JANUARY, 2003

 

NORTH KOREA:  BITTER FRUIT OF ENGAGEMENT

The hypocrisy of the Bush administration position on Iraq versus North Korea has not been lost in establishment media coverage.  On the one hand we have Iraq, one of the most westernized of Islamic nations, albeit under tyrannical leadership (like all other Muslim nations): a bit player in the WMD wannabe game, already invaded and beaten back in the Gulf War, presently making some effort to comply with UN inspections routines, and yet targeted for full scale war and destruction.  

 

Compare this to the Communist regime in North Korea, a recalcitrant throwback to an old Stalinist order.  Pyongyang has such a deadly stranglehold on production and distribution of products and services in the North that almost no private innovation exists, except in the desperate realms of smuggling and the growing of extra food to stave off starvation.  Iraq, even under sanctions, looks like a supermarket by comparison.  Which regime is the greater threat to its own people? 

 

North Korea is also a perennial pariah of weapons proliferation, and is the largest manufacturer and exporter of Scud missiles in the world.  It blatantly admits to having an active nuclear weapons program.  The Pyongyang regime last week disabled UN monitoring devices at a nuclear plant that has already produced enought weapons-grade plutonium to produce one or two atomic bombs.  UN weapons inspectors have been expelled from the country.  North Korea has continued advanced missile development (Taepo Dong I, II) despite verbal promises not to do so, and has already tested intermediate range missiles capable of reaching Japan.  New tests are imminent, say North Korean officials.  Much of the nation’s missile development is going on in Iran in the form of the Shihab 4 and Shihab 5 missile projects.  In short, here is an enemy already guilty of killing thousands of Americans (in the Korean War), which is a current threat to Japan and a future threat to all nations within a 6,000 km radius (including the Philippines, Guam and Alaska), and ironically, the US denies the need for a military solution. 

 

The media seems eager to provide excuses for this hypocrisy rather than unmask it for what it is: the furtherance of a US-led globalist agenda that will inevitably lead to a major world conflict.  In an attempt to appear as if seeking answers to this nagging question on the use of force in Iraq but not in North Korea, the American media parades before the gullible public a predictable array of foreign policy experts from leftist universities and think tanks in the Washington, DC area: Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, the Brookings Institution, etc.  These experts, almost as if scripted, uniformly provide worn-out and servile justifications for the same failed foreign policies the US has implemented during and since Vietnam.   Namely, they favor engagement of any potential threat, rather than vigorous interdiction of predatory regimes.   Serbia and Iraq, of course, are the exceptions.  They were and are being targeted for elimination, not for any overt act, per se, but for their value in rallying Slavic and Islamic peoples in opposition to Western intervention.

 

“Engagement” is one of those permissive euphemisms (e.g.: containment, détente, dialogue, etc.) meant to lull the public into a stupor about the Communist threat to Western culture and liberty.  When one code word for permissive foreign policy becomes an obvious failure, a new one replaces it, but the pursuit of a deliberate course of  inaction relative to these bona-fide threats remains the same.   “Engagement” is currently the popular term in use.  It implies that we should engage the enemy in dialogue, trade incentives, and other non-hostile inducements with the objective being to reform the nation’s leadership, rather than cut out the cancer, militarily, before it becomes unstoppable. 

 

Thus, engagement represents (if we assume some honest, but soft-thinking intentions on the part of its promoters) a lack of understanding of the nature of the threat.  Most academics are on the left side of the political spectrum, and are extremely reluctant to view Communism as the enemy it is.  Ivory Tower scholars are particularly prone to view Communists as driven by benevolent desires for equality and the provisioning of basic human needs, with intentions merely to counteract the supposed ruthlessness of the free markets.  This is woefully mistaken.  Historically, all top Communist leaders have been violent predators with a fetish for control, and a distinct pension for the trappings of wealth once they gain power.  They have been brutal in their predation upon opposition peoples, even if their own public rhetoric has been deceptively smooth.  The doctrines of social justice are only promulgated to lend a façade of benevolence and political expediency to their ruthless policies. 

 

However, Western scholars, ever indulging in illusions of peace, reason that aid, trade and arm twisting of the propertied classes of these nations (into accepting land confiscation, progressive taxation, and redistribution of assets as reasonable domestic policies) will remove the seeds of revolution, and that Communism will die for lack of an issue. Such wishful thinking has simply not been borne out by historical facts, despite the appearance of the “demise of Communism” in Russia – which I consider to be a masterful and grand deception.  (It is not the first time the Russians have tried this, but the third in a serious of carefully crafted deceptions intended to lure the West into complacency.)  In fact, Communism has never been “contained” by policies of permissiveness and softness; engagement only serves to assist Communism by providing these nations more time to grow and develop militarily.  But such popular, if dangerously naive notions, do explain why US policy consistently promotes a socialist agenda in target countries, which only increases class conflict and destroys what economic viability existed rather than bring peace. 

 

An in depth look at the real facts on the ground will support the following crucial conclusion:  Every Marxist, anti-Western country that constitutes a pernicious long-term threat (Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea), all of which have been primary recipients of containment and engagement policies for the last several decades, are guilty of massive violations of arms limitation and arms proliferation agreements, and are stronger militarily today than they were before the “engagement” process.  

