Ramzy Baroud, Aljazeera.net English.

When US forces descended on Baghdad five years ago, they seemed unstoppable. It seemed only a matter of time before the same frenzied scenario took place in Tehran, Damascus, and elsewhere.

As it turned out, the day Saddam’s status was toppled was the day that the US Army faced its real battle in Iraq.

Five years of continuous and unrelenting bloodbaths may have toned down Bush’s expectations. The lonely crusader who once vowed to fight tyranny at any cost is now trying to secure a treaty that would indefinitely secure US interests in Iraq. His administration may essentially be hoping to achieve what it regards as the best possible outcome of a worst possible situation.

Coopting the UN has helped secure temporary legitimacy to the occupation. The international body, once rendered irrelevant, became a major hub for American diplomacy seeking to legitimize its occupation in a country that refuses to concede. Even willing Iraqi leaders, perfectly rehearsed elections and mass suppressions have failed to bring stability and validation. Of course, White House, State Department and US military spokespeople ventured into endless talk about democracy, freedom, liberty and security in order to woo an increasingly agitated American public. But US action on the ground spoke of another reality: An imperial quest.

Now the Bush administration is ready to crown its Iraq travesty with a long-term strategy that would turn Iraq’s occupation into a lasting one. The US is “negotiating” a treaty with the Iraqi government, one that would replace the UN mandate and legalize the US occupation of Iraq permanently.

Basically, time is running out for Bush. If no treaty is reached by the end of the year, his administration could find itself pleading to the Security Council for another extension of the mandate. This would be an embarrassing and dangerous scenario for US diplomacy because it would allow Russia and China to re-emerge as important players wielding veto powers. By signing a long-term treaty, the Bush administration would pre-empt any action by a future Democratic president of Iraq.

When the UN Security Council voted unanimously to extend the US-led multinational forces in Iraq in November 2005, the US celebrated the decision as a sign of international commitment to Iraq’s political transition. John Bolton, then US ambassador to the UN, had repeatedly lambasted the UN and now saw “the unanimous adoption of this resolution (as) a vivid demonstration of broad international support for a federal, democratic, pluralistic and unified Iraq.”

After this the Pentagon said the “US planned to cut the numbers of troops next year.” Since then, the opposite has actualized. Iraqi troops failed their first serious test — in failing to crack down on Mehdi Army — and US forces grew in numbers. In order for the US to sign a long-term strategic treaty with the Iraqi government, it needs a level of stability. The US’ dilemma is that this coveted stability is nowhere in sight.

Since late 2007, officials in the US, the UN and Iraq have asserted that they have no intention of seeking another UN mandate.

The US-Iraq treaty is thus the only option that will legalize the American occupation. The idea of the treaty is to give the impression that the relationship between the two is not that of the occupied and the occupier, but two sovereigns with mutual interests and equitable rights.

Iraqis are, unsurprisingly, furious about US expectations from the treaty. According to Cockburn, “Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.”

Iraqi Cabinet spokesman Ali Al Dabbagh was quoted by Iraqi TV as saying that government will not compromise on Iraq’s sovereignty. Although it is difficult to believe in Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s commitment to “full sovereignty,” one cannot underestimate the pressure he faces in the Parliament — fractious alliances, nationalists from various backgrounds, unstable Shiite front, skeptical Sunni leadership. Al Jazeera reported on how two of these legislators testified to the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that, “US troops should leave Iraq before talks on a long-term security pact could be completed.” Khalaf Al-Ulayyan, the founder of the National Dialogue Council wants talks delayed “until there is a new administration in the United States,” but the US wants an agreement by July.

To avoid embarrassment, “it’s entirely possible that the Bush administration, sometime this summer, will force the hapless regime of Prime Minister Maliki to submit to a US diktat on a US-Iraq accord.” (Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation). “If Maliki signs the accord, and ignores the opposition from Parliament, he would instantly lose whatever remaining credibility he has left as an Iraqi leader,” which would lead to more violence in Iraq on the eve of US elections.

One can argue that no pleasant scenarios are possible in Iraq at any time under a US military presence.

Gwynne Dyer

In the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” the world’s most famous private detective refers to “the curious incident of the dog in the night.”

“But the dog did nothing in the night,” replies his interlocutor.

“That was the curious incident,” says Holmes.

The dogs aren’t barking over the US-Iraq treaty, either, and that is equally curious.

To begin with, the Iraqi dogs aren’t barking. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki clearly doesn’t like the deal that the Bush administration is forcing on him, but will accept it because his government wouldn’t survive a week without US military support. The Shiite religious authorities will not issue a fatwa against it, because their first priority is to preserve the Shiites’ newfound domination of Iraq. But in fact most Iraqis who know about it, hate it.

That includes most of the Iraqi Parliament’s 270 members, who sent a letter to the US Congress last week asking it to reject any US-Iraq security agreement unless the White House agrees to a specific timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. But Congress will not get to vote on the deal, because the White House has defined it not as a treaty (which has to be ratified by the Senate), but as an alliance (which doesn’t).

Equally curious is the lack of outcry in the US media. Last week the Middle Eastern correspondent of “The Independent,” Patrick Cockburn, published two leaked reports about the terms of the “alliance” and the tactics that the Bush administration is using to get the Iraqi government’s approval by the end of July. Nobody denied them, but hardly any mainstream outlet in the US media reported them as a major story, either.

Cockburn revealed that the United States will retain more than 50 military bases in Iraq as part of the “strategic alliance” it is pressuring Baghdad to sign. They will not be defined as US bases, however, since US negotiators insist that a perimeter fence with a few Iraqi soldiers on it is a sufficient fig-leaf to make it an “Iraqi base.”

However, those American soldiers on “Iraqi bases” will be able to carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens without prior consultation with the Iraqi authorities, if US negotiators get their way. US soldiers, and American civilian contractors as well, will enjoy full legal immunity for their actions. So it will remain the case, as it has been since the invasion, that any American employed by the US government in Iraq can kill any Iraqi without having to explain and justify his or her actions to Iraqis. Indeed, the Unites States will be entitled to conduct entire military campaigns on Iraqi soil without consulting the Iraqi government. The US government is not even willing to tell the Iraqi government what American forces are entering or leaving Iraq under the terms of the “alliance,” apparently because it fears that the government would inform the Iranians.

Terms of this sort are familiar from the era of the European empires, when similar treaties were signed between, for example, the British government and its Iraqi colony in the Middle East. Ali Allawi, minister of finance in the Iraqi transitional government 2005-06, warns that this is “a reprise of that treaty,” and predicts that it will lead to the same “riots, civil disturbances, uprisings and coup” that filled the quarter-century between the British-Iraqi treaty in 1930 and the Iraqi revolt that finally overthrew the local puppet regime in 1958.

Some sort of treaty is needed to provide a legal basis for a continuing US military presence in Iraq, since the existing UN mandate lapses at the end of 2008. The particular treaty that the White House is forcing on Baghdad is designed to justify a permanent military occupation of Iraq, and as far as possible to tie the next administration’s hands when it comes to pulling US troops out of the country.

The Iraqi government will probably accept the US demands after some protests, because its survival depends on American troops. Washington is also threatening to allow $20 billion of outstanding US court judgments against Saddam Hussein’s regime to be executed, wiping out 40 percent of Iraq’s foreign exchange reserves.

