Send letter to Congress opposing U.S. military aid to Israel
Since Wednesday, Israel has killed at least 30 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including five children under the age of 16 playing soccer and a six month-old child (Ha'aretz).
Israel's Deputy Defense Minister threatened Palestinians with genocide, calling for an even "bigger holocaust" against residents of the Gaza Strip (Telegraph).
Israel killed almost all of these Palestinians in air strikes most likely with its arsenal of fighter jets-Boeing F-15's and Lockheed F-16's-and attack helicopters-Boeing Apaches and Cobra Bells-paid for by U.S. taxpayers through annual military aid to Israel. Almost all of Israel 's air-to-surface missiles, which would have been used in these attacks, are produced by U.S. corporations such as Hughes, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin and paid for by U.S. tax dollars. The US Campaign opposes all attacks on civilians.
Is this how you want your tax dollars spent-to kill children playing soccer and to carry out threats of genocide?
President Bush has requested $2.55 billion in military aid for Israel in his proposed FY2009 budget. That's a 9% increase in military aid to Israel above and beyond actual spending in 2007. The budget request is the first installment of a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding signed between the United States and Israel in August 2007 to increase military aid by 25% over the next decade, totaling $30 billion.
The United States should be cutting off military aid to Israel for its human rights abuses and violations of the U.S. Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, not increasing it.
TAKE ACTION
1. Have your organization endorse a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittees with oversight over military aid calling on them to reject Bush's budget request and cut off military aid to Israel.The letter and a current list of organizational endorsements are below.The deadline for signing this letter is March 4.To have your organization endorse the letter, click here.
2. Individuals can send a letter opposing military aid to Israel to the Members of Congress who serve on these Appropriations Subcommittees by clicking here.
3. Sign up to receive an organizing packet with postcards, petitions, and fact sheets to educate and organize people in your community to oppose military aid to Israel .To get your organizing packet, click here.
Israeli Minister Says Palestinians Bringing Holocaust Upon Themselves
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Feb. 29, 2008
Washington, DC- The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) strongly condemns the deplorable comments made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai. Speaking on Israel's army radio yesterday, Vilnai said: "They (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." ADC calls on the US and Israeli governments to take immediate action and publicly condemn, reject, and repudiate the Holocaust comment made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.
Vilnai’s comments were reported in numerous international media sources, see below:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/israel-warns-of-palestinian-holocaust-as-violence-in-gaza-worsens/2008/02/29/1204226991566.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL296121231
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/29/headlines
ADC National Executive Director Kareem Shora said, “The Holocaust represents the darkest moment in human history. It included the systematic detainment, torture, and extermination of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The statement made by Vilnai echoes the darkest of eras and should be immediately rejected.” Shora added, ”During this horrible time in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it is shameful for an Israeli Government official to say the Palestinians are bringing a Holocaust upon themselves. Israel should be working to end its 41-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
According to reports, in the three months since the peace talks at Annapolis, Maryland more than 205 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and children; and five Israelis have been killed. Additionally, Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has been in effect since January 12, has left the Gaza Strip without supplies essential to purify water, increasing the risk of contamination and disease. Residents in Gaza are being urged to boil all drinking water to avoid the spread of disease because more than one-third of Gaza's water supply is now untreated. United Nations officials have warned the situation could lead to a health disaster for Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Now, media reports indicate Israel is believed to be preparing a major military ground operation in Gaza.
Washington, DC- The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) strongly condemns the deplorable comments made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai. Speaking on Israel's army radio yesterday, Vilnai said: "They (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." ADC calls on the US and Israeli governments to take immediate action and publicly condemn, reject, and repudiate the Holocaust comment made by Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai.
Vilnai’s comments were reported in numerous international media sources, see below:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/israel-warns-of-palestinian-holocaust-as-violence-in-gaza-worsens/2008/02/29/1204226991566.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL296121231
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/29/headlines
ADC National Executive Director Kareem Shora said, “The Holocaust represents the darkest moment in human history. It included the systematic detainment, torture, and extermination of approximately six million European Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. The statement made by Vilnai echoes the darkest of eras and should be immediately rejected.” Shora added, ”During this horrible time in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it is shameful for an Israeli Government official to say the Palestinians are bringing a Holocaust upon themselves. Israel should be working to end its 41-year occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
According to reports, in the three months since the peace talks at Annapolis, Maryland more than 205 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and children; and five Israelis have been killed. Additionally, Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has been in effect since January 12, has left the Gaza Strip without supplies essential to purify water, increasing the risk of contamination and disease. Residents in Gaza are being urged to boil all drinking water to avoid the spread of disease because more than one-third of Gaza's water supply is now untreated. United Nations officials have warned the situation could lead to a health disaster for Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. Now, media reports indicate Israel is believed to be preparing a major military ground operation in Gaza.
Turkey's Anti-War Diva
By PELIN TURGUT/ISTANBUL, TIME, Feb. 28, 2008
Better known for her tabloid love affairs, plastic surgery and husky voice, transsexual Turkish diva Bulent Ersoy makes the unlikeliest political activist. Yet she has caused a storm of outrage by becoming the only public personality to speak out against Turkey's invasion of northern Iraq. So pervasive is the nationalist climate that Ersoy has been vilified for declaring — on a national TV equivalent of American Idol, where she is a judge — that if she had a son, she would not have sent him to fight this war. She is now under investigation for being "anti-military".
Ersoy is widely popular but the response to her declaration has been bellicose. Turkey's TV watchdog said it has been inundated with calls protesting Ersoy's comments. Officials at the Star TV channel are said to be contemplating dropping her as a judge on the show. An Istanbul prosecutor has begun an investigation into her remarks on the grounds that they could put people off military service, compulsory for men over the age of 18. Many of those killed in Iraq have been conscripts. (This is not the first time Ersoy has been on the wrong side of the military: she was banned from performing for several years following a military coup in 1980.)
When she delivered her remarks on the air, Ersoy immediately got into a fight with a fellow celebrity judge, the singer Ebru Gündeþ, countered that were she to have a son, she would have no hesitation in having him "fight like a lion." "Martyrs killed in action do not die, the country will never be divided," she said. Ersoy retorted that there was no point taking refuge in clichés.
Turkey's military has said it has killed 230 PKK rebels in the current operation while Turkish losses stood at 27, but the casualty reports cannot be independently confirmed. The conflict has killed up to 40,000 people since 1984.
The U.S., mindful of upsetting Iraq's only fairly peaceful region, is urging Turkey for a quick end to the invasion targeting separatist Kurdish rebels based in the mountains of north Iraq. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Ankara today, called for the operation to be over shortly and for the government to address the economic and social concerns of its Kurdish minority, which complains of cultural and other restrictions as well as deep poverty.
But his call appears to be falling on deaf ears. Turkey is awash in fervent nationalism — newspapers are emblazoned with military heroics and jingoistic slogans. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is loathe to upset a cosy alliance with the far right Nationalist Action Party, which helped it push through a recent law allowing headscarves in universities. Although thousands of Kurds in the southeast have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the invasion, there has otherwise been virtually no public opposition (with the exception of Ersoy's comment) to the invasion. A political solution to the Kurdish issue appears a long way off.
Since November, the U.S. has been providing military intelligence to the Turkish army, helping target air strikes. Now that the Turkish army is engaged on the field in north Iraq, it may not want to pull back quickly. Ankara is deeply suspicious of the regional Kurdish government there, which it accuses of supporting the PKK. It is also concerned that the largely autonomous region may seek independence, in turn fomenting similar demands by its own restive Kurdish population. In response to Gates' remarks, the Turkish military did not set a timetable for withdrawal. "Short term is a relative notion. Sometimes it is a day, sometimes a year," Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit said after his meeting with Gates.
Better known for her tabloid love affairs, plastic surgery and husky voice, transsexual Turkish diva Bulent Ersoy makes the unlikeliest political activist. Yet she has caused a storm of outrage by becoming the only public personality to speak out against Turkey's invasion of northern Iraq. So pervasive is the nationalist climate that Ersoy has been vilified for declaring — on a national TV equivalent of American Idol, where she is a judge — that if she had a son, she would not have sent him to fight this war. She is now under investigation for being "anti-military".
Ersoy is widely popular but the response to her declaration has been bellicose. Turkey's TV watchdog said it has been inundated with calls protesting Ersoy's comments. Officials at the Star TV channel are said to be contemplating dropping her as a judge on the show. An Istanbul prosecutor has begun an investigation into her remarks on the grounds that they could put people off military service, compulsory for men over the age of 18. Many of those killed in Iraq have been conscripts. (This is not the first time Ersoy has been on the wrong side of the military: she was banned from performing for several years following a military coup in 1980.)
When she delivered her remarks on the air, Ersoy immediately got into a fight with a fellow celebrity judge, the singer Ebru Gündeþ, countered that were she to have a son, she would have no hesitation in having him "fight like a lion." "Martyrs killed in action do not die, the country will never be divided," she said. Ersoy retorted that there was no point taking refuge in clichés.
Turkey's military has said it has killed 230 PKK rebels in the current operation while Turkish losses stood at 27, but the casualty reports cannot be independently confirmed. The conflict has killed up to 40,000 people since 1984.
The U.S., mindful of upsetting Iraq's only fairly peaceful region, is urging Turkey for a quick end to the invasion targeting separatist Kurdish rebels based in the mountains of north Iraq. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Ankara today, called for the operation to be over shortly and for the government to address the economic and social concerns of its Kurdish minority, which complains of cultural and other restrictions as well as deep poverty.
But his call appears to be falling on deaf ears. Turkey is awash in fervent nationalism — newspapers are emblazoned with military heroics and jingoistic slogans. The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is loathe to upset a cosy alliance with the far right Nationalist Action Party, which helped it push through a recent law allowing headscarves in universities. Although thousands of Kurds in the southeast have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the invasion, there has otherwise been virtually no public opposition (with the exception of Ersoy's comment) to the invasion. A political solution to the Kurdish issue appears a long way off.
Since November, the U.S. has been providing military intelligence to the Turkish army, helping target air strikes. Now that the Turkish army is engaged on the field in north Iraq, it may not want to pull back quickly. Ankara is deeply suspicious of the regional Kurdish government there, which it accuses of supporting the PKK. It is also concerned that the largely autonomous region may seek independence, in turn fomenting similar demands by its own restive Kurdish population. In response to Gates' remarks, the Turkish military did not set a timetable for withdrawal. "Short term is a relative notion. Sometimes it is a day, sometimes a year," Chief of Staff Yasar Buyukanit said after his meeting with Gates.
Many Troops Would Stay In Iraq if a Democrat Wins
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 29, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential candidates, significant numbers of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq regardless who wins in November.
In their final push to win the nomination, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York are repeating their vow to start withdrawing U.S. forces shortly after taking office. But both candidates draw a distinction between "combat" troops, whom they want to withdraw, and "noncombat" troops, who will stay to battle terrorists, protect the U.S. civilian presence and possibly train and mentor Iraqi security forces.
Conducting such missions would likely require the sustained deployment of tens of thousands of American military personnel, foreign-policy advisers from both campaigns acknowledge.
"No one is talking about getting to zero," said a foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Obama.
The upshot: When voters go to the polls in November, they will face a stark choice about the future direction of the Iraq war, but they won't be able bring American involvement to a quick end.
Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain was an early and vocal advocate of the Bush administration's troop "surge," which deployed an additional 30,000 combat troops to Iraq as part of a broader shift to a counterinsurgency strategy.
If elected, Sen. McCain has said that he would maintain the current approach, which focuses on protecting Iraq's population by having small units of American troops live in neighborhoods and towns. That would mean keeping U.S. troop levels at or near 130,000, roughly the number deployed there since the start of the war in 2003.
The two Democratic candidates, by contrast, want to abandon the counterinsurgency approach. Both say they will begin withdrawing combat troops shortly after taking office and will shift the remaining U.S. forces to a more limited mission that won't include explicitly trying to deter Iranian activity within Iraq or moving against Shiite militias responsible for much of the country's carnage.
Sen. Obama, on his Web site, says that the drawdowns would begin "immediately" and continue at a pace of one to two brigades -- which each normally number between 3,500 and 4,500 troops -- per month. He hopes to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, or by the middle of 2010.
Obama foreign-policy adviser Dennis McDonough says the Democratic front-runner wants the residual U.S. forces to focus on counterterrorism -- largely directed against al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown extremist organization responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- and protecting the enormous U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Mr. McDonough says Sen. Obama is open to leaving additional forces in Iraq to train and advise Iraqi security forces, but only if the Iraqi government takes steps to reconcile the country's sectarian groups. Absent such progress, Sen. Obama would halt the training effort, he said. "Our support wouldn't be open-ended," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Sen. Obama.
Mr. McDonough declined to say how many troops Sen. Obama hoped to have in Iraq after the initial 16 months of withdrawals. But another senior adviser said that Mr. Obama was comfortable with a long-term U.S. troop presence of around five brigades, which -- depending on the numbers of support troops and other personnel -- would likely leave around 35,000 troops in Iraq.
Sen. Clinton takes a similar approach and promises to begin withdrawing combat troops within 60 days of assuming the presidency. Lee Feinstein, the Clinton campaign's national security director, says "the principal focus" of the remaining U.S. forces will be fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq.
U.S. forces would no longer patrol Iraqi streets and towns or seek to prevent sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis, or between Arabs and Kurds, he said. "Our troops will not be there to patrol a civil war," Mr. Feinstein said.
Mr. Feinstein declined to say how many troops Sen. Clinton wanted to leave in Iraq, but said that they would be there "in sufficient numbers to carry out the more limited set of missions."
Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com
WASHINGTON -- Despite the rhetoric of the Democratic presidential candidates, significant numbers of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq regardless who wins in November.
In their final push to win the nomination, Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York are repeating their vow to start withdrawing U.S. forces shortly after taking office. But both candidates draw a distinction between "combat" troops, whom they want to withdraw, and "noncombat" troops, who will stay to battle terrorists, protect the U.S. civilian presence and possibly train and mentor Iraqi security forces.
Conducting such missions would likely require the sustained deployment of tens of thousands of American military personnel, foreign-policy advisers from both campaigns acknowledge.
"No one is talking about getting to zero," said a foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Obama.
The upshot: When voters go to the polls in November, they will face a stark choice about the future direction of the Iraq war, but they won't be able bring American involvement to a quick end.
Republican front-runner Sen. John McCain was an early and vocal advocate of the Bush administration's troop "surge," which deployed an additional 30,000 combat troops to Iraq as part of a broader shift to a counterinsurgency strategy.
If elected, Sen. McCain has said that he would maintain the current approach, which focuses on protecting Iraq's population by having small units of American troops live in neighborhoods and towns. That would mean keeping U.S. troop levels at or near 130,000, roughly the number deployed there since the start of the war in 2003.
The two Democratic candidates, by contrast, want to abandon the counterinsurgency approach. Both say they will begin withdrawing combat troops shortly after taking office and will shift the remaining U.S. forces to a more limited mission that won't include explicitly trying to deter Iranian activity within Iraq or moving against Shiite militias responsible for much of the country's carnage.
Sen. Obama, on his Web site, says that the drawdowns would begin "immediately" and continue at a pace of one to two brigades -- which each normally number between 3,500 and 4,500 troops -- per month. He hopes to have all combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office, or by the middle of 2010.
Obama foreign-policy adviser Dennis McDonough says the Democratic front-runner wants the residual U.S. forces to focus on counterterrorism -- largely directed against al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown extremist organization responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians -- and protecting the enormous U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Mr. McDonough says Sen. Obama is open to leaving additional forces in Iraq to train and advise Iraqi security forces, but only if the Iraqi government takes steps to reconcile the country's sectarian groups. Absent such progress, Sen. Obama would halt the training effort, he said. "Our support wouldn't be open-ended," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for Sen. Obama.
Mr. McDonough declined to say how many troops Sen. Obama hoped to have in Iraq after the initial 16 months of withdrawals. But another senior adviser said that Mr. Obama was comfortable with a long-term U.S. troop presence of around five brigades, which -- depending on the numbers of support troops and other personnel -- would likely leave around 35,000 troops in Iraq.
Sen. Clinton takes a similar approach and promises to begin withdrawing combat troops within 60 days of assuming the presidency. Lee Feinstein, the Clinton campaign's national security director, says "the principal focus" of the remaining U.S. forces will be fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq.
U.S. forces would no longer patrol Iraqi streets and towns or seek to prevent sectarian strife between Shiites and Sunnis, or between Arabs and Kurds, he said. "Our troops will not be there to patrol a civil war," Mr. Feinstein said.
Mr. Feinstein declined to say how many troops Sen. Clinton wanted to leave in Iraq, but said that they would be there "in sufficient numbers to carry out the more limited set of missions."
Write to Yochi J. Dreazen at yochi.dreazen@wsj.com
US patrol shoots Iraqi civilian
BBC News, Feb. 28, 2008
The US troops in Iraq have shot dead a civilian who approached their patrol near the town of Miqdadiya, north of Baghdad, the military said.
One report quoting the military said it the man had a cast on his broken arm under his jacket, which troops had mistaken for an explosives vest.
He had ignored instructions to stop and a warning shot, the military said.
There have been a series of bomb attacks in the Muqdadiyah area, which the US has blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Iraqi police said the man was elderly, hard of hearing and suffering from mental disabilities, although the US military could not confirm this.
"There was nothing suspicious found on him but the incident is under investigation," said military spokesman Maj Brad Leighton.
"It was a mistake... an unfortunate incident," he added.
The US troops in Iraq have shot dead a civilian who approached their patrol near the town of Miqdadiya, north of Baghdad, the military said.
One report quoting the military said it the man had a cast on his broken arm under his jacket, which troops had mistaken for an explosives vest.
He had ignored instructions to stop and a warning shot, the military said.
There have been a series of bomb attacks in the Muqdadiyah area, which the US has blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Iraqi police said the man was elderly, hard of hearing and suffering from mental disabilities, although the US military could not confirm this.
"There was nothing suspicious found on him but the incident is under investigation," said military spokesman Maj Brad Leighton.
"It was a mistake... an unfortunate incident," he added.
Despite Antiwar Rhetoric, Clinton-Obama Plans Would Keep US Mercenaries, Troops in Iraq for Years to Come
Jeremy Scahill interview, Democracy Now!, Feb. 28, 2008
Jeremy Scahill reports Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will not “rule out” using private military companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. Obama also has no plans to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009. Despite their antiwar rhetoric, both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton have adopted the congressional Democratic position that would leave open the option of keeping tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq for many years. [includes rush transcript]
For audio & video downloads, click here
JUAN GONZALEZ: “A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation [magazine] that if elected Obama will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq.” That’s the lead sentence from a new article by independent journalist Jeremy Scahill. The adviser to Obama also said that the Illinois Senator does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new president will be sworn in.
AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill joins us now in the firehouse studio, is author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest article in The Nation is called “Obama’s Mercenary Position.” It appears in this issue of The Nation.
Welcome to Democracy Now! So, what did you find out, Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I started looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s Iraq plans, and one of the things that I discovered is that both of them intend to keep the Green Zone intact. Both of them intend to keep the current US embassy project, which is slated to be the largest embassy in the history of the world. I mean, I think it’s 500 CIA operatives alone, a thousand personnel. And they’re also going to keep open the Baghdad airport indefinitely. And what that means is that even though the rhetoric of withdrawal is everywhere in the Democratic campaign, we’re talking about a pretty substantial level of US forces and personnel remaining in Iraq indefinitely.
In the case of Barack Obama, I wanted to focus in on what his position is on private military contractors, particularly armed ones like those that work for Blackwater. And the reason I focus on Obama instead of Hillary on this is because Barack Obama has actually been at the forefront of addressing the mercenary issue in the Congress. In February of 2007—this was way before the Nisour Square massacre, where Blackwater forces killed seventeen Iraqis and wounded twenty others—in February of 2007, Barack Obama sponsored legislation in the Senate that sought to expand US law so that—
JUAN GONZALEZ: This is just after he got into the Senate, right?
JEREMY SCAHILL: This was in 2007. This was a year ago. And so, this was a major piece of legislation by Obama, and it was done in concert with Representative David Price from North Carolina in the House, a Democrat. And Obama’s legislation basically said we realize that there are loopholes in the law that allow Blackwater and other contractors to essentially get away with murder, and so what we need to do is make it so that US law applies to not only Defense Department contractors, but State Department contractors like Blackwater. If they murder someone in Iraq, we can prosecute them back in the United States.
Now, that legislation hasn’t passed at this point, and it may never pass. I mean, the fact is that the Bush administration actually issued a statement opposing that legislation, and I want to read to you what Bush said. He said that law would have, quote, “intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."
And so, I started to look at this reality. Obama is saying he wants to keep the embassy. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Green Zone. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Baghdad airport. Who’s guarding US diplomats right now at this largest embassy in the history of the world? Well, it’s Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp; it’s these private security companies.
And so, I started talking to some of the Obama campaign people. And it really took days for them to actually get back to me and provide someone to talk to me on the record. I started doing interviews with some of his people, and they said, “We can’t answer these questions.” And so, finally I talked to a senior foreign policy person, who said, yes, the reality is that we can’t rule out, we won’t rule out, using private security forces. And I said, well, Senator Obama has identified them as unaccountable, and the reality is, his law may not pass before he takes office, if he wins, and so Obama could potentially be using forces that he himself has identified as both unaccountable and above the law. Long pause. Right.
And so, the situation right now is that Obama seems to have painted himself into a corner on this issue, because the reality is, Obama’s people are saying, well, we’re going to increase funding to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security division. They say, ideally, the people we want to be guarding US diplomats in Iraq will be fully burdened US government employees who are accountable to US law. But the irony right now is that the war machine is so radically privatized that there are about 1,100 mercenaries doing diplomatic security in Iraq right now. There are only 1,400 diplomatic security agents in the entire world, and only thirty-six of them are in Iraq.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, let me ask you, in terms of this whole issue of mercenaries in general, I mean, are we facing the possibility that a Democratic president would in essence reduce the troops but increase the mercenaries?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Juan, this is a great question, and it was one of the reasons why I started looking at this. I want to read you a quote here. Joseph Schmitz, who’s one of the leading executives in the Blackwater empire, recently said this: “There is a scenario where we could as a government, the United States, could pull back the military footprint, and there would then be more of a need for private contractors to go in.” So apparently these contractors see a silver lining in that scenario. You know, the reality is, right now, that these forces are one of the most significant threats to Iraqis in the country. I mean, we’ve seen scores of incidents where they’ve shot at them, etc.
But as you know, Juan, this is a bipartisan industry. I mean, Bill Clinton really gave rise to this phenomenon of the military contractors. We know that Dick Cheney was running Halliburton in the ’90s. Who was giving Dick Cheney all of those contracts? Well, it was Bill Clinton. And the Democrats have long been good for the war contracting industry. There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton is the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the defense industry. Number two is John McCain. Obama is number four. Chris Dodd is ahead of him. It’s very interesting. It’s a bipartisan phenomenon.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk beyond the mercenaries, beyond the military contractors, about their policies in Iraq. I wanted to turn to an excerpt of Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Cleveland, Ohio. This is NBC News Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert.
JEREMY SCAHILL: First of all, Russert’s question is sort of a false question. He shouldn’t have asked that—if Iraqi government says you should leave. What Russert should have said to them is, over 80 percent of Iraqis, conservatively, say they want the United States out now; will you respect the will of the Iraqi people? Of course, that question is not going to be asked by Tim Russert or Brian Williams on one of these debates. But the reality is, listening to Obama and Clinton, they’re giving the impression that what they’re going to do is immediately begin a total withdrawal of US forces.
Now, I’ve looked very carefully at both of their Iraq plans, and both Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama have lifted much of their Iraq plans from two sources. One is the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and then the other is the 2007 Iraq supplemental, which was portrayed as the Democrats’ withdrawal plan. And both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a three-pronged approach to what they see as a longer-term presence in Iraq. They say that US personnel are going to remain in the country to protect diplomats and other US officials in the country. And we’ve already talked a bit about that with Obama. Hillary Clinton appears to be taking the same approach on that. Number two is that they want to keep trainers in place that will train the Iraqi military. At present, there’s 10,000 to 20,000 US trainers, all of whom will require security, so that’s a substantial force. And then the third is that they’re saying that they want to keep a force in place to, quote, “strike at al-Qaeda,” in the words of Barack Obama’s Iraq plan.
When the Institute for Policy Studies did an analysis of what this would mean, they said it’s 20,000 to 60,000 troops, not including contractors. And right now we have a one-to-one ratio with contractors and troops in the country. 20,000 to 60,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq, this is something that over the course of ten years the Congressional Budget Office says could cost half-a-trillion dollars. This doesn’t include the fact that you have to have troops bringing supplies in and out of Iraq. It doesn’t include the troops that Obama and Clinton are going to keep in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere. I mean, this is actually a pretty sustained indefinite occupation that’s going to be on the table if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are in office and take power.
And I mean, you know, the reality is that now would be the time for people to raise these issues, and yet no one is talking about this. It’s “Oh, yeah, Barack Obama is going to withdraw troops from Iraq.” Well, not exactly. He’s actually looking at keeping a pretty sizeable deployment. The other thing about them is they’re both calling for an increase in the number of troops in the permanent US military. In the case of Obama—and Juan, you’ve brought this up recently on the show—in the case of Obama, he says 90,000 new troops. Well, that’s going to be a $15 billion increase in military funding just for those troops to be in the United States, not including their deployment.
The other thing is that Obama is saying he wants to increase the US occupation of Afghanistan by 7,000 troops. What’s interesting is that we see Hillary Clinton, in her Iraq rhetoric, trying to move to the left; Obama, I think, now feeling that he’s going to be facing John McCain, is moving to the right. I mean, his rhetoric talking about striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, yes, he pointed out the irony of McCain criticizing him for that because there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush invaded, but Obama is sort of adopting their language now. And in his plan, the idea of striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, I mean, who is al-Qaeda in Iraq? I mean, what—the Iraqi resistance is largely Iraqis who are attacking US troops. And so, Obama is—he’s sort of positioning himself for this debate to make himself seem tough against John McCain.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole question of the increase in troops, because when I asked Samantha Power, as his foreign policy adviser, about this issue, she talked about the US military being stretched and the need for even in peacekeeping to have what she called “boots on the ground” and that weren’t sufficient. But the reality is obviously that there are many American troops in other parts of the world, like South Korea, like Japan, like, to some degree, Europe, that are not being—not—doing nothing else except occupying those countries, and they could be redeployed if the Army needed more troops.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, what that indicates, I think, is that Obama is going to have an interventionist, expansionist foreign policy. I mean, that certainly was the policy of the Clinton administration. I mean, in fairness, though, Barack Obama, more than Hillary Clinton and certainly more than John McCain, who’s talking about having troops in Iraq for a hundred years, Obama is talking about trying to increase the UN presence in Iraq. He’s trying to bring in regional countries. I mean, he has a pretty serious diplomatic plan for Iraq. The problem is that it doesn’t cancel out his military plan.
On the case of the increase in troops, what Obama’s people told me is that we need these 90,000 troops desperately, because our troops need a rest. Some of them are serving three, four tours over in Iraq, and so we need to get them in there. But the reality is, you don’t get 90,000 troops and then be able to deploy them overnight. So, clearly, they’re thinking about this for years and years to come. I think the reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are actually going to be in the business of permanently ending the US occupation of Iraq. That’s a deadly serious issue, and it needs to be front and center on this campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, thanks very much for joining us. Jeremy has written the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. It’s just been announced that he’s won a George Polk Award—his second—for this book. Congratulations. You’ll be on Bill Maher this week?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Next Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Next Friday, talking about these issues.
Jeremy Scahill reports Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will not “rule out” using private military companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. Obama also has no plans to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009. Despite their antiwar rhetoric, both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton have adopted the congressional Democratic position that would leave open the option of keeping tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq for many years. [includes rush transcript]
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JUAN GONZALEZ: “A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation [magazine] that if elected Obama will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq.” That’s the lead sentence from a new article by independent journalist Jeremy Scahill. The adviser to Obama also said that the Illinois Senator does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new president will be sworn in.
AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill joins us now in the firehouse studio, is author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest article in The Nation is called “Obama’s Mercenary Position.” It appears in this issue of The Nation.
Welcome to Democracy Now! So, what did you find out, Jeremy?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I started looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s Iraq plans, and one of the things that I discovered is that both of them intend to keep the Green Zone intact. Both of them intend to keep the current US embassy project, which is slated to be the largest embassy in the history of the world. I mean, I think it’s 500 CIA operatives alone, a thousand personnel. And they’re also going to keep open the Baghdad airport indefinitely. And what that means is that even though the rhetoric of withdrawal is everywhere in the Democratic campaign, we’re talking about a pretty substantial level of US forces and personnel remaining in Iraq indefinitely.
In the case of Barack Obama, I wanted to focus in on what his position is on private military contractors, particularly armed ones like those that work for Blackwater. And the reason I focus on Obama instead of Hillary on this is because Barack Obama has actually been at the forefront of addressing the mercenary issue in the Congress. In February of 2007—this was way before the Nisour Square massacre, where Blackwater forces killed seventeen Iraqis and wounded twenty others—in February of 2007, Barack Obama sponsored legislation in the Senate that sought to expand US law so that—
JUAN GONZALEZ: This is just after he got into the Senate, right?
JEREMY SCAHILL: This was in 2007. This was a year ago. And so, this was a major piece of legislation by Obama, and it was done in concert with Representative David Price from North Carolina in the House, a Democrat. And Obama’s legislation basically said we realize that there are loopholes in the law that allow Blackwater and other contractors to essentially get away with murder, and so what we need to do is make it so that US law applies to not only Defense Department contractors, but State Department contractors like Blackwater. If they murder someone in Iraq, we can prosecute them back in the United States.
Now, that legislation hasn’t passed at this point, and it may never pass. I mean, the fact is that the Bush administration actually issued a statement opposing that legislation, and I want to read to you what Bush said. He said that law would have, quote, “intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."
And so, I started to look at this reality. Obama is saying he wants to keep the embassy. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Green Zone. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Baghdad airport. Who’s guarding US diplomats right now at this largest embassy in the history of the world? Well, it’s Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp; it’s these private security companies.
And so, I started talking to some of the Obama campaign people. And it really took days for them to actually get back to me and provide someone to talk to me on the record. I started doing interviews with some of his people, and they said, “We can’t answer these questions.” And so, finally I talked to a senior foreign policy person, who said, yes, the reality is that we can’t rule out, we won’t rule out, using private security forces. And I said, well, Senator Obama has identified them as unaccountable, and the reality is, his law may not pass before he takes office, if he wins, and so Obama could potentially be using forces that he himself has identified as both unaccountable and above the law. Long pause. Right.
And so, the situation right now is that Obama seems to have painted himself into a corner on this issue, because the reality is, Obama’s people are saying, well, we’re going to increase funding to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security division. They say, ideally, the people we want to be guarding US diplomats in Iraq will be fully burdened US government employees who are accountable to US law. But the irony right now is that the war machine is so radically privatized that there are about 1,100 mercenaries doing diplomatic security in Iraq right now. There are only 1,400 diplomatic security agents in the entire world, and only thirty-six of them are in Iraq.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, let me ask you, in terms of this whole issue of mercenaries in general, I mean, are we facing the possibility that a Democratic president would in essence reduce the troops but increase the mercenaries?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Juan, this is a great question, and it was one of the reasons why I started looking at this. I want to read you a quote here. Joseph Schmitz, who’s one of the leading executives in the Blackwater empire, recently said this: “There is a scenario where we could as a government, the United States, could pull back the military footprint, and there would then be more of a need for private contractors to go in.” So apparently these contractors see a silver lining in that scenario. You know, the reality is, right now, that these forces are one of the most significant threats to Iraqis in the country. I mean, we’ve seen scores of incidents where they’ve shot at them, etc.
But as you know, Juan, this is a bipartisan industry. I mean, Bill Clinton really gave rise to this phenomenon of the military contractors. We know that Dick Cheney was running Halliburton in the ’90s. Who was giving Dick Cheney all of those contracts? Well, it was Bill Clinton. And the Democrats have long been good for the war contracting industry. There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton is the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the defense industry. Number two is John McCain. Obama is number four. Chris Dodd is ahead of him. It’s very interesting. It’s a bipartisan phenomenon.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk beyond the mercenaries, beyond the military contractors, about their policies in Iraq. I wanted to turn to an excerpt of Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Cleveland, Ohio. This is NBC News Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert.
TIM RUSSERT: You both have pledged a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. You both have said you’d keep a residual force there to protect our embassy, to seek out al-Qaeda, to neutralize Iran. If the Iraqi government said, “President Clinton or President Obama, you’re pulling out your troops this quickly? You’re going to be gone in a year, but you’re going to leave a residual force behind? No. Get out. Get out now. If you don’t want to stay and protect us, we’re a sovereign nation. Go home now,” will you leave?AMY GOODMAN: Senators Clinton and Obama debating in Cleveland on Tuesday. By the way, we invited both foreign policy advisers both from the Obama and from the Clinton camp to talk about their positions on private contractors as well as on Iraq, and they both declined. Jeremy, their positions?
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, if the Iraqi government says that we should not be there, then we cannot be there. This is a sovereign government, as George Bush continually reminds us.
Now, I think that we can be in a partnership with Iraq to ensure the stability and the safety of the region, to ensure the safety of Iraqis and to meet our national security interests. But in order to do that, we have to send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to be there permanently, which is why I have said that as soon as I take office, I will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we will initiate a phased withdrawal, we will be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. We will give ample time for them to stand up, to negotiate the kinds of agreements that will arrive at the political accommodations that are needed. We will provide them continued support.
But it is important for us not to be held hostage by the Iraqi government in a policy that has not made us more safe, that’s distracting us from Afghanistan, and is costing us dearly, not only and most importantly in the lost lives of our troops, but also the amount of money that we are spending that is unsustainable and will prevent us from engaging in the kinds of investments in America that will make us more competitive and more safe.
TIM RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, if the Iraqis said, “I’m sorry, we’re not happy with this arrangement; if you’re not going to stay in total and defend us, get out completely”—they are a sovereign nation—you would listen?
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Absolutely. And I believe that there is no military solution that the Americans, who have been valiant in doing everything that they were asked to do, can really achieve in the absence of full cooperation from the Iraqi government. And—
TIM RUSSERT: Let me ask—let me ask you this, Senator. I want to ask you—
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: And they need to take responsibility for themselves. And—
TIM RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we—if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in totality and al-Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what’s—
TIM RUSSERT: But this is reality.
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: No—well, it isn’t reality. You’re—you’re making lots of different hypothetical assessments.
I believe that it is in America’s interests and in the interest of the Iraqis for us to have an orderly withdrawal. I’ve been saying for many months that the administration has to do more to plan, and I’ve been pushing them to actually do it. I’ve also said that I would begin to withdraw within sixty days based on a plan that I asked begun to be put together as soon as I became president.
JEREMY SCAHILL: First of all, Russert’s question is sort of a false question. He shouldn’t have asked that—if Iraqi government says you should leave. What Russert should have said to them is, over 80 percent of Iraqis, conservatively, say they want the United States out now; will you respect the will of the Iraqi people? Of course, that question is not going to be asked by Tim Russert or Brian Williams on one of these debates. But the reality is, listening to Obama and Clinton, they’re giving the impression that what they’re going to do is immediately begin a total withdrawal of US forces.
Now, I’ve looked very carefully at both of their Iraq plans, and both Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama have lifted much of their Iraq plans from two sources. One is the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and then the other is the 2007 Iraq supplemental, which was portrayed as the Democrats’ withdrawal plan. And both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a three-pronged approach to what they see as a longer-term presence in Iraq. They say that US personnel are going to remain in the country to protect diplomats and other US officials in the country. And we’ve already talked a bit about that with Obama. Hillary Clinton appears to be taking the same approach on that. Number two is that they want to keep trainers in place that will train the Iraqi military. At present, there’s 10,000 to 20,000 US trainers, all of whom will require security, so that’s a substantial force. And then the third is that they’re saying that they want to keep a force in place to, quote, “strike at al-Qaeda,” in the words of Barack Obama’s Iraq plan.
When the Institute for Policy Studies did an analysis of what this would mean, they said it’s 20,000 to 60,000 troops, not including contractors. And right now we have a one-to-one ratio with contractors and troops in the country. 20,000 to 60,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq, this is something that over the course of ten years the Congressional Budget Office says could cost half-a-trillion dollars. This doesn’t include the fact that you have to have troops bringing supplies in and out of Iraq. It doesn’t include the troops that Obama and Clinton are going to keep in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere. I mean, this is actually a pretty sustained indefinite occupation that’s going to be on the table if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are in office and take power.
