Coins for Abbott: Indonesians rally to repay tsunami aid, call Australian PM ‘Shylock’.

Indonesians have mobilized in record numbers to collect cash for the Australian PM, who touched a raw nerve by bringing up Australia’s $1 bn in tsunami relief aid to Jakarta while making a clemency appeal for convicted drug traffickers.

Images of Australian Prime Minister Tonny Abbott with red tape crossed over his mouth can be seen all over Indonesia, particularly in Jakarata. Loads of silver coins are covering banners spread on the ground – all part of the “repay” protest campaign that has spread like a bushfire across the island nation.

As part of the international relief effort for the 2004 earthquake and tsunami off the west coast of Sumatra that killed more than 100,000 people, Australia was quick to offer $1 billion in aid relief.

Speaking this week, Abbott hinted that it is time for the Asian nation to repay its debt by freeing two members of the famous Bali Nine, currently on a death row. The Bali Nine was a name given to a group of nine Australians who were arrested in Bali in 2005 Bali for planning to smuggle 8.3 kg (18 lb) of heroin, valued at over $3 million, from Indonesia to Australia.

“Let's not forget that a few years ago when Indonesia was struck by the Indian Ocean tsunami, Australia sent a billion dollars worth of assistance,” Abbot said. “I would say to the Indonesian people and the Indonesian government: we in Australia are always there to help you and we hope that you might reciprocate in this way at this time,” the PM stated, referring to death-row Australian nationals Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The plea sparked a fierce backlash, with Indonesians comparing Tony Abbott to Shakespeare’s Shylock, the moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who demanded a pound of flesh if his loans weren’t paid back.

In order to rebuff the Australian PM, the nation of 250 million is now collecting pocket change to repay the “loan” Australia had once provided.

"Australians need a prime minister, not a Shylock and drug dealer's cousin," read a banner during Sunday’s protest. A Twitter campaign using the hashtags #KoinuntukAustralia, #coinforAustralia and #coinforAbbott has also generated a lot of steam.

While on the diplomatic front, the country’s leadership seemed satisfied by the explanation offered by the Australians on Friday, many ordinary Indonesians remain enraged. During a protest on Sunday, thousands rallied to express their anger and continue to coin collection campaign.

The Pro-Indonesia Coalition, for example, organized a “Coin for Australia” movement during a car-free day at a roundabout near Hotel Indonesia. “Let us not let our dignity being bought by Tony Abbot,” action coordinator Andi Sinulingga said at the event.

Rian, one of the event organizers, told the Sydney Morning Herald that it was a joy delivering the coins to the Australian embassy, saying that if every person donates one coin, which has a population of 250 million, Indonesia could pay back the “small amount of money donated by Australia.”

“So, don't you ever mention something as tiny as $1 billion in relief for us,” Rian said. “We are a nation that refuses to be colonized, a nation that would like to tell other nations not to try to destroy this republic.”

Indonesia plans to execute 11 convicts on death row, including the drug convicts from Australia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, whose clemency pleas had been rejected by President Joko Widodo. Earlier this week, however, the vice president's office said that the execution of two Australian smugglers had been delayed by up to one month.

Indonesia executed six drug offenders in January, including five foreigners, prompting Brazil and the Netherlands to recall their ambassadors. February 23, 2015 00:35. RT.

Snowden documentary CitizenFour grabs Oscar.

A Laura Poitras’ film about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has won Hollywood’s highest accolade by snatching the Oscar for Best Documentary.

“The disclosures of Edward Snowden don’t only expose a threat to our privacy but to our democracy itself," Poitras said during her acceptance speech. "When the most important decisions being made affecting all of us are made in secret, we lose our ability to check the powers that control," she pointed out, thanking Edward Snowden "for his courage, and for the many other whistleblowers." Poitras added that she is sharing the award with Glenn Greenwald and "other journalists who are exposing truth." She was joined on stage by editor Mathilde Bonnefoy, producer Dirk Wilutzky and Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills.

As the filmmaker and her collaborators walked offstage on Sunday night, Oscar host Neil Patrick Harris couldn't help quipping: "The subject of 'CitizenFour,' Edward Snowden, could not be here tonight for some treason."

In response to the news, Snowden, who was charged under the federal Espionage Act and is currently living in asylum in Russia, wrote in a statement, released by the American Civil Liberties Union: “When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I’m grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received."

“My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world,” Snowden said.

The documentary features a series of face-to-face meetings between Berlin-based filmmaker Laura Poitras, who appeared to be on the US Homeland Security “watch list” at one point, and the whistleblower Snowden, who got in touch with Poitras last January when she was working on a feature about surveillance in the post-9/11 era. 

"Every border you cross, every purchase you make, every call you dial is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not," Edward Snowden warns in the documentary’s trailer.

In 2013, after several months of encrypted correspondence, Poitras came to Hong Kong to meet the leaker. Her camera captured "Citizenfour", aka Snowden, in a hotel room, over the "eight days that shook the world," during which his astounding revelations were first made public in June. She told Vanity Fair that before she was contacted by Snowden she was "stopped and detained every time she crossed the US border" for six years running. She finally decided to move to Berlin. Poitras said she initially expected Snowden to be an anonymous source she would never get to meet in the flesh, and was highly surprised when he said they could meet face-to-face.

