Cheney Deposition Is Ordered in Lawsuit by Protester/DOJ Memos Reveal Legal Thinking Behind Controversial Bush Terrorism Policy

Published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by The New York Times

Cheney Deposition Is Ordered in Lawsuit by Protester

by Kirk Johnson

DENVER - Former Vice President Dick Cheney will have to give his account - under oath, in a legal deposition - of what happened at a Colorado ski resort in June 2006 when a man stepped up to protest the Iraq war and was arrested, a federal district judge ruled Monday.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney (L) is seen after a meeting with members of the economic advisory team at the Treasury Department in Washington August 8, 2007.(Larry Downing/Reuters)

The protester, Steven Howards, sued five Secret Service agents in Mr. Cheney's security detail after the encounter at the Beaver Creek resort. Mr. Howards's lawyers have argued that Mr. Cheney's version of events is crucial to getting at the truth.

Mr. Cheney's lawyers had responded - successfully until Monday's ruling by Judge Christine M. Arguello in Denver - that a deposition was unnecessary. A federal magistrate agreed with Mr. Cheney last April; Judge Arguello's ruling reversed that decision.

Mr. Howards has admitted to approaching Mr. Cheney and saying the administration's policies in Iraq were disgusting, or words to that effect. He walked away unhindered by Secret Service agents, but he was arrested by them about 10 minutes later for what they said was the "assault" on the vice president.

Mr. Howards was detained by the Secret Service and local law enforcement officials, then released. Misdemeanor harassment charges were filed, then dropped by the local district attorney. Several of the agents, in their depositions, have accused one another of unethical and perhaps even illegal conduct in handling the matter.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the civil division of the Department of Justice, which is representing Mr. Cheney, said lawyers were reviewing the ruling and could not comment.

Mr. Howards's lawyer, David A. Lane, said that the deposition would be videotaped and that Mr. Cheney would have to be served with court papers before a date for the deposition could be set.

© 2009 Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

 

Published on Tuesday, March 3, 2009 by ABC News

DOJ Memos Reveal Legal Thinking Behind Controversial Bush Terrorism Policy

Legal Guidance Gave U.S. Military Broad Domestic Authority

by Ariane de Vogue, Pierre Thomas, and Jason Ryan

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department today released nine national security legal opinions written by the Bush administration, and revealed that in the weeks before President George W. Bush left office, an administration attorney had disavowed all of them.

Hours after Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated anti-terror methods enacted under former president George W. Bush, the Justice Department released nine internal memos and opinions it said gave legal grounding to the controversial policies. (AFP photo)

The newly released memos deal with warrantless wire tapping, executive power and the seizure of terrorism suspects, all of which were issues on which the Bush administration received criticism from civil liberties advocates.

On Jan. 15, 2009, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote a "memorandum for the Files" stating that the opinions were no longer being relied upon and that they were "not consistent with the current views" of the Office of Legal Counsel.

The release of the memos today appears to be a tacit admission that many of the legal findings made by the Justice Department in weeks and months after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, giving Bush extradordinary executive power, were flawed.

Some of the most broad sweeping memos concern what authority the military has on U.S. soil, which notes that the Fourth Amendment would not apply for domestic military operations and the assertion that the First Amendment, particularly as it applies to freedom of speech and of the press, may have to be "subordinated."

An Oct. 23, 2001, memo titled, "Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States" states that military operations on U.S. soil would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act, since the military would be conducting military operations and would not be operating in a law enforcement capacity.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibited the use of the military as law enforcement within the United States, "except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress."

The memo also casts aside parts of the Fourth Amendment in its legal analysis.

"The Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent further terrorist attacks," the memo said.

The memo also notes: "The Fourth Amendment was aimed primarily at curbing law enforcement abuses. ... In our view, however well suited the warrant and probable cause requirements may be as applied to criminal investigation or to other law enforcement activities, they are unsuited to the demands of wartime and the military necessity to successfully prosecute a war against an enemy.

"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," the memo says. "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broadened exercises of federal power domestically. Terrorists operate within the continental United States itself and escape detection by concealing themselves within the domestic society and economy."