And I mean, you know, the reality is that now would be the time for people to raise these issues, and yet no one is talking about this. It’s “Oh, yeah, Barack Obama is going to withdraw troops from Iraq.” Well, not exactly. He’s actually looking at keeping a pretty sizeable deployment. The other thing about them is they’re both calling for an increase in the number of troops in the permanent US military. In the case of Obama—and Juan, you’ve brought this up recently on the show—in the case of Obama, he says 90,000 new troops. Well, that’s going to be a $15 billion increase in military funding just for those troops to be in the United States, not including their deployment.
The other thing is that Obama is saying he wants to increase the US occupation of Afghanistan by 7,000 troops. What’s interesting is that we see Hillary Clinton, in her Iraq rhetoric, trying to move to the left; Obama, I think, now feeling that he’s going to be facing John McCain, is moving to the right. I mean, his rhetoric talking about striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, yes, he pointed out the irony of McCain criticizing him for that because there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush invaded, but Obama is sort of adopting their language now. And in his plan, the idea of striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, I mean, who is al-Qaeda in Iraq? I mean, what—the Iraqi resistance is largely Iraqis who are attacking US troops. And so, Obama is—he’s sort of positioning himself for this debate to make himself seem tough against John McCain.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole question of the increase in troops, because when I asked Samantha Power, as his foreign policy adviser, about this issue, she talked about the US military being stretched and the need for even in peacekeeping to have what she called “boots on the ground” and that weren’t sufficient. But the reality is obviously that there are many American troops in other parts of the world, like South Korea, like Japan, like, to some degree, Europe, that are not being—not—doing nothing else except occupying those countries, and they could be redeployed if the Army needed more troops.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, what that indicates, I think, is that Obama is going to have an interventionist, expansionist foreign policy. I mean, that certainly was the policy of the Clinton administration. I mean, in fairness, though, Barack Obama, more than Hillary Clinton and certainly more than John McCain, who’s talking about having troops in Iraq for a hundred years, Obama is talking about trying to increase the UN presence in Iraq. He’s trying to bring in regional countries. I mean, he has a pretty serious diplomatic plan for Iraq. The problem is that it doesn’t cancel out his military plan.
On the case of the increase in troops, what Obama’s people told me is that we need these 90,000 troops desperately, because our troops need a rest. Some of them are serving three, four tours over in Iraq, and so we need to get them in there. But the reality is, you don’t get 90,000 troops and then be able to deploy them overnight. So, clearly, they’re thinking about this for years and years to come. I think the reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are actually going to be in the business of permanently ending the US occupation of Iraq. That’s a deadly serious issue, and it needs to be front and center on this campaign.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, thanks very much for joining us. Jeremy has written the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. It’s just been announced that he’s won a George Polk Award—his second—for this book. Congratulations. You’ll be on Bill Maher this week?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Next Friday.
AMY GOODMAN: Next Friday, talking about these issues.
Israel kills more children & civilians
Israel kills 20 Palestinians in Gaza
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and KARIN LAUB, AP, Feb.28, 2008
Israel launched nearly a dozen airstrikes, killing 20 Palestinians, Gaza hospital officials said. The attacks included a not-so-veiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh — a missile strike on a guard post outside his home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians.
The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.
Israel has been reluctant to invade Gaza, amid concerns of getting bogged down there, but Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his security chiefs Thursday that an offensive is a definite option. "The major ground operation is real and tangible. We are not afraid of it," Barak said, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the top-level session was held in secrecy.
Barak also told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the British foreign minister in phone conversations that Israel would step up its response to the rocket fire, but a ground offensive wasn't imminent. Security officials said an invasion would have to wait until clouds clear in the spring.
The latest spike began Wednesday, when five Iranian-trained Hamas militants, including two rocket masterminds, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. In retaliation, Hamas fired dozens of Gaza-produced Qassam rockets, as well as longer-range Iranian-made Grad rockets smuggled in via Egypt.
Several Grad rockets slammed into Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, on Thursday, including one that hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another that landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.
While more than two dozen rockets have hit the Ashkelon area in the past, most fell in open areas in the southern outskirts and did not cause damage. The latest round of rocket fire was the most intense so far, and police chief Uri Bar-Lev said Thursday it was the first time a building in Ashkelon was hit. On Wednesday, a rocket exploded in the parking lot of Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital.
In the past, the Israeli border town of Sderot, with about 20,000 residents, had been Hamas' main target. In recent years, hundreds of Qassams have hit Sderot, just a mile from Gaza, and on Wednesday an Israeli father of four was killed by a rocket that hit a Sderot community college.
Ashkelon residents demanded better protection.
"We want a warning system, like they have in Sderot," one resident, Moshe Nissim, told Israel TV's Channel Two. "We have no protection from Palestinian attacks." The deputy director of Barzilai Hospital asked for fortifications for his emergency room, maternity ward and surgery departments.
Barak pledged Thursday to install the warning system in Ashkelon within hours, defense officials said.
A senior Israeli security official told The Associated Press the rockets fired into Ashkelon were Iranian-made imports, with a range of about 14 miles, although the military said some locally made rockets have fallen into the southern outskirts of the city.
The Grads are taken apart, smuggled into Gaza through tunnels and reassembled, and Hamas has only a limited supply, the official said on condition of anonymity, in line with briefing regulations.
However, Hamas is rapidly upgrading its Qassams, which it can mass-produce in Gaza. Hamas has hundreds of Qassams in stock, and by the end of the year, it will likely have extended the Qassam range to 12 miles, the security official said.
Qassams now have a range of 10 miles, and would fall just short of Ashkelon.
Israeli military analyst Shlomo Brom said Ashkelon could increasingly become a target once it can be hit by Qassams, not just the Iranian imports. This, in turn, would accelerate an Israeli invasion of Gaza, because "Israel cannot afford Ashkelon turning into a second Sderot," Brom said.
Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said residents of Ashkelon "are already in the circle of warfare," and there is concern that more Israeli cities could be put in rocket range.
Hamas, which seized control of Gaza by force in June, appears to have little to lose. Israel and Egypt keep Gaza's borders closed, making it hard for the Islamic militants to rule. Hamas hopes to push Israel to negotiate a cease-fire, along with a new border crossing deal, but apparently feels it can also survive an offensive.
The Israeli army has U.S.-made F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters, as well as pilotless drones, in its arsenal. Palestinian witnesses said all three types of aircraft were used in the recent attacks.
Hamas officials struck a defiant tone Thursday. "We will never have equipment comparable to our enemy, but we are working all the time to have enough to make any aggression a regrettable adventure for the enemy," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam.
Since Wednesday, 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held Thursday.
On Thursday, Israel carried out more than 10 airstrikes in northern and central Gaza, beginning just after midnight and stretching well into the afternoon, Palestinians said.
The army said it was targeting rocket squads, and blamed militants for operating in populated areas. Civilian casualties were unintended, the army said.
AP photos showed rockets being launched from densely populated areas in northern Gaza. At nightfall Thursday, Hamas said it had fired 82 rockets since Wednesday, including 51 at Sderot.
One missile strike killed two Palestinian brothers and their two cousins who were playing soccer in a field in the town of Jebaliya, their relatives said. A 12-year-old boy who was nearby later died of his wounds, medics said.
Later Thursday, a helicopter attacked a Hamas police post near the home of Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, in the Shati refugee camp. One person was killed and four people were wounded, officials said.
Another Israeli airstrike late Thursday hit an electric company vehicle in Khan Younis, killing two workmen, medics said. The Israeli military said they hit a car carrying militants.
Among the militants killed Thursday was Hamza al-Haya, the son of Hamas lawmaker Khalil al-Haya. The elder al-Haya, one of Hamas' top figures in Gaza, has escaped assassination attempts, including an Israeli strike that killed his brother last year.
Visiting the morgue Thursday, Khalil al-Haya said he was proud his son had lost his life. "This is the 10th member of my family to receive the honor of martyrdom," he said.
In Tokyo, visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel will go after the militants. "We will reach out for the terrorists and we will attack and we will try to stop them," he said.
Rice, who briefly met with Olmert in Tokyo, said Hamas rocket attacks "need to stop," but also expressed concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged calm on all sides.
Israel's public security minister, Avi Dichter, visited Sderot Thursday, but was forced to cut short a news conference when an air raid siren went off and his guards rushed him to a concrete shelter. Before Dichter arrived in the town, two people were hurt by rocket fire, including one of his bodyguards.
Dichter told reporters he had no quick solution for the rocket attacks, but rejected suggestions of opening a dialogue with Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist group.
___
Karin Laub reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.
By IBRAHIM BARZAK and KARIN LAUB, AP, Feb.28, 2008
The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A bloody spike in Israel-Hamas fighting put the Israeli city of Ashkelon and its 110,000 residents at the center of an intensifying militant rocket barrage Thursday — and Israel's defense minister warned he would invade Gaza, if necessary, to halt the attacks.
Since Wednesday, 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held Thursday.
One missile strike killed two Palestinian brothers and their two cousins who were playing soccer in a field in the town of Jebaliya, their relatives said. A 12-year-old boy who was nearby later died of his wounds, medics said.
Israel launched nearly a dozen airstrikes, killing 20 Palestinians, Gaza hospital officials said. The attacks included a not-so-veiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh — a missile strike on a guard post outside his home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians.
The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.
Israel has been reluctant to invade Gaza, amid concerns of getting bogged down there, but Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his security chiefs Thursday that an offensive is a definite option. "The major ground operation is real and tangible. We are not afraid of it," Barak said, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the top-level session was held in secrecy.
Barak also told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the British foreign minister in phone conversations that Israel would step up its response to the rocket fire, but a ground offensive wasn't imminent. Security officials said an invasion would have to wait until clouds clear in the spring.
The latest spike began Wednesday, when five Iranian-trained Hamas militants, including two rocket masterminds, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. In retaliation, Hamas fired dozens of Gaza-produced Qassam rockets, as well as longer-range Iranian-made Grad rockets smuggled in via Egypt.
Several Grad rockets slammed into Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, on Thursday, including one that hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another that landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.
While more than two dozen rockets have hit the Ashkelon area in the past, most fell in open areas in the southern outskirts and did not cause damage. The latest round of rocket fire was the most intense so far, and police chief Uri Bar-Lev said Thursday it was the first time a building in Ashkelon was hit. On Wednesday, a rocket exploded in the parking lot of Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital.
In the past, the Israeli border town of Sderot, with about 20,000 residents, had been Hamas' main target. In recent years, hundreds of Qassams have hit Sderot, just a mile from Gaza, and on Wednesday an Israeli father of four was killed by a rocket that hit a Sderot community college.
Ashkelon residents demanded better protection.
"We want a warning system, like they have in Sderot," one resident, Moshe Nissim, told Israel TV's Channel Two. "We have no protection from Palestinian attacks." The deputy director of Barzilai Hospital asked for fortifications for his emergency room, maternity ward and surgery departments.
Barak pledged Thursday to install the warning system in Ashkelon within hours, defense officials said.
A senior Israeli security official told The Associated Press the rockets fired into Ashkelon were Iranian-made imports, with a range of about 14 miles, although the military said some locally made rockets have fallen into the southern outskirts of the city.
The Grads are taken apart, smuggled into Gaza through tunnels and reassembled, and Hamas has only a limited supply, the official said on condition of anonymity, in line with briefing regulations.
However, Hamas is rapidly upgrading its Qassams, which it can mass-produce in Gaza. Hamas has hundreds of Qassams in stock, and by the end of the year, it will likely have extended the Qassam range to 12 miles, the security official said.
Qassams now have a range of 10 miles, and would fall just short of Ashkelon.
Israeli military analyst Shlomo Brom said Ashkelon could increasingly become a target once it can be hit by Qassams, not just the Iranian imports. This, in turn, would accelerate an Israeli invasion of Gaza, because "Israel cannot afford Ashkelon turning into a second Sderot," Brom said.
Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said residents of Ashkelon "are already in the circle of warfare," and there is concern that more Israeli cities could be put in rocket range.
Hamas, which seized control of Gaza by force in June, appears to have little to lose. Israel and Egypt keep Gaza's borders closed, making it hard for the Islamic militants to rule. Hamas hopes to push Israel to negotiate a cease-fire, along with a new border crossing deal, but apparently feels it can also survive an offensive.
The Israeli army has U.S.-made F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopters, as well as pilotless drones, in its arsenal. Palestinian witnesses said all three types of aircraft were used in the recent attacks.
Hamas officials struck a defiant tone Thursday. "We will never have equipment comparable to our enemy, but we are working all the time to have enough to make any aggression a regrettable adventure for the enemy," said Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam.
Since Wednesday, 31 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The youngest was a 6-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held Thursday.
On Thursday, Israel carried out more than 10 airstrikes in northern and central Gaza, beginning just after midnight and stretching well into the afternoon, Palestinians said.
The army said it was targeting rocket squads, and blamed militants for operating in populated areas. Civilian casualties were unintended, the army said.
AP photos showed rockets being launched from densely populated areas in northern Gaza. At nightfall Thursday, Hamas said it had fired 82 rockets since Wednesday, including 51 at Sderot.
One missile strike killed two Palestinian brothers and their two cousins who were playing soccer in a field in the town of Jebaliya, their relatives said. A 12-year-old boy who was nearby later died of his wounds, medics said.
Later Thursday, a helicopter attacked a Hamas police post near the home of Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, in the Shati refugee camp. One person was killed and four people were wounded, officials said.
Another Israeli airstrike late Thursday hit an electric company vehicle in Khan Younis, killing two workmen, medics said. The Israeli military said they hit a car carrying militants.
Among the militants killed Thursday was Hamza al-Haya, the son of Hamas lawmaker Khalil al-Haya. The elder al-Haya, one of Hamas' top figures in Gaza, has escaped assassination attempts, including an Israeli strike that killed his brother last year.
Visiting the morgue Thursday, Khalil al-Haya said he was proud his son had lost his life. "This is the 10th member of my family to receive the honor of martyrdom," he said.
In Tokyo, visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel will go after the militants. "We will reach out for the terrorists and we will attack and we will try to stop them," he said.
Rice, who briefly met with Olmert in Tokyo, said Hamas rocket attacks "need to stop," but also expressed concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged calm on all sides.
Israel's public security minister, Avi Dichter, visited Sderot Thursday, but was forced to cut short a news conference when an air raid siren went off and his guards rushed him to a concrete shelter. Before Dichter arrived in the town, two people were hurt by rocket fire, including one of his bodyguards.
Dichter told reporters he had no quick solution for the rocket attacks, but rejected suggestions of opening a dialogue with Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist group.
___
Karin Laub reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.
Drop the Racist Frame-up Charges Against Larry Hales NOW!
* Sign Online Petition * Read Article on Community Press Conference
* See pdf of actual Support Letter * Read Cornell Daily Sun article
On Nov. 30, 2007 African-American police brutality and anti-war activist Larry Hales was arrested after 10 cops illegally busted into his home without a warrant and without permission, physically attacked him and handcuffed his partner to a chair. He is facing frame-up charges of "interfering with the police" and faces extended jail time for being the victim of a police attack.
Hales has been a primary organizer of a number of anti-imperialist and anti-racist events in Denver. He is a leader of the youth group FIST--Fight Imperialism, Stand Together; a founder of Colorado United Communities Against Police Brutality; and an organizer with the International Action Center and the Troops Out Now Coalition.
Hales is also a principal organizer in the Recreate 68 Committee, which is planning protests to counter the Democratic National Convention to be held in Denver in August.
At the time of the police attack, Hales and his partner Melissa Kleinman were housing a survivor of police brutality who was on parole. The man had been shot in the back by police and had filed a civil case against the Aurora police department. Hales had previously agreed to house visits by the man's parole officer, but only when the man was home.
However, when Hales told the police officers at his door on Nov. 30 that the parolee wasn't home, and asked to see the business cards that because of a city ordinance Denver police must carry and surrender upon request, he had badges stuck in his face and told that they didn't have to give him their cards. Hales told them that they didn't have permission to come in, that the parolee was not home and that he wanted their cards. One of them scoffed and pushed the door open and him out of the way.
The cops charged into his apartment and ransacked his house. When Hales expressed concern that his cats would escape, he was shoved. When he asserted his rights, the police told him to shut up and violently attacked him, twisting his arm, grabbing him by the back of the neck, ripping out several of his dreadlocks, throwing him against the wall, and tearing off his shirt. He was pushed down the stairs of his apartment building, against the wall and railings and out into the cold night with a half-ripped shirt, socks and thin sweat pants. One officer squeezed his cuffs and the two had an exchange, where the officer remarked that more could be done and that Hales could end up face down on the ground, then he was hit in the stomach and thrown into the car.
The officers rolled the front windows down, left Hales in the car, told him he looked like he might hurt himself and that he would be booked as a "John Doe" and have to spend 72 hours in jail before anyone could find him. He spent the night in a freezing jail cell.
Police brutality is rampant in Denver, and this attack is part of the ongoing attacks on Black youth, from the Jena 6 to Sean Bell and countless cases of police brutality and repression throughout the country.
In addition, the police violence against such a well-known activist can only be seen as part of a continuing attempt to stifle political dissent. At a press conference in the days following the attack, Denver police brutality activist and survivor Shareef Aleem noted that police were attempting to neutralize activists related to the DNC protests. He stated: "In the last couple of years many of us involved in police accountability work have been attacked by the police and we know that when it happens we all have to stand up."
Hales now faces a pretrial hearing on February 29 and trial on March 12 on police "interference" charges. During the arraignment, the states' attorney suggested that more charges from the incident may be pending. For the City Attorney to continue to prosecute these charges would constitute a serious miscarriage of justice and state harassment, standing jutice on its head by blaming the victim of police misconduct and brutality. It could be seen as an illegal, politically motivated abuse of process to chill political protest both against police brutality and at the upcoming DNC.
We demand that ALL charges be dropped immediately against Larry Hales, and that there be an immediate investigation into the police misconduct and violation of Larry Hales’ and Melissa Kleinman’s rights.
What you can do:
* Add your name to the petition to drop the charges, available at http://www.troopsoutnow.org/larryhales/petition.html.
* Contact City Attormey David R. Fine, Judge Larry Bohning and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and tell them you want the charges against Larry Hales to be dropped.