"Citizenfour" was a shoo-in for the documentary category. In the last few months it has scooped a string of coveted awards, including best documentary at the Baftas, the prestigious Directors Guild Award (the DGA), and the National Society of Film Critics. Citizenfour beat out "Finding Vivian Maier", "Last Days in Vietnam", "The Salt of the Earth", and "Virunga" to grab the Oscar. At last year's awards ceremony, "Twenty Feet From Stardom" took home the top honor. 

"Citizenfour" is the final piece of Poitras' trilogy that began with an Oscar-nominee "My Country, My Country", about life and elections in Iraq during US occupation, and "The Oath", about Guantanamo Bay.

Poitras shared a Pulitzer Prize last year for her role in publicizing the Snowden documents. She was also awarded IDA's Courage Under Fire award in 2013 for her "conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth." 

In December, Edward Snowden received a Swedish-based alternative to the Nobel Prize, the Right Livelihood Award, for "his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance violating basic democratic processes and constitutional rights." 

Snowden has inspired another US director, veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone, to turn his story into fiction. Stone has purchased the rights to both “The Snowden Files,” a 2014 book about the NSA leaks written by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, and “Time of the Octopus,” a novel based loosely on the Snowden saga penned by the former contractor’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena. Shooting is set to take place in Munich this year. February 23, 2015 03:57. RT.

Retired US officer kills 2 daughters, self.

A recently retired US police officer has fatally stabbed and shot his two daughters and his dog before turning the gun on himself in White Plains, Westchester County, New York.

52-year-old Glen Hochman shot dead his two daughters; Alissa, 17 and Deanna, 13, and then killed himself on Saturday in their home in Adelphi Avenue, Harrison, a town about 15 miles northeast of New York City.

Police found Hochman lying dead in the garage from a gunshot wound to the head. His wife, Anamarie, 50, and his third and oldest daughter, Samantha, were not home at the time of the shooting spending the day at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut.

David Chong, the commissioner of the White Plains Department of Public Safety, said in a statement that “the department is shocked and horrified by the news of this unfathomable tragedy”.

Also, Harrison schools superintendent Louis Wool issued a statement on the deaths of the two girls, saying “Both were lost to incomprehensible tragedy”. "In this awful moment, let us remember how proud we are of them, and how much they have helped others".

Hochman worked as an officer for the city of White Plains for 22 years and retired from the department last month. He received a lifesaving award through the public safety department in May 2014 for the efforts he made to keep an “unresponsive male’’ alive until paramedics could attend to him.

Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States. The US averages 87 deaths each day as a function of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control. Feb 22, 2015 5:47AM  PTV.

Muslims in Norway demonstrate in solidarity with Jews.

Muslims in Norway have joined a human shield called the “Ring of Peace” outside the only active synagogue in the capital, Oslo, to demonstrate solidarity with Jews in the country.

The Saturday demonstration came following a series of recent attacks against Jewish citizens in Europe.

A group of Norwegian Muslims organized the event in a show of solidarity with the country’s Jewish community, forming what they described as a Peace Ring around the Jewish synagogue.

Jews are a tiny Norwegian minority with a population of only 1,500. There are only two Synagogues in Norway.

The Muslim demonstrators said they sought to reassure fellow Norwegian Jews of their support.

The event participants stated that Muslims and Jews in Europe are both victims of hate crimes and should be supporting each other.

Organizer of the Peace Ring demo, a 17-year-old college student named Hajra Arshad, said during an address to the event that it is the Islamic teachings of love and respect toward others that motivated her to arrange the demonstration.

This is while critics state that any action of solidarity with Jews can be mistaken by some as support for the Israeli regime. Arshad, however, insisted on the importance that people learn to distinguish Jews from Israelis.

“I think it’s really, really, really important that people can distance Israel from Jews because there are a lot of Jews that are not taking any sides of the politics in Israel,” said Arshad.

Norwegian Muslims and Jews often meet in several interfaith harmony events but this is being hailed as a unique event organized by Muslim youths not belonging to any particular denomination and organizations.

Europe’s Jewish population has been steadily declining over the past decades following World War II. While in 1960 their population was registered at nearly 3.2 million, by 2010 only 1.4 million had remained across the continent – nearly 0.2 percent of Europe’s population, according to the US-based Pew Research Center.

Sun Feb 22, 2015 6:38AM  PTV.

Netanyahu does not speak for all American Jews.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, The Washington Post, Religion News Service, February 20, 2015.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing unexpectedly strong pressure to withdraw from a planned March 3 speech to a joint session of Congress. The invitation from House Speaker John Boehner bypassed President Obama entirely. Intended to sway U.S. policy on Iran and support Netanyahu’s re-election bid, the invitation is eliciting unprecedented opposition.

Netanyahu, in defending the visit, has indicated that he is coming to Congress to speak as the representative of the “entire Jewish people.” American Jews are largely appalled by the notion that Netanyahu, or any other Israeli politician — one that we did not elect and do not choose to be represented by — claims to speak for us.

The math is clear: While 69 percent of American Jews (population 6.8 million) voted for President Obama in 2012, only 23 percent of Israel’s Jews (population 6.1 million) voted for Netanyahu.

