May 2003

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Yesterday's News Tomorrow!

Bush Wars on the radio

Last Saturday I did half an hour or so on the phone with Chuck Mertz of WNUR, which is Northwestern University's radio station. Yesterday it was posted to their archive, and if you really have nothing better to do, you can listen here. (Advance the Real Audio slider to roughly the 1 hour and 48 minute mark.)

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 11:03 AM

 

BW Readers on the Greens in '04

Plus: Will BW readers prove to be the avatars of a Draft Michael Moore movement?

There was fairly passionate response to the question I posed about whether the Greens should run a presidential candidate in 2004. If I have a chance later today I'll post some of the reader comments; meantime the poll broke down this way:

Yes, run: 15
No, stay out this time: 8
Fuck you, stay out every time: 1
I just wish someone would listen to me: 3

But today's prize goes to reader Mickey Z. for being first to suggest the Green candidate someone is bound to bring up sooner or later: Michael Moore. (Nice subject line, too: Moore or Lesser?)

I'd send you a t-shirt, Mickey, but the truth is we don't have any. Still, don't be surprised if at some point today you notice a striking abundance of positive energy flowing your way. That'll be me.

So, phase two of the Bush Wars Greens in '04 poll:

Draft Michael Moore?

Email me your thoughts at sperry@citypages.com.

Finally, I got a long letter from the chair of the Michigan Green party, Marc Reichardt, which you can read here.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 10:58 AM

 

On Being a Pariah

It's TGIF Stone Friday here at Bush Wars...

and I offer these two nuggets, suitable for printing and framing.

"It's just wonderful to be a pariah. I really owe my success to being a pariah. It is so good not to be invited to respectable dinner parties. People used to say to me, 'Izzy, why don't you go down and see the Secretary of State and put him straight.' Well, you know, you're not supposed to see the Secretary of State. He won't pay any attention to you anyway. He'll hold your hand, he'll commit you morally for listening. To be a pariah is to be left alone to see things your own way, as truthfully as you can. Not because you're brighter than anybody else is -- or your own truth so valuable. But because, like a painter or a writer or an artist, all you have to contribute is the purification of your own vision, and add that to the sum total of other visions. To be regarded as nonrespectable, to be a pariah, to be an outsider, this is really the way to do it. To sit in your tub and not want anything. As soon as you want something, they've got you!"

And this:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it." 

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 10:57 AM

 

Michigan Green Responds

Steve, 

While I certainly appreciate the more measured response than most other journalists (real or posers) are normally willing to accord us, I think you're misunderstanding a couple things about the USGP.

We did not create a new party and field our own presidential candidate to register a protest vote to the system. We did it because neither of the major parties represents our (or, in fact, the majority's) interests. So long as both Democrats and Republicans are under the shroud of corporate bribery, they will never represent the Average Joe.

However, the process is not as simple as just running a candidate. To be effective, and to hew as closely as possible to our ideals, the Green party must be a mass movement. We cannot represent the idea of political parties as societal elites that 'know better' than the remainder of the public. Political parties in Europe, for example, are far closer to our idea of the party as community organization, wherein members and leaders of the party are your neighbors, your colleagues, your friends. That party does not disappear between elections as the two majors do. Instead, that party stays active in the community and helps make change from a popular level, rather than solely at the ballot box.

That idea, of course, requires one of the issues that Nader continually harped upon in 2000: citizen participation. We must be able to re-activate the public interest of the public, and encourage all citizens to participate in their state which is ostensibly by, for, and of the people. In that respect, I can perhaps explain our reluctance for a hierarchical structure which can 'call the shots', as it were. There is no doubt that it is the harder road, but it is the better one.

And I would be more disposed to believe that 'anyone would do less damage moving forward' if I actually thought the Democrats were still prone to moving forward. Their behavior since the accession of the Bush Administration has been one of almost disgusting servility and obedience. Nancy Pelosi, House Minority leader, stated that America would no longer have to ask what the Democrats 'stood for', in distinction to the Republicans. She promptly followed that by voting for the President's invasion of Iraq and remarking repeatedly that she supported Bush's case for war 'no matter what the United Nations said.' This is the opposition party? Only half of the current Democratic candidates opposed the war, numbered among them is the pro-business, pro-NAFTA, anti-drug reform Howard Dean, and the until recently ardently anti-choice Dennis Kucinich.

People (perhaps not you) would decry this response as 'hoping for the perfect candidate'. We are not hoping for a perfect candidate; we're planning for a Green candidate. Greens are not Democrats. Our agenda and platform are significantly different. If people want a candidate that truly represents their concerns, they will vote Green. If they want a candidate who gives lip service to those concerns while savaging many sectors of society as effectively as Bush (thinking of Bill Clinton and Al Gore here: NAFTA, 1996 Welfare Reform Act, 1996 Telecommunications Act (the latter two passed in a campaign year where one would think they would have been seeking traditional Democratic votes, and not Republicans), the 1998 logging act, etc., etc.) then they will vote Democratic. And, if they desire a feudal warlord, they'll vote for the incumbent...

Change must begin somewhere. We are making that change now. I hope that you and many others like you will help us do it.

Sincerely,
Marc Reichardt,
Chair,
Green Party of Michigan

Those who are saying it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it -Chinese proverb
O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie- El Tupamaros.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 10:37 AM

 

Friday Press Clips

Roadmap to Nowhere: great column on the Israeli deal by Alex Cockburn.

So Sad About Baghdad: The New York Times breaks the news to the chattering classes--the US needs more troops and more money in Iraq.

Jessica Lynch's family is keeping mum about her daring rescue by US troops who, the night before, had fired on an Iraqi ambulance that was trying to return her to the Americans.

Iran tries to placate the US in re al-Qaeda, but the Bushmen won't take yes for an answer.   

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 9:59 AM

 

Truman, Wallace and '48

Yesterday, in mulling over the Greens, I cited Studs Terkel's argument that Henry Wallace's third-party run in 1948 helped Harry Truman and the Dems win the election. Afterward I got this note from Richard Winger, who runs the Ballot Access News website.

You talked about 1948, and you were right. However, it was Samuel Lubell, pollster turned political scientist, who first made the point about 1948. And it wasn't theoretical. His polling data showed that 2,000,000 mostly Catholic, conservative Democrats had voted for Dewey in 1944, because they were so disgusted that the Communist Party in 1944 had endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt. But those 2,000,000 voters came back to the Democrats in 1948, because the Communist Party in 1948 was busy attacking Truman and boosting Progressive Party nominee Henry Wallace. So although Truman lost 1,100,000 votes that went to Wallace (that was Wallace's national total), he gained 2,000,000 votes away from Dewey, which was far more valuable to him. He couldn't have won without them. He carried California, Ohio and Illinois by the squeakiest of margins, and if Dewey had carried those states, Dewey would have had a majority in the electoral college.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 30, 2003 9:36 AM

 

Greens in '04: Get In or Stay Out?