City Attorney David R. Fine david.fine@denvergov.org, (720) 865-8600, fax (720) 865-8796; Office of the City Attorney, 1437 Bannock, St., Room 353, Denver, CO 80202
Judge Larry Bohning larry.bohning@judicial.state.co.us, (720) 865-8610, fax (720) 865-8250; Judge Larry Bohning, 1437 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80202
Mayor John Hickenlooper larry.bohning@judicial.state.co.us, MileHighMayor@ci.denver.co.us, (720) 865-9000, fax(720) 865-8787; Mayor John W. Hickenlooper, City and County Building, 1437 Bannock Street, Suite 350, Denver, CO 80202
* Fax letters on your organization or union's stationery or on your official letterhead, and send a copy to the National Justice for Larry Hales Committee at the address below. If possible, scan the letter and email it to justice4larryhales@safewebmail.com. We will post as many letters as possible on this site.
* Solicit organizations and leaders in your community to do the same
* Send posts to contacts and listservs with links to this page urging action
* If you are in the Denver area, pack the courthouse on February 29 and March 12. Come to courtroom 151P in the Denver County Court, 1437 Bannock St, Denver, CO 80202
* Donate to the Justice for Larry Hales campaign, to help with legal defense and support campaign costs. Checks should be written to Justice for Larry Hales/IAC, and sent to the address below.
National Justice for Larry Hales Committee
c/o Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
NY NY 10011
www.TroopsOutNow.org/larryhales
justice4larryhales@safewebmail.com
212.633-6646
* See pdf of actual Support Letter * Read Cornell Daily Sun article
On Nov. 30, 2007 African-American police brutality and anti-war activist Larry Hales was arrested after 10 cops illegally busted into his home without a warrant and without permission, physically attacked him and handcuffed his partner to a chair. He is facing frame-up charges of "interfering with the police" and faces extended jail time for being the victim of a police attack.
Hales has been a primary organizer of a number of anti-imperialist and anti-racist events in Denver. He is a leader of the youth group FIST--Fight Imperialism, Stand Together; a founder of Colorado United Communities Against Police Brutality; and an organizer with the International Action Center and the Troops Out Now Coalition.
Hales is also a principal organizer in the Recreate 68 Committee, which is planning protests to counter the Democratic National Convention to be held in Denver in August.
At the time of the police attack, Hales and his partner Melissa Kleinman were housing a survivor of police brutality who was on parole. The man had been shot in the back by police and had filed a civil case against the Aurora police department. Hales had previously agreed to house visits by the man's parole officer, but only when the man was home.
However, when Hales told the police officers at his door on Nov. 30 that the parolee wasn't home, and asked to see the business cards that because of a city ordinance Denver police must carry and surrender upon request, he had badges stuck in his face and told that they didn't have to give him their cards. Hales told them that they didn't have permission to come in, that the parolee was not home and that he wanted their cards. One of them scoffed and pushed the door open and him out of the way.
The cops charged into his apartment and ransacked his house. When Hales expressed concern that his cats would escape, he was shoved. When he asserted his rights, the police told him to shut up and violently attacked him, twisting his arm, grabbing him by the back of the neck, ripping out several of his dreadlocks, throwing him against the wall, and tearing off his shirt. He was pushed down the stairs of his apartment building, against the wall and railings and out into the cold night with a half-ripped shirt, socks and thin sweat pants. One officer squeezed his cuffs and the two had an exchange, where the officer remarked that more could be done and that Hales could end up face down on the ground, then he was hit in the stomach and thrown into the car.
The officers rolled the front windows down, left Hales in the car, told him he looked like he might hurt himself and that he would be booked as a "John Doe" and have to spend 72 hours in jail before anyone could find him. He spent the night in a freezing jail cell.
Police brutality is rampant in Denver, and this attack is part of the ongoing attacks on Black youth, from the Jena 6 to Sean Bell and countless cases of police brutality and repression throughout the country.
In addition, the police violence against such a well-known activist can only be seen as part of a continuing attempt to stifle political dissent. At a press conference in the days following the attack, Denver police brutality activist and survivor Shareef Aleem noted that police were attempting to neutralize activists related to the DNC protests. He stated: "In the last couple of years many of us involved in police accountability work have been attacked by the police and we know that when it happens we all have to stand up."
Hales now faces a pretrial hearing on February 29 and trial on March 12 on police "interference" charges. During the arraignment, the states' attorney suggested that more charges from the incident may be pending. For the City Attorney to continue to prosecute these charges would constitute a serious miscarriage of justice and state harassment, standing jutice on its head by blaming the victim of police misconduct and brutality. It could be seen as an illegal, politically motivated abuse of process to chill political protest both against police brutality and at the upcoming DNC.
We demand that ALL charges be dropped immediately against Larry Hales, and that there be an immediate investigation into the police misconduct and violation of Larry Hales’ and Melissa Kleinman’s rights.
What you can do:
* Add your name to the petition to drop the charges, available at http://www.troopsoutnow.org/larryhales/petition.html.
* Contact City Attormey David R. Fine, Judge Larry Bohning and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and tell them you want the charges against Larry Hales to be dropped.
City Attorney David R. Fine david.fine@denvergov.org, (720) 865-8600, fax (720) 865-8796; Office of the City Attorney, 1437 Bannock, St., Room 353, Denver, CO 80202
Judge Larry Bohning larry.bohning@judicial.state.co.us, (720) 865-8610, fax (720) 865-8250; Judge Larry Bohning, 1437 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80202
Mayor John Hickenlooper larry.bohning@judicial.state.co.us, MileHighMayor@ci.denver.co.us, (720) 865-9000, fax(720) 865-8787; Mayor John W. Hickenlooper, City and County Building, 1437 Bannock Street, Suite 350, Denver, CO 80202
* Fax letters on your organization or union's stationery or on your official letterhead, and send a copy to the National Justice for Larry Hales Committee at the address below. If possible, scan the letter and email it to justice4larryhales@safewebmail.com. We will post as many letters as possible on this site.
* Solicit organizations and leaders in your community to do the same
* Send posts to contacts and listservs with links to this page urging action
* If you are in the Denver area, pack the courthouse on February 29 and March 12. Come to courtroom 151P in the Denver County Court, 1437 Bannock St, Denver, CO 80202
* Donate to the Justice for Larry Hales campaign, to help with legal defense and support campaign costs. Checks should be written to Justice for Larry Hales/IAC, and sent to the address below.
National Justice for Larry Hales Committee
c/o Solidarity Center
55 W. 17th St. #5C
NY NY 10011
www.TroopsOutNow.org/larryhales
justice4larryhales@safewebmail.com
212.633-6646
'No timetable' for Turkey assault
BBC News, Feb. 27, 2008
A senior Turkish official has said there is no timetable for an end to military operations against Kurdish PKK separatists in northern Iraq.
Speaking after a meeting in Iraq's capital Baghdad, Ahmet Davutoglu said they would continue "until terrorist bases are eliminated".
But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the action was unacceptable and violated Iraq's sovereignty.
The US says it wants the offensive to end as soon as possible.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Ankara and says he has already raised concerns at the highest levels.
Casualty figures
But Mr Davutoglu, chief foreign policy advisor of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters: "Our objective is clear. Our mission is clear and there is no timetable... until the terrorist bases are eliminated."
Mr Zebari, speaking at the news conference with Mr Davutoglu after the talks, said Iraq wanted an immediate withdrawal.
"We condemn the terrorists and the PKK, but we also condemn the violations of the sovereignty of Iraq at the same time and we have to be very clear on that," he said.
Mr Zebari, himself a Kurd, added that the Kurdish regional government had expressed willingness to work with Turkey "to eliminate the threat from the PKK".
The Turkish military has been attacking bases of PKK rebels, who want a homeland in south-east Turkey.
Following the latest clashes, the military said 77 rebels and five of its soldiers had been killed. It says 230 rebels and 24 soldiers have been killed since the offensive was launched on Thursday.
The PKK rebels say they have killed at least 81 Turkish soldiers. Neither report can be independently verified.
Intelligence help
Speaking to the BBC in Delhi before leaving for Turkey, Mr Gates said the Turkish military operation against PKK bases should be very short and very precisely targeted.
Then, he added, the Turks should withdraw back across the border.
"They cannot solve the PKK terrorist problem which is a very real one from the Turks' standpoint," he said.
"A lot of innocent Turks have been killed by these terrorists. But they can't solve that problem entirely by military means and they need to begin thinking about what they're going to do in the non-military arena."
He said the US had provided additional intelligence and reconnaissance help to Turkey, but would also be ready to offer non-military solutions to the problem.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began their campaign in 1984.
Ankara says as many as 3,000 PKK members use northern Iraq as a safe haven.
The US, the EU and Turkey consider the PKK to be a terrorist organisation.
A senior Turkish official has said there is no timetable for an end to military operations against Kurdish PKK separatists in northern Iraq.
Speaking after a meeting in Iraq's capital Baghdad, Ahmet Davutoglu said they would continue "until terrorist bases are eliminated".
But Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the action was unacceptable and violated Iraq's sovereignty.
The US says it wants the offensive to end as soon as possible.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is due to visit Ankara and says he has already raised concerns at the highest levels.
Casualty figures
But Mr Davutoglu, chief foreign policy advisor of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters: "Our objective is clear. Our mission is clear and there is no timetable... until the terrorist bases are eliminated."
Mr Zebari, speaking at the news conference with Mr Davutoglu after the talks, said Iraq wanted an immediate withdrawal.
"We condemn the terrorists and the PKK, but we also condemn the violations of the sovereignty of Iraq at the same time and we have to be very clear on that," he said.
Mr Zebari, himself a Kurd, added that the Kurdish regional government had expressed willingness to work with Turkey "to eliminate the threat from the PKK".
The Turkish military has been attacking bases of PKK rebels, who want a homeland in south-east Turkey.
Following the latest clashes, the military said 77 rebels and five of its soldiers had been killed. It says 230 rebels and 24 soldiers have been killed since the offensive was launched on Thursday.
The PKK rebels say they have killed at least 81 Turkish soldiers. Neither report can be independently verified.
Intelligence help
Speaking to the BBC in Delhi before leaving for Turkey, Mr Gates said the Turkish military operation against PKK bases should be very short and very precisely targeted.
Then, he added, the Turks should withdraw back across the border.
"They cannot solve the PKK terrorist problem which is a very real one from the Turks' standpoint," he said.
"A lot of innocent Turks have been killed by these terrorists. But they can't solve that problem entirely by military means and they need to begin thinking about what they're going to do in the non-military arena."
He said the US had provided additional intelligence and reconnaissance help to Turkey, but would also be ready to offer non-military solutions to the problem.
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began their campaign in 1984.
Ankara says as many as 3,000 PKK members use northern Iraq as a safe haven.
The US, the EU and Turkey consider the PKK to be a terrorist organisation.
Poll: Most Israelis Want Truce With Hamas
Two-Thirds Support Talks With Arch-Enemy; Israeli Air Strike Kills 5 Hamas Militants
cbsnews.com, Feb. 27, 2008
JERUSALEM(CBS/AP)- As Israel's military continues its targeted campaign against Palestinian militants a new poll released Wednesday shows that almost two-thirds of the Israeli public supports direct peace talks with the arch-enemy, the militant group Hamas.
The poll, carried out by the Dialog company and published in the left-leaning Haaretz daily, showed that 64 percent of Israelis believe Israel should talk to Hamas now to bring a halt to the steady barrage of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and to win the release of a captured soldier, Cpl. Gilad Schalit.
Cpl. Schalit was seized in June 2006 by Hamas militants and has been held in Gaza since then as talks on a prisoner swap have stalled.
"The poll reflects the view among a growing number of Israelis that a truce is the only way to stop daily Palestinian rocket attacks," reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
Only 28 percent of Israelis reject talks with Hamas, according to the poll, that included 500 respondents and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
The findings run contrary to Israeli government policy and most of the rhetoric coming from both civilian and military officials. The official line from leaders has been, and remains, that no negotiations will be held with Hamas until the rocket attacks stop and the group recognizes Israel's existence, reports Berger.
Several Hamas officials have proposed a truce with Israel.
Israel's government has opposed a truce with Hamas due to fears the Islamic group which wrested control of the Gaza Strip could use it to rearm for another round of conflict.
However, some Israeli officials have recently expressed support for such talks. Those officials include former heavyweights in Israel's defense establishment and Eli Moyal, mayor of the town of Sderot, which is bombarded almost daily by Gaza militants.
Moyal, seen at left standing next to the remnants of spent Palestinian rockets which landed in and around Sderot, came out in favor of peace-talks with Hamas in a radio interview on Sunday.
In the short term, the possibility of any cease-fire agreement seems unlikely, given intensifying violence between Hamas militants and Israeli forces.
An Israeli aircraft blew up a minivan carrying Hamas gunmen in southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing five militants, including two key commanders involved in rocket attacks on Israel, the group said.
After the strike, burned bodies in camouflage uniforms were visible in the white minivan. Berger reports Palestinian officials said a senior rocket engineer and a rocket squad commander were among the dead.
The air strike came on the heels of a Palestinian rocket attack on Israel that left a 10-year-old Israeli boy wounded Monday in Sderot. His arm was partially severed and reattached in surgery.
Berger says the number of Israelis supporting negotiations is far more than in previous polls. "The idea of talking to Hamas was once unthinkable because the group was behind dozens of bloody suicide bombings a few years ago and its charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
"But, recently radio talk shows have featured some former defense officials who say the only way to stop the rocket fire is to talk to Hamas about a truce," said Berger, who confirmed the significance within Israel of the Sderot mayor's comments.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that a peace deal with the Palestinians wouldn't necessarily be concluded by the end-year target that he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas set.
"The desire is to make an agreement within the year 2008," he told business leaders in Tokyo. "I'm not sure we will be able to achieve it, and certainly not to implement it in the year 2008."
President Bush oversaw a Mideast peace summit in November where he announced that Israel and the Palestinians would aim to achieve a comprehensive peace deal by the end of this year. Mr. Bush has expressed hope and confidence repeatedly since the summit in Maryland that the goal could be achieved.
Two other Hamas members were wounded in the Gaza air strike Wednesday, according to Hamas and Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry.
Minutes after the first explosion, an Israeli missile struck another car nearby. Witnesses said the militants had abandoned that vehicle for the white minivan shortly before the strike. There were no casualties in the second attack.
"This is a new Israeli crime. It shows the bloody-mindedness of the occupation," said Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu.
The Israeli military confirmed the strikes, which it said targeted vehicles transporting militants.
The body of another Palestinian militant killed in central Gaza overnight was brought to the hospital in Gaza on Wednesday morning. The Islamic Jihad group said the man was one of its gunmen who had been killed in a clash with the Israeli military. The army said a militant approached the Gaza-Israel border fence late Wednesday and that soldiers had seen an explosion, likely caused by explosives the militant was carrying.
Israel's military operations in Gaza have not succeeded in stopping or even slowing the rocket fire.
Israel has been working to isolate Hamas since the Islamic group came to power in Gaza in June 2007. Hamas has been labeled a terror organization by Israel, the U.S. and EU.
In addition to its military strikes, Israel has imposed tough economic sanctions on Gaza, blocking most exports and allowing little more than basic humanitarian goods into the area.
The sanctions have caused widespread shortages of basic goods in Gaza. On Wednesday, the area's main water provider urged residents to boil all drinking water, citing a dire shortage of chlorine as a result of the blockade.
The Coastal Municipality Water Utility made the announcement in radio and newspaper advertisements. It said there was a "major concern over a health disaster due to possible contamination of the drinking water" and appealed to the international community for help.
Israeli officials were looking into the report and had no immediate comment.
cbsnews.com, Feb. 27, 2008
JERUSALEM(CBS/AP)- As Israel's military continues its targeted campaign against Palestinian militants a new poll released Wednesday shows that almost two-thirds of the Israeli public supports direct peace talks with the arch-enemy, the militant group Hamas.
The poll, carried out by the Dialog company and published in the left-leaning Haaretz daily, showed that 64 percent of Israelis believe Israel should talk to Hamas now to bring a halt to the steady barrage of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and to win the release of a captured soldier, Cpl. Gilad Schalit.
Cpl. Schalit was seized in June 2006 by Hamas militants and has been held in Gaza since then as talks on a prisoner swap have stalled.
"The poll reflects the view among a growing number of Israelis that a truce is the only way to stop daily Palestinian rocket attacks," reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
Only 28 percent of Israelis reject talks with Hamas, according to the poll, that included 500 respondents and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
The findings run contrary to Israeli government policy and most of the rhetoric coming from both civilian and military officials. The official line from leaders has been, and remains, that no negotiations will be held with Hamas until the rocket attacks stop and the group recognizes Israel's existence, reports Berger.
Several Hamas officials have proposed a truce with Israel.
Israel's government has opposed a truce with Hamas due to fears the Islamic group which wrested control of the Gaza Strip could use it to rearm for another round of conflict.
However, some Israeli officials have recently expressed support for such talks. Those officials include former heavyweights in Israel's defense establishment and Eli Moyal, mayor of the town of Sderot, which is bombarded almost daily by Gaza militants.
Moyal, seen at left standing next to the remnants of spent Palestinian rockets which landed in and around Sderot, came out in favor of peace-talks with Hamas in a radio interview on Sunday.
In the short term, the possibility of any cease-fire agreement seems unlikely, given intensifying violence between Hamas militants and Israeli forces.
An Israeli aircraft blew up a minivan carrying Hamas gunmen in southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing five militants, including two key commanders involved in rocket attacks on Israel, the group said.
After the strike, burned bodies in camouflage uniforms were visible in the white minivan. Berger reports Palestinian officials said a senior rocket engineer and a rocket squad commander were among the dead.
The air strike came on the heels of a Palestinian rocket attack on Israel that left a 10-year-old Israeli boy wounded Monday in Sderot. His arm was partially severed and reattached in surgery.
Berger says the number of Israelis supporting negotiations is far more than in previous polls. "The idea of talking to Hamas was once unthinkable because the group was behind dozens of bloody suicide bombings a few years ago and its charter calls for the destruction of Israel.
"But, recently radio talk shows have featured some former defense officials who say the only way to stop the rocket fire is to talk to Hamas about a truce," said Berger, who confirmed the significance within Israel of the Sderot mayor's comments.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that a peace deal with the Palestinians wouldn't necessarily be concluded by the end-year target that he and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas set.
"The desire is to make an agreement within the year 2008," he told business leaders in Tokyo. "I'm not sure we will be able to achieve it, and certainly not to implement it in the year 2008."
President Bush oversaw a Mideast peace summit in November where he announced that Israel and the Palestinians would aim to achieve a comprehensive peace deal by the end of this year. Mr. Bush has expressed hope and confidence repeatedly since the summit in Maryland that the goal could be achieved.
Two other Hamas members were wounded in the Gaza air strike Wednesday, according to Hamas and Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Gaza Health Ministry.
