In this issue:

LaRouche Featured in Iran University Forum

Bush-Cheney Iraq Crimes 'Far More Serious' Than Watergate

Kerry Mimics Bush-Cheney in Backing Fascist Sharon

International Leaders Emphasize Arafat's Central Role

UN Blasts Israeli Blocking of Food Aid to Palestinians

Captured al-Qaeda Member Recants

U.S. Army Opens Investigations of Homicides

From Volume 3, Issue Number 27 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published July 6, 2004
Southwest Asia News Digest

LaRouche Featured in Iran University Forum

Lyndon LaRouche is prominently referenced on the Bi Onvan ("Untitled") website, which is associated with the Center for Political Studies of the top-ranked Sharif University in Tehran. Bi Onvan is the only student website in Iran which is updated on a daily basis.

The website's "Articles" section, covers a speech delivered in late March by Dr. Abbasi, at Shahid Abbaspour University (which has a hot political environment).

A major portion of Dr. Abbasi's speech, entitled "Psychology of America's Behavior After the 9/11 Events." is devoted to Lyndon LaRouche, with the subtitle "Interview with Lyndon LaRouche, the American Analyst." Abbasi points to LaRouche's forecasts on the economic crisis before Bush's election; his radio interview on Sept. 11, 2001 with Jack Stockwell; and his interview with Iran radio (IRNA) earlier this year.

Abbasi quotes from LaRouche that some organizations, in the U.S. such as [the] Mellon [family foundations], intend to launch a "clash of civilizations" ideology. "LaRouche says that they are imitating the same policies of Nazis in World War II, and are planning to create a world government," Abbasi reports.

"In the 1990s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, those people in the military of America who wanted to create a world government similar to the Roman Empire, started to destroy other nations by ideologies such as globalization and free trade, and were trying to create a sort of religion that would be controlled by only a few people."

"LaRouche thinks that the threat of Bush to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, is coming from this same 'clash of civilizations' ideology."

Bush-Cheney Iraq Crimes 'Far More Serious' Than Watergate

In an article titled, "Embedded Patriots," in the upcoming July 12 issue of the Nation, William Greider, a veteran investigative journalist and historian, who first wrote in 1976 about the Carter Administration's links to the Trilateral Commission (picking up on EIR's story at the time) says that the actions of the Bush-Cheney Administration are illegal, and "as momentous as Watergate, but more serious." And—the professional U.S. government establishment is fighting back. Greider says:

"The most intriguing story in Washington these days is a subterranean conflict that reporters cannot cover because some of them are involved. A potent guerrilla insurgency has formed in and around the Bush Presidency—a revolt of the old pros in government who strike from the shadows with devastating effect. They tell the truth. They explode big lies. They provide documentary evidence that undermines popular confidence in the Commander in Chief. They prod the media and the political community to ask penetrating questions of the Bush regime. Doubtless these anonymous sources act from a mixture of motives, some noble, some self-interested—but in present circumstances one might think of them as 'embedded patriots.' "

"Leaks are an everyday thing in Washington.... But what has occurred during the past several months is not the normal commerce. A series of explosive leaks—closely held documents and well-informed tips—have altered the course of politics and might very well influence the outcome of this year's presidential election. Yet, we don't know whom to thank...."

"My own surmise—corroborated in conversations with several long-experienced Washington reporters is that we are probably talking about career military officers and senior civil servants at the Pentagon, Justice Department lawyers and professionals at the CIA or State Department....

"Whatever their intentions, the leakers have now raised the stakes for the country—posing grave implications that cannot be easily brushed aside.... Thus, an ominous warning light is now flashing for the Republic: the potential for criminal charges running far up the military command, and for the lodging of impeachment charges against this President and for an international tribunal to examine American war crimes. The connecting facts are not yet visible to support these accusations, but a plausible outline for how they may be connected is well-exposed. These matters in other words, could lead to a constitutional crisis as momentous as Watergate, maybe more serious because the offenses are far more fundamental...."

Kerry Mimics Bush-Cheney in Backing Fascist Sharon

The Presidential campaign of John Kerry is circulating a policy paper on Israel that appears to be as pro-Ariel Sharon as that of President George W. Bush. Entitled, "John Kerry: Strengthening Israel's Security and Bolstering the US-Israel Special Relationship," according to a July 2 report in Ha'aretz by U.S.-based reporter Nathan Guttman. The report was sent out to the American Jewish community in mid June.

On Sharon's Berlin Wall on the West Bank, the report stated, "The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense erected in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israeli citizens." It goes on to support Bush's infamous April 14 letter to Sharon, including the permanent annexation of parts of the occupied territories, and eliminating the Palestinian "right to return" to lands from which they fled, or were driven out. The paper says, "In light of demographic realities, a number of settlement blocs will likely become a part of Israel."

