Patrick’s Notebook

‘We’re an empire and when we act, we create our own reality’

How George Bush’s wartime administration used a magician, Hollywood designers and Karl Rove telling 1,001 stories to sell the invasion of Iraq.

By Christian Salmon Le Monde diplomatique — 1 January 2008

– A few days before the 2004 presidential election, Ron Suskind, a columnist who had been investigating the White House and its communications for years, wrote in The New York Times about a conversation he had with a presidential adviser in 2002. “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community’, which he defined as people ‘who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality’. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors.. and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’ ” (1).

Suskind’s article was a sensation, which the paper called an intellectual scoop. Columnists and bloggers seized on the phrase “reality-based community” which spread across the internet. Google had nearly a million hits for it in July 2007. Wikipedia created a page dedicated to it. According to Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University: “Many on the left adopted the term. ‘Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community’, their blogs said. The right then jeered at the left’s self-description. (‘They’re reality-based? Yeah, right…’)” (2).

The remarks, which were probably made by Karl Rove a few months before the Iraq war, are not just cynical and Machiavellian. They sound like they come from the theatre rather than from an office in the White House. Not content with renewing the ancient problems discussed in cabinet offices, pitting idealists against pragmatists, moralists against realists, pacifists against warmongers or, in 2002, defenders of international law against supporters of the use of force, they display a new concept of the relationship between politics and reality. The leaders of the world’s superpower were not just moving away from realpolitik but also from realism to become creators of their own reality, the masters of appearance, demanding a realpolitik of fiction.

Continue reading ‘Scheherazade in the White House’ »

If a Jewish state is legitimate in principle, how and why did “the only democracy in the Middle East,” end up looking like apartheid South Africa and the segregated American south.

By Lenni Brenner, PalestineChronicle.com — 30 December 2007

– Can anyone be more defensive of Zionism’s reputation than Israel’s Prime Minister?  Therefore many people wondered why Ehud Olmert suddenly announced after Annapolis that “if the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished” (”Olmert Warns of ‘End of Israel’,” BBC, 11/29/07)

Apparently he was reacting to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s blunt statements to him.  Haaretz, Israel’s most prestigious newspaper, tells us that:

In private conversations — and as she said in Annapolis — Rice tends to compare the Israeli occupation in the territories to the racial segregation that used to be the norm in the American South.  The Israel Defense Forces checkpoints where Palestinians are detained remind her of the buses she rode as a child in Alabama, which had separate seats for blacks and whites.  This is an uncomfortable comparison, of course, for the Israelis, who view it as “over-identification” on her part with Palestinian suffering.  (Aluf Benn, “What’s the Hurry?” 12/27/07)

Abe Foxman of America’s Anti-Defamation League and other apologists for Israel scream at ex-President Jimmy Carter for attacking West Bank Israeli apartheid.  And Haaretz says that American Zionist ultras are dumping on Rice for using the s-word, which, if it sticks to Israel, will ultimately be fatal for Zionism in the US.  Now these fanatics are ranting at Olmert for his statement.  But he is smarter than them.  When Carter and Rice say what they say, Israel must make a deal with the Palestine Authority and the Arab states backing it, or face growing opposition within American imperialism from those more concerned about Arab oil than Zionist campaign contributions.  Olmert knows that growing divisions between Israel and its patron will inevitably inspire many Palestinians to continue to fight Zionism until it is defeated like the apartheid regime that even he says it resembles.

Continue reading ‘Rice Compares Israeli Occupation to US Segregation’ »

Underscoring another failure of the so-called surge is the fact that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad remains more divided than ever, and hopes of reconciliation have vanished.

According to a recent ABC/BBC poll, 98 percent of Sunnis and 84 percent of Shias in Iraq want all U.S. forces out of the country.

By Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service — 29 December 2007

– Despite all the claims of improvements, 2007 has been the worst year yet in Iraq.

One of the first big moves this year was the launch of a troop “surge” by the U.S. government in mid-February. The goal was to improve security in Baghdad and the western al-Anbar province, the two most violent areas. By June, an additional 28,000 troops had been deployed to Iraq, bringing the total number up to more than 160,000.

By autumn, there were over 175,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq. This is the highest number of U.S. troops deployed yet, and while the U.S. government continues to talk of withdrawing some, the numbers on the ground appear to contradict these promises.

