Bush takes nation to edge of war

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Jan. 29 (AGR)-- President Bush took the nation to the edge of war with Iraq on Jan. 28, declaring in his annual State of the Union message that Saddam Hussein had missed his “final chance” by showing contempt for UN weapons inspections. Bush told Americans that war with Iraq was all but inevitable. A year after he first identified Iraq as part of an “axis of evil,” Bush used his address to argue that United Nations inspections had failed and only a dramatic capitulation by Hussein could save him.

The president, addressing a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience of tens of millions, left no doubt that he is ready to part ways with allies who favor extended inspections in Iraq, serving notice that “America’s purpose is more than to follow a process,” and that “the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others.”

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer underlined this position, saying this week that a new Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force would be “desirable, but it is not mandatory,” and adding that insufficient support for a new resolution would not stop the United States from acting alone.

During his speech, Bush boasted of what he considered to be the “war on terror’s” high points -- signs, Bush argued, that the Americans are “winning.”

“All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate.” Clearly relishing the extermination of unnamed villains, Bush leaned into the microphone and coyly inferred, “Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.”

“Whatever the duration of this struggle and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men,” Bush later explained.

Bush delivered the hour-long address at a time when his leadership, both domestic and foreign, is less popular than at any point since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush’s wartime luster has steadily tarnished month by month, to the point that his aides said over the weekend that they could see their political mortality for the first time since Sept. 11, 2001. The budget deficit is ballooning and unemployment has risen, while consumer confidence, stock prices and business investments have fallen.

At odds with Bush, 7 in 10 Americans would give UN weapons inspectors months more to pursue their arms search in Iraq, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Bush’s aides had said in advance that he would not use the address to declare war, adding that he would speak to the nation again when he sets a final deadline for Hussein, and again if he decides to launch an attack. He also declined, as expected, to produce fresh evidence of Hussein’s guilt.

Leaders of several traditional allies of the United States have demanded more compelling evidence that Iraq is the greatest threat facing the world. Bush said he intends to supply it when Secretary of State Colin Powell will present new intelligence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the UN next week to try to rally US allies.

Instead, Bush spoke broadly about Iraq. “Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm,” he said. “He has shown instead his utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world.”

Bush’s State of the Union address came just one day after weapons inspectors delivered a harsh but inconclusive report on the disarmament of Iraq before the United Nations Security Council.

Bush also alleged new depths of Iraqi obstruction of the two-month-old UN inspection program. “From intelligence sources we know . . . that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors -- sanitizing inspection sights and monitoring the inspectors themselves,” he said. Bush added that Iraqi scientists have been threatened with death if they cooperate with inspectors.

Speaking to Iraqis, Bush explained: “Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.” Addressing American troops in the Middle East, Bush said, ominously: “Some crucial hours may lie ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you.”

“This threat is new; America’s duty is familiar,” Bush said, comparing terrorism to “Hitlerism, militarism, and communism.”

Bush said, “the gravest danger facing America and the greatest danger facing the world ... is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror and mass murder,” he said.

What little intelligence the administration has released about Iraq has been challenged by UN officials and some Security Council members. In particular, these critics cite Bush’s allegation, made to the UN General Assembly in September, that Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. After investigating the claim, UN inspectors concluded the tubes likely were never meant for enriching uranium but rather were intended as components for ordinary artillery rockets — a finding consistent with Iraqi explanations.

The US president’s arguments in favor of toppling Saddam by force if necessary have left many countries unconvinced that Iraq poses an immediate threat and could arm anti-Western groups like those that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most key UN Security Council members say the inspectors need more time to complete their job and that a new UN resolution is required to authorize any attack. Russia, France, Syria, Germany and China, as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the inspections were working and should be given more time, particularly in the light of any concrete evidence that Iraq has rebuilt its arsenal as the Bush administration insists.

Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, said a preemptive strike would mean that the “law of the jungle” had triumphed.

The skeptics were given ammunition by Mohamed Elbaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who said his inspectors had found no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons program. “We should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program,” he said. “These few months would be a valuable investment in peace because they could help us avoid war.”

“If the US government puts out bad information it runs a risk of undermining the good information it possesses,” said David Albright, a former IAEA weapons inspector who has investigated Iraq’s past nuclear programs extensively. “In this case, I fear that the information was put out there for a short-term political goal: to convince people that Saddam Hussein is close to acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said this week that public opinion in Europe was overwhelmingly opposed to military action in Iraq and urged the US and Britain not to launch a campaign without wider international support.

