Feith Investigation Slowing Senate Inquiry

This story on the Feith investigation shows how all the Iraq matters are connected.

The second part of the Senate investigation into bungled pre-war Iraq intelligence is still being held up by an internal Pentagon investigation of Douglas Feith, one of the war's leading architects, RAW STORY has learned.

As previously reported by Raw Story, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) inquiry -- titled Phase II -- is waiting on a report from the Pentagon inspector general as to Feith's alleged role in manipulating pre-war intelligence to support a case for war. Feith, who is also being probed by the FBI for his role in an Israeli spy case, resigned in January 2005.

You should definatley read the entire artcile.

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Drinking the Kool-Aid

What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean today? It signifies that the person in question has given up personal integrity and has succumbed to the prevailing group-think that typifies policymaking today. This person has become "part of the problem, not part of the solution."

What was the "problem"? The sincerely held beliefs of a small group of people who think they are the "bearers" of a uniquely correct view of the world, sought to dominate the foreign policy of the United States in the Bush 43 administration, and succeeded in doing so through a practice of excluding all who disagreed with them. Those they could not drive from government they bullied and undermined until they, too, had drunk from the vat.

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Why God Chose the Jews

No wonder the LA Times is losing subscribers left and right. This poorly written peice about the Jewish "Early Warning System" is an embarrasment and should never have been published.

If you just had lunch you may want to wait a bit before you read this.

Why God chose the Jews

THERE IS ONE good thing about anti-Semitism: It lets you know who the bad guys are. Right, left, black, white, freak or straight, the minute someone starts rattling on about the evil Jews, you know your train just pulled into Slimeball Station. [Ah, but didn't the Iranian President talk about Israel, not the Jews?]

All bigotry is wrong, of course, but there's something about this particular form of prejudice that is weirdly reliable as a sign of deeper wickedness. Perhaps it's because the Jews contributed so much to humanity's moral code that to hate them as a race is to despise the restraints of morality itself. [Since you equate Jews with Israel, is Israeli conduct an example of that "moral code."]

Whatever the reason, true, virulent anti-Semitism is such a good indicator of the presence of evil that I'm tempted to believe that when God made the Jews his chosen people, this is what he chose them for: to be a sort of Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else. [This is just stupid, and the rest goes downhill from here.]

Unfortunately, in his infinite love for his creation, I suspect the Big Guy may have overestimated our intelligence. Maybe he thought that after Hitler we'd just, you know, like, get it. Instead, we still see apparently intelligent people appeasing, making excuses for and even embracing the sorts of stinkers who ought to set off the Big Alarm.

That's why I think the system could use more bells and whistles — a loud honking noise perhaps, or even closed captioning for the morally impaired. Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a "myth" or that Israel "must be wiped off the map," you would hear a loud honk and words would appear in the air below his face: "Hello. I am an evil madman. Please stop negotiating with me now and proceed to cripple my nuclear capability by any means necessary."

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US Threatens Norwary over Israel Boycott

Am I simply not aware of the US taking such a strong stance whenever any other country has issues with other foreign nations. Maybe I am just not informed.

USA threats after boycott support

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with "serious political consequences" after Finance Minister and Socialist Left Party leader Kristin Halvorsen admitted to supporting a boycott of Israeli goods.

The reaction was reportedly given to the Norwegian embassy in Washington DC, and it was made clear that the statements came from the top level of the US State Department, newspaper VG reports.

VG claims that two classified reports promised a "tougher climate" between the USA and Norway if Halvorsen's remarks represented the foreign policy of the new red-green alliance of the Labor, Socialist Left and Center parties.

Norway's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre, responded immediately with written explanations to both Israel and the USA, clarifying the government's stance, while Halvorsen distanced her party's policy from that of the government's.

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Why they hate US.

Pat Buchanan on the US' standing in the middle east.

America’s standing in the Arab world could hardly be worse. And the questions the survey raises are these: Do we care? And, if we do, do not the Arabs have a point? Has not U.S. behavior in the Middle East lent credence to the view that our principal interests are Israel and oil, and, under Bush II, that we launched an invasion to dominate the region?

After all, before liberating Kuwait, Secretary of State Baker said the coming war was about “o-i-l.” And while we sent half a million troops to rescue that nation of 1.5 million, we sent none to Rwanda, where perhaps that many people were massacred.

