| To: robnhood who wrote (85) | 12/7/2001 6:42:05 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | Remember that story a few weeks ago that they were going to hold off on releasing government documents? There's a reason - they are incriminating.
dailynews.yahoo.com
US Ok'd Indonesian '75 E.Timor Invasion - Documents
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President
Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger gave then Indonesian strongman
Suharto (news - web sites) the green light for
the 1975 invasion of East Timor (news - web
sites) that left perhaps 200,000 dead,
according to previously secret documents
made available on Thursday.
Kissinger has maintained that he only learned of the plan at the airport as
he and Ford prepared to fly home after meeting Suharto in Jakarta on
the eve of the Dec. 7 thrust into East Timor, a former Portuguese
colony.
Kissinger also has argued that any U.S. nod for the action should be
seen in its Cold War context -- on the heels of the communist victory in
Vietnam and amid U.S. fears that other ''dominoes'' might fall in
Southeast Asia.
The incursion led to a bloody occupation that ended only after an
international peacekeeping force took charge in 1999 and East Timor
achieved independence.
At the time of the 1975 invasion, the United States supplied as much as
90 percent of Indonesia's weapons on condition that they be used only
for defense and internal security.
Ford and Kissinger appear to have gone to considerable lengths to
assure Suharto, a staunch anti-communist, that they would not oppose
the invasion, which was designed to keep East Timor from breaking
away from Indonesia.
``We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or
drastic action,'' Suharto told them during a stopover on their way home
from meetings with Chinese leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping in
Beijing, according to a newly declassified Dec. 6, 1975, document.
``We will understand and will not press you on the issue,'' Ford replied,
according to the State Department record of the conversation
declassified by Ford's presidential library.
Kissinger pointed out that ``the use of U.S.-made arms could create
problems,'' but added: ``It depends on how we construe it; whether it is
in self-defense or is a foreign operation,'' according to the same
document.
MANIPULATING PUBLIC OPINION
The private National Security Archive, a Washington-based research
group that obtained the document under the Freedom of Information
Act, said it showed that Kissinger's concern was not that U.S. weapons
would be used offensively -- hence illegally -- but about how he might
manipulate public opinion.
``It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly,'' Kissinger told
Suharto, according to the document. ``We
would be able to influence the reaction in
America if whatever happens, happens after
we return.''
``We understand your problem and the need to
move quickly but I am only saying that it would
be better if it were done after we returned'' to
Washington, Kissinger said, according to the document.
Ford's current chief of staff, Penny Circle, said the former president had
no comment. Kissinger did not respond to requests for comment.
The National Security Archive released a package of East
Timor-related documents, some of which had been made public before
but had been heavily censored. They can be accessed at the National
Security Archive's Web site (www.nsarchive.org).
In a March 19, 1999, interview with WNYC Radio in New York,
Kissinger denied having held substantive talks with Suharto on the
invasion plan, saying: ``We were told at the airport as we left Jakarta
that either that day or the next day they intended to take East Timor.''
He added, ``And it happened in a year when southeast Asia, Indochina
had collapsed. So it wasn't a question of approval but of not being able
to do anything about it.''
The newly disclosed material could raise new questions about President
Bush (news - web sites)'s drive to resume sales of non-lethal weapons
to Indonesia. Former President Bill Clinton cut off most military
cooperation after Indonesia's armed forces and paramilitary units
attacked East Timor in response to an Aug. 30, 1999, U.N.-sponsored
referendum in favor of independence.
``This is a critical time in relations between the West and the Muslim
world, and Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim country,'' said Frida
Berrigan of the New York-based World Policy Institute, author of an
October report on U.S. weapons sales to Indonesia. |
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| To: Thomas M. who wrote (87) | 12/8/2001 8:18:24 PM | | From: robnhood | | | | | Thomas,,, The lawyers up here in Canada are balking at the new laws , and the House of Lords in England are balking. I for one am glad to see that someone with a bit of muscle are up to questioning this Fascist insurgence. |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (91) | 12/10/2001 2:27:40 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | Excellent chat Q&A with Palestinian commentator Ali Abunimah:
discuss.washingtonpost.com
<<< Every human rights group that has looked into Israel's practices, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Israeli group B'Tselem, and many others, have found that Israel deliberately shoots to kill unarmed Palestinian civilians, and indeed the vast majority of the nearly nine hundred Palestinian civilians killed were unarmed. Over two hundred of them are children. All the human rights groups have found a deliberate pattern of gunshots to the upper body and head. Each of them has websites, so you can easily verify this yourself.
I think that the following quote from an article written by Michael Finkel in the New York Times magazine on December 24, 2000 illustrates very well the findings of every human rights group that has looked into it. He is speaking of his observations in one place in the occupied Gaza Strip:
"I spent two weeks at Karni during daylight hours, and in my time there, the Israeli Army fired live ammunition almost every day. Sometimes only two or three shots, sometimes a dozen or more. On occasion the shots were fired when cars or buses needed to enter or exit the settlement, at other times I could ascertain no reason for the shooting. Not once did I see or hear a single shot from the Palestinian side. Never during the time I spent at Karni did an Israeli soldier appear to be in mortal danger. Nor was either an Israeli soldier or settler even slightly injured. In that two-week period, at least 11 Palestinians were killed during the day at Karni." In addition to this, Israel plants bombs in crowded refugee camps and shells them with the inevitable and predictable result that innocent people are killed, just like the five schoolboys I mentioned in the article. >>> |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (91) | 12/10/2001 2:33:29 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | commondreams.org
Published on Sunday, December 9, 2001 in the Toronto Sun
America's New War: A Progress Report
by Eric Margolis
What has the U.S. achieved after waging war for the past two months in Afghanistan?