The trickier question is what happens if President Bush’s successor is not the like-minded John McCain. To the extent that they can successfully pretend that the US has won the war in Iraq, they can attach a very high political cost to Barack Obama’s pledge to pull US troops out of the country, and this treaty also serves as part of that charade. But it does not oblige US troops to stay in Iraq forever. It just says they can if they want to. This game is not over, and neither is the war.

George W. Bush brought death and chaos to Iraq on the basis of lies. Now, as he staggers through the last months of his failed presidency, he is trying one more bit of trickery — forcing the Nuri Al-Maliki government to legitimize a long-term military occupation of Iraq in a treaty, which will make that sovereign country an American colony. The treaty would permit the maintenance of up to 50 American bases from which US forces could operate against perceived threats to their interests, and at no point would US military personnel nor contractors be answerable to Iraqis. Vice President Dick Cheney has reportedly been leading the negotiations on this agreement — characterized euphemistically as “ a strategic alliance” and has been bullying the Al-Maliki administration to agree to the deal before the end of this month.

It is hard to think of a more effective way of demonstrating so clearly that whatever specious nonsense the Bush administration may have spouted about liberating the Iraqi people from dictatorship and bringing them the blessings of democracy, the real truth all along was that the invasion was all about Washington’s desire to control a major oil-producing country. To realize that ambition, tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, hundreds of thousands more have been maimed and injured and countless others have had their lives ruined and torn apart.

Yet the Bush occupation was all wrapped up in the big promise that as soon as stability was restored to Iraq, US troops would pack up and leave. Washington’s British allies were certainly told and believed this falsehood — UK troops have been itching to leave Basra for months. But with the leaked news of negotiations on this “strategic alliance,” the lies are exposed and the real neocolonialist ambitions of this administration are laid bare.

The problem is that outrageous as the proposals may be, they are just as outrageously stupid. Only a blinkered and desperate president with his few remaining neocon acolytes could be so dumb as to imagine that forcing the Iraqi government to sign a piece of paper would in any way reinforce the US position in the country. Indeed, it is not necessary to be too smart to see that if such a deal were to be cut, it would, at a stroke, destroy what remains of US credibility in the region. Even more to the point, every Iraqi, every Arab and every decent citizen anywhere in the world would recoil at this brazen attempt to usurp the sovereignty of another country.

The Al-Maliki-led national unity government would be shattered before the ink had dried. The McCain Republican campaign might be tempted to embrace the deal but it is certain that Obama and the Democrats will reject it. Iran would walk away from any rapprochement with Washington and Al-Qaeda and its killers would welcome a new excuse for revenge butchery.

The “strategic alliance” talks must therefore be trashed — as is fitting for the last two-bit policy from a two-term, two-timing president who has tried to deceive everyone but has succeeded mostly in deceiving himself.

- Khaled Al-Maeena

Unmasking the real plans of American occupiers/invaders/terrorists sitting in the Pentagon

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

LONDON, 7 June 2008 — A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq’s position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

The accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq — a victory that he says Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

“The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.”-Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 — 10,000 more than when the military “surge” began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government. The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. “It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty,” said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimize the government in Baghdad that will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: “This is just a tactical subterfuge.” Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 ft and the right to pursue its “war on terror” in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called “strategic alliance” without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said that such a deal would create “a permanent occupation”. He added: “The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans.”

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.

The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.

Although Iraqi ministers have said they will reject any agreement limiting Iraqi sovereignty, political observers in Baghdad suspect they will sign in the end and simply want to establish their credentials as defenders of Iraqi independence by a show of defiance now.

The Iraqi government wants to delay the actual signing of the agreement but the office of Vice President Dick Cheney has been trying to force it through. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, has spent weeks trying to secure the accord.

Aijaz Zaka Syed

Unlike English poet Alexander Pope — I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came — I suffer from a natural discomfort with numbers. Which is why one had to be more than dependent on one’s more calculating classmates when it came to mathematics. Even now I often fail to fathom the fundamentals of my modest monthly budget.

So while everybody who’s somebody holds forth on the perils of rising inflation and declining dollar (Emirati dirham, like other Gulf currencies, is handcuffed to the greenback), I can’t join the conversation thanks to my ineptitude with numbers. But even if one doesn’t understand the first thing about inflation and budgetary constraints we brown expats of subcontinental variety currently face in the Gulf, one constantly feels its effects.

Six years ago when I landed in Dubai, my weekly grocery bill used to range between 250 dirhams to 300 dirhams at Lulu, the neighborhood supermarket. Today, we feel blessed if we can keep it between 500 dirhams and 600 dirhams, even though my wife still checks the price tag and thinks twice before throwing anything in her trolley. The bag of Basmati rice that would be yours for 60 dirhams now costs you more than 110 dirhams. The humble “roti” that you’d get two for a dirham now costs the double. The monthly school fees for my children used to be well under 1,500 dirhams. These days, I have to write a check of 2,500 dirhams. These two being my biggest monthly expenses after housing, they are my budgetary benchmarks.

They also leave two huge holes in my pocket. And like so many other struggling expats, one finds the going increasingly tough. This despite the substantial pay rise most companies and governments have given their staff over the past couple of years.

I hate talking about my financial and domestic woes. And this is not a veiled appeal to my bosses for a raise either. But I am genuinely perplexed by the unparalleled rise in cost of living. If a guy like me who has a reasonably nice job with a big media organization finds the daily grind challenging, I wonder how people whose pay is less than what I shell out for my kids’ school fee or groceries manage?

A great deal has been said about the world food crisis. But it is not as if food and the staples like rice and wheat are scarcer today. They are not. They have only got too pricey. There is no shortage of food for those who can offer the right price. Supermarket shelves are still bursting with bags of rice and wheat flour. Only their prices have shot up — out of reach of less fortunate.

Some of our friends in the West, especially pundits like Thomas Friedman of New York Times, have been running a campaign against oil-producing countries — read Arabs and Muslims — blaming the high oil prices for the world’s economic woes.

The crude prices may be partly responsible for global economic problems. But have holier-than-thou wonks like Friedman ever wondered what is driving the oil prices?

It is the quirky dollar that is driving the oil. And why has the mighty dollar gone berserk? The people of Iraq and Afghanistan would tell you why. It is Bush’s disastrous wars that have broken the greenback’s back. And it is not just the luckless people of Iraq and Afghanistan who are paying for this cowboy president’s Oedipal insecurities. From the suicidal farmers in India to the hungry multitudes of Africa, all of us are paying for these wars.

There is strong evidence now to suggest that the shooting price of energy is a direct result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the accompanying geopolitical instability.

As if these two disastrous campaigns were not enough to drive nervous energy markets crazy, our neocon friends are pitching for a war with Iran.

Can you blame the markets then if they are getting jittery? After all, Iran is one of the world’s biggest producers of oil. And in case some of us fail to recall, Iraq, the main front of the neocon war, too was a big producer of oil. Under Saddam, it was the second largest producer after Saudi Arabia.

So is this a mere coincidence that the oil prices shot up soon after the US attack on Iraq? When Bush took the Americans, and the rest of us, into the morass called Mesopotamia, the crude was selling at about a quarter of what it is today. And look where we are today, at $129 a barrel.

