Baghdad, Jan 29, (VOI) – The fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad came under mortar shells attack on Tuesday afternoon with no reports of casualties, an Interior Ministry’s source said.
“Three mortar rounds fell into the Green Zone on Tuesday afternoon, with no reports of casualties,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
The Green Zone in central Baghdad is the seat of the Iraqi government offices and the compound of the U.S. and British embassies.
The U.S. army has not yet commented on the incident.
Archive for January 31st, 2008
James Galbraith: Former NATO Generals’ “Radical Manifesto” Violates Key Principle Of International Law
James Galbraith: Former NATO Generals’ “Radical Manifesto” Violates Key Principle Of International Law
Guardian | James K Galbraith | January 25, 2008
Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”
In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/25/james-galbraith-former-n_n_83346.html
A criminal idea
Attacking other countries to stop them acquiring nuclear weapons repudiates a key principle of international law
James K Galbraith
Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”
In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.
Under this doctrine, the US could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country’s presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country’s nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.
The Nuremberg principles are the bedrock of international law on war crimes. Principle VI criminalises the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression …” and states that the following are war crimes:
“Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”
To state the obvious: the use of a nuclear weapon on the military production facilities of a non-nuclear state will mean dropping big bombs on populated areas. Nuclear test sites are kept remote for obvious reasons; research labs, reactors and enrichment facilities need not be. Nuclear bombs inflict total devastation on the “cities, towns or villages” that they hit. They are the ultimate in “wanton destruction”. Their use against a state with whom we are not actually at war cannot, by definition, be “justified by military necessity”.
“The west” has lived from 1946 to the present day with a nuclear-armed Russia; no necessity of using nuclear weapons against that country ever arose. Similarly with China, since 1964. To attack some new nuclear pretender now would certainly constitute the “waging of a war of aggression …” That’s a crime. And the planning and preparation for such a war is no less a crime than the war itself.
Next, consider what it means to determine that a country is about to acquire nuclear weapons. How does one know? The facilities that Iran possesses to enrich uranium are legal under the non-proliferation treaty. Yes, they might be used, at some point, to provide fuel for bombs. But maybe they won’t be. How could we tell? And suppose we were wrong? Ambiguity is the nature of this situation, and of the world in which we live. During the cold war, ambiguity helped keep both sides safe: it was a stabilising force. We would not use nuclear weapons, under the systems then devised, unless ambiguity disappeared. But the generals’ doctrine has no tolerance for ambiguity; it would make ambiguity itself a cause for war. Thus, causes for war could be made to arise, wherever anyone in power wanted them to.
The generals’ doctrine would not only violate international law, it repudiates the principle of international law. For a law to be a law, it must apply equally to all. But the doctrine holds that “the west” is fundamentally a different entity from all other countries. As the former Reagan official Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, it holds that our use of weapons of mass destruction to prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction is not, itself, an illegal use of weapons of mass destruction. Thus “the west” can stand as judge, jury and executioner over all other countries. By what right? No law works that way. And no country claiming such a right can also claim to respect the law, or ask any other country to respect it.
Conversely, suppose we stated the generals’ doctrine as a principle: that any nuclear state which suspects another state of being about to acquire nuclear weapons has the right to attack that state – and with nuclear weapons if it has them. Now suppose North Korea suspects South Korea of that intention. Does North Korea acquire a right to strike the South? Under any principle of law, the generals’ answer must be, that it does. Thus their doctrine does not protect against nuclear war. It leads, rather, directly to nuclear war.
Is this proposed doctrine unprecedented? No, in fact it is not. For as Heather Purcell and I documented in 1994, US nuclear war-fighting plans in 1961 called for an unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union, as soon as sufficient nuclear forces were expected to be ready, in late 1963. President Kennedy quashed the plan. As JFK’s adviser Ted Sorensen put it in a letter to the New York Times on July 1, 2002:
“A pre-emptive strike is usually sold to the president as a ’surgical’ air strike; there is no such thing. So many bombings are required that widespread devastation, chaos and war unavoidably follow … Yes, Kennedy ‘thought about’ a pre-emptive strike; but he forcefully rejected it, as would any thoughtful American president or citizen.”
It’s not just citizens and presidents who are obliged to think carefully about what General Shalikashvili and his British, French, German and Dutch colleagues now suggest. Military officers – as they know well – also have that obligation. Nuremberg Principle IV states:
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Any officer in the nuclear chain of command of the United States, Britain or France, faced with an order to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state would be obliged, as a matter of law, to ponder those words with care. For ultimately, as Nuremberg showed, it is not force that prevails. In the final analysis, it is law.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/james_k_galbraith/2008/01/a_criminal_idea.html
Fortified Green Zone mortared – U.S. base in Falluja comes under missile fire
Fortified Green Zone mortared
Baghdad – Voices of Iraq
Wednesday , 30 /01 /2008
_____________________________________________________________
U.S. base in Falluja comes under missile fire
Anbar – Voices of Iraq
Wednesday , 30 /01 /2008
Anbar, Jan 29, (VOI) – A U.S. army base in Falluja was hit by four missiles on Tuesday, Anbar police said, while the “Islamic army” claimed in statement that the attack was a show of support for the blockaded Palestinian city of Gaza.
