Is Obama Repackaging Bush's War on Terror?

Andy Worthington's done it again. This time, asking if Obama is really just repackaging Bush's war on terror.

Changing the names of things was a ploy that was used by the Bush administration in an attempt to justify some of its least palatable activities. In response to the 9/11 attacks, for instance, the nation was not involved in a limited pursuit of a group of criminals responsible for the attacks, but instead embarked on an open-ended “War on Terror.” In keeping with this “new paradigm,” prisoners seized in this “war” were referred to as “detainees,” and held neither as criminal suspects nor as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as “enemy combatants,” without any rights whatsoever. Later, when the administration sought new ways in which to interrogate some of these men, the techniques it endorsed were not referred to as torture -- even though many of them clearly were -- but were instead described as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Read more...

New Blockbuster Book: Bushco Violated Constitution, Committed War Crimes

(check review here)
Yes we all know it, don't we? But the evidence outside our own minds, actual legal evidence, is mounting, evidence that can be used in a court of law. And Jane Mayer's about-to-be-published (target date: July 15th) book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, is, according to its publisher:

a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world-- decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author, Jane Mayer, relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

THE DARK SIDE will chronicle real, specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of what was happening in Washington, looking at the intelligence gained—or not—and the price paid. In some instances, torture worked. In many more, it led to false information, sometimes with devastating results. For instance, there is the stunning admission of one of the detainees, Sheikh Ibn al-Libi, that the confession he gave under duress—which provided a key piece of evidence buttressing congressional support of going to war against Iraq--was in fact fabricated, to make the torture stop.

In all cases, whatever the short term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself. THE DARK SIDE chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

And in a related video to be released for home viewing in September, called "Taxi to the Dark Side", it shows

According to the documentary, even the Pentagon has concluded that more than 35 detainees have died as a result of homicide while under American custody -- and they were killed by torture techniques authorized directly by the White House under the direction of Cheney, with the knowledge of Bush. Rumsfeld set the tone in the Pentagon for the torture to be undertaken as a routine procedure.

The CIA esitmated that a 1/3 of the "terrorist detainees" were not really terrorists; and other estimates place the innocent figure as high as 50%.

So why, may I ask, is impeachment off the table??????

US Plans to Occupy Iraq, Grab Its Resources

In Maya Schenwar's article, "Managing Iraq's Econoccupation", she discusses how negotiations between the Bush administration and the US-backed Maliki government have forged ahead relentlessly to basically "occupy" Iraq economically, especially to maintain that all-important stranglehold on Iraq's impressive oil supply.

On the one hand, Iraq is being torn apart by violence, largely inspired by the US invasion and occupation of that country. On the other hand, the real "message" of that invasion and occupation, the oil-grab and strategic base-grab is being strongarmed into place by aggressive "diplomatic" talks. Talks, of course, that are made forceful by that megaladon US military presence. According to Ms. Schenwar's article in truthout:

In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month, State Department
Iraq Coordinator David Satterfield revealed the Declaration of Principles
proposals have now been divided into a binding Status of Forces Agreement (on
military involvement) and a nonbinding Strategic Framework Agreement (on
economic and diplomatic relations). Neither would be submitted for the consent
of Congress.

Some of the details being worked out in the Strategic Framework Agreement are detailed here:

Thanks to Bremer's alterations of Iraqi law during the first year of the US
occupation, American companies are now allowed to buy out 100 percent of Iraqi businesses, instead of partnering with them. Bremer's orders also eliminated Iraq's high taxes on corporations, exchanging them for a 15 percent "flat tax." They abolished the practice of giving preference to Iraqi companies - in contracting out reconstruction work, for example - and erased a requirement to hire Iraqi workers.
Previously, Iraqi banks were closed to foreign ownership. Now, not only can foreign banks operate in Iraq, they can take over private Iraqi banks as well.
Bremer reworked Iraq's trademark and copyright laws, eliminated trade barriers and afforded foreign businesses the option of circumventing Iraq's legal system and taking any disputes to international tribunals.

