ABC and the DEBATEs or WHAT SUBSTANCE?

THE ABSURD TIMES

• THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: The Decider said he'd give everyone money to stimulate the economy. Again. Most people I know are getting "stimuli" in the amount of 3 or maybe 4 figures (if 4, it usually starts with a 1).

Sorry to bother you with another edition so soon -- I'll cut it short and need to take a break anyway.

I had to mention my own reaction to the debate last night. Nothing was discussed. I kid you not, here are the sort of questions that took up at least half of it and by then I was looking for an intentionally funny talk show.

"Hey, why don't you wear a flag pin? You some sort of Communist?"

"Hey, why you calling people bitter?"

(Actually, I saw Obama talking about that a week ago to an audience and several shouted out "But I AM bitter about Bush!")

"How come you know someone who was in the weather underground?"

Far out. I mean, like, how irrelevant to anything meaningful can you get. Disney has lost touch with reality wince Walt died.

Here's an interview with RAlph Nader's running mate commenting and suggesting a few things ABC (The Disney Gang) might have asked about:

*Highlights of ABC Presidential Debate*,

Rush Transcript

*AMY GOODMAN: *We begin today's show with last night's Democratic
presidential debate between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack
Obama. It took place in Philadelphia, their first debate in nearly two
months, possibly their last of the campaign. Clinton is trailing Obama
in both the popular vote and the delegate count. Even if she wins
Tuesday's Pennsylvania's primary, she would need the backing of
Democratic superdelegates to win the nomination.

Much of the debate's first half had Senator Obama on the defensive. ABC
News anchors Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos confronted Obama
about his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and his alleged
ties to a former member of the '60s group the Weather Underground. Obama
was even asked about the fact he doesn't wear an American flag on his
lapel. Obama was also pressed about his recent comments that
disenfranchised Americans have turned to guns and religion. This was
Senator Obama's response.

*SEN. BARACK OBAMA: *Let me be very clear about what I meant,
because it's something that I've said in public, it's something
that I've said on television, which is that people are going
through very difficult times right now. And we are seeing it all
across the country, and that was true even before the current
economic hardships that are stemming from the housing crisis. This
is the first economic expansion that we just completed in which
ordinary people's incomes actually went down, when adjusted for
inflation, at the same time as their costs of everything from
healthcare to gas at the pump have skyrocketed.

And so, the point I was making was that when people feel like
Washington's not listening to them, when they're promised year
after year, decade after decade, that their economic situation is
going to change, and it doesn't, then politically they end up
focusing on those things that are constant, like religion. They
end up feeling "This is a place where I can find some refugee.
This is something that I can count on." They end up being much
more concerned about votes around things like guns, where
traditions have been passed on from generation to generation. And
those are incredibly important to them.

And yes, what is also true is that wedge issues, hot-button
issues, end up taking prominence in our politics. And part of the
problem is that when those issues are exploited, we never get to
solve the issues that people really have to get some relief on,
whether it's healthcare or education or jobs.

*AMY GOODMAN: *In a reversal of previous statements, Senator Clinton
conceded she believes Obama could defeat McCain in November, but she
also defended her campaign's focus on Obama's recent comments and argued
she's the better candidate to take on Republican candidate John McCain.

*SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: *First of all, I want to be very clear: my
comments were about your remarks. And I think that's important,
because it wasn't just me responding to them, it was people who
heard them, people who felt as though they were aimed at their
values, their quality of life, the decisions that they have made.

Now, obviously, what we have to do as Democrats is make sure we
get enough votes to win in November. And as George just said, you
know, the Republicans, who are pretty shrewd about what it takes
to win, certainly did jump on the comments.

But what's important here is what we each stand for and what our
records are and what we have done over the course of our lives to
try to improve the circumstances of those who deserve to live up
to their own potential, to make the decisions that are right for
them and their families. And I think year after year for now
thirty-five years, I have a proven record of results.

And what I'm taking into this campaign is my passion for
empowering people, for giving people the feeling that they can
make a better future for themselves. And I think it's important
that that starts from a base of respect and connection in order to
be able to get people to follow you and believe that you will lead
them in the better direction.

*AMY GOODMAN: *The debate later turned to the issues. On Iraq, both
candidates vowed to begin a withdrawal from Iraq rather than wait for a
recommendation from General David Petraeus.

*SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: *But one thing I am sure of is that our
staying in Iraq, our continuing to lose our men and women in
uniform, having many injured, the Iraqi casualties that we are
seeing as well, is no way for us to maintain a strong position in
the world.

It's not only about Iraq. It is about ending the war in Iraq, so
that we can begin paying attention to all of the other problems we
have. There isn't any doubt that Afghanistan has been neglected.
It has not gotten the resources that it needs. We hear that from
our military commanders responsible for that region of the world.
And there are other problems that we have failed to address.

So the bottom line for me is, we don't know what will happen as we
withdraw. We do know what will happen if we stay mired in Iraq.
The Iraqi government will not accept responsibility for its own
future. Our military will continue to be stretched thin, and our
soldiers will be on their second, third, even their fourth
deployment. And we will not be able to reassert our leadership and
our moral authority in the world. And I think those are the kind
of broad issues that a president has to take into account.

*CHARLIE GIBSON: *And Senator Obama, your campaign manager, David
Plouffe, said, "When he is"-this is talking about you-"When he is
elected president, we will be out of Iraq [...] in sixteen months at the
most; there should be no confusion about that." So you'd give the same
rock-hard pledge, that no matter what the military commanders said, you
would give the order: bring them home.

*SEN. BARACK OBAMA: *Because the commander-in-chief sets the mission,
Charlie. That's not the role of the generals. And one of the things
that's been interesting about the President's approach lately has been
to say, 'Well, I'm just taking cues from General Petraeus.' Well, the
President sets the mission. The General and our troops carry out that
mission. And unfortunately, we have had a bad mission set by our
civilian leadership, which our military has performed brilliantly. But
it is time for us to set a strategy that is going to make the American
people safer.

Now, I will always listen to our commanders on the ground with respect
to tactics. Once I've given them a new mission, that we are going to
proceed deliberately in an orderly fashion out of Iraq and we are going
to have our combat troops out, we will not have permanent bases there,
once I've provided that mission, if they come to me and want to adjust
tactics, then I will certainly take their recommendations into
consideration. But ultimately the buck stops with me as the
commander-in-chief.

*AMY GOODMAN: *From the Democrats, we now turn to another candidate in
the 2008 field: Matt Gonzalez, running on Ralph Nader's ticket as a
vice-presidential candidate, San Francisco-based attorney, former
president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In 2003 he ran for
mayor of San Francisco on the Green Party ticket but lost in a close
race to Democrat Gavin Newsom. Matt Gonzalez joins me here in Palo Alto
at Stanford University. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Thanks for having me.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Well, as we play clips of the debate last night, let's
start at the beginning, with this whole controversy about what Senator
Barack Obama said about people who are in desperate conditions, people
who are economically strapped, turning to guns and religion.