If things continue in this fashion, top economic brains warn, before long the world could be looking at $200 a barrel. Imagine what it could do to multiply our current economic woes.

Even a layman like me can see that markets are sensitive to bad news and their short- and long-term effects. Especially when it is inspired by the US, the world’s biggest economy and the custodian of the international trade and financial system. And all Bush has done over the past seven years is bombard markets with bad news.

Oil prices began to climb after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and have risen in tandem with the escalation of conflict and turbulence in the Middle East. There’s clearly a method in the madness. These wars are also contributing to the escalation of fuel cost and economic woes in indirect ways; by plunging the US ever deeper into debt and depreciating the dollar. The oil is largely priced in US dollars. And as the greenback’s value is eroded, oil-exporting countries demand more and more dollars for their produce.

Aside from pushing up oil and inflation, the war is also at the heart of the global food crisis. The prices of essential foodstuff and grains like rice and wheat have shot up because fuel prices have gone up; food production and its transportation are critically dependent on fuel.

The World Bank says food prices have more than doubled over the past three years. The price of rice, the staple for billions of Asians, is up 147 percent over the past year alone. The mounting food prices have caused hunger and riots across the Third World.

Maybe it is time for the Americans and the rest of the world to see that the disastrous consequences of Bush wars go beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. They have set the whole world on fire. And the first thing the Americans can do to put out the blaze is persuade the cowboy in the White House to bring the troops home.

— Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based journalist and commentator.

Just who are the real terrorists ?

By Linda Heard

Someone once told me if you’re going to tell a lie make it a whopper based on the premise the more outrageous the lie the more likely it is to be believed. At the time, I wrote off his advice as hogwash but as we see from the Iraq debacle, he was right. Five years later, the deceit continues undiminished and nobody has been held to account.

Britain’s Gordon Brown yesterday promised to hold an enquiry into the “mistakes” made in Iraq. Sounds good, but don’t hold your breath. All previous inquiries have been labeled “whitewashes”. They can’t afford the truth to come out else they might get a one-way ticket to The Hague.

Ambassador David Satterfield, and adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is doing the rounds of talk shows lauding America’s victories over Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

On one occasion the host interjected to mention the unpalatable fact that Al-Qaeda members only flocked to Iraq once the Americans were in place leaving Satterfield momentarily nonplussed.

It’s obvious that Satterfield is so saturated in the party line he forgot the Pentagon’s recently published study that found with certainty that Saddam Hussein had absolutely no links to Al-Qaeda. And lest we forget Saddam didn’t have WMD either, which means not only was the war immoral the prewar sanctions on that country that contributed to the deaths of over half-a-million Iraqi children were too.

Think about it for a moment. The warmongers invaded, crushed and occupied a country that was no threat to anyone. They stood by as it was looted, exacerbated sectarianism, flattened entire towns, tortured untold numbers of innocents, brought in gum-chewing, tattooed foreign mercenaries and paid crony companies billions of dollars for mythical reconstruction projects.

They then pretended to hand over sovereignty to that country while at the same time constructing permanent bases and the biggest US Embassy in history resembling a small town. They said they had no interest in Iraq’s oil, yet they are putting immense pressure on the Iraqi government (sic) to sign into law a bill that permits foreign (read American) oil companies to lock up decades-long deals. Let’s be frank. Iraq wasn’t a blunder, it was a crime. So how did they manage to get away with implanting their long-conceived plot to do away with Israel’s No. 1 foe, ensure their competitors couldn’t get their hands on Iraq’s resources and entrench their military might in the region? Future historians will no doubt be scratching their heads over this one. You had to live through it to believe it.

First, they cleverly used the politics of fear to sway public opinion. As noted in the Project for the New American Century’s document “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, the warmonger signatories - who later became senior members of the Bush administration - needed “a new Pearl Harbor”. On Sept. 11, 2001 they got it. Americans and their allies were in shock. Almost every country in the world was sympathetic and willing to do anything to help. And, boy, did they capitalize on that empathy even managing to persuade Russia to stay silent as they made deals with Caspian states to allow US bases.

Step one was a country where a giant bogeyman was supposed to be hiding out in a cave presumably equipped with a dialysis machine and a production studio and whose black-turbaned government forced women to wear a burqa and disallowed nail polish. But then Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld was disappointed because there weren’t enough targets for his bombs. It was no fun bombing a country into the Stone Age when it was already there.

Step two was the insidious demonizing of Muslims, thousands of whom were arrested and held for months without charge or access to lawyers. In that climate of fear, it was relatively simple to persuade the American people that Saddam Hussein was conniving with the people who brought down the World Trade Center. US officials warned of mushroom clouds; Prime Minister Tony Blair said British interests could be attacked within 45 minutes of Saddam giving the order. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell allowed himself to be used as their fall guy. He spouted the most unbelievable scripted codswallop the UN had ever heard…yet, bullied and bribed nation after nation pretended to believe him as IAEA chief Mohammed El-Baradei and UN weapons inspector Hans Blix did little to discredit the hoax.

Step three entailed replacing Osama in people’s minds with Saddam, who overnight morphed into a hydra-headed monster whose idea of a pleasant weekend was gassing and torturing his own people.

Step four was ‘Shock and Awe’ which illuminated the Baghdad skyline on March 19, 2003. As their bombs and missiles rained down on crowded market places scattering limbs, they told us those bombs and missiles were Saddam’s even though the Independent’s Middle East correspondent inconveniently dug up their Made in the USA shards.

As the months went on, we began to wonder what happened to the WMD. They told us it was only a matter of time before it would be unearthed from under the sands or discovered in a tunnel under one of Saddam’s palaces. They even suggested it may have been shipped off to a neighboring country for safekeeping!!

Step five was an orchestrated administration campaign to inject us with mass amnesia. Never mind about the weapons, they said. We are here to liberate the poor Iraqi people from their evil dictator and deliver freedom and democracy. Look, look, they said. The Iraqis have purple fingers! With up to one million dead, Iraqis are lucky they have any fingers at all.

To be fair, they couldn’t have done it without the aid of a compliant, supine media, which embedded its reporters with US battalions and agreed not to show captured US soldiers, flag-draped coffins, military funerals or scenes of blood-soaked Iraqi civilians. Independent reporters who neglected to abide by the script were discredited, refused access to information and even shelled.

I still recall a live report from David Chater of Sky News, who saw the barrel of a US tank slowly turn toward the Palestine hotel - known to be a journalist’s hang-out - before firing its shell killing three reporters. The Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya were also hit.

With so much information on tap I’m flabbergasted that so many people still believe the Iraq fairytale. I wish they’d get in touch with me. I’ve got a few pyramids and a sphinx going cheap. Sad, isn’t it!

Images of War: Afghanistan (© zoriah/www.zoriah.com)

By Suzanne Baroud

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. At the risk of sounding terribly cliche, I have to say that my understanding of war, the pain of war, the humanity that is able to rise above war, the valiant spirit of mothers and children caught in the midst of war….were ever so slight until I stumbled upon the miraculous work of the award-winning war photographer called Zoriah.