This is your blueprint for occupation. Iraq will cease to have any effective sovereignty, the U.S. having essentially "taken over" the country and its resources. So much for the blatant lies and propaganda fed to US protoplasm, calling it a "liberation". What a callous, calculated con job! In a very telling example of the propaganda lie vs. the on-the-ground truth:

The November version of the Bush-Maliki agreement suggested a commitment to
"facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investments to Iraq,
especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and
rebuilding of Iraq."
According to James A. Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, the "flow of foreign investments to Iraq" wouldn't manifest as generously as it sounds: The deal would primarily translate into "US/UK oil company control."
Last week's assault on Basra was "part of an effort to defeat the 'nationalists' in Iraq and consolidate a pro-US political regime that will go ahead with the oil deals," Paul told Truthout.

Just before fighting erupted in Basra, the Iraqi presidential council approved the "provincial law," which clears the way for elections - potentially allowing nationalist leaders who oppose US oil interests to come to power. Maliki's Basra attack, says Paul, represents a failed attempt to quash that possibility..

Wow... this means that our soldiers are fighting to keep Iraq as a US "possession", not a sovereign nation. Our enemies are no longer called "terrorists". Now that the deed is done, or almost done, we can call them what they really are: "nationalists". We are fighting to keep control of Iraq, especially its oil. And according to the article, this is not the idea of Big Oil corporations, but Bush/Cheney's idea. Of course, Big Oil stands to profit, but Bush's idea was to keep America richer, on oil, maintain the status quo.

The Iraqis, however, have quite a different agenda, and with what little rudiments of democracy they have now in place, they are fighting the US oil-grab with all they've got.

According to James A. Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum,

"The Parliament has remained steadfastly opposed and, in spite of periodic
predictions that parliamentary agreement is 'near,' they have not acted," he
said. "There have even been rumors that the companies have offered $5 million to
each parliamentarian who votes 'yes,' a rumor that seems to me to be probably
based in reality, yet even with such blandishments the Parliament has not
acted."

And a recent poll shows 63 percent of the Iraqi people want Iraqi companies to keep control of their country's oil.

Antonia Juhasz, a fellow at Oil Change International, isn't convinced that US policy will change with the November elections either.

"I hope things would change under a Democratic administration. But the
fact that neither Clinton nor Obama has put forward an immediate withdrawal plan
is worrisome. It doesn't give me confidence that they would abandon the oil
policies the Bush administration has pursued."

Obama's going to have to address the hard stuff: either we're for democracy, and have to listen to the will of the Iraqi people, or we're for aggression and empire, and have to listen to the warmongers, oil interests, and neocons.

War on Terror Fuels Itself; Economy, Democratic Values Pay

Tom Engelhardt's intro to Mark Danner's great article on "Taking Stock of the War on Terror" brings this eloquent take on the war on terror:

The announcement (not declaration) of "war" was, in fact, a necessity for this administration, the only lever available with which to pry a commander-in-chief presidency out of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Without the President's self-proclaimed War on Terror, there would have been no "war" at all, and so no "wartime" atmosphere or "wartime" presidency to be invoked to cow Congress into backing Bush's future war of choice in Iraq. Without "war" and "wartime," it would have been impossible to bring the American people along so readily and difficult to apply "war rules" from the Guantanamo prison complex in Cuba and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Otherwise, as Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris recently pointed out in the New Yorker, how could American officials and commanders have designated those prisoners seized by the U.S. military in Iraq as "'security detainees,' a label that had gained currency in the war on terror, to describe 'unlawful combatants' and other prisoners who had been denied P.O.W. status and could be held indefinitely, in isolation and secrecy, without judicial recourse."