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, Amy, I think it's a tempest in a teapot. I don't
think that you can take this one- or two-sentence remark that Senator
Obama made and really draw all kinds of conclusions by it. I think
anybody that's in the political arena, often as you're speaking, you
engage in shortcuts as you're trying to make a point. And my
understanding of the way the polls have played out there, the comment
isn't that significant.

*AMY GOODMAN: *And these other issues that were raised for the first
forty-five minutes of this debate: wearing a lapel pin, friends with
someone who was in the Weather Underground in the 1960s?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think that that's disturbing. I think the real
question is the responsibility of the media not to, essentially, present
these in a way that suggests that there is something that Senator Obama
has to explain about them. And that's the sense that I have is what
occurred last night.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Their positions on war?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think the debate actually-and the problem with
the debate is that they're not getting clear answers on these issues.
The candidates are using certain catch phrases. They're saying "no
permanent bases" and "we're going to start a withdrawal" or "we're going
to get combat troops out." But they're not committing to having troops
out of the region in the first four years of their presidency. They have
left it very open. I think Senator Obama, in an interview with you,
indicated that he would leave the private army that's there, over
100,000. And I think there are policy groups, Democratic policy groups,
that have made it clear that it would require tens of thousands of
soldiers in Iraq to carry out Senator Obama's mandate, which is to be
able to strike at al-Qaeda and do counterterrorism there.

*AMY GOODMAN: *What is your proposal?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think Nader has been very committed to getting
our troops out. He's saying that the resistance is going to continue as
long as there's an American presence there, and we have to start
engaging in a foreign policy that doesn't believe that you're going to
accomplish everything through aggression. I think it's very clear that
the United States has a long history of engaging in foreign policy for
our quote-unquote "interests," which are unfortunately too often
corporate interests.

*AMY GOODMAN: *I wanted to turn to the candidates' positions on the
economy. This is a clip from last night's debate in Pennsylvania.

*SEN. BARACK OBAMA: *We have seen wages and incomes flat or
declining at a time when costs have gone up. And one of the things
that we've learned from George Bush's economic policies, which
John McCain now wants to follow, is that pain trickles up. And so,
partly because people have been strapped and have had a tough time
making ends meet, we're now seeing a deteriorating housing market.

That's also as a consequence of the lack of oversight and
regulation of these banks and financial institutions that gave
loans that they shouldn't have. And part of it has to do with the
fact that you had $185 million by mortgage lenders spent on
lobbyists and special interests who were writing these laws.

So the rules in Washington-the tax code has been written on behalf
of the well connected. Our trade laws have-same thing has
happened. And part of how we're going to be able to deliver on
middle-class tax relief is to change how business is done in
Washington. And that's been a central focus of our campaign.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Clinton also touted her economic plan.

*SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: *I think we have to invest in our
infrastructure. That also will get the economy moving again, and I
believe we could put about three million people to work in good
union jobs, where people get a good wage with a good set of
benefits that can support a middle-class family with a rising
standard of living.

I want to see us actually tackle the housing crisis, something
I've been talking about for over a year. If I had been president a
year ago, I believe we would have begun to avoid some of the worst
of the mortgage and credit crisis, because we would have started
much earlier than we have-in fact, I don't think we've really done
very much at all yet-in dealing with a way of freezing home
foreclosures, of freezing interest rates, getting money into
communities to be able to withstand the problems that are caused
by foreclosures.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Independent vice-presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez,
your response to their economic proposals?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I don't think you can really talk about the
economy without talking about the tremendous amount of resources we're
putting into the war. A full 55, maybe as much as 60, percent of our tax
dollars are going to this war, to paying debt on the war, to going into
the military. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates in this
field want to increase military spending. And so, for all of the
rhetoric about trying to deal with, you know, the common person, the war
has to be addressed.

The other thing I would say is that when the Democrats took Congress,
when Pelosi became the Speaker, they moved forward on raising the
minimum wage. But one thing that they didn't do is address an issue that
these candidates are raising now, which is, as cost of living shifts,
that minimum wage should be going up without having to go back and have
a fight in Congress. When we passed the minimum wage in San Francisco,
we did that. And again, the question mark is, how effective is our
opposition party in Congress, when, when they have a majority, they
don't take advantage of it and institute something that can work on its
own in the future?

*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you and Ralph Nader have a strategy to win?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *I do. I certainly do. In talking to Ralph, I think he's
very heartened by some of the polls that are out there. The real
question is whether or not we're going to be allowed into the debates.
When I ran for mayor, I started-in San Francisco, I started with support
of maybe three, four percent. Because I was allowed into debates, that
eventually became 47 percent. Nader has poll numbers in Michigan at ten
percent. Other national polls have put him at five, six percent. I think
that-put us in the debates, and let's see how it goes. And I think as
the American people see there is an alternative, those numbers will get
stronger.

*AMY GOODMAN: *And the argument, of course, that this is a pivotal year,
2008, in changing the direction of this country-what impact do you think
your race will have?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think one thing that's important to keep in
mind is that if you don't change how elections are happening, you're
never going to have the fundamental change that you need to address a
host of issues. So if we don't run, there's no problem that needs to be
fixed, and we keep on this very narrow political spectrum. If we run, we
raise the question, which is, "What are the other political parties
doing to reform elections?" and "Why aren't they addressing issues that
we're addressing, like single-payer healthcare or issues related to a
full withdrawal from the war in Iraq?"-questions like that.

*AMY GOODMAN: *If you had won in 2003 against Gavin Newsom for mayor of
San Francisco, you would have been the first Green mayor, the first
Green Party mayor in the country. Yet, now you have left the Green Party
to run as an independent. Why?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I left the Green Party to enhance ballot access
in certain states that don't allow you to be a member of a political
party and run as an independent. I think the important thing that would
have happened if I had been elected mayor of San Francisco is that a lot
of the red-baiting that was taking place in that campaign would have
essentially gone to the wayside. I think people would have seen that
members of the left can govern when they're given an opportunity to do
that.

*AMY GOODMAN: *You talked about the polls in Michigan, indicating Ralph
Nader has a good percentage there. But what is your strategy to win? How
are you campaigning right now?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, Ralph is on the road full-time. I'm doing
interviews every day, and I'm going to join him as he's reaching
California in a couple of weeks and start traveling up to the Northwest.
And I think it's the way you campaign in any contest: it's one voter at
a time. You talk about the issues, and you challenge your opponents to
win your voters away from you if they're concerned about some outcome
that shouldn't happen. I think that in a three-candidate race, a
four-candidate race, you can win the contest with 35 percent of the
vote. So if you're allowed into the debates and you suddenly have 15, 20
percent, there are a lot of voters who will suddenly consider you, if
they truly believe that you're competitive and have a chance to win.

*AMY GOODMAN: *If you were vice president today, what would be your
first act in regards to Iraq?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think we would certainly start an orderly
withdrawal of all the troops out of Iraq. I don't think there's any
question about that.