What an amazing and talented artist. What wonders this man captures with his camera. It is as if he has an enchanting ability to transport the viewer of his work right to the heart and soul of the many conflicts he has covered. I cannot remember being so moved by a photograph and the story which it imparts.

I always felt that I had a keen understanding of the tragedy in Iraq, the catastrophes of Palestine and Afghanistan, but after witnessing Zoriah’s works of pure genius, my understanding seems deeper and closer then ever before. The wisdom in the eyes of Gaza’s children, the knowing expression of an elderly man wasting away in a Baghdad hospital, I leave Zoriah’s work with a profound sense of grief and admiration that is rarely felt. It is like I too have been there.

Zoriah is a multiple award winning photojournalist whose work has been seen in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries, museums and publications, with clients such as Newsweek, the BBC, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Grand Reportage and many many others.

Before his career as a photojournalist, Zoriah was involved in disaster management and humanitarian aid to developing countries. But after a brief period of working for a large international aid organization, he realized that red tape and bureaucracy would significantly hamper the work he hoped to do: “So I decided to pick up my camera after a long hiatus and set out to document disasters and humanitarian crisis. I believed that I could use the power and emotion of the still image to educate the people about suffering in the developing world.”

And so this man travelled to uncountable countries with “his camera as his weapons” to do just that. For the greater part of his career, Zoriah has worked as a freelance photographer, explaining that he could only “go so far” with the corporate mainstream media: “I do feel like there is quite a lot of censorship in the mainstream media. My editors in the past used to tell me ‘this is an incredible story Zoriah…you know it will never sell, right?’ It is so painful to put every bit of yourself into a story and risk your life to capture images that will never end up being seen.”

I asked Zoriah if he felt that his work with mainstream media was highly censored, he replied, saying: “Censorship can be in the form of blatantly removing blood or body parts from images of war, down to subtle censorship, choosing only a select group of images from a larger story or not running graphic or controversial stories/images at all. As long as news remains a moneymaking industry, publications will cater to what they believe the average person wants to see. Somehow it has become ok to show violence for the sake of movies and entertainment but not for the sake of news and education.”

Zoriah has been in the heart of the world’s most ruthless of conflicts and disasters, from working as an embedded journalist with the US army to his work as a disaster technology specialist with the American Red Cross. I asked him to share an experience that had made a profound impact on his life as a humanitarian worker and a photojournalist. He narrated an episode in Pakistan: “After the Asian Earthquake I was in Pakistan photographing the injured in a local hospital. A man came up to me and gently put his arm around me and pointed down the hall. He did not speak English but I knew he wanted me to follow him. He took me into a room where a woman sat crying next to the body of dead man as two other women comforted her. I found out that the man was her husband and had just died do to injuries he sustained when their house collapsed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon photographing this family mourn the loss of this man. I was truly humbled by the fact that they had brought me into their lives to let me document such a personal and painful moment. They seemed to instantly understand my motivations for being there and I believe that I understood their need to show the world the pain that they were experiencing. To this day my favorite photograph is from this moment and the experience will remain in my heart as long as I live.”

He shared another story of his experience as an embedded journalist with the US army in Iraq:

“While in Iraq, I find out that a group of detainees are about to be released. Although formally forbidden to take photos of any detainees under any circumstances, I am close with the unit and they invite me along.

The detainees, still blindfolded and cuffed are led into a convoy of armored vehicles. We set out to drop the men off in the area that they had been taken into custody the day before. It is about a fifteen minute drive and the sun is beginning to set.

‘This is it, this is where we picked them up’ says one of the soldiers as the convoy pulls off to the side of the road in a residential neighborhood. The detainees are led out of the vehicles and lined up against a wall. Their blindfolds are taken off and when the men realize that they are being released they begin to cry with relief. They look absolutely exhausted, their clothes filthy and torn with a look of fear and confusion on their eyes.

As the soldiers escort the detainees back to their homes, a crowd of friends and relatives begins to gather on the streets. There is screaming, crying and hugging as the community sees the missing men are alive. Two women faint and are held up by their husbands and sons.

One man starts screaming in English “why did you do this? Why did you take them? They are graduate students at the University. These are not terrorists, they are students! Why did you take them? What did you do to them?”

Zoriah’s work is raw and it is real. It does not induce a false sense of comfort nor can it leave the viewer with the faintest feelings of impartiality. I have an ironic feeling of frustration as our exchange ends; I simply cannot find the words to commend this man for the invaluable work he has done. I conclude with asking him about his source of inspiration. His answer is frank and poignant: “Every photographer is different and has different motivations. My motivation is pretty simple…I just want to change the world… and I am fairly sure I can do it.”

- For more on Zoriah’s work, visit his website: www.zoriah.com and his blog: www.zoriah.typepad.com.

Sami Al Hajj and his son: freedom at last (Photo: Aljazeera)

By Aijaz Zaka Syed

My youngest one is as old as the young son of Sami Al Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was carried home to freedom on a stretcher this week, after seven years in the Guantanamo Bay.

Watching a shockingly emaciated Hajj shower kisses on his son at a Khartoum hospital, where he has been admitted after freedom from the high security prison in Cuba, I couldn’t help think about my own kids.

I put myself in Hajj’s shoes and wonder how I would fare if I ended up in Bush’s gulag. What would happen to my own children and loved ones? And what chance would I have at freedom, if I got picked up by America’s friends and allies and ended up in the Bay, just as Hajj had been?

You might think I don’t have to end up in the Bay. I am not a terrorist. And I haven’t done anything except hold a mirror to the US and other big powers once in a while. But then Hajj is not a terrorist either. He did not fly any planes into the symbols of America’s might. He did not try to blow himself up near the White House or Pentagon. The only crime he ever committed was work for Al Jazeera, the television channel the Americans seem to think is run by Osama Bin Laden.

Hajj was on his way to Afghanistan to report for Al Jazeera when he was picked up by the authorities in Pakistan in 2001 and handed over to the US. Despite holding a valid visa to work as a journalist in Afghanistan, he was bundled off as an ‘enemy combatant’ to Gitmo.

Today, reunited with his family in Khartoum, Hajj is understandably emotional. Articulating his happiness at finding himself among his loved ones and sense of outrage at what he has been through at the same time is almost overwhelming for him. And more than the relief at his freedom, it is the thought of those left behind that torments him.

Watching the homecoming of Hajj, shown live on Al Jazeera for hours and watched by an outraged Arab world, a senior colleague comments: “I find it hard to believe this can happen in our age and time. And that too by the world’s greatest democracy and champion of human rights! I mean, how could you lock up a guy for years without a trial and charges and get away with it!”

Exactly. How could they do this to an individual in this age? Especially doing this to a journalist, working for a prominent media organisation as Al Jazeera, is a little hard to stomach. Yet that’s precisely what happened to Hajj. Repeated appeals and campaigning by human rights agencies and media groups failed to persuade the US authorities to let Al Jazeera man go.

If they are capable of doing this to a renowned journalist backed by a big organisation, I shudder to think what ordinary and nameless individuals picked up from around the world could go through at Gitmo. And there are hundreds of ordinary and nameless individuals languishing in the hellhole called Guantanamo Bay.

