Why the Mideast Exploded, Really

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Exclusive: The new conventional wisdom, in the wake of angry protests roiling the Middle East, is that Muslims are either way too sensitive or irrational. How else to explain the fury over an offensive anti-Islam video? But the video was just the spark that ignited a long-smoldering fire, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

“Why Is the Arab world so easily offended?” asks the headline atop an article by Fouad Ajami, which theWashington Post published online last Friday to give perspective to the recent anti-American violence in Muslim capitals.

While the Post described Ajami simply as a “senior fellow” at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, Wikipedia gives a more instructive perspective on his checkered career and dubious credibility.

An outspoken supporter of the war on Iraq, Ajami was still calling it a “noble effort” well after it went south. He is a friend and colleague of one of the war’s intellectual authors, neocon Paul Wolfowitz, and also advised Condoleezza Rice. It was apparently Wolfowitz or Rice who fed Ajami’s analyses to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who cited Ajami’s views repeatedly in speeches.

The most telling example of this came in Cheney’s VFW address on August 26, 2002, in which the Vice President laid down the terms of reference for the planned attack on Iraq. Attempting to assuage concerns about the upcoming invasion, Cheney cited Ajami’s analysis: “As for the reaction of the Arab ‘street,’ the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans.’”

Author and scholar Fouad Ajami.

In his writings, Ajami did warn, in a condescending way, that one could expect some “road rage … of a thwarted Arab world – the congenital condition of a culture yet to take full responsibility for its self-inflicted wounds.” He then added:

“There is no need to pay excessive deference to the political pieties and givens of the region. Indeed, this is one of those settings where a reforming foreign power’s simpler guidelines offer a better way than the region’s age-old prohibitions and defects.”

No One Better?

Ignoring the albatross of tarnished credentials hanging around Ajami’s neck, the Post apparently saw him as just the right academician to put perspective on the violence of last week in Middle East capitals. As for his record of credibility: Well, who takes the trouble to go to Wikipedia for information on pundits?

Nor were the Post’s editors going to take any chances that its newspaper readers might miss the benefit of Ajami’s wisdom. So the Post gave pride of place to the same article in Sunday’s Outlook section, as well. What the Post and other mainstream media want us to believe comes through clearly in the title given to the article’s jump portion, which dominates page 5: “Why a YouTube trailer ignited Muslim rage.”

Setting off the article were large, scary photos: on page one, a photo of men brandishing steel pipes to hack into the windows of the U.S. embassy in Yemen; the page-5 photo showed a masked protester, as he “ran from a burning vehicle near the U.S. embassy in Cairo.”

So – to recapitulate – the Post’s favored editorial narrative of the Mideast turmoil is that hypersensitive, anti-American Muslims are doing irrational stuff like killing U.S. diplomats and torching our installations. This violence was the result of Arabs all too ready to take offense at a video trailer disrespectful of the Prophet.

Nonetheless, it seems to be true that the trailer did have some immediate impact and will have more. According to an eyewitness, the 30 local guards who were supposed to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi simply ran away as the violent crowd approached on Tuesday night.

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the video trailer which made the guards abandon their post.
“There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”

Predictably, Islamophobes and Muslim haters with influence over Western media coverage are citing the violence as the kind of “irrational” over-reaction that “exposes” Islam’s intolerance and incompatibility with democratic values and demonstrates that Islam is on a collision course with the West.

It is no surprise that Ajami gives no attention to the many additional factual reasons explaining popular outrage against the U.S. and its representatives – reasons that go far deeper than a video trailer, offensive though it was. Ajami steers clear of the dismal effects of various U.S. policies over the years on people across the Muslim world – in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Afghanistan. (The list stretches as far as distant Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state.)

Last week’s violence not only reflects the deep anger at and distrust of the U.S. across the Islamic world, but also provides insight into the challenges posed by the power now enjoyed by the forces of extremism long held in check by the dictators toppled by last year’s wave of revolutions.

Cui Bono?

Who are the main beneficiaries of misleading narratives like that of Ajami. He himself concedes, “It is never hard to assemble a crowd of young protesters in the teeming cities of the Muslim world. American embassies and consulates are magnets for the disgruntled.”

So, does that mean the notorious video trailer is best regarded as a catalyst for the angry protests rather than the underlying cause? In other words, if the video served as the spark, who or what laid the kindling? Who profits from the narrative that neocons are trying so hard to embed in American minds?

Broad hints can be seen in the Washington Post’s coverage over recent days – including a long piece by its Editorial Board, “Washington’s role amid the Mideast struggle for power,” published the same day Ajami’s article appeared online.

The Moral Challenge of ‘Kill Lists’

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Exclusive: Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan has been called President Obama’s “priest” as they wrestle with the moral dilemma of assembling a “kill list” of “bad guys,” a role that recalls how established religions have justified slaughters over the centuries, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.


