­ing the troops”:http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11KRUG.html, “But I also sus­pect that a gov­ern­ment of, by and for the eco­nomic elite is hav­ing trou­ble over­com­ing its basic lack of empa­thy with the working-class men and women who make up our armed forces.”

Okay, so the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the war on Iraq was the weapons of mass destruc­tion Sad­dam Hus­sein had ready to use against the U.S.. The U.S. knew where the weapons were and a war would find them. Well, the war came and no weapons were found. So the story changed. The U.S. attacked Iraq because Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, which he would then surely use against the U.S. The U.S. knew where the weapons were being devel­oped and they would be uncov­ered any day now. But five months of inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq have found nothing.

So now a new story. The U.S. under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol tells us that whether Hus­sein had the weapons “isn’t really the issue.” But the war is still jus­ti­fied because Sad­dam had sci­en­tists who might some­day work on a weapons pro­gram that might some­day build a weapon that might some­day be used against the U.S. or one of its allies

Bolton said that Sad­dam kept “a coterie” of sci­en­tists he was pre­serv­ing for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhin­dered by inter­na­tional constraints.

I’m per­son­ally just wait­ing for the next level of Bush Admin­is­tra­tion retreat. Wait for Bolton to announce next month that it didn’t mat­ter if Sad­dam didn’t actu­ally have any trained nuclear sci­en­tists, as occu­pa­tion inspec­tors had uncov­ered evi­dence that North Badg­dad High taught cal­cu­lus for its eleventh graders. “They might go on to work on a weapons pro­gram some­day, we had to invade before Sad­dam could teach them Calc II.”

The excuses just get more pathetic as the truth becomes harder to ignore: the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The only win­ners in this war are the energy com­pa­nies rebuild­ing the Iraqi infra­struc­ture with U.S. tax­payer dol­lars. It’s time to con­nect the dots, to stop pay­ing inves­ti­ga­tors to comb Iraq for the non-existant weapons. The inspec­tors should be recalled to Wash­ing­ton to inves­ti­gate the very real bam­boo­zle (dare I say “con­spir­acy”?) that foisted a war on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We’ve been played for chumps.

“My thought was, how did that get into the speech?“This choice quote comes from Greg Thiel­mann, an intel­li­gence expert in the US State Depart­ment (now retired). In today’s papers this Bush Admin­is­tra­tion insider has come right out and said that the White House “lied about Sad­dam threat”.
    Mean­while the happy-go-lucky Don­ald Rums­feld has said the occu­pa­tion is cost­ing the US $3.9 bil­lion per month (see side­bar) and Gen­eral Tommy Franks pre­dicts high troop lev­els will be needed “for the fore­see­able future.”