This is what Sami Al Hajj was trying to point out after his release. Fearing for those left behind, Hajj repeatedly appealed to the world’s conscience - if there’s such a thing as the world’s conscience - calling for justice and urgent efforts by the international community for freeing those still held at the Bay in most horrific conditions, without a trial, without a charge and without due process.

I don’t know how many people paid attention to what this distraught man was saying. But this is something that no human being with any belief in humanity and human dignity can ignore.

“Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad and they get worse by the day,” Hajj told the media from his hospital bed. “Our human dignity was violated and the US administration went beyond all human values, moral values, religious values. There are people from more than 50 countries who are completely deprived of all rights and privileges. They will not give them the rights that they give their animals.”

Strong words! And a damning indictment of the US and all that it stands for. But there’s no reason to doubt Hajj’s claim. The journalist himself is a walking proof of all that is wrong with the Gitmo. The Al Jazeera man was in his early 30s when he was captured. Today he’s in his late 30s but looks like a man in 80s. So much so his own brother Asim couldn’t recognise him when he was brought out of the aircraft.

It’s believed that by targeting Hajj, the US was trying to punish Al Jazeera for trying to show the alternate reality of the war on terror that the US media can’t or dare not. Al Jazeera, with its refreshingly bold approach and daredevil team of reporters, offers you the perspective you won’t find on CNN.

David Remes, a lawyer fighting for the Bay detainees, says there was also an element of racism in the way Hajj was treated and abused at the Bay. “The Europeans would never receive this sort of treatment,” Remes points out. As a result, Hajj is today “psychologically damaged” and might never recover from the trauma he underwent over the past seven years.

You would think those responsible for this would at least be repentant, if not offer a sincere apology to Hajj and his family. But as if responding to the outrage in the Muslim world over Hajj episode, a US spokesperson says Al Jazeera man was pretending to be ill when the aircraft carrying him landed in Khartoum. The official told ABC News Hajj was a ‘manipulator and a propagandist’ and was “faking illness” on his homecoming.

Hajj was in such a bad shape that the Sudanese and US officials accompanying him were alarmed. Sudanese minister Kamal Obeid says that “Hajj was exhausted, with very slow heart beats and low blood pressure”.

Only after he was drip-fed that the journalist was able to regain strength.
And there are still hundreds of Sami al Hajjs out there languishing in the biggest gulag of our time, waiting for their turn and waiting for freedom and justice. Contrary to the US claims, most of those individuals are innocent people who happened to be at the wrong place at a wrong time. Except for an odd militant or two, most of them are ordinary men like you and me.

This has been repeatedly argued by rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and several courageous lawyers and activists in the US. The Washington Post ran a whole series proving why most of the Bay detainees are innocent people picked up by booty hunters in Afghanistan and Pakistan who were turned over as ‘terrorists’ to the US for a cash price.
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And the world has forgotten these innocent men. After all, it has enough of its own existing problems, from shooting oil prices to worsening food crisis. Who cares for nearly 300 faceless individuals, especially if they happen to be Arab or Muslim? There’s not a greater sin than being a Muslim in the time of terror war.

When will the US and the world wake up to the shame of Guantanamo Bay? Because this gulag and all that goes on in there fly in the face of all that America and the civilized world believe in. Freedom, justice, democracy, the rule of law and human rights; everything is at stake in the Guantanamo Bay.

Nicolas D Kristof of New York Times says, “it would take an exceptional enemy to damage America’s image and interests as much as Bush and Cheney already have with Guantanamo.”

They certainly have. The Guantanamo Bay violates everything that the US once celebrated and epitomised. And it’s not the terrorists and so-called enemy combatants who are incarcerated there. It’s America’s ideals that are imprisoned in the Guantanamo Bay. Free them, Mr Bush!

-Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based journalist and commentator. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: Aijaz.Syed@hotmail.com.

Iraq accounted for 60 per cent of worldwide terrorism fatalities.

By Ramzy Baroud

The data provided in the US State Department’s annual terrorism report for 2007 points to some interesting if puzzling conclusions. The much publicised document, made available 30 April via the State Department’s website, makes no secret of the fact that Al-Qaeda is back, strong as ever. It also suggests that violence worldwide is nowhere near subsiding, despite President Bush’s repeated assurances regarding the success of his “war on terror”.

Will the report inspire serious reflection on the US’s detrimental foreign policy and its role in the current situation?

Let’s look at some of the data. To start with, take Pakistan. Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda-inspired attacks in the country more than doubled (from 375 to 877) between 2006 and 2007. These attacks have claimed the lives of 1,335 people, compared to 335 in a previous report. That is a jump of almost 300 per cent.

Then there’s Afghanistan, which was supposedly “liberated” shortly after 11 September 2001. The number of attacks reported there increased a sharp 16 per cent in 2007. Some 1,127 violent incidents killing 1,966 people represent a significant surge in violence compared to 2006’s 1,257 deaths.

There have also been many other violent incidents around the world, including but not limited to North Africa, the terrorist bombings in Algeria in particular.

But this is barely half the story — or 40 per cent of it, if we want to be as specific as the terrorism report. Iraq accounted for 60 per cent of worldwide terrorism fatalities.

Considering the fact that the horrifying violence currently witnessed in Iraq was unheard of prior to the US invasion of 2003, will the Bush administration take a moment to connect the dots? Even a third grader could figure this one out: the US occupation was a major, if not sole factor, in Iraq’s relentless bloodbath. In order to right the wrong in Iraq, the US military should clearly just withdraw, and Bush — or whoever next claims the White House — should stop fabricating pretexts to justify a prolonged mission.

On 1 May 2003, President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. As he stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln a huge banner behind him bore the words “Mission Accomplished”. The New York Times then wrote, “the Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall.”

Instead, more than five years after Bush’s speech, the administration seems determined to maintain a military surge, having added 20,000 soldiers. Making no apologies for the war’s contribution to an increase in terrorist activities, Bush’s officials continue to rationalise the surge as a commonsense response to ongoing violence, conveniently omitting the US’s own part in this violence. The State Department report doesn’t classify any of the thousands of innocent victims killed by US or coalition forces as victims of terrorism.

Russ Travers, deputy director of the Counterterrorism Centre, stated on the day the report was published, “It’s a fair statement that around the globe people are getting increasingly efficient at killing other people.” While Travers’ assertion is undoubtedly true, there seems to be no intention of providing any context, no connection drawn to the US’s direct invasions, or indirect but equally devastating role in campaigns of violence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.

But what the State Department’s terrorism report didn’t fail to do was once again identify Iran as the world’s “most active” state sponsor of terrorism. As reported in the Associated Press on 1 May, Iran was responsible for “supporting Palestinian extremists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, whereÉ elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps continued to give militants weapons, training and funding.”

The irony is that the report further contributes to the US’s long-touted case for war against Iran; ironic because the report’s findings, if viewed responsibly, substantiate the claim that the Bush administration’s policies have only made the world more unsafe. Wouldn’t a war against Iran hike up the number of violent or terrorist incidents?

It also remains unclear how powerful Al-Qaeda really is, and how much of its capabilities were hyped in order to enable the Bush administration to continue its mission. Consider the two occasions Al-Qaeda was back in the news recently.