By Ray McGovern

In an extraordinary article in Tuesday’s New York Times, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” authors Jo Becker and Scott Shane throw macabre light on the consigliere-cum-priestly role that counterterrorist adviser John Brennan provides President Barack Obama.
At the outset, Becker and Shane note that, although Obama vowed to “align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values,” he has now ordered the obedient Brennan to prepare a top secret “nominations” list of people whom the President may decide to order killed, without charge or trial, including American citizens.


The authors understate this as “a moral and legal conundrum.” It is, in fact, a moral and legal impossibility to square “kill lists” for extrajudicial murders with traditional legal and moral American values.

Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, who would become
Pope Pius XII (seated, center), at the signing
of the Reichskonkordat with Adolf Hitler's
Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen on
July 20,1933, in Rome.

Enter the legal consiglieres. Attorney General Eric Holder and Harold Koh, the State Department’s top lawyer, seem to have adopted the retro (pre-1215) practices of their immediate predecessors (think Ashcroft, Gonzales, Mukasey) with their extraordinary ability to make just about anything “legal.”
Even torture? No problem for the earlier trio. Was not George W. Bush well-armed with the perfect squelch, when NBC’s Matt Lauer asked him about waterboarding in November 2010?
Lauer: Why is waterboarding legal, in your opinion?

Bush: Because the lawyer said it was legal. He said it did not fall within the anti-torture act. I’m not a lawyer. But you gotta trust the judgment of the people around you, and I do.
So there! You gotta trust those lawyers. The legal issue taken care of – though early in his presidency, Bush had ridiculed other lawyers who thought international law should apply to him. “International law?” he asked in mock fear. “I better call my lawyer.” He surely knew his lawyer would tell him what he wanted to hear.

The Moral

President Obama has adopted a similar attitude toward the moral conundrum of targeted killings around the world. Just turn to Consigliere John Brennan for some “just war” theorizing. We have it from Harold Koh that Brennan is “a person of genuine moral rectitude. … It’s as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war.”
So, like the Caesars of old or the generals of World War I, Obama consults a priest or minister before having folks killed. And in this case the “priest” is Brennan, “whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the President’s attempt to apply the ‘just war’ theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict,” write Becker and Shane.

If, as the New York Times writers claim, President Obama is a student of the writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he seems to be getting very warped exegesis from Brennan.
Cameron Munter, Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, is just one who seems inadequately schooled in those theories. According to Becker and Shane, Munter has complained to his colleagues that the CIA’s strikes are driving American policy in Pakistan, saying, “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people.”

Western news reports have Munter leaving his post this summer, after less than two years — an ambassador’s typical tenure.

Bellying-Up

Now, don’t “mis-underestimate” John Brennan. His heart is in the right place, we’re told. The authors quote him as insisting, “The President, and I think all of us here, don’t like the fact that people have to die.” Yes, it really is too bad, don’t you know; but, hey, sometimes you just have to belly-up to the really tough decisions.

Render to Caesar, Extraordinarily

Consortium News
Ray McGovern

Some of us pause on Good Friday to mark the torture and death of a high-value detainee rendered, extraordinarily, to Roman occupiers.

Although the charges against Jesus of Nazareth were trumped up, the Romans decided to err on the safe side by going to the “dark side.” They applied enhanced torture techniques with the ultimate hanging.

I try my best to follow the example set by that fellow from Nazareth. I do get beat up on occasion for “knowing where I stand and standing there,” as Dan Berrigan has told us. But I don’t expect to be tortured — much less hung up to die. Those things just happen to folks who don’t look like me.

In my worst nightmares I never dreamed that my country of birth, the country I love, would resort to torturing prisoners. Still less, did I expect my alma mater, Fordham University, to honor a person known to have championed kidnapping and torture (as well as illegal eavesdropping on Americans), by inviting him to give the commencement address.

What’s the big deal? I have been asked. Aren’t you proud to have a fellow Fordham alumnus at the right hand of the President as deputy national security adviser? When I answer, “Not proud, but shamed,” I am met with a quizzical look.

When the shock wears off, I realize this should come as no surprise. The findings of a Pew poll conducted three years ago should have accustomed me to the shame. Those polled were white non-Hispanic Catholics, white Evangelicals, and white mainline Protestants. A majority of those who attend church regularly (54 percent) said torture could be “justified,” while a majority of those not attending church regularly responded that torture was rarely or never justified.

I let myself wonder whether similar results might obtain, if a similar poll were conducted today at Fordham. And then I remembered that most of the college students at Fordham had not yet reached their teens, when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney decided to resort to techniques developed for the Spanish Inquisition and honed by the Nazis — “enhanced” methods to use on suspected terrorists.

Here’s some background for those just coming of age — and a refresher for others — with particular attention to what you should know about John Brennan (College, 1977).

