Iraq Does Exist By Ghali Hassan

Sunday, December 16, 2007

The history of trying to obfuscate the truth and distort the image of Iraq has always been the aim of the U.S. aggression against the people of Iraq. There is the added factor now of new breed of ‘journalists’ and ‘bloggers’ ever on the lookout for a story that will tell Westerners all they need to know about Iraq, its problems, dangers, and prospects. Despite all of this, Iraq remains a nation of proud people struggling to liberate themselves from a murderous colonial Occupation.

In a recent interview ("Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore") with the self-described ‘leftists’ blogger Mick Whitney, Nir Rosen made untruthful and unsubstantiated statements regarding the situation on the ground in Iraq and the Occupation of that country by U.S. forces and their collaborators.

Let’s start with the fact. Nir Rosen is an Israeli-American (‘dual loyalty’) citizen of Iranian descent. Before he was recruited for the war on Iraq, Rosen once wrote; “I had dreamed of joining Israel's elite special forces” to murder defenceless Palestinians and Arabs. Like many of the new breed of journalists who have been drafted into service, Rosen was an embedded ‘reporter’ with U.S. Armoured Cavalry Regiment in western Iraq. Embedded journalism is the antithesis of independent journalism. In embedded journalism, journalists have to serve power and cover-up war crimes. With his "Middle Eastern appearance", Rosen is the perfect face of U.S. imperialism.

Rosen publishes in many of the U.S. mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, Times Magazine and the Boston Review. However, if Rosen articles about the Middle East, Iraq in particular, had any shred of truth in them, they wouldn’t appear in the New York Times, Times Magazine or the Boston Review. Because if Rosen deviates from what Noam Chomsky calls the ‘doctrinal framework’ or the line of serving power, he wouldn’t get his rubbish published there.

In the interview Rosen told Whitney: “The main reason that things have gone so horribly wrong in Iraq is there was no plan for anything; good or bad. The looting was not ‘deliberate’ American policy. It was simply incompetence. The destruction of Iraq's cultural icons was incompetence, also -- as well as stupidity, ignorance and criminal neglect. I don't believe that there was really any deliberate malice in the American policy; regardless of the malice with which it may have been implemented by the troops on the ground. The destruction of much of Iraq was the result of Islamic and sectarian militias-both Sunni and Shiite-seeking to wipe out hated symbols. The Americans didn't know enough about Iraq to intentionally execute such a plan even if it did exist. And, I don't think it did”.

So Rosen and Whitney want us to believe that, the illegal invasion of Iraq was not planned and the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and Police in order to create chaos and insecurity was not deliberate. The mass murder of innocent Iraqi civilians and the destruction of Iraq, including Iraq's cultural heritage was simply “incompetence”, according to Nir Rosen.

Anyone who has paid serious attention to the aggression against the Iraqi people knows that Rosen is patently dishonest and lack moral principles when he touts the situation there was the result of “incompetence” and the destruction of much of Iraq was the result of the militias. The aggression was not a deliberate “malice” according to Rosen; it just happened. According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial in 1945 wrote: “Any resort to war — any kind of war — is a resort to means that are inherently criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of liberty, and destruction of property”. Imagine Rosen describing the aggression in Jackson’s term.

The interview was simply a rehashing of Rosen’s crude simplification that fills a need felt by many pro-Occupation fascists to have it confirmed for them that what happen in Iraq was “unintentional”. Our mission was to “spread democracy” and “freedom” because we jus have too much o them in the West. It is just something gone wrong in Iraq and we had no control over it. Once again we are misled by a typical example of the Western man led by moral principles to promote ‘good’.

Repeating the same rubbish he has been perfecting, Rosen told Whitney: "The violence in Iraq was not senseless or crazy, it was logical and teleological. Shiite militias were trying to remove Sunnis from Baghdad and other parts of the country, while Sunni militias were trying to remove Shiites, Kurds and Christians from their areas. This has been a great success. So you have millions of refugees and millions more internally displaced, not to mention hundreds of thousands dead. There are just less people to kill". Of course, Whitney did not challenge Rosen during the interview, and the interview is posted on all Zionist and pro-Occupation websites.

Whitney and Rosen know very well that before the U.S. illegal aggression against Iraq, Iraqis were living in harmony regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds. No racist journalist should deny the fact that before the aggression, Iraq was a safe country for every one, including Westerners like Whitney, Rosen and their ilk. Baghdad is a city of one million Kurds. The “great success” of terrorising Iraqis is happening under the radar screen of the Occupation. Indeed, sectarianism is brought by the invasion and subsequent Occupation, like the Cholera epidemic. It is encouraged and nurtured because it is a vital instrument of the Occupation.

Different militia and extremist groups are working as paid death squads for the Occupation. Iraqis have publicly denounced the violence as without distinction (between ‘Sunnis’ and ‘Shiites’) carried out by criminal gang and death squads on the U.S. pay roll. To increase the violence and justify the ongoing Occupation, the U.S. began inciting one faction against the other. Of course, every thing is ‘masterminded’ by the phantom of “al-Qaeda”. [1]

The current division and political violence is an imperialist-Zionist ploy designed to destroy Iraq as a nation. The destruction of Iraq (physically, culturally and militarily) has been the ideological dream of the Israeli leaders and their Zionist supporters in the U.S., the pro-Israel Jewish Lobby. The recent U.S. Senate vote to partition Iraq along ethnic/religious lines is the beginning of an old scheme for the Middle East. This imperialist-Zionist scheme is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis who are loudly demanding the end to the murderous Occupation.

