United States News Digest
Kissinger Pushes Bush To Launch War on Iraq
Appearing on the PBS program "News Hour" Aug. 22, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was appearing with Clinton's former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, pushed President Bush to launch war on Iraq, and threatened Europe that it was must follow suit.
Kissinger said: "I also believe that were we to go to warand that is a decision as former Secretary of State one should not urge, this is a decision the President ought to make, although I would sympathize with itwere we to go to war, we have to do it in a manner where even if we don't have support at the beginning, other nations can participate in the process of reconstruction and governance that has to take place afterwards, as we have so successfully done in terms of organization in the Balkans (sic)."
Kissinger dismissed the opposition to war from Middle Eastern nations as a cover for their actual support, claiming they are unwilling to express it publicly because the United States has not openly declared its intent to go to war, and "those who might support us could be left out in the open, if the decision is in the negative."
On Europe, though, he opened up: "I believe most Europeans will ask themselves whether than can really afford to separate on a matter of vital security interests of the U.S., from the country that has been assuring their vital security interests for 50 years."
He said that the issue of sending into Iraq UN weapons inspectors instead of waging war is nonsense, since the kinds of inspections necessary are "not achievable in my view without the threat of warand maybe not without war."
He also responded to Albright (who said that the containment against Iraq was working, and that the war on terrorism was more important) that an Iraq war "is a good way to fight terrorism, because it would demonstrate to the countries in the region, from which, after all, terrorism has come, that to threaten the interests and the security of what America cares about is extremely dangerous."
This is the Kissinger/Nixon "mad dog" theory from the Vietnam War.
Neo-Con Podhoretz Wants To Break Bush from His Father's Crowd
Neo-con John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post Aug. 20, says that President George W. Bush is articulating a new strategy against terrorism, that of preemption, and "it's creative, even visionary." And this is why Brent Scowcroft and other advisers from the days of the elder President Bush don't like it, charges Podhoretz.
"Bush the Elder was the most unimaginative President of the second half of the 20th century, and his senior advisers were among the most mediocre ever to staff an administration," Podhoretz writes, concluding that Dubya has learned the lessons from his father's failures, and has moved beyond filial loyalty.
Bush Summer Reading: Neo-Con War Propaganda
Dana Milbank, who has penned a series of Washington Post stories cataloguing the war between the "establishment wing" of the Republican Party and the "hardliners" over President Bush's foreign policy, wrote a dispatch Aug. 20 that the President's summer reading includes neo-con Elliot Cohen's Supreme Command, an all-out attack on the uniformed military command for being too cautious when it comes to going to war. The war in question is the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Cohen has been one of the leading proponents of war to the death against the Iraqi ruler.
Cohen is not only a member of the Richard Perle-led Defense Policy Board, he is at Paul Wolfowitz's old stomping ground, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His book was promoted most aggressively by William Kristol of the Weekly Standard, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dan Quayle. Cohen summarized his views against the Joint Chiefs' war wariness in an op ed last week in the Wall Street Journal, "Generals, Politicians and Iraq," which read like a chapter out of Huntington's infamous Soldier and the State.
Milbank counterposed Cohen's Wall Street Journal op ed to Brent Scowcroft's, which appeared the next day, and grabbed media headlines worldwide because of Scowcroft's stiff opposition to an invasion of Iraq (and because of Scowcroft's close relationship to the elder President Bush). "With Scowcroft's establishment wing of Republican foreign policy in open revolt, the Iraq policy has become a proxy war for the 30-year feud between Republican hardliners and moderates on foreign policy."
Milbank cited Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the careerists at State as the moderates within the Administration, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the civilians at the Secretary of Defense's office as the hardliners. And Milbank wondered whether President Bush's decision to leak his choice of reading material, in a recent interview at the Crawford ranch with AP reporter Scott Lindlaw, was a signal that he, too, has joined the hardline cabal in the Administration.
Canadian Government Says No to War on Iraq
According to a Reuters wire of Aug. 21, Canadian Defense Minister John McCallum said his government had no information which would merit military action against Iraq. "Based on the information that we have now, everyone in this government has been saying, it is unlikely that we would join an attack against Iraq." Foreign Minister Bill Graham added, "If there was a clear danger that Iraq was going to attack its neighbors, that it has the capacity to use weapons of mass destruction and was about to use it, clearly we would reevaluate our policy."
Bush To Meet Ambassador Bandar on U.S./Saudi Relations
President Bush will meet Aug. 27 with Saudi Arabian Ambassador Prince Bandar at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, "to talk about a variety of regional issues," according to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, including the fact that Saudi Arabia has refused the U.S. access to military bases for an attack on Iraq.
Top Saudi military officials have tentatively agreed to visit the United States this fall, the Wall Street Journal reports, for a series of high-level talks originally scheduled for the, but cancelled. No date has been set.