The American Greens--to the extent they even exist as a national organization--are up in arms over whether to run a candidate in the 2004 presidential race. A great many Greens, understandably, are putting "Beat Bush" first on their agenda and wondering whether the party should opt out this time. But there are those who oppose sitting out 2004, on the grounds that abdicating now would mean abandoning the party's recent gains in major party standings from state to state. In any case, the names bandied about so far as Green candidates include the perennial Nader, deposed Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, and a couple of party unknowns, David Cobb and Paul Glover.

As a two-time Nader supporter and a consistent champion of any political gesture that serves to discredit or to embarrass the Republicrat duopoly, I am--so far--agnostic on this one. Two reasons: There's a better-than-usual case to be made that the venal, threadbare "lesser evil" argument that Democratic apologists trot out every four years actually contains some merit when the greater evil is George W. Bush and the boys.

I despise nearly all the clowns in the Democratic field this time--but I think I would vote for any of them (except Joe Lieberman, who's not going to get the nomination in any event) in lieu of Bush. This is not because I have any illusion that Democratic President Fill-in-the-Blank will undo what Bush has wrought; it's because the Bushmen are the most radical claque to rule the US in this century, and for once it's probably right to say that virtually anyone else would do less damage going forward.

My second reservation about the Greens in '04 is that they are just so fucking dumb when it comes to concerted national action. They don't know how to do a national campaign, in part because many of them are opposed in principle to the idea of a prominent or powerful national Green party hierarchy. Say what you will of Nader's past campaigns; I like Ralph. But one thing you cannot say is that he was running to win in either 1996 or 2000. He was running to make a point, and a worthy one as far as it went, about the rigged game that is American politics. This gave his candidacy a stuffy, didactic air. Nader's profile is more that of the traveling lecturer than the political evangelist; he articulates important truths but he's no fire-starter.

Personally, I still believe that a serious third-party effort by the Greens could help to beat Bush. The great Studs Terkel has argued that Henry Wallace in 1948 performed exactly that service for Harry Truman and the Democrats in 1948. By dragging the centrist Truman toward more populist/liberal campaign themes, and energizing an untapped segment of the public--or so Terkel reasoned, plausibly--Wallace and his third-party candidacy actually helped propel Truman to a win.

Could 2004 be analogous to 1948? I doubt it. I don't think yet another run by Nader or any of the other likely suspects would bring new voters into the mix in any great numbers--Cynthia McKinney may be the sole exception, but she stands to alienate a great many as well--and I also do not think the modern Democratic party can be induced to move left except as a matter of the occasional rhetorical gesture. If beating Bush is really the paramount issue this time, it's hard to see how a Green party that has neither a national organization nor a charismatic leader is going to help matters. 

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This is all a first-blush reaction. Meantime tell me your thoughts on the matter. Greens in or out in '04? Email me at sperry@citypages.com, and thanks. 

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Related press clips 

 MSNBC: Greens may back Dems in '04.

washpost: Greens weigh their options.

Studs Terkel: Truman, Wallace, and the lesson of '48

Posted by Steve Perry at May 29, 2003 11:38 AM

 

Bob Hope: He's Not Getting Older, He's Getting Drier

And thanks for the memories, even though you probably don't remember them

What sort of war blog would this be if I failed to note that it's the 100th birthday of the undead Bob Hope, avatar of war and entertainment and war entertainment? Steve Monaco over at Couch Pundit has just the tribute that Bob deserves.  

Posted by Steve Perry at May 28, 2003 9:25 PM

 

What if There's No Such Thing as "al-Qaeda"?

The world's most infamous terror group: global conspiracy, or just good friends?

Ten days ago you couldn't dip your toe in the world press without encountering fervid proclamations that the terrorist bombings in Riyadh and Casablanca were a) certainly connected and b) proof positive that a new wave of al-Qaeda bombings was imminent. 

So far, though, no more bombs. Why? Off the top I can see three or four possibilities:

1) There was in fact no significant connection between the attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the latter having been undertaken by a local outfit that may or may not have been acting in concert with larger al-Qaeda goals. Remember one thing: None of the evidence popularly cited so far amounts to a definitive case that there is a new al-Qaeda-sponsored offensive in the offing. We're only supposing.

2) There was a connection between the Riyadh and Casablanca bombings, and the promised al-Qaeda offensive simply has yet to unfold.

3) The SA and Morocco bombings were intended as the kickoff of a new wave of attacks, but intervening events have disrupted the plan. According to one theory, al-Qaeda is regrouping now because of blowback in the Arab world after the Riyadh and Casablanca attacks. According to this line of thought, they may be shifting course from destabilizing US allies in the Middle East (a tricky business in itself) toward the safer and less complicated course of attacking the US directly. Conversely, the situation in Iran may be dictating al-Qaeda policy. It's possible, if unlikely, that the Iranian government really does control the movements of several key al-Qaeda operatives and has put the clamps on them since the US kicked up a fuss. (I emphasize that this is unlikely--according to a Washington Post dispatch quoted here a few days ago, it's probable that the Iranian government has no means of tracking, much less controlling, the handful of operatives in the north of Iran.)

There's another possibility lurking beneath all these, which is that US intelligence services have ever had only the vaguest sense of what al-Qaeda is and what they are or aren't up to.

Rightly or wrongly, my notion about al-Qaeda from the start has been that the American media and (so far as we can say from public signs) American intelligence has completely and willfully misunderstood the nature of the so-called network. They have approached it as though it's a single entity with a command/control structure analogous to the sort we're most familiar with--the top-down hierarchy of US corporations and the American military.

It always struck me as more ad hoc and opportunistic than that. I've always suspected that what we call "al-Qaeda" is really just the most prominent node in an emerging, loosely confederated network of insurgent anti-imperialist/anti-US cells the world over. If you want a more American frame of reference, say that they are one venture capital firm in a growing industry, rather than a company. This is certainly the tenor of what we've been hearing about the "new" al-Qaeda in recent weeks (see Asia Times, 5/17 and 5/20, a pair of accounts by Syed Saleem Shahzad that describe the radical decentralization of what had been known as al-Qaeda). 

I bring this up now because of a very interesting and little-noted interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad that appeared the other day at the GOPUSA site. Assad had this to say on the subject of al-Qaeda:

"Is there really an entity called al Qaeda? It was in Afghanistan, but is it there anymore?" Assad asked....

"We blame everything on al Qaeda but what happened is more dangerous than bin Laden or al Qaeda. We're talking about a certain ideological bloc. The issue is ideology, it's not an issue of organizations," Assad said regarding the recent terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.