“Four missiles landed in the U.S. army base, located 3 km east of Falluja, on Tuesday,” a Falluja police officer, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).
He added, “The missile, launched from the southern and eastern sides of the base, landed in the middle of the base where billows of smoke were seen spiraling upward.”
The U.S. side was not available to comment on the incident.
A short time later, four U.S. helicopters were seen hovering over Falluja for 25 minutes.
The Islamic army claimed responsibility for the attack in flyers circulated across the city.
The Islamic army is one of the large armed groups that has joined the campaign launched by the U.S. troops and Tribal awakening (Sahawa) forces to fight al-Qaeda network and crush its operatives in Anbar province and many Iraqi cities.
”The attack came as part of a campaign to support our people in Gaza,” the armed group’s statement said
Falluja, one the biggest cities in Anbar province, lies 45 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
AM/SR
http://66.111.34.180/look/english/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrArticle=67736&NrIssue=2&NrSection=1
Turkey continues to hammer at Israel on Gaza despite anger over Erdogan remarks
Turkey continues to hammer at Israel on Gaza despite anger over Erdogan remarks
The New Anatolian / Ankara
30 January 2008
Turkey on Friday has again declared it is deeply concerned with the onhgoing Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip while Israel has protested earlier remarks by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the action.
“The embargo imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip, in this context the closure of the border gates between Israel and the Gaza Strip and lastly the cutting off of fuel supplies is cause of great concern,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.
“As a result of these measures, the conditions of the civilian population of Gaza, already living under the harshest circumstances, have further deteriorated, serious disruptions have occurred in the distribution of water and electricity, as well as in health services,” the Ministry reported.
It said Turkey is convinced that embargoes and blockades “which further aggravate the life of the people in the Gaza Strip” merely serve the goals of extremist elements. The Foreigbn Ministry said Turkey calls for an immediate end to these practices.
The Foreign Ministry said “it is, of course, our expectation that the rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip to Israel and the military operations of Israel directed at Gaza come to a halt.”
Prime Minister Erdogan irked the Israelis when he said no Israelis have been killed by Qassam missiles, while every Israel Defense Forces attack in the Gaza Strip kills dozens of Palestinians, Israeli daily Hazaretz reported.
Haaretz said senior Israeli Foreign Ministry officials Wednesday issued a protest to Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, and requested clarifications of Erdogan’s remarks.
“Israel is very disappointed by Erdagan’s statements in light of the friendly relations between the two countries. … Israel expects a different response from a state that itself is fighting terror,” a senior Foreign Ministry official told Tan, in conveying the official protest.
Erdogan was critical of Israel’s closing the Gaza Strip border as well as Israeli military operations in the area.
“The Palestinian territories are like an open-air prison, they are under siege from Israel,” he said in a televised speech to lawmakers Wednesday.
He blamed Israel for the situation in Gaza: “The people of Gaza are facing a humanitarian tragedy,” he said. “We cannot accept a practice that amounts to punishing nearly 2 million innocent people due to some rocket attacks. … When we ask our Israeli colleagues how many Israeli citizens died as a result of these rocket attacks, we do not get an answer.”
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-30934.html
Sibel Edmonds: ‘Buckle up, there’s much more coming.’
Sibel Edmonds: ‘Buckle up, there’s much more coming.’
01/30/08
In the last few weeks, UK’s Times has run a series of articles about the so-called ‘Sibel Edmonds case.’ (‘For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets, ‘FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft’ and ‘Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe’)
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds stumbled into a world of espionage, nuclear black market, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and corruption at the highest levels of the US government.
I interviewed Sibel yesterday regarding the current investigation and reporting by the Times, the failures of the US media, and last week’s decision by the Bush administration to legalize the sale of nuclear technology to Turkey, in an apparent effort to exonerate prior criminal activity by officials in his administration.
Sibel also has some urgent ‘action items’ so that we can stop these dangerous nuclear proliferation activities. I urge you to act on her suggestions.
Luke Ryland: What do you have to say about the recent work by the Insight journalists – Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria – at the UK’s Times?
Sibel Edmonds: They’ve done good, solid reporting so far by doing what reporters are supposed to. They have been chasing sources and getting their hands on documents. It’s pretty simple. As you know, this story has been available to any journalist for six years now.