*AMY GOODMAN: *The issue of the candidates on the issues, what-is there
a candidate who you prefer?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I don't want John McCain to win the contest, but
I don't want Senator Obama or Senator Clinton to win either. I think
what's missing from the debate is the fact that nobody is asking
Senators Obama and Clinton to account for some of their terrible votes,
when Obama votes for the Class Action Reform Act, which was a Republican
bill to really make it harder for people to bring class-action lawsuits,
or when he supports something like the Energy Policy Act in 2005, which
is one of the reasons why oil companies have the profits that they have
this year. Why aren't we having that discussion? And before progressives
vote for him or vote for Clinton, they ought to have an accounting as to
how you can vote for those bills and somehow suddenly change the culture
of Washington if you're elected president of the United States.

*AMY GOODMAN: *I wanted to turn to another clip of the debate last
night. This is a clip of-well, Senator Obama was asked how he would use
past presidents, how specifically he would use, if he would use, George
W. Bush.

*SEN. BARACK OBAMA: *I'm probably more likely to ask advice of the
current president's father than the President himself, because I
think that when you look back at George H.W. Bush's foreign
policy, it was a wise foreign policy, and how we executed the Gulf
War, how we managed the transition out of the Cold War, I think,
is an example of how we can get bipartisan agreement. I don't
think the Democrats have a monopoly on good ideas. I think that
there are a lot of thoughtful Republicans out there. The problem
is, we've been locked in a divided politics for so long that we've
stopped listening to each other.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Your response to Barack Obama?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think it's unfortunate that he continues to
make these remarks. He made similar remarks on /Larry King Live/ about a
month ago. I think he's romanticizing George Bush, Sr.'s presidency and
the way that he acquitted himself in the original Iraq war.

*AMY GOODMAN: *The fact that President Bush-that's George H.W.
Bush-invaded Panama, Iraq, as well, what about Obama's expressed support
for him, turning to him?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Yeah, I just don't understand it. I don't understand
how, on the one hand, you can be suggesting that you're really going to
engage in a different kind of foreign policy and sort of wax eloquently
and romanticize this sort of presidency in what it could offer you in
terms of advice. I think it's troubling.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Is there an area of the country you're going to be
focusing on?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *I'll probably be more on the West. I've got trips
planned to New Mexico and Arizona, and that's where I'll start.

*AMY GOODMAN: *The fact that Barack Obama didn't want to have a photo
taken of him with Gavin Newsom, afraid, at least as the reports go,
concerned about Gavin Newsom's support for gay marriage?

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Well, I think that the way we create change if we're
progressives is that we have the courage to go out and articulate what
we believe in. And certainly, taking a picture with an elected official,
there's just nothing wrong about that. And to want to distance yourself
from that, I think, says a lot about the lack of courage you have and
the unlikeliness of you being able to change Washington.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Matt Gonzalez, I want to thank you for being with us.

*MATT GONZALEZ: *Thanks for having me.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Independent vice-presidential candidate on Ralph Nader's
ticket.

Free Speech Back

THE ABSURD TIMES

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: From http://www.whatnowtoons.com

Awhile ago, I mentioned that Randi Rhodes had been kicked off the air by, of all people, Air-America, for remarks she made about Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro. Seems the management has ties to Clinton somehow. Anyway, she made the remarks in a stand-up routine at a night-club and she had no "morals clause" or anything like that. Some people said the Air-America was "relieved" when she resigned.

Some of you wrote me and said I should contact the network and complain. Well, I had been trying to get an address and what I found out was that she was immediately snapped up by another network, NOVA. Most of Air-America's Affiliates' had contacted her as soon as they found out and she was already one the air before I could get around to complain.

She is on at 2, Central time, just google for a station close by. Nova is the network. Too many commercials, but she is funny. A welcome alternative to regular talk radio if you are interested. KPHX has a stream you can listen to even with dial-up. New stations are joining daily. Buffalo just joined.

________________________________________

Here's an interview with Noan Chomsky:

Tom Dispatch

posted 2008-02-26 15:13:30

Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Terrorists Wanted the World Over

One of Noam Chomsky's latest books -- a conversation with David
Barsamian -- is entitled What We Say Goes
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086714/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>.
It catches a powerful theme of Chomsky's: that we have long been living
on a one-way planet and that the language we regularly wield to describe
the realities of our world is tailored to Washington's interests.

Juan Cole, at his Informed Comment website
<http://www.juancole.com/2008/02/three-events-that-changed-world.html>,
had a good example of the strangeness of this targeted language
recently. When Serbs stormed the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, he offered
the following comment (with so many years of the term "Islamofascism" in
mind): "?given that the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians, will the
Republican Party and Fox Cable News now start fulminating against
'Christofascism?'"

Of course, the minute you try to turn the Washington norm (in word or
act) around, as Chomsky did in a piece entitled What If Iran Had Invaded
Mexico?
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174797/noam_chomsky_on_the_iran_effect_>,
you've already entered the theater of the absurd. "Terror" is a
particularly good example of this. "Terror" is something that, by
(recent) definition, is committed by free-floating groups or movements
against innocent civilians and is utterly reprehensible (unless the
group turns out to be the CIA running
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/76824/mike_davis_return_to_sender_car_bombs_part_2_>
car bombs into Baghdad
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/09/politics/09ALLA.html?ei=5007&en=f6ed30bebf50f090&ex=1402113600&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position=>
or car and camel bombs
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/2033/which_war_is_this_anyway_> into
Afghanistan, in which case it's not a topic that's either much
discussed, or condemned in our world). On the other hand, that weapon of
terror, air power
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/106273/air_war_barbarity_and_the_middle_east>,
which is at the heart of the American way of war, simply doesn't qualify
under the category of "terror" at all -- no matter how terrifying it may
be to innocent civilians who find themselves underneath the missiles and
bombs.

It's with this in mind that Chomsky turns to terror of every kind in the
Middle East in the context of the car bombing of a major figure
<http://warincontext.org/2008/02/24/guest-contributor-roger-morris-americas-shadow-in-the-middle-east/>
in Lebanon's Hizbollah movement. By the way, The Essential Chomsky
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595581898/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
(edited by Anthony Arnove), a new collection of his writings on politics
and on language from the 1950s to the present, has just been published
and is highly recommended. /Tom/

The Most Wanted List

*International Terrorism*
By Noam Chomsky

On February 13, Imad Moughniyeh, a senior commander of Hizbollah,
was assassinated in Damascus. "The world is a better place without
this man in it," State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said:
"one way or the other he was brought to justice." Director of
National Intelligence Mike McConnell added that Moughniyeh has been
"responsible for more deaths of Americans and Israelis than any
other terrorist with the exception of Osama bin Laden."

Joy was unconstrained in Israel too, as "one of the U.S. and
Israel's most wanted men" was brought to justice, the London
/Financial Times/ reported. Under the heading, "A militant wanted
the world over," an accompanying story reported that he was
"superseded on the most-wanted list by Osama bin Laden" after 9/11
and so ranked only second among "the most wanted militants in the
world."