The memos were, in part, revoked on the legal analysis by Bradbury, who wrote in his Jan. 15, 2009, memo in the final days of the Bush administration: "The purpose of the memorandum is to confirm that certain propositions stated in several opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel in 2001-2003, respecting the allocation of authorities between the president and Congress in matters of war and national security, do not reflect the current views of this office."

In the 11-page memo, Bradbury explained that many of the opinions had been written "in the wake of the atrocities of 9/11," but that they departed from the usual practice of the office by addressing "broad contours of legal issues" instead of targeting specific and concrete policy proposals.

Jameel Jaffeer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, praised the release of the memos, but said he was troubled by what they revealed.

"The story is that the OLC argued that neither the Bill of Rights nor congressionally enacted statutes bind the president during war time, not on foreign battlefields and not on U.S. soil," Jaffeer said.

Copyright © 2009 ABCNews Internet Ventures

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

JFK, FDR and 'Seven Days in May'

http://consortiumnews.com/2009/022409a.html

 

JFK, FDR and 'Seven Days in May'

 

By Lisa Pease

February 24, 2009

 

Robert Parry recently wrote of how President Obama's early actions might bring him a "Seven Days in May moment," http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/022009.html referring to a fictitious coup attempt from a film of the same name, in which a popular military figure nearly took over the government.

 

In Parry's piece, he compared Obama's situation to that of President Jimmy Carter. I was reminded, however, of President John Kennedy's comments regarding his own brush with the "Seven Days in May" scenario, and the dangers Obama too will face.

 

I was also reminded of the coup that almost came about during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term.

 

The film "Seven Days in May" began as a novel by Fletcher Knebel, inspired to a great degree by Knebel's conversations with Gen. Curtis LeMay, President Kennedy's contentious Air Force Chief of Staff who was furious at Kennedy for not sending in full military support during the Bay of Pigs incident.

 

Additionally, LeMay infamously argued during the Cuban Missile Crisis for a preemptive nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union, a move Kennedy abhorred.

 

One of Kennedy's friends, Paul Fay, Jr., wrote in his book The Pleasure of His Company how one summer weekend in 1962, one of Kennedy's friends bought Knebel's book to his attention, and Kennedy read the book that night.

 

The next day, Kennedy discussed the plot with friends, who wanted to know if Kennedy felt such a scenario was possible. Bear in mind this was after the Bay of Pigs but before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

"It's possible," Kennedy acknowledged. "It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness.

 

“Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, 'Is he too young and inexperienced?'

 

“The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment."

 

After a moment, Kennedy continued. "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen."

 

Kennedy wanted the public to understand the threat to the presidency, and encouraged the film's director and longtime Kennedy friend John Frankenheimer to make the film "as a warning to the Republic."

 

Kennedy even offered to leave Washington for a few days so Frankenheimer could shoot at the White House.

 

Learning Limits

 

In the wake of the tragically flawed Bay of Pigs operation, Kennedy learned a valuable lesson that Obama has yet to learn: the limits of presidential authority.

 

As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas recounted later, "He had experienced the extreme power that these groups had, these various insidious influences of the CIA and the Pentagon, on civilian policy, and I think it raised in his own mind the specter: Can Jack Kennedy, President of the United States, ever be strong enough to really rule these two powerful agencies?"

 

It's a question we could ask of Obama as well. As Parry noted, Obama has already moved to exert authority over the military by ordering a plan to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months, even though top generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno have expressed their belief that thousands of troops should remain in Iraq for years to come.

 

Obama is also ruffling mighty feathers by calling out top banking officials on their egregious bonuses at a time when so many Americans are out of work or struggling to get to the next paycheck.

 

If he nationalizes the banks to any degree, no matter how necessary or temporary, he'll place himself square in the shoes of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who also challenged the bankers early in his first term.

 

In FDR's case, the bankers responded by attempting to lure the widely known and very popular General Smedley Butler into a coup against Roosevelt. (Some commentators believe this failed coup also helped shape Knebel's novel.)