There’s been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks that American reporters haven’t touched this story because they are ‘corporate owned’ but it is wrong to exonerate these reporters so quickly. Many of them are too close to their official sources, and some are simply lazy. This Times team chases sources, and if they can’t reach them one way, they’ll try and try again, or they’ll seek out alternate sources, or find other ways to ensure that they get the story.
When I hear from US reporters, they say ‘Sibel, give us all the documents we’ll need, and you line up all the sources for us, and then maybe we’ll do a story’ and if one source doesn’t return their phone call, they simply give up. That’s not journalism!
Luke Ryland: Why has the US failed on this story so dramatically for 6 years?
Sibel Edmonds: It’s a combination of things, obviously. You need to consider that the entire US press corps has failed on this story; not only the regular print and TV media, but the alternative media has failed on this too.
Part of the reason is that journalists are simply too close to their official sources. Those sources might tell the journalist that there’s nothing to the story, and so the journalist gives up on it, or the official sources might ‘request’ that the journalist to stay away from the story, and the journalist is then concerned about losing access to the source in the future.
Another reason is the partisanship. With the foreign press, there is no partisanship, and that’s one reason why they have been more effective at covering this case, and I’m not just talking about the recent Times articles here. With the US media, it appears as though if there is no clear partisan angle, then there’s no story. As you know, this case is spread over two administrations, and that appears to make it difficult for the reporters to cover the story. Even within one news organization you might have one journalist who wants to use the story to indict Clinton, and another who wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in the end neither of them write about the story because it doesn’t fit their partisanship, their ‘narrative’, so they just drop it altogether.
I had such high hopes for the alternative press, and they do a lot of good work, but partisanship repeatedly gets in the way there too, on both sides.
The US media also suffers from a pack mentality. I was told by one executive that they weren’t doing the story because it was ‘old news’ because 60 Minutes did a single segment in October 2002, even though they only covered a tiny part of the case. This executive literally told me that he’d only cover the story if it was ‘hot and sexy.’ I often think that I’d need to be able to hire Britney Spears to be a spokesperson – and this is not just for my case, but for any of the many other solid, important cases at the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Apparently this is what it would take to get any coverage.
Of course, given the pack mentality, if any of these stories does become ‘hot and sexy’ then all the journalists focus on the same issues and there’s no differentiation in their reporting.
The other major problem in the US is the focus on symptoms, rather than root causes. My case is a good example, but there are lots of others too. Look at the early reporting on my case in 2002, the Washington Post broke the story in July 2002 about the espionage in the translation bureau and then they dropped the story after two weeks. They stopped reporting on it when more important information came out and the State Secrets Privilege was invoked. To this day not a single US reporter has asked ‘Why was the State Secrets Privilege been invoked here? What is going on?’
Just this week I was approached by a major US outlet who wanted to do a story on Kevin Taskesen! Ed note: Taskesen was an incompetent FBI translator who got his job because his wife worked in the administrative office This is absolutely the most trivial element of the case, and it has already been reported at length. I told them that they could learn everything they needed to know by watching 60 Minutes, 2002. Again, the US media needs to start looking at the root causes of these problems, not the symptoms.
Luke Ryland: Will the US media start reporting on this now that it is ‘hot and sexy’ again?
Sibel Edmonds: It’s hard to know. After being told for years that they won’t cover it because it is ‘old news,’ now there are certain officials in the agencies quietly telling journalists to stay away from the story because I came across a highly sensitive covert national security operation.
Also, Turkey’s army of lobbyists in DC are very effective. The US press tends to stay away from any stories critical of Turkey, I would say even more than Israel.
There’s also the possible problem of ‘eating crow’ but I hope this isn’t an issue, this story is way too important for any of that. The information that has been published in the Times recently could have easily come out four years ago in the US press. We now need everyone to focus on the important issues.
I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it’s not over. Much more will come out. They won’t be able to ignore it any longer, and so I hope they get over any reluctance they might have.
Look at the positive press that the Times’ series has received since their first article ran. Do you think their editors haven’t noticed? The Times is adding more and more resources to the story, more journalists, bigger budgets, and more importantly, they are getting more and more sources coming forward to shed light on these illegal activities. As I have said from the beginning, this story is not about me, there are many sources who have been waiting for the right time to come forward, I’ve probably never even heard of most of them, and now they are coming forward. This will play out like Watergate played out, with the drip, drip, drip. So I say to everyone ‘Buckle up, there’s much more coming.’
So, hopefully American reporters will start to cover the story. I’m not particularly confident, but to a certain degree it doesn’t matter that much because the internet and the blogs can spread the reporting from the UK as soon as it hits the wires.