 

This failure of containment and engagement has been evident for 60 years, and yet South Korea’s outgoing president Kim Dae-jung, speaking out on the current crisis with the North, said this week that dialogue was the only option.  Kim is sending Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik to Beijing and Vice-Minister Kim Hang-kyung to Moscow for further talks.  At least Kim recognizes who controls North Korea, even though both Russia and China have had the gall to make numerous public appeals to North Korea to abide by non-proliferation agreements (as if there were no control relationship between North Korea and its suppliers of weapons technology).  North Korea, like China and Cuba, acts as a surrogate for Russia in training revolutionaries and transferring WMD technologies to others client states (so that Russia, meanwhile, can play the role of reformer and peace partner). 

 

Kim argued before his cabinet that Pyongyang’s backsliding called for more conciliation and aid, not confrontation.  “Pressure and isolation have never been successful with communist countries -- Cuba is one example,” he asserted.  What world does he live in?  Perhaps he views pressure and isolation as the weak-kneed variety of the US policies following the Cuban missile crisis.  The reason pressure and isolation didn’t work after the crisis is that the US had secretly agreed not to remove Castro, in exchange for removal of the missiles.  But during the crisis, real pressure (the barrel of a gun) and a rigorously enforced blockage (true isolation!) quickly brought Cuba to its knees.  Too bad we didn’t follow through.    

 

But, it gets worse.  Kim started getting carried away by his own bravado: “We will work closely with our allies to solve this Korean peninsula problem and we will firmly oppose North Korea's nuclear arms program, but no matter what, we will pursue a peaceful solution.”  Firmly?  How firmly can one oppose a threatening military program if one is committed to a peaceful solution “no matter what”?  Kim continued, “We cannot go to war with North Korea and we can't go back to the Cold War system and extreme confrontation.” In other words, Kim (and his pacifist successor President-elect Roh Moo-hyun) claims to be able to solve this issue without the use of force.  Yet engagement, the much-touted alternative, has already been proven ineffective.  Let’s examine one case of the recent failure of such policies in this region.

 

In the Agreed Framework signed by the United States and North Korea in October of 1994, Pyongyang agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program, accept enhanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and safeguards, and promise to work for a nuclear-free peninsula.  These were all paper promises, with no intentions of honest follow-through.  Notice that North Korea was not required to yield up anything specific or concrete in the agreement – not even the supplies of enriched plutonium it had illegally produced so far.

 

In contrast, the US provided much more than paper promises.  The US agreed to normalize trade relations, build a new nuclear reactor for Pyongyang, provide regular shipments of fuel oil, and bequeath tons of food aid to North Korea (80% of which was diverted to feed Pyongyang’s million man army).   Meanwhile, other than put its plutonium production on hold (supposedly), North Korea did not nothing to cease its nuclear program.  On the contrary, using existing plutonium stockpiles, it simply used the time to develop and build its first bombs in other facilities, not revealed to inspectors.  As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said in October that North Korean officials admitted to him that they had been secretly developing a uranium-enrichment program for several years to produce nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 US-North Korean pact negotiated with the Clinton administration.”  Following the Bush administration’s logic in justifying military action against Iraq, this admission should be cause for another pulpit-pounding speech calling for UN action and a US attack in North Korea!  Instead, only expressions of concern are voiced.  

 

Now that the Agreed Framework agreement has gone up in smoke, let’s look at the end results of this dubious policy.  Instead of destabilizing the Pyongyang regime during its worst famine in a century, the West ensured the North’s survival by providing crucial shipments of food, fuel and a brand new nuclear plant.  The US, for its part, got nothing but egg on its face.  South Korea became less politically stable and more anti-American.  Local pro-American veterans of the Korean War and their families now find themselves in  the political minority as anti-American feelings are hitting an all-time high.  Meanwhile, the leftist/Marxist/pacifist student movement in South Korea has grown into a second and third generation, sufficient to capture a near majority in the nation’s parliament.  President-elect Roh, a human rights lawyer and covert leftist, is particularly sympathetic to the cause of the Communist regime to the North.  Like the American ACLU, “human rights” champions in South Korea have a fetish about errors in legitimate law enforcement and turn a near blind eye to the egregious human rights violations of China, Russia, Cuba and North Korea. 

 

So, what is so different now than in the mid-90’s that would give anyone confidence that South Korea has a legitimate partner in peace that can be induced to lay down its power, arms, and institutionalized control?  Is Chairman Kim Jong-il any less virulent in its hatred of the US?  Not at all.  Is he any more conciliatory in tone?   No.  Is his regime more trustworthy?  Not by any reasonable standards.  Is the North militarily weaker or more near the breaking point?  No, they are stronger and more confident than ever.  So chances are even less likely that a permissive policy will effect any positive changes in the North Korean regime.  At the same time, the South has little to gain by attempting to peaceably accommodate the North.  North Korea has few export products (other than weapons) and no service sector of any value to the South to offer in trade.  In fact, the North has only two advantages to offer the South in engagement: 1) access to the thousands of Korean families and relatives (hostages) stranded in the North at the end of hostilities in the Korean War; and 2) the prospect of dismantling their nuclear production facilities and weapons of mass destruction (which only fools and dupes take seriously). 