Minutes after the first explosion, an Israeli missile struck another car nearby. Witnesses said the militants had abandoned that vehicle for the white minivan shortly before the strike. There were no casualties in the second attack.
"This is a new Israeli crime. It shows the bloody-mindedness of the occupation," said Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu.
The Israeli military confirmed the strikes, which it said targeted vehicles transporting militants.
The body of another Palestinian militant killed in central Gaza overnight was brought to the hospital in Gaza on Wednesday morning. The Islamic Jihad group said the man was one of its gunmen who had been killed in a clash with the Israeli military. The army said a militant approached the Gaza-Israel border fence late Wednesday and that soldiers had seen an explosion, likely caused by explosives the militant was carrying.
Israel's military operations in Gaza have not succeeded in stopping or even slowing the rocket fire.
Israel has been working to isolate Hamas since the Islamic group came to power in Gaza in June 2007. Hamas has been labeled a terror organization by Israel, the U.S. and EU.
In addition to its military strikes, Israel has imposed tough economic sanctions on Gaza, blocking most exports and allowing little more than basic humanitarian goods into the area.
The sanctions have caused widespread shortages of basic goods in Gaza. On Wednesday, the area's main water provider urged residents to boil all drinking water, citing a dire shortage of chlorine as a result of the blockade.
The Coastal Municipality Water Utility made the announcement in radio and newspaper advertisements. It said there was a "major concern over a health disaster due to possible contamination of the drinking water" and appealed to the international community for help.
Israeli officials were looking into the report and had no immediate comment.
Cops destroyed files relating to Klan massacre in Greensboro
Anti-Klan rally files destroyed, 3 say
AP, newsobserver.com, Feb. 27, 2008
GREENSBORO - Three ministers accused a Greensboro police officer Tuesday of ordering officers to destroy about 50 boxes of police files related to the fatal shootings at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in 1979.
The Revs. Cardes Brown, Gregory Headen and Nelson Johnson said an active-duty officer told them he and at least three other officers were told to destroy the records in 2004 or 2005, shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested police files related to the shootings.
The News & Record of Greensboro reports that the order came from Sgt. Craig McMinn in the department's Special Intelligence Unit. The ministers didn't identify the officer who provided the information.
Telephone messages left by The Associated Press with McMinn and Chief of Police Timothy Bellamy weren't returned Tuesday.
On the morning of Nov. 3, 1979, a heavily armed caravan of Klansmen and Nazi party members confronted the rally. Five marchers were killed and 10 were injured.
Those criminally charged were later acquitted in state and federal trials. The city and some Klan members were found liable for the deaths in civil litigation.
The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in 2006, after spending two years researching the shootings and surrounding events. Its report placed most of the blame for the violence on Greensboro police who knew the white supremacists planned to attend the "Death to the Klan" march.
But the report also found fault with the Klan and Nazi members who opened fire and the activists who underestimated the danger posed by verbal baiting of the Klan.
The commission, a seven-member panel Johnson helped create, has recommended that the police department and city officials apologize for the department's role in the shootings. Johnson, who didn't sit on the panel, helped organize the rally three decades ago and witnessed the violence.
The commission had neither subpoena power nor the ability to grant amnesty, though organizers said its intent was to heal the community. It was modeled after truth commissions in South Africa and Peru.
The panel included members of local faith, race relations and community activism organizations, as well as a retired corporate attorney, a consultant for nonprofit organizations and a professor of education at N.C. A&T State University.
Johnson is now with Faith Community Church. Brown of the Light Baptist Church is president of the NAACP branch in Greensboro, and Headen is from Genesis Baptist Church.
AP, newsobserver.com, Feb. 27, 2008
GREENSBORO - Three ministers accused a Greensboro police officer Tuesday of ordering officers to destroy about 50 boxes of police files related to the fatal shootings at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in 1979.
The Revs. Cardes Brown, Gregory Headen and Nelson Johnson said an active-duty officer told them he and at least three other officers were told to destroy the records in 2004 or 2005, shortly after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested police files related to the shootings.
The News & Record of Greensboro reports that the order came from Sgt. Craig McMinn in the department's Special Intelligence Unit. The ministers didn't identify the officer who provided the information.
Telephone messages left by The Associated Press with McMinn and Chief of Police Timothy Bellamy weren't returned Tuesday.
On the morning of Nov. 3, 1979, a heavily armed caravan of Klansmen and Nazi party members confronted the rally. Five marchers were killed and 10 were injured.
Those criminally charged were later acquitted in state and federal trials. The city and some Klan members were found liable for the deaths in civil litigation.
The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings in 2006, after spending two years researching the shootings and surrounding events. Its report placed most of the blame for the violence on Greensboro police who knew the white supremacists planned to attend the "Death to the Klan" march.
But the report also found fault with the Klan and Nazi members who opened fire and the activists who underestimated the danger posed by verbal baiting of the Klan.
The commission, a seven-member panel Johnson helped create, has recommended that the police department and city officials apologize for the department's role in the shootings. Johnson, who didn't sit on the panel, helped organize the rally three decades ago and witnessed the violence.
The commission had neither subpoena power nor the ability to grant amnesty, though organizers said its intent was to heal the community. It was modeled after truth commissions in South Africa and Peru.
The panel included members of local faith, race relations and community activism organizations, as well as a retired corporate attorney, a consultant for nonprofit organizations and a professor of education at N.C. A&T State University.
Johnson is now with Faith Community Church. Brown of the Light Baptist Church is president of the NAACP branch in Greensboro, and Headen is from Genesis Baptist Church.
Senator Feingold's Peace Effort
By David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org, Feb. 26, 2008
Senator Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) is preparing to give the Republicans in the Senate two more opportunities this week to grandstand and filibuster in favor of the occupation of Iraq. They will, of course, do so; and they will, of course, win.
Feingold cannot possibly have any doubt of that as he introduces his bills. As far as I know, he's not even trying to get the House to pass the same things, since they're guaranteed not to pass the Senate.
One of Feingold's bills proposes a delayed partial beginning of a withdrawal from an occupation that the vast majority of Americans (not to mention Iraqis) want completely ended. The other asks Bush to produce a report on his strategy for accomplishing the mythic mission that he uses to justify that same occupation. Both bills are written in Bush-Cheney vocabulary, promoting the very ideas they are intended to oh-so-weakly oppose.
The first bill, "S . 2633 To provide for the safe redeployment of United States troops from Iraq," by Feingold, Reid, and Menendez, says "The President shall promptly transition the mission of the United States Armed Forces in Iraq to the limited and temporary purposes set forth in subsection (d)." That sounds good, of course, until you read subsection d.
The bill even says that Bush "shall commence the safe, phased redeployment from Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces who are not essential to the limited and temporary purposes set forth in subsection (d). Such redeployment shall be carried out in a manner that protects the safety and security of the United States Armed Forces." And that sounds good until you read subsection d, and until you realize that redeployment means sending the troops elsewhere in the empire, and until you realize that Feingold is promoting the idea that withdrawal, rather than continued deployment, somehow endangers soldiers.
The bill also proposes, in its own wimpy way, to use the power of the purse: "Effective 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act and except as provided in subsection (d), no funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces." And that, too, sounds good until you read subsection d or realize that Bush and Cheney routinely misappropriate funds as they see fit, knowing full well that Congress will never impeach them for it. Also, bear in mind that 120 days from passing this would be the middle of next summer were it not guaranteed to be filibustered and guaranteed to be vetoed in the miraculous case that it overcame a filibuster. Remember, the point of this is to allow Democratic Senators to pretend to want to end the occupation of Iraq. The bill is worded to attract as many of them as possible.
So, what about subsection d? Here it is:
"The prohibition under subsection (c) shall not apply to the obligation or expenditure of funds for the following limited and temporary purposes:
(1) Conducting targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al Qaeda and affiliated international terrorist organizations. [You could stop right there, as Bush and Cheney would consider point (1) to justify the whole occupation.]
(2) Providing security for personnel and infrastructure of the United States Government.
(3) Providing training to members of the Iraqi Security Forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the United States Armed Forces, provided that such training does not involve members of the United States Armed Forces taking part in combat operations or being embedded with Iraqi forces.
(4) Providing training, equipment, or other materiel to members of the United States Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security. [The troops to protect troops scam: this means occupation without limit.]
(5) Redeploying members of the United States Armed Forces from Iraq. [As if FUNDING is needed for that. As if the cost of bringing everyone home is not pocket change of a quantity that the Pentagon regularly "misplaces".]
Of course, Senator Feingold thinks this is a smart bill to get a vote on. He thinks it'll attract more Democrats than last time, and maybe even some Republicans. And, if it doesn't actually become what passes for "law" these days, well, at least it's a step in the right direction. After all, what else can a senator possibly do? And aren't we all just filling time as respectably as we can until the new emperor ascends the thrown? Isn't there an election breathing down our necks a mere 10 months away?
Oh, I don't know, Senator, what COULD you POSSIBLY do? Maybe you could commit to FILIBUSTERING the next chunk of the funding that you claim to oppose!
Since when did filibustering become an exclusively Republican tool? Would it be uncouth to propose such a thing when your party is in the (just barely) majority? Well, you know what, Russ, it's uncouth to get your head and limbs ripped off by American weapons in Iraq too, but it happens every day. The stains just don't reach the carpeting of the U.S. Senate.
And you could still push your bills too, but you'd be understood to have much better motives in doing so.
Why do you think an unsuccessful filibuster would be so much more humiliating than an unsuccessful bill passage? Even PROPOSING bills in the era of the Unitary Executive and his Signing Statements makes you look like a chump, and you know it. And allowing the Republicans to win debate after debate after filibuster after filibuster does not make you or your beloved party look good. I'm sorry to be blunt, but - you know - people are dying.
Feingold's other doomed bill is "S . 2634 To require a report setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates," by Feingold, Reid, and Menendez. It would "require a report setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates." Since when does the United States need a global strategy to "defeat" a foreign terrorist group that has grown primarily as a result of U.S. efforts aimed or pretended to be aimed at "defeating" it? Well, I guess since it became possible for threats to the United States to be made in almost any country around the world. The report would include:
"(1) An analysis of the global threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, including an assessment of the relative threat [to whom? to what?] posed in particular regions or countries.
"(2) Recommendations regarding the distribution and deployment of United States military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other assets to meet the relative regional and country-specific threats described in paragraph (1). [Now we'll know where to redeploy all those stop-lossed soldiers.]
"(3) Recommendations to ensure that the global deployment of United States military personnel and equipment best meets the threat identified in described in paragraph (1) and does not—
"(A) undermine the military readiness or homeland security of the United States;
"(B) require the deployment of reserve units more than once every four years, or of regular units more than once every two years; or
"(C) require further extensions of deployments of members of the United States Armed Forces."
This will go down in a fiery filibuster denouncing it as micromanaging the work of the fuhrer in chief. And, worse than that, the PEACE movement will lament its failure to pass.
WAKE UP, America. I miss you. The world misses you.
WAKE UP, Senator Feingold. You could be a hero tomorrow if you so choose.
Senator Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) is preparing to give the Republicans in the Senate two more opportunities this week to grandstand and filibuster in favor of the occupation of Iraq. They will, of course, do so; and they will, of course, win.
Feingold cannot possibly have any doubt of that as he introduces his bills. As far as I know, he's not even trying to get the House to pass the same things, since they're guaranteed not to pass the Senate.
One of Feingold's bills proposes a delayed partial beginning of a withdrawal from an occupation that the vast majority of Americans (not to mention Iraqis) want completely ended. The other asks Bush to produce a report on his strategy for accomplishing the mythic mission that he uses to justify that same occupation. Both bills are written in Bush-Cheney vocabulary, promoting the very ideas they are intended to oh-so-weakly oppose.
The first bill, "S . 2633 To provide for the safe redeployment of United States troops from Iraq," by Feingold, Reid, and Menendez, says "The President shall promptly transition the mission of the United States Armed Forces in Iraq to the limited and temporary purposes set forth in subsection (d)." That sounds good, of course, until you read subsection d.
The bill even says that Bush "shall commence the safe, phased redeployment from Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces who are not essential to the limited and temporary purposes set forth in subsection (d). Such redeployment shall be carried out in a manner that protects the safety and security of the United States Armed Forces." And that sounds good until you read subsection d, and until you realize that redeployment means sending the troops elsewhere in the empire, and until you realize that Feingold is promoting the idea that withdrawal, rather than continued deployment, somehow endangers soldiers.
The bill also proposes, in its own wimpy way, to use the power of the purse: "Effective 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act and except as provided in subsection (d), no funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces." And that, too, sounds good until you read subsection d or realize that Bush and Cheney routinely misappropriate funds as they see fit, knowing full well that Congress will never impeach them for it. Also, bear in mind that 120 days from passing this would be the middle of next summer were it not guaranteed to be filibustered and guaranteed to be vetoed in the miraculous case that it overcame a filibuster. Remember, the point of this is to allow Democratic Senators to pretend to want to end the occupation of Iraq. The bill is worded to attract as many of them as possible.
So, what about subsection d? Here it is:
"The prohibition under subsection (c) shall not apply to the obligation or expenditure of funds for the following limited and temporary purposes:
(1) Conducting targeted operations, limited in duration and scope, against members of al Qaeda and affiliated international terrorist organizations. [You could stop right there, as Bush and Cheney would consider point (1) to justify the whole occupation.]
(2) Providing security for personnel and infrastructure of the United States Government.
(3) Providing training to members of the Iraqi Security Forces who have not been involved in sectarian violence or in attacks upon the United States Armed Forces, provided that such training does not involve members of the United States Armed Forces taking part in combat operations or being embedded with Iraqi forces.
(4) Providing training, equipment, or other materiel to members of the United States Armed Forces to ensure, maintain, or improve their safety and security. [The troops to protect troops scam: this means occupation without limit.]
(5) Redeploying members of the United States Armed Forces from Iraq. [As if FUNDING is needed for that. As if the cost of bringing everyone home is not pocket change of a quantity that the Pentagon regularly "misplaces".]
Of course, Senator Feingold thinks this is a smart bill to get a vote on. He thinks it'll attract more Democrats than last time, and maybe even some Republicans. And, if it doesn't actually become what passes for "law" these days, well, at least it's a step in the right direction. After all, what else can a senator possibly do? And aren't we all just filling time as respectably as we can until the new emperor ascends the thrown? Isn't there an election breathing down our necks a mere 10 months away?
Oh, I don't know, Senator, what COULD you POSSIBLY do? Maybe you could commit to FILIBUSTERING the next chunk of the funding that you claim to oppose!
Since when did filibustering become an exclusively Republican tool? Would it be uncouth to propose such a thing when your party is in the (just barely) majority? Well, you know what, Russ, it's uncouth to get your head and limbs ripped off by American weapons in Iraq too, but it happens every day. The stains just don't reach the carpeting of the U.S. Senate.
And you could still push your bills too, but you'd be understood to have much better motives in doing so.
Why do you think an unsuccessful filibuster would be so much more humiliating than an unsuccessful bill passage? Even PROPOSING bills in the era of the Unitary Executive and his Signing Statements makes you look like a chump, and you know it. And allowing the Republicans to win debate after debate after filibuster after filibuster does not make you or your beloved party look good. I'm sorry to be blunt, but - you know - people are dying.
Feingold's other doomed bill is "S . 2634 To require a report setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates," by Feingold, Reid, and Menendez. It would "require a report setting forth the global strategy of the United States to combat and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates." Since when does the United States need a global strategy to "defeat" a foreign terrorist group that has grown primarily as a result of U.S. efforts aimed or pretended to be aimed at "defeating" it? Well, I guess since it became possible for threats to the United States to be made in almost any country around the world. The report would include:
"(1) An analysis of the global threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, including an assessment of the relative threat [to whom? to what?] posed in particular regions or countries.
"(2) Recommendations regarding the distribution and deployment of United States military, intelligence, diplomatic, and other assets to meet the relative regional and country-specific threats described in paragraph (1). [Now we'll know where to redeploy all those stop-lossed soldiers.]
"(3) Recommendations to ensure that the global deployment of United States military personnel and equipment best meets the threat identified in described in paragraph (1) and does not—
"(A) undermine the military readiness or homeland security of the United States;
"(B) require the deployment of reserve units more than once every four years, or of regular units more than once every two years; or
"(C) require further extensions of deployments of members of the United States Armed Forces."
This will go down in a fiery filibuster denouncing it as micromanaging the work of the fuhrer in chief. And, worse than that, the PEACE movement will lament its failure to pass.
WAKE UP, America. I miss you. The world misses you.
WAKE UP, Senator Feingold. You could be a hero tomorrow if you so choose.
Bush to Unleash Nuclear Genie
Progressive Democrats of America, Feb. 26, 2008
If you thought the Bush administration couldn’t get any scarier, they have a new surprise for you: In a dangerous precedent, the administration wishes to grant India an exemption from the long-standing nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Fortunately, Rep. Howard Berman (Dem., CA 28th) has introduced H. Res. 711, and you can help by taking action here. H. Res. 711 attempts to hold the administration accountable not only to common sense but to the Hyde Act (“United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation act of 2006”, which President Bush himself signed into law on December 18, 2006.
H. Res. 711 resolves there be no change to nuclear guidelines relating to India until the administration addresses inconsistencies between its new nuclear cooperation agreement and the Hyde Act. The full text of the resolution also notes, among several sobering points, that “an unqualified exemption for India would create a strong incentive for India to negotiate nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries…”
For a fascinating, closer look at the players and factors in the global nuclear game, see this excellent chart from the Carnegie Endowment.
Please help keep the nuclear genie bottled up as much as possible. Take action! Tell your Congressman to vote for H. Res. 711. Send a message by clicking here.
If you thought the Bush administration couldn’t get any scarier, they have a new surprise for you: In a dangerous precedent, the administration wishes to grant India an exemption from the long-standing nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Fortunately, Rep. Howard Berman (Dem., CA 28th) has introduced H. Res. 711, and you can help by taking action here. H. Res. 711 attempts to hold the administration accountable not only to common sense but to the Hyde Act (“United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation act of 2006”, which President Bush himself signed into law on December 18, 2006.
H. Res. 711 resolves there be no change to nuclear guidelines relating to India until the administration addresses inconsistencies between its new nuclear cooperation agreement and the Hyde Act. The full text of the resolution also notes, among several sobering points, that “an unqualified exemption for India would create a strong incentive for India to negotiate nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries…”
For a fascinating, closer look at the players and factors in the global nuclear game, see this excellent chart from the Carnegie Endowment.