"Such an ideology cannot live without a certain social base. It has to convince people and strengthen its presence. Dealing with this issue should be through a social approach not through security," he added.

Read the rest.

First, let's be clear what he is not saying. Assad obviously does not mean that there is no such thing as an element that calls itself al-Qaeda; he doubts whether it exists in the sense ceaselessly touted by the West, as the head of the octopus. And I suspect he's entirely right.

This is not to say that there is no such thing as communication and planning between disparate groups. Rather, it suggests that their ranks are more varied and spotaneous, and their connections more fleeting and provisional, than the Bush administration has painted them to be. One corollary is that they are much harder to track than the US lets on; another is that even if you succeed in tracking down particular individuals, you will usually accomplish little by taking one factor out of the equation. Hunting the US's many enemies through intelligence ops is a little like trying to track particular drops of water through a roiling pool.

Related press clips

NYT: US presses Iran to hand over al-Qaeda suspects.

BBC: Iran rejects US pressure.

Newsweek (Isikoff et al.) on al-Qaeda's summer plans.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 28, 2003 9:13 AM

 

Trouble in the Hinterlands

Lugar, Bush, and the permanent war in its first throes of crisis 

Now we begin to see what synergy is all about. There's bad news for the Bush administration from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel. Late last week Richard Lugar, the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, publicly scolded the Bushmen and warned them that their victory in Iraq was "at risk." But Lugar pulled what might have been his most effective punch when he rather delicately pointed out that continued failure in Iraq would create "an incubator for terrorist cells and activity." The incubator Lugar alludes to is more like a factory, and it has been pumping out product since the invasion of Afghanistan. You have only to look to the waves of foreign volunteers who streamed into Iraq to wage jihad against the Americans at the outset of the war--more than 10,000, according to the European press. And events since then have no doubt galvanized countless more.        

Lugar is promising an investigation of the Bush administration's planning for post-war Iraq. We'll see. Lugar is one of the few people in the entire government who could singlehandedly do serious damage to Bush next year, but only at the cost of making himself a lifelong pariah in Republican circles. He's really not the type. Jeff St. Clair of Counterpunch, an expert in all things Hoosier, says this of him:

Privately Lugar is said to have thought that Bush bungled diplomacy and that the war on Iraq was unnecessary and detracted from the hunt for al-Qaeda. He is often at odds with the neo-cons camped in the Bush inner sanctum and has a particular hatred of Rumsfeld. Lugar has bit his tongue for the last two years, but now that the Iraq war is over and his former staffer Mitch Daniels has left the administration to run for governor in Indiana, Lugar feels freer to speak out openly. But he's a fixer, not a revolutionary. He'll be the public voice of Colin Powell's agenda.

As I've written before, I believe the US entered Iraq with the sole intention of staying as long as possible and insinuating itself as deeply as possible in the fabric of the economy and of such government as exists there. So in that sense the Bushmen's current predicament cannot be altogether a surprise to them. But even if this was their "plan," there's no question that they did a wretched job of thinking through the contingencies. There is no sense in which it's in the administration's interest to have this level of anarchy in Baghdad, and yet they are only now awakening to the fact that it's probably not a good idea to occupy the city with combat troops. A larger force will be required in any case, and meanwhile Britain has been quietly and steadily withdrawing troops from the occupation force.   

Bush and his people are now more than ever at the mercy of events beyond their control, though it's clear they don't see it that way. Their latest response to the growing fiasco in Iraq is to fire yet another warning shot in Iran's direction. Even as things sour around him, Bush, like Osama, remains anxious to carry the war on terror forward. The pretext need not be substantial (what follows is from the WashPost article linked in this paragraph):   

A senior administration official who is skeptical of the Pentagon's arguments said most of the al Qaeda members -- fewer than a dozen -- appear to be located in an isolated area of northeastern Iran, near the border with Afghanistan. He described the area as a drug-smuggling terrorist haven that is tolerated by key members of the Revolutionary Guards in part because they skim money off some of the activities there. It is not clear how much control the central Iranian government has over this area, he said.

"I don't think the elected government knows much about it," he said. "Why should you punish the rest of Iran," he asked, just because the government cannot act in this area?

Perhaps it's because the war on terror is not really a war on terror, as our failure to do anything about Saudi Arabia attests.

Tomorrow--assuming, as always, that nothing else blows up in the meantime--I'll try to post something about a few other key players in the current drama: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, North Korea. 

Posted by Steve Perry at May 26, 2003 2:36 PM

 

A Weekend Reminder

I don't typically post on weekends now except in the event of breaking stories. But I encourage you to have a look at some of the other columns here at Twin Cities Babelogue, the Minneapolis-based blogging group I belong to. TCB is not all politics and war news--mostly not, in fact.

If it's war you want, take a look at Elaine Cassel's column on the war at home, Civil Liberties Watch, or check out The Mississippifarian's annotated primer on the 14 defining characteristics of fascism.

If you're in a literary mood, look at Brad Zellar's great Open All Night or Sally Ryan's Not-So-Private Ryan.

Curmudgeonly wisdom and cult movies at Couch Pundit (formerly A Movie a Day), which presently features a picture of the president mentally conjuring a UFO.  

Finally, there are great music blogs by the omnivorous and omniscient Melissa Maerz, the fervid and far-sighted Dave Marsh, the sly and sexed-up Peter S. Scholtes, the--enough with the Marvel Comics shtick, I guess. There's a great alt-country blog by Jack Sparks, and good music items at Britt Robson and David Schimke's blogs, though music is only part of their beat.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 25, 2003 9:20 AM

 

Friday Press Clips

Busy editing day today, but meanwhile a few updates to stories I've followed here this week.

al-Qaeda

Here's more from Syed Saleem Shahzad (whose in-depth reports on changes to al-Qaeda I posted the other day) writing in Asia Times, this time concerning the fresh tensions between Pakistan and India that are springing up as terror cells stir to life.

Iran has said it's holding "several unnamed al-Qaeda operatives," and US intelligence believes they include Said al-Adel, the man touted in the past week as the new military commander of al-Qaeda.

Jason Burke has a good piece in Friday's Globe and Mail: "Franchising al-Qaeda"

The BBC posted this sampler of reactions from the Arab press to the resurgent al-Qaeda.

The Christian Science Monitor on this week's new al-Qaeda tape, allegedly from bin Laden's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Iraq

Bremer announces dissolution of Iraqi army and ministries.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 23, 2003 8:45 AM

 

America's New Weapons Lab

Did the US use try out new radioactive weaponry in Afghanistan?