 

In short, the South, if committed solely to non-threatening gestures, can only give more and expect nothing of substance in return.  The North will continue to take and grow stronger. Yet this policy of accommodation, aid, and one-way trade, euphemistically termed the “sunshine policy,” is exactly what South Korea is intent on following.   When the deception finally unravels, this “sunshine” policy will end up as a night of darkness, leaving this once free country with the terrifying realization that it no longer has the power to stop an imminent military invasion.  The only negotiating point then will be how to arrange for an orderly capitulation – which the Red hoards will surely not honor.  And then the purging and pillaging will begin anew and people will come to the realization that they knew inside it was going to turn out this way.  Conscience has a way of reminding us when our illusions collapse that we weren’t ignorant after all.  We had received many subtle warnings, and dismissed them all.  Soft thinking is ultimately deadly. 

 

One of the reasons the grand deception of the “collapse of the Soviet Union” is so dangerous, is that it multiplies the force of people’s cowardly and false hopes that they will never have to confront evil.  It feeds the illusions of millions of wishful thinkers who are temporarily convinced that accommodation and compromise with tyranny really works.  It doesn’t.  There really is no historical precedent for virulent tyrants laying down their means of destruction and power voluntarily.  Anyone with any sense can feel that the Russian Bear and the Chinese Dragon are stirring, plotting and maneuvering behind the façade of reform and progress, preparing to strike.

 

WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS OF WAR IN KOREA?

Surprisingly, the prospects of military engagement in the Koreas is very small, for the present.  US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has the bravado to claim he can fight a war in Korea while tangling with Iraq, but the experienced US commanders know better.  North Korea has an overwhelming numerical advantage (approximately 2:1) over US and South Korean forces, and the US is already strung out to about 80% of its capacity in preparing for the Iraqi conflict.  The Pentagon has resorted to using tens of private cargo vessels since the US Navy no longer has sufficient transport capacity to handle their modest commitments.  The logistics and spare parts supply lines have been strained to the limit in the attempt to bring deployed battle equipment up to full readiness.  Yes, the US could turn to weapons of mass destruction (as Bush has hinted) to keep up the façade of strength, but the US couldn’t get away with using them without inviting a Russian or Chinese retaliatory response. 

 

This is the salient fact that no one in the administration, nor any of the media talking heads, will address: that North Korea still has the full backing of Russia and China, our so-called partners in the phony war against terrorism.  Russia is playing both sides of the issue and no one is calling its bluff.  Defense Minister Ivanov recently chided Pyongyang, saying (tongue in cheek), “North Korea should strictly observe all its corresponding international obligations.”  Sure – just like Russia always does!   At the same time Ivanov warned the US that “aggressive rhetoric and threats, and especially attempts to isolate North Korea will only escalate tensions which contradicts regional and international stability interests.”  In other words, Russia will play the rhetorical game of cheerleading for “international compliance,” but the US must actually abide by the pacifist actions demanded. 

 

The US won’t use a pre-emptive strike on North Korean nuclear and missile facilities for the same reason it won’t tackle any key ally of the Russian/Chinese axis.  For their part, Russia and China are not going to allow the North to go rampaging into war until such action fits in with the much larger war agenda Russia itself has planned.  Russia, which is ultimately calling the shots for all the anti-US forces, intends to use some trigger event (either a Middle East regional war or a second Korean War) to induce a much larger US response--and then use that escalation to launch its long-planned pre-emptive nuclear attack on US military targets.  But it’s too early yet for that.  Russia still is working to finish its underground factories which will preserve its ability to manufacture WMDs in the midst of nuclear and conventional war.

 

It appears that Russia is willing to sacrifice Iraq at this time to US aggression in order to encourage the world to see the US in a negative light.  Few nations are really buying the US justification for attacking Iraq.  Most suspect oil as the motive.  It is, but the oil issue is only secondary to the overarching globalist agenda of fomenting war.   Both the US-led globalist forces and Russian/Chinese axis are maneuvering for this final showdown.  The winner will take possession of the vaunted New World Order.  There will be no victory for liberty, regardless of who wins.  Both sides intend to snuff out national sovereignty and limited government once and for all.  Korea is a potential flashpoint for this ultimate struggle, as are Taiwan and the Middle East.  

 

The India and Pakistan conflict is the only nuclear flashpoint that I don’t believe would give rise to a third world war, since both sides are allied with either Russia or China.  Most likely the subcontinent will erupt in nuclear conflict only after China and Russia turn on each other, which I view as inevitable, but highly unlikely before the start of the next world war.  However, at some point in the next war when the tide begins to turn against Russia, I expect China to betray her, removing Russia from the global power scheme and emerging itself as the new threat to the West. 

 

US CONTINUES TO PLACATE NORTH KOREA

The Bush administration has pledged to offer no more new concessions to North Korea, saying it won’t pay twice for getting North Korea back into compliance with the failed “Agreed Framework” disarmament plan.  Well, that may seem refreshing, but look at what the administration is saying out of the other side of its mouth: the US won’t implement sanctions on trade (no interdicting of weapons shipments from North Korea to other nations), it will initiate no military strikes, and it will continue food shipments (even though the rest of the world has nearly cut off food aid).  If there are no more concessions to be offered, and no military or sanction consequences with which to threaten North Korea, what has the US got to negotiate over?  Obviously, the US is bending over backwards to play into North Korea’s hand, and lying about what they intend to give away.  If there is a new agreement, I wouldn’t put it past Bush to agree to the same kind of non-aggression pact that Cuba has (secretly) with the US – which is exactly what North Korea is demanding.