The Bush administration said the “surge” was also aimed at curbing sectarian killings, and to gain time for political reform for the government of U.S.-backed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

During the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced from their homes quadrupled, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. By the end of 2007, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that there are over 2.3 million internally displaced persons within Iraq, and over 2.3 million Iraqis who have fled the country.

Continue reading ‘Iraq Progresses To Some Of Its Worst’ »

IndiaInfo.com — 29 December 2007

– An alleged al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud, blamed by the Pakistan government for killing Benazir Bhutto, denied any involvement in her death.

He had no involvement in this attack, his spokesman Maulana Omar said in a telephone call.

This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies.

The spokesman said he was calling from Pakistan’s Waziristan area, a lawless tribal region where Pakistani government forces have been battling Islamist militants.

It is against tribal tradition and custom to attack a woman, Omar said.

He said the transcript released by the government, allegedly of a phone call between Mehsud and a militant discussing Bhutto’s death after the killing, was a drama and expressed sadness over her assassination on Thursday.

He said it would have been impossible for militants to get through the security cordon around the campaign rally where she was killed.

Benazir was not only a leader of Pakistan but also a leader of international fame. We express our deep grief and shock over her death, Omar said.

Pakistan’s government was quick to blame Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but US officials caution that it’s too early to pin the blame on any group in particular.

By Mark Hosenball, NEWSWEEK — 28 December 2007

– US experts believe that Islamic jihadists with possible connections to Al Qaeda are the most likely perpetrators behind Thursday’s assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. But counter-terrorism officials warn that US agencies believe it is still to early to pin the blame for the attack on any particular extremist group or faction.

Pakistan’s government, led by long-time Bhutto antagonist (and Pakistani President) Pervez Musharraf, has already begun to accuse one specific Islamic militant leader of complicity in the assassination. On Friday, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz claimed that his government had acquired an ”intelligence intercept” in which Baitullah Mehsud, an alleged Al Qaeda leader based inside Pakistan, ”congratulated his people for carrying out this cowardly act.”

According to a purported transcript of the intercept reported by the Associated Press, Mehsud was in contact with an associate who described how “our men” had been present at the assassination. Mehsud supposedly replied: “It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her.”

Two US counter-terrorism officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing the ongoing investigation, said that US agencies so far had no hard evidence to confirm the authenticity of the purported Pakistani intercept. Likewise, the officials said, there is no hard evidence to confirm the role of Mehsud or any other particular Jihadist leader–or any particular Jihadist group or faction–in the Bhutto attack.

Continue reading ‘Was It al-Qaeda?’ »

By Paul Craig Roberts — 28 December 2007

– At Christmas time it has been my habit to write a column in remembrance of the many innocent people in prisons whose lives have been stolen by the US criminal justice (sic) system that is as inhumane as it is indifferent to justice. Usually I retell the cases of William Strong and Christophe Gaynor, two men framed in the state of Virginia by prosecutors and judges as wicked and corrupt as any who served Hitler or Stalin.

This year is different. All Americans are now imprisoned in a world of lies and deception created by the Bush Regime and the two complicit parties of Congress, by federal judges too timid or ignorant to recognize a rogue regime running roughshod over the Constitution, by a bought and paid for media that serves as propagandists for a regime of war criminals, and by a public who have forsaken their Founding Fathers.

Americans are also imprisoned by fear, a false fear created by the hoax of “terrorism.” It has turned out that headline terrorist events since 9/11 have been orchestrated by the US government. For example, the alleged terrorist plot to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower was the brainchild of a FBI agent who searched out a few disaffected people to give lip service to the plot devised by the FBI agent. He arrested his victims, whose trial ended in acquittal and mistrial.

Many Europeans regard 9/11 itself as an orchestrated event. Former cabinet members of the British, Canadian and German governments and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army have publicly expressed their doubts about the official 9/11 story. Recently, a former president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, said in an interview with the newspaper, Corriere della Sera (November 30, 2007), that “democratic elements in America and Europe, with the Italian center-left in the forefront, now know that the 9/11 attack was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad in order to blame the Arab countries, and to persuade the Western powers to undertake military action both in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Continue reading ‘We Are All Prisoners Now’ »

By Robert Parry — 28 December 2007

– The chaos spreading across nuclear-armed Pakistan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is part of the price for the Bush administration’s duplicity about al-Qaeda’s priorities, including the old canard that the terrorist group regards Iraq as the “central front” in its global war against the West.

Through repetition of this claim – often accompanied by George W. Bush’s home-spun advice about the need to listen to what the enemy says – millions of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders consider Iraq the key battlefield.