The terminology is accurate enough, according to the rules of
Anglo-American discourse, which defines "the world" as the political
class in Washington and London (and whoever happens to agree with
them on specific matters). It is common, for example, to read that
"the world" fully supported George Bush when he ordered the bombing
of Afghanistan. That may be true of "the world," but hardly of the
world, as revealed in an international Gallup Poll after the bombing
was announced. Global support was slight. In Latin America, which
has some experience with U.S. behavior, support ranged from 2% in
Mexico to 16% in Panama, and that support was conditional upon the
culprits being identified (they still weren't eight months later,
the FBI reported), and civilian targets being spared (they were
attacked at once). There was an overwhelming preference in the world
for diplomatic/judicial measures, rejected out of hand by "the world."

*Following the Terror Trail*

In the present case, if "the world" were extended to the world, we
might find some other candidates for the honor of most hated
arch-criminal. It is instructive to ask why this might be true.

The /Financial Times/ reports that most of the charges against
Moughniyeh are unsubstantiated, but "one of the very few times when
his involvement can be ascertained with certainty [is in] the
hijacking of a TWA plane in 1985 in which a U.S. Navy diver was
killed." This was one of two terrorist atrocities the led a poll of
newspaper editors to select terrorism in the Middle East as the top
story of 1985; the other was the hijacking of the passenger liner
/Achille Lauro/, in which a crippled American, Leon Klinghoffer, was
brutally murdered,. That reflects the judgment of "the world." It
may be that the world saw matters somewhat differently.

The /Achille Lauro/ hijacking was a retaliation for the bombing of
Tunis ordered a week earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
His air force killed 75 Tunisians and Palestinians with smart bombs
that tore them to shreds, among other atrocities, as vividly
reported from the scene by the prominent Israeli journalist Amnon
Kapeliouk. Washington cooperated by failing to warn its ally Tunisia
that the bombers were on the way, though the Sixth Fleet and U.S.
intelligence could not have been unaware of the impending attack.
Secretary of State George Shultz informed Israeli Foreign Minister
Yitzhak Shamir that Washington "had considerable sympathy for the
Israeli action," which he termed "a legitimate response" to
"terrorist attacks," to general approbation. A few days later, the
UN Security Council unanimously denounced the bombing as an "act of
armed aggression" (with the U.S. abstaining). "Aggression" is, of
course, a far more serious crime than international terrorism. But
giving the United States and Israel the benefit of the doubt, let us
keep to the lesser charge against their leadership.

A few days after, Peres went to Washington to consult with the
leading international terrorist of the day, Ronald Reagan, who
denounced "the evil scourge of terrorism," again with general
acclaim by "the world."

The "terrorist attacks" that Shultz and Peres offered as the pretext
for the bombing of Tunis were the killings of three Israelis in
Larnaca, Cyprus. The killers, as Israel conceded, had nothing to do
with Tunis, though they might have had Syrian connections. Tunis was
a preferable target, however. It was defenseless, unlike Damascus.
And there was an extra pleasure: more exiled Palestinians could be
killed there.

The Larnaca killings, in turn, were regarded as retaliation by the
perpetrators: They were a response to regular Israeli hijackings in
international waters in which many victims were killed -- and many
more kidnapped and sent to prisons in Israel, commonly to be held
without charge for long periods. The most notorious of these has
been the secret prison/torture chamber Facility 1391. A good deal
can be learned about it from the Israeli and foreign press. Such
regular Israeli crimes are, of course, known to editors of the
national press in the U.S., and occasionally receive some casual
mention.

Klinghoffer's murder was properly viewed with horror, and is very
famous. It was the topic of an acclaimed opera and a made-for-TV
movie, as well as much shocked commentary deploring the savagery of
Palestinians -- "two-headed beasts" (Prime Minister Menachem Begin),
"drugged roaches scurrying around in a bottle" (Chief of Staff Raful
Eitan), "like grasshoppers compared to us," whose heads should be
"smashed against the boulders and walls" (Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir). Or more commonly just "/Araboushim/," the slang counterpart
of "kike" or "nigger."

Thus, after a particularly depraved display of settler-military
terror and purposeful humiliation in the West Bank town of Halhul in
December 1982, which disgusted even Israeli hawks, the well-known
military/political analyst Yoram Peri wrote in dismay that one "task
of the army today [is] to demolish the rights of innocent people
just because they are Araboushim living in territories that God
promised to us," a task that became far more urgent, and was carried
out with far more brutality, when the Araboushim began to "raise
their heads" a few years later.

We can easily assess the sincerity of the sentiments expressed about
the Klinghoffer murder. It is only necessary to investigate the
reaction to comparable U.S.-backed Israeli crimes. Take, for
example, the murder in April 2002 of two crippled Palestinians,
Kemal Zughayer and Jamal Rashid, by Israeli forces rampaging through
the refugee camp of Jenin in the West Bank. Zughayer's crushed body
and the remains of his wheelchair were found by British reporters,
along with the remains of the white flag he was holding when he was
shot dead while seeking to flee the Israeli tanks which then drove
over him, ripping his face in two and severing his arms and legs.
Jamal Rashid was crushed in /his/ wheelchair when one of Israel's
huge U.S.-supplied Caterpillar bulldozers demolished his home in
Jenin with his family inside. The differential reaction, or rather
non-reaction, has become so routine and so easy to explain that no
further commentary is necessary.

*Car Bomb*

Plainly, the 1985 Tunis bombing was a vastly more severe terrorist
crime than the /Achille Lauro/ hijacking, or the crime for which
Moughniyeh's "involvement can be ascertained with certainty" in the
same year. But even the Tunis bombing had competitors for the prize
for worst terrorist atrocity in the Mideast in the peak year of 1985.

One challenger was a car-bombing in Beirut right outside a mosque,
timed to go off as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers. It
killed 80 people and wounded 256. Most of the dead were girls and
women, who had been leaving the mosque, though the ferocity of the
blast "burned babies in their beds," "killed a bride buying her
trousseau," and "blew away three children as they walked home from
the mosque." It also "devastated the main street of the densely
populated" West Beirut suburb, reported Nora Boustany three years
later in the /Washington Post/.

The intended target had been the Shi'ite cleric Sheikh Mohammad
Hussein Fadlallah, who escaped. The bombing was carried out by
Reagan's CIA and his Saudi allies, with Britain's help, and was
specifically authorized by CIA Director William Casey, according to
/Washington Post/ reporter Bob Woodward's account in his book /Veil:
The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987/. Little is known beyond the
bare facts, thanks to rigorous adherence to the doctrine that we do
not investigate our own crimes (unless they become too prominent to
suppress, and the inquiry can be limited to some low-level "bad
apples" who were naturally "out of control").