Rosen failed to admit that Iraqis fought an eight-year war against Iran defended their country with pride regardless of religious affiliation. Iraqis do not see themselves in terms of ‘Shiites’ or ‘Sunnis’. Iraqis identify themselves as Muslim-Arab and see themselves as Iraqis first. They showed this loyalty during the Iran-Iraq war. According to U.S. military findings, when the Iraqi government “initiated a total call-up of available manpower in 1986, the response was good. No draft riots occurred; young men-even college students—reported without incident. The fact that the public answered the call tells us that Iraqis support their government ... Eighty-five percent of the army belongs to the sect of Shiism”. [2]

The needless killing of more than 1.3 million innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, appeared to have escaped Rosen’s reporting. In fact since 1990, the U.S. and Britain declared outright intent to use disproportionate force, mortally targeting Iraqis as a national group. Some 1.5 million Iraqis died, including 500,000 infants, as a result of the 13-years U.S.-UK enforced UN sanctions.

Countless U.S. soldiers are publicly condemning their criminal actions in Iraq. Writing in the Vermont’s Rutland Herald, Matt Howard, a U.S. Marine, reflects on his participation in the deliberate and unprovoked war of aggression against the Iraqi people: “We did not go to war with the country of Iraq; we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.”

In Rosen’s view, the total destruction of urban centres such as Fallujah, Tel Afar, Samarra, Al-Qaim, Haditha, Tikrit, and Ramadi, among other cities and towns by indiscriminate bombing is not considered war crimes perpetuated with intent to terrorise and pacify the entire Iraqi population.

It is important to remember that from the outset of the Occupation, the U.S. Administration embarked on dividing Iraqis into religious and ethnic groups and hence planted the first seed for disunity and violence. The U.S.-imposed “Iraqi Governing Council” was the best example of a colonial-imposed puppet government formed along ethnic and sectarian lines. The puppet government is simply an extension of the Occupation. It is voids of anything resembling a democracy. It has no political control whatsoever beyond the ‘Green Zone’ where it is protected by the Occupation. Its main function is to provide a façade and legitimise the Occupation. The recent “agreement” to extend the Occupation in flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty is a case in point.

Back in August 2007, Nir Rosen told Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow news: “It’s too late for anything good to happen in Iraq, unfortunately. If the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of this civil war, of ethnic cleansing, until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically—or sectarian, homogenous zones, which is basically what’s already happened. If the Americans leave, then you’ll see greater intervention of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq and being drawn into battle. But no matter what, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore”. Not as simple as that, Mr. Rosen.

And what proof is offered for this Zionist propaganda? None. In fact all the evidence pointed to a premeditated and deliberate U.S.-Zionist plan to destroy Iraq as a nation and replace it with a collection of dependent fiefdoms. It is true, if the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of a U.S.-perpetuated violence and ethnic cleansing. But this is not what Rosen meant. Rosen failed to acknowledge that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is supported by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis and will remove the primary cause of the violence.

Where all these militias and criminals came from? Who trained them, armed them and finance them? Whitney didn’t ask. Nowhere in the interviews and scattered articles does Rosen tell us that the militias were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners.

Furthermore, Whitney did not challenge Rosen how the Americans managed to protect the Iraqi Oil Ministry while at the same time turn blind eye to the looting and burning of Iraq’s most important buildings and Iraq’s cultural heritage. If the looting was not "deliberate" American policy, there must be a selective “incompetence”. Reports after reports showed clearly that the looting was pre-organised policy to strip Iraq of its Muslim-Arab identity and history. It is important to remember that at the time of looting and destruction, the British journalist Robert Fisk was in Baghdad and witnessed a systematic and deliberate attempt to destroy Iraq as a nation.

Again, Whitney failed to ask Rosen how the Americans were able to build the largest C.I.A. station (“U.S. Embassy”) in the world, “the size of Vatican City, with the population of a small town, its own defence force, self-contained power and water, and a precarious perch at the heart of Iraq's turbulent future”, while most Iraqis left without food, drinking water and electricity. Why Iraq’s healthcare services, including major hospitals and medical centres, and Iraq’s education system including, schools and university remained destroyed and dysfunctional, while Americans are busy building military bases, described by many as “bustling American towns, replete with Burger King, Pizza Hut, shops, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads”? In fact, like most people, many Americans now openly admit that there is a plan to occupy Iraq permanently and loot Iraq of its natural resources.

Finally, Like in Vietnam, the Americans offer the Iraqi people a choice: either you submit to a murderous colonial Occupation or we break you. The Iraqi people refused to submit and the Americans failed to break them.

U.S. policy in Iraq is not simply “incompetence”; it is “an essential component of U.S. policy [since 1990], constituting premeditated genocide against the people of Iraq”, writes Ian Douglas, a professor of Political Sciences and a member of the organising committee of the Brussels Tribunal. Furthermore, the U.S. failed in its imperialist strategy in Iraq not because of “incompetence”, but because “the Iraqi Resistance prevents Iraqi oil from reinforcing the occupation or paying for America’s global war of aggression”, added Douglas. [3].

One question that Mike Whitney didn't ask Rosen which may clarify Rosen's perspective is, why thousands of Iraqi scientists, professors, intellectuals and other professionals have been murdered in cold blood? Why at least 40 per cent of the educated and experienced Iraqi professionals have been threatened and forced to leave the country? The aim is to destroy Iraq’s independence by liquidating Iraq’s human resources.