                Today, North Korea upped the ante by declaring they are pulling out of the Non Proliferation Agreement.  So what else is new? Were they ever in compliance?  Incredibly, so called experts have a ready explanation for North Korea’s incredible ability to defy the free world and win bundles of concessions after every negotiated confrontation--the presumed “genius” of North Korea’s petty tyrant Kim jong-il.  Ludicrous!  What is really deadly to academic analysis is that it is now considered anathema to look at the truth: the US has been secretly favoring the rise of Communism for decades in order to foment future global conflict, from which they intend to force upon us a New World Order.   This is not without historical precedents: In the prelude to WWII we saw the same behind-the-scenes aid and trade with dictatorial regimes in Germany and Japan, followed by ‘look the other way’ diplomacy, and then incitement to war (Pearl Harbor and the early bombing of German civilians) that mirrors what is happening today.    

                Even the permissive EU can’t deal with North Korean duplicity on food aid.  Pyongyang won’t let aid workers into the country who speaking Korean (don’t want them finding out how bad things are), workers can’t travel outside of restrictive locations, and aid organizations can’t investigate what happens to the food after leaving government warehouses.  It is known that much of the food aid goes to feed the North’s million man army.  Worse, it is well known that the portion of the food aid which makes it to the general population is distributed only to people willing to give total allegiance to the Communists.  Dissidents are systematically denied food till they starve. 

 

YET ANOTHER MARXIST LEADER IN LATIN AMERICA

Ecuador is the latest Latin American nation to succumb to the wiles of Marxist class conflict, following Cuba, Venezuela and Brazil.  The election was billed as a “rich man versus champion of the poor” contest.  Well, it certainly is true that establishment candidate Alvaro Noboa, a kingpin in the banana trade, is very wealthy.  But newly elected Marxist president Lucio Gutierrez is no champion of the poor.  Like all Communist leaders, he plays upon people’s economic plight and sympathy for the poor in gaining their support, claiming, “I have a philosophy of service to the poor.” Yet it an unassailable truth that once Communist leaders attain office the poor always find themselves worse off, while the Communist hierarchy secretly lives in the lap of luxury.  Communists never can deliver on their promises to the poor.  They can only confiscate and regulate the productive class and otherwise tear down the fabric of society with their divisive and counterproductive redistribution schemes.  Look at Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez — both now hated figures in their own countries (at least by the majority wishing to be free).  Marxist Utopias still elude every nation which claims to be building them through socialist means.  Marxist leaders, being the most aggressive of socialists, hold power ultimately, only by force of arms. 

Gutierrez is a former army colonel who led a coup attempt in 2000 against former Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad, who was only one in a series of presidents who had to deal with Ecuador’s eternal economic crises — created by socialist programs, funded by and large by IMF and World Bank loans.  Since socialist programs create a net drain on the economy, Latin America becomes permanently bound to decline economic factors, which actually increases dependency upon international debt.  Further down the road, the increasing inability to service the growing debt leads to hatred of those who have them by the financial throat (international banks), providing more fodder for Marxist class hatred.

In this recent election, Gutierrez won with a margin of 54.3% compared with 45.7% for Noboa.   During this week’s lavish ceremony, punctuated with appearances by his fellow Communist leaders Lula da Silva, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro, Gutierrez made superficial appeals to unity while already beginning to soft pedal his radical agenda.  In his address to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in Quito, Gutierrez proposed a new approach to government, naturally based on “ethical values, moral values — with social justice.”  The latter is a euphemism for redistribution by force, hardly a moral value.  He also said that he would govern the country of 13 million “with love.”  Tell that to the new wave of political prisoners who will quickly run afoul of his proposed “land reform” confiscation agenda.  Gutierrez also vowed to stamp out corruption, a flagrant and perennial problem in all Latin America.  Of course, it’s the Marxists, who claim to decry wealth and corruption, who always become the most corrupt — but in their case, it’s never admitted as corruption because it is official and eventually legalized (at least for the those in power). 

 

MEANWHILE, VENEZUELA CONTINUES TO DESCEND TOWARD SERIOUS CONFLICT

Venezuela’s Central Bank this week suspended sales of dollars for the third time in the 45-day-old general strike.  People have been lining up at banks (open only three hours a day now) to buy dollars as a hedge against the plunging value of the national currency, the Bolivar.  Meanwhile, President Hugo Chavez traveled to the US to seek support from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  Naturally, Annan will stress the importance of using “constitutional and democratic means” to resolve the crisis.  This approach seems evenhanded, but in fact it favors only Chavez.   Restricting the options to those allowed by the Constitution means that Venezuelans are stuck with Chavez for the duration. 

Chavez, himself, is using dictatorial powers not granted by the Constitution and is therefore in violation of his oath of office.  So there would appear to be ample grounds for his removal.  But Chavez controls almost all of the legal law enforcement machinery, including the Supreme Court, which he has packed with his own supporters.

Last month, the Court played as if it were following the law by handing back control of the Caracas police to its mayor, an opposition leader.  But now, that same Court has allowed the military to disarm the Caracas police so they have no power. 