*"Terrorist Villagers"*

A third competitor for the 1985 Mideast terrorism prize was Prime
Minister Peres' "Iron Fist" operations in southern Lebanese
territories then occupied by Israel in violation of Security Council
orders. The targets were what the Israeli high command called
"terrorist villagers." Peres's crimes in this case sank to new
depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder" in the words
of a Western diplomat familiar with the area, an assessment amply
supported by direct coverage. They are, however, of no interest to
"the world" and therefore remain uninvestigated, in accordance with
the usual conventions. We might well ask whether these crimes fall
under international terrorism or the far more severe crime of
aggression, but let us again give the benefit of the doubt to Israel
and its backers in Washington and keep to the lesser charge.

These are a few of the thoughts that might cross the minds of people
elsewhere in the world, even if not those of "the world," when
considering "one of the very few times" Imad Moughniyeh was clearly
implicated in a terrorist crime.

The U.S. also accuses him of responsibility for devastating double
suicide truck-bomb attacks on U.S. Marine and French paratrooper
barracks in Lebanon in 1983, killing 241 Marines and 58
paratroopers, as well as a prior attack on the U.S. Embassy in
Beirut, killing 63, a particularly serious blow because of a meeting
there of CIA officials at the time.

The /Financial Times/ has, however, attributed the attack on the
Marine barracks to Islamic Jihad, not Hizbollah. Fawaz Gerges, one
of the leading scholars on the /jihadi/ movements and on Lebanon,
has written that responsibility was taken by an "unknown group
called Islamic Jihad." A voice speaking in classical Arabic called
for all Americans to leave Lebanon or face death. It has been
claimed that Moughniyeh was the head of Islamic Jihad at the time,
but to my knowledge, evidence is sparse.

The opinion of the world has not been sampled on the subject, but it
is possible that there might be some hesitancy about calling an
attack on a military base in a foreign country a "terrorist attack,"
particularly when U.S. and French forces were carrying out heavy
naval bombardments and air strikes in Lebanon, and shortly after the
U.S. provided decisive support for the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon, which killed some 20,000 people and devastated the south,
while leaving much of Beirut in ruins. It was finally called off by
President Reagan when international protest became too intense to
ignore after the Sabra-Shatila massacres.

In the United States, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon is regularly
described as a reaction to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
terrorist attacks on northern Israel from their Lebanese bases,
making our crucial contribution to these major war crimes
understandable. In the real world, the Lebanese border area had been
quiet for a year, apart from repeated Israeli attacks, many of them
murderous, in an effort to elicit some PLO response that could be
used as a pretext for the already planned invasion. Its actual
purpose was not concealed at the time by Israeli commentators and
leaders: to safeguard the Israeli takeover of the occupied West
Bank. It is of some interest that the sole serious error in Jimmy
Carter's book /Palestine: Peace not Apartheid/ is the repetition of
this propaganda concoction about PLO attacks from Lebanon being the
motive for the Israeli invasion. The book was bitterly attacked, and
desperate efforts were made to find some phrase that could be
misinterpreted, but this glaring error -- the only one -- was
ignored. Reasonably, since it satisfies the criterion of adhering to
useful doctrinal fabrications.

*Killing without Intent*

Another allegation is that Moughniyeh "masterminded" the bombing of
Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992, killing 29
people, in response, as the /Financial Times/ put it, to Israel's
"assassination of former Hizbollah leader Abbas Al-Mussawi in an air
attack in southern Lebanon." About the assassination, there is no
need for evidence: Israel proudly took credit for it. The world
might have some interest in the rest of the story. Al-Mussawi was
murdered with a U.S.-supplied helicopter, well north of Israel's
illegal "security zone" in southern Lebanon. He was on his way to
Sidon from the village of Jibshit, where he had spoken at the
memorial for another Imam murdered by Israeli forces. The helicopter
attack also killed his wife and five-year old child. Israel then
employed U.S.-supplied helicopters to attack a car bringing
survivors of the first attack to a hospital.

After the murder of the family, Hezbollah "changed the rules of the
game," Prime Minister Rabin informed the Israeli Knesset.
Previously, no rockets had been launched at Israel. Until then, the
rules of the game had been that Israel could launch murderous
attacks anywhere in Lebanon at will, and Hizbollah would respond
only within Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory.

After the murder of its leader (and his family), Hizbollah began to
respond to Israeli crimes in Lebanon by rocketing northern Israel.
The latter is, of course, intolerable terror, so Rabin launched an
invasion that drove some 500,000 people out of their homes and
killed well over 100. The merciless Israeli attacks reached as far
as northern Lebanon.

In the south, 80% of the city of Tyre fled and Nabatiye was left a
"ghost town," Jibshit was about 70% destroyed according to an
Israeli army spokesperson, who explained that the intent was "to
destroy the village completely because of its importance to the
Shi'ite population of southern Lebanon." The goal was "to wipe the
villages from the face of the earth and sow destruction around
them," as a senior officer of the Israeli northern command described
the operation.

Jibshit may have been a particular target because it was the home of
Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid, kidnapped and brought to Israel several
years earlier.. Obeid's home "received a direct hit from a missile,"
British journalist Robert Fisk reported, "although the Israelis were
presumably gunning for his wife and three children." Those who had
not escaped hid in terror, wrote Mark Nicholson in the /Financial
Times/, "because any visible movement inside or outside their houses
is likely to attract the attention of Israeli artillery spotters,
who? were pounding their shells repeatedly and devastatingly into
selected targets." Artillery shells were hitting some villages at a
rate of more than 10 rounds a minute at times.

All of this received the firm support of President Bill Clinton, who
understood the need to instruct the /Araboushim/ sternly on the
"rules of the game." And Rabin emerged as another grand hero and man
of peace, so different from the two-legged beasts, grasshoppers, and
drugged roaches.

This is only a small sample of facts that the world might find of
interest in connection with the alleged responsibility of Moughniyeh
for the retaliatory terrorist act in Buenos Aires.

Other charges are that Moughniyeh helped prepare Hizbollah defenses
against the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, evidently an
intolerable terrorist crime by the standards of "the world," which
understands that the United States and its clients must face no
impediments in their just terror and aggression.

The more vulgar apologists for U.S. and Israeli crimes solemnly
explain that, while Arabs purposely kill people, the U.S. and
Israel, being democratic societies, do not intend to do so. Their
killings are just accidental ones, hence not at the level of moral
depravity of their adversaries. That was, for example, the stand of
Israel's High Court when it recently authorized severe collective
punishment of the people of Gaza by depriving them of electricity
(hence water, sewage disposal, and other such basics of civilized
life).

The same line of defense is common with regard to some of
Washington's past peccadilloes, like the destruction in 1998 of the
al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The attack apparently led to
the deaths of tens of thousands of people, but without intent to
kill them, hence not a crime on the order of intentional killing --
so we are instructed by moralists who consistently suppress the
response that had already been given to these vulgar efforts at
self-justification.