There is no doubt that the premeditated aggression and murderous Occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces and their collaborators have succeeded in destroying the physical state of Iraq and terrorising the Iraqi population. “But, of course, the spirit of the Iraqi people is indestructible. They cannot be broken. They will resist, drive out all intruders, and they will recover. The people of Iraq will overcome the catastrophes of recent years”, writes Denis Halliday, former UN assistant secretary-general and one of the very few honourable voices in the West to publicly condemn the deliberate genocide in Iraq.

Iraq does exist. We should never forget the fact that there is an Iraqi nation and nationalism represented by legitimate National Iraqi Resistance. The U.S. government and its collaborators may have succeeded in killing many innocent Iraqis and removed a sovereign government but the U.S. failed and will not success in its attempt to destroy the Iraqi nation and the Iraq people’s will to resist the Occupation.

Today more than ever there is a need for honest and independent journalists who can stand up and against the active complicity of the mainstream media and in support of the people of Iraq struggle for freedom and independence. Nir Rosen is just another propaganda agent who has shown to be part of a murderous colonial Occupation.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.

Endnotes:

[1] Hassan, Ghali, Iraq: Occupation and Sectarianism; Varea, Carlos, Iraq: Sectarian Violence in Iraq and the New War in the Middle East; Wolf, Max, For Iraq, the ‘Salvador Option’ becomes Reality.

[2] Marine Corps Historical Publication - FMFRP 3-203, Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War, December 10, 1990 Chemical Weapons.

[3] Douglas, Ian, Notes on genocide in Iraq. This document should be read by any concerned citizen.

The Economist The World's Sleaziest Magazine By Mark Ames

September 11, 2007

Here's a real-life superhero dilemma: What do you do when you're the world's most powerful news and opinion magazine, carrying the English-language torch of freedom on behalf of your million-plus high-net-worth readers across the globe, and suddenly you spot injustice on the Eurasian horizon: Sham elections in an oil-rich Eurasian country, resulting in a one-party parliament; its autocratic leader just pushed through constitutional amendments allowing him to remain in power for life; and it's waging a campaign to bully Western oil companies out of their lucrative oil fields, in spite of contracts and investments made.

If the country in question is Kazakhstan, and you're The Economist, then you know exactly what to do: Put Vladimir Putin on the cover and scare the shit out of your readers by sounding the "Hitler Alarm!" threat he poses to mankind. It doesn't matter that you run a version of this story almost every week. Or that the story you decide to run in the wake of Kazakhstan's sham elections happens to have been run in almost the exact same form by all of your colleagues FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO.

For The Economist, the Putin-as-Fascist story isn't bound by traditional Newtonian concepts of time or space, let alone the basic principles of Western journalism. It's a story that can be played like a deck of trump cards. No matter what else happens in the world -- for example, the mega-clusterfuck in Iraq, a war that The Economist screamed for in a campaign capped by its infamous "The Case For War" editorial -- when a story threatens to confuse or upset their agenda, the weekly can just drop the Putin-Hitler trump card. It works like a dream, every time.

Thanks to the English magazine's clever rhetorical strategy, calibrating an effective mixture of aristocratic contempt, two-notches-smarter-than-Newsweek diction, and occasional anti-elitist populism to pander to its majority-American readership, readers trust The Economist. They -- particularly American readers -- trust it because they think it knows more than they do; this is its entire appeal. They even get a sick thrill being talked down to by a dirty old aristocratic prig. For Americans in particular, accustomed to the lifeless, dumbed-down, least-common-denominator prose in their own media, reading The Economist is its own reward, giving them the sense not only that they're smarter than the average Time subscriber, but that it even makes them vaguely decadent, in a literary-aristocratic sort of way. They become smarter by osmosis simply by being in the imagined drawing room of The Economist's wit-slinging editorial offices.

In reality, The Economist is one of the most appallingly wrong and evil -- as in responsible-for-millions-of-dead-people evil -- organs in the world today. As far as "wit" goes, The Economist ranks up there with Benson, the snappy TV sitcom butler, though it's nowhere near as delightfully entertaining as the British butler in the godawful Dudley Moore comedy Arthur.

Or as Michael Lewis, the author of Liar's Poker, observed after moving to England, "The magazine is written by young people pretending to be old people. If American readers got a look at the pimply complexions of their economic gurus, they would cancel their subscriptions in droves."

If only it was a question of overrated wit. But it's much worse. It's a sinister and sophisticated English snowjob. Considering their influence and their influential readership, not to mention where they're leading us with their anti-Russia campaign, it's time to set the record straight, to put the "s" back in "limey" and call The Economist for the slimey fucks that they are, before they drag us all down with them again, just as they did with Iraq.

* * *

Last month's Kazakhstan/Russia coverage is a perfect example of what's so wrong with the magazine.

Just before Kazakhstan's sham elections, The Economist warned that an "ugly trade" might soon happen: Every country in the West, save two, had already agreed to overlook President Nazarbayev's out-of-the-closet authoritarianism, and give him the chair to the OSCE in 2009 no matter how disgraceful the elections turned out. The two holdouts were the U.S. (whose ambassador praised Nazarbayev's constitutional changes allowing him to be president-for-life as "a good step forward") and Great Britain, which was a bit more circumspect.

These two countries still haven't made up their minds about whether or not to allow Kazakhstan to take over the OSCE chair. Coincidentally, The Economist hasn't made its mind up either, a position manifested by its decision to allot a meager column-sized article tepidly condemning the elections. This was completely overshadowed by the multi-page lead article: Russia is "now" run by the KGB.