Brennan’s Role in Torture

John Brennan had been CIA Director George Tenet’s chief of staff for two years when Tenet promoted him to be CIA’s Deputy Executive Director in March 2001. In that post he continued to function as one of Tenet’s closest aides – after the 9/11 attacks – as President Bush and Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA onto what Cheney (and later Brennan himself) came to call the “dark side.”

ACTION: Oppose Oregon House Bill 4110 imposing sanctions on Iran

AUPHR
Dan Handelman

Friends

Yesterday, the Oregon House Revenue Committee approved a bill that will be heard very soon by the full House, that calls for divestment from any company connected to Iran's oil industry. Ostensibly, this is to fall in line with already-imposed (draconian, mostly unilateral) sanctions imposed by the US against Iran. As with Iraq in 1990 (-2003), sanctions will hurt the people more than the government. This is actually part of the drum-beat to war that must be reversed.

The vote could take place as soon as Friday, so contact your legislator as soon as  you can; if you don't know who they are, here's a place to get information:
http://www.legislatorpro.com

Leah Bolger of Veterans for Peace in Corvallis-- who, I should add, is also now the President of the National Veterans for Peace-- wrote an excellent letter to her legislator which I include as a generic letter below for you to use to contact yours.

Here is the link to find out more information about the bill:
http://apps.leg.state.or.us/MeasureInfo/Measure/AtGlance?session=36&MeasureNumber=HB4110

This is pretty depressing after a nice turnout of about 300 people at Sunday's "No War on Iran!" demonstration.
--dan handelman
peace and justice works iraq affinity group

Dear Representative ______:

I am writing today in opposition to House Bill 4110.

The main opposition against the bill comes from an argument that has been made in support of it "...the impact of this bill would be to make sure that Oregon funds are not used to build a nuclear weapons program..." This statement implies that Iran is building nuclear weapons.  There is no evidence to that, and in fact the opposite is true.

In a memorandum written on behalf of Veterans for Peace, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote: "Defense Ministers Provide Context--Recent accusations that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon lack credibility. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and his counterpart, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak have both said (on Jan. 8 and Jan. 18 respectively) publicly that Iran is not.

"On Face the Nation, Panetta asked: 'Are they [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon?' and immediately answered his own question: 'No.' Ehud Barak followed suit ten days later. He added that only if Iran expelled the U.N. inspectors would there be 'definite proof that time is running out' and that 'harsher sanctions or other action against Iran' might be in order."

But what we DO know for certain is that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and has never let International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors into their country.  Pakistan and India have not signed the NPT either, and they both have fully developed weapons.  For the U.S. to impose sanctions of any kind on Iran is provocative, hypocritical, and inhumane.
Those sanctions the U.S. has already put in place are already having a crippling effect. There is superinflation and it is hurting the average Iranian.

Though I do not even support the development of nuclear power (there is too much danger of a catastrophe like Chernobyl or Fukushima), I acknowledge that every country has the right to develop nuclear energy. There is no evidence to show that Iran is doing anything more than that. But even if they were developing a nuclear weapon, how can we say that they have no right to, when Israel has them, we have them, India and Pakistan have them...?  If our state government wants to pull Oregon money away from all countries who are developing nuclear energy and/or have nuclear weapons, then I am all for that.  But this bill adds fuel to the fire that Iran is our enemy, and is not a positive step.

I am also bothered by the final portion of the bill:  "SECTION 9. This 2012 Act being necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is declared to exist, and this 2012 Act takes effect on its passage."  This is just more alarmist language to make people think that the U.S. is in imminent danger at the hands of Iran, when actually the opposite is true.

I would like to see the Oregon legislature pass a bill that says that they do not support any military attack on the nation of Iran.  That would do a lot more to calm the rush to war that we are hearing from everywhere. Though its crafters believe this is a very narrowly written bill, its implications are very harmful. I hope you will not support this bill.

Thank you,

Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War

Consortium News

Exclusive: A torrent of war propaganda against Iran is flooding the American political scene as U.S. neocons and Israeli hardliners see an opening for another war in the Middle East, a momentum that ex-CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray urge President Obama to stop.

By Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray

President Obama needs to put an abrupt halt to the game of Persian Roulette about to spin out of control in the Persian Gulf. If we were still on active duty at the CIA, this is what we would tell him:
This informal memorandum addresses the escalating game of chicken playing out in the waters off Iran and the more general issue of what can be done to put the exaggerated threat from Iran in some kind of perspective.

In keeping with the informality of this memo and our ethos of speaking truth to power, we may at times be rather blunt. If we bring you up short, consider it a measure of the seriousness with which we view the unfolding of yet another tragic mistake.

The stakes are quite high, and as former intelligence analysts with no axes to grind, we want to make sure you understand how fragile and volatile the situation in the Gulf has become.