However, intelligence evidence, gathered from intercepted al-Qaeda communications, indicate that bin Laden’s high command views Iraq as a valuable diversion for U.S. military strength, not the “central front.”

For instance, as the Iraq War was heating up in 2005, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri asked if the embattled al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq might be able to spare $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze facing the group’s top leaders in hiding, presumably inside Pakistan near the Afghan border.

Continue reading ‘Pakistan Is ‘Central Front,’ Not Iraq’ »

In a startlingly blunt article, Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung highlights the recent results of a survey for the US military casting doubt on the assumption made by the US media and leadership that violence between Iraqi groups is based on “ancient hatreds”. In fact, say the results of the survey, members of all Iraqi sectarian and ethnic groups see the US invasion as “the primary root of the violent differences” among Iraq’s communities, and see “the departure of US forces” as “the key to national reconciliation“.

You can read the entire article HERE.

By Bill Harlan, Rapid City Journal — 21 December 2007

– Political activist Russell Means, a founder of the American Indian Movement, says he and other members of Lakota tribes have renounced treaties and are withdrawing from the United States.

“We are now a free country and independent of the United States of America,” Means said in a telephone interview. “This is all completely legal.”

Means said a Lakota delegation on Monday delivered a statement of “unilateral withdrawal” from the United States to the U.S. State Department in Washington.

The State Department did not respond. “That’ll take some time,” Means said.

Meanwhile, the delegation has delivered copies of the letter to the embassies of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and South Africa. “We’re asking for recognition,” Means said, adding that Ireland and East Timor are “very interested” in the declaration.

Other countries will get copies of the same declaration, which Means said also would be delivered to the United Nations and to state and county governments covered by treaties, including treaties signed in 1851 and 1868. “We’re willing to negotiate with any American political entity,” Means said.

Continue reading ‘Lakota Sioux Secede From US, Declare Independence’ »

Democrats won the 2006 midterm elections largely based on their calls for “a new direction” in Iraq. Early in January 2007 speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi repeatedly cautioned the administration that dems would not just roll over and commit funds and more troops for the newly proposed “surge,” like the previous republican controlled congress had done. The democrats tough talk said that there would be no more troops and no more money without “oversight, standards and conditions.” Pelosi said, “The president now knows that he does not have a blank check from Congress without any justifications.” 

Actions speak louder than words; like they say, “Money talks and bullshit walks;” so let’s see how well they did:

January 2007 — Congress approves a $93 BILLION supplemental appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also authorized the so called “surge” of an additional 21,500 troops. Conditions imposed: None.

March 24, 2007 — Another supplemental appropriation of funds for the wars, this time totaling $100 BILLION. Conditions imposed: None

May 24, 2007 — Congress again agrees to additional funding for the wars of another $100 BILLION, and also permits the “surge” to balloon to more than 30,000 troops. Conditions imposed: Yup, you guessed it. None.

October 1, 2007 — Not to be outdone by their previous generosity, the lap-dogs in congress retrieved a whopping $150 BILLION additional appropriation for the wars and despite all the tough talk about oversight and mandatory troop withdrawal; congressionally mandated conditions: None.

December 12, 2007 — Included as part of an overall half trillion dollar defense package, congress once again approved an astronomical $186 BILLION for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conditions imposed: Sadly, none.

The total appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approved by congress in 2007 alone, is $629 BILLION. That’s about $2000 for every man, woman and child in the US. I don’t know about you, but I would have rather used my 2 grand this year to go to Vegas or the islands for a couple weeks.

C’mon Blue, good dog, you.

Little more than a month after his confirmation as attorney general, Michael Mukasey who vowed to bring credibility back to the justice department appears to have withdrawn from that promise when on Friday he rejected a congressional request for information about a justice department probe into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of interrogations of suspected terrorists that depicted torture.

The embattled Bush administration with the capitulation of former attorney general Alberto Gonzales authorized the CIA to use torture while interrogating suspects in a disclosed DOJ legal opinion from 2005. It was to this point – US use of torture – that became so prominent during Mukasey’s confirmation hearings. Although unwilling to declare that the torture technique of water-boarding was illegal by US standards, Mukasey non the less pledged to bring respectability once again to the DOJ leaving behind the partisanship that had overshadowed the department under Alberto Gonzales resulting from the torture debate and the controversy that arose over the firing of 8 US federal judges. Fridays decision by Mukasey clearly contradicts that pledge.

