In this issue:

FEATURE

German Monday Demonstrations Expand

Schroeder Sticks to Austerity Plan

INTERNATIONAL

The Fight in Al-Najaf Can Blow the Whole Region

Venezuela On Course for Civil War, Despite Referendum

Financial Predators Seek New War of the Pacific

Terrorism in India: Alive and Well

NATIONAL

The Stench of Watergate Haunts Dick Cheney

Is McGreevey Scandal an Ashcroft Sting Operation?

U.S. Sending Medically Unfit Soldiers to Iraq


From Volume 3, Issue Number 34 of EIR Online, Published Aug. 24, 2004

Feature

German Monday Demonstrations Expand

From Our European Bureau

Aug. 18 (EIRNS)—The Monday night demonstrations against the German government's austerity program, and for more jobs, dramatically expanded on Aug. 16, increasing from about 34 cities and 40,000 people a week before, to an estimated 150 cities and more than 100,000 people. Unless the government decides to withdraw its "Hartz IV" program of social service cuts, some rally leaders are promising that millions will march against the murderous "reform" in Berlin on Oct. 3, German Reunification Day.

This rapid expansion testifies to the farsightedness of Helga Zepp LaRouche and the international LaRouche Youth Movement, who set off this process by calling for Monday rallies in a mass leaflet more than a month ago.

Zepp LaRouche, who heads the BueSo Party, has now issued a Manifesto for the rallies, to spur debate among participants and Germany as a whole on a positive alternative to the Hartz IV program. She lays out seven principles for discussion, stating that the aim of the demonstrations is not to overthrow the government, but "to change its economic policies fundamentally," focussing on economic recovery based on credit creation, for modern infrastructure and for "reindustrialization," to be accomplished by replacing the collapsed world monetary system with one based on the New Bretton Woods proposal of her husband, Lyndon LaRouche.

In building the demonstrations, Zepp LaRouche concentrated the efforts of the youth in Leipzig, the historic center of the Monday demonstrations which brought down the government of communist East Germany, but the numbers of rallies, and their numbers, are now mushrooming.

"We are the People, We Want Jobs," many of the picket signs read, in this new wave of demonstrations. The rallies are drawing both unemployed (mostly in the East), and political parties, all of whom are focussed on getting rid of the government "reform" that will crush the unemployed, in particular, but will create not a single job. Only the BueSo, however, is putting forward a program for state job creation in the area of badly needed infrastructure development, a program explicitly modelled on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in the United States to overcome the Depression of the 1930s.

Zepp LaRouche is laying it on the line, to a population which is currently suffering over 10% unemployment, much of it long-term, and lacks hope. Don't make the same mistake we Germans made back in the 1930s, she warns, and let fascism come into being. Back the FDR solution which her BueSo party, and her husband Lyndon LaRouche in the United States, are putting forward. - Taking to the Streets -

With more than 100,000 Germans taking to the streets, the turnout more than doubled, from last Monday's events. And in several cities, notably in Leipzig, two rallies were held at the same time.

By far the biggest rallies took place in Magdeburg (15,000), Leipzig (15-20,000) and Berlin (15,000), but there were numerous cities with a participation of about 3,000-5,000: Dessau, Halle, Schwerin, Chemnitz, Rostock, Gera. These cities are all in the East, and have very high unemployment rates.

An interesting pattern is also the number of small cities in which some people took a spontaneous initiative and pulled several hundred protesters on a short notice. These included Oranienburg (400), Pritzwalk (300), and Burgstaedt (150).

In various places, non-Monday rallies are also being planned. A Tuesday rally will take place in Frankfurt/Oder and another in Goerlitz (organized by the BueSo) on Aug. 18; on Thursday, Aug. 20, rallies will be held in Erfurt, Greifswald, Stralsund, and Neubrandenburg. - Hartz IV the Issue -

This explosion of activity has taken the German government by surprise. Two days after the Aug. 9 rallies, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pulled together an emergency cabinet meeting in order to discuss what to do about the popular uproar. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, Finance Minister Wolfgang Clement, who had arrogantly attacked the Monday demonstrations days before, announced concessions on the Hartz IV package, although the core of the package was left untouched. The government clearly hoped this would calm things down.

But they were wrong. Leading organizers of Monday rallies in several cities responded with critical remarks, saying that the concessions were totally insufficient. Andreas Ehrholdt, the initiator of the Magdeburg Monday rally movement, which mobilized about 12,000 citizens on Aug. 9, said on Aug. 12 that the protests would continue until Hartz IV was replaced by a policy that created new jobs. Protesting citizens did not want the government "to just throw a bone in front of them, like placating a beaten-up dog," Ehrholdt said. As can be seen by the huge turnout of 15,000 in Magdeburg Aug. 16, Ehrholdt delivered.

The pastor of the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, Christian Fuehrer, also a veteran of the 1989 movement, said that the unemployed cannot be treated this way, and that the demonstrations will continue until Hartz IV in cancelled. In Leipzig, at least 20,000 citizens marched and demonstrated on Aug. 16.