In November, opposition leaders put together a petition of 2 million signatures demanding a referendum on Chavez's rule, set for February 2.  The Venezuelan Constitution doesn’t allow for a binding referendum until next August (2003), so it is likely that the Chavez-packed Supreme Court will rule the referendum unconstitutional.  In fact, it is not unconstitutional because it is merely a non-binding referendum meant to embarrass Chavez and encourage him to resign.  Personally, I think the strategy of trying to embarrass Chavez is naïve.  Tyrants on a rampage will never step down voluntarily, especially on account of unpopularity.  As long as they control the use of force, they won’t go away peaceably.   Remember, Chavez is not some liberal reformer; he views himself as one of the prime champions of the underground Communist power structure, just now gaining strength throughout Latin America.  Chavez sees himself, his mentor Castro, and Lula of Brazil as comrades in arms, leading the way towards control of all Latin America where Marxists have been busy fomenting revolutions for 50 years.

If the Supreme Court rules against the opposition referendum, anti-Chavez leaders say they will begin round-the- clock demonstrations.  Soon, it will turn more violent than it already has.  Meanwhile, Marxist Brazil has offered to serve as a neutral “broker” in peace talks.  Of course, few believe Marxist President Lula will have any sympathy for the opposition to Chavez.  Consequently, the US is stepping in supposedly to “balance out” Brazil’s leftist viewpoint, but I am skeptical of a sellout or compromise that will retain Chavez in power.  The US State Department has long believed in a peculiar form of democratic freedom in Latin America:  “any government you want, as long as it’s on the left!”   Meanwhile, other pro-socialist states are adding their weight to the conflict.   Representatives from Mexico, Chile, Spain and Portugal have joined with Brazil to form a “Friends of Venezuela” group supposedly intent on seeking a solution for the strike, which has brought Venezuela financially to its knees.   However, the ultimate pressure group is the pro-left Organization of American States, chaired by Sec. Gen. Cesar Gaviria.  Gaviria has also called for a solution that is “peaceful, constitutional, democratic and electoral,” all of which means: the opposition has to stay within the electoral law and let Chavez serve out his term.  You can bet that if the duly elected president were pro-free market and anti-Communist (as in the case of Somoza of Nicaragua), these pressure groups would be calling for his immediate ouster. 

 

BUSH BACK-PEDALS ON TOUGH NORTH KOREA STANCE

Last week I reported on the President’s untenable position: he wasn’t going to reward North Korea with any more aid for coming back into compliance with an agreement it just broke, but at the same time, there would be no consequences imposed – no sanctions, and no military force.  Of course, this left the US with no options at all; a position which I knew was not going to stand. 

Sure enough, President Bush has backed down from his stance and has signaled a major softening of his policy towards North Korea.  He said this week that if North Korea would abandon its nuclear weapons program he would consider a “bold initiative” of aid, energy and perhaps even diplomatic and security agreements.  So, true to standard US policies of the last 50 years, another hard-line Communist nation will be rewarded for flaunting its power.   The “security agreement” Bush is offering is particularly worrisome.  North Korea wants a non-aggression pact, and I predict Bush will secretly agree to this as part of his “bold initiative.”   Such an agreement is consistent with the globalist plan to placate the real future enemies of the West to facilitate a future strike against us. 

China is the big winner if the US continues to be permissive with North Korea.  NewsMax.com published an interesting comment by a former high-ranking US intelligence officer, Thomas Woodrow of the Defense Intelligence Agency.  According to the article, Woodrow “says China may be building up North Korea’s nuclear strength to threaten the U.S. away from its commitment to protect Taiwan from Red China’s attempted takeover [or at least to spread the US forces too thin to effectively respond when the attack comes].  He warns the United States to bear in mind that much of the deadly threat from rogue states can be traced to Chinese-instigated nuclear proliferation.  ‘Beijing’s willingness to sell and transfer critical components of WMD [weapons of mass destruction] technology makes China directly or indirectly a key component of the global proliferation of nuclear and missile technology,’”   Indeed it does, and the US knows it, but is keeping silent.  See the whole article at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/1/16/172426.shtml.

 

MORE HYPOCRISY ON IRAQ

In contrast to his bending over backward to accommodate North Korea’s belligerence, President Bush became very bombastic with reporters during his photo opportunity with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was visiting the White House.   Bush grew angry as reporters asked about his timetable for attack on Iraq.  “Time is running out on Saddam Hussein,” he crowed. “I am sick and tired of games and deception, and that is my view on timetables.”   Bush also said, before meeting with the Polish president, “The United Nations has spoken with one voice.  [Saddam has] been given 11 years to disarm, and we have given him one last chance.”   Compare this tough stance with the administration’s policy concerning North Korea, which has been in direct violation of its non-proliferation agreements for at least as long as Saddam Hussein has, and which even provided Scud missiles to Iraq.   Why the crackdown on Iraq now, while North Korea is only given more chances?

The Pentagon has long indicated that Jan. 27 (the date the UN weapon inspectors’ 60 day report is due) will mark the time when the US will finally make its decision on whether to go to war.  But this date keeps slipping as the UN keeps failing to come up with a smoking gun.  On January 16, chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed El Baradei announced that they had finally found a smoking gun — but it turned out to be empty.  Inspectors had found 11 empty chemical warheads in what they described as “excellent” condition.  These were not, however, of recent origin.  They date back to purchases Iraq made in the 80s.  A UN spokesman said that these components were not reported in Iraq's declaration, but Iraq insisted the warheads had been included in its declaration.  The Security Council won’t easily be able to tell who is right since all non-permanent members only received an edited version of the original 12,000 pages. In any case, these are empty shells and hardly constitute a “material breach.”