This isn’t the first time that Netanyahu has claimed the mantle of the representative of the Jews, nor is it the first time that Jews around the world have been affronted by the idea that the prime minister of Israel would claim to speak for them. What makes this moment unique, however, is the unprecedented cracks in the bipartisan consensus that usually sustains unquestioning support for Israel.

Thus far, at least 25 members of Congress have publicly pledged to skip Netanyahu’s speech, including the heads of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Staunch Israel supporters, from Thomas Friedman to Jeffrey Goldberg, have expressed concern that the current brouhaha threatens the bipartisan consensus on Israel, while even the leaders of the Anti-Defamation League and the Union for Reform Judaism have called on Netanyahu to cancel his speech.

For years, some political observers have noted that there is an alliance of true belief between the Republican Party and the Likud-led Israeli government, while Democratic party principles should at least in theory require some criticism of Israel’s settlement building, human rights violations, and discriminatory policies. Of course, it hasn’t until now played out that way, as the pressure from donors and the skillful Israel lobby has enforced a virtual, if superficial, consensus on Israel.

Now, under the guise of supporting Obama and inter-party wrangling, some Democrats have the opportunity to express a little of their deep anger not only toward Israeli policies, but their perception that they’ve been forced to support those policies even when they didn’t agree with them to ensure their re-election.

This partisan split is why staunch supporters of the Israeli status quo want Netanyahu to cancel the speech — they fear this initial crack in the consensus could lead to a permanent split, with Israel becoming a partisan issue.

While coverage of the controversy over the speech has focused on violations of diplomatic protocol and Israeli officials attempting to play Democrats and Republicans against one another, the stakes are actually much higher. Netanyahu is not only trying to dictate American policy toward Iran, but is also using the issue of Iran as a way to avoid hard questions about Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and its own citizens.

The current controversy around Netanyahu’s speech has revealed what we have known for a long time: that the increasingly oppressive and hawkish policies of the Israeli government do not reflect the values of American Jews, nor of Democrats. Israel’s right-wing leadership — which justified a brutal war against Gaza last summer, continues settlement construction in the face of international censure, and allows ongoing attacks in the streets of Israel against Palestinians and anti-war activists — is not worthy of our support.

The long-standing bipartisan support for Israel even as it continues to flout international law and undermine the possibility for peace has long been an anomaly in U.S. politics. That’s why those of us who have long advocated change in U.S. policy towards Israel see the growing backlash against the speech as a hopeful sign.

A couple of weeks ago, Jewish Voice for Peace and a coalition of allies initiated an online campaign to ask our elected officials to ?skipthespeech as a strong statement against warmongering and electioneering. Over 55,000 people have since taken action. Other progressive groups have issued similar calls.

Trends indicate a growing discomfort with Israeli actions among many Americans, including people of color and young Jews. Elected Democratic officials may increasingly find support among their base for taking a clear stand against warmongering and Israel’s assumed unconditional support by the U.S. Skipping the speech is turning out not just to be good policy, but good politics.

(Rebecca Vilkomerson is the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest grass-roots Jewish organization working for equality and human rights for all the people of Israel and Palestine.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/netanyahu-does-not-speak-for-all-american-jews-commentary/2015/02/20/9c456ecc-b943-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html

Who Is the Ruler of Israel?

By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch.

The real ruler of Israel is one Sheldon Adelson, 81, American Jew, Casino king, who was rated as the world’s tenth richest person, worth 37.2 billion dollars at the latest count. But who is counting?
Besides his casinos in Las Vegas, Pennsylvania, Macao and Singapore, he owns the U.S. Republican party and, lately, both Houses of the U.S. Congress. He also owns Binyamin Netanyahu.

Adelson’s connection with Israel is personal. On a blind date, he fell in love with an Israeli woman.
Miriam Farbstein was born in Haifa, attended a prestigious high school, did her army service in the Israeli institute which deals with bacteriological warfare and is a multifaceted scientist. After an adopted son died of an overdose, she is devoted to the fight against drugs, especially cannabis.
Both Adelsons are fanatical supporters of Israel. Not just any Israel, but a rightist, supremacist, arrogant, violent, expansionist, annexationist, non-compromising, colonialist Israel.

In "Bibi" Netanyahu they found their man. Through Netanyahu they hope to rule Israel as their private fief. To assure this, they did an extraordinary thing: they founded an Israeli newspaper, solely devoted to the furthering of the interests of Binyamin Netanyahu. Not of the Likud, not of a specific policy, but of Netanyahu personally.

Years ago I invented a Hebrew word for papers which are distributed for nothing. "Hinamon" translates, roughly, into "ragratis" or "gratissue" and was intended to denigrate. But I did not dream of a monster like "Israel Hayom" ("Israel Today") – a paper with unlimited funds, distributed every day for nothing in the streets and malls all over the country by hundreds, perhaps thousands of paid young persons.

Israelis love getting something for nothing. Israel Hayom is now the daily paper with the widest distribution in Israel. It drains readers and advertising revenue from its only competitor – Yedioth Ahronoth ("Latest News"), which held this title until then.

Yedioth reacted furiously. It became a ferocious enemy of Netanyahu. Yossi Werter, a commentator of the center-left Haaretz (which has a far lower circulation) even believes that the present election boils down to a contest between the two papers.