The worst is Kerry's aping of Bush and Cheney on the question of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "Yasser Arafat is a failed leader and unfit partner for peace" and called for "his total isolation." Apparently, Kerry has not heard that several leading retired Israeli chiefs of the security and intelligence services have come forward exposing that the smears against President Arafat, were a political ruse, concocted by Likud cronies who wanted to kill the peace negotiations.

This last point on Arafat significantly contrasts with that of former President Bill Clinton, who in a recent interview with the British Guardian, stressed in no uncertain terms, that peace is not possible without Arafat's participation.

The paper also blasts Saudia Arabia, which it accuses of backing anti-Semitism, and Iran, declaring "a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable."

International Leaders Emphasize Arafat's Central Role

In the aftermath of a concerted move by a faction in Israeli intelligence to counter the official slander line that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat did not want to pursue a peace agreement with Israel, there has been a pattern of international moves to bring Arafat back into the diplomatic picture.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier met with Arafat June 29, after which he called for the deployment of an international force in Gaza after any Israeli evacuation, and said that France was prepared to take part in it. He added, "The Palestinians have to put an end to acts of violence and punish those responsible," and "Israel also must take some measures such as to stop building the wall and to stop the acts of demolition."

After meeting Arafat's Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei June 30, Barnier told reporters, "During my two meetings yesterday with President Arafat, I was able to take a close measure of the fate that he has been subjected to. Considering what he represents, his situation is not dignified for him and is not dignified for the Palestinian people he represents. We consider that this situation cannot last as he is the elected and legitimate President of the Palestinian people." He also attacked Israel for its destruction of Palestinian infrastructure.

Also on June 30, speaking at the conference of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, South African President Thabo Mbeki said: "No solution is going to be found without the participation of Yasser Arafat." (See Africa Digest.)

UN Blasts Israeli Blocking of Food Aid to Palestinians

The United Nations World Food Program has launched an effort to reach over 480,000 Palestinians, who are not refugees, but are being affected by the construction of the Ariel Sharon's Berlin Wall of the West Bank. The WFP has found that the wall has led to the seizure of a substantial amount of the best agricultural land. The number of Palestinians in need of food aid has massively increased since prior to the Intifada, and represents a quarter of the Palestinians who are not refugees, both on the West Bank and Gaza.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for giving aid to refugees, is currently supplying food to another 1.5 million people, up from 80,000 prior to the Intifada. Thus over half of the entire Palestinian population relies on food aid.

A WFP report indicates that they are not reaching all the Palestinians in need. 38% of the non-refugee population, or 752,000 people, are designated "in immediate need of food assistance. Another 26% or 586,000 people are designated vulnerable or in near threat to food insecurity."

Captured al-Qaeda Member Recants

The information that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's guerrillas could not get adequate chemical weapons from Afghanistan and the Taliban, and therefore turned to Iraq, has been a favorite reference point for Vice President Dick Cheney, and was used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 2003 lying briefing to the UN Security Council. The source of the information was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "a one-time member of OBL's inner circle," writes Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff in the magazine' July 5 issue, and al-Libi has apparently recanted the information. Al-Libi's recanting has "never been publicly acknowledged," but Newsweek's sources say that the information comes from U.S. interrogators who have been questioning him. Al-Libi was one of the first al-Qaeda leaders captured in the course of the Afghanistan war.

The big question is whether al-Libi was tortured. Isikoff writes that "Some officials now suspect that al-Libi, facing aggressive interrogation techniques, had previously said what U.S. officials wanted to hear." For the last several years, information from "captured al-Qaeda" members has been heralded by Bush many times. Cheney continued to use the al-Libi poison gas story, including in his recent attacks on the 9/11 Commission. But since Abu Ghraib, the question has been raised as to whether the information from these sources, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, cited in the 9/11 staff report, can be reliable if torture was involved.

U.S. Army Opens Investigations of Homicides

The U.S. Army is reopening cases of prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan that had been previously declared to be deaths from "natural causes." Prompted by evidence in the lawsuit against private contractors, CACI International and Titan, Inc., which was filed in San Diego on June 9, the U.S. Army Inspector General and Army Criminal Investigations Division are looking into some 15 deaths attributed to "natural causes," especially exposure to heat and cold. The suit was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the New York City-based organization that began fighting civil rights cases in the 1960s, on behalf of Iraqi prisoners. USAToday wrote in a June 28 article that the sources for their story were three military officials with direct knowledge of the Army investigations, officials with the International Red Cross, and the attorneys for CCR. The story details how in January-February 2004 (long after the Abu Ghraib investigation had been done), there was a pattern of prisoner deaths in Iraq, from "cardiac arrest." An official with one of the anti-torture NGOs told USAToday, that such a "pattern" of deaths should definitely be investigated, because it is such patterns that sometimes point to incidents of torture.

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