If Kuwait did not sit on an underground sea of oil, would we have gone in? Is our military presence in the Mideast unrelated to its control of two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves?

If human rights is our goal, why have we not gone into Darfur, the real hellhole of human rights? If democracy is what we are fighting for, why did we not invade Cuba, a dictatorship, 90 miles away, far more hostile to America than Saddam’s Iraq, and where human rights have been abused for half a century? Saddam never hosted nuclear missiles targeted at U.S. cities.

And is Israel not our fair-haired boy? Though Sharon & Co. have stomped on as many UN resolutions as Saddam Hussein ever did, they have pocketed $100 billion in U.S. aid and are now asking for a $2 billion bonus this year, Katrina notwithstanding. Anyone doubt they will get it?

Though per capita income in Israel is probably 20 times that of the Palestinians, Israel gets the lion’s share of economic aid. And though they have flipped off half a dozen presidents to plant half a million settlers in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, have we ever imposed a single sanction on Israel? Has Bush ever raised his voice to Ariel Sharon? And when you listen to the talking heads and read the columns of the neocon press, is it unfair to conclude that, yes, they would like to dump over every regime that defies Bush or Sharon?

Empathy, a capacity for participating in another’s feelings or ideas, is indispensable to diplomacy. Carried too far, as it was by the Brits in the 1930s, it can lead to appeasement. But an absence of empathy can leave statesmen oblivious as to why their nation is hated, and with equally fateful consequences.

Conference on Jewish Majority in Acre

This speaks for itself.

Conference to be held on achieving Jewish majority in Acre
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondent

A conference on finding ways to achieve a permanent Jewish majority in Acre is to be held on Sunday in the northern Jewish-Arab city. The convention, the first of its kind, was initiated by the New Forum for Strengthening the Jewish community in Acre, lead by council member Muli Cohen, a member of Mayor Shimon Lankri's faction in the city council.

Over the weekend, Cohen told a local newspaper that Acre has the right to exist as a mixed city only if it has a permanent Jewish majority. "The real solution is to establish appropriate institutions so that the city would be able to receive nationalist ultra-Orthodox families," he told the Zafon1 newspaper.

The Acre municipality said in response that "the mayor supports any activity that may advance the city and bring in strong populations to advance it."

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NSA

Abramoff Israeli Charity

From the WaPo:

Fredericksburg, Va.: Hi Susan, great stories so far. How is it the Abramoff could be broke? He had zillions of dollars, it seemed. What gives?

Susan Schmidt: I keep wondering the same thing. We do know he spent millions of dollars on his two restaurants, that he bankrolled a religious academy that educated his children, that he was sending money to settlers on the West Bank for a sniper school. He also lived extravagantly, flying by private jet and buying expensive cars. But that's an awful lot of money to go through. And there is hardly anything left for the lawyers!

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Chief Rabbi's Son Gets Prison.

And his father is a leader in the religious community?

The Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday sentenced Meir Amar, the son of Chief Sephardic Rabbi Shlomo Amar, to a prison term of two years and eight months.

As part of a plea bargain, Amar was convicted of kidnapping a youth involved in a romantic relationship with his sister Ayala, as well as abuse of a minor, illegal confinement, extortion, threats, and causing bodily harm.

The court also ordered Amar to compensate the youth with NIS 35,000 (about USD 8,000).

His mother, Mazal Amar, pled guilty to distorting a report on the incident, but was not convicted.

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Santa Attacked in Israel.

Again, can you imagine the coverage if the corresponding incident happened in the US?

Thugs set upon man wearing Santa costume

Father wearing Santa Clause outfit, who came to pick up his daughter from a night club in south Tel Aviv, set upon by gang of youths
Natasha Musgovia

He's Jewish in every way, but on New Year's Eve, Alexei Shtukin (42) decided to dress up as Santa Clause "just for fun," and paid for his decision dearly.

He was set upon by a gang of youths at the Dome nightclub in Tel Aviv, and beaten in front of his family. Youths were heard shouting, "dead Christian."

Alexei and his wife had decided to head to the Dome night club in south Tel Aviv, in order to pick up their daughter, Dasha (14), who was celebrating the New Year.