 

Butler was first approached on the issue of the gold standard. One of FDR's early acts as President was to decouple the country's money supply from the gold supply.  This outraged the banking establishment, as the resulting inflation devalued their holdings.

 

Through a proxy, several prominent Americans approached General Butler and asked him to lobby the veterans who adored him for a return to the gold standard, using the argument that inflation would devalue the veteran's bonuses that had yet to be paid.

 

The point man for the conspiracy, Gerald MacGuire, had studied the fascist coups in Europe and found that they were made possible only by the cooperation of a strong faction in the military. MacGuire offered to provide Butler with a speech to give before the American Legion that would fire up the troops and rally them behind Butler.

 

Butler smelled a rat right away. He decided to string MacGuire along until he could unravel the details of the plot. He learned the goal was to appoint a special assistant to President Roosevelt, a sort of "co-president," after which Roosevelt would be forced to resign using his polio-ravaged condition as an excuse.

 

With Butler's help, or so they hoped, the military would quickly side with the coup plotters should any challenge arise during the transfer of power.

 

The men approached Butler because they believed that he, like many others, would be corruptible. Offers of wealth and mortgage forgiveness were made.

But instead, Butler brought a reporter into the fold so it wouldn't be just Butler's word against the conspirators. When the two of them had gathered enough data, they went to Congress.

 

Congress was initially outraged and curious. But when the investigation soon led to some of the biggest names in the Establishment, the investigation was prematurely aborted, and not one person was charged with any crime, despite solid evidence of perjury, at a minimum.

 

Obama seeks to pattern himself after Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Kennedy. But two of the three had their presidencies cut short by assassins, and one was challenged by a fascist group within the Establishment.

 

Truly, President Obama will need to be extremely vigilant, courageous and wily if he seeks to achieve their stature while avoiding the wrath of similar, and powerful, enemies.

--

Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era.   

--

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Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

PRISONS BEYOND GUANTANAMO

Feb 2009 issue of World War 4 Report

 

PRISONS BEYOND GUANTANAMO

Thousands of "Enemy Combatants" Held in Global Gulag

 

http://ww4report.com/node/6934

 

by Matt Vogel <matthew.vogel@yahoo.com>, NYC Catholic Worker (This story originally appeared in the January-February 2009 issue The Catholic Worker, newspaper of the New York City branch of the Catholic Worker movement, 36 East 1st St., New York, NY 10003)

 

Jan. 11, 2009 began the eighth year of operation for the prisons at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In the past few months, Guantánamo has been much in the news, with Barack Obama's promise to close it down. Many people around the world hope that President Obama will indeed shut down this terrible symbol of torture and abuse, and are working to hold him to this promise.

 

Peering into the moral and legal black hole that is Guantánamo, however, one quickly sees that Guantánamo's 270 or so prisoners are but the tip of the iceberg; the US is and has been holding thousands more prisoners around the world as "enemy combatants" in the course of the Global War on Terror. Human rights and anti-death penalty lawyer Clive Stafford Smith reported in early December 2008 that the US is holding 27,000 other prisoners in prisons worldwide. Like Guantánamo early on, very little is known about these prisons or the people they house, and that should worry us. The US system of detention in this war truly is a global gulag.

 

Many of the prisoners are held in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bagram Air Base, the center of US operations in Afghanistan, is one of the most infamous US prisons anywhere. At least since 2005, with reports of the deaths of two men in custody at Bagram in 2002, allegations of abuse and torture have swirled around the prison. Several prisoners at Guantánamo, who had previously been held at Bagram, say Bagram is worse. (The US says it stopped transferring prisoners from Bagram to Guantánamo in 2004). But, unlike Guantánamo, there are no plans to close Bagram. In May 2008, the Pentagon announced plans to replace the current prison at Bagram with a $60 million, 40-acre prison housing up to 1,100 prisoners, suggesting that the current prison, housing roughly 625 prisoners, is simply not big enough. Additionally, the US government wants to beef up the intelligence staff at the prison, asking for more interrogators and analysts, according to a September 2008 report in USA Today.