In the meantime, consider with Mark Danner, author most recently of The Secret Way to War, the fate of that global Pax Americana which the War on Terror was intended to bring about, as he gave this clear, painfully true picture of the War on Terror:

How indeed to "take stock" of the War on Terror? Such a strange beast it
is, like one of those mythological creatures that is part goat, part lion, part
man. Let us take a moment and identify each of these parts. For if we look
closely at its misshapen contours, we can see in the War on Terror:
Part anti-guerrilla mountain struggle, as in Afghanistan;
Part shooting-war-cum-occupation-cum-counterinsurgency, as in Iraq;
Part intelligence, spy v. spy covert struggle, fought quietly -- "on the dark side,"
as Vice President Dick Cheney put it shortly after 9/11 -- in a vast territory
stretching from the southern Philippines to the Maghreb and the Straits of
Gibraltar;
And finally the War on Terror is part, perhaps its largest part,
Virtual War -- an ongoing, permanent struggle, and in its ongoing political
utility not wholly unlike Orwell's famous world war between Eurasia, East Asia,
and Oceania that is unbounded in space and in time, never ending, always
expanding.

Read more of this brilliant expose, of which this is another excerpt defining the GWOT:

... declaring war on "terrorism" -- a technique of war, not an identifiable group or target -- was simply unprecedented, and, indeed, bewildering in its implications. As one counterinsurgency specialist remarked to me, "Declaring war on terrorism is like declaring war on air power."

That's it! It's the war against "evil", against "terrorism", against something that is neither a nation nor a people, but rather an amorphous idea. Why not declare war instead on, say, the number 13?

And the impressive result? According to the National Intelligence Estimate of 2006, the Iraq War, what was to be the "clincher" against terrorism, has become its biggest promoter.

In fact, that NIE cites the "Iraq jihad" as the second of four factors "fueling
the jihadist movement," along with "entrenched grievances, such as corruption,
injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a
sense of powerlessness"; "the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social,
and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations"; and "pervasive anti-US
sentiment among most Muslims." ...
Which means that telling the story of the War on Terror, a half dozen years on -- and "taking stock" of that War -- merges inevitably with the sad tale of how that so-called war, strange and multiform beast that it is, became subsumed in a bold and utterly incompetent attempt to occupy and remake a major Arab country.

Basically, the War on Terror is "an ideological crusade", and considering that bin Laden deliberately provoked the U.S. into attacking the Islamic world in order, as he envisioned it, to weaken America's military and economic power in a hopeless quagmire, it seems that Bush jumped right in. Into Iraq, that is, worse in so many ways than Afghanistan. And look at our military and economy now, going downhill fast.

The original idea was to shape up the Middle East and create a "Democracy domino effect. But as Mr. Danner points out:

The problem the administration faced, or rather didn't want to face, was
that the calcified order that lay at the root of the problem was the very order
that, for nearly six decades, had been shaped, shepherded, and sustained by the
United States.

Instead of dealing with the dictatorships that create instability and public resentment, we chose to invade an autonomous nation, causing already-existing potential rifts to morph into deadly civil war, further exacerbated by al-Qaeda who deliberately foment such violence.

... the Sunni-Shia divide running through Iraq in effect runs through
the entire Middle East. The United States, in choosing this place to stage its
Democratic Revolution, could hardly have done al-Qaeda a better favor.

Now we are hardly in a position to walk away. The moral victory is a distant fantasy. The terrorists have decentralized. They've become "viral al-Qaeda":

"viral al-Qaeda" -- "spontaneous groups of friends," in the words of former
CIA analyst and psychiatrist Marc Sageman, "as in [the] Madrid and Casablanca
[bombings], who have few links to any central leadership, [who] are generating
sometimes very dangerous terrorist operations, notwithstanding their frequent
errors and poor training."

And as Mr. Danner sums it up, we have passed into the "era of the amateurs",

...self-organized, Internet reliant, and decentralized, dependent not on
armies, training, or even technology but on desire and political will.

We keep feeding that desire and starving our own moral vision by refusing creative nonviolent options. It's time to use our minds in something other than creating enemies and hitting them with clubs. It's time to reassess our purpose on this earth. When you insist on fear, emotions get in the way of reason. A war on terror is self-destruction, and humankind deserves better.