As mentioned above, this story is four fucking years old. There's no "now" to it. The Economist article relies on a report issued in 2003 by sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya. Back in 2003, The Economist's colleagues in the Western media covered the report as the news story it then was. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, ran a story called "KGB influence still felt in Russia" in its December 30, 2003 edition. It stated:

"Olga Kryshtanovskaya is a sociologist who dances with wolves. For more than a decade she's been Russia's premier expert on the political, business, and security elites.

"But even Ms. Kryshtanovskaya says she's alarmed by her own recent findings. Since Vladimir Putin came to power four years ago, she's been tracking a dramatic influx into government of siloviki - people from the military, the former Soviet KGB, and other security services - bringing with them statist ideology, authoritarian methods, and a drill-sergeant's contempt for civilian sensibilities."

For The Economist's brand of quantum journalism, time is relative, depending on the observer -- or rather, the observer's agenda. A story like this is like a fine wine, meant to be stored in a cool place, to be popped open for their readers to help them forget all that other depressing, confusing news coming out of Kazakhstan or Iraq. Thus, four years after the Monitor's story, The Economist arrives to sound the alarm.

What's strange is how sloppy The Economist is about this, to the point where it reads like a classic case of four-years-late plagiarism.

But most readers would never know how dated the peg to the recent cover story really is. "Political power in Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB's successor," declared the magazine. Note The Economist's sly insertion of the word "now" -- giving the reader the impression that news about the siloviki's rise is hot out of the box. "Now" in the weekly news world literally means "now." It doesn't mean four years ago, or even four months ago. It means last week, or perhaps sometime in the last four weeks.

The Economist betrays even more nervousness about running a story this belatedly with another strange insertion in the opening sentence:

"On the evening of August 22nd, 1992 - 16 years ago this week [note the ludicrous time-peg, "16 years ago this week" - Ed.] - Alexei Kondaurov, a KGB general, stood by the darkened window of his Moscow office and watched a jubilant crowd moving towards the KGB headquarters in Lubyanka Square..."

Let's leave aside for now the very strange decision to anchor an anti-silovik story to Kondaurov - a former KGB general who was a top Yukos executive (respect to the PR firm that helped arrange that). A couple of paragraphs later, we are introduced to Kryshtanovskaya and her four-year-old study. Here, The Economist pulls a classic example of censorship-by-omission: "According to research by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences, a quarter of the country's senior bureaucrats are siloviki - a Russian word meaning, roughly, 'power guys', which includes members of the armed forces and other security services, not just the FSB. The proportion rises to three-quarters if people simply affiliated to the security services are included. These people represent a psychologically homogeneous group, loyal to roots that go back to the Bolsheviks' first political police, the Cheka."

They never mention when the report was published, because if they did - "According to a report four years ago..." - it would kind of contradict the "now" in the sub-header. So you just don't mention it. Instead, you crudely manipulate her findings: "the proportion [of siloviki] rises to three-quarters if people simply affiliated to the security services are included."

Is that really what Kryshtankovskaya reported? In an interview with Radio Free Europe last year, she explained "The 78 percent figure...is not a precise figure." But precision, a quantum journalist might argue, is itself a relative concept.

* * *

For the last few years, The Economist has been waging a relentless, obsessive-compulsive campaign to rebrand Russia and Vladimir Putin as a Fascist state and a Fascist regime. Consider last year's "The Hardest Word":

"It is an over-used word, and a controversial one, especially in Russia. It is not there yet, but Russia sometimes seems to be heading towards fascism."

That's as serious a charge as can possibly be levied - Nazi Germany with thousands of nuclear weapons. Fascism in the popular consciousness has a pretty simple, straightforward definition: a country that will invade and enslave the world by force, and gas its Jews. Is that Russia? Because if Russia really is Fascist, then what the fuck are we doing here? Every foreigner should run screaming for the border! The West should demand the immediate and unconditional surrender of the Kremlin or else...or else we'll blow the whole fucking world to smithereens by midnight tomorrow. I'm serious: If Russia is Fascist, what are we waiting for? Isn't this the lesson of the 30s - attack now! Don't wait! Drop the bomb before it's too late, launch the entire arsenal and say hello to Jesus!!!

The Economist gets around this death-of-mankind problem by softening up its definition of Fascism, thereby making it fit Russia while at the same time defusing its seriousness: "History also offers a term to describe the direction in which Russia sometimes seems to be heading: a word that captures the paranoia and self-confidence, lawlessness and authoritarianism, populism and intolerance, and economic and political nationalism that now characterise Mr Putin's administration."

Yep, that's right, Fascism doesn't mean violently aggressive militarism, invasions, and the industrial slaughter of millions. Nope, you had it all wrong. In these multicultural times, we need to expand Fascism's meaning, to make it accessible to other cultures, particularly those we dislike. So now the new expando-version includes "self-confidence, lawlessness, populism"... Let's see, what else is happening in Russia that we can put in there? Why not add to that Economist definition, "a word that captures the dima-bilan mullets and gopniki, face control and purse dogs, people who say 'da' and people who also say 'nyet.'" There, that ensures that Russia is now Fascist!

This sleazy redefinition of the word Fascism allows The Economist to effectively rebrand Russia by working backwards from Russia to Fascism. The implication is obvious. The Putin regime must be destroyed before it destroys us. Maybe not right away - but soon. That's what our leaders have always promised to do should Fascism ever rear its ugly head in Europe again.

* * *

It wasn't always this way. In fact, if you hopped aboard The Economist's own DeLorean time machine, you'd find that there was a time when they downright loved their li'l Fascist spy in the Kremlin. Sometimes they loved him, that is. And sometimes they didn't. Kinda depended on the day of the week -- and to what degree he served Anglo-American geopolitical/corporate ambitions.

Keep in mind that in this relationship, Putin is the only one who's been consistent. When he came to power in 2000, he promoted the siloviki, shut down opposition media, and brought all other sources of power -- the Duma, Federation Council, and regional governors, under the Kremlin's control in what was called the "vertikalnaya vlast'." It was all out in the open. Everyone knew it.

In the beginning of his reign, The Economist was skeptical -- about everything, ranging from Putin's credentials as a liberal to an even more serious concern for Western investors, whether or not he could really get the chaos under control, which in his first year or two was really the main concern of Western investors--and The Economist:

"Though Mr Putin has said he will 'eliminate' the oligarchs 'as a class', the early signs are not encouraging." (May 13, 2000)

"It is not just that reform has bogged down, that economic growth is fizzling out, and that the Chechen war is dragging on unwinnably; the Kremlin's own authority also seems to be fraying." (March 16, 2001)

Regarding the media crackdown, in a rare moment of truth-telling The Economist explained, "Independent media in the provinces of Russia have been shriveling for years, under the combined assault of powerful regional bosses and their business friends. Now the same is happening at the centre. But, for the time being at least, information is still available to anyone with an Internet connection or a decent radio." (April 21, 2001)

That provided some solace then, but is never mentioned today, even though any Russian with a radio or Internet connection is still in the same position they were in on April 17, 2001. Read that quote again, and again ... it's so incredible in its complete contradiction to everything The Economist says now that I can almost feel my hair falling out of my scalp...

But for those few hairs remaining, there's this Economist shocker, coming just a few months later:

"At home and abroad, things have never looked brighter for Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.... At home, the economy is still growing and reforms continue." (Nov 3, 2001. "Hope Gleams Anew")

Wait...didn't they just say...you can't do that, can you? Let's pull up another 2001 quote:

"Russia's opinion polls still show Mr Putin as very popular. But they are not completely trustworthy -- and in any case his standing is artificially bolstered by a servile state-run television." (March 17, 2001.)

Ah, that's what I likes to hear. Yeah, feed me more of that anti-Putin moral crusading, baby. Come on, daddy-o, feed me:

"Mr Putin's huge popularity means that his new foreign policy faces no direct threat. Most Russians are delighted to see their country more popular and respected, and glad to avoid a direct entanglement in Afghanistan. Even slow and patchy economic reforms are better than none." (November 3, 2001)

Wait -- you can't flip-flop like that. Or can you? Yup indeed, if you're The Economist, you can go a-flippin' and a-floppin' all you want, on any issue you please. Even the most sacred issue of all: Putin's human rights record:

"Other western allies, such as Turkey, have plenty of blots on their human-rights record too." (May 18, 2002 "What Russia Wants")

Wow. So first it was unsettling and foreboding, and these days it's Hitlerian, but way back in 2002, it's just... a "blot." And blots like these are par for the course for the West's friends, so therefore it's not really an issue.

By now, it's pretty obvious why The Economist decided to switch to pillow-talk mode with Putin: In the months after 9/11, it looked like he was going to be America's best, most submissive friend in the whole authoritarian world.

To put it in their own words, "On acute issues, such as American involvement in the former Soviet empire, Mr Putin is shunting Russia's policy in the right direction, towards accepting the inevitable." (May 18, 2002)

Inevitable indeed. They really called that one. But at the time, they were gloating like a clique of English villains proud of their own deception: "That's a good Pootie-Poot! Good boy! Now go run along and play with, Blair. Go on, be a good doggie!"

The Economist's flip-flopping is so over-the-top absurd and unapologetic that it reads like a scene out of a bad Mel Brooks skit, with Harvey Korman playing Edward Lucas, by turns grotesquely sweet-talking or contemptuously dismissing the character of Putin, played by Cloris Leachman. One minute Putin's popularity is "not trustworthy" and "artificially bolstered by a servile state-run television," a few months later, "Most Russians are delighted" and "Mr Putin's huge popularity means that his new foreign policy faces no direct threat."

In the sleaziest of all of these flip-flops, they even managed, in the above-quoted November 2001 article, to brush off a future martyr's threat to her safety, balancing it positively against a grotesquely obvious PR exercise:

"Change is least visible in politics...The squeeze on the independent press continues: Anna Politovskaya, the most intrepid Russian reporter dealing with Chechnya, has fled to Vienna after receiving threats. But the competent and well-publicised salvaging of the Kursk did strike a good note, in sharp contrast to the lies and confusion that surrounded the tragedy of its sinking as it unfolded in August last year."

I-bee-bee-bee-bee-whuhhh? So what you're saying is, Politkovskaya had to flee for her life, but hey, didja see the way they pulled up those Kursk corpses? Pretty impressive, wasn't it? If I was a drowned corpse, that's how I'd want to be dredged... Yeah, so, how 'bout them Red Sox, eh? Dang, lost my train-a thought here... I forgot what we were talking about. Oh yeah, Putin... Right, what a guy! (Incidentally, speaking of flip-flops, they supported John Kerry in 2004 ... after supporting Bush in 2000, and the Iraq War in 2002-3.)

So what changed? Why did Putin's crackdown on the media go from being a problem, then to a blot not unlike other blots, then to something you contrast to a successful corpse-salvage mission in Murmansk, to... a clear sign of Fascism?

What changed is Yukos. The arrest of oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October, 2003. The darling of everyone from Exxon and Chevron to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle. The man who argued that Russia should have supported the war in Iraq, and should orient its oil towards the West, rather than China. The man who, in the end, tried and failed to change the power structure in Russia.

The Economist has admitted as much: "If the emergence of Yukos epitomised Russia's transition from a planned economy to the wild capitalism of the 1990s, which for all its excesses thrived on private initiative, its destruction was a turning-point towards an authoritarian, corporatist state." (May 10, 2007)

What "excesses" might Yukos have committed? Murder, if you believe ex-Wall Street Journal writer David Satter, whose study of the rapacious oligarchs was once was cited favorably in The Economist. Mass theft, if you believe even Khodorkovsky's candid account of how Yukos' assets were acquired. Not that that's a big secret. But you see, admitting that into the record would sorta muddy up the picture. So that all gets passed off as "excesses," which could really mean anything, like "excess of free-market zeal." It's a whitewash, just like when Putin seemed pliable, The Economist downgraded his human rights record to mere "blot" status.

This is how The Economist has always worked in Russia, its hand constantly on two dials: a "sunny side" dial, and a "bleakness" dial, the latter ending in Fascism.

Take this example from the Yeltsin years, a period where The Economist's record is so appallingly deceitful that it would require a separate article, and scores of beta-blockers just to read through without suffering a 10-valve thrombo. In late 1997, when it still looked like Western financial institutions were reaping huge profits and stood to earn more, The Economist said of Yeltsin and his notoriously hated "privatization" lieutenant, Anatoly Chubais:

"Market forces have grown stronger with each year, but may not yet be strong enough to propagate themselves unaided. Their chances would be much better if there were a hundred more people in government of Mr. Chubais's calibre, or even a score. Mr. Yeltsin, at least, appears to believe that there isn't one. Un-Marxist as it might be to argue as much, great men are needed to do great things. Mr. Yeltsin, in his way, is one such. And Mr. Chubais, in his way, is another."

Exactly four months later, as the IMF-backed pyramid scheme was unraveling and Westerners started getting burned, The Economist changed its mind, but in smarmy known-it-all language suggesting it had known this all along: "Russia's institutions being worryingly weak and the powers of its president frighteningly strong, it is vital that the man in charge is beholden to neither demagogues nor billionaires... Unfortunately, as age, vodka and the wooziness of barely diluted power get the better of him, Mr Yeltsin is utterly failing to do this part of his job.... Once a Titan, rightly lauded for helping to pull down one of the world's most evil regimes, he now seems to lurch, disaster-prone, from one fit of bad temper to the next. Poor Russia."

Yes, it was so long ago that he was "rightly lauded," I mean, how could anyone possibly have guessed he'd turn out to be so bad four long months later? It's like when Austin Powers discovered that Liberace was gay: "Who would have guessed? I never saw that one coming!"

The Economist even played their Fascism card back in the Yeltsin years ... although to entirely different purposes, as this 1998 email from scholar Anatol Lieven to David Johnson shows:

"Dear David, attached is part of my book on Chechnya... The relevance of the argument is demonstrated by the latest article in The Economist: "Could Russia Go Fascist?" -- which translates as -- "Shoudn't we give billions of dollars to support Yeltsin and our darling Young Reformer Chubais because Russians are intrinsically given to imperialism and aggression and Chubais assures us that he and Yeltsin are all that is standing between Russia and Fascism." Some of the people you can indeed fool all the time. Yours, Anatol Lieven"

In 1998, The Economist lied about a Russian Fascist threat in order to prop up a wildly unpopular, corrupt regime, which had overseen the total collapse of its economy, devastated the health of its citizens, and forever ruined the concepts of "liberalism," "free markets" and "free speech" in the minds of those who survived it ... all because it seemed to benefit us. Today, they're lying again about the Fascist threat, only this time in order to bring down a highly popular (albeit corrupt) regime that has overseen the unexpected revival of its economy and power. All because Putin isn't our bitch.

How did The Economist get to such a vile state?

The horrible answer is, it's always been this vile. If you go back to The Economist's beginnings in Victorian England, you'll find, for example, the magazine's brave stand on the Great Irish Famine, the English-led genocide that left up to two million Irish dead. When a cry went up to stop the famine, The Economist countered, "It is no man's business to provide for another. If left to the natural law of distribution, those who deserve more would obtain it."

And speaking of Hitlers, in the mid-1930s, The Economist even found time to praise you-know-who: "Herr Hitler is showing encouraging signs of statesmanship." Yes, they really did write that.

The first and last example of genuine wit that The Economist ever produced.

Repercussions of the American Establishment's Decision to "Coexist" with Iran by Raghida Dergham Al-Hayat

December 7, 2007

NEW YORK- After the surprise issuing of the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Tehran halted its secret nuclear program in 2003, one must ask: What has happened between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran? Is it the beginning of a big deal between the two countries to divide up influence in Iraq and use the new relationship to contain the Arabs when needed? Is it an internal coup d'état against US President George W Bush, to halt his march toward war? After all, it was expected that such a blow would have been directed at the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Or was the NIE just business as usual, as part of the truce between the US and Iran and as part of the historical relationship between Persians and Jews, such that no war will take place between these two powers under any circumstances?

These are likely possibilities, and the events of the coming weeks and months might even raise the level of the commotion, whether as part of the strategy or as one of its consequences. But it has become clear, and logical, that the military option is no longer on the US president's table, as long as Iran doesn't make a serious mistake against US forces in Iraq. It's become clear that the American "establishment" has taken an implicit decision to coexist with the Iranian regime and has halted attempts to topple it, in return for a price whose details will be revealed later.

On the surface, this price is Iraq, and what is taking place there. Realistically, the Iraq war has made Iran the partner of Israel in terms of regional superiority; the NIE report by 16 US intelligence agencies cements Iranian superiority and lifts the specter of war and the burden of sanctions from the minds of the clerics in Tehran.

In any case, withdrawing or neutralizing the military option is something that chills the heart of many people, not only Americans and Europeans, but also Arabs, especially since Arab states are paying the costs of US wars in the region, in terms of stability or money. However, cementing Iran's superiority in "victories" led by the Iranian president could be reflected in Iran's regional aspirations, which have the air of hegemony, unless the big deal involves Iran's halting its intervention in Palestine and Lebanon, stopping its financial and weapons support to Hamas and Hizbulah, working with Arab Gulf states as partners, and leaving behind issues such as "exporting the revolution" and the qualitative aspect of Iranian rule.

In any case, Arab leaders must think deeply about the meaning of what has happened, when the US decided to reveal the NIE instead of keeping it secret. American leaders both inside and outside the administration should think long and hard about the gap in US credibility and the cementing of the country's reputation of leaving behind friends under the astonishment of deception and abandonment, even with the impression (even if a passing one) that the NIE has perhaps officially put the administration in the category of lame duck, since it has removed the available options. Merely containing information to the effect that Iran has given up its nuclear military program and is not active today on this front might make it nearly impossible for Bush to direct a military strike against Iran. This estimate has perhaps destroyed every step by the administration to prepare the US public for such a war.

The administration has made efforts over the last few weeks and months to shed light on the Iranian role against US forces in Iraq, without focusing on the nuclear aspect, which indicates that it was expecting the conclusion of the NIE. Or perhaps the administration consoled to friends and allies that the operational preparations for a military strike against the infrastructure of the Iranian regime had entered the stand-by phase, while awaiting the US president's decision to go ahead. The US informed its allies, at the highest levels, that the aircraft carriers in the Gulf were not there for a picnic; this would also give the International Atomic Energy Agency, headed by Dr. Mohammed El-Baradei, an opportunity to make the final diplomatic effort and use of sanctions to convince Iran to abandon its rejection of suspending uranium enrichment, which was a unanimous wish expressed by the members of the United Nations Security Council.

Some believe that the strategy of the war option remains in place, and that the "nuclear" aspect has been separated on purpose from the justifications for military action because of the link in people's minds between weapons of mass destruction and the inability to find them after the invasion of Iraq. Justifications for military action have been based on a reaction to the actions of the Iranian regime in Iraq, which kill US personnel; Iran's efforts to wreck the peace process that was launched in Annapolis, via the Hamas movement; and Iran's determination to turn Lebanon into an Iranian base via Hizbullah. This is possible.

Nothing can be completely ruled out during the current phase of developments. It was very interesting to see the US administration take the decision to publicly reveal the NIE and it is truly interesting to see the US intelligence community's excessive finding that Iran is innocent of currently working on nuclear weapons, while the IAEA is saying: wait a minute, such a decisive conclusion isn't necessary.

Of course, El-Baradei feels that the NIE backs what he has always said about his institution's lack of evidence that Iran has embarked upon a secret nuclear military program. However, the NIE weakens the IAEA's own hand: there is a focus on the same conclusion that Tehran abandoned its secret program in 2003, which could weaken international determination to strengthen sanctions, if Iran does not live up to its commitments before the IAEA and offer complete cooperation. In other words, the celebration of seeing the IAEA's opinion triumph and its defeat of the attacks against it, along with the exclusion of the military option and the strengthening of sanctions, means that the IAEA will pay the price, since it will be alone and without international momentum behind it as it negotiates with Iran in Vienna, far away from the Security Council.

Thus, it might be in the interest of the IAEA to not push hard toward removing the Iranian nuclear issue from the Security Council and not engineer the dismantling of the Security Council's resolution that demands the suspension of uranium enrichment as a prior condition for the handful of temptations offered by the five permanent Security Council members and Germany to Iran, which include dialogue. If it's true that Iran frozen or halted its secret nuclear program in 2003, we must remember that this date coincides with the countdown to, and implementation of, the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The politically-savvy Tehran perhaps concluded that it might be faced with military action and thus halted its program. But there is another interesting theory. All of the indications at the time pointed to the pro-Iraq war group - from neoconservatives to those advocating the unleashing of what they called the "Shiite force" -- all worked on the basis that the enemy were only Sunnis, who produced terrorism and the 11 September 2001 attack on the US. The basic idea for these people was Iraq, and its president, Saddam Hussein, constituted the "ideal" cover to justify a strike at the country, on the pretext of WMD. They said that the oil-rich Arab lands were inhabited by Arab Shiites, and that the best way to create an oil belt (a "Petrolistan") is to produce chaos in these areas. Then, it would be able to create a Shiite extension of influence in the Arab Gulf for Iran, and via the special Syrian-Israeli relationship, one could link to Israel via Syria and Lebanon.

This line of thinking -- supported by measures for dividing Iraq on the pretext of liberating it -- was probably behind the Iranian leadership's decision to freeze nuclear military activity, and could prove to be correct if military pressure (via the war in Iraq) and the diplomatic efforts (via sanctions) are what prompted the leadership to take this decision.

If history proves that the real reasons for the Iraq war involved a desire to divide the country, since such a move would serve the interests of both Israel and Iran in the minds of war advocates, then the real reason for halting Iran's secret nuclear military program in 2003 was wisdom. It was useless, as long as the US was waging war against the biggest Arab enemy of Iran and Israel; the Saddam Hussein regime had a nuclear capability that could fight back against these capabilities and the dividing of Iraq, with both Arab financing and assistance.