News media cited official Afghani reports attributing the recent assassination attempt on US-ally Afghani President Hamid Karzai to Al-Qaeda. In other reports, the US rationalised its own assassination of a leading Somali militia leader Aden Hashi Eyrow on 1 May as targeting a key Al-Qaeda member. It’s not the logic of the assassination that is key here, but rather the fact that while Al- Qaeda has reached a position of strength that can penetrate several layers of defences in Afghanistan, the US is getting itself involved in a regional feud in Somalia. Why would the Bush administration be chasing Al-Qaeda in Somalia, as in Iraq, if the group is reportedly in the most powerful position in Afghanistan?

Moreover, if Al-Qaeda indeed exists on such a large and influential scale in so many countries, isn’t it time to question the logic used by the Bush administration’s “war on terror” that was meant to weaken and destroy Al- Qaeda in the first place?

It may be, of course, that Al-Qaeda’s power and outreach is inflated for political reasons, where every conflict the US is involved in becomes immediately reduced to those who support, shield or host Al-Qaeda or Al- Qaeda inspired groups, thus justifying US military intervention anywhere.

Instead of dealing with the obvious truths that the terrorism report highlights, the authors of the report have resorted to another logic that places blame squarely on external circumstance, never holding the US government accountable for its actions.

Finally, is there really a need for lengthy reports that cost large sums of money and thousands of work hours if the lessons gleaned are always the wrong ones, leading to more blunders that prompt more violence, and more terrorism reports?

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk

It doesn’t look as though Americans in Iraq are going anywhere anytime soon. Officially Iraq’s sovereignty was handed back to its rightful owners years ago, which means the occupiers remain in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government. OK, try not to laugh!

Fact is the occupying power is digging in for the long haul and there is little the Iraqi leadership can do about it even if it wanted to. When challenged about their supersized, superfortified embassy sprouting on prime land — which one must assume was sequestered rather than gifted by Iraq — and their mushrooming permanent military bases, the Americans cite the postwar German/Japan models.

In other words, they are saying the victor has a perfect right to hang around the necks of the vanquished in perpetuity.

In this case, I don’t blame Arab governments for refusing to send their diplomatic personnel into the jaws of danger merely to hobnob with Iraqi officials for the purposes of affording them legitimacy when, as we know, the real decision-making takes place in Washington.

It could be that the Pentagon’s new plan to transform the so-called Green Zone into a walled-off oases of 21st century Western luxury is, in part, an attempt to lure reluctant ambassadors into lending credibility to the game with their mere presence and encourage their own diplomats to put their lives on the line.

According to the Associated Press, the US has a $5 billion, “five-year development ‘dream list’ to create a zone of influence around the new $700 million embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound”. In fact, it is now likely to cost more than $1.3 billion as we know from an emergency supplemental funding request delivered by President Bush to Congress in 2006.

The article quotes US Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, whose team conceived the plan, as explaining, “When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time.”

Unfortunately, we still don’t know the purpose of such a gigantic embassy, dubbed “Fortress America” that will house 1,000 permanent staff, a 3,000-strong security contingent and a substantial Marine detachment over 104 acres. To give this context, it is six times bigger than the UN headquarters in New York.

But we do know that it will contain its own power station, water and sewage treatment facilities, school, office buildings, apartment blocks, clubhouse, swimming pools and a cinema.

So how did the US take possession of 104 acres back of prime real estate smack in the center of the capital? Surely, the Iraqi government lodged its objections. Certainly the British would be up in arms if, say, the French decided Hyde Park would be a suitable site for its diplomatic mission and it’s doubtful the Egyptians would acquiesce to any extension of the US Embassy that would demolish their historical upmarket Garden City district.

Yet, according to reports, an interim Iraqi government actually transferred these 104 acres to the US in 2004 lock, stock and barrel. This is scandalous. No government would willingly sign away their people’s assets, let alone to an enemy responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its innocent citizens. This is just another indication that the Iraqi leadership is not in charge.

Returning to the Green Zone, Capt. Karnowski envisages shopping malls, luxury condos, state-of-the-art hospitals, an amusement park and five-star hotels featuring in the blueprint.

The Marriott is already signed up, he says, although Marriott International is reluctant to confirm or deny this claim.

Are we, therefore, to construe that the Green Zone is slated to become a sort of embassy extension where Americans, elite Iraqis and visiting dignitaries can pretend they’re in Manhattan, at least when they are not actively ducking rockets and mortars?

It’s surely bad enough that the Americans effectively destroyed Iraqi culture during the 2003 invasion when they stood back as museums were looted and libraries ransacked. Are they now going to be allowed to superimpose their own “culture” onto Iraq’s very heart?

Moreover, there is something horribly elitist about this plan. What about the rest of Baghdad that is still suffering from power outrages and still resembles a war zone in parts?

Rather than construct multistoried malls for the benefit of diplomats and generals, the US should be working to restore the power/water treatment plants and reequip the hospitals it destroyed.

Take a good look at the ugly face of 21st century imperialism folks, for this is surely it. Whether they’ve got 5,000 troops in country or 150,000 the Americans have moved into Iraq and they’ll stay there as long as they can.

Ray Hanania, Arab News

I think I actually now prefer a president who can’t properly pronounce the word “nuclear” over someone who keeps using it like the theme in a “Get Out the Vote” election strategy.

Hillary Clinton said she would “obliterate” Iran if Tehran were to use a nuclear weapon against Israel.

My guess is Israel can take care of itself. But vowing to “obliterate” Iran sure doesn’t hurt when you face the very likely possibility that the only way to win the Democratic Party nomination is to steal it.

Clinton clearly believes she can broader her support among Jewish voters by pandering to them, and by throwing a Barry Goldwater mushroom cloud to Republicans who think John McCain isn’t quite fanatic enough.

I had to look up the word “obliterate” just to make sure I knew exactly what she meant.

It has several meanings, according to the dictionary I am sure Hillary is using, Merriam-Webster. It has a long history of applying racist definitions to Persian-looking and other Middle Easterners.

The M-W says “obliterate” means: “1a — to remove utterly from recognition or memory; 1b — to remove from existence, destroy utterly all trace, indication, or significance; 1c — to cause to disappear (as a bodily part or a scar) or collapse (as a duct conveying body fluid), to remove like a “blood vessel” obliterated by inflammation; or, 2 — to make undecipherable or imperceptible by obscuring or wearing away; or, 3 — cancel.”

I think Hillary means Option “1B,” to remove from existence, destroy utterly all trace, indication or significance. Of course, I could never read the precise style of a dictionary definition. M-W defines an “Arab” as a “vagabond,” too. The United Nations tried definition “2” on Saddam Hussein, but before they could wear away the dictator’s power, President Bush, who pronounces “nuclear” as “nuke-a-ler,” tried “1b” too.

That’s how we got into this Iraq thing, which is a war but technically isn’t a real war by Constitutional definition, I suppose, which is a conflict that has been going on for four and one-half years beyond the date in which we were told we had “prevailed.” Frankly, I’d prefer to apply “1b” to the Iraq War. I just want to make it go away at this point. We can’t win. And I don’t see how bombing Iran will help us achieve what voters have clearly asked the next president to do: Get us out of Iraq.

But to “obliterate” Iran gets Americans into a potential conflict that has a certainty of allowing them to prevail in a real way, as opposed to the White House “spin” way.

