By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Oct. 23 (IPS)— They normally come in the form of simple, one or two-paragraph queries, affectionately, and sometimes not so affectionately, referred to by his underlings and colleagues as “snowflakes.”

But Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld’s latest ruminations blew in like a freak autumn blizzard, catching officials in Washington off-guard and leaving spokespersons scrambling for guidance that could reassure reporters, Congress and the public that, yes, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan really are completely under control.

The leak of a dour, two-page memo addressed to four of Rumsfeld’s top aides and filled with a series of fundamental questions that most experts would have expected to have been thought out long ago is the latest indication of serious disarray — even self-doubt — among the Bush administration hawks who led the march to war in Iraq.

Coming two weeks into a major administration public-relations campaign to persuade the public that things in Iraq are going much better than the press is reporting and on the eve of a donors conference in Madrid designed to persuade US allies to cough up billions of dollars in reconstruction aid for Iraq, the timing for airing Rumsfeld’s worries could not be much worse.

The memo, which appeared in USA Today on Wednesday and, among other things, confirms that the Pentagon has failed even to establish benchmarks in its “global war on terror” to measure whether it is winning or losing, comes on top of a number of other embarrassments this week around the US-led occupation of Iraq.

They began with the continuing reverberations from last week’s disclosure that the Pentagon official in charge of tracking down former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the leadership of the al-Qaida terrorist group, Lt Gen William Boykin, is something of a Christian fanatic.

Boykin has appeared in uniform in churches around the country the past two years proclaiming, among other things, that the enemy in the ‘war on terrorism’ “is a guy named Satan” and that the god worshipped by Muslims is “an idol.”

While several powerful lawmakers, including leading Republicans, demanded that Boykin immediately step down or at least be reassigned to a less sensitive post, the Pentagon said only that it would investigate if he violated any laws or regulations but that no further action was being considered.

The next blow came from abroad. After wrangling for months to get a clearly reluctant Turkish parliament to authorize the contribution of as many as 10,000 troops to US-led occupation forces in Iraq, the administration hinted this week it may soon cancel the idea in the face of unanimous opposition from its hand-picked Governing Council in Baghdad.

Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the Turkish deployment — the parliament’s endorsement of which earlier this month was touted as a major diplomatic breakthrough — would go forward only if an arrangement could be worked out that was “satisfactory to (the Turks), satisfactory to the Iraqis and satisfactory to the coalition.”

“Whether or not they will ultimately find a method of satisfying everybody, I don’t know,” Rumsfeld said, adding he still hoped the plan could be salvaged. But the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has formally recommended the idea be abandoned.

The Pentagon views Turkish troops as particularly desirable because their military and peacekeeping experience would enable them to actually replace US troops in the field, rather than simply act as auxiliary units for defending fixed targets such as oil pipelines.

It was also felt that Turkey’s participation would encourage other predominantly Muslim countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, to contribute troops, thus reducing the ability of Islamic militants to depict the occupation as similar to the Crusades of the Middle Ages.

But with the Turkish option fading, it appears that administration hopes for drawing down US troop levels to less than one-half of the 130,000 troops in Iraq now by the end of 2004 were unrealistic. That assessment, in turn, means that yet more reservists will have to be deployed to Iraq, further straining an overstretched and increasingly demoralized army.

The US commander in Iraq disclosed Wednesday that attacks on US troops there have increased sharply in October, reaching a high of 35 a day, compared to between 10 and 15 attacks in July and August.

Military officials argued that the rise in attacks mostly reflected more-aggressive tactics by US forces, particularly in Sunni-dominated western provinces, where troops had previously asserted only a modest presence.

But analysts here said the growing attacks also indicate that the resistance continues to grow and spread to regions that have been relatively quiet.

Despite the bad news, the administration remained officially upbeat this week with Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, telling Republican donors Monday, “we are rolling back the terrorist threat at the very heart of its power, in the Middle East.”

While that may be the official line, pundits and Democrats noted Thursday, Rumsfeld’s private doubts tell a different story. While the Pentagon chief’s penchant for constantly sprinkling his “snowflakes” — questions, proddings, suggestions — all over the national-security bureaucracy, his Oct. 16 memo seemed, as USA Today called it, especially grim.

Consisting essentially of a series of questions, it is particularly notable for the lack of confidence it expresses in the ability of both the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to effectively prosecute the war on terror.