Gitmo Trials Rigged! I mean really, really rigged!

This just in from the Nation:

"Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal. "

Read more...

Top 10 Cloak-n-Dagger Capers in '007

For a year numbered 007, it had more than its fair share of the clandestine, the Republicans having the sleightest and most illusory of hands, especially Bush-Cheney-World, which operates in unprecedented secrecy. Some of the following were only discovered in '007, although the legerdemain itself occurred earlier. Some became scandals of a sort, but overall, the American public has remained steadfastly teflonized, preferring to be disinformed, cortisol-driven, and inflammatory.

10. Operation Disinformation.

The mainstream corporate media collaborated with the administration to provide us bait-n-switch news on unimportant events, while disastrous activities passed by under our very noses unnoticed. How many Americans were aware that Bush just signed Martial Law into legal possibility - up to his own sole discretion - while the Paris Hilton frenzy was hitting the airwaves a month ahead of her much-heralded future jail stint?

And media manipulation by Bush-leaning corporate heads is the greatest protection against crimes committed by those in high office.

As Sen. Conyers said on Democracy Now:

“There is a very stark reality that with the corporatization of the media, we could end up with turning people, who should be documented in history as making many profound errors and violating the Constitution, from villains into victims,” the Michigan Democrat said.

Or, according to Consortiumnews,

He’s probably right that the Washington press corps would hoot any serious
impeachment drive against Bush and Cheney off the political stage.

In my view, the above 2 opinions show marked cynicism and lack of hope in the power of dissidence and truth. Perhaps that's part of the success of corporate media:

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change."
(David Barsamian, journalist and publisher)

9. The Missing Torture Tapes.

What torture tapes? Did anybody have torture tapes? Do you mean Dick Cheney's stash? Don't tell me Nancy Pelosi saw it??? And said nothing? I guess everyone is getting blase about torture...

I suspect this will be #1 in '008...

8. Big Bro's Backdoor Break-In

Although this has been going on since 9-11 and the manic "Patriot" Act, spying on Americans involves not just the Bush administration, but telecom giants as well, in complicity with the neocon so-called "war on terror". Warrantless spying on Americans was introduced through the back door, so no one would know for sure.

When pressed about it, then-Justice Gonzales claimed it was authorized by the President, but

"I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Which implied there was more than meets the press.

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance
programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein,
a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations

This was just the tip of the iceberg - or shall we say, the spy network?

According to the WaPo, the very next day after this ambiguous testimony,
"the Senate voted 69 to 30 to end a filibuster of the proposed four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law enacted in 2001. The Senate plans today to approve the measure, which contains hotly debated modifications."

So much for government by the people.

7. The Petraeus Maneuver

We're hemhorraging from the solar plexus, Iraq is a hopeless quagmire, 90% of the Iraqi people want us out and consider this an unwanted invasion, a brazen oil grab, and a total disaster, and yet the Bushco folks trot out this "ass-licking little chickenshit" to convince the American people - or protoplasm, your choice - that the Surge Is Working, and We've Turned a Corner! Meanwhile, all military dissidents are slipped out the backdoor - presumably the same one the surveillance guys snuck in through - and silenced. Shhhhhhhh....


6. The Emperor's New Coronation (And the People's New "Clothes" - ignorance and powerlessness)

Little known to the American public as a whole, George Bush has consolidated power in the Presidency through a series of signing statements, pocket vetoes, and Presidential Declarations. One such Directive (with a twisted, convoluted name) I call his coronation - It gives him, among other things, the right to retain sole executive unchecked power over the United States of America - sans Congress, sans Supreme Court oversight - simply based on his own determination that a "national emergency" exists. A sort of self-proclaimed martial law clause. Are we an empire yet? He was workin' on it - even crowned himself emperor - while the public was in a drunken media-soaked stupor over ... the earthshaking jail sentence of Paris ... the humanity-threatening meltdown of Lindsay...etc...