To repeat once again, we can distinguish three categories of crimes:
murder with intent, accidental killing, and murder with
foreknowledge but without specific intent. Israeli and U.S.
atrocities typically fall into the third category. Thus, when Israel
destroys Gaza's power supply or sets up barriers to travel in the
West Bank, it does not specifically intend to murder the particular
people who will die from polluted water or in ambulances that cannot
reach hospitals. And when Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of the
al-Shifa plant, it was obvious that it would lead to a humanitarian
catastrophe. Human Rights Watch immediately informed him of this,
providing details; nevertheless, he and his advisers did not intend
to kill specific people among those who would inevitably die when
half the pharmaceutical supplies were destroyed in a poor African
country that could not replenish them.

Rather, they and their apologists regarded Africans much as we do
the ants we crush while walking down a street. We are aware that it
is likely to happen (if we bother to think about it), but we do not
intend to kill them because they are not worthy of such
consideration. Needless to say, comparable attacks by /Araboushim/
in areas inhabited by human beings would be regarded rather
differently.

If, for a moment, we can adopt the perspective of the world, we
might ask which criminals are "wanted the world over."

/Noam Chomsky is the author of numerous best-selling political
works. His latest books are Failed States: The Abuse of Power and
the Assault on Democracy
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805082840/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
and What We Say Goes
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086714/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
a conversation book with David Barsamian, both in the American
Empire Project <http://www.americanempireproject.com/> series at
Metropolitan Books. The Essential Chomsky
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595581898/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
(edited by Anthony Arnove), a collection of his writings on politics
and on language from the 1950s to the present, has just been
published by the New Press./

Copyright 2008 Noam Chomsky

What a Week

THE ABSURD TIMES

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Bill Clinton before his defense of his wife, Hillary. Bill said, about Hillary, "After all, it was after 11:00, she was exhausted, and she's over 60" (Bill like blondes, Hillary used to have dark hair.) Another reason for the ilustration is just that I've liked Sheryl Crow since she was banned in Wal-Mart.

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

Let's just review a few things that have happened in the last few days.

The Clinton headquarters in Indiana burned down and Bill said "We will rise from the ashes," an apparent reference to the Phoenix. I hope so. The Phoenix does that every 500 years according to the myth, so we will be safe for awhile.

George Bush said we will know when our job in Iraq is finished when it [Iraq] is able to help us fight our enemies! Guam? No, he probably means Iran.

Bowling seems to be an important factor in this election. Neither Hillary nor Obama were able to knock down more than one or two pins at a time. However, I remember George Sr. once demonstrating his style, which was ok, except he forgot to let the ball go and its momentum carried him forward and onto his face on the bowling lane.

A recent Poll indicated that a McCain/Rice combination would defeat an Obama/Clinton one. Why on earth would anyone take such a poll? It ain't gonna happen nohow noway anywhere not never. [Just practicing syntax in case I want to run for political office. Local Libertarians have talked about my running for Sheriff as I've told them I'd never show up at my office unless they let me smoke there.]

I've noticed that there is a lot of protest over the Olympic torch going around the world. The Dali Lama is against the protests. I don't follow - it would seem that American politicians, who are so fond of quoting Hitler, would like to keep this grand tradition he started alive. Munich. Jessie Owens. You know.

A bill has been introduced into the Senate to make John McCain a "natural born citizen." See, he was born in Panama, both parents citizens, so the citizen part is no problem. It's the word "Natural" that some people are worried about. It's absurd, of course, but that does not exclude it as important news.

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

Here are a couple articles about the cost of the occupation of Iraq. They seem appropriate as this is the bloodiest week of the year for American Soldiers in Iraq:

Three Trillion Dollar War Review

April 09, 2008 By *Girish Mishra*

Girish Mishra's ZSpace Page </zspace/girishmishra>

Karl Marx once remarked: "War in direct economic terms is just the same
as if a nation cast part of its capital into water." After many decades,
once again, the validity of this statement has been underlined by the
invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US-led coalition. A period of
more than five years has elapsed, yet there is no sign of freedom,
democracy and prosperity as promised to the Iraqi people. In fact, the
invasion and continued occupation has brought enormous devastation of
this ancient country, nor has it done any good even to the people of
America and its coalition partners. This has been analyzed at length in
a recently published book, /The Three Trillion Dollar War,/ by Joseph
Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.

No way, this book can be ignored by terming it as mere propaganda. Among
its authors is Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, who once
headed the team of economic advisers to President Clinton and then
became chief economist at the World Bank. His books have been widely
read and discussed all over the world. Linda Bilmes teaches at the
Harvard University and was once a high ranking official in the Clinton
administration looking after financial and commercial affairs.

At the time of American invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration gave
out that its aim was to liberate the Iraqi people from the clutches of
Saddam Hussein, giving them freedom and democracy and putting them onto
the path of happiness and prosperity and, this mission would cost just
$50-$60 billion. Lawrence B. Lindsey, then economic adviser to Bush,
dared challenge this figure as an underestimation and he was thrown out
of his job. He had predicted that the cost might be somewhere from $100
to $200 billion. To quote Lindsey, "My hypothetical estimate got the
annual cost about right. But I misjudged an important factor: how long
we would be involved." Five years after his ouster, he believes that
"one of the reasons the administration's efforts are so unpopular that
they chose not to engage in an open public discussion of what the
consequences might be, including the economic cost."

Just three months after the invasion, The Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace came out with its Policy Brief (no.24, May 2003),
"Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building." The
very opening paragraph said: "The real test for the success of the U.S.
preemptive war against the regime of Saddam Hussein is whether or not
Iraq can now be rebuilt after the war. Few national undertakings are as
complex, costly, and time consuming as reconstructing the governing
institutions of foreign societies. Even a combination of unsurpassed
military power and abundant wealth does not guarantee success, let alone
quick results. Historically, nation-building attempts by outside powers
are notably mainly for their bitter disappointments, not their triumphs."

The authors of the Policy Brief—Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper—pointed out
that the United States, till then, had used its armed forces in foreign
lands on more than 200 occasions and its nation-building record had been
utterly dismal. What they said has proved to be prophetic: "The internal
characteristics of Iraqi society will severely test Washington's
resolve, skill, and patience in pursuing its declared goal of political
transformation. With a population of 24 million, Iraq is larger than any
of the Latin American countries where the United States has attempted
nation building." With its deep ethnic divisions, the internal situation
would be too complicated for the Americans to deal with. "Outside
efforts to bridge such ethnic and religious divisions through
reconciliation have a poor track record—as has been demonstrated in the
former Yugoslavia." It would be extremely difficult "to align U.S.
strategic interests with those of the Iraqi elite and public."

Warning the hawks in the Bush administration, the authors said, "they
should reconsider their position in light of the sobering lessons from
American nation building during the past century. Aside from an overall
low rate of success, such unilateral undertakings have led to the
creation and maintenance surrogate regimes that have eventually mutated
into military dictatorships and corrupt autocracies. Repeating these
mistakes in Iraq, especially after President Bush's declaration of
American resolve to build democracy there, would be a tragedy for the
Iraqi people and a travesty of American democratic ideals."