I've written here before about the incredible vanishing E-bomb, a microwave weapon that the US appears to have used in Iraq. Now a BBC report is suggesting that the US has used unadvertised and dangerous radioactive weaponry in Afghanistan. According to Alex Kirby's dispatch, Afghan citizens are now turning up with "astonishing" levels of uranium in their urine (and it's not from the depleted-uranium missiles we already know about). He quotes an official from the Washington-based Uranium Medical Research Center thus: 

"Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces."

Maybe you'd better read that sentence again.

Read the rest of Kirby's report.

Thanks to reader Gil Gillman.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 22, 2003 5:07 PM

 

Who the Hell is Steve Perry?

There are a lot of Steve Perrys out there, I'll grant you. I once tried to get a magazine editor to run the following biographical tag: "Steve Perry is not the Steve Perry who sang for Journey, or writes science fiction novels, or produces Clint Eastwood movies, or directs porn videos. He was not a bit player in two or three obscure 1950s movies. He's just some guy."

For the record, I am the editor of the Minneapolis/St. Paul alternative weekly City Pages. It's my second time around here. I was editor from January 1989 until August 1997, and I've been back since September 2002. Prior to my first stint at CP I was mainly a rock writer, in which capacity I managed to get my bylines in Rolling Stone--once, as I remember--Spin, In These Times, the Boston Phoenix, and LA Weekly. Once upon a time I edited the free local music magazine Buzz, and around that same time I was a contributing editor to Musician magazine and to Dave Marsh's (then-) Rock & Roll Confidential. 

My political writing has appeared in Counterpunch, Mother Jones, The Nation, New York Press, The Stranger, and a few more places I can't remember. I haven't published any books, though I do have this novel you could look at...  

Posted by Steve Perry at May 22, 2003 1:04 PM

 

"Total Information Awareness" Revisited

You know about the name change. But what about the shadow sister agency?

The Bushmen are shrewd and feral political animals, unerring in their feel for picking moments of distraction to pounce on their prey. A recent case in point is this week's Total Information Awareness facelift. The most patently incendiary of Bush/Ashcroft's proposed domestic surveillance programs, TIA had come under fire even from within the Republican party for overreaching any reasonable interpretation of domestic security needs. 

Well, fear not, citizens: The name is now "Terrorism Information Awareness," and the president along with DARPA hopes that any confusion or alarm is thereby cleared up.

One would like to think there would be a huge fuss over such a transparently cynical gesture if everyone were not fixated on the terror alert level instead. Probably not, though. As I write the Democrats are busy going the opposite way, accusing Bush of being soft on domestic terror readiness. Libertarian conservatives are practically the only ones opposing Ashcroft et al. with real verve, and while they are a huge element in the public at large and on the internet, they don't have much clout in the Republican party.  

The rechristening of TIA isn't the real story here anyway. The real story has barely been told as far I can tell, apart from a single New York Times article with a thoroughly misleading headline. According to this piece by writer John Markoff, the official TIA program is itself a front for a more furtive, and ambitious, shadow version that is taking shape completely removed from public scrutiny under the auspices of the NSA. (Its official budget is only $100 million, but official budgets don't mean much in this sort of endeavor.) Markoff writes,

The research being conducted for the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency is being financed by a little known federal office called the Advanced Research and Development Activity, established during the Clinton administration to provide federal intelligence agencies with basic research capability similar to that of Darpa.

The agency has a budget of about $100 million a year, according to a former government official. Its research covers a wide range of areas from nanotechnology to quantum computing.

The agency is pursuing research in areas like facial recognition as well as basic image recognition technologies, according to computer scientists. In March 2000, for example, the organization reviewed 45 research proposals and made grants to nine organizations including corporations, universities and research centers that are studying various image recognition problems.

ARDA is also financing a program called "Novel Intelligence from Massive Data," which was begun after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The intent of the project is to give intelligence analysts early warning of "strategic surprises" in the same way that the Total Information Awareness system was intended to provide advance information about possible domestic terrorist attacks.

Both the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project and the ARDA research project seek to detect hidden patterns of activity in vast collections of digital data.

The kinds of information engines envisioned here are potentially devastating mechanisms of social control, down to the most microscopic level--down to you and me. (Already we have learned that the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center is being used to surveill and report on anti-war protesters.) But that's not the only agenda in play. I direct your attention to LifeLog, another offshoot of the data collection efforts undertaken after 9/11.  

And what is LifeLog? It is a DARPA fantasy at the moment, but a telling one that may yet prove largely feasible. Noah Shachtman describes it thus at Wired News,

The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read.

All of this--and more--would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health.

This gigantic amalgamation of personal information could then be used to "trace the 'threads' of an individual's life," to see exactly how a relationship or events developed, according to a briefing from the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, LifeLog's sponsor.

Read the rest.

If you think strictly in terms of the intelligence applications of such a system, you're missing half the picture. It has enormous commercial implications as well; any consumer products corporation would kill to have that kind of particularized data. And don't think the folks at DARPA and NSA are oblivious to this. Just as the Pentagon budget has long been a system for publicly financing high-tech R&D, the anti-terror budget is now a public laboratory for developing new business/consumer information systems.

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Elaine Cassel does a wonderful job of writing about these issues every day at her Civil Liberties Watch blog.      

Posted by Steve Perry at May 22, 2003 12:17 PM

 

George of the Jungle

From GWB or Chimpanzee

In the past week,

a) George Bush filed to run for re-election, and

b) a new study, published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences, purported to show that chimps share so much DNA with us that they rightfully belong to the human genus.

Coincidence, or campaign stunt?

Posted by Steve Perry at May 22, 2003 8:26 AM

 

Chaos in Iraq: Just What the US Wanted?

The Bushmen make official that they will be overstaying their welcome, and--phone the NRA!--taking away Iraqi citizens' guns

While the rest of the western world went back to fretting over al-Qaeda, the Bush administration has moved in recent days to consolidate its bid for long-term occupation of Iraq. Last Friday the US's new man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, told a meeting of Iraqi leaders that the US would be extending its stay. This coincided with the terms of a new UN resolution sponsored by the US that would recognize Uncle Sam as the occupier of Iraq for a period of one year--renewable, of course--and give the Americans administrative control of Iraqi oil funds. (Now there is a pension fund worth plundering.) And earlier this week the US also said its forces would be taking away Iraqis' firearms.

These steps are further inflaming an already insurrectionary public mood. The Kurds and Arabs have been at each other lately in some parts of the north. The whole infrastructure of Baghdad is in the same mess as the day Saddam fell. Banks, utilities and the government--Iraq's biggest employer--are closed, and shipments of goods along the Amman to Baghdad highway are routinely hijacked. Thousands of Shiites took to the streets in protest last Friday.