5. The Ashcroft Caper

When they needed to override dissent, there's always the old deathbed signover thing, especially when it comes to Cheney's pet project, "Robust Interrogations", otherwise known as torture. And so it was reported in May 2007 - when the "stunning" all-absorbing announcement of Paris Hilton's possible jail term was revealed with much media attention - that back in 2004,

On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.

In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft,
summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers
they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the room, turned and left. ...

The next day, as terrorist bombs killed more than 200 commuters on rail lines in Madrid, the White House approved the executive order without any signature from the Justice Department certifying its legality. Comey responded by drafting his letter of resignation, effective the next day, March 12.

The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said...
It also marks the first public acknowledgment that the Justice Department found the original surveillance program illegal, more than two years after it began.

4. The Gonzales Eight

When it came out that Gonzales fired 8 Prosecutors for political reasons, the cloaks were out in full regalia, lying like hell - which finally sunk in as the clandestine operation it was:

The only way to redress that insult -- and to uphold the constitutional balance of powers -- is to demand the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes that may have been committed in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys and the coverup that followed.

There is little doubt that Gonzales and his aides have sought to mislead Congress about the origins of the scandal.


3. Project Libby - The Switch

A spy is compromised, laws are broken, and the perps get what? They get lost, of course! And when the dust settles, all that's left is a dedicated front man/guy Friday for some unnamed Vice Presidential figure who goes by the name of Dick. Who in turn, wrote a little note implicating Bush W himself about which was said:

So Cheney was reflecting a presidential decision as to who was expendable and
who wasn’t? Bush wanted to save Rove by designating Libby the fall-guy. He asked
Libby to be the fall guy for Rove. (Cheney may not have been thrilled that he
had to lose his right-hand man to save the president’s.) Pure speculation, of
course. But it makes sense. And if true, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the
mafia-like code of loyalty that exists in Bush world.

And here: "The Post's Dana Milbank writes that Martin also discussed Dick Cheney's PR strategy, which included putting him on Meet the Press where he could "control [the] message" about the White House's handling of Iraqi nuclear plan evidence. Tactics also included burying bad news on the weekends and keeping Bush spokespeople in the dark about important matters."

Matters such as committing the treasonous, impeachable crime of blowing the cover of an American spy. Such as Valerie Plame. So to protect the impeachable, someone's gotta stand in the line of fire, obstructing justice. Thanks, Scooter, said Dick.

2. Blackwatergate

Suddenly, the news woke up one morning, perhaps after some Britney meltdown, and there in the margins, was this:

U.S. security contractor Blackwater has been involved in at least 195 shooting
incidents in Iraq since 2005 and, in eight of 10 cases, their forces fired
first, a leading U.S. lawmaker said on Monday, reported Reuters.
State Department contractor Blackwater is under investigation for the shooting deaths of 11 Iraqis on September 16, they will answer questions about that incident and its performance in Iraq at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Now it appears that not only is the United States military overextended, it's hiring mercenaries who are above the law and killing Iraqi civilians.

And the US government is covering it up:

"It appears that the State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to put the 'matter behind us' rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability," said the (Waxman)memorandum.

Aside from being a scandal, Blackwatergate may be used by Bushco to further obfiscate the war scene in Iraq as suggested here:

Condemnation of Blackwater, however justified, can easily be siphoned into a
political whirlpool that demands a cleanup of the U.S. war effort -- as though a
relentless war of occupation based on lies could be redeemed by better
management -- as if the occupying troops in Army and Marine uniforms are
incarnations of restraint and accountability.

1. The Shadow Presidency


WaPo's expose on Dick Cheney revealed the ultimate caper: that the man in charge was not really the President after all: the previously ceremonial office of Vice President had been transformed, in a move of unprecedented wholesale legerdemain, to the status of uncrowned king.

"Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of
power obliquely, ... has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for
edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did
not assert.