My sources close to the Pentagon now say the Iraq war won’t begin in earnest until mid-late February at the earliest.  The administration is determined to attack, but is still waiting for some pretense of “material breach” on the part of Iraq.  It doesn’t appear as if the foregoing breach will qualify, though the US may try to make much of it.  Meanwhile, Bush will use the time to keep building up his war machine in the Middle East.

 

ISRAEL: MORE TERRORIST FUNDS FOR PA

Word has surfaced that, in the midst of US demands that corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) must stop and that Yasser Arafat must go, the US State Department is secretly pressuring Israel to release millions of dollars in tax funds originally earmarked for the PA but since withheld by the Israeli government.  Right wing leaders, not in the Sharon government, have come to the US in an effort to encourage Jews to lobby against the release of funds.  Some of the funds will go into Arafat’s Swiss bank accounts and much of the rest will go to fund more terrorism.  

The amount is not trivial; $500M is about to be released.  The money comes from tax funds set aside for the PA by Israel according to the Oslo agreement.  But the Israeli right correctly notes that the PA has violated every aspect of the Oslo agreement and therefore the agreement is null and void.  Why reward them for breaking the agreement?   Many Israelis who have been injured by terrorism or who have lost loved ones have filed suit to make claim on these funds as compensation for injuries.  At the same time, the Sharon government is anxious to release these funds before the court rules to make sure there are no funds left to pay victims.

 

AUSSIE GUN CONTROL:  THE NEWS IS BAD AND GETTING WORSE

Here is a brief overview from Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia:  “Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under.  It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australian tax payers more than $500 million dollars.


“The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!  In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!) While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.  There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns.’”

FEBRUARY, 2003

 

PLAYING “GOTCHA” POLITICS--POWELL’S SHOW AND TELL AT THE UN

While most Americans were impressed by Sec. of State Collin Powell’s Feb 5th case against Iraq before the UN Security Council, I was struck by the weakness of it all.  Anyone with any background in US intelligence methods is able to perceive multiple ironies and contradictions in the Powell presentation.  The general public, on the other had, is led down the path of seeming perfect logic, not realizing it is being led to focus only on where Powell wants his audience to be lead.   Let’s examine some of the contradictions and ironies.

 

1) Satellite photos.  First of all I was struck by the thought “Is that all there is?”   The US makes multiple daily passes over Iraq with high definition satellite photo-reconnaissance, snapping thousands of photos per day—and all they can come up with for suspicious activity is an engine test stand and some trucks loading or unloading things from a bunker?  Both of these photos have no provable time/date tags and are given highly subjective interpretations, which cannot be verified without additional inspections on the ground. 

This brings us to a crucial question, which no establishment journalist asked:  Why no verification of these “gocha” images by UNSCOM weapons inspectors before Powell’s presentation?   Powell gives us a general time frame of November, 2002 for these violations and yet none of this info was passed on to Hans Blix for UN verification.  If the US is trying to make inspections work, they could and should have immediately alerted inspectors to descend on the trucks in question and examine their contents.  If an immediate response wasn’t possible, US reconnaissance could have tracked the trucks to their intended destinations and directed a subsequent inspection.  In like manner, if Iraq had ever mounted a missile engine on the test stand in question, the US could have alerted inspectors to inspect it at close range within hours.  The US could have provided actual satellite photos of the engine test in operations.  It is suspicious that there aren’t any photos of the test stand in operation.  It is standard procedure for the US to do multiple follow ups of these suspicious activities, so I know the US has the information.  They simply are withholding it.  This can only be because there was no actual smoking gun or the US is hiding the end result for political reasons.  All of this leads to the conclusion that the US is using its technology to sabotage the inspection process, not assist it.  In other words, they are more interested in collecting  “gotcha” moments for public consumption than disarming Iraq.

                Has there ever been a precedence for the US alerting inspectors to anomalies discovered by US recon satellites.  There is.  The NY Times reported that US officials recently gave the UN inspectors satellite photos of what the CIA claimed were “Iraqi clean-up crews operating at a suspected chemical weapons site.”  However, inspectors found otherwise upon direct inspection.  The concluded that the site “was an old ammunition storage area often frequented by Iraqi trucks, and that there was no reason to believe it was involved in weapons activities.”  [See, “Blix Says He Saw Nothing to Prompt a War,” NY Times, 31 January 2003).  So, why didn’t they use this procedure in the situations Powell cites? 

                The satellite photos of the supposed chemical weapons burial sites at Al-Musayyib amounted to an expanse of desert, and yellow lines drawn in by the CIA to help Powell paint the desire results.  Strangely, the public is required to take Powell’s word for these ‘facts’ even though even a cursory sampling by UN inspectors of the dirt in question  could have proven Powell’s point.  Why was no soil sample analyzed? 

                Indeed, there is evidence the US is withholding other important satellite photos.  Let’s examine what they are and why the US is being less than candid about them.   From leaks to the press prior to Powell’s presentation, we know that the US possessed multiple Satellite photos of convoys of Iraqi military trucks with armed escorts transporting tons of materials from weapons bunkers and taking that material across the border to Syria.  The US knows the origin of the convoys and the destination.   Israeli intelligence, which has multiple human intelligence (HUMINT) resources in Syria confirmed that these convoys contained Iraqi chemical and biological warheads.  So why was this information deleted from Mr. Powell’s presentation?   First, it would make President Bush look like a liar in his State of the Union address for having challenged Iraq to tell us where and what they have done with their WMD—as if we didn’t already know!   Second, it would point the finger at Syria who is a sitting member of the Council, exposing Syria’s duplicity in the matter.  Third, it would raise the question of why the US did not intervene to stop these convoys, which had to pass through no fly zones controlled by American aircraft.