Senators had asked Mukasey in a letter this week what the Justice Department had known about the CIA videotapes and whether attorneys for the department had viewed the tapes, whether they offered advice about their destruction or discussed them with the White House. Mukasey flatly refused to release any information that federal investigators had gleaned so far from their review of the matter and in so doing continues the DOJ’s role as enabler of the Bush administrations overreaching and intrusive – illegal – policies.

The House passed a defense policy bill on Wednesday that would authorize $696 billion in military programs, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is difficult to believe. A year ago during the mid-term elections the American people clearly voted for a change in policy towards the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but despite this clear mandate congress is repeatedly unwilling to listen to their constituents. Not only was there a change of majority in the house and senate, with the expressed hopes of a change in foreign policy but the presidents poll numbers are now lower than they have been for any president — ever. But still congress will not listen.

American government is supposed to be Of, By and For the people, but clearly this administration has taken it upon itself to ensure the political and financial aggrandizement of its corporate and political cronies at the expense of the American people. Social programs are being slashed. Military spending is at an astronomical and all time high. The Mexican border has been effectively erased to provide and endless stream of low cost workers to hold down the bottom line on wages for everyone. And now, like a good lap dog, the congress keeps caving in to the administration and wastes more of Americans hard earned tax dollars. And for what?

Every month the US government spends at least 12 billion tax dollars on its military operations abroad, which is adding to the economic hardship and suffering of working and middle-class citizens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the country would need at least 2 trillion dollars to continue its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq for another decade. According to CBO estimates, Washington has already spent about 604 billion dollars on these wars, which also includes 39 billion dollars dedicated to diplomatic operations and foreign aid. But yet most Americans go without health care. Fuel costs are soaring. Wages are stagnant. The American Dream as it was defined following WWII is non-existant. Unless you’re part of the ruling elite, this country is surely headed in the wrong direction. The people have said as much. But no one seems to listen or care.

The New York Times reported that in 2005, the CIA destroyed at least two videotapes showing its operatives subjecting terror suspects to harsh interrogation practices in 2002. Officials said the CIA destroyed these tapes to protect agency operatives from legal consequences. The destruction of these tapes appears to be part of an extensive, long-term pattern of misusing executive authority to insulate individuals from criminal prosecution for torture and abuse.

“The destruction of these tapes suggests an utter disregard for the rule of law. It was plainly a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence that could have been used to hold CIA agents accountable for the torture of prisoners. Both Congress and the courts have repeatedly demanded that this evidence be turned over, but apparently the CIA believes that its agents are above the law.”

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union

By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

– The CIA destroyed video evidence of the coercive interrogation of al-Qaida operatives held under its secret rendition programme in order to shield agents from prosecution, it was revealed yesterday.

The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaida detainee was made in November 2005 – as American media were just beginning to focus on the existence of the secret CIA prison network.

“The tapes posed a serious security risk,” the CIA’s director, Michael Hayden, told agency employees in a statement yesterday. “Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the programme, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathisers.”

Hayden’s message to CIA employees went out a day after he learned that the New York Times planned to publish an article today about destruction of the videotapes.

The revelation is bound to reignite debate in Congress about the use of torture in the war on terror. But far more seriously for the Bush administration, it raises the prospect that the CIA withheld information from and obstructed the work of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks as well as lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 11th hijacker. Officials from the September 11 commission told the New York Times yesterday they had formally requested from the CIA evidence of interrogations, and had been informed that all materials had been handed over.

Continue reading ‘CIA destroyed video of ‘waterboarding’ al-Qaida detainees’ »

Russia’s Foreign Minister says the country has no proof that Iran has ever had a nuclear weapons programme. This follows a U.S. intelligence report clearing Tehran of developing atomic bombs. Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency believes the crisis could be solved diplomatically.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad hailed the report as proof of the peaceful nature of his country’s nuclear programme. But U.S. President George W. Bush continues to insist that the issue remains a global problem.

“The Iranian government has more to explain about its nuclear intentions and past actions, especially the covert nuclear weapons programme pursued into the fall of 2003, which the Iranian regime has yet to acknowledge,” Bush said.

At the same time, experts in the United States maintain that President Bush’s accusations are groundless.

Joseph Cirincione, Senior Fellow and Director of Nuclear Policy at the Washington- based Center of American Progress, says it’s a “very embarrassing” situation for the Bush administration.

Continue reading ‘No proof Iran had nukes: Russia’ »