In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for
Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget
appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his
native West.

Now who really pulls the strings of power? The Angler? Or just ... 007?...

Benazir Played Miss Congeniality III: Unarmed & Endangered

Benazir Bhutto's assassination was easy to predict: in fact, her survival, both politically and physically, was something of a dark horse. With many enemies and no army, strong pro-US anti-terrorist rhetoric right in the heart of Al-Qaeda Country, and without any political clout except being the titular head of a political party that was not really in the running, she had no one watching her back except the remote-control promises of a maligned superpower (with the Oh-so-trustworthy Bush administration), and her old nemesis, Pervez Musharraf who only allowed her back in Pakistan under U.S. pressure. By her own account:

"There was one suicide squad from the Taleban elements, one suicide squad from al-Qaeda, one suicide squad from Pakistani Taleban and a fourth – a group, I believe, from Karachi,” she said.

So why did the geniuses at Bushco put her up to it? Her gushing, smiling interviews before her "triumphant" return to Pakistan gave her the innocent look of a True Believer. I asked myself, "Does she actually believe this war on terror crap? Does she really think the United States is trying to bring democracy to Pakistan? She looks for all the world like she really does..."

Bhutto was the perfect answer to America's public relations disaster in Pakistan - our Great White Hope for a Democratic Pakistan. A disarming - but not demilitarizing - smile, general good looks, a woman who is nonetheless Muslim, she has name recognition, a following, a way with words (first female president of prestigious Oxford's Debate Club) ... what more could she ask for?

Blackwater, for one thing. But Musharraf wouldn't allow Blackwater to operate in Pakistan, leaving Benazir at the mercy of rivalvMusharraf, with those sticky fingers in the Al-Qaeda/Taliban/Islamist pie...

Bhutto was "immortalized" in Pakistani newspapers, such as this article:

Benazir Bhutto embraced martyrdom and was immortalized just like her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as another tragedy struck the unfortunate Bhutto family.She is the fourth Bhutto dying in violent circumstances.

She was killed in the same town where her father was executed 28 years ago, in an area

"... outside the Liaquat Bagh, the same park where Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was shot dead not long after the country’s independence. ... Liaquat Bagh, named after Liaquat Ali Khan, has in a way become a tragic place where participants of public rallies have been often attacked and killed and two prime ministers lost their lives in violent circumstances."

With a family known for being on the receiving end of death plots, you couldn't say she didn't know she was putting herself in harm's way. It took much cajoling and reassurance from Condi Rice to convince her to come back. Rice, too, was fully aware of the danger to Ms. Bhutto in this high-stakes, high-risk gamble. Ultimately, her love of the adulation of crowds and the high-end perks of power, combined with her trusting attitude towards American assurances, led to her "dark horse" going down.

According to earlier reports:

Benazir made the fatal mistake to come out of the sun-roof, deciding to wave to the crowd, and was shot.

You wouldn't catch Musharraf standing up in a van - he's a survivor, not a Bhutto. And he has the military, the executive power, and the conniving to back up his own security against repeated assassination attempts. He now stands accused of being either behind the Bhutto murder or deliberately laissez fair in her security. Now he's also accused of a coverup, which lends more credence to the murder plot innuendoes. Why else would he try to deny the gunman's hand and point at the suicide bomber?

The initial reports of Ms Bhutto having been killed by a gunman's bullets to her head and neck were changed later by officials in the Mubarak regime to state that the suicide bomb blast caused her to hit her head, causing her death. But new video released by nbc news shows that the official line could NOT have been the case, and that the gunman is the actual assassin who killed Benazir Bhutto. This, of course, only inflames the Pakistani public further against Musharraf.

Even before this responsibility claim was supposedly released from al-Qaeda:

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

Bush was already pinning the tail on the donkey:

"The US strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," he said. "Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice."