We know you are briefed regularly on the play by play, and we will not attempt to replicate that. Your repeated use of the bromide that “everything is on the table,” however, gives us pause and makes us wonder whether you and your advisers fully recognize the implications, if hostilities with Iran spin out of control.

You have the power to stop the madness, and we give you some recommendations on how to lessen the likelihood of a war that would be to the advantage of no one but the arms merchants.

If your advisers have persuaded you that hostilities with Iran would bring benefit to Israel, they are badly mistaken. In our view, war with Iran is just as likely in the longer term to bring the destruction of Israel, as well as vast areas of Iran — not even to mention the disastrous consequences for the world economy, of which you must be aware.

'US drone attacks wipe out families'

PressTV

Three Muslim countries have been targeted within two days by US drones attacks, with one hundred people dying. US drone usage is secrecy shrouded, placing it outside the scope of international law.

Press TV talks with Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst from Washington about the inaccuracy of US intelligence combined with the deadly accuracy of drone missiles, the resulting increase in militancy in areas that are under attack and the growing hate of America by whole populations. Following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: The US president was actually elected being more like a dove than a hawk. When he came in it was on a slogan of change and opening dialogue instead of war. What has happened? We're having war and now have even more drone attacks under the Obama administration more than we had under George W. Bush!

Ray McGovern: Well, it's been a very depressing surprise to see how President Obama has let himself be ruled by the Pentagon and by the CIA. If you look at the drones - not considering the moral consideration or the legal considerations, both of which we should be considering - but let's just look at their accuracy…

These drones were first devised to take pictures and videos so we could know what was going on over a certain area over a protracted period of time. And some generals and some arms manufacturers said, you know, I think we can put missiles on these things - and sure enough a big industry grew up - Hellfire missiles.

Now, people say - Are they accurate missiles? And my friends tell me these are amazingly accurate missiles. The only problem is that the intelligence - the targeting information is amazingly 'inaccurate.' And so a lot of people get killed - people other than the so-called militants that are the targets.

If you look at Somalia just over the last three days, 85 people have been killed by drones. If you say that each of these had an extended family or coterie or friends of a dozen that makes one thousand people totally alienated from the United States and they could become militants as I dare say you or I might were our relatives taken out in that way.

So, in terms of accuracy the missiles are accurate, the targeting information is not accurate and efficacy or efficiency or effectiveness… well… they're only effective in terms of the arms supplier who builds the drones and builds the missiles. They're not effective in terms of US foreign policy because they are very simply creating more terrorists instead of less terrorists.

Press TV: The government in Washington for example are saying that they have to go into these failed states because of these militants. When did it become legal for any country just to go into another country with, let's say even if they're after somebody - How can they just make these strikes from the air with missiles because they're after someone. It sounds more like an Old West scenario than 2011.

Ray McGovern: It does sound that way. There has been a total disregard and I would say disrespect for the rule of law, not only international law and international conventions, but our own domestic law in the United States. We have a Constitution that forbids people killing one another even if it's the president doing the killing, or approving the killing, without due process. And so the legalities of this thing are indisputably violated.

The moral ones I would come back to. You don't kill a bunch of people for dubious purpose or simply because you have a fancy new weapon that can do that. When the Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan bragged in June of this year that not one civilian was killed in any of these drone attacks for the previous year, that was laughable.

How the world changed after 9/11 (Democracy Now! Scooped in their own back yard by The Guardian)

The Guardian

On the day of September 11, Charlie Skelton attends a symposium of critical thinkers in New York

The heavy syllables of the victims' names boomed out along the streets around Ground Zero. The public were patted down, then allowed up a cramped side road to peer at a distant video screen of the memorial. They filmed the video screen on their mobile phones, filmed each other filming, and film crews filmed them filming.

It was hardly fertile ground for grief, you'd think. And yet, the weird detachment of the moment was severed by the chanting of the names and the brief tributes of the readers. It was the daughter who said her father's friends tell her that she reminds them of him that did it for me. That, and the list of victims called Jones. Jones after Jones after Jones. Too many Joneses. I took my sniffles back up the street to Starbucks.

And from Starbucks, I went down the rabbit hole. I found myself at a conference on Walker Street called 'How The World Changed After 9/11'. It was packed, but I managed to slide in at the back, to hear a guy called Webster Tarpley chant his own list of names. The names of the 46 military exercises and hijack drills (called things like 'Vigilant Guardian') that were actually taking place on the morning of September 11. "The greatest density of drills in US military history," Tarpley said.

Fake radar blips, dummy hijacks, dummy attacks, fighter jets sent off to Turkey, the skies left unprotected, with the FBI's top anti-terror experts stuck on a training exercise in California. The drills, said Tarpley, were important, because not only did they weaken and confuse US air defence, but there was also a military drill for each major component of the 9/11 attacks. The drills were cover, and the dummy threats were made real.