Hey. Can’t get us out of Iraq. Obliterate Iran. It makes sense. Certainly more sense than even the lies we were spoon fed about Iraq in the first place.

“Obliterate” Iran and we don’t have to worry about Osama Bin Laden. Rising oil prices. The collapsing home mortgage market. The recession. What to do when social security runs out? Maybe Hillary didn’t mean “obliterate.” I mean, we can give Hillary, a first lady who couldn’t remember whether or not the Serbs were firing bullets at her as she was running or walking from the helicopter during a tour of Bosnia, a little slack, don’t you think?

Maybe she meant to say, “obligate,” as in “We need to obligate Iran to adhere to international weapons treaties so they don’t threaten to fire weapons at Israel.”

Which is a good point since Iran’s off-kilter President Ahmadinejad hasn’t really threatened to nuke Israel.

Chances are even before Iran’s nuclear plants even get close to being weapons-grade facilities, Israel, using American-made fighter jets and bombs, will probably render the nuclear centers useless.

Is Hillary trying to disparage Israel, by chance? Maybe she is trying to act the way a man acts when someone suggests that a “woman” might fight their battle for them.

This could be a too sophisticated strategy to appeal to male voters. You know. The “I don’t need my wife to fight my battles for me because I am a man.”

Maybe Hillary meant to use the term “obfuscate” rather than “obliterate,” which would make sense since she clearly has no idea how to handle foreign policy.

If the strategy of fiery rhetoric doesn’t bump up the polls the way she hopes, she can always fall back on her “get out of trouble” card again, and use the “dumb blond routine.” It worked with the Bosnian bullets raining down on her head, her decision to stick it out with Bill despite his embarrassing infidelity, and the last time her polls started to slip

Iraq: The Israeli Agenda
Neil Berry

Last week’s fifth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war occasioned much debate in the British media. But the contributors to the debate conspicuously did not include the war’s principal British proponent, Tony Blair. As little inclined as ever to admit to culpability over the Iraq debacle, Britain’s former prime minister has “moved on” and is now preoccupied with a dizzying assortment of fresh projects.

One of those projects has been to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict, though the signs are that it is already giving way to other concerns, such as combating climate change and making a start on his lucrative memoirs. Perhaps only a professional fantasist could ever have supposed that tackling a problem that has defeated so many others would require anything less than sustained personal commitment over an indefinite period of time. That Blair undertook the role of Middle East peace envoy on a part-time basis speaks for itself.

It is true that in the run-up to the war Blair insisted Britain would only support a US-led pre-emptive war on condition that it entailed an all-out effort to resolve the conflict. But, echoing the manifesto of the neoconservatives in Washington, he also intimated that simply deposing Saddam Hussein would yield a substantial peace dividend. The settling of the Palestine-Israel conflict was billed as the prize, the great byproduct of “regime change” in Baghdad and the emergence of Iraq as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.

What is extraordinary is how Blair, along with all the other protagonists of the Iraq war, continues to be portrayed as having acted in good faith if nothing else. The mainstream Western media are little receptive to the notion that he functioned as one of the chief salesmen for an ideology-driven war whose true objective, far from being to make the Middle East a better place, was to create havoc. In the US, claims that the war was undertaken for essentially cynical reasons find no place in public discussion; they do not find much more of one in British public discussion either, for all that the media in Britain permit more open discussion of the Palestine-Israel conflict.

The British journalist, Jonathan Cook, makes a persuasive case that the chaos into which Iraq has descended was anything but an unintended consequence of the Anglo-American invasion. Yet Cook’s is a voice unfamiliar not just to the general public but even to the more educated sections of British society. A sometime staff writer for the Guardian who now lives in Nazareth, he operates, perforce, as an underground writer, publishing much of his work on the US online left-wing magazine Counterpunch: His trenchant analysis of the motives underlying the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq is deemed far too radical for mainstream consumption.

In his last book, Blood and Religion (2006), Cook argued that Israel is a pseudo-democracy whose systematic oppression of the Palestinian people was inherent in the Zionist program to establish a Greater Israel, an expanded military state where only Jewish blood and religion count. In his new book, Israel and the Clash of Civilizations, he argues that the Iraq war was as much a Zionist as an American undertaking and that it was inspired in no small degree by the US/Zionist ambition to sow discord in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is a view of course that Cook is by no means unique in holding but few have propounded it with such cogency. Cook maintains that civil war in Iraq followed by partition was the projected upshot of the invasion, just what the pro-Israeli neoconservatives who came to shape US foreign policy under President George W. Bush wanted. He points out that while the United States has long gone in for regime change, especially in its “backyard” of Central America and the Caribbean, it has usually had in mind whom it was planning to install as its dependable “strong man”. In the case of Iraq, however, the striking thing is that it has not been impossible to identify the strong man Washington hoped would replace the old one. Indeed, the actions of the Bush administration guaranteed that no such strong man would emerge. In short, Iraq seems to be a case of “regime overthrow” rather than “regime change”, with brutal military occupation the actual goal of the invasion rather than a brief transitional phase while a new leader was installed.

Cook’s central contention is that this distinctive strategy for regime overthrow originated not in Washington but in Israel. In the early 1980s, he writes, the Jewish state’s security establishment developed ideas about dissolving other states of the Middle East with a specific view to nurturing ethnic and religious conflict. This was in effect a re-imagining of the regional power structure that existed under the Ottoman Empire — before the arrival of European colonialists and their reordering of the Middle East into nation states — but with Israel replacing Turkey as the local imperial power. The aim was to partition potentially powerful states such as Iraq and Iran between their rival ethnic and sectarian communities, thus neutralizing the threat they posed to Israel.

Not the least benefit of the ensuing chaos, it was calculated, would be that Israel became free to pursue the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the occupied territories, and possibly from inside Israel too. That such a policy was bound to promote Islamic radicalism was seen by Zionist strategists as positively desirable, and the fact is that with the rise of Hamas in the occupied territories, Israel has succeeded in greatly increasing Western alarm about Islam as a global threat, in the process identifying the question of what to do with the Palestinians with the issue of what the West should do about Islamic extremism.

Of a piece with all this has been Israel’s assiduous cultivation of a view of itself as standing in the frontline of an epoch-making “clash of civilizations” between East and West. The message of Israel and the Clash of Civilizations is that Israel was all too well prepared to exploit the US “war on terror” to reshape the Middle East in its own interests and that the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians and that of the US occupation of Iraq have become inextricably bound up with each other.

What is certain is that the Zionist plan to remake the Middle East is no figment of Jonathan Cook’s imagination. Nor can it be doubted that, fortuitously or not, events have unfolded much as the plan envisaged. Whether Cook is right in every particular may be a matter for debate, but that he has written a challenging book is not. Nevertheless, the Western media can be expected to carry on peddling the line that the instigators of the Iraq debacle meant well, ignoring the indications that they were party to a project designed not to bring peace to the Middle East but to ensure Israel’s safety, albeit at the cost of plunging the Middle East into chaos.

Tariq A. Al-Maeena

Five years into the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, US President George Bush claims it’s been worth the haul. And although he claims he sheds tears for every one of the 4,000 soldiers he has sent to their death, little or no mention is made of an estimated one million or more innocent Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives as a result of his grand adventure.