Please help keep the nuclear genie bottled up as much as possible. Take action! Tell your Congressman to vote for H. Res. 711. Send a message by clicking here.
Nuke Plant Shutdown Cuts Power in Fla.
AP, breitbart.com, Feb. 26, 2008
MIAMI (AP) - Florida's largest electric company shut down a nuclear reactor south of Miami for safety reasons Tuesday, causing sporadic power outages covering large portions of the state that could last well into the night. More than 3 million people are affected, the state says.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the two Florida Power & Light nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power point 30 miles south of Miami automatically shut down. Two other power plants farther north, the Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors, in the state continued to operate, although officials at those two facilities noticed the grid disturbance.
"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the NRC regional office in Atlanta. He said the two reactors were automatically shut down and in safe standby.
"There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed," said Clark in a telephone interview. He said both reactor continued to have offsite electric power. He said two coal-burning power plants at Turkey Point also shut down.
FPL in several media interviews estimated that power should be up statewide within 10 hours. The company did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press or speak to a reporter in the lobby of its Juno Beach headquarters.
Outages appear to be concentrated in the southeast portion of the state, including Miami, but were also reported in along the southwest coast and northeastern part of the state as well as in the Florida Keys. The outages began shortly after 1 p.m. EST, though power in some affected areas had been restored an hour later.
In Collier County in the southwestern portion of the state, sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said officials were working to determine the extent of the outages.
"We really don't have a good picture of it," sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said. "It's not any one location."
In central Florida, the Orange and Volusia county sheriff's offices confirmed power outages at traffic signals across their jurisdictions.
"I don't have a handle on whether we're experiencing residential or commercial outages," said Gary Davidson, Volusia sheriff's spokesman. "I know we're receiving reports of traffic lights out virtually throughout the county, from Deland, Deltona, Ormond Beach, South Daytona to Debary."
Jaime Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Department of Emergency Management, said the county is partially activating its emergency operations center. He said no injuries have been reported so far.
By 2 p.m., most of northern downtown Miami appeared to be back to normal operation, including a campus of Miami-Dade Community College and numerous stores and businesses. Traffic lights were out for a short time but appeared to be back in regular operation. In the Florida Keys, spokesman Andy Newman reported, areas were without power for about 15 minutes, but it was back up as well.
An official at the Miami International Airport says the facility is working on a generator backup but that no airline delays were reported.
In Collier County in the southwestern portion of the state, sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said officials were working to determine the extent of the outages.
"We really don't have a good picture of it," sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said. "It's not any one location."
MIAMI (AP) - Florida's largest electric company shut down a nuclear reactor south of Miami for safety reasons Tuesday, causing sporadic power outages covering large portions of the state that could last well into the night. More than 3 million people are affected, the state says.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the two Florida Power & Light nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power point 30 miles south of Miami automatically shut down. Two other power plants farther north, the Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors, in the state continued to operate, although officials at those two facilities noticed the grid disturbance.
"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the NRC regional office in Atlanta. He said the two reactors were automatically shut down and in safe standby.
"There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed," said Clark in a telephone interview. He said both reactor continued to have offsite electric power. He said two coal-burning power plants at Turkey Point also shut down.
FPL in several media interviews estimated that power should be up statewide within 10 hours. The company did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press or speak to a reporter in the lobby of its Juno Beach headquarters.
Outages appear to be concentrated in the southeast portion of the state, including Miami, but were also reported in along the southwest coast and northeastern part of the state as well as in the Florida Keys. The outages began shortly after 1 p.m. EST, though power in some affected areas had been restored an hour later.
In Collier County in the southwestern portion of the state, sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said officials were working to determine the extent of the outages.
"We really don't have a good picture of it," sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said. "It's not any one location."
In central Florida, the Orange and Volusia county sheriff's offices confirmed power outages at traffic signals across their jurisdictions.
"I don't have a handle on whether we're experiencing residential or commercial outages," said Gary Davidson, Volusia sheriff's spokesman. "I know we're receiving reports of traffic lights out virtually throughout the county, from Deland, Deltona, Ormond Beach, South Daytona to Debary."
Jaime Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Department of Emergency Management, said the county is partially activating its emergency operations center. He said no injuries have been reported so far.
By 2 p.m., most of northern downtown Miami appeared to be back to normal operation, including a campus of Miami-Dade Community College and numerous stores and businesses. Traffic lights were out for a short time but appeared to be back in regular operation. In the Florida Keys, spokesman Andy Newman reported, areas were without power for about 15 minutes, but it was back up as well.
An official at the Miami International Airport says the facility is working on a generator backup but that no airline delays were reported.
In Collier County in the southwestern portion of the state, sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said officials were working to determine the extent of the outages.
"We really don't have a good picture of it," sheriff's spokeswoman Karie Partington said. "It's not any one location."
Two US Soldiers Killed in Action in Baghdad
AFP, Javno, Feb. 24, 2008
The latest deaths bring to 3,972 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
Two US soldiers were killed in action in separate incidents in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, the US military announced.
One soldier was killed "when an improvised explosive device struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in northern Baghdad," the Baghdad military command said in a statement.
The second soldier was killed "by small-arms fire during combat operations" in southern Baghdad, the US military added.
The latest deaths bring to 3,972 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.
The latest deaths bring to 3,972 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.
Two US soldiers were killed in action in separate incidents in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, the US military announced.
One soldier was killed "when an improvised explosive device struck the soldier's vehicle during a combat patrol in northern Baghdad," the Baghdad military command said in a statement.
The second soldier was killed "by small-arms fire during combat operations" in southern Baghdad, the US military added.
The latest deaths bring to 3,972 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, according to an AFP tally based on independent website www.icasualties.org.
Post-surge troops levels: 140,000
By ROBERT BURNS, AP, Feb. 25, 2008
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is projecting that when the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq ends in July there will be about 8,000 more troops on the ground than when it began in January 2007, a senior general said Monday.
Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that by July the troop total is likely to be 140,000. That compares with 132,000 when President Bush approved orders to send an additional five Army brigades to Iraq to improve security and avert civil war.
Ham also announced that the Pentagon believes U.S. force levels in Afghanistan will stand at 32,000 in late summer, up from about 28,000 currently. The current total is the highest since the war began in October 2001, and another 3,200 Marines are scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan this spring.
It had been widely expected that some support troops sent to Iraq with the five extra brigades would need to remain, even after July. But until now it was not clear what their number would be.
Ham stressed that his projected number of 140,000 is subject to change depending on security conditions, but it is the first time the Pentagon has publicly estimated what the total will be.
Among the support forces to be needed beyond July, Ham said, are military police, logistics troops, aviation forces and a headquarters staff to command combat forces in an area south of Baghdad. The headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Division was installed there as part of Bush's "surge" of forces in April; it will be replaced this summer by an unspecified unit, Ham said.
One reason for keeping a higher number of U.S. security forces is that the plan for transitioning responsibility for detention facilities to the Iraqi government "has not progressed as rapidly as we would like," Ham said. "So there is a need to have the (American) force sustained."
Ham said it was not possible to know how long troop levels would stay at 140,000. He noted that the Joint Staff and other military organizations are studying post-July troop levels and will make recommendations to Bush this spring.
The general, asked if the total would be below 132,000 by the time Bush leaves office next January, said, "It would be premature to say that."
When Bush announced his decision last September to reinforce troop levels in Iraq, he said an extra 21,500 combat troops, including the five Army brigades, would be sent. Eventually it became clear that another 8,000 support forces were required as well, although they got less public attention.
So far, one of the five extra Army brigades in Iraq has returned without being replaced, reducing the number of brigades from a peak of 20 to 19. Ham said the number would drop to 18 in March. By July it will fall to 15.
Separately, the Pentagon announced that an Army general who was among those thought to be a possible successor to Gen. David Petraeus as the top American commander in Iraq is being given a different assignment.
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is currently commander of Joint Special Operations Command, heading U.S. special operations in Iraq. In his new assignment, McChrystal will be director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, replacing Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, who has been named the new commander of U.S. forces in South Korea.
No date has been set for Petraeus to end his tour in Iraq. He arrived there in February 2007.
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is projecting that when the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq ends in July there will be about 8,000 more troops on the ground than when it began in January 2007, a senior general said Monday.
Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, operations chief for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that by July the troop total is likely to be 140,000. That compares with 132,000 when President Bush approved orders to send an additional five Army brigades to Iraq to improve security and avert civil war.
Ham also announced that the Pentagon believes U.S. force levels in Afghanistan will stand at 32,000 in late summer, up from about 28,000 currently. The current total is the highest since the war began in October 2001, and another 3,200 Marines are scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan this spring.
It had been widely expected that some support troops sent to Iraq with the five extra brigades would need to remain, even after July. But until now it was not clear what their number would be.
Ham stressed that his projected number of 140,000 is subject to change depending on security conditions, but it is the first time the Pentagon has publicly estimated what the total will be.
Among the support forces to be needed beyond July, Ham said, are military police, logistics troops, aviation forces and a headquarters staff to command combat forces in an area south of Baghdad. The headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Division was installed there as part of Bush's "surge" of forces in April; it will be replaced this summer by an unspecified unit, Ham said.
One reason for keeping a higher number of U.S. security forces is that the plan for transitioning responsibility for detention facilities to the Iraqi government "has not progressed as rapidly as we would like," Ham said. "So there is a need to have the (American) force sustained."
Ham said it was not possible to know how long troop levels would stay at 140,000. He noted that the Joint Staff and other military organizations are studying post-July troop levels and will make recommendations to Bush this spring.
The general, asked if the total would be below 132,000 by the time Bush leaves office next January, said, "It would be premature to say that."
When Bush announced his decision last September to reinforce troop levels in Iraq, he said an extra 21,500 combat troops, including the five Army brigades, would be sent. Eventually it became clear that another 8,000 support forces were required as well, although they got less public attention.
So far, one of the five extra Army brigades in Iraq has returned without being replaced, reducing the number of brigades from a peak of 20 to 19. Ham said the number would drop to 18 in March. By July it will fall to 15.
Separately, the Pentagon announced that an Army general who was among those thought to be a possible successor to Gen. David Petraeus as the top American commander in Iraq is being given a different assignment.
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is currently commander of Joint Special Operations Command, heading U.S. special operations in Iraq. In his new assignment, McChrystal will be director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, replacing Lt. Gen. Walter Sharp, who has been named the new commander of U.S. forces in South Korea.
No date has been set for Petraeus to end his tour in Iraq. He arrived there in February 2007.
Russia could use force in Kosovo
BBC News, Feb. 22, 2008
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if Nato exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organisations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognised Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February.
On Tuesday members of the Serb minority in Kosovo attacked two border posts staffed by UN personnel and Kosovo police.
The violence led the Nato troops in Kosovo - known as K-For - to reinforce the border with Serbia.
Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians are following a plan drawn up by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari for "supervised independence", which was rejected by Serbia.
Russian media outcry
The EU will soon deploy 2,000 officials to strengthen law and order in Kosovo, which has a population of about two million. Russia argues that the mission has no legal basis.
There has been a furious reaction in some Russian media to Kosovo's declaration of independence.
A commentary in the Vesti Plus analytical programme, on state-run television, called the assassinated former Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, a Western puppet who had "received a well-deserved bullet".
It said Djindjic had sold national heroes to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The programme concluded that Serbia - and not only Serbia - must now decide whether to acquiesce in what has happened, or resist.
Russia's ambassador to Nato, Dmitry Rogozin, has warned that Russia could use military force if the Kosovo independence dispute escalates.
"If the EU develops a unified position or if Nato exceeds its mandate set by the UN, then these organisations will be in conflict with the UN," he said.
In that case Russia would "proceed on the basis that in order to be respected we need to use brute force", he said.
Many EU members have recognised Kosovo, but several oppose recognition.
Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, backs Serbia, which has condemned the independence declaration issued by the Kosovo parliament on 17 February.
On Tuesday members of the Serb minority in Kosovo attacked two border posts staffed by UN personnel and Kosovo police.
The violence led the Nato troops in Kosovo - known as K-For - to reinforce the border with Serbia.
Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians are following a plan drawn up by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari for "supervised independence", which was rejected by Serbia.
Russian media outcry
The EU will soon deploy 2,000 officials to strengthen law and order in Kosovo, which has a population of about two million. Russia argues that the mission has no legal basis.
There has been a furious reaction in some Russian media to Kosovo's declaration of independence.
A commentary in the Vesti Plus analytical programme, on state-run television, called the assassinated former Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, a Western puppet who had "received a well-deserved bullet".
It said Djindjic had sold national heroes to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
The programme concluded that Serbia - and not only Serbia - must now decide whether to acquiesce in what has happened, or resist.
Russian Deputy PM reiterates support for Serbia over Kosovo
www.chinaview.cn, Feb. 25, 2008
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Monday reiterated his country's support for Serbia over the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.
"Our stance is that Serbia is an indivisible state whose jurisdiction extends to the whole of its territory and we will stick to this principled stance," Medvedev said at a joint news conference with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica after their meeting.
Medvedev's short visit to Serbia, just a week after its Southern province declared independence, was aimed, among other things, to show support for Serbia at a time when Belgrade was outraged at the U.S. and some western countries over their recognition of Kosovo's independence.
"Moscow thinks the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo violates Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and it is not in accordance with principles of international law, Resolution1244, the U.N. Charter and the Helsinki Final Act," Medvedev said, warning that Kosovo's independence has complicated the situation there and may have negative consequences on other regions in Europe and worldwide.
Kostunica told reporters that Serbia is grateful to Russia and President Vladimir Putin for their support for Serbia on defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Kostunica said Serbia will continue to work with Russia to have Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence annulled at the U.N. Security Council.
There will be "no normalization of relations with those countries that have recognized Kosovo, until they annul their decisions," he said.
During his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic, Medvedev was told that Belgrade would never recognize the independence of Kosovo and would continue to fight for its legitimate interests by peaceful, diplomatic and legal means.
The two agreed that the economic cooperation of the two countries was progressing and that bilateral relations were developed in the interests of both Russia and Serbia.
Medvedev, who is also the Russian gas giant Gazprom's chairman of the board of directors, attended Monday a signing ceremony, in which Gazprom and Serbia's state-owned gas company signed an agreement to create a joint company that will build the Serbian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline.
The 10-billion-euro (14.65-billion-U.S. dollar) South Stream project by Gazprom and Italy's ENI is designed to bring Siberian gas to Western Europe.
Editor: Yan Liang
BELGRADE, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Monday reiterated his country's support for Serbia over the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo.
"Our stance is that Serbia is an indivisible state whose jurisdiction extends to the whole of its territory and we will stick to this principled stance," Medvedev said at a joint news conference with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica after their meeting.
Medvedev's short visit to Serbia, just a week after its Southern province declared independence, was aimed, among other things, to show support for Serbia at a time when Belgrade was outraged at the U.S. and some western countries over their recognition of Kosovo's independence.
"Moscow thinks the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo violates Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and it is not in accordance with principles of international law, Resolution1244, the U.N. Charter and the Helsinki Final Act," Medvedev said, warning that Kosovo's independence has complicated the situation there and may have negative consequences on other regions in Europe and worldwide.
Kostunica told reporters that Serbia is grateful to Russia and President Vladimir Putin for their support for Serbia on defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Kostunica said Serbia will continue to work with Russia to have Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence annulled at the U.N. Security Council.
There will be "no normalization of relations with those countries that have recognized Kosovo, until they annul their decisions," he said.
During his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic, Medvedev was told that Belgrade would never recognize the independence of Kosovo and would continue to fight for its legitimate interests by peaceful, diplomatic and legal means.
The two agreed that the economic cooperation of the two countries was progressing and that bilateral relations were developed in the interests of both Russia and Serbia.
Medvedev, who is also the Russian gas giant Gazprom's chairman of the board of directors, attended Monday a signing ceremony, in which Gazprom and Serbia's state-owned gas company signed an agreement to create a joint company that will build the Serbian stretch of the South Stream gas pipeline.
The 10-billion-euro (14.65-billion-U.S. dollar) South Stream project by Gazprom and Italy's ENI is designed to bring Siberian gas to Western Europe.
Editor: Yan Liang
Turkey 'launches new Iraq raids'
BBC News, Feb. 25, 2008
Turkish forces have launched further attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, officials there say.
The security officials say the raids targeted Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions near the border overnight. There is no word on any casualties.
The Iraqi government has urged Turkey to withdraw its forces, which were sent across the border on Thursday to confront PKK rebels.
The new fighting prompted the Turkish president to postpone an African trip.
The Turkish army on Monday released new footage of helicopters taking off from an unnamed military base in the south.
It also showed military vehicles transporting soldiers, as well as infrared sensor images of bombing attacks.
It is not clear where or when the footage was recorded, but Iraqi Kurd officials say Turkish forces struck PKK positions about 20km (12 miles) from the border early on Monday.
US concern
The Turkish authorities launched the cross-border attack on Thursday night, after accusing the Iraqi government of failing to stop the PKK from using the area as a safe haven.
Ankara says more than 112 PKK militants have been killed, as well as 15 of its own soldiers, since the fighting flared up again.
Washington has called on Turkey to keep its campaign in Iraq - another US ally - as short as possible.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul was due to begin a four-day trip to Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo on Tuesday.
A presidential spokesman told AFP news agency that the visit had been postponed because "the president wished to be in Ankara while the operation is still under way".
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began fighting for a Kurdish homeland in south-eastern Turkey in 1984.
The US, the EU and Turkey regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
Turkish forces have launched further attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, officials there say.
The security officials say the raids targeted Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions near the border overnight. There is no word on any casualties.
The Iraqi government has urged Turkey to withdraw its forces, which were sent across the border on Thursday to confront PKK rebels.
The new fighting prompted the Turkish president to postpone an African trip.
The Turkish army on Monday released new footage of helicopters taking off from an unnamed military base in the south.
It also showed military vehicles transporting soldiers, as well as infrared sensor images of bombing attacks.
It is not clear where or when the footage was recorded, but Iraqi Kurd officials say Turkish forces struck PKK positions about 20km (12 miles) from the border early on Monday.
US concern
The Turkish authorities launched the cross-border attack on Thursday night, after accusing the Iraqi government of failing to stop the PKK from using the area as a safe haven.
Ankara says more than 112 PKK militants have been killed, as well as 15 of its own soldiers, since the fighting flared up again.
Washington has called on Turkey to keep its campaign in Iraq - another US ally - as short as possible.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul was due to begin a four-day trip to Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo on Tuesday.
A presidential spokesman told AFP news agency that the visit had been postponed because "the president wished to be in Ankara while the operation is still under way".