Another former East German civil rights leader, Wolfgang Templin, came out in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung on Aug. 16, predicting that, come this autumn, "protests will become stronger and spread all throughout Germany," and that broader layers of the population would join. "Bread crumbs tossed out to the people" will not stop the ferment, he said. The protests will not be "normal protests against a normal reform. We have an emergency situation." - The BueSo Role -

Every political leader in Germany is well aware that this burgeoning movement was catalyzed by Helga Zepp LaRouche and the LaRouche Youth Movement, who continue to massively circulate leaflets for an alternative to Hartz IV, under the slogan "In Saxony, the economy must grow!," and to hold demonstrations in Leipzig and some other cities. Some of the nation's press, especially the Establishment paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, have decided to attack Zepp LaRouche by name, others by reference to the slanderous "rightwing" label.

But on the street, the idea which LaRouche and the BueSo are putting forward is catching fire. Particularly notable to many is the fact that the LaRouche Youth Movement is an international group, bringing French, Germans, Swiss, Danes, Poles, and Americans to Saxony for the state's election campaign (the election is Sept. 19), and the anti-Hartz IV fight. Second, the LaRouche Youth readily capture the imagination of the population through their singing of Classical music (Bach, Beethoven), and of the Negro Spirituals associated with the U.S. civil rights movement.

For example, the LaRouche Youth report that on Aug. 16, demonstrators, wandering off from the larger "funeral procession" (the "official" demonstration), were dumbfounded by the contrast with the singing and the constant flow of ideas which characterized the BueSo demonstration, and many found it odd that the two demonstrations were separate—thanks to the intervention of local political forces.

As the much-expected "Hot Autumn" approaches, such containment cannot be relied on.

Schroeder Sticks to Austerity Plan

Special to New Federalist

Aug. 19 (EIRNS)—In his semi-annual report to the nation, given Aug. 18, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder announced that the "Hartz IV" package of so-called economic reforms, which has been the object of growing mass demonstrations in recent weeks, will be pushed through "without any changes." Schroeder claimed that the "reforms," which amount to drastic cuts in payments to the unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, are necessary "to keep the social welfare state intact for future generations."

Adding insult to injury, Schroeder attacked the ongoing Monday demonstrations for, in effect, equating his government with "a dictatorial regime."

Currently, if a German loses his or her job, 50-60% of the last average income earned will be paid as jobless support by the state. This may be 700, 800, or even more than 1,000 euros per month. After 12 months (for Germans under age 55) or after 18 months (for those above 55), one enters the category of long-term unemployed citizens, who receive only around 50% or less. And after another 24 months, one becomes a social welfare recipient who will receive, at most, 650 euros per month, but in most cases, substantially less.

With the Hartz IV package, the new standard pay for all long-term unemployed (12 months or more out of work) and welfare recipients will be only 345 euros a month for citizens in Germany's capital of Berlin, and her 10 western states; citizens in the five eastern states will receive only 331 euros. This will the maximum, depending on the following conditions: 1) the citizen must first live on proceeds from the sale of any property above a level of 26,000 euros (cars, home, other real estate, life and other insurance); only after spending that money, will a citizen receive pay under the Hartz IV system; 2) any job offered through the state and private job agencies must be accepted, regardless of low pay, qualifications, or distance from the worker's residence; 3) in case of failure to get a new job, a citizen has to prove that the failure is not her or his fault.

Besides shredding the safety net for Germany's millions of long-term unemployed (the country has an institutional unemployment level of almost 10%), Hartz IV does not create a single job. Yet it is conservatively estimated that there are at least 8.6 million unemployed in the nation.

The Hartz measures represent a step down the road of killing austerity like that of Germany's infamous "Hunger Chancellor" Heinrich Bruening in the early 1930s, imposed to try to help shore up the bankrupt world monetary system, and later of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's Economics Minister, who sacrificed the living standards of the population to fund Hitler's war machine. Today, by clinging to such measures, which are being demanded by the central bankers of Europe and the International Monetary Fund to maintain the present bankrupt monetary system, Schroeder is signing his own political death warrant, unless he comes to his senses in the very near term.

INTERNATIONAL

The Fight in Al-Najaf Can Blow the Whole Region

by Hussein Askary

Aug. 19 (EIRNS)—As the Islamic tradition states, "all acts are effects of intention"; the Cheney-Bush Administration's intended war-policy in Southwest Asia is the source of the ongoing, bloody asymmetric warfare in Iraq. The illegal invasion of Iraq aside, the post-invasion policy of stripping the nation of Iraq of all its national military, security, economic, and cultural institutions has led to the chaos raging in Iraq today. The rise of religious forces in Iraq to assuming a controlling political-military status was a result of that policy.

The intention of the current fighting in the holy city of Al-Najaf is, obviously, to spread the Iraq war into the neighboring countries, especially Iran, and not least Saudi Arabia, by using Iraq as bait for sectarian strife in the region. Al-Najaf is the holiest city for Shia Muslims around the world, after Mecca and Al-Madina in Saudi Arabia, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The existence of Al-Najaf as a city is tied to the Shrine of Imam Ali, cousin of the prophet Mohammed and one of the most revered historic Muslim leaders and thinkers. It is the destination to which Shia pilgrims from all over the world travel. That mosque, now, has become the base of young cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr's militia, his Mahdi Army. Inevitably, it is developing into a symbol of resistance against the U.S.-British occupation forces in Iraq.

Shia Muslims are a majority in all southern Iraq and the capital Baghdad, and are a minority in northern Iraq. Iran is almost exclusively of the Shia sect. There are Shia minorities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Yemen, and all the way to Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Four of these nations are close U.S. allies. - Not a Shia Problem -

However, this is not an exclusively Shia affair. Sunni Muslims, who constitute the majority of the world's 1 billion Muslims, revere and respect Imam Ali. Many Sunni groups have explicitly given support to Muqtada Al-Sadr's position. The leading Sunni authority in Iraq issued a fatwa prohibiting Iraqis from fighting side by side with the U.S. troops in Al-Najaf. If the Imam Ali mosque were stormed, whether by Iraqi government troops or, worse, by American troops, a bloodbath would be a fact, and the idea of religious war could become a reality.

This concern has prompted Iranian leaders to issue signals that they would not be able to control the Shia population in Iran if something that grave happens in Najaf, and they might be forced to intervene. At that point, Iran itself would become a target of military action by the U.S.-British coalition and its puppet Iraqi regime of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

The Allawi government has already resorted to Saddam Hussein-era propaganda methods and other shenanigans. As Saddam's regime did in 1979-80, to contribute to fomenting the war with Iran, Iraqi officials today, such as Defense Minister Hazem Al-Shaalan and Interior Minister Falah Al-Naqib, have accused the Iranians of playing a key role in the destabilization of Iraq. Since the outbreak of the latest fighting in Al-Najaf Aug. 3, the Iraqi government has allegedly produced evidence of Iranian involvement in the fighting, with both weapons and personnel.

It has to be noted that the fighting broke out Aug. 3 in Al-Najaf after Iraqi police forces, supported by U.S. troops, approached the residence of Muqtada Al-Sadr. Al-Sadr's guards took combat positions, believing that the U.S. troops were intending to storm the residence and arrest Al-Sadr. Then cross-shooting took place. This provocation was all it took to start this latest armed uprising in Al-Najaf, Baghdad's Al-Sadr slum city, and all the cities and towns of southern Iraq. This disrupted a ceasefire reached in June. Different attempts at a truce were sabotaged.

The latest one occurred last Saturday, Aug. 14, when the Iraqi government's National Security Adviser Mwaffaq Al-Rubaie (a longtime asset of the Bush-Blair war party) suddenly interrupted his negotiations with Al-Sadr representatives without any clear reason, and stated that armed actions against Al-Sadr's militia would be resumed. - The Iraqi National Congress -

This took place on the eve of the convention of the Iraqi National Congress, which is expected to vote-select the next provisional 100-member "parliament" from among representatives of the Iraq's different political, religious, and tribal forces. The Parliament is supposed to monitor the performance of the provisional government and prepare for the next elections. The Iraqi government's insistence on a military solution, or a humiliating political settlement with Al-Sadr—which he will never accept—was interpreted by the independent Iraqi National Congress members as an attempt by the U.S.-controlled government to sabotage the Congress and delay the political process and elections indefinitely. It is known that fair elections would oust all the political forces which came into Iraq with the invading forces.

Therefore, many participants in the conference in Baghdad, boycotted it and demanded that a delegation be sent to Al-Najaf to find a political, peaceful settlement to the conflict. Such a delegation was formed Aug. 17, and arrived at Al-Najaf's Imam Ali Mosque Aug. 18. The delegation, headed by Sayid Hussein Al-Sadr, a relative of Muqtada and chairman of the Iraqi National Congress, presented three demands to Al-Sadr's representatives: leave the shrine peacefully; disarm the militia; and turn the Al-Mahdi militia into a political movement.

Spokesmen for the Iraqi government preempted these negotiations by stating that Al-Sadr refused these terms, and the Defense Minister announced from Al-Najaf that his troops would launch "a massive and decisive attack" in the city. Al-Sadr's spokesman Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani told Reuters late Aug. 18, "Yes, Sayyed Muqtada has agreed to the demands" of the Iraqi interim government.

"We have just received a letter from Muqtada Sadr's office in Baghdad that confirms 'in the name of God,' Muqtada Sadr's acceptance of the conditions imposed by the conference," said Safia al-Shair, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress. He later told AFP: "Today, Muqtada Sadr accepted the three points to put an end to Iraqis' bloodletting and demonstrated his desire to take an active role in the new Iraq." - Approaching the Mosque -

In spite of that, as of midday of Aug. 19, U.S. troops and Iraqi National Guard forces were approaching the Imam Ali Mosque in Al-Najaf's Old City. During the night, U.S. tanks had invaded Al-Sadr city in Baghdad, leaving 40 Iraqis dead in the clashes with militiamen.

Al-Sadr's obvious demands are that a truce should be reached and that the terms he agreed to be implemented after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Al-Najaf and other Iraqi cities. He further demands that the Shrine be put under the control of the Shia religious authority of which he is a part, rather than the Iraqi police or security forces.

The true nature of this conflict, as cited above, is not related to one Iraqi faction or another. The issue is that Iraq today is under occupation by foreign military powers. The country has no sovereignty, and its government has no legitimacy. Iraqis cannot trust decisions made by the government, because they know that the real power behind it is the U.S. occupation and the Blair-Bush governments, which have agendas in the region that reach beyond the borders of Iraq.

The current Iraqi government will certainly disintegrate if the current policies are pursued, and Iraq will descend deeper into anarchy and chaos. Utopian military solutions will not work. Even if Al-Sadr is not the most popular Iraqi religious or political leader, he becomes one by default, when Iraqis see American-British boots trampling on their sanctuaries and symbols. - The Only Solution -

Approaches like Lyndon LaRouche's "LaRouche Doctrine: U.S. Interest in South West Asia" plan, are the only solution. An immediate shift in U.S. policy in the whole region, and the engagement of nations neighboring Iraq, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey by the U.S. to define a wider solution for the whole region, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is the way out of this impending disaster.

Venezuela On Course for Civil War, Despite Referendum

by Gretchen Small

Aug. 19 (EIRNS)—A great moment has found a very little people indeed, in Venezuela. The fact that the national referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez has failed to stop the plunge toward civil war, exemplifies the horrors lack of national leadership can bring upon a country—and a continent—under conditions of global breakdown.

On Aug. 15, millions of Venezuelan voters stood doggedly in line for up to ten hours, to vote on whether Chavez should be booted out immediately, or finish his term. Chavez, who has support among many of Venezuela's desperate poor because of his radical promises, was put in power by the same London financiers, and the Rockefeller family's favorite Venezuela billionaire Gustavo Cisneros, who today also back the opposition. Declaring he will rule until 2021, Chavez had the Constitution rewritten in 1999 to justify mob rule, calling on legal arguments used by Nazi Crown jurist Carl Schmitt to justify Adolf Hitler's dictatorship.

In five years in office, Chavez's rule has so polarized the country that Venezuelans saw the referendum as a last chance to head off civil war. Opposition forces had tried to oust him by mass protests and military coup in 2002, and by a devastating two-month national strike in 2003.

The lines at the polls were so long Aug. 15, that poll closing was twice postponed, until midnight. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, heading a delegation of international observers, said he had seen nothing like it in 50 countries whose elections his team had observed.

At 4:00 a.m. Aug. 16, despite protests of irregularities by two opposition members of the National Electoral Council, its head—a Chavez supporter—announced that, with 94% of the vote counted, Chavez had defeated the attempt to recall him, 58% to 42%. By midday, Carter and his fellow observers endorsed the election results; 24 hours later, so did the U.S. State Department.

Opposition leaders cry fraud, targetting the electronic voting machines used. They are demanding a manual recount of the verification papers voters received, and an examination of the software and memory of those machines. Patterns of potential fraud cited include reports that in over 500 polling stations in one state, exactly the same number of "yes" votes were recorded, suggesting machines were programmed to impose a ceiling. - And the Nation? -

Everyone is focussed on democracy, but the issue is not the numbers, U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche commented. The real issue is: Did the vote produce results under which the country can survive? He warned, also, to watch out for what the Bush Administration may do. President Bush is psychotic, crazy—and that's the best side of him.

Demoralization, fear, and anger are setting in among those who voted to get the Chavez beast-man regime out, only to discover what they refused to see, and act on, in time: the failure of the opposition to develop leadership concerned with the nation as a whole.

Whether or not Chavez won fairly, the referendum proved the bankruptcy of the opposition "leadership": a group of squabbling politicians and "social" activists of differing ideologies, united only by what they were against: Chavez. More than 50% of all Venezuelans have only "informal" work (selling imported gizmos on the street, working off-the-books), yet no one offered a shadow of an idea of how to rebuild the country, much less a vision for the future. Despite fighting for a year to hold the referendum, the opposition could not even agree on a candidate to replace Chavez, in case the referendum succeeded in calling new elections.

Rightwing neo-conservatives seeking the final takedown of the Venezuelan state, tended to dominate the opposition leadership, promising Dick Cheney and his boys would help install them in power. Most dangerous now, is that a group of outright Nazis (with links to Cuban extremists in Miami) stand ready to recruit demoralized radicals to the armed insurgency they have been building up. - God ... and the Bankers -

Chavez, a certifiable lunatic (he claims he's the reincarnation of Simon Bolivar), had announced in advance that a defeat of his recall would be "Christ's vote against imperialism." After winning, he told a pre-dawn rally that "the Venezuelan people have spoken, and the people's voice is the voice of God.... Venezuela has changed forever. There is no turning back."

Whether or not Chavez has the direct channel to God he claims, he does have the backing of international financiers. Holland's giant ABN Amro bank, London's Standard Asset Management, and various multinational oil interests were among the voices before the vote urging a Chavez victory, because, as one banker put it, "he has shown a commitment to paying interest on the nation's $22-billion foreign debt."

Chavez has promised to quickly clean out any opposition from the judiciary, and replace all state and municipal police with a national police force.

With reason, Venezuelans are fearful of what comes next. The streets of the capital have been unusually quiet since the vote, although a confrontation between extremists on both sides the day after the election left eight wounded and one dead.

Financial Predators Seek New War of the Pacific

by Cynthia R. Rush

Aug. 18 (EIRNS)—The nation of Chile is arming itself to the teeth, and on Aug. 4, engaged in provocative war games against Bolivia and Peru. Venezuela's Jacobin President Hugo Chavez continues to say how much he'd like to swim at a "Bolivian beach," a reference to Bolivia's demand that Chile return the strip of territory on South America's Pacific coast that Chile seized during the British-orchestrated 1879-81 War of the Pacific, which left Bolivia landlocked.

Peru's unstable President Alejandro Toledo, whose tenure in office remains uncertain, used the occasion of his Independence Day speech July 28 to warn Chile that it had 60 days to begin negotiations of its maritime border with Peru. Second Vice President David Waisman then lied that Peru was "technically and morally prepared" to confront any war threat from Chile. Defense Minister Roberto Chiabra made similar statements.

A band of foolish sabre rattlers? Yes—but it goes beyond foolishness. This South American region is rife with unresolved border conflicts and land claims stemming from the 1879-81 war, which London-based synarchist financial predators launched, using their front man Chile, to defend their looting rights. Desperate today to hang onto the power that is threatened by the crumbling world economy, these same usurers are prepared to unleash another such conflict. Their left- and right-wing assets in the region are deployed accordingly.

Chavez and his Jacobin allies in Bolivia are playing to the hilt the issue of that country's demand for access to the sea. Fearing for his government's stability, President Carlos Mesa unwisely initially linked any possibility of exporting natural gas abroad through Chile to resolution of the issue. On Aug. 5, Toledo fuelled tensions further, suggesting that Peru might favor modifying the 1929 treaty that codified Bolivia's borders, post-War of the Pacific.

In the context of global financial breakdown, fighting over territorial claims will inevitably lead to disaster, as statesman Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly warned. It is notable that Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who has obediently applied the International Monetary Fund's austerity dictates domestically, has recently acted to shift the regional debate instead to the issue of infrastructure development and South America's physical integration.

On Aug. 11, Lula met with Toledo and Mesa in the Amazonian city of Cobija, Bolivia, to inaugurate the binational "Friendship" bridge that now connects Cobija with the Brazilian town of Brasilea. Brazil financed the bridge, to the tune of $2 million, and the South American Regional Infrastructure Initiative (IIRSA), whose goal is to connect the South American continent from ocean to ocean by 2010, is promoting these activities. A second bridge is planned to connect Brazil's Vila Asis with the Peruvian city of Inapari and the Bolivian town of Bolprea, in the nearby tri-border region. With their Foreign Ministers, Lula, Toledo, and Mesa also discussed the feasibility of building a petrochemical complex and power plants in that undeveloped region of the Amazon.

Lula located the Presidents' efforts as part of the broader vision of "the construction of a great South American nation, which proceeds through its physical integration.... I want to end my life seeing South America transformed into a true single nation." In the final communiqué issued Aug. 12, the Presidents expressed interest in a "South American Infrastructure Authority," whose creation will be discussed during the October meeting of South American Finance Ministers in Lima.

Terrorism in India: Alive and Well

by Ramtanu Maitra

While the world has long been attuned to the militancy and terrorism in the Islamic countries, terrorism in India's northeast, bordering Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, had remained mostly unreported. That changed on Aug. 15, India's 58th Independence Day, when 16 schoolchildren were killed, and 40 injured, in Assam's Dhemaji district. Based on what the authorities claimed, and looking at the modus operandi itself, there is little doubt that the suspects—the militants of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA)—triggered the killer blast.

A day earlier, the same group of terrorist-suspects blew up a crude-oil installation belonging to the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation near Kunwarpur, 223 miles east of the capital Guwahati in the restive northeastern state of Assam. ULFA is one of a half-dozen medium-size to large militant groups who have been fighting against New Delhi for decades. Their demands range from attaining ethnic supremacy, to separatism and secessionism. Although none of these militant groups is in a position to wrest from New Delhi what they demand, their ability to wreak havoc and loss of lives cannot be underestimated. - Unrest All Over -

Another northeastern state, Manipur, southeast of Assam and bordering Myanmar, appears to be heading toward another phase of political instability. Locked in an ethnic battle between the tribal Nagas and Meitais, the state has been devastated by narcotics moving in from Myanmar and by an indifferent administration. Since independence in 1947, New Delhi has paid little attention to the requirements of these northeastern states, which enjoyed virtual autonomy during the almost 100 years of British rule.

The northeastern states, sandwiched between two vastly underdeveloped nations, Bangladesh and Myanmar, have very little physical infrastructure. Here, agriculture is weak and industry even weaker. As a result, secessionist and separatist movements have cropped up, kept alive by huge opium production in Myanmar, and to some extent in Arunachal Pradesh, India's easternmost state, and by the abundance of small and medium weapons in Southeast Asia. In other words, due to inadequate efforts by New Delhi, the area is highly dangerous.

Besides the secessionist movements, which have for a long time been degenerating into terrorism, the threat of drug addiction and the rampant spread of AIDS in the region are very real. Mizzima News Group recently conducted a survey of areas in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland, and Assam (four of India's seven northeastern states), as well as Namphalong in Myanmar, and published a report on cultivation, production, trafficking, and consumption of drugs. The old linkage—drug money generated by the militants to procure weapons—could not have been clearer. - Huge Drug Problems -

In Arunachal Pradesh, opium has traditionally been cultivated in the hilly areas of Tirap, Changlang, Lohit, and Upper Siang districts; almost all areas dominated by militants. Some 90% of Lohit's population is involved in opium cultivation, making it the biggest producer of these districts.

Manipur shares 300 km of porous border with Myanmar, and suffers the twin scourges of terrorist-type violence and AIDS spread through heroin addicts' needles. A number of violent groups are based in the region, and according to India's Narcotics Control Bureau, at least two—People's Liberation Army and United National Liberation Front—have been closely associated with drug trafficking.

Adjoining Manipur is the state of Nagaland, which reportedly has the second-highest number of drug addicts in India. Opium comes from Myanmar through Moreh and finds its way to the state capital Kohima—now a major transit point for heroin-trafficking.

NATIONAL

The Stench of Watergate Haunts Dick Cheney

by Jeffrey Steinberg

Aug. 19 (EIRNS)—Approximately eight weeks ago, faced with mounting pressure from traditional Republican activists for his removal from the 2004 GOP ticket, Vice President Dick Cheney—along with his wife Lynne—launched a full-court counterattack, aimed at bullying, cajoling, and blackmailing his party rivals into abandoning the fight.

One of the key events that triggered the Cheney effort was the June 21 nationwide publication of an open letter to the Veep by James Gannon, the editor-in-chief of the Midwest Republican "newspaper of record," the Des Moines Register, calling on Cheney to resign from the ticket, for the good of the party and the country. The open letter appeared in the pages of USA Today and scores of other GOP-linked dailies.

On July 11, Jude Wanniski, one of the gurus of the Reaganite "supply side economics" crowd, circulated an open memo to Karl Rove, demanding Cheney's ouster and his replacement by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. Wanniski wrote, "Now that President Bush looks like a loser in November, because all of you ignored my counsel, I can only say your only chance of winning reelection is if you replace Cheney with Tom Ridge.... Mr. Bush should have picked him in the first place." Wanniski said Ridge "would never have fed the President the 'disinformation' that Cheney served up to him daily, as prepared by the neo-con kitchen cooks, Cheney's old pals: Perle, Wolfie, Rummy, Gaffney, ad nauseam."

One of the first signs of the Cheney thug efforts was the op ed in the Washington Times in late July by former Reagan Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, a longtime Wanniski ally who had earlier made no secret about his angst over Cheney's place on the GOP ticket.

Cheney's counterattack, to save his job—regardless of the consequences for the Republicans in November—gained a boost from elements in the Democratic National Committee, who argued that Cheney's presence on the ticket shaved two to three percentage points off the Bush vote in a number of swing states. Between that DNC foolishness, and the failure of the Democratic Convention in Boston to forcefully target Cheney for his role in the Iraq war fiasco and every other Bush policy debacle, thus angering some core Democratic voters, Cheney's fortunes momentarily turned.

Going into the Republican Convention in New York City on Aug. 30, Cheney is reportedly feeling more secure that his position on the ticket has been reconsolidated.

However, Republican activists who have a broader interest than salvaging Dick Cheney's presence on the ticket, are growing increasingly alarmed that Cheney carries the "stigmata" of Watergate on his forehead. They worry that the mounting Federal probes into Cheney's activities as CEO of Halliburton, and, later, as Veep, may blow up after the Convention, and they worry even more that they could blow up following a Bush reelection. Watergate, they recall, brought down Richard Nixon after his November 1972 reelection. - The Crimes of Dick -

First among the worries about Dick "Watergate" Cheney is the ongoing Federal grand jury probe into the leak of the identity of a CIA undercover officer to columnist Robert Novak in July 2003. Novak outed Valerie Plame, the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after Wilson penned a New York Times op ed exposing the lies behind the Bush-Cheney claims that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger. Those false charges found their way into President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address (the famous "16 words"), and formed a core feature of the Administration argument for invading Iraq. In March 2003, prior to the Iraq invasion, IAEA head Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei revealed that the Niger government documents, on which the Iraq nuclear bomb allegations were based, were shoddy forgeries. Cheney denounced ElBaradei, and reiterated that Saddam was close to building a nuclear bomb.

Last October, under massive pressure, the Justice Department appointed an independent counsel, to probe the source of the Plame leak. The grand jury investigation has increasingly centered around Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff and chief national security advisor. One former White House official described Libby as Cheney's alter ego. Libby was the former private-sector attorney for international swindler and suspected Israeli intelligence front-man Marc Rich. This newspaper was first to report that the "Get Joe Wilson" effort was launched in Cheney's office in March 2003—days after the ElBaradei revelations about the Niger forgeries.

In recent weeks, a string of prominent journalists, as well as Secretary of State Colin Powell, have been called to testify before the grand jury probing the Plame leak.

A source close to the probe described Libby as only an "interim target" of the probe, indicating that independent counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is looking to highers-up in the White House, perhaps Libby's boss. "The prosecutors know what happened, and they are now zeroing in to get corroborating witnesses," the source said.

The Plame affair is but one ticking time-bomb, set to detonate in Cheney's lap—whether before the GOP Convention, before the November elections, or later in the year.

Cheney's five years as CEO of Halliburton, and Halliburton's $7 billion in no-bid contracts for Iraq war and occupation-related operations, are the subject of a string of Federal criminal probes, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, and at least three foreign criminal probes, in France, Switzerland, and England.

There are parallel investigations in Europe and the United States into $180 million in bribes, shelled out by a Halliburton-led consortium, to obtain a monopoly on natural gas production in Nigeria. The French probe into those bribes is now focussed on millions of dollars siphoned out of the bribe fund, and may have been routed into the GOP for the 2000 Presidential elections. - Politics and the Law -

In both the Plame probe and the multiple Halliburton investigations, there are also percolating reports that prosecutors are looking into obstruction-of-justice charges.

In the legal community, there is a groundswell of concern that the judicial process could be contaminated, if political pressures lead to a postponement of action against Cheney until after the election.

One attorney who knows the Watergate affair from the inside, John Dean, is the author of a 2004 book, "The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," which trashes the Bush Administration in general, and Dick Cheney in particular, as far more corrupt than the Watergate bunglers. Events are catching up with Cheney. The question is whether the Republican Party will wake up in time, and perform the proper surgery before November.

Is McGreevey Scandal an Ashcroft Sting Operation?

by Edward Spannaus

Aug. 19 (EIRNS)—Shortly before New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's Aug. 15 press conference announcing his resignation, he filed a complaint with the FBI charging his former Homeland Security advisor Golan Cipel with extortion. In so doing, McGreevey may have short-circuited an entrapment operation being run against him by John Ashcroft's Justice Department and the local U.S. Attorney.

Ashcroft's Justice Department has become notorious for its targetting of Democratic elected officials, the most notable example of which was the pre-election targetting of Philadelphia Mayor John Street last year. (That operation was stymied by the intervention of the LaRouche Youth Movement, which made Ashcroft the issue in the election, so that Street was reelected.)

The U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, Christopher Christie, took office in December 2001, and serves on a number of Ashcroft's advisory committees. He has been going after McGreevey's top fundraisers, and it was an open secret that these were stepping stones toward a hoped-for prosecution of the Governor himself.

Last month Christie indicted two of McGreevey's top contributors, one of whom was Charles Kushner, who controls a billion-dollar real estate empire. Yesterday, Kushner pleaded guilty to charges of witness-tampering, and violations of tax laws and campaign financial laws, and is expected to get an extraordinarily light sentence of 18-24 months. U.S. Attorney Christie and Kushner's attorney went to great lengths to assert that Kushner was not cooperating with Federal authorities, and that he had no involvement in the McGreevey case.

That remains to be seen.

Kushner in fact was central in many aspects of what looks like an attempted frame-up of McGreevey.

* It was Kushner who sponsored the work visa for Israeli Golan Cipel, who returned to the U.S. in 2001 to do outreach to the Jewish community for McGreevey's gubernatorial campaign. Cipel had spent 1995-99 working for Israeli Consulate in New York. In 2001, Kushner also gave Cipel a $30,000/year part-time job as a public relations advisor.

After being elected Governor in 2001, McGreevey gave Cipel the position of his homeland security advisor, but Cipel was soon forced to step down from that post, after a public outcry over his lack of qualifications, and the fact that his Israeli citizenship barred him from obtaining the security clearance necessary to permit him to be briefed by the FBI and other Federal security agencies.

Cipel remained on the state payroll as an advisor to McGreevey, and then took various private-sector jobs in public relations. - The Set-Up -

On July 23, 2004, McGreevey got a phone message from an Allen Lowy, a lawyer representing Cipel, who threatened to file a lawsuit charging McGreevey with sexual harassment and homosexual assault, and demanded a payment of $50 million to "settle" the matter without going public. Over the next few weeks, Cipel and his lawyers reduced their "hush money" demands to $5 million, and then, reportedly, to $2 million in cash.

In a lengthy account of the case published on Aug. 15, the New York Times reported that the vehemence of Cipel's accusations against McGreevey, had the Governor's advisors wondering if somebody else were behind the demands and the negotiations. "The Governor's inner circle," the Times reported, "thought it was possible that Mr. Cipel and Mr. Lowy might be cooperating with Federal investigators as part of some sting operation involving Mr. McGreevey."

At the very last minute before McGreevey's scheduled press conference on Aug. 12, a new lawyer entered the picture with another demand: that Gov. McGreevey obtain approval for Touro College, a Jewish school based in New York, to build a medical school in New Jersey. Kushner is a major contributor to Touro College, sits on its advisory board, and was a key promoter of the medical school project. Reportedly, he wants to have the medical school named after his mother.

Touro officials claim no knowledge of the demand, and say they've had no contact with Cipel "for an extended period of time."

The New York Jewish newspaper Forward, noting that Kushner is a leading supporter of Touro College, wrote: "Reports of the Touro link and Cipel's stint as a consultant to the college fueled speculation that Cipel had been acting in tandem with or under the direction of a secret advisor."

The Newark Star-Ledger and other outlets report that the FBI has now expanded its investigation to include the Touro College allegations. But the ultimate decision on any prosecution will come from U.S. Attorney Christie and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In public statements, Christie has refused to say whom and what he is investigating, leaving open the possibility that he could end up indicting the victim of the plot, McGreevey.

Cipel's lawyers gave non-stop interviews over the weekend after McGreevey's press conference, claiming that Cipel was not a homosexual, and that McGreevey had assaulted Cipel and then offered him money to keep him quiet—which could be twisted into a criminal offense or a conspiracy by an unscrupulous Federal prosecutor.

Then, on Monday, Aug. 17, Cipel surfaced in Israel, making the same claims that McGreevey had assaulted him, that he was the innocent victim of sexual harassment, and that after he left the Governor's employ he was threatened, to try to make him leave the United States.

Still to be determined, is whether Cipel was a plant from the beginning, or whether the Justice Department simply took advantage of a target of opportunity to go after McGreevey.

U.S. Sending Medically Unfit Soldiers to Iraq

by Carl Osgood

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 (EIRNS)—The Defense Department has gone to great lengths in recent weeks, to deny any story that the U.S. military, the Army in particular, is stretched far beyond its capacity to handle the missions it is being called upon to carry out. While threatening vetoes of any Congressional measure to increase end strength, the Army has resorted to such measures as mobilizing soldiers out of the Individual Ready Reserves, instituting stop-loss to keep soldiers in the Army up to 18 months beyond the end of their obligations and even recruiting personnel recently separated from the Navy and the Air Force to join the Army.

The Pentagon has also resorted to sending certain specialized Air Force and Navy personnel, including security, logistics, and medical specialists, to supplement Army and Marine forces on the ground in Iraq.

Perhaps the most telling indication that something is seriously wrong, is that being medically unfit may not prevent a soldier from being deployed to Iraq. Last March 30, First Sergeant Gerry Mosely, who had just retired from the Army Reserve following a deployment to Iraq, testified to the House National Security Subcommittee that pre-deployment health screenings of soldiers were wholly inadequate, and that many were deployed with known medical conditions that would be worsened by deployment. He said he personally knew of soldiers who were deployed with conditions including hearing loss, insulin-dependent diabetes, Tourette's syndrome, serious allergies requiring refrigerated medicines, and unrepaired hernia.

One case that has just come to the attention of this news service concerns Sgt. Tony Lampin, a mechanic with the 115th Field Hospital, which deployed to Iraq on July 25 from Fort Polk, La. After Lampin underwent two knee surgeries, extensive therapy, and medications over a two-year period, his doctor concluded that he is non-deployable and should be medically discharged from the Army. In an open letter asking for help, his wife wrote that the commander of the 115th overrode the doctor's recommendations and put him on the deployment anyway. Brandie Lampin wrote, in an open letter asking for help, that she knew of at least two other medically unfit soldiers in the same unit who were deployed, one of whom was on crutches with a broken foot!

These are not isolated cases. "It's happening all over," said Steve Robinson, in a discussion with EIR on Aug. 12. He reported that he was working with an infantry soldier who was wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq. He had to have a corneal transplant because of a shrapnel eye wound, his profile says he can't carry a weapon, and yet, the Army is trying to send him back to Iraq. Robinson attributed this situation to the pressures of Iraq deployments. "Commanders, in order to meet deployment goals required by the military when they're called up ... they're just taking everybody," Robinson said; "the sick, the lame, the crippled, the psychologically injured." He reported that he even has cases where soldiers had previous diagnoses of psychological conditions which should have prevented them from deploying, "and they got deployed anyway."

Robinson was unable to quantify the effect that deploying medically unfit soldiers to Iraq has on casualty and medical evacuation rates. "My gut felling is this," he said. "If you ship somebody with a pre-existing condition to war ... I bet you ... that these people exacerbate the condition that they already had and are suddenly having to be evacuated out of theater." As of Aug. 16, the Pentagon was reporting that 937 Americans had died in Iraq and another 6,276 have been wounded. Not reported is the total number of medically evacuations, which Robinson said exceeds 22,000. How many of those 22,000 people had pre-existing medical conditions, and should not have deployed in the first place?

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