The meeting will occur in the midst of serious changes in Saudi and other Gulf States' investments in the United States, following the filing of a trillion-dollar lawsuit against Saudi Arabia for damages related to the Sept. 11 attacks. (see ECONOMIC NEWS DIGEST).
According to Bloomberg wire service on Aug. 22, the largest Arab financial association will meet Aug. 25 in Bahrain on the subject of common action in response to the lawsuit against Saudis, which seeks to freeze Arab investors' assets in the United States. The General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions may decide to pull out of the U.S. funds currently valued at $1.2 trillion.
Sharon Cancels Event With Florida Governor Jeb Bush
On Aug. 23, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cancelled a highly publicized planned trip to Florida, where he would have appeared at an event with Florida Governor Jeb Bush, only two months before the elections for Governor. War criminal Sharon would have been going to Florida on Sept. 9 to campaign for Jeb Bush, under the guise of a "stand with Israel" celebration.
Sharon's visit was a test case for driving the Jewish vote into the Republican camp. However, according to the New York-based Jewish newspaper Forward, the Florida Jewish community rebelled against Sharon, demanding that he also meet with Democratic gubernatorial candidates. Sharon had planned to share the speaker's platform with Bush at an event organized by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. Earlier this year, the same group helped to organize in the Miami area an Israeli Bonds drive for Sharon's fascist spokesman Raanan Gissen (the same Gissen who defended the IDF study of the tactics the Nazi used against the Warsaw Ghetto uprising). During that tour, Gissen told audiences that World War III is inevitable.
The New York Times reported that Florida Democratic Party chairman Bob Poe denounced the Sharon visit as "absolutely improper," and a White House ploy.
'Rand Analyst' Murawiec Caught in More Lies
Laurent Murawiec, the supposed "Rand analyst" whose briefing to Richard Perle's Defense Policy Board on Saudi Arabia raised such an uproar, has been caught in another lie, denying having made derogatory comments to the Dubai-based magazine Arabian Business. After Murawiec denied making the statements quoted in an article published on Aug. 13 and titled "Potent words, softly spoken, rock Saudi-U.S. relations," the magazine released tapes of the interview to the media and regional governments, showing that Murawiec had indeed been quoted accurately.
The article quoted Murawiec as saying: "My experience in your part of the world is that most people hate the Saudis' guts .... Everybody knows they are bunch of lazy a******s that are arrogant, too big for their shoes, which behave in a consistently disgusting manner...."
Murawiec also told the magazine that he is working on a book about Islam to be called In the Spirit of Islam. He claims that "there is a fundamental difference between Islam as a privately practiced religion and Islam as it claims to bemeaning a polity." Murawiec asserted that Islam is fine as a private religion, "but Islam as a polity is an unadulterated disaster."
Murawiec acknowledged never having lived in the Arab world, but claimed to have spent some time there, and added that "I grew up with Arabs in France"apparently making him an expert.
Meanwhile, James Thomson, the president of the Rand Corp. on Aug. 23 denounced Murawiec's remarks. "The comments on the tape recording on the Web site ITP.net are offensive and repugnant, and Rand repudiates them in the strongest terms. Rand was unaware of these comments until they were reported by ITP.net."
DLC Candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's Gubernatorial Campaign in Trouble
The troubles besetting the Maryland gubernatorial campaign of Democratic Leadership Council figure Kathleen Kennedy Townsend are causing many highers-up in the Democratic Party to worry. Despite setting new records in fundraising ($6.6 million so far). and in a state that has twice as many registered Democrats as Republicansone which hasn't elected a Republican Governor since Spiro Agnew more than 35 years agoKennedy Townsend, the state's Lt. Governor and eldest daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, is barely ahead in the polls vis-à-vis her Republican opponent, Robert Ehrlich, a Gingrichite ideologue.
Like Baltimore Mayor Marin O'Malley, and Washington, D.C. Mayor Tony Williams, Kennedy Townsend is a creation of the DLC, and follows their New Age/new economy line as religiously as does Senator Joe Lieberman. Her identification with the DLC is so complete that she appeared on the cover of the issue of The New Democrat magazine that was handed out at the 2000 Democratic convention.
Aside from Kennedy Townsend's complete lack of a human personality, it is the DLC's rejection of the Roosevelt Democratic constituency, which is responsible for her lack of any enthusiastic support from the majority of the citizens.
Last week, Democratic Party money bags Terry McAuliffe called Kennedy Townsend to offer his assistance with her failing campaign; incumbent Maryland Governor Parris Glendening also tried to help; and Uncle Ted has also discussed his niece's election problems with members of the Maryland Congressional delegation. However, the kiss of death may be her campaign's request for help from Donna Brazille, who memorably led Al Gore's 2000 Presidential campaign to defeat.
A Bull Moose Third Party?