That is vastly exaggerated. Judged by political and social content, there is little to differentiate the two. Both are super-patriotic, warmongering and rightist. That is the journalistic recipe for attracting the masses anywhere in the world.

Yedioth is owned by the Moses family, a business-minded clan. The present, third-generation publisher is Arnon ("Noni") Moses, the publicity-shy boss of a large economic empire based on the paper. The paper serves his business interests, but he has no special political interests.
Adelson is unique.

In Israel, betting is forbidden by law. We have no casinos, and secret gambling dens are raided by the police. In our early youth we were taught that casino moguls are bad people, almost like arms merchants. They take the money off poor addicted people, throwing them into despair, even suicide. See Dostoyevsky.

Israelis read Israel Hayom (it’s something for nothing, after all), but they don’t necessarily like the man and his methods. So some members of the Knesset were encouraged to enter a bill forbidding gratis newspapers altogether.

Netanyahu and the Likud party did everything to obstruct this bill. But in the preliminary vote (necessary for private members’ bills) they were beaten in an amazing way. Even members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition voted for it. The cameras caught Netanyahu literally running in the Knesset plenum hall to gain his seat before the voting started.

The vote was 43 to 23. Almost half the Likud members absented themselves. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his party voted for the bill. So did ministers Ya’ir Lapid and Tzipi Livni.

From the preliminary vote to the final adoption, such a bill has to pass several stages. There was plenty of time to bury it in one of the committees. But Netanyahu was furious. A few days after the vote, he dismissed Lapid and Livni from the cabinet, causing the government coalition to break up and the Knesset to disperse.

Why did Netanyahu do such a foolish thing less then half way through his (third) term of office? There can be only one logical explanation: he was ordered to do so by Adelson, in order to prevent the adoption of the law.

If so, Adelson is now our chief lawmaker. Perhaps he is also our chief government-maker. Money plays an ever-increasing role in politics. Election propaganda is made on television, which is very expensive. Both in Israel and the U.S., legal and illegal funds pour into the campaign, directly and indirectly. Corruption is abetted or tolerated by the courts. The very rich (known euphemistically in America as the "wealthy") exercise undue influence.

In the last U.S. presidential elections, Adelson poured rivers of dollars into the contest. He supported Newt Gingrich, and then Mitt Romney, with huge sums of money. In vain. Perhaps Americans don’t like to be ruled by captains of casinos.

For the next U.S. presidential elections, Adelson has started early. He has summoned to his Las Vegas casino HQ all leading Republican candidates, to grill them on their allegiance to him – and to Netanyahu. Nobody dared to refuse the summons. Would a Roman senator refuse the summons of Caesar?

In Israel, such rituals are superfluous. The Adelsons – both Miri and Sheldon – know who their man is.
The Israel Hayom newspaper is, of course, a big propaganda machine, totally devoted to the re-election of Netanyahu. All quite legal. In a democracy, who can tell a newspaper whom to support? We are still a democracy, for God’s sake!

It seems to be strange for a country to allow a foreigner, who never lived in the country, to have such enormous power over its future, indeed, over its very existence.

That’s where Zionism comes in. According to the Zionist creed, Israel is the state of the Jews, all the Jews. Every Jew in the world belongs to Israel, even if temporarily residing somewhere else. A few days ago, Netanyahu publicly claimed to represent not just the State of Israel but also the entire "Jewish People". No need to ask them.

Accordingly, Adelson is not really a foreigner. He is one of us. True, he cannot vote in Israel, though his wife probably can. But many people, including himself, believe that he, being a Jew, has a perfect right to interfere in our affairs and dominate our lives.

For example, the appointment of our ambassador in the U.S. Ron Dermer is an American, born in Miami, who was active in Republican politics. To appoint an American functionary of the Republican Party as ambassador of Israel to a Democratic administration may seem strange. Not so strange if Netanyahu acted under the orders of Sheldon Adelson.

It was Adelson who prepared the witches’ brew that is now endangering Israel’s lifeline to Washington. His stooge, Dermer, induced the Republicans in Congress – all of them dependent on Adelson’s largesse or hoping to be so – to invite Netanyahu to give an anti-Obama speech before both Houses.
While this intrigue was in preparation, Dermer met with John Kerry but did not tell him of Netanyahu’s coming. Neither did Netanyahu inform President Obama, who, in a fury, announced that he would not meet with the Prime Minister.

From the point of view of Israel’s vital interests, it is sheer madness to provoke the President of the United States of America, who controls American’s flow of arms to Israel and the American veto power in the UN. But from the point of view of Adelson, who wants to elect a Republican president in 2016, it makes sense. He has already threatened to invest unlimited sums of money to prevent the reelection of any Senator or Representative who is absent from Netanyahu’s speech.

We are nearing open warfare between the Government of Israel and the President of the United States. Is someone playing roulette with our future?

February 16, 2015: http://www.counterpunch.org/

Unprecedented! US breaking ranks with Israelis, saying they are liars.

An American political commentator and activist says it is "unprecedented" that a US administration is “breaking ranks” with Israelis, telling them they are liars.

Mark Glenn, writer and co-founder of the Crescent and Cross Solidarity Movement, an interfaith forum dedicated to uniting Muslims and Christians against Zionists, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration said Israel is issuing false information about America’s position in nuclear negotiations with Iran.