More than 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began fighting for a Kurdish homeland in south-eastern Turkey in 1984.
The US, the EU and Turkey regard the PKK as a terrorist organisation.
Interview: Cindy Sheehan in Egypt
Liam Stack in Cairo, aljazeera.net, Feb. 24, 2008
Cindy Sheehan, an American activist who was nicknamed the "Peace Mom" by the media for her criticism of the Iraq War, retreated from her public campaigns in 2007.
The death of her son Casey, a US soldier, in a Baghdad battle in 2005 had transformed Sheehan into a public figure in the US.
But she resurfaced in Cairo last week as a member of a delegation from the Muslim American Society which is in Egypt to protest against the military trial of 40 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
She spoke to Al Jazeera about her journey from peace activist to Congressional candidate, her thoughts on Iraq and her experiences in Egypt.
Al Jazeera: You first became famous for your protests against the Iraq war in August 2005, but you have not been an active anti-war figure for a while now. What happened?
Sheehan: In May 2007, I decided to quit actually being the face of the anti-war movement in America. I quit and I have not gone back to that. When I left the movement I was broke, I was tired, I was sick – literally sick and in pain.
I wanted to just totally be out of the political realm and not have anything to do with it. The establishment that runs our country just disgusted me and I was tired of it. It is very corrupt and I definitely saw that when I was focusing on anti-war activism.
The leaders of both parties work together to keep normal people out of the process. In many ways the Democratic leadership, especially in Congress, has been complicit with George Bush, the US president, in his crimes against humanity.
How can [Democratic Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi say unequivocally that water-boarding is torture and that Bush and [Richard] Cheney, the US vice-president, should not only be impeached but they should be charged with war crimes when in 2002 she herself was briefed on water-boarding and shown video of the rendition places where water-boarding happened?
Impeaching George Bush was a popular demand among liberal Americans at one time, but very few people talk about it anymore. Is that what turned you into an activist again?
When George Bush commuted [vice-presidential aide] Scooter Libby's sentence, the Democrats in Congress didn't do anything about it. When the Administration said they would not cooperate with subpoenas against [presidential aide] Harriet Myers, the democrats didn't do anything about it.
That's what pulled me back into activism. I thought how can they do that? How can they say 'I'm just not going to come to your stupid trial,’ and no one will say anything about it?
When the Democrats took impeachment off the table, I decided enough was enough. On July 23, 2007, I officially announced that I was running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi.
Why the focus on Nancy Pelosi?
I decided if Nancy Pelosi wasn't going to put impeachment on the table then I would run against her.
You can't take any part of the Constitution off the table, even though they have rendered it almost meaningless between George Bush and Karl Rove. Since they came to power they have institutionalised torture and spying against Americans.
They have passed the Military Commissions Act and just done away with habeas corpus. They have practically rendered it meaningless. That is why I decided to challenge Pelosi for her seat. I always say if you want change you have to vote out the enablers, and Pelosi is the biggest enabler there is.
If your new focus is on unseating Nancy Pelosi, what are you doing in Egypt?
My anti-war work evolved into work for global human rights because I saw the problem was much deeper than just George Bush.
It's about militarism and violence, globalisation and free trade.
I decided I wanted to do human rights work on behalf of people around the world who have been harmed by US imperialism.
Part of why I am here, also, is to draw attention to the parallels between the military courts here and the same kinds of courts that are being used to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay by the US.
If this becomes the standard for the world, and there is no international outcry, then everyone is in big trouble.
But what does the US have to do with a military trial in Egypt?
Egypt is a major recipient of US foreign aid, and there is no relationship between American aid and human rights.
If we [America] really want to promote democracy in this region then we cannot silence the voices of the Muslim Brotherhood because they're the moderate voice here and they are the ones who are actually working for democracy.
Do you think your presence in Egypt will have an effect on the trial?
Well, we have been doing a lot of media work since we came to Egypt and we hope this will put pressure on the Egyptian government to treat the prisoners better and to also maybe alleviate their punishment.
Hopefully we will draw some international attention to what is happening here, too, and that will help the situation.
You also went to the National Council of Women in downtown Cairo to request a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt's First Lady. How did that go?
I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on. There was a lot of yelling in Arabic. They weren't the right people to get us a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak ... I left a letter for Madame Mubarak and they promised that she would see it.
We thought it was important to go there because there are women and children who are being harmed by having their fathers and husbands detained, so I wanted to talk to Suzanne, mother to mother.
We brought along mothers and wives of the detainees and they were actually able to file complaints, and it was really great.
Have you spoken to many of the families of the defendants in the military trial? Have you spoken to many female members of the Brotherhood mother-to-mother?
My conversations with the mothers and children of the detainees have been really emotional. They told me about the hardships [the arrests and trials] have placed on their families, from financial hardships to emotional and physical hardships.
It is very emotional for me because my family has gone through the same things since my son died. It has been really hard for us.
People always say to me, 'Cindy, why do you always make everything personal?'.
But in the end, everything affects people, whether it's war or economics or human rights violations. I don't think politicians who make political decisions necessarily think about how they are going to affect people and their families.
That is why when I meet people who have been harmed by the policies of their own countries, or the policies of my country, it just makes me resolved to work harder to make the world a better place.
Cindy Sheehan, an American activist who was nicknamed the "Peace Mom" by the media for her criticism of the Iraq War, retreated from her public campaigns in 2007.The death of her son Casey, a US soldier, in a Baghdad battle in 2005 had transformed Sheehan into a public figure in the US.
But she resurfaced in Cairo last week as a member of a delegation from the Muslim American Society which is in Egypt to protest against the military trial of 40 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
She spoke to Al Jazeera about her journey from peace activist to Congressional candidate, her thoughts on Iraq and her experiences in Egypt.
Al Jazeera: You first became famous for your protests against the Iraq war in August 2005, but you have not been an active anti-war figure for a while now. What happened?
Sheehan: In May 2007, I decided to quit actually being the face of the anti-war movement in America. I quit and I have not gone back to that. When I left the movement I was broke, I was tired, I was sick – literally sick and in pain.
I wanted to just totally be out of the political realm and not have anything to do with it. The establishment that runs our country just disgusted me and I was tired of it. It is very corrupt and I definitely saw that when I was focusing on anti-war activism.
The leaders of both parties work together to keep normal people out of the process. In many ways the Democratic leadership, especially in Congress, has been complicit with George Bush, the US president, in his crimes against humanity.
How can [Democratic Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi say unequivocally that water-boarding is torture and that Bush and [Richard] Cheney, the US vice-president, should not only be impeached but they should be charged with war crimes when in 2002 she herself was briefed on water-boarding and shown video of the rendition places where water-boarding happened?
Impeaching George Bush was a popular demand among liberal Americans at one time, but very few people talk about it anymore. Is that what turned you into an activist again?
When George Bush commuted [vice-presidential aide] Scooter Libby's sentence, the Democrats in Congress didn't do anything about it. When the Administration said they would not cooperate with subpoenas against [presidential aide] Harriet Myers, the democrats didn't do anything about it.
That's what pulled me back into activism. I thought how can they do that? How can they say 'I'm just not going to come to your stupid trial,’ and no one will say anything about it?
When the Democrats took impeachment off the table, I decided enough was enough. On July 23, 2007, I officially announced that I was running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi.
Why the focus on Nancy Pelosi?
I decided if Nancy Pelosi wasn't going to put impeachment on the table then I would run against her.
You can't take any part of the Constitution off the table, even though they have rendered it almost meaningless between George Bush and Karl Rove. Since they came to power they have institutionalised torture and spying against Americans.
They have passed the Military Commissions Act and just done away with habeas corpus. They have practically rendered it meaningless. That is why I decided to challenge Pelosi for her seat. I always say if you want change you have to vote out the enablers, and Pelosi is the biggest enabler there is.
If your new focus is on unseating Nancy Pelosi, what are you doing in Egypt?
My anti-war work evolved into work for global human rights because I saw the problem was much deeper than just George Bush.
It's about militarism and violence, globalisation and free trade.
I decided I wanted to do human rights work on behalf of people around the world who have been harmed by US imperialism.
Part of why I am here, also, is to draw attention to the parallels between the military courts here and the same kinds of courts that are being used to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay by the US.
If this becomes the standard for the world, and there is no international outcry, then everyone is in big trouble.
But what does the US have to do with a military trial in Egypt?
Egypt is a major recipient of US foreign aid, and there is no relationship between American aid and human rights.
If we [America] really want to promote democracy in this region then we cannot silence the voices of the Muslim Brotherhood because they're the moderate voice here and they are the ones who are actually working for democracy.
Do you think your presence in Egypt will have an effect on the trial?
Well, we have been doing a lot of media work since we came to Egypt and we hope this will put pressure on the Egyptian government to treat the prisoners better and to also maybe alleviate their punishment.
Hopefully we will draw some international attention to what is happening here, too, and that will help the situation.
You also went to the National Council of Women in downtown Cairo to request a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt's First Lady. How did that go?
I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on. There was a lot of yelling in Arabic. They weren't the right people to get us a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak ... I left a letter for Madame Mubarak and they promised that she would see it.
We thought it was important to go there because there are women and children who are being harmed by having their fathers and husbands detained, so I wanted to talk to Suzanne, mother to mother.
We brought along mothers and wives of the detainees and they were actually able to file complaints, and it was really great.
Have you spoken to many of the families of the defendants in the military trial? Have you spoken to many female members of the Brotherhood mother-to-mother?
My conversations with the mothers and children of the detainees have been really emotional. They told me about the hardships [the arrests and trials] have placed on their families, from financial hardships to emotional and physical hardships.
It is very emotional for me because my family has gone through the same things since my son died. It has been really hard for us.
People always say to me, 'Cindy, why do you always make everything personal?'.
But in the end, everything affects people, whether it's war or economics or human rights violations. I don't think politicians who make political decisions necessarily think about how they are going to affect people and their families.
That is why when I meet people who have been harmed by the policies of their own countries, or the policies of my country, it just makes me resolved to work harder to make the world a better place.
Gazans set to form 'human chain' protest over Israeli blockade
AFP, Feb. 25, 2008
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Gazans were set to form a human chain along the length of the territory on Monday to protest the crushing Israeli blockade, with Israeli forces on alert for trouble or a possible rush on the border.
The Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), a politically independent group headed by Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, called for the mass demonstration against the months-long siege on the impoverished territory.
The group said it would attempt to construct a human chain from the sealed Rafah crossing on the southern Gaza border with Egypt to the Beit Hanun crossing in northern Gaza along the territory's main highway.
Israel has sealed off the territory -- where most of the 1.5 million population depend on aid -- from all but vital humanitarian supplies since Hamas violently seized power there in June, in a bid to halt rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
But Palestinians and several international agencies have said the sanctions amount to collective punishment of its civilian population.
Palestinian militants blasted several holes in the border barrier between Gaza and Egypt on January 23, sending a tide of hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the Sinai on a mission to replenish depleted stocks.
Egyptian troops and Hamas gunmen resealed the border on February 3.
Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip last June following battles with forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, has said it backs Monday's demonstration but did not organise it.
But Israel warned Hamas on Sunday it would defend its territory if there were any disturbances during the rally.
"Israel will not intervene in demonstrations inside the Gaza Strip but it will ensure the defence of its territory and prevent any violation of its sovereign borders," said a joint statement from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Media reports said the Israeli army is preparing for a possible rush on the border fence around the Gaza Strip aimed at breaking the economic blockade.
According to Israeli army radio, Hamas may turn the demonstration into a mass march on the border.
"Hamas must understand that there are lines not to be crossed," Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said on public radio on Monday. "We will use all means necessary to prevent infiltrations into our sovereign territory."
Israel's Haaretz newspaper has reported that Israeli forces have increased their presence along the border, adding that there were fears of casualties if troops try to halt such a march.
Spokesman Miki Rosenfeld told AFP that Israeli police have been put on high alert, one stage below the maximum level.
"We have deployed significant personnel in southern Israel, who have been placed under the supervision of the army and are prepared for any eventuality," he told AFP.
Vilnai said Hamas should have no difficulty in controlling the rally.
"In general, Hamas knows how to repress demonstrations," he said in an apparent reference to the movement's squelching of protests by supporters of its rival Fatah and other groups.
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Gazans were set to form a human chain along the length of the territory on Monday to protest the crushing Israeli blockade, with Israeli forces on alert for trouble or a possible rush on the border.
The Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), a politically independent group headed by Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal al-Khudari, called for the mass demonstration against the months-long siege on the impoverished territory.
The group said it would attempt to construct a human chain from the sealed Rafah crossing on the southern Gaza border with Egypt to the Beit Hanun crossing in northern Gaza along the territory's main highway.
Israel has sealed off the territory -- where most of the 1.5 million population depend on aid -- from all but vital humanitarian supplies since Hamas violently seized power there in June, in a bid to halt rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel.
But Palestinians and several international agencies have said the sanctions amount to collective punishment of its civilian population.
Palestinian militants blasted several holes in the border barrier between Gaza and Egypt on January 23, sending a tide of hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the Sinai on a mission to replenish depleted stocks.
Egyptian troops and Hamas gunmen resealed the border on February 3.
Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip last June following battles with forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, has said it backs Monday's demonstration but did not organise it.
But Israel warned Hamas on Sunday it would defend its territory if there were any disturbances during the rally.
"Israel will not intervene in demonstrations inside the Gaza Strip but it will ensure the defence of its territory and prevent any violation of its sovereign borders," said a joint statement from Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Media reports said the Israeli army is preparing for a possible rush on the border fence around the Gaza Strip aimed at breaking the economic blockade.
According to Israeli army radio, Hamas may turn the demonstration into a mass march on the border.
"Hamas must understand that there are lines not to be crossed," Israel's Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said on public radio on Monday. "We will use all means necessary to prevent infiltrations into our sovereign territory."
Israel's Haaretz newspaper has reported that Israeli forces have increased their presence along the border, adding that there were fears of casualties if troops try to halt such a march.
Spokesman Miki Rosenfeld told AFP that Israeli police have been put on high alert, one stage below the maximum level.
"We have deployed significant personnel in southern Israel, who have been placed under the supervision of the army and are prepared for any eventuality," he told AFP.
Vilnai said Hamas should have no difficulty in controlling the rally.
"In general, Hamas knows how to repress demonstrations," he said in an apparent reference to the movement's squelching of protests by supporters of its rival Fatah and other groups.
Nader calls for impeachment & end to Palestine & Iraq occcupations on Meet The Press
msnbc.com, Feb. 24, 2008
MR. RUSSERT: ...Ralph Nader, welcome.
MR. RALPH NADER: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: Will you run for president as an independent in 2008?
MR. NADER: Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That's about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz's poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the--all, all the candidates--McCain, Obama and Clinton--are against single payer health insurance, full Medicare for all. I'm for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don't like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That's off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.
The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media--the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don't have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you--one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great issues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran--won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.
MR. RUSSERT: As you know, Ralph Nader, they'll be Democrats all across the country who are going to find this very disturbing news, and they'll point again to 2000. This was the vote count. Al Gore winning the popular vote, but you've got 2.7 percent, nearly three million votes, in 2000. Then Florida, Florida, Florida. As you remember, George Bush won Florida by 537 votes. You've got 97,488. Democrat after Democrat says to this day, Ralph Nader, if your name had not been on that ballot, Al Gore would've carried Florida. Exit polls show he would've carried Nader voters 2-to-1. Gore would've been president and not George Bush. You, Ralph Nader are responsible for what has happened the last seven years.
MR. NADER: Not, not George Bush? Not the Democrats in Congress? Not the voters who voted for George Bush? But there were Democrats in Florida, 250,000 of them. You know, I wish we'd have Al Gore on this program someday Tim and ask him, "Why did you not become president in 2000?" And I think what he's going to tell you is he thought he did win Florida, but it was taken from him before, during and after the election from Tallahassee. Katherine Bush--you know the secretary of the state...
MR. RUSSERT: Katherine Harris.
MR. NADER: Harris, rather, and Jeb Bush, all the way to that terribly politicized Supreme Court decision. But the, the political bigotry that's involved here is that we shouldn't enter the electoral arena? We, all of us who, who, who think that the country needs an infusion of freedom, democracy, choice, dissent should just sit on the sidelines and watch the two parties own all the voters and turn the government over to big business? What's really important here is, if you want to look at it analytically, is there--Mr. Gore would, would tell you if he won Tennessee, anything else being equal, he would've been president. It's his home state. If he won Arkansas, everything else being equal, he would've been president. The mayor of Miami sabotaged the Democrats because of a grudge, didn't bring thousands of votes out. Quarter of a million Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. There is all kinds of thievery in Florida.
So why do they blame the Greens? Why do they blame the people all over the country who are trying to have a progressive platform, not just the environment. What was their crime? Why, why, why isn't there tolerance for candidates' rights the way there is a building tolerance over the last 50 years for voter rights? Because without voter rights, candidate rights don't mean much. And without candidate rights--more voices and choices--voter rights don't mean much. I--I'm amazed at the liberal intelligencia here. They are analytic and they deal with all kinds of variables, but when it comes to 2000 election, it's just one variable.
And I might add that Solon Simmons and other scholars--he teaches at George Mason--have shown that by pushing Gore to take more progressive stands, he got more votes than the votes he allegedly--were withdrawn from for the Green party. Twenty-five percent of my vote, according to a Democratic pollster, exit poll, would've gone to Bush. Thirty-nine percent would've gone to Gore and the rest would've stayed home. Every major--every third party in Florida got more votes than the 537 vote gap. So let's get over it and try to have a diverse multiple choice, multiple party democracy the way they have in Western Europe and Canada. This bit of, of spoiler is really very astonishing. These are the two parties who've spoiled our electoral system, money, they can't even count the votes, they steal--the Republicans steal the votes, and the Democrats knock third party candidates off the ballot. That's their specialty these days.
MR. RUSSERT: Barack Obama was asked about your announcement...
MR. NADER: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: ...which you're going to--just made this morning on MEET THE PRESS and yesterday.
MR. NADER: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: This is what Obama had to say. Let's watch.
(Videotape)
SEN. OBAMA: He had called me, and I think reached out to my campaign--it--my sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies, things are not substantive. He seems to have a, a pretty high opinion of, of his, his own work. In many ways, he is a heroic figure, and I don't mean to diminish him. But I do think there's a sense now that, you know, if, if somebody's not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, then you, you must be lacking in some way.
(End videotape)
MR. NADER: Well, first of all, compare my Web site, votenader.org, and all the issues that Mr. Obama and Senator Clinton and Mr. McCain are not addressing that are supported by a majority of the American people. A majority of the American people support these issues. They want foreign and military policy not to just be an aggressive military situation.