Stiglitz and Bilmes have come out with a mass of data in their three
hundred and odd page book, underlining that Pei and Kasper were
perfectly right and Bush and his team completely wrong in going ahead
with their criminal act of invading and devastating Iraq. In the
process, they have harmed the very American people that entrusted them
with the reins of the state. Stiglitz and Bilmes correctly assert: "By
now it is clear that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake.
Nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have been killed, and more than 58,000 have
been wounded, injured, or fallen seriously ill... One hundred thousand
U.S. soldiers have returned from the war suffering from mental health
disorders, a significant fraction of which will be chronic afflictions.
Miserable though Saddam Hussein's regime was, life is actually worse for
the Iraqi people now. The country's roads, schools, hospitals, homes,
and museums have been destroyed and its citizens have less access to
electricity and water than before the war. Sectarian violence is rife.
Iraq's chaos has made the country a magnet for terrorists of all
stripes. The notion that invading Iraq would bring democracy and
catalyze change in the Middle East now seems like a fantasy. When the
full price of the war has been paid, trillions of dollars will have been
added to our national debt. Invading Iraq has also driven up oil prices.
In these and other ways, the war has weakened our economy."

Till now, America has spent $600 billion on Iraq war. Stiglitz and
Bilmes have calculated, after taking into account both direct and
indirect, open and hidden, expenses and assuming that the war is going
to last a bit longer, that it will cost $3 trillion or, maybe, $4
trillion. Countering the argument that this is a very small sum for the
largest economy in the world, they say, "The issue is not whether
America can afford three trillion dollars. With a typical American
household income in 2006 just short of $70,000, we have far more than we
need to get by. Even if we threw 10 percent of that away, we would still
be no worse off than we were in 1995—when we were a prosperous and
well-off country. There is no risk that a trillion dollars or two or
three will bankrupt the country. The relevant question is a rather
different one: What could we have done with a trillion dollars or two or
three? What have we had to sacrifice? What is, to use the economists'
jargon, the opportunity cost?"

The opportunity cost of the Iraq war has been enormous. With the money
being spent on Iraq war, America could have easily solved its social
security problem at least for the next half a century. With one trillion
dollars, it could have constructed as many as 8 million new dwelling
units, employed 13 million more school teachers, provided elementary
education to 120 million kids or health insurance to 530 million
children for one year or granted scholarships to 43 million students for
four years. Multiply these figures by 3 and you get the opportunity cost
of $3 trillion to be gobbled up by the Iraq war. In a recent article in
/The Guardian/ (April 6), Stiglitz and Bilmes, while refuting Bush's
claim that the $3 trillion dollar estimate of the total cost may be
exaggerated, assert that it is "in fact, conservative. Even the
president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given
by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is
little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a
cost so far of $600 billion."

Explaining why their estimates are different, they state: "Our numbers
differ from theirs for three reasons: first, we are estimating the total
cost of the war, under alternative conservative scenarios, derived from
the defence department and congressional budget office. We are not
looking at McCain's 100-year scenario- we assume that we are there, in
the diminished strength, only through to 2017. But neither are we
looking at a scenario that sees our troops pulled out within six months.
With operational spending going on at $12 billion a month, and with
every year costing more than the last, it is easy to come to a total
operational cost that is double the $600 billion already spent.

"Second, we include war expenditures hidden elsewhere in the budget, and
budgetary expenditures that we would have to incur in the future even if
we left tomorrow. Most important of these are future costs of caring for
the 40%of returning veterans that are likely to suffer from disabilities
(in excess of $600 billion; second world war veterans' costs didn't peak
until 1993), and restoring the military to its prewar strength. If you
include interest, and interest on the interest - with all of the war
debt financed - the budgetary costs quickly mount.

"Finally, our $3 trillion dollars estimate also includes costs to the
economy that go beyond the budget, for instance, the cost of caring for
the huge number of returning disabled veterans that go beyond the costs
borne by the federal government - in one out of five families with a
serious disability, someone has to give up a job. The macro-economic
costs are even larger. Almost every expert we have talked to agrees that
the war has had something to do with the rise in the price of oil; it
was not just an accident that oil prices began to soar at the same time
as the war began."

The Iraq war has adversely impacted not only the two sides involved in
it but also the world at large, especially the developing nations. As a
result of the war, while the demand for oil has increased, its supply
has declined as the production in Iraq has declined. At the time of the
invasion of Iraq, oil was selling $25 a barrel but now it can be had for
around$100 a barrel. In the years to come, it may go up to $125 a
barrel. The increasing price of oil has strengthened inflationary
pressures around the world. Besides, the production of ethanol and other
bio-fuels is being undertaken by diverting corn, sugarcane, soybeans and
other crops to it. This, in turn, contributes to the worldwide growing
shortage of food grains and pushes up the prices. The higher oil prices
have inflicted a direct cost to the world economy to the tune of roughly
$1.1 trillion.

Since the beginning of the Iraq war, America's national debt has gone up
by $2.5 trillion, out of which $1 trillion has been due to the Iraq war.
Bush, after coming to power, reduced the tax liabilities of the upper
income group people. It means the burden of meeting the war expenditures
has fallen more on the people at large. By 2017, it is estimated that
the national debt will increase by $2 trillion.

There are other adverse consequences that defy quantification. For
example, the morale of the troops is very low, there is a shortage of
wherewithal and there is a nationwide discontent because of insufficient
attention to the wounded soldiers. So far as the Iraqis are concerned,
more than a million people have perished. There is no law and order
worth the name. Anarchy reins supreme. As many as 45 per cent of the
families in Baghdad have lost their one or more members. There is a
large-scale displacement of the population. To quote Stiglitz and
Bilmes, "In human terms, it is the loss of life and the destruction of
Iraqi society that is the most egregious...

"For most Iraqis, daily life has become unbearable—to the point that
those who can afford to leave their country have done so. By September
2007, a stunning 4.6 million people—one of every seven Iraqis—had been
uprooted from their homes. This is the largest migration of people in
the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948."

As many as 2.4 million Iraqis have migrated to foreign lands, especially
Syria and Jordan, who are also feeling the strain. In all 20 per cent of
the pre-war population is displaced. Those who are left behind have
neither drinking water nor electricity. Schools and colleges do not
function because most of the teachers have either fled or been killed.
Hospitals suffer from lack of beds, doctors, nursing staff and medicines.

Iraq's museums have been looted and historical treasures have been taken
away. Valuable manuscripts have been lost, stolen or destroyed.
Christopher Hitchens says of Baghdad: "This is one of the greatest
centres of learning and culture in history. It was here that some of the
lost works of Aristotle and other Greeks... were preserved,
retranslated, and transmitted via Andalusia back to the the ignorant
"Christian" West." Naomi Klein, in her "The Shock Doctrine," has given
the details of the plunder and has also narrated how Iraqi economy has
been destroyed to make it pasture for the MNCs.

gmishra@girishmishra.com

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Iraq War Costs Skyrocketing, But Congress Unable to Scrutinize Spending

April 11, 2008 By *Jason Leopold*

Jason Leopold's ZSpace Page </zspace/jasonleopold1>

Nearly all of the $516 billion allocated by Congress to fund the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq has come in the form of emergency spending
requests, a method the White House has abused, depriving Congress the
ability to scrutinize how the Pentagon spends money in the so-called
global war on terror. The use of emergency supplemental bills to fund
the wars has likely resulted in the waste of billions of taxpayer
dollars, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability
Office.