No matter where you look, the US is portrayed as having made a royal mess of the post-war transition. To suppose they've bungled what they meant to do is both uncharitable and unwise. Yes, there's no doubt the Bushmen lacked a serious plan for restoring services and forming an interim government, but that begs the real question. Did they want one? (Remember the straight-faced assurance, prior to the invasion, that the Pentagon had spent three weeks on postwar planning? "Rebuilding" Iraq and setting it on its own feet again was the furthest thing from their minds. They had no such intention.)

I think the administration has done exactly what it set out to do, which was to seize the country rapidly and then unveil by degrees its plan for a long-range military and business presence there. No central government? No problem. In fact, that may be the whole idea. This passage, sent along by BW reader Peter Lee from an essay he'd written, nicely sums up the case for managed chaos in Iraq: "The neocon think-tank recipe for Iraq--a federated sack of sand without control of its own military, security, or intelligence portfolios--is seemingly ripped from the cookbook Ariel Sharon wrote for Palestine.  In both instances, the intent is to impose a weak, compromised leader conspicuously beholden to a foreign power, thereby guaranteeing an impotent, illegitimate, and insecure state providing ample and continuous pretexts for foreign interference and control." 

Lee presumes the Bushmen do want a central government of some sort in Iraq, and no doubt they would take one to their liking if they could get it, but for now anyway they can't. Thus, it appears, the plan is to keep on "overseeing" the power vacuum in Baghdad and around the country. It's a dangerous gamble; there is always a delicate balance between managed chaos and the other kind. (It also amplifies the risk of the US's getting sucked into other conflicts elsewhere in the region, but plainly the Bushmen still believe there is no contingency in the world equal to their steely, shoot-'em-up resolve.)

The Bremer Factor

Every day's a bad hair day
(PBS photo)

If you want a notion of what the US is really up to, the most obvious clue is the appointment of L. Paul Bremer to replace General Jay Garner. Why Bremer? Here is what the New York Times said:

Mr. Rumsfeld said in the interview that the plan had always envisioned someone like Mr. Bremer to fill the role of overall civilian administrator for Iraq. He said that he and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, went through a list of about 50 candidates before ultimately selecting Mr. Bremer, a 23-year diplomat. Mr. Rumsfeld said he consulted with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence; and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, who all concurred on the choice.

But Bremer is not your average "23-year diplomat." He is specifically the former Reagan administration counterterrorism ambassador, a position that no doubt entailed intelligence coordination and assessment with a number of different agencies and countries. On the face of things, that would appear to be the rationale for his promotion: The US recognizes that its counterintelligence activities among the disparate Iraq factions has got to be first-rate to head off nasty surprises and keep the situation at a manageable level of tumult. Rome was not burned in a day.

Here's a great overview of the present Iraq situation by Patrick Cockburn. 

Posted by Steve Perry at May 21, 2003 8:14 AM

 

The Discreet Charm of the NYT

In light of the foregoing, I want to pause to call your attention to the lede from the New York Times's May 18 story, "Looting is Derailing Detailed US Plan to restore Iraq," by Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger. 

Long before President Bush ordered the attack against Iraq, the White House and the Pentagon drew up a plan for rebuilding and running the country after the war that was nearly as meticulous as the battle plan.

But over the past two to three weeks, the wheels have threatened to come off their vehicle for establishing the peace. The looting, lawlessness and violence that planners thought would mar only the first few weeks has proved more widespread and enduring than Mr. Bush and his aides expected and is threatening to undermine the American plan.

Question: What evidence is there, in this story or any other, that the Bush administration ever possessed a post-war plan for Iraq "nearly as meticulous as the battle plan"? None. And there are plenty of signs to the contrary, such as the boast that the administration formulated its post-war plan in three weeks and expected it to take just months and a few billion dollars.

Yet that does not dissuade Schmitt and Sanger from spending 40 paragraphs or so in sober rumination over this essential fiction. If only Jayson Blair had learned in time: At the Times, one lets one's sources make up the stories.  

Posted by Steve Perry at May 21, 2003 8:13 AM

 

The Neocons in Brief

Lew Rockwell, whose anti-war libertarian website has crept into the Alexa top 1000 with barely so much as a nod from official media, posted a great essay yesterday on the neo-cons who control the Republican party and the country.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 21, 2003 7:45 AM

 

New al-Qaeda Blueprint: Smaller is Better

Meet Saif al-Adel, the alleged mastermind of a leaner, more diffuse al-Qaeda designed to evade US intelligence 

Good villains always look 
a little like Lee Harvey Oswald

Who is he?

According to numerous sources al-Adel is the new military commander of al-Qaeda, and the architect of its new wave of suicide bombings. al-Adel, an Egyptian, is a close and trusted bin Laden lieutenant, and the head of Osama's personal security operation. At the moment he is also one of the two terrorists the US is accusing Iran of harboring. He was implicated in the 1998 Kenya and Tanzania bombings, and the FBI currently has a $25 million price on his head.

That's about as much biographical detail as can be gleaned from the press so far, and several of those "facts" come with an asterisk. First, it isn't clear when al-Adel ascended to his new role of prominence--the BBC, for instance, reported on December 19, 2001 that al-Adel had then risen to military commander of al-Qaeda following the death of Mohammed Atef. False alarm, maybe. Second, a Reuters report claims that al-Adel was not in fact the mastermind of the latest wave of attacks; the Reuters report says they were planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before his capture earlier this year. And finally, it's not at all clear that al-Adel is in Iran. Though a CNN report from August of last year placed him there at the time, most English-language reports from the region now say he's believed to be somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with bin Laden.

What's the "new" al-Qaeda?

Yesterday a reader named Robert Johnson sent me links to a little trove of very provocative reports from Asia Times, a paper that has done a lot of good work lately. All are by the same correspondent, Syed Saleem Shahzad, whose writing I'm not familiar with, and they purport to lay out in some detail the structure and strategy of al-Qaeda going forward. It's certainly the most detailed analysis I've seen, and it's more than plausible on its face, especially in light of recent events.      

According to Shahzad's accounts, al-Qaeda means to think globally and act locally--he writes that the organization has effectively dissolved itself into a coalition of localized units and plans to strike frequently, on a small scale, and in multiple locales around the world. Shahzad writes that "new cells are in place in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and they will be responsible for carrying out attacks--including suicide attacks--against United States interests in a number of regions. This will be the new face of al-Qaeda, which will emerge soon with a new name and under new command."

He also reports that an Egyptian group, Jamaat al-Jehad, is funneling people and resources to the main al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere, under the direction of bin Laden's second-in-command, Dr. Aiman al-Zawahiri: "Jamaat's leaders have redirected the energies of [regional] militants to concentrate purely on US targets, saying that it is the real enemy. It also pointed out that the network would operate with a new team and new name and would strike on US interests sooner rather than later."