 

In June 2008, the Afghan Human Rights Organization reported that ten children between the ages of nine and thirteen were being held at Bagram, and, in its May 2008 report to the UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child, the US acknowledged that children were being held in Bagram, though the Pentagon has repeatedly denied that anyone under 16 is in custody there. As if all of this didn't mirror Guantánamo enough, a 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC, which does have access to the prisoners at Bagram) report is said to claim horrible conditions at the prison, including overcrowding, prisoners being held incommunicado, prisoners held without charge or lawyers for over five years, some prisoners hidden away from even the ICRC itself and cruel treatment violating the Geneva Conventions. In responding to the report, the Pentagon said that the ICRC had access to all Department of Defense prisoners at Bagram, raising a serious question, as similar language did in Guantánamo: are other agencies (like the CIA) holding prisoners at Bagram?

 

The two major US-run prisons in Iraq are Camp Bucca in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border (reportedly with a capacity of 30,000) and Camp Cropper near Baghdad (with a capacity of roughly 4,000). Together, these two hold the vast majority of the 27,000 prisoners to which Stafford Smith referred. The US military reports that it holds, as of this writing, roughly 15,800 prisoners in Iraq. While the recent Status of Forces Agreement between the US and Iraqi governments at least in theory ends the US military's ability to arrest and hold prisoners in Iraq, with the Iraqi institutions still so unstable, it is unclear how exactly those restrictions will be played out on the ground. Already, the US military has announced that some US troops will remain in Iraqi cities and towns after the summer of 2009, when the Status of Forces Agreement stipulates their withdrawal. Will the provisions regarding the prisoners be discarded as easily?

 

As of January 1, 2009, the US, according to the Status of Forces Agreement, was to transfer those prisoners believed to be dangerous to the Iraqis and release the rest. The Iraqis, lacking provisions for preventive detainment under Iraqi law, must either charge those prisoners transferred to them with a crime or release them. The US is to release prisoners "in a safe and orderly manner," and, in December the plan was to release 1,500 prisoners each month until the prisons are emptied, with Feb. 1, 2009 as the first release date.

 

The military also claims that once there are 8,000 prisoners left in Camp Bucca, they will be transferred to a new prison being built in Taji, scheduled to begin operation in March 2009, and Camp Bucca will be closed. This Taji prison is planned to be turned over to Iraqi control in December 2009, nearly a year past the January 1, 2009 date the Status of Forces Agreement sets for an end to the arrest and detainment of captives by the US. The US military has not announced any plans to close Camp Cropper, the US detention system’s headquarters and main processing center in Iraq.

 

Even if the US were to follow the Status of Forces Agreement and either turn prisoners over to the Iraqi government or free them, the Iraqi Interior Ministry's prisons receive a great deal of money from and are advised by the US—yet another successful US government imprisonment-by-proxy exercise, it appears. December reports placed the population of Iraqi prisons around 25,000. Conditions in these prisons are so bad that Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups are genuinely worried that prisoners will be transferred only to be tortured; a recent UN report cites "ongoing widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees by Iraqi law enforcement authorities."

 

Nevertheless, the US military is trying to find evidence of criminality for the roughly 5,000 prisoners it considers dangerous, prior to turning them over to the Iraqis. This underscores the fact that thousands of people have been held without access to courts or lawyers and without charge, many for years. Clive Stafford Smith reported in a May interview with Amy Goodman on the radio program Democracy Now! that the US is even bringing people into Iraq from other places, giving credence to the notion that the US is using its prisons in Iraq to keep people hidden away, just as it tried to do in Guantánamo.

 

The CIA, however, has a more effective way of hiding people—it uses secret prisons. Much has been written over the past several years about the CIA's "black sites," and President Bush confirmed their existence in 2006. However, the CIA has never stated that the program has ended, nor has it ever released any of the locations of its prisons, the number of prisoners, their names, or described the treatment they received. US officials have admitted that the CIA has used "enhanced interrogation techniques" (the Bush administration's euphemism for torture), including waterboarding, in the past. Secret prisons are believed to be in or have been in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia, Djibouti, Thailand, Jordan, Morocco, Eastern Europe (including at least Poland and Romania) and Guantánamo. Moreover, in March 2008, the BBC reported the story of a Yemeni man who claimed he was held in secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe and was tortured as late as 2006. Years after the existence of these black sites was uncovered, we are still far from the whole truth.