“There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There's no question about that,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

He accused Israel of "cherry-picking" intelligence information that distorts the US position.

Fri Feb 20, 2015 1:42AM PTV

Wesley Clark: “ISIL got started through funding from our friends and allies”.

A retired US general has acknowledged that Washington’s allies created the ISIL terrorist group to confront the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah.

Retired general Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000, made the revelation in a recent interview with the CNN. “ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies,” Clark admitted on Tuesday, using another acronym for ISIL.

The only group that will fight Hezbollah is ISIL because they are “zealots” and resemble a “Frankenstein,” he said. General Clark did not specify exactly which US allies were involved the creation of the ISIL. But he said the terrorist group is part of a strategy to destroy Hezbollah with an army of extremists.

Clark is known for his critical comments regarding Washington’s war plans.

Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:27PM PTV. Also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHLqaSZPe98

CIA-planted ‘evidence’ may force IAEA review of Iran’s alleged nuke arms program.

Doctored blueprints for nuclear weapon components supplied to Iran by the CIA 15 years ago could force the IAEA to review its conclusions on Iran’s atomic program, which was potentially based on misleading intelligence, Bloomberg reports.

The details of the Central Intelligence Agency operation back in 2000 were made public as part of a judicial hearing into a case involving Jeffrey Sterling, an agentconvicted of leaking classified information on CIA spying against Iran.

“The goal is to plant this substantial piece of deception information on the Iranian nuclear-weapons program, sending them down blind alleys, wasting their time and money,” a May 1997 CIA cable submitted to the court reads.

The intelligence in question pertains to fake designs of atomic components that were transferred to Iran in February 2000.

Now it turns out the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could be forced to reassess their earlier conclusions regarding Iran’s atomic program, the publication quoted two anonymous Western diplomats as saying. Part of the IAEA’s suspicions about the alleged Iran's nuclear weapons program relies on information provided by multiple intelligence agencies.

“This story suggests a possibility that hostile intelligence agencies could decide to plant a ‘smoking gun’ in Iran for the IAEA to find,” Peter Jenkins, the UK’s former envoy to the Vienna-based agency told Bloomberg. “That looks like a big problem.”

In the latest quarterly report, the atomic watchdog said that the team of experts is still concerned about Iran’s nuclear intentions, prompting an immediate reaction from Israel.

“The agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile,” it reads.

Whether or not the revealed CIA secret will change this assessment remains to be seen, but Tehran has always insisted that its atomic energy program is peaceful.

“This revelation highlights the dangers of reliance by the IAEA upon evidence concerning Iran provided to it by third party states whose political agendas are antithetical to Iran,” Dan Joyner, a law professor at the University of Alabama told Bloomberg.

In response to the news, the IAEA told the publication that it conducts thorough assessments of the information it receives and uses. The CIA has so far failed to comment.

In 2013, Iran agreed to an interim deal with Russia, the United States, China, France, Great Britain and Germany under which Tehran would promise to flatline its nuclear program, in exchange for a loosening of the severe banking and oil sanction earlier imposed by the West. Published time: February 21, 2015 00:16 RT.

The United States & the Invasion of Iraq.

Malene Melvold Hordvik

This paper explores the reasons for the United States’ invasion of Iraq. The main argument is that the US adopted rhetorical tools such as “fighting terror” and “liberating Iraq” to disguise its real policy objectives of national interests; namely to control and protect the Persian Gulf region’s excessive oil reserves; to guard the interests of US ally Israel; and the broader desire of a US global hegemony.

The paper is organised into two main sections, in which the first section focuses on the official reasons given by the Bush Administration for invading Iraq in 2003. It highlights how the events of 9/11 changed the discourse to a “War on Terror” and was used to justify the invasion, by highlighting the Saddam regime’s alleged support for terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and the urgent need to change regime and liberate Iraq. This section also points out the inconsistencies in the evidence given for invading Iraq, and identifies that there must have been a hidden rationale behind fighting terror and implementing democracy in the Gulf region.

Hence the following section reveals the real US foreign policy objectives for invading Iraq. Through the implementation of Goldstein’s realist model, it reveals that there is continuity in foreign policy objectives through the Clinton and Bush Administrations, however tactics changed from Clinton’s policy of ‘containment’, to Bush’s unilateral approach and regime change in Iraq. Thus, the tactic change helped preserve the national interests of oil, Israel and hegemony, at least in the short term.

On 11 September 2001, global militant Islamist organisation al Qaida carried out a series of coordinated attacks on American soil, commonly referred to as the ‘9/11’ attacks. As a direct response, president George W. Bush launched the global ‘War on Terror’, with a clear message to the international society, ”We will pursue nations that provide aid and safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”^[1] Twelve days later, the President signed the Executive Order 13224, which authorised the US government to block foreign individuals and entities that commit, “or pose a significant risk of committing” terrorism, as well as those who “provide support, services, or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorist and terrorist organizations.”^[2]

Whilst the Order legitimised the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October, intending to overthrow the Taliban government who supposedly hosted al Qaida, it became evident that the Order also would apply to the future invasion of Iraq. The policies that led up to the invasion were spelled out in a series of presidential speeches and statements, namely at the UN General Assembly on 12 September 2002, when Bush addressed his National Security Strategy, which “declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent.”^[3] The security strategy also authorised the US to act preemtively and, if necessary, unilaterally for national security reasons.