September 11, he argues, was a coup carried out by a rogue network within the US military and government. A cabal of fascists, working with (and for) a banking oligarchy, "the old boys of Wall Street".

Webster Tarpley

"You want to blame Saudi Arabia, or Israel, or Pakistan? You can't. There isn't the evidence." The evidence, Tarpley says, points towards 9/11 as a false flag attack, carried out by a high level clique, that forced a shocked and awestruck US public into a vast and still ongoing war. It was America's very own Reichstag fire. And the official version of the event? "A racist, militaristic, and fascist myth that we must reject."

What I heard, from speaker after speaker, was a heartfelt desire to turn away from the path of destruction, militarism and lies that America has been set upon after 9/11. Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, mourned for Iraq: "One million dead, 4m displaced, and that's a victory?" He sees the failure of Americans to comprehend the scale of the destruction wrought under their flag as nothing less than racist. "In America, we are very good at segregating our tears. Racism is our original sin."

Ray McGovern

McGovern quoted from Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham jail: "Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." And 9/11, for McGovern, is a "big boil" that needs lancing.

He drew attention to an extraordinary story, barely touched by the mainstream press, that Richard Clarke, who was the White House counter-terrorism czar at the time of the attacks, has recently accused the CIA of deliberately suppressing information before 9/11, information that might have prevented the attacks. Clarke claimed: "There was a high-level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share information." And who made this decision? "I would think it would have been made by the director".

So that would be George Tenet. Director of the CIA from 1997-2004, now a managing director of an investment bank. The former CIA man, McGovern, ends his speech by saying: "Of all the people who should be put in prison, he'd be top of my list."

Another speaker, Mike Rivero, addressed the outrage, which he often felt when the "false flag" analysis of 9/11 is presented. The idea that "we would never do such a thing" or "it's not the sort of thing governments do." He gave a whistlestop tour of state-sponsored attacks and hoodwinkings: the Lusitania, the Maine, the Dodgy Dossier, Saddam's nuclear weapons, the staged burning of the Reichstag, and the notorious Gleiwitz incident in which the Nazis faked an attack on a German radio station to justify the invasion of Poland. His point being that 9/11 was "not unique". There's a historical context.

History, documentation, facts. A respect for life, and a respect for truth. This is what I heard, over and over again, at this remarkable conference. Wayne Madsen – a former naval officer and NSA operative – spoke of the atmosphere of "hype and fear" that still grips America, 10 years after 9/11. A fear that's pumped into us, relentlessly, through our flatscreen HD Orwellian "telescreens"

Wayne Madsen

Madsen called for the release of the commission findings that Ludkowski told me about last night: "Let's get those documents out of the National Archives!" But he noted that the man whose job it is to decide what gets released, the administrator of the White House office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is one Cass Sunstein. The same Cass Sunstein that in 2008 urged the government to "cognitively infiltrate" alternative groups like the 9/11 Truth Movement. So releasing those documents probably isn't top of his to-do list.

He's also the same Cass Sunstein that wrote the first op-ed about Julian Assange – the CIA asset and "child of MK Ultra", as Tarpley dubs him. But that's a whole other can of worms …

I found myself blinking back tears for the second time when McGovern read out a poem – in his polished CIA Russian – about a mother mourning the loss of her child. This thread of grieving ran throughout the conference. Wayne Madsen grieved for the loss of "shoeleather journalism", McGovern mourned the death of the fourth estate, while Tarpley spoke of the hollow memorial at Ground Zero – the two "abysses": the reflecting pools, or "voids", as they're often called. He sees these memorials as an appropriately empty vision of "nothingness. Nihil. No ideals, nothing." A nothingness at the heart of America. "But we have to do something."

We have to do something. Even if that something is simply to Google 'Cass Sunstein' and start from there. Begin your own cognitive infiltration. Google 'Vigilant Guardian' or 'Able Danger'. Crosscheck 'Abdel Hakim Belhadj' and 'Al-Qaida'. Begin digging. Begin thinking. And stop believing.

Spirits of Justice Going to Gaza

OpEdNews
Ray McGovern

For those who engage in the common struggle for Justice, an invaluable grace comes from getting to know new friends similarly engaged -- and equally willing to speak with more than words.

Thus, it has been a great grace to get to know folks like Alice Walker personally as well as through her writings -- including some new ones.  In one recent article, Alice addressed her reasons for joining the other 49 of us by putting her body on the line in sailing with "The Audacity of Hope," the U.S. boat to Gaza. She wrote:

"There is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help -- our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors -- and came to stand with us.

"They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys' of Neshoba County, Mississippi, and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man with formidable courage who died with them. So even though our boat will be called "The Audacity of Hope,' it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart."