“It is not possible to change DoD (Department of Defense) fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror,” he complains, suggesting that perhaps a new institution should be created “either within DoD or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.”

Rumsfeld writes that the war against al-Qaida has so far yielded only “mixed results” and that US forces have made “somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban” in Afghanistan.

Perhaps most strikingly, he indicates that the Pentagon has never devised specific benchmarks for assessing progress in its anti-terrorism campaign. “Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror,” he adds.

“Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas (Islamic schools) and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” he asks, exclaiming later, “the cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions ... Is our current situation such that ‘the harder we work, the behinder we get’?”

On the record, administration officials described the memo as a reflection of just the kind of critical process that is needed to prevail in a long, drawn-out war. Off the record, they admitted the questions were not exactly ones that inspired confidence.

The Democrats jumped on the leak. “Secretary Rumsfeld is only now acknowledging what we’ve known for some time,” said retired Gen Wesley Clark, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, “that this administration has no plan for Iraq and no long-term strategy for fighting terrorism.”

Occupation is not liberation, protesters say

50,000 people marched to the White House and Justice Department on Oct. 25 to call for withdrawal of the 130,000 US troops stationed in Iraq and to end the US occupation.Photo courtesy DC Indymedia

By Katherine Stapp

Washington, DC, Oct 26 (IPS)— The US capital saw its first massive protest since the George W. Bush administration declared victory in Iraq, as 50,000 people marched to the White House and Justice Department on Oct. 25 to call for withdrawal of the 130,000 US troops stationed in the Middle Eastern nation and to end the US occupation.

The rally was organized by ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and United For Peace and Justice.

More than 20,000 people also marched in San Francisco, according to organizers, and thousands turned out for smaller rallies in dozens of US cities.

As usual with protests in DC during the Bush presidency, Bush was out of town and spent the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland.

In Washington, the dozens of speakers included civil rights leader and presidential candidate Reverend Al Sharpton, who slammed the expensive military operations and reconstruction package just approved by the US Congress.

Opponents fear that much of the money will be squandered on lucrative sweetheart contracts to companies like Halliburton, of which Vice President Dick Cheney is a former top executive.

“Don’t give Bush 87 billion [dollars], don’t give him 87 cents; give our troops a ride home,” Sharpton said.

The mother of anti-war resister Stephen Funk took to the podium and initially stated that her son was reluctant to speak out while being enlisted in the American armed forces.

However, he eventually said that “I refuse to surrender my dignity,” Funk’s mother recounted. “My son uttered these words in an effort to stop countless of others from destroying themselves and our planet. For speaking his mind and exercising his constitutional rights of free speech he was court-martialed by the military and sentenced to six months in detention. We stand in complete support of those in the military who wish to get out.”

Marchers also lambasted the administration’s failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, carrying signs that read “Bush Lied, Thousands Died,” “No War For Empire,” and “Occupation is no Liberation.” No arrests were reported.

Larry Syverson came to Washington from Richmond, Virginia, where he protests three times a week in front of the federal courthouse with a placard bearing photographs of his two sons — Branden, stationed with the Fourth Infantry Division in Tikrit, Iraq and Bryce, a gunner with the Bradley First Armoured Division in Baghdad. They will be deployed there for at least another year, he says.

“At first, [the Iraqi] people were very friendly to them, offering food, juice, homemade bread,” Syverson said. “Now children throw rocks at them. From their letters, I’ve seen a real deterioration in the relationship between the populace and the troops.

“Every day, the news talks about another soldier killed,” Syverson said. “I’m afraid people will start to grow complacent. I’m here to put a face on these soldiers. I hope people will think twice about why we’re there.

“It took 50,000 [US] dead before we pulled out of Vietnam,” he added. “We don’t need to wait until we’re at 50,000. One is too much.”

The Washington march also fell on the second anniversary of the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which greatly expanded the government’s domestic spying powers and, rights activists say, created a discriminatory system of religious and racial profiling.

“America’s immigration policy is misguided,” said Samar Shams of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, citing secret trials, the imprisonment of people indefinitely without charge or conviction, and the forced registration of more than 100,000 people from a list of mostly Arab or Muslim countries.

“If you think this doesn’t affect Americans you are misguided,” she told the crowd gathered in front of the Washington Monument. “These measures are not counter-terrorism, they’re counterproductive.”