This Egyptian connection might seem to explain Egypt's conspicuous absence from the list of countries bin Laden targeted for jihad in his last taped message, in February. But Shahzad claims that Egypt is in fact one of the countries being actively targeted by al-Qaeda.

Shahzad's most recent post, dated today, says that "intelligence sources" are saying the next targets could be in Europe ("and soon").

But you should really read his posts in full, particularly the May 17 and May 20 dispatches, which go into great detail describing the reorganization of al-Qaeda into more dispersed cells. (See also: May 3, May 15.)

[A footnote here: Tuesday's Guardian reports that the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, is warning of an imminent major attack in the US or Saudi Arabia: "There is chatter, a high level of chatter regionally and in other international spots... My gut feeling is that something big is going to happen here or in America."] 

A word about the menace that is Mindanao

A few weeks ago I wrote an item about the island of Mindanao at the southern end of the Philippines. Ripe ground for a skirmish in the war on terror, I said. And?

I will only note that yesterday, with Iraq in shambles and al-Qaeda blowing up around his ears, President Bush took time to offer a veiled warning to the terrorists who call Mindanao home. During a meeting with Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the hardest-working man in global counterterrorism outlined a plan for US military aid to the Philippines in exchange for greater "cooperation" in getting American hands round the throats of Filipino terrorists. He mentioned in particular the US's longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf--and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which happens to call Mindanao home. 

Why the MILF, and why Mindanao? It's where Asia's richest oil reserves are located.

A Last Note on Our Saudi Pals

Australia's The Age reports that the Saudi national guard sold arms to al-Qaeda, which turned around and bombed the residential compound housing employees of the American firm/CIA front that trains the Saudi national guard.

This is pretty much how they do things in Saudi Arabia all the time. Great place.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 20, 2003 1:44 AM

 

Play It Again, O-Sam-a

Do the Casablanca bombings herald more al-Qaeda attacks?

The news wires are buzzing with speculation that the suicide bombings in Morocco late last week were a signal to commence a new wave of al-Qaeda attacks. You may recall that in February, during the ramp-up to the Iraq invasion, Osama bin Laden released an audiotape in which he named several "apostate" regimes--Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Yemen--as sites for future action.

Of course that's assuming that the Morocco attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, a point on which there is some disagreement, at least outside the US. Several press accounts I've seen so far hint that the Morocco attacks may be the work of Salifia Jihadia, a separate organization with possible al-Qaeda ties.

But let's presume for the moment that there is a connection in the timing of the Saudi and Moroccan attacks. This would suggest two things: first, that the US's claims to have done serious damage to al-Qaeda's command-control structure since September 11 are hooey; and second, that this new coordinated offensive, if it is one, is aimed at pro-western governments in Islamic countries rather than head-on at the US. This would serve the dual purpose of striking at infidel regimes within the Islamic world, which is an end in itself for al-Qaeda, and undermining the US by further destabilizing west-friendly regimes in the Middle East and Africa.

That al-Qaeda has resurfaced should be no surprise for a couple of reasons. The Bush administration's actions since September 11, foregoing any semblance of international law in favor of a holy war of its own, have amounted to one long recruitment commercial not only for al-Qaeda but for all manner of guerrilla organizations.

Second, despite the Bushmen's touted capture or killing of key al-Qaeda operatives in the past year and a half, it remains doubtful whether the administration and the US intelligence apparatus even understand the nature of organizations like al-Qaeda. Ever since September 11, they have spoken of it as though it were a traditional military organization with a clear top-down hierarchy. Cut off the head and you kill the beast, or so the US has claimed to believe.

Highly doubtful. If a wave of fresh attacks does ensue in the coming days and weeks, we will know that al-Qaeda does possess some manner of command hierarchy, but that doesn't make it a traditional military organization. My hunch from the start has been that al-Qaeda is best understood not as one big company but as a trade group, a consortium of grassroots entrepreneurs with only a rough and loose kind of centralized communication/control. And the so-called leaders are probably best viewed as the venture capitalists who coordinate and underwrite specific projects. If this is so, then cutting off the head will likely only make it grow two new ones. (This goes for funding as well as the recruitment of soldiers and planners--there is no shortage of money to finance this kind of terrorism, thanks in part to vast sums of protection money paid to al-Qaeda et al. in the past by our friends the Saudis.)

So far we can say with certainty that either a) al-Qaeda has already begun growing new heads, or b) all US claims about taking out "key" al-Qaeda planners and operatives up to now have been lies or misreadings.

But of course what's good for Osama's holy war is good for GWB's as well. Every attack on US interests or allies puts more political capital behind the Bush administration's blank check for making war on terror wherever it professes to find it, at home and in some nations abroad. Bush and bin Laden both want a more polarized world, and they're getting it.

I'm mystified by one thing, though. Why wasn't Egypt on that list of Osama's? Are Egyptian elements now bribing al-Qaeda to stay off its strike list, as the House of Saud has long done? 

Related press clips

The Observer: Blown to Pieces.

India Times: al-Qaeda plans more Gulf attacks.

The LA Times: "Local hands" responsible for Casablanca blasts.

CBS: Iran the latest al-Qaeda haven?

"Far from crushing the al-Qaeda group, the US war has served only to temporarily shift them, perhaps making them even harder to target": Haveeru Daily.

Times of London on al-Qaeda's reappearance.

The Hindustan Times on the threat to Pakistan.

The Independent: al-Qaeda, back with a vengeance.   

SJ Merc-News: new wave of attacks?

NYT: global terror links in Morocco. 

US Dems call Bush soft on terrorism.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 19, 2003 8:52 AM

 

Weekend Note

I usually don't post much here on weekends--I have a life to simulate!--but I hope you weekenders will take a look around Twin Cities Babelogue, the blogging collective that Bush Wars is a part of. Check out Civil Liberties Watch, Not-So-Private Ryan, or the directory on the TCB home page, which features a growing roster of blogs on news, politics, arts, culture.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 17, 2003 10:55 AM

 

We're All in Bush's Movie

More production notes from Triumph of the Will II

None of the White House's past masters of the stage-managed photo op--Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton--can touch the hem of George Bush's garment. Where his predecessors settled for staging their own appearances, W (in concert with a better-trained press corps than any of his forebears enjoyed) is managing American perceptions not only of himself but the whole world.

He would like to tell the whole world what to think, but that's a taller order. Consider all the calculated media subterfuges of the Iraq War, starting with Shock & Awe, which was conceived in part as a televised message to the rest of the world. In the absence of instantaneous global media to broadcast the spectacular pictures, it's doubtful whether the US would have felt compelled to put on such a gaudy fireworks show.