 

Closely tied to the CIA's black sites is the extraordinary rendition program, by which the US government kidnaps people and "renders" them to a third country for interrogation and often torture. Countries people report having been "rendered" to include Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Uzbekistan, all with worrisome human rights records. Stafford Smith's organization, Reprieve, claims, in a report released in June 2008, that there have been at least 200 or so renditions since 2006 when President Bush claimed the program ended. A congressional report cited in a June 2008 article in The Guardian claims that at least 14,000 people may have been subjected to rendition and secret imprisonment since 2001. With these programs still shrouded in secrecy, it is impossible to know exactly how many people the CIA is holding (or holding by proxy) throughout the world—and whether or not they‘re still being tortured.

 

It seems that a key component of the rendition program is US military ships. Reprieve's June 2008 report claims that the US has used at least seventeen ships as prisons since 2001. Often, prisoners were brought to these ships for interrogation and then "rendered" elsewhere. The US has admitted to using the USS Bataan and the USS Peleliu as prisons, and Reprieve believes the USS Ashland and other ships stationed off Somalia in the Gulf of Aden have also been key prisons in the War on Terror. What could be more isolated or secret than a prison floating in the middle of an ocean?

 

Reprieve's report also cites fifteen other ships it believes should be investigated, given their presence in the Indian Ocean around the island of Diego Garcia. Located about 1,000 miles south of India, Diego Garcia is the largest of a sixty-five-island archipelago known as the Chagos Islands. A tiny island, thirty-seven miles long, with only twelve square miles of land, Diego Garcia is a British territory leased to the US since 1971 for use as a military base (after the 2,000 inhabitants were removed). It has been a key staging area for both the first and second Iraq wars and is thought to have been home to a secret CIA prison from 2002 until at least 2006. In fact, Reprieve believes that most of the "high-value" prisoners were "rendered" through or were held in Diego Garcia, on British soil.

Despite the fact that a senior US official admitted the existence of the CIA's prison on Diego Garcia to Time magazine in August 2008, officially, the US and Britain deny such claims. The revelation of the existence of a CIA prison on Diego Garcia not only illustrates the truly global nature of the US system of indefinite detention, it highlights its deliberate secrecy.

 

The US military estimates that, since 2001, in the course of the War on Terror, it alone has detained over 80,000 people. Those prisoners and those held by other US agencies have found themselves in different prisons all over the world, but all have been held without trial, charges or access to lawyers, hidden away from the outside world, and many prisoners faced torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment.

 

Scores of people have fought to bring light into Guantánamo, to open it to the courts and the press, to humanitarian oversight and legal representation. But as the years wear on, we learn more and more that this makes Guantánamo an exception to this clandestine world-wide prison operation. Thousands upon thousands languish unheard of in these other prisons, and as we press President Obama to shut down Guantánamo, we cannot forget the rest of those the US has disappeared.

 

----

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

Christian Peace Witness groups want more immediate pull-out

www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_city/bal-md.peace02mar02,0,3016094.story

baltimoresun.com

Parishioners cautiously embrace Obama's withdrawal plan

Christian Peace Witness groups want more immediate pull-out

By Stephen Kiehl | stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com

March 2, 2009

In their pursuit of peace, the parishioners and leaders of Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church have marched, rallied, prayed and even been arrested. Yesterday, they celebrated. President Barack Obama announced last week that 90,000 U.S. combat troops would withdraw from Iraq by August 2010.

Some peace activists have criticized Obama's plan because it would keep 35,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq into 2011 - months longer than the timetable he envisioned as a candidate. Congregants at Brown Memorial said they believed Obama was keeping his promise to end the war, but they also said they would not rest in their efforts for peace.

Standing on the altar of the Bolton Hill church, the Rev. Andrew Foster Connors asked his congregation to pray that God would "guide President Obama in his quest for peace and help us hold him accountable."