But Senator Obama is a person of substance. He's also the first liberal evangelist in a long time. He's run a brilliant tactical campaign. But his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself. And I give you the example, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. So don't touch that, even though it's central to our security and to, to the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate, during he ran--during the state Senate. Now he's, he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former Cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, "Let's have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress," so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians and their illegal occupation of Palestine.
MR. RUSSERT: But would you prefer, as an American citizen, to have Barack Obama or John McCain as president?
MR. NADER: What I prefer as an American citizen?
MR. RUSSERT: Yes.
MR. NADER: You're asking me? I'm running for president, for heaven's sake.
MR. RUSSERT: But as a citizen.
MR. NADER: I would prefer that the American people organize, that whoever is in president--is president, they give that person backbone.
MR. RUSSERT: How would you feel, however, if Ralph Nader's presence on the ballot tilted Florida or Ohio to John McCain and McCain became president, and Barack Obama, the first African-American who had been nominated by the Democratic Party--this is hypothetical--did not become a president and people turned to you and said, "Nader, you've done it again"?
MR. NADER: Not a chance. If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas? You think they're going to vote for a Republican like McCain, who allies himself with the criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the most multipliable impeachable presidency in American history? Many leading members of the bar, including the former head of the American Bar Association, Michael Greco, absolutely dismayed over the violations of the Constitution, our federal laws, the criminal, illegal war in Iraq and the occupation? There's no way. That's why we have to take this opportunity to have a much broader debate on the issues that relate to the American people, as, as, as a fellow in Long Island said recently, Mr. Sloane, he said, "These parties aren't speaking to me. They're not speaking to my problems, to my family's problems."
MR. RUSSERT: But you do see differences between Barack Obama and John McCain on the war, on tax cuts, on the environment, on a lot of issues?
MR. NADER: Yeah. There are differences, obviously. The question is not whether their differences verbally or what they put on their Web site, the question is what is their record? Senator Obama's record has not been a challenging one. He's not been a Senator Wellstone or Senator Abourezk or Senator Metzenbaum by any means. He has leaned, if anything, more toward the pro-corporate side of, of policymaking. The issue is, do they have the moral courage? Do they have the fortitude to stand up against the corporate powers and get things done? Yes, get things done for the American people?
1950, President Truman proposed universal health care. We still don't have it. We have the worst tax system, perverse incentives that rewards the speculators on Wall Street. Why aren't we taxing speculation on Wall Street instead of heavily taxing human labor and sales taxing necessities like food and appliances and furniture and clothing? There's no debate on this. William Hartung, the independent military analyst, wrote an article the other day saying there's no debate on the bloated military budget, on how best to defend this country without breaking the federal budget and putting huge deficits on the backs of our children and their grandchildren. We need to shift the power from the few to the many. And always in American history, every social justice movement was a shift of power from the few to the many. Maybe the slogan should be "Power to the babies."
MR. RUSSERT: On Wednesday it's your birthday. Happy birthday.
MR. NADER: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: You'll be 74 years old. You would be the oldest man ever elected president of the United States. You're older than John McCain.
MR. NADER: Thank you very much, Tim. I really like that.
MR. RUSSERT: It's an issue that has been discussed about John McCain, and I'm presenting it to you.
MR. NADER: First of all, I thought David Letterman was very unfair in the way he made fun of John McCain's age. Very, very--I mean, really overboard. I mean, humor has no limits, obviously. But second, someone once said the only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals, and I want the people out there just to look at our Web site and see how exciting it's going to be. I've been assured by my computer/Internet literate associates--I grew up in the Underwood typewriter age, you know--that this is going to be the most exciting, informative, participatory Web site of any presidential campaign, votenader.org. And on that Web site now, Tim, is a declaration that we will receive no money from commercial interests, no money from political action committees, only from individuals. And I'll take it from any individuals--Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, independent, Green party. And, and we are very frugal. They've labeled me Mr. Frugal, my, my associates. We know how to use it. None of this huge waste on political consultants who have really messed up Hillary Clinton's campaign.
MR. RUSSERT: You heard Barack Obama say that in many ways, you're a heroic figure. You were first on MEET THE PRESS in 1966, you said that you would never run for elective office back then. This is your third run for the presidency. Are you concerned now, when people look back at Ralph Nader, they'll consider him the Wendell Willkie of his generation, someone who kept running and running for president with no chance of winning, which will diminish the legacy that you tried to carve out as a consumer advocate.
MR. NADER: No, Tim. My concern doesn't proceed from that. I came to Washington over 40 years ago to help improve my country and, and started a lot of citizen groups who did that. That was a time you had a hearing in Congress, regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration would be more responsive--Auto Safety Agency, EPA. That's a time Nixon, because he heard the rumble of the people, and he was the last president to really fear liberals enough to change his position, signed OSHA, signed EPA, had a health plan that he didn't really believe in, had a minimum income plan to abolish poverty, and then it started. Around 1979, the doors started closing on the citizen groups. So my concern, Tim, comes from, to give you statistics quickly, 58,000 workers who die every year from work-related diseases and trauma on the job; 65,000 people according to EPA who die from air pollution; over 100,000 people who die from adverse effects of medicines; 250 people a day who die from hospital-induced infections; and all the fraud, waste and abuse that's eating at the heart of the family budget, aggravating them. They can't get answers to their questions. They're thrown into huge debt. Now they're losing their houses while White House--while Wall Street speculators laugh all the way to the bank. That's where my concern comes from. And I hope it's shared by a lot of people around the country. I hope a lot of people will be gathered around the country to establish Congress watchdogs in every district, a thousand people--we want to hear from very congressional district--to show the American people how easy it is to turn the Congress around if people are organized. Fifteen hundred corporations get their way by--from a majority of 535 members of Congress. We're millions of people out there, and we simply have to, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and the state of our nation in the world, we have to mobilize in that manner, and that's what that, that Web site is all about. It's not just a Web site. It's a gathering center, votenader.org.
MR. RUSSERT: Ralph Nader, we thank you very much for joining us, making your announcement and sharing your views.
MR. NADER: Thank you very much, Tim. Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: ...Ralph Nader, welcome.
MR. RALPH NADER: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: Will you run for president as an independent in 2008?
MR. NADER: Let me put it in context, to make it a little more palatable to people who have closed minds. Twenty-four percent of the American people are satisfied with the state of the country, according to Gallup. That's about the lowest ranking ever. Sixty-one percent think both major parties are failing. And, according to Frank Luntz's poll, a Republican, 80 percent would consider voting for a independent this year. Now, you take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut, shut out, marginalized, disrespected and you go from Iraq to Palestine/Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts, getting a decent energy bill through, and you have to ask yourself, as a citizen, should we elaborate the issues that the two are not talking about? And the--all, all the candidates--McCain, Obama and Clinton--are against single payer health insurance, full Medicare for all. I'm for it, as well as millions of Americans and 59 percent of physicians in a forthcoming poll this April. People don't like Pentagon waste, a bloated military budget, all the reports in the press and in the GAO reports. A wasteful defense is a weak defense. It takes away taxpayer money that can go to the necessities of the American people. That's off the table to Obama and Clinton and McCain.
The issue of labor law reform, repealing the notorious Taft-Hartley Act that keeps workers who are now more defenseless than ever against corporate globalization from organizing to defend their interests. Cracking down on corporate crime. The media--the mainstream media repeatedly indicating how trillions of dollars have been drained and fleeced and looted from millions of workers and investors who don't have many rights these days, and pensioners. You know, when you see the paralysis of the government, when you see Washington, D.C., be corporate-occupied territory, every department agency controlled by overwhelming presence of corporate lobbyists, corporate executives in high government positions, turning the government against its own people, you--one feels an obligation, Tim, to try to open the doorways, to try to get better ballot access, to respect dissent in America in the terms of third parties and, and independent candidates; to recognize historically that great issues have come in our history against slavery and women rights to vote and worker and farmer progressives, through little parties that never ran--won any national election. Dissent is the mother of ascent. And in that context, I have decided to run for president.
MR. RUSSERT: As you know, Ralph Nader, they'll be Democrats all across the country who are going to find this very disturbing news, and they'll point again to 2000. This was the vote count. Al Gore winning the popular vote, but you've got 2.7 percent, nearly three million votes, in 2000. Then Florida, Florida, Florida. As you remember, George Bush won Florida by 537 votes. You've got 97,488. Democrat after Democrat says to this day, Ralph Nader, if your name had not been on that ballot, Al Gore would've carried Florida. Exit polls show he would've carried Nader voters 2-to-1. Gore would've been president and not George Bush. You, Ralph Nader are responsible for what has happened the last seven years.
MR. NADER: Not, not George Bush? Not the Democrats in Congress? Not the voters who voted for George Bush? But there were Democrats in Florida, 250,000 of them. You know, I wish we'd have Al Gore on this program someday Tim and ask him, "Why did you not become president in 2000?" And I think what he's going to tell you is he thought he did win Florida, but it was taken from him before, during and after the election from Tallahassee. Katherine Bush--you know the secretary of the state...
MR. RUSSERT: Katherine Harris.
MR. NADER: Harris, rather, and Jeb Bush, all the way to that terribly politicized Supreme Court decision. But the, the political bigotry that's involved here is that we shouldn't enter the electoral arena? We, all of us who, who, who think that the country needs an infusion of freedom, democracy, choice, dissent should just sit on the sidelines and watch the two parties own all the voters and turn the government over to big business? What's really important here is, if you want to look at it analytically, is there--Mr. Gore would, would tell you if he won Tennessee, anything else being equal, he would've been president. It's his home state. If he won Arkansas, everything else being equal, he would've been president. The mayor of Miami sabotaged the Democrats because of a grudge, didn't bring thousands of votes out. Quarter of a million Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. There is all kinds of thievery in Florida.
So why do they blame the Greens? Why do they blame the people all over the country who are trying to have a progressive platform, not just the environment. What was their crime? Why, why, why isn't there tolerance for candidates' rights the way there is a building tolerance over the last 50 years for voter rights? Because without voter rights, candidate rights don't mean much. And without candidate rights--more voices and choices--voter rights don't mean much. I--I'm amazed at the liberal intelligencia here. They are analytic and they deal with all kinds of variables, but when it comes to 2000 election, it's just one variable.
And I might add that Solon Simmons and other scholars--he teaches at George Mason--have shown that by pushing Gore to take more progressive stands, he got more votes than the votes he allegedly--were withdrawn from for the Green party. Twenty-five percent of my vote, according to a Democratic pollster, exit poll, would've gone to Bush. Thirty-nine percent would've gone to Gore and the rest would've stayed home. Every major--every third party in Florida got more votes than the 537 vote gap. So let's get over it and try to have a diverse multiple choice, multiple party democracy the way they have in Western Europe and Canada. This bit of, of spoiler is really very astonishing. These are the two parties who've spoiled our electoral system, money, they can't even count the votes, they steal--the Republicans steal the votes, and the Democrats knock third party candidates off the ballot. That's their specialty these days.
MR. RUSSERT: Barack Obama was asked about your announcement...
MR. NADER: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: ...which you're going to--just made this morning on MEET THE PRESS and yesterday.
MR. NADER: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: This is what Obama had to say. Let's watch.
(Videotape)
SEN. OBAMA: He had called me, and I think reached out to my campaign--it--my sense is that Mr. Nader is somebody who, if you don't listen and adopt all of his policies, things are not substantive. He seems to have a, a pretty high opinion of, of his, his own work. In many ways, he is a heroic figure, and I don't mean to diminish him. But I do think there's a sense now that, you know, if, if somebody's not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, then you, you must be lacking in some way.
(End videotape)
MR. NADER: Well, first of all, compare my Web site, votenader.org, and all the issues that Mr. Obama and Senator Clinton and Mr. McCain are not addressing that are supported by a majority of the American people. A majority of the American people support these issues. They want foreign and military policy not to just be an aggressive military situation.
But Senator Obama is a person of substance. He's also the first liberal evangelist in a long time. He's run a brilliant tactical campaign. But his better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself. And I give you the example, the Palestinian-Israeli issue, which is a real off the table issue for the candidates. So don't touch that, even though it's central to our security and to, to the situation in the Middle East. He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate, during he ran--during the state Senate. Now he's, he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people. He doesn't have any sympathy for a civilian death ratio of about 300-to-1; 300 Palestinians to one Israeli. He's not taking a leadership position in supporting the Israeli peace movement, which represents former Cabinet ministers, people in the Knesset, former generals, former security officials, in addition to mayors and leading intellectuals. One would think he would at least say, "Let's have a hearing for the Israeli peace movement in the Congress," so we don't just have a monotone support of the Israeli government's attitude toward the Palestinians and their illegal occupation of Palestine.
MR. RUSSERT: But would you prefer, as an American citizen, to have Barack Obama or John McCain as president?
MR. NADER: What I prefer as an American citizen?
MR. RUSSERT: Yes.
MR. NADER: You're asking me? I'm running for president, for heaven's sake.
MR. RUSSERT: But as a citizen.
MR. NADER: I would prefer that the American people organize, that whoever is in president--is president, they give that person backbone.
MR. RUSSERT: How would you feel, however, if Ralph Nader's presence on the ballot tilted Florida or Ohio to John McCain and McCain became president, and Barack Obama, the first African-American who had been nominated by the Democratic Party--this is hypothetical--did not become a president and people turned to you and said, "Nader, you've done it again"?
MR. NADER: Not a chance. If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who almost gives an indication that he's the candidate of perpetual war, perpetual intervention overseas? You think they're going to vote for a Republican like McCain, who allies himself with the criminal, recidivistic regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney, the most multipliable impeachable presidency in American history? Many leading members of the bar, including the former head of the American Bar Association, Michael Greco, absolutely dismayed over the violations of the Constitution, our federal laws, the criminal, illegal war in Iraq and the occupation? There's no way. That's why we have to take this opportunity to have a much broader debate on the issues that relate to the American people, as, as, as a fellow in Long Island said recently, Mr. Sloane, he said, "These parties aren't speaking to me. They're not speaking to my problems, to my family's problems."
MR. RUSSERT: But you do see differences between Barack Obama and John McCain on the war, on tax cuts, on the environment, on a lot of issues?
MR. NADER: Yeah. There are differences, obviously. The question is not whether their differences verbally or what they put on their Web site, the question is what is their record? Senator Obama's record has not been a challenging one. He's not been a Senator Wellstone or Senator Abourezk or Senator Metzenbaum by any means. He has leaned, if anything, more toward the pro-corporate side of, of policymaking. The issue is, do they have the moral courage? Do they have the fortitude to stand up against the corporate powers and get things done? Yes, get things done for the American people?
1950, President Truman proposed universal health care. We still don't have it. We have the worst tax system, perverse incentives that rewards the speculators on Wall Street. Why aren't we taxing speculation on Wall Street instead of heavily taxing human labor and sales taxing necessities like food and appliances and furniture and clothing? There's no debate on this. William Hartung, the independent military analyst, wrote an article the other day saying there's no debate on the bloated military budget, on how best to defend this country without breaking the federal budget and putting huge deficits on the backs of our children and their grandchildren. We need to shift the power from the few to the many. And always in American history, every social justice movement was a shift of power from the few to the many. Maybe the slogan should be "Power to the babies."
MR. RUSSERT: On Wednesday it's your birthday. Happy birthday.
MR. NADER: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: You'll be 74 years old. You would be the oldest man ever elected president of the United States. You're older than John McCain.
MR. NADER: Thank you very much, Tim. I really like that.
MR. RUSSERT: It's an issue that has been discussed about John McCain, and I'm presenting it to you.
MR. NADER: First of all, I thought David Letterman was very unfair in the way he made fun of John McCain's age. Very, very--I mean, really overboard. I mean, humor has no limits, obviously. But second, someone once said the only true aging is the erosion of one's ideals, and I want the people out there just to look at our Web site and see how exciting it's going to be. I've been assured by my computer/Internet literate associates--I grew up in the Underwood typewriter age, you know--that this is going to be the most exciting, informative, participatory Web site of any presidential campaign, votenader.org. And on that Web site now, Tim, is a declaration that we will receive no money from commercial interests, no money from political action committees, only from individuals. And I'll take it from any individuals--Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, independent, Green party. And, and we are very frugal. They've labeled me Mr. Frugal, my, my associates. We know how to use it. None of this huge waste on political consultants who have really messed up Hillary Clinton's campaign.
MR. RUSSERT: You heard Barack Obama say that in many ways, you're a heroic figure. You were first on MEET THE PRESS in 1966, you said that you would never run for elective office back then. This is your third run for the presidency. Are you concerned now, when people look back at Ralph Nader, they'll consider him the Wendell Willkie of his generation, someone who kept running and running for president with no chance of winning, which will diminish the legacy that you tried to carve out as a consumer advocate.
MR. NADER: No, Tim. My concern doesn't proceed from that. I came to Washington over 40 years ago to help improve my country and, and started a lot of citizen groups who did that. That was a time you had a hearing in Congress, regulatory agencies like the Food and Drug Administration would be more responsive--Auto Safety Agency, EPA. That's a time Nixon, because he heard the rumble of the people, and he was the last president to really fear liberals enough to change his position, signed OSHA, signed EPA, had a health plan that he didn't really believe in, had a minimum income plan to abolish poverty, and then it started. Around 1979, the doors started closing on the citizen groups. So my concern, Tim, comes from, to give you statistics quickly, 58,000 workers who die every year from work-related diseases and trauma on the job; 65,000 people according to EPA who die from air pollution; over 100,000 people who die from adverse effects of medicines; 250 people a day who die from hospital-induced infections; and all the fraud, waste and abuse that's eating at the heart of the family budget, aggravating them. They can't get answers to their questions. They're thrown into huge debt. Now they're losing their houses while White House--while Wall Street speculators laugh all the way to the bank. That's where my concern comes from. And I hope it's shared by a lot of people around the country. I hope a lot of people will be gathered around the country to establish Congress watchdogs in every district, a thousand people--we want to hear from very congressional district--to show the American people how easy it is to turn the Congress around if people are organized. Fifteen hundred corporations get their way by--from a majority of 535 members of Congress. We're millions of people out there, and we simply have to, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, and the state of our nation in the world, we have to mobilize in that manner, and that's what that, that Web site is all about. It's not just a Web site. It's a gathering center, votenader.org.
MR. RUSSERT: Ralph Nader, we thank you very much for joining us, making your announcement and sharing your views.
MR. NADER: Thank you very much, Tim. Thank you.
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