As for me, I will be flying in my own heart the flag of Jonathan Daniels, a Danforth Graduate Fellow of 1961, with whom my Fordham '61 college classmate Brian Daley, S.J., author Palmer Parker, and I spent a week of Danforth Fellow orientation on the shore of Lake Michigan in September 1961. Four years later, Jonathan was dead. Here's some of the rest of the story:

On Aug. 13, 1965, Jonathan Daniels, in a group of 29, went to picket whites-only stores in the small town of Fort Deposit, Alabama. All were arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Hayneville. Five juvenile protesters were released the next day. The rest of the group was held for six days; they refused to accept bail unless everyone was bailed.

Finally, on Aug. 20, the prisoners were released without transport back to Fort Deposit. After release, the group waited by a road near the jail. Jonathan with three others -- a white Catholic priest and two black protesters -- went down the street to get a cold soft drink at Varner's Grocery Store, one of the few local stores that would serve nonwhites.

They were met at the front by Tom L. Coleman, an engineer for the state highway department and unpaid special deputy, who wielded a shotgun. The man threatened the group, and finally leveled his gun at 16-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed Sales to the ground and caught the full blast of the gun. He was killed instantly.

The priest, Richard F. Morrisroe, grabbed the other protester and ran. Coleman shot Morrisroe, wounding him in the lower back. Coleman was subsequently acquitted of manslaughter charges by an all-white jury.

Open Letter to President Obama by Ray McGovern

Salem-News

For the passengers and crew of 'The Audacity of Hope' to Gaza.

(NEW YORK CITY) - This is an open letter by Ray McGovern for the passengers and crew of “The Audacity of Hope” to Gaza.

Dear Mr. President:

Your speech on the Middle East earlier today emboldens us to claim your protection as we set out to put flesh on your rhetoric. Fifty of your fellow citizens will be sailing on “The Audacity of Hope” to Gaza next month.

You spoke eloquently today about “times in the course of history when the action of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years.” And you lamented “failure to speak to the broader aspirations of ordinary people.”

We, the passengers and crew of “The Audacity of Hope,” sailing to Gaza in June together with the International Flotilla 2011, represent ordinary Americans determined to speak to the aspirations of the 1.5 ordinary Gazans yearning to be free. We will be delivering thousands of letters of support from other ordinary Americans who are persuaded, as Dr. King put it, that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

We write you for assurance of your support and protection as we try to embody your rhetoric. You emphasized that “the United States supports a set of universal rights,” and that this U.S. support is “not a secondary interest.” It is, rather, “a top priority that must be translated into concrete actions.”

Bold words. With respect to the situation in Gaza, though, perhaps you will agree that it hardly suffices to bemoan the fate of one “Palestinian who lost three daughters to Israeli shells in Gaza,” who, as you put it, has a “right to feel angry.”

That Palestinian and his dead daughters are four, but 1,400 Gazans were killed by Israeli forces in December 1998-January 1999 — and 1.5 million Gazans remain deprived of the universal rights of which you spoke. Gaza is a sequestered, crowded open-air prison, in which Israel keeps inmates at a subsistence level of existence. This amounts to the kind of collective punishment banned by international law and is enforced by an equally illegal blockade.

We have long been puzzled that you choose to exempt Gazans from your concern about universal rights, and have tired of waiting for a cogent explanation. So we ask you to look upon our voyage to Gaza as our attempt to implement your rhetoric about what ordinary citizens can do — not only to “speak” but also to act to meet the broader aspirations of the ordinary people of Gaza.

Tomorrow, you will have an opportunity to inform Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of our intention to sail to Gaza next month. You have probably already been briefed on Israel’s far-flung diplomatic offensive to prevent our boat and the other boats of the international flotilla from embarking for Gaza. Indeed, the Israelis may be emboldened by your lack of response to the killing of nine passengers, including an American citizen, on the 2010 relief flotilla. This year you have a golden opportunity to speak up for us beforehand. We expect you to use it.

And please do not try to pretend that $3 billion of our taxes — our annual gift to Israel — cannot be translated into the kind of leverage that will spare “The Legacy of Hope” from harm at the hands of the “Israeli Defense Forces.”

Finally, allow us to suggest talking points not likely to be included in your briefing papers. These points transcend rhetoric, and spring from a faith heritage you share with Netanyahu. They deal with the doing of justice, the preoccupation of the prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition:

Before your meeting, have a look at what Isaiah says about “proclaiming liberty to captives and release to prisoners” and how Jesus of Nazareth repeats that, word for word, eight centuries later. Think about it, and be prepared to put justice above politics.

Please let us know how the discussion goes.