In interviews after the service, Connors and others said they worried about the pace of withdrawal from Iraq, and they questioned the troop escalation in Afghanistan and the lack of an apparent plan for victory.

"I am very worried about continuing American interventionism and the idea that we can go wherever we please," Connors said. "I don't know that a military solution [in Afghanistan] is even a solution. We may end up creating new enemies, like in Iraq."

The current U.S. force in Iraq numbers about 142,000. During the campaign, Obama pledged to bring combat troops home within 16 months of taking office. His new timetable takes about three months longer than that, and most of the troops wouldn't begin coming home until after Iraqi elections in December.

"He made the 16-month pledge, but at the same time he qualified that as based on the military experts," said Elden Schneider, 66, a teacher who participated with his wife in local rallies and street demonstrations for peace. "The 19-month pullout - it's based on the best information he has. I'm so glad that the process has started."

Brown Memorial is part of the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq coalition, and its members have participated in marches and nonviolent "witness" events in Washington for several years. In 2006, Connors was arrested during a peace action outside the U.S. Capitol.

His parishioners have supported him and been inspired by him. They've tied peace ribbons outside their church and joined Connors in protests at the White House.

"As far as Iraq is concerned, I have been feeling for a long time that we should get out of there as fast as we can without having things fall completely apart," said Carl Taylor, 92, a professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has spent several years in Afghanistan recently, working with a nonprofit called Future Generations Afghanistan, and he said the country is most in need of infrastructure - schools, roads, jobs.

"Troops are secondary," he said. "What's really needed are development activities."

The Rev. Heber Brown III, pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in North Baltimore, has also been active with the Christian Peace Witness group. In 2007, he was arrested in a march for peace at the White House. He believes Obama is keeping his word.

"At the same time I recognize, from my own personal and moral standpoint, that no time is too soon to step away from a war that has now been largely agreed upon to be wrongheaded," Brown said. He said he would like to see a quick end to combat and a shift in focus to rebuilding and justice for Iraqis.

Among Brown Memorial parishioners, Mari Satterlee has a unique perspective. She attended high school with Obama in Hawaii and the first two years of college with him at Occidental College before Obama transferred to Columbia. She said Obama has been considering the counsel of his military advisers.

"I'd like to have [a withdrawal] as soon as possible," said Satterlee, an assistant principal in the Baltimore school system. "But I think he's been given some good advice, so for me it seems prudent. I'm sure once things get started, he'll reanalyze his decision."

Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Uri Avnery
28.02.09

 

10 Ways to Kill Fatah

979 DAYS HAVE passed since the soldier Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner. On any one of these days it would have been possible to free him for the price fixed by Hamas right from the beginning: 450 "important" Palestinian prisoners, in addition to hundreds of others, as well as all the women and juvenile prisoners.

In the eyes of our government, it is all about the return of the "kidnapped" soldier in exchange for "heinous murderers" who have "blood on their hands".

In the eyes of Hamas, it is about releasing a Jewish "prisoner of war" in return for the freeing of hundreds of "resistance fighters" who have "carried out heroic attacks deep in the territory of the Zionist occupier."

Many had hoped that Ehud Olmert would tie up the affair before leaving office in the next few weeks. But Olmert is afraid. Recently he has made several U-turns. One moment he decides this way, another time the other. Which would be more popular? To act or not to act?

If he carries out the prisoner exchange and the soldier comes home, there will be an eruption of public joy. Olmert will be the hero of the hour. But for how long? Two days? Three? After this, a reaction will set in: How could he release hundreds of vicious murderers? Surely they will carry out new attacks, Jewish blood will be spilled, children will be murdered. Olmert will be the scoundrel of the year.

A leader of stature makes a decision and accepts the consequences. But Olmert is a politician, only a politician. He has never been more than that. He is cynical rather than moral, cunning rather than wise. He still hopes to come out intact from his manifold corruption affairs, and then, after the failure of Binyamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni, to return to power. So perhaps, he may calculate, it is best to leave the whole Shalit affair to the next prime minister.

 BUT BEHIND the personal considerations there lurks a political problem, too. How will the prisoner exchange affect the balance of power between Fatah and Hamas?