* Afghanistan's de facto government, the Taliban, an Islamic religious movement with about 30,000 armed supporters, has been overthrown and scattered. After holding out for five weeks under massive U.S. bombardments, its leader, Mullah Omar, ordered his men to retreat to the mountains. Omar, who may be shortly captured or killed, claimed he ordered the retreat to spare civilians in Taliban-ruled areas from U.S. bombing.
To date, the U.S. has dropped 10,000 bombs on Afghanistan, killing sizable numbers of civilians - in the range of 1,500-2,000, according to Afghan sources. U.S. bombing of cities, towns and villages has driven over 160,000 people into refugee camps.
* On Dec. 3, 2000 - one year ago - this column said that overthrowing the Taliban would "pave the way for a second Russian occupation of Afghanistan." This has now happened. The Northern Alliance, armed and funded by Russia, directed by the Afghan Communist party and under the overall command of the chief of the Russian general staff, Marshall Viktor Kvashnin, deputy KGB director Viktor Komogorov, and a cadre of Russian advisers, seized Kabul and all of northern Afghanistan. U.S. President George Bush committed a colossal, inexcusable blunder. If this column could foresee Russian intervention, why didn't the White House?
* Last week's much-ballyhooed Afghan "unity" conference in Germany produced precisely what this column predicted: a sham "coalition" government run by the Northern Alliance. One of the CIA's Pashtun "assets," Hamid Karzai, who represents no one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no other real Pashtun representation, though they comprise half the population.
Of 30 cabinet seats, two-thirds went to Northern Alliance Tajiks, notably the power ministries of defence, the interior and foreign affairs. Two women were added for window dressing to please the West. The 87-year old deposed Afghan king, Zahir Shah, widely blamed for allowing the communists to infiltrate Afghanistan in the 1970s, was invited back as a figurehead monarch. In short, a communist-dominated regime, ruled by a king, whose strings are pulled by Moscow. Quite a bizarre creation.
FEUDING STARTS
The very next day, feuding broke out among Alliance members. Old communist stalwart Rashid Dostam, who had just finished massacring hundreds of Taliban prisoners with American and British help, threatened war if his Uzbeks did not get more spoils. My old friend, the Alliance's figurehead president, Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a respected Islamic scholar, was shoved aside by young communists.
* The Bush administration was apparently too preoccupied chasing Osama bin Laden to notice its new best friend, Russia, had broken its agreement to wait for formation of a pro-U.S., pro-Pakistani regime, and seized half of Afghanistan. Marshall Kvashnin rushed his men into Kabul, just as he outfoxed the Americans in 1999 in a similar coup de main in Kosovo.
* The hunt for bin Laden and his Al-Qaida continues. A few senior figures have been killed, likely including Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad. The net is closing around bin Laden's possible hiding places. Unless he has escaped Afghanistan, his capture or death appear imminent. This will be welcome news for the Bush administration. If bin Laden somehow escapes, or his body is never found, Bush will be accused of blowing apart Afghanistan, killing large numbers of civilians, and allowing the Russians to grab back the country, all for nothing.
* The late Pashtun leader Abdul Haq, whom I knew from my Peshawar days, warned the U.S. before his death that bombing Afghanistan was unnecessary and a grave mistake. Taliban control could be broken, where needed, by financing tribal uprisings - the standard form of Afghan warfare - without foreign intervention. Otherwise, he warned, the Northern Alliance would take over and bring in the Russians. He pleaded with Washington for restraint, but to no avail. Haq was captured by the Taliban during a bungled CIA operation and hanged.
But Haq was right. U.S. forces could have hunted bin Laden in southern Afghanistan with relative impunity, as they are now doing, without having to launch a total war against the Taliban. U.S. air power totally dominates barren Afghanistan. Taliban forces could not move or communicate. There were only a small number of Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan where bin Laden was hiding.
Bombing Afghan civilian centres was absolutely unnecessary. The only real military targets offered by the Taliban were its entrenched troops facing the Alliance. It was remarkable the Taliban managed to withstand five weeks of carpet bombing by U.S. B-52s - particularly, as one Pakistani writer wryly noted, after his nation gave in to the U.S. after only a threatening phone call from Washington.
The U.S. could have hunted bin Laden without allowing the Russians to recapture half of Afghanistan, a severe geopolitical defeat for American ambitions to use that nation as a gateway to Central Asian oil and gas. And without blasting to rubble what little remained of demolished Afghanistan, and without driving 160,000 civilians into terrified flight.
So, after eight weeks of war, the Taliban is out, the communists are in power in Kabul and the south is in chaos. The war has cost Washington US$60 billion to date. Afghanistan is a bloody mess. And Vladimir Putin is smiling. |
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| To: pie-faced-mutt who wrote (94) | 12/10/2001 2:55:26 PM | | From: Thomas M. | | | | I'm confused. The U.S. blocks international germ-warfare bill, for nebulous reasons. Apparently, we wanted it to focus on "rogue nations" (defined conveniently by us).
dailynews.yahoo.com
But, here we are nuking Iraq in the Gulf War:
counterpunch.org
And, the anthrax from the recent scare has been determined to have originated from U.S. government labs. |
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