Dozens of emergency funding requests that Congress has approved since
2001 is unprecedented compared with past military conflicts when war
funding went through the normal appropriations process. As of March, the
GAO said average monthly costs to fund military operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan has reached roughly $12.3 billion, $10 billion for Iraq
alone, more than double what it cost to fund the war in 2004.

"Over 90% of [the Department of Defense] funds were provided as
emergency funds in supplemental or additional appropriations; the
remainder were provided in regular defense bills or in transfers from
regular appropriations," the report said. "Emergency funding is exempt
from ceilings applying to discretionary spending in Congress's annual
budget resolutions. Some Members have argued that continuing to fund
ongoing operations in supplementals reduces congressional oversight."

Vernonique de Rugy, a senior research fellow and budget scholar at the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said funding the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars through emergency legislation is troubling because the
money "doesn't get counted in deficit projections, making it hard to
track the real cost of the war and effectively removing any upper limits
on spending for the war."

"Even seven years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, and five
years after the start of the war in Iraq, Congress and the president are
still using "emergency" funding bills to cover costs, rather than going
through the regular appropriations process," said de Rugy, who just
published an article on the issue, "The Trillion-Dollar War," in the May
issue of Reason magazine. "While other wars have initially been funded
using emergency supplementals, they have quickly been incorporated into
the regular budget. Never before has emergency supplemental spending
been used to fund an entire war and over the course of so many years."

Most troubling about this trend, the GAO said in a report issued in
February, is that while the Pentagon's budget requests has steadily
increased annually the reasons the Defense Department has cited to
explain its skyrocketing costs "do not appear to be enough to explain
the size of and continuation of increases."

"Although some of the factors behind the rapid increase in DOD funding
are known — the growing intensity of operations, additional force
protection gear and equipment, substantial upgrades of equipment,
converting units to modular configurations, and new funding to train and
equip Iraqi security forces — these elements" fail to justify the
increase, the GAO report stated, adding that "little of the $93 billion
DOD increase between [fiscal year] 2004 and [fiscal year] 2007 appears
to reflect changes in the number of deployed personnel."

Furthermore, a $70 billion "placeholder" request included in the fiscal
year 2009 budget that the Pentagon says will be used to finance
operations in Iraq does not include any details on how the money will be
spent "making it impossible to estimate its allocation," according to
the report.

The GAO added the Pentagon has used emergency supplemental requests to
get Congress to fund equipment and vehicle upgrades that would otherwise
come out of the Pentagon's annual budget. The Pentagon has succeeded
largely due to a new way it now defines the war on terror.

"Although some of this increase may reflect additional force protection
and replacement of "stressed" equipment, much may be in response to
[Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon] England's new guidance to fund
requirements for the "longer war" rather than DOD's traditional
definition of war costs as strictly related to immediate war needs," the
GAO report says, adding that Congress must immediately begin to demand a
more transparent accounting of Pentagon emergency spending in order to
put an end to the agency's accounting chicanery.

"For example, the Navy initially requested $450 million for six EA-18G
aircraft, a new electronic warfare version of the F-18, and the Air
Force $389 million for two Joint Strike Fighters, an aircraft just
entering production; such new aircraft would not be delivered for about
three years and so could not be used meet immediate war needs," the GAO
report said.

On Wednesday, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee,
Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, said the military
will soon run out of cash if lawmakers don't act to approve a $102
billion emergency supplemental spending bill to continue funding
military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We start running out of military pay for our force in June, we start
running out of operational dollars that we can flow to the force in
early July," Cody said. "It's all about time now. Those will be the
consequences of not getting the supplemental."

The GAO generally agrees with Cody, but said the Pentagon could dip into
its budget and transfer funds to finance operations in Iraq until late
September or early October, which would give Congress more time to
scrutinize the emergency funding request.

Still, these dire warnings from Bush administration officials and
military personnel about imminent funding shortfalls have become routine
since Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006. Last year,
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates threatened to fire more than 200,000
Defense Department employees and terminate contracts with defense
contractors because Congressional Democrats did not immediately approve
a spending package to continue funding the Iraq war. The GAO and the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) advised Congress that Gates could tap
into the Pentagon's $471 billion budget to fund the war while Congress
continued to debate the merits of giving the White House another "blank
check" for Iraq.

Government auditors have said that these predictions are untrue and have
been cited publicly by the White House to prod Congress into quickly
passing legislation to appropriate funds. Republican lawmakers and
administration officials have also said failure by Democrats to fund the
war is tantamount to not supporting the troops. But the rhetoric has
been enough to spook Democrats into passing the emergency funding
requests, often without being aware of how the money is being spent.

Other federal agencies, including the Congressional Research Service
(CRS) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), have testified to
Congress about the limited transparency in DOD's emergency budget requests.

"While DOD has provided considerably more justification material for its
war cost requests beginning with the [fiscal year] 2007 supplemental,
many questions remain difficult to answer — such as the effect of
changes in troop levels on costs — and there continue to be unexplained
discrepancies in DOD's war cost reports, the GAO report stated.

That led the GAO to draft a letter to Congress March 17, saying the $108
billion the Pentagon has recently requested is based on "unreliable"
financial data and should be considered an "approximation," which,
technically, could be interpreted to mean the Pentagon's accounting
methods underestimated the cost of the war.

"Over the years, we have conducted a series of reviews examining funding
and reported obligations for military operations in support of [the
global war on terror], the letter, addressed to Congressional
committees, says. "Our prior work has found the data in DOD's monthly
Supplemental and Cost of War Execution Report to be of questionable
reliability. Consequently, we are unable to ensure that DOD's reported
obligations for [the global war on terror] are complete, reliable, and
accurate, and they therefore should be considered approximations...GAO
has assessed the reliability of DOD's obligation data and found
significant problems, such that these data may not accurately reflect
the true dollar value of obligations [for the global war on terror.]"

A Pentagon spokesman did not return calls for comment. But a GAO
spokeswoman said the DOD has been struggling with "deficiencies in the
Pentagon's financial management system" that contributed to the
unreliable data. She would not elaborate.

Although studies have surfaced stating that the cost of the Iraq war
could soar past $2 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office said trying
to estimate future costs for the war is difficult "because DOD has
provided little detailed information on costs incurred to date."

"The Administration has not provided any long-term estimates of costs
despite a statutory reporting requirement that the President submit a
cost estimate for [fiscal year] 2006-2011 that was enacted in 2004," the
GAO said.

/ /

/Jason Leopold is the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie,"
a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com <http://www.newsjunkiebook.com/>
for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored
award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to
Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the
Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a
series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
Leopold is working on a new nonprofit online publication, expected to
launch soon./