The release of 1200 Palestinian prisoners will be perceived by the Palestinian people as a huge victory for Hamas. For them, it will demonstrate once again that the Israelis understand only the language of force, as Hamas has consistently maintained. It will shame Mahmoud Abbas, the more so if Hamas brings about the release of Fatah’s No. 2, Marwan Barghouti.

Olmert could, of course, prevent the humiliation of Abbas. Tomorrow morning he could free a thousand prisoners belonging to Fatah, including Barghouti, as a gesture to Abbas. That would take the sting out of the Hamas victory.

Simple? Certainly. Smart? For sure. Possible? Not at all. Not in our country. Not for Olmert and his ilk. To give Abbas something for nothing? Preposterous. Out of the question!

This exposes again the divided attitude vis-à-vis the PLO that has bedeviled Israeli policy for dozens of years already. An inconsistency that is political, but also psychological.

SOME 40 YEARS ago I read a book by the psychologist Eric Berne, "Games People Play".

One of the book’s theses is that the ostensible motive for an action often contradicts the real, unconscious one. For example: a habitual felon sets out to rob a bank, and is caught and sent to prison. The obvious motive is clear: he wants to get rich the easy way. But his real motive is quite different: he is afraid of life outside prison. In his unconscious mind he hopes to be caught, because in prison he feels secure. His place in the prison hierarchy is assured.

I am often reminded of this theory when I think about the curious behavior of successive Israeli governments towards the PLO.

IN SEPTEMBER 1993, after a long and bloody fight, Yitzhak Rabin signed an agreement with Yasser Arafat and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The logical continuation would have been for Israel to help in establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel and to do everything to strengthen Arafat and the Palestinian Authority created by the agreement.

But, oddly enough, successive Israeli governments have done exactly the opposite.

It started already with Rabin himself on the morrow of the Oslo agreement. After deciding that our national interest demanded a partnership with Arafat, it would have been logical for him to reinforce Arafat’s authority in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and sign a peace agreement with him as soon as possible, even before the time limit set by Oslo (1999).

Contrary to the demonic image that Israel constructed for him, Arafat was the ideal partner. He was a strong leader and all sections of the Palestinian public accepted his authority completely – including those who criticized him, even including Hamas. He had the two attributes essential for making peace: the will to achieve it and the ability to convince his own people to accept it.

But, strangely enough, our government moved in the very opposite direction. The peace negotiations did not even start. The settlement drive continued unabated. Everywhere in the West Bank one could see the red tile roofs of the settlers springing up. The absolutely essential passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was not opened – in spite of the solemn undertaking of the Israeli government to open four "safe passages". Not only did the economic situation of the Palestinians not improve, but on the contrary, it worsened perceptibly. Before Oslo, Palestinians could move freely in the whole of the country (including Israel proper). After Oslo, that freedom of movement was restricted more and more.

All this was already happening under Rabin, and became much worse after his murder. The stupid decision of his successor, Shimon Peres, to assassinate the Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash brought about a series of bloody revenge attacks and raised the prestige of Hamas – something totally opposed to Israeli interests as presented by our leadership.

Things reached a climax at the 2000 Camp David summit conference. Ehud Barak, the then prime minister, initiated the conference and then scuttled it himself with a blend of arrogance and ignorance. In the following days, instead of declaring that the talks would continue until peace was achieved, he spread the mantra "There is no one to talk with! We have no partner for peace!" In this he was inspired by the evil genius of his advisor (then and now), Amos Gilad, who twisted army intelligence reports to suit his destructive purpose.

Not only did Barak destroy the "Zionist Left", but he also dealt a shattering blow to Fatah, the movement that had promised the Palestinians peace with Israel. Not content with that, Barak allowed Ariel Sharon to carry out his provocative visit to the Temple Mount, accompanied by hundreds of soldiers and policemen. Thus he triggered the outbreak of the second intifada and prepared the ground for Sharon to come to power.

When Sharon was elected Prime Minister at the beginning of 2001, he was determined to destroy Arafat and Fatah. He blockaded Arafat in the Ramallah Mukataa and demolished the Fatah infrastructure throughout the occupied territories. When Arafat was murdered (one can guess by whom) Mahmoud Abbas was elected to fill his place.