Luke Ryland: Two weeks after the first article in the Times about the involvement of high-level US officials being involved with Turkish and Israeli interests in supplying the nuclear black market, President Bush quietly announced that the US will start supplying nuclear technology to Turkey. Do you think that is a coincidence?
Sibel Edmonds: The timing is certainly very, very suspicious. The proposals that are being floated are very suspicious too. There are reports that Turkey will build an enrichment facility, and that Turkey will become the key supplier of nuclear fuel to other Muslim countries who want nuclear power plants. None of this makes any sense.
And again, the US media is nowhere to be seen on this issue. Where are the journalists? Do you remember the noise made a couple of years ago when the US announced that it would supply India with nuclear technology? So far, nearly a week after the announcement and not a single major US media outlet has even reported on the deal! Think of the hypocrisy, with all the saber-rattling at Iran over enrichment.
If it’s such a good idea to sell nuclear technology to Turkey, why isn’t the White House out there selling the idea? Where are the arguments in the press saying that this will be good for regional stability, or that it will help reduce demand for oil, or even that it is simply good business because US firms will be able to sell their hardware and knowledge? There’s nothing! Silence. What does that tell you?
Luke Ryland: What needs to be done?
Sibel Edmonds: The way they’ve structured this deal is that Congress has 90 days from the announcement, now 84 days, to block the ‘agreement’ otherwise it basically becomes law.
The first thing that we need to do is to make sure that this doesn’t ‘automatically’ become law. We need the journalists, the experts, and the bloggers to raise hell over this issue, and we need to make sure that Congress investigates this properly before rubber-stamping it. The clock is ticking and we need to act now.
As you know, and this was even published in the White House press release on this issue, certain ‘Turkish private entities’ have been involved ‘in certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation.’ This includes supplying the A.Q. Khan network – which built Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, and also supplied North Korea, Iran and other countries – but as the recent Times stories indicate, so much more as well.
The White House press release states that all these issues have been resolved; that the Turkish government has addressed these issues, that the US government has evaluated these actions and that the US government is satisfied, and that all of this is secret, classified!
Given the track record of this administration in abusing classification and distorting intelligence, why on earth would we trust them with this? What is in the report? Is it truthful? Why is it classified? We saw these exact same people do the same thing in the late 80s when they enabled Pakistan to get nuclear weapons. Richard Barlow did his best to stop them then, but if Congress doesn’t hold hearings this time around the same thing will happen again. We should have stopped Pakistan then, but unless this ‘classified’ report is made public and the contents publicly debated, then the Barlow of today won’t even get the chance to debunk whatever is in that ‘classified’ report. What conceivable logic is there in classifying the details of how Turkey has cleaned up its act regarding nuclear proliferation? If they have, they should be proud of it!
There are many great anti-proliferation organizations out there, we need to rally all of them, and all of the ‘pro-transparency’ organizations, to this cause. We need journalists to contact these experts for their opinion and expertise, and we need these experts to contact journalists to ensure that the story, and the issues, is covered, and covered thoroughly.
We also need to recruit bloggers and alternative media to keep the pressure on. Perhaps a ‘countdown clock’ as we count down the 90 days might help.
Luke Ryland: What are the next steps in the process?
Sibel Edmonds: I’m not exactly sure of the process at the moment, but it has been reported that this ‘automatically’ becomes law after the 90 days, somehow, unless Congress blocks or amends the legislation.
Apparently the approval process somehow includes convincing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to object, so those committees appear to be our first firewall.
(Ed note: Senate Foreign Relations Committee includes Joe Biden (Chair), Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Barack Obama and Jim Webb for the Democrats, and Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel and George Voinovich for the minority. Hopefully one of them will stand up on this important issue. The House side looks more difficult, the Chairman is Tom Lantos who was listed in Sibel’s Rogue’s Gallery, which apparently identifies 18 of the guilty parties in her case, so that might be a problem. Ron Paul is also on that committee, he might be a prime target for this campaign.)
Luke Ryland: Is there anything else we can do?
Sibel Edmonds: There is one other hope. As last week’s White House press release states, Bill Clinton tried to pass this legislation in 2000 but “immediately after” Clinton tried to send it to Congress it was blocked because some people apparently highlighted Turkish involvement in the nuclear black market and, who knows, maybe threatened to blow the whistle. Those same individuals, and others like them, can stop this again, and they should do everything they can to make sure that this doesn’t happen. They should try to do it internally, and if they can’t do it internally, then they need reach out to journalists, either on or off the record. Hopefully some honest, dedicated people will try to block it again, but we can’t rely on that. We need to pressure congress to ensure that this doesn’t go through.
Time is running out, the countdown clock is ticking down, and we need to stop this now. We need the help of journalists, congress, nuclear proliferation experts, bloggers and those active citizens in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-buckle-up-theres-much.html