As a result, Iraq became the epicentre of the War on Terror. Iraq had since early 2002 been part of Bush’s Axis of Evil^[4], which consisted of "the world's most dangerous regimes"^[5] who supposedly sponsor actions of terrorism and threaten the US with WMDs. Furthermore did US government officials, most noteworthy Vice President Dick Cheney, make a connection between Iraq and al Qaida, consequently manufacturing Iraq as a key to the war on terrorism.^[6] The result was a joint Iraq Resolution passed by the US Congress in October 2002, justifying the pre-emptive military action against Iraq that would take place on 19 March 2003:^[7]

"Our cause is just, the security of the nations we serve and the peace of the world. And our mission is clear, to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, and to free the Iraqi people."

President George W. Bush discusses Beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 22 March 2003.

Despite the crystal clear agenda, UN inspectors installed in Iraq since November 2002^[8] had still failed to discover Saddam’s alleged WMDs by May 2003, when the war was considered officially over.^[9] Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission report of 16 June 2004 concluded there was "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States.”^[10]. No link had been found between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden: the two actors were, in fact, bitter enemies: "Each would look to control the future of the Muslim world, bin Laden conceivably for the greater glory of Allah and Saddam for the earthly delight of vastly augmenting his power."^[11]

Only by pointing out Iraq on the map, it quickly becomes evident that Operation Liberate Iraq was not in the national interest of the US. If the global superpower had been truly concerned with democracy, it would not have turned a blind eye to the human rights abuses in Iraq’s neighbouring country Saudi Arabia, which govern according to the controversial Sharia law; nor would it ignore the fact that 15 out of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were found to hold Saudi passports,^[12] whilst none were of Iraqi origins. As Heradstveit and Hveem (2004: 2) noted,

“Washington’s new desire to introduce democracy in Iraq is merely a rhetorical device to maintain and strengthen the legitimacy of US policy in the Gulf – a kind of psychological warfare ultimately as transparent as the code-name for the war, “Operation Liberate Iraq””.

Thus, the true intentions and formulations of US foreign policy are revealed through the implementation of Goldstein’s Foreign Policy Objectives model, which illustrates how national interests, capabilities, threats and opportunities of the US shape foreign policy objectives. Evidence also proves how the four factors have remained essentially the same throughout the Clinton and Bush administration, however tactics changed from Clinton’s policy of containment towards Iraq to Bush’s desire for regime change.

When Bush was elected the US President in 2000, he inherited Clinton’s policy of containment towards Iraq; however the sanctions that had lasted throughout the 1990s were costing the US excessive prestige.^[13] The Clinton administration also left to Bush the foreign policy agendas concerning the promotion of democracy, free trade and market economies, human rights, and weapons proliferation, as well as other “related issues intersected to promote continuity as well as change in American foreign policy.”^[14] Whilst Bush continued to promote the Western ‘liberal’ agenda, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s first-term national security advisor and second-term secretary of state, mediated for a new realist approach to US foreign policy, arguing that the administration should “refocus the United States on the national interests and the pursuit of key priorities.”^[15] Thus, the events of 9/11 served as Bush’s gateway to intervene and change the course of action towards Iraq, hence end the era of containment.

The previous paragraph confirms how the capabilities available to the US for pursuing its foreign policy objectives remained unchanged through the two presidencies. The current unipolar system^[16] left the two presidents with the opportunity to act unilaterally, however, it is evident that Clinton and Bush viewed their roles as president remarkably different. Whilst the Clinton doctrine (mostly) concerned the promotion of multilateralism and UN peacekeeping, President Bush used the unipolar structure and his capabilities as the US president to act unilaterally. Furthermore, it is evident that not only the capabilities of US foreign policy objectives remained unchanged throughout the Clinton and Bush administrations (and even before), but also the threats and opportunities to US national interests. The external threat of ‘international terrorism’, for instance, was adopted already in the Reagan administration as a new pretext to defend the need for a huge military budget after the Russian threat was eliminated, and to protect the Middle Eastern ‘defence industrial base’ (what Chomsky calls a euphemism for “high-tech industry”).^[17]

Iraq under Saddam Hussein had been an "immense risk" to US national security ever since the Gulf War.^[18] With Saddam in power, American companies were left outside Iraq whilst Asian, Russian and European oil companies were welcomed in.^[19] Being the world’s biggest oil consumer and importer, America has an overwhelming dependence upon oil^[20] that can only be sustained by controlling 67% of the world's proven oil reserves "that lie below the sands of the Persian Gulf."^[21] Thus, the best solution for the Bush Administration was to stop Clinton’s decade-long tradition of containment in Iraq and rather turn “a ‘friendly’ Iraq into a private American oil pumping station”^[22] by invasion. It is also important to note that representatives of the international oil, construction, security and armaments industries gained huge profits from the Iraq war, not to mention interests within the domestic sphere. As invasion in Iraq commenced, neoconservatives in the Pentagon were mediating with Vice President Cheney and President Bush to "funnel reconstruction contracts to firms in which they both had stakes."^[23]