Contrary to Arafat, who had been demonized by the Israeli leadership for decades, Abbas was seen in Israel as a nice, peace-loving person, an absolutely ideal partner for peace. It could have been expected that our leadership would now move energetically to fortify his regime by a rapid advancement in the peace negotiations, a massive release of prisoners and the freezing of the settlements. But lo and behold: the opposite happened. Sharon ridiculed him publicly by calling him a "plucked chicken,” the settlements were enlarged and the Wall was extended at a frantic pace.

Even more blatantly, Sharon evacuated the costly Gaza Strip settlements without any arrangement with the Palestinian Authority, leaving behind a complete chaos in which Hamas thrived.

THE CONSEQUENCES were not late in arriving: in the Palestinian elections, closely monitored by international inspectors, Hamas won a victory that surprised everyone, including the Hamas leadership itself. Israel boycotted the new Hamas government. In order to minimize the damage to his party, Abbas formed a Fatah-Hamas unity government, but Israel (followed by Europe and the US) boycotted that one, too.

This situation benefitted, of course, Hamas. Palestinian support for Abbas is based mainly on the hope that he can bring about peace with Israel. If he is unable to do that, who needs him?

The Israeli government – and its satellites in Washington DC – were not content with that. They tried to establish Muhammad Dahlan, a man considered by many Palestinians as an agent of Israel and the US, as the strong-man of the Gaza Strip. To preempt this move, Hamas assumed direct power in the Strip, turning it into "Hamastan". Thus Abbas lost all power over almost half of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

This would probably have been impossible if Israel had not completely cut off the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, in violation of the agreements it had signed. In Oslo it was declared that the West Bank and the Strip constitute one single entity, and that they would be connected by safe passages. In practice, not a single passage was opened, not for a single day. Those who claim that Israel has served the Strip to Hamas on a platter do not exaggerate.

The continuation is well-known: Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, Hamas launched rockets at Israel, a cease-fire was declared, which the Israeli army violated on November 4 by entering the Strip and killing several Hamas militants, Hamas launched more Qassam rockets, Israel started the Gaza War. Israeli leaders asserted publicly that they were waging the war also for Abbas’ sake, thus marking him in the eyes of the Palestinians as a collaborator with the enemy against his own people. The Hamas regime in Gaza survived.

The net result: Hamas was hugely strengthened and according to all expectations will increase its power in the next elections. Most governments in the world understand now that they must start a dialogue with Hamas.

MANY PEOPLE around the world believe in the anti-Semitic myth that we Jews are immensely clever and that all our actions prove our diabolical cunning. Therefore, the ascent of Hamas must be the result of a shrewd Zionist conspiracy. The existence of Abbas (and Arafat before him) hinders the Jews from taking hold of the whole country, because the world demands a compromise with the "moderate" Palestinian leadership. But the world accepts that there can be no compromise with the murderous Hamas, and therefore the clever Jews are interested in a Hamas victory.

On the other hand, many Israelis believe that our governments are composed of exceedingly stupid politicians who do not know what they are doing. These Israelis believe that the series of actions that have weakened Fatah and reinforced Hamas are just a march of folly, the result of Israeli stupidity.

I propose a compromise between the two perceptions: Israeli policy is indeed foolish, but there is method in this foolishness. It can go on only because it conforms with a deep-seated desire, which most people are not conscious of or do not want to admit: to hold on to all of Eretz Israel and not to allow a Palestinian state to come into being.

If we want to change this, we must drag the unconscious motivation up to the level of consciousness: what do we want? Peace or more territory? Co-existence between two states or occupation and eternal war?

It is too late to turn the wheel back. Hamas is now a part of reality. It is in the Israeli interest that a Palestinian unity government be set up, a government with which we can reach an agreement that will be kept. If we have already played such a pivotal role in turning Hamas into a central Palestinian power, by all means let’s talk with them!

This way we can also free Gilad Shalit in a prisoner exchange – before his 1000th day in captivity.

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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs