The Guerrilla Campaign

Former Longtime Confidant Accuses Ariel Sharon of Assassinating Yasser Arafat by Stephen Lendman 12/30/06 Longtime and now recently deceased confidant to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Uri Dan, published a book in France that may have been his 2006 one titled Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait in which he accused the former prime minister of assassinating Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasser Arafat by poisoning him. Dan claimed Sharon got approval from George Bush by phone early in 2004 to proceed with his plan after he told the US president he was no longer committed to "not" liquidating the Palestinian leader who then was under siege and practically incarcerated in what remained of his Ramallah compound, most of which had already been destroyed by the Israelis in a lawless act of retribution against him. Based on his record during his tenure as Texas governor, when he authorized more death row inmate executions than any US governor in history (and was c...

The puppet regime in Iraq has given the bush his revenge on “the guy who tried to kill his daddy.” Another “milestone”. […] ‘Saddam Hussein’s execution comes at the end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops,’ Bush said in a statement released as he prepared to usher in 2007 at his Texas ranch. […] ‘Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror,’ he said . And so, Saddam Hussein is dead. I read that TV executives are planning tasteful coverage of the event. And after that we can slip into mourning and rending clothes for president ford. There certainly is a wide choice of ‘tasteful’ fare to entertain ourselves this New Year’s weekend. And still, the carnage continues . Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

by Mary Pitt As the time nears for the Democratic Congress to take office, debate is beginning to rage about whether the Pelosi approach is the correct one and it is more prudent for the Congress to launch investigations to hold responsible certain individuals in reverse chain-of-command fashion, dealing with rapscallions on each level in order to obtain testimony against those higher on the food chain or whether the direct attack would be more immediate and productive and follow the leadership of outgoing-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and others of like mind and go directly to impeachment. It is the opinion of this writer that both approaches to haltering the rampant adventurism of this administration are too little and too late. This is not your old-fashioned game of political niceties that is being played here. It's a combination of Texas Hold-Em with all guns on the table and the world's greatest chess masters with behind-the-scenes coaches who now find themselves in check...

by Chris Toensing; Middle East Report; December 27, 2006 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=11721 The latest convoluted set of events within Palestine, and at its borders, form a depressing tableau that mirrors the conflict as a whole. Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister compelled by an Israeli-Arab-Western financial blockade to seek his government’s budget from Iran and Sudan, was denied reentry into Gaza, the seat of his government, until Israeli-Egyptian-U.S. negotiations decided he would leave his bags of donated cash behind in Egypt. That a Palestinian’s movements should be thus externally controlled is not, of course, novel, and Israel accorded Yasser Arafat similar treatment, in life and in death. But there was a twist in Haniyeh’s delayed border crossing on December 14: The prime minister’s entourage met a hail of bullets from gunmen likely linked to Fatah, the main rival of the Hamas movement to which he belongs. Haniyeh escaped, but a bodyguar...

by Stephen Lendman 12/27/06 […] At the end of the sixth horrific year under the reign of the Bush modern-day extremist Jacobin-neocons, we can now look ahead, but to what. We have an administration in charge for another two years one longtime analyst characterizes as "a bunch of crooks, incompetents and perverts" with the president's approval rating plunging as low as 28% in some independent polls and a growing number of people in the country demanding his impeachment and removal from office. It's not likely from the new Democrat-led Congress arriving in January, as their DLC leadership took it off the table and so far only promises more of the same failed policy other than some minor tinkering around the edges to create an illusion of change no different than the deceptive kind of course correction proposed by the Baker "Gang of Ten" Iraq Study Group (ISG) that guarantees none at all. It doesn't leave members of the body politic with much hope for the n...

By Sheila Samples Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player Th at struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. ~~McBeth, Act V, Scene V It's almost painful to watch the disintegration of George W. Bush and what's left of his murderous administration. Those who haven't fled are racing blindly through the halls of power, lurching into one another in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from Bush and to escape reaping what they have sown. Even cutting a bit of slack, it's still inconceivable that any thinking person could spend more than five minutes in the presence of Bush without the shock of recognizing what a total idiot this country has as its president. Other than breaking stuff, killing anything in his path, refusing to admit mistakes, and making an obscene mess of anything he touches, apparently the only thing Bush can do with any success is break wind --pas...

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3343184,00.html US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that Iraq is ''worth the investment'' in American lives and dollars. Rice also said the United States can win in Iraq, although the war so far has been longer and more difficult than she had expected. In an AP interview, Rice was asked whether an additional USD 100 billion the Pentagon wants for the Iraq and Afghan wars might amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq. Rice answered that Iraq is "worth the investment" and that "once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East.'' (AP) "We Think the Price Is Worth It" By Rahul Mahajan November/December 2001 http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1084 Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know,...

by Rodrigue Tremblay December 18, 2006 "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002 "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." George W. Bush, September 12, 2002 "Intelligence leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal lethal weapons." George W. Bush, March 18, 2003 "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003 "But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.." George W. Bush, May 30, 2003 Wars of aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices. Wars are al...

By General William Odom 18.12.2006 General William Odom, one of the earliest advocates of an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, attacks some of the mythologies that are interfering with an honest debate about how to proceed in the Middle East and says the media have failed to recognize dramatic changes in the region. Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski. E-mail: diane@hudson.org Mythologies about the war in Iraq are endangering our republic, our rights, and our responsibilities before the world. The longer we fail to dispel them, the higher price we will pay. The following...

By Ghali Hassan Dec 15, 2006, 05:37 Faced with fierce legitimate Resistance to its violent and brutal military Occupation of Iraq, the U.S. is searching for a way to configure the Occupation. The “new” strategy is to manipulate and pacify the American public to “achieve” U.S.-Zionist ideology in the Middle East Let us roll up our sleeves and admit the obvious truth. The vast majority of the Iraqi people have rejected the Occupation, and are united in their call for the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. forces and collaborators from Iraq. Also most Iraqis see U.S. troops and their collaborators as the generator of violence, and a significant majority of Iraqis is in favour of armed attacks against U.S. forces. As a result of nearly four years of brutal Occupation, violence has increased dramatically and the living conditions for ordinary Iraqis have deteriorated. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been needlessly killed and many more have been injured. Millions of Iraqis ...

Doubling the number of part-time employees By Jack Rasmus Z Magazine Online December 2006 Volume 19 Number 12 This past October, Wal-Mart, the largest employer in the U.S. with revenues of more than $310 billion a year, announced it was going to double the number of its workers employed part-time —from 20 percent to 40 percent of its total work force—while reducing full-time jobs by yet unknown thousands at the company. Given Wal-Mart’s total U.S. employment of 1.3 million, that means 260,000 more Wal-Mart workers will now make roughly half of what full-time employees earn. What little health and other company-paid benefits the 260,000 had as full-time employees will be reduced or eliminated. Wal-Mart will save an estimated $3.042 billion a year in wages and benefits by doubling its part-time work force to 40 percent, for a total of 520,000 part-timers. Wal-Mart also announced in October a “cap” on wages that will impact many thousands more of its workers. In addition, both part-time a...

by Stephen Lendman Thursday, December 14, 2006 http://tmars.iwarp.com/guerrilla_campaign/document/Omissions-ISG-Report.html Noted historian Eric Foner in a December 7 article on OpEd News.com calls George Bush "the worst president in US history....(who) in his first six years in office....managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors." Equally noted historian Gabriel Kolko agrees, and along with his other comments, calls the Bush administration "the worst set of incompetents ever to hold power in Washington." And referring specifically to the war in Iraq, Kolko colorfully describes what former Reagan administration National Security Agency (NSA) chief General William Odom calls "....the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States" by saying the Bush administration "shocked and awed....itself." Hard to say it better than that. Enter James Baker and the Iraq Study Group...

The Americans Don't See How Unwelcome They Are, or That Iraq Is Now beyond Repair . by Patrick Cockburn; Independent; December 11, 2006 During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts. For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed.. Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of v...

As the prophet Muhammad was growing in popularity he asked his followers to go and live in Yathrib, an oasis about a hundred and fifty miles from Mecca. Inevitably Muhammad stepped on commercial interests with his message of social responsibility and tolerance and was forced to flee for his own life to Yathrib. In those days a city was the state--the nation, if it existed at all, was usually a confederation of city-states. Since Yathrib was populated by so many of his followers Muhammad quickly became a head of state; he renamed the city Medina and continued to convert followers. The powers of Mecca became more hostile than ever and waged war against Medina, which Mohammad and his followers defended at great sacrifice and success. War, however, was not Muhammad's way so he turned to diplomacy with the first pilgrimage to Mecca. He was not allowed into the city but he and his followers could not be ignored and he negotiated a peace with Mecca and would be allowed to complete his pil...

(The Neediest President in History, Part 2) 12/8/2006 The Rude Pundit And so it was that James Baker III, oozing the kind of reptilian evil that we expect from the half-men, half-crocodiles that slither from the putrid pools of 41's inner circle, said to a Senate Committee regarding his Iraq Study Group's list of nearly four-score recommendations: "I hope we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say, `I like this, but I don't like that, I like this, but I don't like that.'" Yes, Baker was there to save the nation from Iraq and 43 and 43 from himself, but no one gives a damn. When it's time for an empire to fall, it must fall. So when 41 became a weepy bitch over Jeb's imminent passage from public life, it was the pathetic whine of a fallen patrician, the end of the goddamn line. For what was 43's press conference yesterday but a chance to hunch over in the ditch once more and toss dingleberries at the media, the degraded man, not so mu...

by Stephen Lendman "Today we gave another lesson in dignity to the imperialists, it is another defeat for the empire of Mr. Danger....another defeat for the devil. We will never be a colony of the US again....Long live the socialist revolution....Destiny has been written....Socialism is human. Socialism is love." This is how Hugo Chavez Frias characterized his smashing electoral victory on December 3 when he appeared on the balcony of the Palacio de Miraflores (the official presidential palace residence) and addressed a huge gathering of his followers below that evening telling them of his victory for the people and that he now has an even stronger mandate to pursue his Bolivarian Project to do more for them ahead than he's already accomplished so far which is considerable. He told his loyal, cheering supporters his impressive landslide electoral victory is one more blow to George Bush, and it follows on the others won by populist candidates in the region in the past s...

by Mary Pitt 12/8/06 The elephant called the Iraq Study Group has labored long and hard and, after keeping their secret until "after the election", has brought forth a gnat. They have utterly failed to discover a method for extracting W's grubby little fist from the cookie jar this time. Instead they have delivered another missive of pomposity which has nothing new to offer and can only prove one thing. We are in another quagmire and there is no way we can get out of it without being covered with mud. One does not walk out of a door with honor after walking in without any. This committee recommendation deserves only one title: "Too Little, Too Late". This is typical Bush politics. When in trouble, appoint a prestigious investigative committee, make a lot of smoke, and then continue with the same foolhardy practices that started the problem. After 9/11, a similar committee was named and they "investigated", failing to come to any realistic conclusion wi...

“…When the post-invasion death toll was compared against the pre-invasion death rate, the findings, extrapolated for the whole country, disclosed “excess” deaths — above the pre-invasion death rate — of between 400,000 and 900,000, with the likely total of excess, or war-related, deaths put at 650,000. The results were published last week in The Lancet . And, of course, the study was dismissed — as “politics, not science,” as “total crap” — by every stay-the-course zealot with a media forum…” A Few Corpses Past 'Whatever' By Robert C. Koehler In the light of this report, I’m going to say that the researchers of the Lancet report have just had their methodology, and their numbers independently verified. So, can we now cut the crap, and call the supporters and the architects of this obscene carnage in Iraq what they really are? The Coalition Casualties in Iraq website lists 2922 American military killed as of Dec 06, 2006, and 35,174 injured as of December 2, 2006, as reported b...