Then there were the jubilant and selectively photographed throngs of Iraqis in the streets, culminating in the endlessly aired footage of the "crowd" at the foot of Saddam's toppling statue. And the guns-ablaze rescue of Private Jessica Lynch from a hospital that both sides knew Iraqi defense forces had already abandoned. ("Two days before the snatch squad arrived," the BBC notes, "[Lynch's Iraqi doctor] had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance.")

And this is to say nothing about the expensive, cartoonish episode on the USS Abraham Lincoln, or yesterday's tie-free tax-cut speech, or any of the rest of Bush's own photo-friendly stunts.

Just as impressive, though, is the litany of stories the American TV networks have disappeared on Bush's behalf: the shootings in Mosul, the utter civil chaos in Baghdad, this week's SA bombings. When it comes time to assemble the Bush in '04 campaign film, W won't really need his own Leni Riefenstahl; he can just work from the American network news archives. 

Posted by Steve Perry at May 16, 2003 7:53 AM

 

Chaos in Iraq

But do the Bushmen really mind?

While we're rehearsing the distortions of Bushtime, few are more egregious than what the American public has been given to understand about post-war affairs in Iraq. Ever since US forces staged their dramatic surge into Baghdad (enabled, it seems likely, by a secret payoff of top Ba'ath officials) and thereby stymied a rising chorus of the war's critics, scarcely anyone in American media has challenged a single claim of the Bush administration regarding Iraq. Instead we hear each day that everything is going to plan--with the usual regrettable setbacks, of course.

In truth, the Iraqi civil infrastructure is probably in worse shape now than it was the day Saddam's people were given the word to stop showing up for work. The US's efforts to restore utilities and civil order in Baghdad--assuming that it's actually fair to presume there have been any--have been so auspiciously disastrous that it's already led to the ouster of General Jay Garner, a longtime Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz ally who was expected to see through the first phase of the occupation.

Thursday's Washington Post featured an article on congressional rumblings about the Bushmen's clumsy handling of the war's aftermath. ("The disorder in Iraq has forced the administration to bring in more U.S. troops and to seek troops from other coalition countries," it notes.)  

It's tempting to conclude that things are going so badly because the Bush administration is so inept and so ill-prepared for the job. Never before has it seemed so plausible that the Bushies really were sincere in their fantastical assertion that they would clean up and restore Iraq in a few weeks with just a few billion dollars.  

It's also possible that they are not as dumb as they look. The question is, how badly does the US need or want a stable central government in Iraq? To bring together anything even remotely resembling a legitimate central government in Baghdad is to hasten the day when the calls for US withdrawal come to a head. It makes a certain kind of strategic sense for the US to put off that day while it tends to the real business of the occupation--establishing a long-term military presence in Iraq, getting the oil flowing again under US control--so long as it can deliver enough essential services to keep the populace from total revolt.

I'm not saying this is a wise course, even on its own cynical terms; continued US presence in Iraq, coupled with the civil revolt there, poses enormous risks to the US and its shaky Arab allies. But I do suspect there are elements in the administration thinking along these lines.

Have any of you seen an analysis of the Bushmen's endgame in Iraqi government-building? Send it along to sperry@citypages.com.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 16, 2003 7:52 AM

 

SA Bombings: Targeted US Company Was CIA Front

Vinnell Corp., the American company whose employee residential compound was struck in last Monday's bombings, has longtime ties to the CIA. Its staff includes a number of folks implicated in covert ops in other countries, as well. This Pacific News Service report by William Beeman is the most comprehensive account I've seen so far.    

Posted by Steve Perry at May 15, 2003 12:17 PM

 

W's Wish List: Bunker-Buster Nukes

Don't think of them as "battlefield" nuclear weapons. Think of them as first-strike nuclear weapons.

For years there has been a small claque of Pentagon hawks who have pushed for the development of "low-yield," "tactical" nuclear weapons--not the kind that sit around gathering dust, the kind you can actually use.

Seeing as how long-time members of that radical sect run the country now, it's not exactly surprising they want to revisit the subject of battlefield nukes. Late last week the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a 10-year-old ban on the development of baby fission-bombs.

As with most of its key initiatives, the Bush administration is trying to bum-rush the measure past the rest of the government. Ian Hoffman writes in the Oakland Tribune, "In just two months, the Bush administration and Republican lawmakers dismantled a decade-old cornerstone of arms control and put weapons scientists to work on not one but at least two nuclear weapons without any formal Pentagon request for them." (Read Hoffman's excellent analysis.) 

The most common cover story told on behalf of tactical nuke development is that it will give the US the mother of all bunker-busters, the sort of bomb that can burrow down deep in the ground--to the places where furtive, rodent-like despots the world over are most prone to hide their weapons of mass destruction.

(And yes, administration apologists are actually using this absurd excuse. The New York Times quotes Republican Armed Services Committee chair John Warner thus: "Research on low-yield nuclear weapons is a prudent step to safeguard America from emerging threats and enemies who go deeper and deeper underground." The Times account also features this knee-slapper: "Proponents, mainly Republicans, argue that low-yield warheads could be used to incinerate chemical or biological weapons installations without scattering deadly agents into the atmosphere." Without scattering deadly agents aside from nuclear fallout, that is.)

But the real impetus for a new generation of smaller nuclear weapons is political. As the administration makes ready for a world in which America extends and enforces its empire by more nakedly aggressive and exclusively military means, it still lacks for the mother of all pre-emptive threats--no matter how much a renegade nation the US may be now, the Bushmen nonetheless realize they cannot credibly threaten adversaries with nuclear annihilation without mobilizing the whole world against them. So their solution is to strive for a new generation of smaller (but, needless to say, still devastating) nuclear weapons with which they can threaten recalcitrant foes into submission. Quoth the NYT again:

"We need to make sure our weapons will in fact be seen by other counties as a deterrent," Linton Brooks, the acting administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in an interview. "One element of that is usability. If nobody believes there is any circumstance where you will use the weapon, it is not a deterrent."

So the real bottom line is once again deterrence, except with a first-strike frame of mind: Do as we say and don't make us kill you.

More: Here's a nearly two-year-old post-9/11 piece by Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch in which they note the brewing agitation for baby nukes.

And here's a pretty good analysis from James Carroll in the Boston Globe.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 15, 2003 10:49 AM

 

TV News and the SA Bombings: The Dog That Didn't Bark

Monday night I wrote that none of the Big 3 cable news channels was featuring the Riyadh bombings in its evenings telecasts; I took a look around on Tuesday evening as well and it was pretty much the same--MSNBC was featuring a Riyadh report, but the other two were once again busy elsewhere.

Consider: In the midst of a supposed war on terror, we experience the largest terrorist strike against US interests since 9/11, and to the American broadcast news apparatus that has marketed the war on terror since day one, it's just another story in the daily cycle. What gives?