Remember the proponents of the aggression then? One of the strongest, Tony Blair of UK, is now keeping himself as far away from Bush as possible, and privately conceding that this adventure was a “horrible mistake”. Was he led into this deceitful adventure by the smooth-talking neocons of the Bush administration and the gentle prodding by Bush himself?

Whatever happened to Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Donald Rumsfeld, those active cheerleaders of a murderous and unlawful invasion of countries that harbored no ill will toward the United States or the American people?

Now facts have proven that this carnage was built on an orchestrated deception, first among Bush’s constituents through selective manipulation of the media, and later by presenting false evidence to the world community, the United Nations.

These past five years will remain embedded in the minds of those who had lost their loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan with pain and anguish. For it was under the US commander in chief’s instructions that US soldiers used their most brutal practices among the prisoners by systematic acts of rape, sodomy and torture. They dehumanized their captives. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have become synonyms for gross human rights violations.

This continued and sustained assault on these two countries is a violation that has for the most part remained unchecked. Most nations are noticeably quiet on US transgressions in the region. It has not, however, failed to create deep chasms of animosity and suspicion of Bush’s intentions. His talk of “spreading democracy in the Middle East” is now met with derision.

For poll after poll has proven that the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Iraq see themselves as worse off today than before the acts of aggression began. And really, what was it that Bush was after?

There were no weapons of mass destruction. Nor was there any sign of ill will in either country toward the United States. Was it the oil? Well maybe, but there was always the specter of an Israeli lobby dictating terms and manipulating things.

Many of those smooth-talking neocons who convinced their constituents of a doomsday situation if Iraq was not invaded are not around today parading in front of the world’s media with their false assertions. Perhaps they are keeping a low profile for fear of being charged for these crimes against humanity in some tribunal sometimes in the future.

For, if you strip away all irrational rhetoric, what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan is indeed a crime. A war crime to match the Israeli aggression and occupation of Palestine! How closely were the two operations orchestrated with Bush and Sharon in power?

And while one languishes in a vegetative state, the other is free to continue his acts of violence unchecked and unfettered.

And not satisfied with the amount of innocent blood already spilled, he is now pushing for another bloody adventure, this time against Iran.

Iran is an Islamic state, and Bush should think long and hard before contemplating any such moves. He lacks credibility when he talks about Iran’s threat to the region and his evidence is dismissed as a joke.

The people in this region have seen and heard enough. The real threat has never been Iran. The real threat has been the willingness of some to believe what Bush says.

While Bush and his remaining neocons work covertly with the Israelis in an effort to convince the world body of the threat Iran poses, such alarmist talk has indeed been falling on deaf ears in the region.

As for the tears Bush says he sheds for the fallen, everyone knows they are as fake as the evidence he presented to justify his wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Linda Heard

Russian President Vladimir Putin was recently quoted as saying, “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the US. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent”. Finally, a voice of reason amid a cacophony of belligerence!

Indeed, the way Iran is being treated by the so-called “international community” a euphemism for nations hanging onto the coattails of Uncle Sam, does little except provide fodder for hard-liners and their incendiary rhetoric. As long as Iran is under siege it will lock down rather than open up.

I’m reminded of the competition between the sun and the wind that saw a man pulling his coat around him. Both boasted that they would be the one to force the man to remove his coat. The wind whipped up a gale but the man simply held on tightly to the garment. Then the sun shone brightly and you know what happened next.

Iran is being demonized for a purpose. The deliberately orchestrated hype and fear mongering obscures the reality. There is no evidence that Iran is working toward the production of nuclear weapons as a US National Intelligence Estimate clearly stated and far from threatening its neighbors it is going out of its way to extend the hand of friendship to all except Israel, which, by the way, President Ahmadinejad did not advocate wiping off the map. His words were mistranslated and the Western media shirked its duty to correct the mistake.

The fact is Iran remains the last obstacle to America’s complete domination of this region. If Washington could force Iran to do its bidding its hegemonic ambitions in this part of the world including control over its resources would be attained. This, my friends, is the bottom line. This is why Iraq was invaded and occupied and this is why Iran is being groomed to go the same way.

Weakening Iran is just another phase of the neoconservative New Middle East itinerary, which has nothing to do with spreading freedom and democracy and all to do with increasing US power and that of its regional satellite Israel. If you look at it from the American/Israeli perspective, a defanged Iran might translate into a compliant Shiite population, and the eventual demise of Hezbollah and Hamas due to a lack of funding and weapons.

But this truth isn’t palatable to most ordinary people and flies in the face of international law. So, just as the US contrived to come up with a pretext — or rather a series of pretexts — to invade Iraq, it has had to find excuses to sanction Tehran, perhaps as a prelude to military action.

Indeed, a military assault on Iran looks ever more likely. Now that the nuclear weapons pretext has been shelved, US officials have changed tack and are now accusing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard of supplying Iraqi Shiite militias with weapons, cash and training with which to attack US forces. They say Iran is using surrogates to wage a de facto war on the US. Gen. David Petraeus and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are expected to reinforce this message to Congress today; not that President Bush requires approval from lawmakers to launch strikes on Iran.

The Daily Telegraph has quoted “a Whitehall assessment” to the effect “a strong statement” from Gen. Petraeus “about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities”.

Indicators that there may be a looming conflagration include the recent resignation of head of CENTCOM Adm. William Fallon, who famously said “there will be no attack on Iran on my watch”.

Then came the botched attack by the Iraqi military backed up by the US on pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Basra, which defeated the purpose of eradicating hostile entities by, instead, bringing them together to expose the feebleness of the Iraqi Army whose members deserted or switched sides in large numbers.

At the same time, Israel is engaged in a five-day homeland security exercise that, according to Ha’aretz will “include a simulated missile attack on civilian areas — some missiles with chemical warheads”. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has urged his army to remain alert, while Hezbollah believes the emergency drill is a precursor to a new war.

The Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert is trying hard to allay Lebanese and Syrian suspicions but when it comes to Iran he has made his position clear. He says he is absolutely certain Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and has called for a “concerted world action” to prevent it from attaining such “nonconventional capacity”.

Another piece of the puzzle may be found in the presence of US warships off the coast of Lebanon, while, according to reports, the USS Abraham Lincoln strike force is heading for the Gulf along with a US nuclear submarine. It’s also worth noting that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Minister Robert Gates have recently been touring the region and holding discussions with its leaders.

Countries here are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on this issue. Most moderate predominately Sunni states fear the unencumbered rise of Iran that would empower Shiite populations and result in a power play. But at the same time, they don’t want another war on their doorstep in which they will be coerced to take sides for when the dust settles Iran will still be their neighbor and memories in this part of the world tend to be long. The mistrust between Sunnis and Shiites engendered by the occupation of Iraq has tragically fueled this divide, which plays right into the hands of the US and Israel.

A visiting alien might wonder why Muslim nations sharing the same turf and seas and with so much in common can’t get together preferring instead to allow a foreign power to set their neighborhood alight to further its geopolitical interests with virtually no risk to itself. On second thoughts, one doesn’t have to be an extraterrestrial to be shocked at the ridiculousness of that.