Yours truly,

Ray McGovern (for the “ordinary” citizens on “The Audacity of Hope”)

Military Tribunal May Hide 9/11 Motives

Ray McGovern

ConsortiumNews

By Ray McGovern
April 6, 2011

The Obama administration’s decision to use a military tribunal rather than a federal criminal court to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others means the real motives behind the 9/11 attacks may remain obscure.

What? I sense some bristling. “Their side of the story?” Indeed! We’ve been told there is no “their side of the story.”

For years, President George W. Bush got away with offering up the risible explanation that they “hate our freedoms.” The stenographers of the White House press corps may have had to suppress smiles but silently swallowed the “they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms” rationale.

The only journalist I can recall stepping up and asking, in effect, “Come on; now really; it’s important; why do the really hate us” was the indomitable Helen Thomas.

In January 2010, just weeks after the “underpants bomber” tried to down an airliner over Detroit, President Barack Obama asked White House counter-terrorism guru, John Brennan, to field questions from the White House press.

Helen Thomas took the opportunity to ask why the would-be bomber did what he did. The exchange with Brennan is, hopefully, more instructive than it is depressing — highlighting a limited mindset still stuck in bromides.
Thomas: "Why do they want to do us harm? And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why."

Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. ... They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he's (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death."

Thomas: "And you're saying it's because of religion?"

Brennan: "I'm saying it's because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way."

Thomas: "Why?"

Brennan: "I think this is a long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland."

Thomas: "But you haven't explained why."

One should, I suppose, be grateful for small favors. At least Brennan did not adduce the they-hate-our-freedoms rationale.

So Why?

After the Obama administration announced on Nov. 13, 2009, that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court for murder, I wrote an article which began by quoting ACLU attorney Denney LeBoeuf regarding some unpleasant facts, such as torture, that the case was likely to reveal.
“I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at,” LeBoeuf said.

Never much for political correctness, I also went into some detail on the light that might be shed on more plausible reasons why “they hate us” — Exhibit A being U.S. support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. You will not find much on this in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), but there is no lack of evidence.

I included, for example, the findings of a Sept. 23, 2004, report of the Pentagon-appointed U.S. Defense Science Board, which I’d suggest now has additional impact in light of the tumult now reigning in the Middle East and Northern Africa:

“Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.”

The FCM ignored that report for two months. Finally, on Nov. 24, 2004, the New York Times published a story on the report — but with some revealing surgery in the above paragraph.
The Times quoted the first sentence, but pressed the delete button for the one on what Muslims do object to — “what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights…”
The Times story did include the sentence from the original report that immediately followed the (excised) sentence about Israel.  So it was clearly a case of surgical removal of the offending sentence, not merely a case of shortening the paragraph.

Even More Obvious Revisions

Back to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: as he was being interrogated, the drafters of the 9/11 Commission Report found themselves wondering why he would bear such hatred toward the U.S.
They were aware that he earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of North Carolina/Greensboro, and speculated that he suffered some kind of gross indignity during his years there.

Not the case, the drafters were told by those with access to the interrogation reports. Rather, the report concludes on page 147:

“By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experience there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”
This prompted the authors to observe later in the Commission report:

“America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world. … Neither Israel nor the new Iraq will be safer if worldwide Islamist terrorism grows stronger.”

As for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s motivation, the neocon editors of the Washington Post waited a decent interval — five years – apparently in hopes that few readers would get as far as page 147 in the 9/11 Commission report, and/or that those who did would have short memories. 

On Aug. 30, 2009, the Post cited an unspecified “intelligence summary” for a brand new explanation of his motives:

“KSM’s limited and negative experience in the United States —which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills — almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist. … He stated that his contact with the Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country.”

Let’s give the Post the benefit of the doubt. It could be, I suppose, that the above did not come from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed until his 183rd waterboarding session. In any case, the revised explanation of his motives is surely politically more convenient to those wishing to obscure Mohammed’s other explanation implicating “U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”

White House Gives Up

The New York Times article on the Obama administration’s reversal of its earlier attempt to hold key 9/11 trials in a Manhattan federal court declared in a headline, “White House Gives Up Civilian Court Plan.” But what does the reversal mean?

For one, it means there is likely to be far less reportage and publicity than would have been the case in federal criminal court, which normally accommodates a far larger audience. Even plain folks like you and me can go and watch. 

(In 2009, I attended a U.S. Court of Appeals hearing in D.C. that reversed an earlier decision to release 17 innocent Uighur detainees into the United States from Guantanamo.)

Reduced public access to statements made by the 9/11 defendants was one of the specific reasons cited by Sen. Joe Lieberman and other members of Congress for blocking a federal criminal trial.

"Putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a public courtroom in full view of the public gives him a better platform than any member of al Qaeda has been given to recruit new members," Lieberman said in February, successfully arguing that funds should be denied for holding such a trial.

In other words, Lieberman wanted to prevent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants from having an opportunity to explain their actions in a way that the U.S. and world public would get to hear.