The answer is simple and baldfaced. More than ever the TV networks take their cues from the White House, and the Bush administration does not want to foreground the Saudi bombings. They raise too many pertinent and discomfiting questions: about the nature of our alliance with the corrupt and crumbling House of Saud, and therefore about our real goals in the region; about our friends the Sauds' effort to keep the wolves at bay by paying large sums of protection money to terrorist elements; about brewing popular revolt against pro-US governments in key countries such as SA, Egypt, and Pakistan.

Finally, and most devastatingly, the Saudi/Al-Qaeda connection points to the real Saudi-bred roots of September 11, and quite possibly to the reasons the Bush administration did nothing about the pre-9/11 terror warnings it received.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 14, 2003 10:09 AM

 

Saudi Updates

The casualty figures listed this morning are much lower than the ones that floated on the wire yesterday--34 is the latest figure commonly cited.

ABC News Australia is reporting that Monday's Saudi bombers were indeed members of the cell that was being chased by intelligence agents last week.

Australia's The Age reports that there is intelligence to indicate coming Al-Qaeda attacks in Indonesia. And many Russians, including Vladimir Putin, believe that Al-Qaeda is also behind the Chechnya terror bombings of recent days.

The Independent reports that "most American diplomatic personnel" are being moved out. The BBC notes that US officials have long pressed the Saudis to improve their security. Bob Graham is pushing his Bushies-soft-on-terror line again.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 14, 2003 10:07 AM

 

Elsewhere at TCB

There are several blogs here at the Twin Cities Babelogue site that feature news and comment on the war, and the culture of war here at home. Check out Elaine Cassel's Civil Liberties Watch, the best Ashcroft-watching digest I've seen anywhere, and Sally Ryan's Not-So-Private Ryan. Steve Monaco's got a nice essay about a forgotten McCarthy-era radio satire that's now available on the web. Finally, take a look at TCB newcomer Dave Marsh's new web column.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 14, 2003 9:48 AM

 

They're Always Scheming Against Us

I've got a column in the print edition of City Pages this week about the war and American siege culture. It's too long to throw up in its entirety here on the front page (about a thousand words), but you can see it here.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 14, 2003 9:21 AM

 

Some Foreign Workers Set to Flee SA

How much is too much?

check out the great posters at propaganda remix project

"One expatriate found body parts in the swimming pool after a night of terror for Westerners," notes the Times of London. Michael Theodoulou writes that some UK companies are already telling employees to get their dependents out of the country:

BAE Systems advised its staff to repatriate dependents, even though none of its employees were in compounds attacked by the suicide bombers. The aviation company employs about 2,000 Britons in Saudi Arabia and estimates that between 600 and 1,000 of their dependents are still there. Other dependents took voluntary repatriation before the Iraq war and had not yet returned.

Read the rest.

Boeing is pulling its 11 employees out of SA.

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article on Saudi Arabia's Uncivil War.

Here's a fairly vivid glimpse of ex-pat life in Saudi Arabia from the Coventry News.

But this article from Arab News suggests there's still a good deal of denial among ex-pats:  "Reaction in the expatriate community to the explosions and mounting death and injury toll in the Riyadh bombings has been immediate and voluble.... A common theme is that the perpetrators are not representative of the majority of Saudis."

Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?

Posted by Steve Perry at May 13, 2003 5:48 PM

 

Al-Qaeda Note Claims Responsibility

Suggests more attacks on the way in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere

The Washington Post has details of the email from an alleged Al-Qaeda operative to al-Majallah, the London-based Arabic weekly, that points toward yesterday's Riyadh bombings. The Post quotes this portion of the note, which was received by the paper on the eve of the bombings:

"Beside targeting the heart of America, among the strategic priorities now is to target and execute operations in the Gulf countries and allies of the United States, particularly Egypt and Jordan," Al-Ablaj wrote in the e-mail.

"The list of assassinations, the raid teams and the martyr operation squads are ready. The caches of weapons, ammunition, explosives and bombs are plentiful, and the authorities cannot uncover them," al-Ablaj wrote, according to the magazine. "We will start by creating tensions to confuse the security services, then carry out major operations and lethal strikes."

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 13, 2003 4:57 PM

 

Bombers Hit Employees of Firm That Trains Saudi National Guard

BW reader Robert Johnson sent along this link to an AFP wire story indicating that one of the residential compounds struck yesterday was occupied by employees of the US firm Vinnell, whose job it is to train the Saudi National Guard.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 13, 2003 1:27 PM

 

CNN: Definitely Al-Qaeda

It's no particular surprise that CNN terrorism talking head Peter Bergen has pointed the finger at Al-Qaeda--so has everyone else--but the transcript of his appearance this morning is interesting nonetheless. Here's what he has to say about Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda:

I think this action speaks for itself. I mean, you've got U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arriving in the country. This attack happened. Prince Nayif, the minister of the interior, just last week said that al Qaeda was weak or perhaps nonexistent in Saudi Arabia. Well, this is their answer.

I think the Saudis have consistently downplayed the fact that al Qaeda exists in their country to such a large degree. For obvious reasons they don't want to admit it. But when you have 15 of the September 11, 2001, hijackers were Saudi, isn't it kind of odd that we haven't had any person extradited from Saudi Arabia who might have been a confederate in the 9/11 attacks?

We have had people extradited from Pakistan who were part of the 9/11 plot. We've also seen in Germany the Germans putting on trial people involved in the 9/11 plot. But none of this has happened in Saudi Arabia.

Reports indicate that the largest category of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are Saudi. Clearly, al Qaeda is a group that has benefited from Saudi money. You know Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. In fact, Riyadh is his hometown, where these explosions happened.

This is a Saudi operation to a large degree, and I think this is a huge wake-up call for the Saudis to really get very, very serious about clamping down. They have done some things in the past; for instance, trying to crack down on Saudi charities that may be funneling money to al Qaeda. They say that they've arrested hundreds of people and they've questioned thousands more. But clearly that was not enough to prevent this kind of attack.

Read the rest.

Posted by Steve Perry at May 13, 2003 9:54 AM

 

The Bombing Attacks in Saudi Arabia

Last updated 2:00 p.m. central time

At least 90 dead, including 10 Americans; everyone presumes it's Al-Qaeda

News sources this afternoon are saying that 90-100 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a string of three near-simultaneous car bomb attacks at the US-occupied compounds of Al-Hamra, Cordoval, and Gedawal. These were followed a few hours later by a bombing outside a US-Saudi-owned joint venture called the Saudi Maintenance Company, or Siyanco, which operates shipping facilities in the port city of Jeddah.

MORNING NEWS CLIPS: The Hindu says the death toll could reach 100. Al-Qaeda is naturally a prime suspe