It was very intriguing that the US president said, during his news conference following the release of the NIE, that there had been an understanding with the ruling Iranian establishment in Tehran. This was done away with by the election of Ahmadinejad as president.

In this column I have often said that Ahmadinejad's election was a pleasant surprise for the neoconservatives, who had a close relationship with people promoting a Shiite force to gain revenge for the domination by Sunni Arabs. I mentioned that Ahmadinejad was a wheel in the spokes of this plan, since he spoke about Israel in an unacceptable way that did away, temporarily, with the neoconservatives' plans to contain and whittle down the Arabs and take away areas of oil resources as dictated by the clerics in Iran, such as the ambitious and wealthy Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

These two were behaving with patience and skill as they played the country's strategic cards, despite the "obstacle" represented by a person named Ahmadinejad. They played the strategic card and acted with strategic wisdom by abandoning, temporarily, Iran's nuclear aspirations.

What these men can deliver in a big deal -- if such a thing has truly taken place -- is a strategic partnership with the US and Israel in containing the Arabs. They offer considerable influence in controlling things in Iraq, provided that Iraq is "Iranian." Iraq is the big prize for Iran: an Iraq free of nuclear weapons-making capacity and cowed, unable to be independent… and Iraq subject to Iranian influence, representing a launching-point for influence in the Gulf state, in the name of Shiite leadership, even though it is in fact Persian influence to exercise hegemony over the Arabs.

What will the United States gain in return for this, from recognizing Iran as the de facto force to offering a status of superiority par excellence to the clergymen and Islamic revolutionaries? This is the big question, which is difficult to answer definitively speaking right now.

Logic requires us to consider the natural elements of such a deal, in terms of the US administration's insistence on seeing the Iranian leadership abandon Hamas and Hizbullah. Giving up Hamas is relatively easy compared to the other group. Despite the grandstanding against the Palestinian Authority and exploitation of the Palestinians' sufferings under occupation, the Palestinian issue is not a vital matter for Iran. It is a bargaining chip and not an Iranian responsibility, for sectarian and ideological reasons. Thus, Iran can abandon it.

The matter is different when we talk about Hizbullah in Lebanon. Iran has a vital, strategic and tactical relationship with the party. This doesn't mean that the mullahs in Iran consider the leader of Hizbullah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a priority ahead of the strategic relationship with the US. But it does mean that Hizbullah and Lebanon are subject to give and take as part of the formulas of relationships among the US, Iran and Isarel, passing through Syria.

The wheel in the spokes of this relationship is the International Court to try the perpetrators of political assassinations in Lebanon. One of the most important Syrian demands is to freeze or prevent the formation of this court, for very obvious reasons. Damascus' insistence on abolishing this court is testimony to its likely involvement in these terrorist crimes, according to the Security Council's definition of them. Neither Israel, the US nor France (with which relations have deteriorated in the era of its new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, from a favored standing of the first order to an element of deal-making, of the second order) will be able to give guarantees to Damascus regarding the elimination of the court. The court is now out of the hands of these individuals and bargains and deals won't be able to contain the investigation and its conclusions, or stop the court.

Therefore, we should ask how -- if a big deal has been struck between the US and Iran -- the role of Syria in Lebanon and the International Court for those who planned and carried out political assassinations is being dealt with. Some are quick to say that the Americans "sold out" Lebanon and the court. But this is a bit hasty and excessive and jumps over several items, such as Bush himself and his view of public positions and personal commitments regarding Lebanon. Perhaps the man has knuckled under to pressure from the ruling American "establishment" and bowed his head, avoiding and withdrawing from his commitments to Lebanon. There is no proof as to whether this is what actually happened, while a development in the Iranian nuclear issue might lead to his speaking out loudly to say to Tehran and Damascus: Enough. Keep your hands off Lebanon.

Because this phase is one of confusion and drift, and searching for what is happening behind the sudden and hidden decisions, it is necessary to wait until events have played themselves out. These include movement by the leaders of some Arab states in surprising directions and visits. One example is the sudden visit by King Abdullah II of Jordan to Syria and the later visits by high-ranking Jordanian officials. Another is the precedent of Ahmadinejad's attendance at the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit in Doha. It's not clear if a policy of "splitting off" countries is behind these movements, i.e. separating Syria from Iran, or vice versa.

In other words, it's still not clear if the truce between the US and Iran has launched similar moves by Arab countries toward Iran and Israel, to start a qualitatively new chapter in the entire Middle East. The smell of deals is getting stronger and the timing is intriguing, especially in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon - three issues that distinguish regional and international relations. The preparations are underway to create a US military base in Iraq, by virtue of the understanding and agreement governing bilateral US-Iraqi ties, and this requires an understanding with Iran, according to the analysts. Thus, the history of "failure" in the Iraq war has perhaps led to the intelligence agencies working to regain their dignity and reputation, which suffered in the justifications and pretexts for the Iraq war. Thus, we are talking about the future of these common interests, as represented in the need by the US and Iran to avoid a war and work instead on arranging the division of influence in Iraq and using a new strategic partnership for influence of another kind in the Middle East.

All of this could be overturned by surprises. Just as Ahmadinejad appeared on the scene to upset the arrangements that had been made by the US and Iranian governments, as Bush confirmed in his statements this week, a surprise might try the patience of the man in the White House and see the lame duck "kick," in a bid to regain the momentum. But today, the US president appears to be the victim of an internal coup against him and it's not clear whether the establishment has carried this out in order to rein him in, or whether he was convinced of the step for deeper and wider reasons, which remain secret.

http://www.raghidadergham.com/