Of course, we all know "extremists" by name. Then why, now, are those dastardly al-Qaeda folks denying it? The Musharraf government had even named the al-Qaeda operative, Ali Mehsud, who now publicly states it would be against his tribal traditions to kill a woman, and that he had nothing to do with it. Speaking on behalf of al-Qaeda - and who in that shadowy world doesn't? - and the Taliban - or more precisely, a recently formed Pakistani version of same - he claims

"This was a well-planned conspiracy carried out by the intelligence agencies, army and government for their own political motives," he said.

So who speaks on behalf of whom? Who really killed Benazir? Check out the above video for the photo of the guy. As for who put Benazir in harm's way, we should look beyond UBL, America's favorite anti-Christ, and a little closer to home... like that bumbling, foreign-policy wizard, the one who thinks the so-called war on terror is a great idea, a guy also known as W ...

Who Are the Insurgents?

Dahr Jamail reviews "Meeting Resistance"

"Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don’t be surprised by their reactions," says "The Imam," a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.

He is one of the protagonists that Meeting Resistance presents as unmistakable evidence that the root cause of the conflict in Iraq is the occupation itself. The film has resistance fighters themselves tell their story.

Journalists-turned-filmmakers Molly Bingham and Steve Connors were compelled to film this documentary during their early reporting of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. They used the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to explore and depict an insurgency that has been caricatured by the Bush Administration.

Bingham, who has reported previously from Rwanda, the Gaza Strip, and Iran, was the official photographer to the Office of the Vice President of the United States from 1998 to 2001. She believes that it is imperative to understand the people within the resistance if the United States is to find a solution to the Iraq quagmire.
...

The eighty-five-minute groundbreaking film focuses on ten members of the Iraqi resistance. Interspersed with stunning footage of the aftermath of car bomb attacks, of frightened soldiers aiming their weapons at crowds of Iraqis, and of burning remains of destroyed military vehicles, the meat of the film is the words of the fighters themselves.

"I felt a fire in my heart," one of them recounts. "When they occupied Iraq, they subjugated me, subjugated my sister, subjugated my mother, subjugated my honor, my homeland. Every time I saw them I felt pain. They pissed me off, so I started working [in the resistance]."

The complex nature of their lives speaks to the intricacies of the Iraqi resistance.

...
"To place an opponent like the Iraqi resistance in the human space of ordinary people defending their right to self-determination is to challenge our view of ourselves as liberators," says Connors.
While laying bare the motivations of the resistance, the film also does a forceful job of dispelling other myths.
One of the interviewed, referred to as "The Republican Guard" since he was a career officer in Saddam Hussein's military, is a Sunni married to a Shia woman. "The Sunni and Shia are bound together by blood and family ties," he explains. "I am married to a Shia, my sister is married to a Shia. I can’t kill my own children's uncles or kill my wife, the mother of my children."
One scene includes a butcher hacking away at a side of beef. "Iraq is our homeland, it's our Iraq," he says. "If you don't defend your land, you will not defend your honor."
The film recognizes that the resistance has the tacit support of a large percentage of the population, even though the Bush Administration doesn't acknowledge this.

"The Administration chooses to portray people who oppose their will in Iraq as terrorists or extremists who live on the fringes of Iraqi society, isolated from their own countrymen," says Bingham. "Without doubt some individuals involved in attacking U.S. troops are 'extreme' in their beliefs, and they are relentless fighters in the pursuit of their goals, but they are very human and very much part of the social structure of Iraqi society, and move within it. If we removed the context of occupation—in all its forms—from Iraq, most of them would stand down and return to their lives."
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Bingham feels that the film represented a radically different perspective to the military personnel who viewed it.
"The bulk of the people were taking on new information that was a dramatic paradigm shift for them," she says. "To see their enemy as largely fighting for their homeland because of nationalism and religion, rather than being terrorists, is a big deal."

Dahr Jamail is the author of the recently released book "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq." Jamail spent eight months reporting from Iraq, and has been covering the Middle East for over four years for the Inter Press Service, The Sunday Herald, Foreign Policy in Focus, andThe Independent, among others.