“Military action represents a failure of diplomacy,” he said. “Europeans in big numbers think that the last resort moment has not arrived. I do not think the moment of last resort has arrived.”

That day Colin Powell announced that Washington had a sovereign right to attack Iraq.

“We continue to reserve our sovereign right to take military action on Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing,” Powell told global political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Justifying a military invasion of Iraq, Bush explained that “a future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all.”

Former UN arms inspector Richard Butler said Tuesday that Washington was promoting “shocking double standards” in considering taking unilateral military action to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.

“The spectacle of the United States, armed with its weapons of mass destruction, acting without Security Council authority to invade a country in the heartland of Arabia and, if necessary, use its weapons of mass destruction to win that battle, is something that will so deeply violate any notion of fairness in this world that I strongly suspect it could set loose forces that we would deeply live to regret,” Butler said.

The United States and other permanent Security Council members were themselves the possessors of the world’s largest quantities of nuclear weapons, he said.

“Why are they permitting the persistence of such shocking double standards?” Butler said.

The principal themes in the Bush administration’s national security strategy echo arguments made by staunch conservatives a decade ago.

When Vice President Dick Cheney was defense secretary during the administration of the first President Bush, his aides drafted a document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, which included many of the provocative themes that the current administration has embraced. The Cheney aides involved in the effort included Paul D. Wolfowitz, now the deputy defense secretary; I. Lewis Libby, now Cheney’s chief of staff, and Zalmay Khalilzad, now the White House envoy to the Iraqi resistance.

The draft document argued that the goal of American policy should be to maintain United States military primacy and discourage the emergence of a rival superpower.

In an October letter to Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency said Iraq was unlikely to sponsor a terrorist attack in the United States with weapons of mass destruction as long as the United States did not attack it.

Bush concluded his address with a Christian invocation suggesting the US path to war was all but preordained by God: “We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving god behind all of life and all of history. May he guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America. Thank you.”

The US invasion plan revealed this week intends to shatter Iraq “physically, emotionally and psychologically” by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise missiles in two days.

The Pentagon battle plan aims not only to crush Iraqi troops, but also wipe out power and water supplies in the capital, Baghdad.

It is based on a strategy known as “Shock and Awe,” conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. That averages out at one missile every four minutes around the clock, easily exceeding in just two days the total fired over six weeks in the 1991 Gulf war.

“There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.”

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Thursday forecast a long period of war driven by hatred, revenge and greed.

“The worm finally turned. The weak have now hit back in the only way they can. Groping for the enemy, the strong hits out blindly in every direction, in every part of the world. No one is free. Fear rules the world,” Mahathir declared. “Sanity has deserted both sides. Just as, in the stone age, the man with the biggest club ruled, in our modern and sophisticated global village the country with the biggest killing power rules.”

Sources: Agence France-Presse, Daily Telegraph (UK), Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), New York Times, Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald, Times (UK), Washington Post

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INS detains immigrant cab drivers,
security guards before Super Bowl

Compiled by Nicholas Holt        

Jan. 28 (AGR)-- Federal immigration authorities arrested 69 foreign-born cab drivers and private security guards in San Diego, CA last week in what they said was an effort to ensure security at the Super Bowl, outraging local immigrant community leaders.         

The sweep, called Operation Gameday, was one element of a $9-million Super Bowl security plan that included increased security at the California-Mexico border, a no-fly zone and military patrols over the stadium, and camera surveillance of the area.        

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) reported that half the detainees were Mexican and half were of African of Middle Eastern origin, and that none were suspected terrorists.        

Of those arrested, 34 had prior criminal convictions, and dozens of others had visa violations.        

Sam Hamoud of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Diego said Operation Game Day violated a promise made by local INS officials last month “not to engage in these raids against ethnic communities.”        

“We hope it is over,” he said. “If these people are criminals or have overstayed their visas, that is legitimate. But the way it was done is questionable.”         

“They have targeted what they say are illegals who are in their database,” Hamod said. “The problem is, we don’t know what the database is saying.”        

He said some people are in the database because of a slowdown in the INS processing of immigration applications or because they served as government witnesses.        

Hamoud said he had received dozens of calls from frightened Arab community members as a result of the operation.        