Another significant threat to US national interests, and thus a vital rationale for the invasion of Iraq, was the alleged threat that Iraq posed on US close ally Israel. Israel has been in conflict with Iraq since it was founded in 1946, and as Mailer (2003: 97) argues, "If a war with Iraq ends with Americans installed there, Israel would feel more secure for decades to come." Mearsheimer and Walt (2006) even suggest that the “centrepiece” of US Middle East policy is its close ties with Israel. In their critically acclaimed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer and Walt reveal that the ‘Israeli Lobby’, which is a “convenient short-hand term for the loose coalition of individuals and organizations”^[24] within the US, including pro-Israel neoconservatives with close ties to the Likud party^[25], in large part motivated the Iraq war. The group was already determined to have Saddam removed long before Bush became President^[26], however they were unable to achieve their objective until after 9/11.^[27]

Whilst Saddam’s Iraq posed a significant threat to US’ foreign policy objectives concerning the possession of Iraqi oil and its ally Israel, the invasion and regime change also opened up other opportunities, in which Mailer (2003: 50-51) proclaim, "behind the whole push to go to war with Iraq is the desire to have a huge military presence in the Middle East as a stepping-stone to taking over the rest of the world." In his renowned book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (2003), Chomsky portrays the American Grand Strategy of ultimate hegemony, which is achieved by injecting US policy into world politics, concurrently maintaining military and economic supremacy. Realist theorists argue that a hegemon works solely to pursue its own interest, which observably match the manoeuvres of the US in the aftermath of 9/11. Hence, a key to the US hegemonic project was to shift from the policy of containment to a preventive war on Iraq, in which 9/11 served as the catalyst “needed to make Bush's grand strategy come alive"^[28].

It is evident, indeed, that the American “imperialist agenda”^[29] started long before 9/11. Already in 1997, Kristol and Kagan founded The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an American think-tank aiming “to promote American global leadership.” The founding statement of the neoconservative agenda was based on Kristol and Kagan’s article in Foreign Affairs in 1996, Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy, which argued that America should become a “benevolent global hegemony” rather than reducing its international role in the post-Cold War world. They also stressed that the US must enhance its “strategic and ideological predominance” by, namely, strengthening America’s security, advance its interests and promote its principles globally.^[30] The PNAC proved considerably influential in affecting military and foreign policies within the Bush administration, most noteworthy the policies of national security and the war in Iraq.

To summarise, this paper has revealed the real multicausal rationale of the US invasion of Iraq, which were predominantly to protect and access the Iraqi oil fields, protect the Iraqi threat towards Israel and enhance and strengthen the US global hegemony. This paper has demonstrated that there is continuity in foreign policy objectives through the Clinton and Bush administration, in which the national interests, capabilities, threats and opportunities remained essentially the same. There is, however, a change in tactics used to achieve such goals, as Bush ended Clinton’s policy of containment towards Iraq and changed the regime, justified by the rhetorical War on Terror and Operation Liberate Iraq. Despite the rhetorical tools, it has later become clear that the threat of terrorism was “not a firm foundation on which to build a grand strategy”, although the “foreign and national security policies of the George W. Bush administration rest heavily on its threat.”^[31]

Bibliography

Books:

Wittkopf, E. R., Jones, C. M., & Kegley, C. W. Jr. (2008) American Foreign Policy: Patterns and Process. 7^th edition. Thomson Wadsworth. California, USA.

Burman, S. (2007) The State of the American Empire: How the USA shapes the world. Earthscan. Brighton, UK.

Fawn, R. & Hinnebusch, R. (eds.) (2006) The Iraq War: Causes and Consequences. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. London, UK.

Chomsky (2004) Middle East Illusions. Including Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Maryland, USA.

Gaddis, J. L. (2005) Surprise, Security, and the American Experience. Harvard University Press. USA.

Hart, G. (2004) The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty First Century. Oxford University Press. New York, US.

Heradstveit, D. & Hveem, H. (2004) Oil in the Gulf: Obstacles to Democracy and Development. Ashgate Publishing Limited, UK.

Chomsky (2003) Hegemony or Survival: America’s quest for global dominance. Penguin. London, UK.

Jervis, R. (2003) A Grand Strategy for America. Cornell University Press. New York, USA.

Mailer, N. (2003) Why are we at war? Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York, US.

Internet sources:

Haass, R. N. (2013) The Irony of American Strategy: Putting the Middle East in Proper Perspective. Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 1 November from: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139106/richard-n-haass/the-irony-of-american-strategy

Mearsheimer, J. J. & Walt, S. M. (2006) The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Retrieved 22 October 2013 from: http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0040.pdf

Biddle, S. D. (2005) American Grand Strategy After 9/11: An Assessment. Retrieved 28 October 2013 from: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub603.pdf

Chomsky, N. (February 2002) Distorted Morality: America's War on Terror? Delivered at Harvard University. Retrieved 3 November 2013 from: http://www.chomsky.info/talks/200202--02.htm

Chomsky, N. (2001) Clash of Civilizations? Retrieved 12 November 2012 from: http://www.india-seminar.com/2002/509/509%20noam%20chomsky.htm

CNN (21 September 2001) Transcript of President Bush’s Address. Retrieved 4 November 2013 from: http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/