 

2) Tapes of US eavesdropping.   It is impossible to know if these tapes are valid or not.  The US never allows any independent technical lab to analyze these intercepts.  Even if they are legitimate, one has to ask, ‘Is that all there is?’ out of a decade of electronic intercepts?  There should be hundreds of similar intercepts if Iraq was engaged in systematic violations. 

Let’s examine the possibility of falsification.  It is relatively easy to do.  The CIA’s private public relations firm, The Rendon Group, has long been engaged in black propaganda on behalf of our government.   According to an article in NY’s Village Voice, a Harvard graduate student was hired to make fake propaganda broadcasts of Saddam's voice to be broadcast into Iraq.  According to the student he was paid $3,000 per month and was never told who he was working for (typical of black operations).  He said, “I never got a straight answer on whether the Iraqi resistance, the CIA, or policy makers on the Hill were actually the ones calling the shots.”  [“Broadcast Ruse: A Grad Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves,” The Village Voice, 13-19 November 2002]

 Back in 1990 the CIA helped engineer support for the Gulf War by manufacturing the lie that Iraqi troops invaded a hospital and through Kuwaiti babies out of their intensive care incubator tents, and promulgating it through another public relations front organization.  [“The Lies We Are Told About Iraq," The Los Angeles Times, 5 January 2003).  Lastly, the CIA has a long standing record of promoting suspiciously vague voice and video recordings, supposedly of Osama bin Laden sending out coded messages to his terror networks.  No one in the media seems to be smart enough to ask the most obvious question:  “How is it that bin Laden, with the backing of millions in funds, and supposedly possessing encryption communications equipment, can’t seem to purchase or use a decent voice or video recorder to making these crucial public relations messages?  The video and/or voice recording quality is so bad that none can be deciphered except by CIA experts—making them suspect.

 

3) The Al Qaeda connection.   This argument is so weak as to border on the fraudulent.  Powell’s claims of Iraq’s Al Qaeda connection are based largely on the presence of one Abu Musab Zarqawi—a Jordanian national found operating out of northern Iraq.  Powell claims that Zarqawi (suddenly depicted, without an independent confirmation as is part of a huge terror network--complete with hierarchical organizational flowcharts) is Saddam’s Al Qaeda liason to this presumed worldwide network.  It never ceases to amaze me how much information the ‘incompetent’ CIA can come up with whenever Bush or Powell want to make an impressive presentation, and yet never be able to capture or invade these top secret networks before they strike.  How can the US know so much and yet seemingly have no power to interdict in a timely manner?   Either they are manufacturing the data or refusing to try very hard to capture—which appears to be the case with Osama bin Laden.

                Here’s the crucial contradiction.  How can the US definitively link Saddam Hussein to the elusive Zarqawi when Zarqawi is based in Northern Iraq which is off limits to Saddam Hussein and his military?  Powell painted a picture of Zarqawi running terrorist training camps in  Northern Iraq but conveniently neglected to address the paradox that, since 1991, northern Iraq has been completely out of control of Saddam Husseins government.  The area is controlled by Kurds, hostile to Saddam.   Secondly, why has not the US, with its numerous special forces teams present in northern Iraq, taken out these camps?  This can be added to other prior evidenc that points to US stonewalling about terrorists in northern Iraq.  As I previously reported, the Kurds who have been given control of northern Iraq have tried in vain to get the CIA to interrogate, much less take into custody of, 3 suspected Al Qaeda terrorist leaders being held by the Kurds.

 

4) Mobile Chemical labs.   The US simply has nothing verifiable to go on here except presumed defector’s statements—hence the artist renderings.  According to Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix, the US has tried, in vain, on several occasions to direct UN inspectors to these mobile railcars and trucks.  In every occasion, the inspectors said the vehicles inspected at US request did not contain chemical weapons equipment.  Powell neglected to mention these follow up inspections.

 

5) We must create a comparative construct with North Korea.  To get a sense of the hypocrisy of the Powell presentation, one must construct a mental model of what the US could have shown about North Korean violations, and deceptions.  Had the US given a side by side comparison, via satellite photos, eavesdropping intercepts, and defector statements about North Korean violations and deceptions, it would have made Powell’s Iraq presentation look like the US made a mountain out of a molehill.  The US has satellite photos of hundreds of Korean ships transporting scud missiles to dozens of nations around the world.  It has daily evidence of nuclear weapons deceptions as well as secret tunnels into which missiles are stored.  If America was impressed by the Powell presentation, it is only because Americans are ignorant of the bigger picture. 

 

6)  The Big Lie technique:  declaring the unprovable as fact.   Collin Powell made the following assertions on more than one occasion: “Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.”  If I were to say that, Powell would excuse it out of hand; yet we are expect to take his word at face value.  He refused to say anything about his sources except to assert he had them—leaving us with nothing to judge. 