With the case handled by a much more tightly controlled military tribunal, the defendants will be denied that public “platform.”

Even if Mohammed somehow could seize an opportunity, before sentencing, to explain what drove him to conduct the attacks of 9/11, his comments would likely fall like the proverbial tree in the forest with very few there to listen and report.

Favored journalists in attendance would be unlikely to provoke their military hosts or their editors back home by passing along to the readers any inconvenient motives that the defendant might express.
The Guantanamo locale affords the government other distinct advantages. In addition to the fewer attendees, there can be closed sessions for handling secrets and the “CLASSIFIED” stamp can be used virtually at will. Transcripts can be heavily censored — all with very little scrutiny. 

The government also can select the attendees. In the past, military officials at Guantanamo have cherry-picked — and blacklisted — journalists. 

While these restrictions are abhorrent to human rights advocates, neocons can breathe easier, since we are reasonably assured of protection against any renewed complaints about the “one-sided U.S. policy favoring Israel.”

Still, the tribunal approach may further delay justice in the 9/11 cases, since the untested tribunal rules will likely be subjected to many more legal challenges than would be the case in the well-worn rules of criminal courts.

ACLU director Anthony Romero has noted that the military commission system is “rife with constitutional and procedural problems,” adding that the Attorney General’s “flip-flop is devastating to the rule of law.” 

The most serious casualty appears to be the Constitution of the United States, given the dubious fairness of the military commissions and the possibility that some future president might expand their coverage to anyone who is deemed to lend any form of support to “terrorists,” such as perhaps leaking U.S. government secrets.

Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow and an attorney, wrote that she was given all of two hours “advance notice” regarding the Justice Department’s decision to not prosecute the remaining alleged 9/11 conspirators in an open court of law. 

She asked that we all think about what this decision says about President Barack Obama, the Justice Department, and the United States of America. She provided her own thoughts:

“As for the Department of Justice, it shows their inability to prosecute individuals who are responsible for the death of 3,000 people on the morning of 9/11. Apparently our Constitution and judicial system -- two of the very cornerstones that make America so great and used to set such a shining example to the rest of the world -- are not adequately set up to respond to or deal with the aftermath of terrorism.
“To me, this is a startling and dismal acknowledgment that perhaps Osama Bin Laden did, in fact, win on the morning of 9/11. And chillingly, I wonder whether it wasn't just the steel towers that were brought down and incinerated on 9/11, but the yellowed pages of our U.S. Constitution, as well.”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as a CIA analyst for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Ray McGovern Beaten for Silent Protest at Hillary Clinton's Speaking Engagement

Partnership for Civil Justice

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t-shirt.

Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern remarked, as he was hauled out the door, "So this is America?" Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted in the assault.

Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). "It is the ultimate definition of lip service that Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government's supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act of dissent at her speech," stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the PCJF.

Mr. McGovern now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

131 arrests in DC and that's not news

Madison Examiner
Gregory Patin

About 135 people were arrested yesterday in an anti-war protest outside the White House. This came as President Obama was revealing a new report that touted progress in the war in Afghanistan. Thanks to our diligent, informative, corporate media, this act of civil disobediance and arrests apparently are not news.

Those arrested included Pulitzer prize-winning war correspondent, Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers, retired 27-year CIA analyst Ray McGovern, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley, as well as several members of Veterans for Peace.

The anti-war protest, organized by Veterans for Peace, began at 10 am yesterday in Lafayette Park with a series of speeches on the importance of civil resistance delivered to several hundred participants in frigid weather. After the rally, activists formed a solemn single-file process to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. When they encountered police barricades there, some veterans began climbing over them, until the police opened up the barricades, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House.

At about 12:30 pm, police began arresting protesters who remained along the fence, several of whom had chained themselves to it, while supporters who did not want to risk arrest were moved across the broad street. Some of the demonstrators stood in the snow and freezing temperatures for nearly four hours before being taken to Anacostia processing center and released. All have been released. Some have elected to pay a fine, while others, including Ellsberg and McGovern, will go to trial on the charge of disobeying a lawful order. Police spent several hours making the arrests and taking photos of each one of the demonstrators before placing them in a van.

While small in numbers, this protest is significant because it was organized and led by veterans who have served their country. It is also significant that it was completely ignored by the mainstream media on a news day largely filled with sports news and holiday shopping reports.

One would think that 135 or so arrests on the White House grounds are newsworthy, but apparently not with today’s media. If there is any doubt that the information that major corporate media outlets feed their consumers or omit to tell them is controlled, then this should dispel that doubt. It is apparently not in the corporate media’s interest to report that veterans, ex-CIA and FBI personnel and most Americans are opposed to the ongoing wars.

Update: 12/17/2010, 1830 EST. Veterans for Peace is now reporting that the precise number of arrests is 131.