According to Hallie Joyce, from Pensacola, Florida, the site of a huge naval air base, “I know right from wrong, and this is just wrong — even evil,” she said.

“There are a lot of people in my hometown who are against the war and occupation, but we feel like we’ve been silenced. It’s fundamentalism versus fundamentalism.”

While bringing the troops home was the major theme of the rally, speakers also called for more domestic spending on healthcare, education and job creation.

The Raging Grannies, a women’s group from throughout the United States and Canada, entertained and inspired the crowd with anti-Bush and anti-war songs that were parodies of the dominant political culture in America. During the march, the Raging Grannies were set up on a street corner across from the Independence Square and performed to the multitudes of peace activists marching down the streets. One song which critiqued the economics of war said “follow the money, fund peace not war.”

Other speakers at the rally included former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who is mounting a campaign to impeach President George Bush for what he described as the “destruction of both Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Organizers of the march announced two other days of protests. One will take place during the federal holiday around the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. in January and the other will be on Mar. 20, to mark the first anniversary of the US military invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation.

Additional info: Pan-African News Wire

Cuba vote shows Bush’s waning authority

Analysis by Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Oct 24 (IPS)— The unexpectedly lop-sided vote by the Republican-led US Senate on Oct. 23 to end a 40-year ban on US citizens traveling to Cuba marks another embarrassing defeat for President George W. Bush.

Less than two weeks ago the president announced new measures to make it more difficult for people who travel to the Caribbean island illegally.

The 59-36 vote to lift the ban also signals Bush’s weakening hold on fellow Republicans in Congress, who are trying to assert greater independence from the administration as they have watched the president’s approval ratings plummet from around 80 percent last spring to less than 50 percent one year before the 2004 elections. A total of 19 Republican senators voted against Bush’s position.

“This would have been inconceivable six months ago,” said one Congressional aide after the Senate vote on Cuba. “But it’s clear that more Republicans are willing to vote against the president.”

The vote, which prompted an immediate veto threat from the White House, followed approval of an almost identical provision by the House on Sept. 9. In spite of furious lobbying by the Republican leadership, 53 Republicans voted with a strong majority of Democrats to end travel restrictions.

Because both houses approved the same wording, which is now attached to the 2004 Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill, it will be much more difficult for the Republican congressional leadership to delete or amend the provision in the House-Senate “conference committee,” which must reconcile the two pieces of legislation before the final bill can be sent to the president.

White House officials told reporters a veto was likely if the provision survives the conference committee.

Bush’s consistent hard line toward Havana is aimed primarily at ensuring the Republican loyalties of Cuban-American voters in the key battleground state of Florida.

The vote was the first time that the Senate, which had previously approved exempting food and medicine from Washington’s 42-year trade embargo against Cuba, voted to lift the ban on travel there.

The large margin of victory caught even some supporters by surprise, particularly because several Republican senators who voted to back the president, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, indicated they thought the ban should be lifted, but that this is not the time to do so, particularly given President Fidel Castro’s unexpectedly harsh crackdown against dozens of dissidents this year.

Citing the recent crackdown, which included lengthy prison terms for some of Cuba’s most distinguished dissidents, the administration has argued that Castro has become ever more authoritarian and that providing new sources of income through tourism would serve only to sustain the government there.

Two weeks ago, Bush announced several steps he said were meant to speed the coming of “a new, free, democratic Cuba,” including increasing the number of Cuban immigrants allowed into the United States, creating a commission to plan “Cuba’s transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society,” and tightening restrictions on travel there by US citizens.

Under current US law, travel to Cuba is allowed for family reunions, study and research and other limited purposes, but “those exceptions are too often used as a cover for illegal business travel and tourism, or to skirt the restrictions on carrying cash into Cuba,” Bush charged in a brief White House rose garden appearance.

“Illegal tourism perpetuates the misery of the Cuban people,” he added.

But supporters of lifting the ban, which, under the provision approved by the House and Senate, would be done by denying the Treasury Department funds to enforce it, have argued that denying citizens the right to travel to Cuba simply perpetuates a policy that has never worked.

“Coming just days after the president’s speech endorsing an enforcement of the travel ban to Cuba, this is a clear vote of no confidence,” noted Anya Landau of the Center for International Policy, a think tank that has lobbied for lifting the ban.