Michael Steinhart's New York Sun newspaper reports that Sen. John McCain's adviser Marshall Wittmann is leaving the Republican Party to become an independent, which is likely to fuel stoke speculation that McCain, a Republican Senator from Arizona and a failed Republican Presidential candidate in 2000, will also resign from the GOP, perhaps to run for President as an independent.
Wittmann is the chief promoter of the "Bull Moose," Teddy Roosevelt-styled third-party alternative for McCain, in which McCain would run against Bush in 2004. He is currently employed at the Hudson Institute, and heads the Project for Conservative Reform.
Wittmann criticizes Bush for being too pro-business. "I can't identify with the corporatization of the Republican Party...." Wittmann says. The turning point for him, he says, was the GOP's obsession to permanently eliminate the estate tax, which Wittmann says "symbolizes the corruption of Republican values."
What he doesn't say, of course, is that his mentor McCain is entirely a creature of organized-crime-related "business," and that McCain's multimillion-dollar fortune derives from dirty liquor concessions.
New York Times, Washington Post Warn of Black-Jewish Fissures in Democratic Party
The Aug. 22 issues of the Washington Post and the New York Times both warn of black-Jewish fissures within the Democratic Party, as a result of the recent AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) mobilizations against incumbent black Congressmen Earl Hilliard (D-Ala) and Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga). The targetting in their respective Democratic primaries, in June and August, of these two Congressmen, because of their criticisms of the Nazi-like policies of Ariel Sharon and the IDF, has caused the biggest conflict in memory between two leading constituencies of the Democratic Partythe African-Americans and Jews. Both Hilliard and McKinney were defeated in those primaries.
The New York Times illustrated the depth of the AIPAC mobilization by quoting AIPAC founder and former executive director Morris Amatay gloating that the defeats of the two incumbents shows that there is a "price to pay for taking views out of step with the majority of Americans."
Privately, Washington sources have told EIRNS that there is deep rage among the leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, and there will be a tremendous backlash against the AIPAC/ADL interference in the primaries. In addition to the massive infusions of money to McKinney's opponent, Denise Majette, there was a big crossover GOP vote for Majette, in a district which has a large Christian Zionist constituency. According to one source, Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga) played a pivotal role in the "Get McKinney" effort, and a staffer of Miller's formerly on the staff of John McCain, was deeply involved in the crossover vote drive.
Amtrak's Acela Express: What Lies Behind the Problems
Amtrak rushed its Acela Express into service in December 2000 to meet the demands of the "Amtrak Reform Council" and the Congressional Conservative Revolutionaries, anxious to see the high-speed train in operation because it would bring in an increase of revenue.
Now, of course, all 18 Acela trains are idled, because of cracks found in their shock absorption systems.
An aide to a Congressman on the House Transportation Committee told the Aug. 18 New York Times that Amtrak moved perhaps too hastily, in order to prove that it could meet "operational self-sufficency," a requirement imposed by the Congress five years ago, which Amtrak must meet by this winter. Hence, Amtrak may not have had time to conduct all the necessary tests on the Acela.
In 1997, the von Hayek Conservative Revoutionaries in Congress passed the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act, which specified that Amtrak must reach "operational self-sufficiency," without any funding from the U.S. Congress, by December 2002, or else face being radically "restructured and rationalized"meaning that large chunks of Amtrak would be shut down, leaving whole sections of the United States without any inter-city rail traffic.
Amtrak had the Bombardier Co. of Montreal and the Alsthom Co. of France develop 20 train sets for the Acela. But the Acela design had to withstand much higher American standards for crash-worthiness for high-speed trains than are specified in European requirements. Therefore, the Acela locomotive train set was built with a very heavy upper car on top of a European-derived undercarriage. The Congressional aide likened this to a "tank chassis on a Ferrari suspension." The Acela train set required significant testing, but Amtrak rushed it into early service, in order to try to prove "operational self-sufficiency."
Wall Street Journal: Amtrak Should Be Dismantled
In an editorial Aug. 19, the Wall Street Journal declared that Amtrak, America's largest inter-city passenger rail service, carrying more than four-fifths of all passengers nationwide, must be put through "fundamental reform." The Journal said that in June, when Amtrak asked the Congress for a $200-million loan guarantee, Congress should have refused. "There were other sensible options, such as ... closing money-losing routes, or declaring bankruptcy and allowing a [bankruptcy] judge to take the political heat for killing off Amtrak's dogs," i.e., Amtrak's losing routes.
The editorial labelled Amtrak a "subsidy racket for the Northeast states," and concluded by demanding implementation of the Bush Administration reform plan, which it adopted from the Amtrak Reform Council.
Meantime, Sen. John McCain is sponsoring a bill to shut down and split off parts of the system, in a privatization plan. At present, Amtrak is still barely continuing to operate, by special Federal funds which run out Oct. 1.
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