“What’s most obvious in all of this is a lack of any explanation about how this will yield any increase in safety or security for the Super Bowl,” said Jordan Budd, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego. “These kinds of operations make us no safer...and they alienate people in those immigrant communities who are most valuable in informing us about genuine threats.”        

“There’s no sign they’ve done similar background checks of US citizens with the same sorts of jobs -- transportation or security positions,” Budd said.        

The three month roundup came as the immigration service conducted a nationwide registration program requiring tens of thousands of temporary immigrants, from mostly Muslim countries, to appear at INS offices to be interviewed, fingerprinted, and photographed. More than 1,000 appearing for the interviews were detained, prompting protests from Arab-American groups, immigrant groups, and civil liberties advocates.        

Countries like India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are expected to be added to the list.        

“Eventually we will have structures in place for registering everyone from all countries of the world,” said a spokesman for the State Department.

Sources: Dawn, New York Times, Reuters

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Third World Social Forum
draws 100,000 to Brazil

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Jan. 28 (AGR)-- The third annual World Social Forum (WSF) ended on Jan. 28 in Porto Alegre, Brazil with a strong message against war, injustice, and social inequality.

During the six-day forum, more than 100,000 debated, offered input, and shared their concerns. The forum was attended by numerous well-known figures, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, both of whom received enthusiastic welcomes.

“Our greatest victory this year is that the world has heard us out,” said Brazilian activist Cándido Grzybowski, a member of the WSF organizing committee.

“In only three years,” Lula said as he addressed the thousands of attendees on Jan. 24, “you, the organizers of the Forum, have succeeded in making the World Social Forum the most important political event of the year, and that is no small accomplishment.”

Lula was the first government leader permitted to personally address the Forum.

The first WSF, in 2000, was the brainchild of organizations involved in the anti-capitalist protests of the late 90s in an effort to develop alternative ways of living.

The event is held at the same time as the business-led World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, in order to draw attention to the idea that, in the words of the WSF logo, “Another World is Possible.”

“The forum started as an opposition to Davos, but today, with more than 100,000 people who have gathered here, it is Davos which is in opposition to us,” Grzybowski stated at a press conference on the day of the Forum’s closing.

The choice of Porto Alegre was symbolic too. For 15 years the city’s governing Workers Party -- which now rules Brazil through Lula’s presidency -- has been deciding the budget through a process of popular participation, redistributing wealth, reducing poverty, and eliminating corruption as a result.

It is the wholehearted involvement of the city administration in the running of the WSF that makes it highly practical for a discussion of participatory democracy, which was, along with social economics and alternatives to war, the main theme of the forum.

The forum opened to a flurry of anti-war banners, with activists waving Iraqi flags and carrying a photo-montage comparing US President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler among the dominating red flags of the Workers Party.

Some delegates spoke of the danger that a US war on Iraq could consume much of the energy of civil society, and could divert the attention of developing countries from the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations ahead of the September ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico.

That could enable the US, the European Union, and other industrialized nations to force the rest of the world’s governments to accept the start of negotiations on new issues in the WTO.

The prospect of war gave an added sense of urgency to the search for alternatives.

A sign of this was growth in the participation from the US. In the first two years of the WFS, only a few academics and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) managed to find the funds to travel to Brazil. This year, the US had one of the largest non-Latin American delegations, with nearly 2,000 attendees.

Porto Alegre was packed. Every conceivable public space was occupied. Even empty warehouses in the dockyards, Porto Alegre’s Catholic University, and a local soccer stadium were all utilized for panel discussions, debates, and seminars.

Some of the speakers were well known: Anarchist and linguist Noam Chomsky, activist and Nobel Prizewinning author Arundhati Roy, and activist and novelist Tariq Ali attended, as well as Lula and Chavez.

But the big names are no longer what draw thousands to attend the WSF, say organizers.

“Initially, celebrities helped to give the event its legitimacy; now everybody recognizes the WSF as the space for global alternatives,” Luciano Brunet, one of the organizers, said. “It has a life of its own.”

The WSF recorded 717 NGOs represented from 156 countries, and 1,286 workshops were held.

The organization also estimates that more than $20 million was circulated during the Forum, which cost $ 3.48 million.

Sources: Agence France Presse, AP, forumsocialmundial.org, Guardian (UK), IPS, Newsday, Rabble.ca, South America Daily, Terraviva

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