Kristol, W. & Kagan, R. (1996) Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. In Foreign Affairs July/August 1996. Retrieved 9 November 2013 from: http://carnegieendowment.org/1996/07/01/toward-neo-reaganite-foreign-policy/1ea

Governmental sources:

President Discusses Beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. (22 March 2003) Retrieved 24 October 2003 from: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html

Address to the United Nations General Assembly President George W. Bush (September 12, 2002) Retrieved 26 October 2013 from: http://www.state.gov/p/io/potusunga/207557.html

Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. (2 October 2002) Retrieved 26 October 2013 from: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021002-2.html

Executive Order 13224 (September 23, 2001) Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. U.S. Department of State. Accessed 22 October 2013 from: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/122570.htm

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^[1] President Bush in a speech before Congress, on the night of the 9/11 attacks.

^[2] Executive Order 13224, September 23, 2001: U.S. Department of State.

^[3] Chomsky, 2003: 2-3

^[4] Burman, 2007: 108: The Axis of Evil was coined by President Bush in his 29 January 2002 State of the Union speech. He named North Korea, Iran, Iraq, whilst John R. Bolton added Cuba, Syria and Libya.

^[5] Fawn & Hinnebusch, 2006: 2

^[6] Chomsky, 2003.

^[7] Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq, 2 October 2002.

^[8] Fawn & Hinnebusch, 2006: 3: On 8 November, the UN Resolution 1441 became the compromise between the US and those "unconvinced of the danger posed by Iraq", which admitted UN inspectors to Iraq to investigate if Iraq still possessed the alleged WMDs.

^[9] Hinnebusch, 2006: 3, 309-10: By the end of December 2002, the UN inspectors in Iraq had visited 150 sites and made surprise visits to 13 sites in one month, but had discovered no WMDs.

^[10]  Hinnebusch, 2006: 309-10: There were multiple evidence that there were no WMDs in Iraq, for instance:

1) United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission UNMOVIC "did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction."

2) The report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that the supposed Iraqi WMD capabilities were not at all a threat. Iraqi's nuclear program had already been suspended, whilst the chemical weapon production had been destroyed and dismantled due to effective international constraints, sanctions and weapons inspections.

3) John S. Duffield noted in Oil and the Iraq War that Saddam would never dare supplying WMDs to Al-Qaida, because if such weapons were used, they would most definitely be traced back to Saddam himself.

^[11] Mailer, 2003, p. 36

^[12] Aljazeera, 2013: “How damaged are US-Saudi ties?”

^[13] After the Gulf War (1990-91), Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons program had been investigated by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which also worked on the post-war disarmament of Iraq. UNSCOM concluded that the program had stopped completely after the war, in which US and its allies responded to by maintaining the policy of ‘containment’ towards Saddam’s regime. However, the policy, which included various sanctions, has been widely criticised for causing the Iraqi people excessive damage, namely high rates of malnutrition, lack of medical supplies and diseases from lack of clean water.

^[14] Wittkoph & Jones, 2008: 57

^[15] Rice, 2000 as seen in Wittkoph & Jones, 2008: 12

^[16] Critics, however, argue that the bipolar system of the Cold War changed into a multipolar system after the fall of the Soviet block in 1991. Despite this, it is undeniable that the US remained the largest and strongest power.

^[17] Chomsky, 2001

^[18] Hinnebusch, 2006: If Iraq had annexed Kuwait during the Gulf War (1990-1) and gained Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields, it would have possessed 40% of the world’s oil reserves – without a ‘helping hand’ from America.

^[19] Hinnebusch, 2006: 289: For instance, French oil and gas company Total "signed a letter of intent for oil development with the Saddam regime."

^[20] Burman, 2007: 26-8: The US imports 60% of the oil it consumes; a number projected to rise to 75% by 2030.

^[21] Ralph Nader in Mailer, 2003: 56

^[22] Youssef Ibrahim, International Herald Tribune, 1 November 2002. In Hinnebusch, 2006.

^[23] Burman, 2007: 30: One example of the internal links between business corporations and US foreign policy making is seen in the case of Halliburton, one of the world's biggest oil-services companies. The link between Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney, previous CEO of Halliburton, and Halliburton’s post-war oil production and rebuilding of Iraq is conspicuous.

^[24] Mearsheimer and Walt, 2006: 14

^[25] Hinnebusch, 2006

^[26] Mearsheimer & Walt, 2006: 33: On 20 September 2001, for example, a group of neoconservatives published an open letter to the President, stating “even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.”

^[27] Mearsheimer & Walt, 2006: 33: In the aftermath of 9/11, the lobby established two organisations with the intention to manipulate intelligence information and portrait Saddam as an imminent threat to US security. One of the organisations, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, was ordered to find links between Iraq and al Qaida “that the intelligence community supposedly missed”.

^[28] Burman, 2007: 14

^[29] Historian John Lewis Gaddis (2004) also noted that the Bush Administration’s emphasis on unilateralism, pre-emption and hegemony is in fact a recreation of America’s 19^th century foreign policy.

^[30] Kristol and Kagan (2006) also argued that Washington needed to “spend about $ 60-$ 80 billion more each year in order to preserve America's role as global hegemon.”

^[31] (Hart, 2004 & Wittkoph & Jones, 2008)