 

ISRAEL VOTES RIGHT, SHARON MOVES LEFT

The nominally right wing Likud party under the controlling leadership of PM Ariel Sharon won a stunning election victory last week, qualifying for 38 out of 120 possible seats in the Israeli parliament (Knesset).  In defiance of this powerful mandate to reject the disastrous OSLO peace process (which allowed the arming of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority in exchange for ‘peace’) Ariel Sharon immediately declared he would seek to form a government with his presumed enemy opposition in the Labor and Meretz parties.  For any party to rule, it must put together a coalition with other parties totaling at least 61 seats in the Knesset.  Sharon could easily do this with the other right wing parties.  However, as a condition of their support, Sharon would have to agree on key portions of the right wing agenda—most notably, the refusal to grant the terrorist Palistinians a sovereign state.  Since Sharon is in favor or a Palestinian state, he chooses to join forces with the left rather than his own allies.  In Israel, as suicidal joining of Likud and the opposition forces on the left is called a “unity” government—a euphemisms for a sellout of Israeli national interests. 

 

What keeps driving Sharon back into the arms of the leftist ‘peace through concessions” crowd is that US pressure and control dictates such a suicidal policy.  Despite President Bush’s open repudiation of Palestinian terror and its terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, the US president continues to push for Palestinian statehood and for Israel is refrain from any definitive attacks on Palestinian terrorist groups.  Palestinian statehood would give Arafat and his gang sovereign immunity from terrorist plans such as the build-up of arms and munitions for future attacks.

 

While pretending to be on the right, PM Ariel Sharon’s government is starting to attack its own people.  Just as in the US, where a supposedly conservative Bush administration is quickly building up a tyrannical police state with police powers to illegal surveil, arrest and incarcerate citizens (deemed enemy combatants), Israel is slowly showing signs of corrupting local police forces, encouraging them to abrogated laws which protect free speech and the right to dissent.  Here’s a dramatic real life example in the life of Susie Dym a right wing activist-spokesperson for “Cities of Israel” that was arrested under false pretenses by orders from above.

 

“I received word from the chairman of our local Likud Youth outfit, that MK Yosi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo process, was speaking here in my hometown, Rehovot, at a Meretz (extreme dovish party) gathering.  I left my husband presiding over our five children, equipped myself with some placards which reside under one of the beds in our apartment for just such situations, plus some clothesline and clothespins, called a and set out to do my civic duty -- something I have done hundreds of times since Israel signed the disastrous Oslo Accords one decade ago.  When we arrived at the sidewalk in front of the hall where Beilin was to speak, the Likud Youth was already there, clustered in a dark corner on the other side of the street. This is not my style.  I got busy at a highly visible location, found two poles which could support my clothesline, and began -- as is my wont -- to hang my placards on the clothesline, using my clothespins.  A pair of Meretz organizers soon materialized at my elbow. ‘Disappear,’ they said brusquely. I replied that I was utilizing my democratic right to protest and added that I was surprised to hear their request since I would have expected them to support my endeavors. ‘Aren't you the people who are always in favor of democracy?’  I asked. ‘We'll call the police,’ they threatened. ‘That is your democratic privilege,’ I replied.

 

“A police car arrived on the scene only minutes later -- perhaps even less.  This did not bother me at all. After all, the police had often, in the past, visited our protest activities. And so whenever they asked me what the purpose of the protest was, which they invariably did, I always made sure to provide a detailed response. They usually wrote the whole story down, which was just fine with me. ‘Don't forget to mention, in your report that the Government has confiscated only 8 thousand of the 150 thousand guns which are thought to be in the hands of the Palestinian terrorists’, I would urge them.  I would begin to dictate [my name and organization, etc.]. Normally that was enough:--the policeman would usually know enough to supply without further input from me.  In short, my identity as a law biding protester has become very well known to the Rehovot police force over the past decade.

 

“None of this pleasant history was of relevance this time, however. This time, Officer Shuki Goldstein jumped out of the squad car and said brusquely, ‘Get all this junk out of here, and disappear. Right now.’  ‘This is a legal protest against Yosi Beilin,’ I replied firmly. ‘We are in full compliance with the law.’ This was of no interest to Mr. Goldstein. ‘You are hereby detained for questioning,’ he replied ominously.  ‘There is nothing to question me about, since it perfectly clear to us both that no crime is being committed here,’ I countered. ‘I know my rights, and if you are maintaining that I am committing a crime, you will have to arrest me. ’This is a standard ploy with the occasional aggressive police-officer. As they know, if you agree to be detained for questioning, there is little you can do afterward in the way of complaining.  After all, you agreed to be detained.  On the other hand, a wrongful arrest is a serious matter, and when you clarify to a police officer that you know your rights, and are aware that you need only go along to the station if duly arrested, the police officer normally backs off, because an arrest without a warrant is only permissible (by the books) if the police officer catches the perpetrator of a crime, red-handed. I knew that this was not the case here, and so did Mr. Goldstein, but ‘You are under arrest,’ was his answer notwithstanding. He and a colleague then grabbed me and pulled me forcibly toward the police-car -- which was entirely unnecessary, since I would not have resisted arrest (one is entitled to refuse to be ‘detained’, but one cannot decline to be arrested).

 

“’What is the charge?’ I asked with interest, as I was dragged along. I knew that it is my right to be informed of the crime of which I was being accused, by virtue of the arrest.  ‘Siruv leIkuv’ (declining to be detained) was the respo