"We went inside to look for her, and then someone yelled: 'Santa Clause.'"

Alexei was convinced that the shout was one of enthusiasm, but was proved bitterly wrong.

The costume, as he immediately found out, was like a red sheet placed in front of a bull, and drew the rage of revelers. It started with a kick to the head and the pulling off of his hat.

"I bent down to pick up the hat, and then a group jumped on me. All I wanted at that time was to take my daughter and wife and get out of there in peace," he said.

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Fisk on Coverage of Israel in the Media

Fisk makes some great points here. One point he does not make is that by not getting accurate coverage we (US citizens) do not fully understand why we are the target of terrorist attacks.

Telling it like it isn't

By Robert Fisk, ROBERT FISK is Middle East correspondent for the London Independent and the author, most recently, of "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East," published last month by Knopf.

I FIRST REALIZED the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from the Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting. I could save my sorrows for someone else, he said. One of the joys of leaving was that he would no longer have to alter the truth to suit his paper's more vociferous readers.

"I used to call the Israeli Likud Party 'right wing,' " he said. "But recently, my editors have been telling me not to use the phrase. A lot of our readers objected." And so now, I asked? "We just don't call it 'right wing' anymore."

Ouch. I knew at once that these "readers" were viewed at his newspaper as Israel's friends, but I also knew that the Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu was as right wing as it had ever been.

This is only the tip of the semantic iceberg that has crashed into American journalism in the Middle East. Illegal Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are clearly "colonies," and we used to call them that. I cannot trace the moment when we started using the word "settlements." But I can remember the moment around two years ago when the word "settlements" was replaced by "Jewish neighborhoods" — or even, in some cases, "outposts."

Similarly, "occupied" Palestinian land was softened in many American media reports into "disputed" Palestinian land — just after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 2001, instructed U.S. embassies in the Middle East to refer to the West Bank as "disputed" rather than "occupied" territory.

Then there is the "wall," the massive concrete obstruction whose purpose, according to the Israeli authorities, is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from killing innocent Israelis. In this, it seems to have had some success. But it does not follow the line of Israel's 1967 border and cuts deeply into Arab land. And all too often these days, journalists call it a "fence" rather than a "wall." Or a "security barrier," which is what Israel prefers them to say. For some of its length, we are told, it is not a wall at all — so we cannot call it a "wall," even though the vast snake of concrete and steel that runs east of Jerusalem is higher than the old Berlin Wall.

The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.

If a Jewish colony built illegally on Arab land is simply a nice friendly "neighborhood," then any Palestinian who attacks it must be carrying out a mindless terrorist act.

And surely there is no reason to protest a "fence" or a "security barrier" — words that conjure up the fence around a garden or the gate arm at the entrance to a private housing complex.

For Palestinians to object violently to any of these phenomena thus marks them as a generically vicious people. By our use of language, we condemn them.

We follow these unwritten rules elsewhere in the region. American journalists frequently used the words of U.S. officials in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency — referring to those who attacked American troops as "rebels" or "terrorists" or "remnants" of the former regime. The language of the second U.S. pro-consul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, was taken up obediently — and grotesquely — by American journalists.

American television, meanwhile, continues to present war as a bloodless sandpit in which the horrors of conflict — the mutilated bodies of the victims of aerial bombing, torn apart in the desert by wild dogs — are kept off the screen. Editors in New York and London make sure that viewers' "sensitivities" don't suffer, that we don't indulge in the "pornography" of death (which is exactly what war is) or "dishonor" the dead whom we have just killed.

Our prudish video coverage makes war easier to support, and journalists long ago became complicit with governments in making conflict and death more acceptable to viewers. Television journalism has thus become a lethal adjunct to war.

Back in the old days, we used to believe — did we not? — that journalists should "tell it how it is." Read the great journalism of World War II and you'll see what I mean. The Ed Murrows and Richard Dimblebys, the Howard K. Smiths and Alan Moorheads didn't mince their words or change their descriptions or run mealy-mouthed from the truth because listeners or readers didn't want to know or preferred a different version.

So let's call a colony a colony, let's call occupation what it is, let's call a wall a wall. And maybe express the reality of war by showing that it represents not, primarily, victory or defeat, but the total failure of the human spirit.

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