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19 June 2006

www.MiddleEast.Org
News, Views, & Analysis Governments, Lobbies, & the
Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know


US BUILDING STEALTH PERMANENT BASES IN IRAQ

MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 19 June: When pressed in public American officials say they are not building 'permanent bases' in Iraq. But then just what is the definition of 'permanent bases' and just where are all those billions going and what are all those contractors doing in Iraq? Americans officials have certainly earned considerable skepticism and disbelief about what they say -- to say the least! Nearly half of the American public do not even believe the official 9/11 story and when asked by pollsters says another investigation not run by government is needed.

Meanwhile reports continue to come in, as previously reported by MER, that huge military bases far out in the desert that any normal person would declare 'permanent' are in fact being built in Iraq. Part of the price for arming and empowering the latest configuration of Iraqis kept safe in the green zone and known as 'The Iraqi Government' is their complicity, or at least silence and acquiesence, in the building of these bases. They are of course destined to be used to help 'control' and 'stabilize' the region for years to come; and quite possibly for a future war against Iran and others -- think Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas), and should the U.S. regimes in Pakistan and Afghanistan fall those countries as well.

That is the context in which this insightful investigative article originally published at AfterDowningStreet.com should be read. By using secret hearings and briefings and by twisting the facts and the reporting of the facts in a massive and continual propaganda campaign -- itself funded into the hundreds of millions of dollars -- this kind of thing is happening more and more in the American 'democracy'.
No Permanent Bases: Passed Both Houses,
Removed in Conference Committee

By David Swanson

9 June 2006: When the House and the Senate pass similar but not identical bills, they create a conference committee to work out the differences. When they both passed amendments to the "emergency supplemental" spending bill stipulating that none of the money could be used to build permanent bases in Iraq, the conference committee, behind closed doors this week, resolved that non-difference by deleting it.

This would appear to be a blatant violation of the rules of Congress and an unconstitutional voiding of the will of the people as expressed by their Representatives and Senators. But it can't appear that way to a people that knows nothing about it. And it does not appear that way at all to the journalists who inform the public of its government's doings. Even the minority members of the conference committee and the leaders of the minority party in Congress seem entirely comfortable with this course of events, although Congresswoman Barbara Lee has denounced the Republicans for it.

The House was the first to pass the "no permanent bases" amendment, back in March. Only one media outlet in the nation reported on the matter, the San Francisco Chronicle, which wrote:

"Lee's amendment, which would bar the use of any funds in the new spending bill to establish permanent bases, passed on a voice vote, with no one speaking in opposition. President Bush and some top administration officials have said the U.S. military has no interest in permanent bases, the prospect of which is among the causes of anti-American unrest in Iraq. Leaders of the Republican majority also may have chosen to avoid a debate and recorded vote on Lee's proposal because they didn't want to go on record endorsing a permanent military presence in Iraq when polls show Americans oppose the war. Opponents also may try to strike the amendment when leaders of the House and Senate reconcile their bill for final passage. 'In adopting this amendment, we can take the target off our troops' backs by sending a strong and immediate signal to the Iraqi people, the insurgents and the international community that the United States has no designs on Iraq,' Lee said on the House floor."

In response to this, I wrote at the time:

"That's quite a story: an issue so touchy that the majority party goes against its own wishes in order to avoid going on record, and a reporter, with his editor's approval, anticipates that they will likely reverse that position behind closed doors. Won't that be an even bigger story! Well, no. Not if no one has heard about this one. And not if no one has even heard that bases are being built or that Iraqis are killing Americans because of it."

Then the Senate did the same thing. They passed "no permanent bases" on a voice vote with no opposition. And the media was silent. Everyone knew what was coming, but nobody felt the public should hear about it.

Now the newspapers are full of stories about things the conference committee did yesterday. None of the stories that I've seen mention the removal of the language about permanent bases. Instead, most of the articles focus on the idea that the conference committee saw its job as reducing spending. It stripped out money for American farmers and other useful spending.

But what would those farmers think if they knew the committee had spent their money on multi-billion-dollar permanent military bases in somebody else's country, bases never explicitly authorized by Congress, bases built as part of an ongoing occupation never authorized by Congress? Would the farmers be dangerously overcome with joy to learn that? Is that the reason they must not be told?

If nobody knows and nobody cares, I guess it can't be treason.

Here are two people who would be interested to hear your opinion on the topic: Senator Thad Cochran (202-224-5054) and Congressman Jerry Lewis (202-225-5861), the pair of Republicans in charge of the conference committee. Feel free to give them a call and tell them what you think.

Oh, and one other public servant would love to hear from you. The public has been demanding for many months that Congress at least hold an open debate on the Iraq War, a lengthy debate allowing Congress Members from both sides of the aisle to introduce amendments and have them voted on. Instead, House Majority Leader John Boehner (202-225-6205) has announced that he'll allow a short debate next week, with no amendments allowed, and discussion limited to a phony bill the Republicans slapped together in secret this week on a napkin.

OK, I admit I don't know if it was on a napkin. But I guarantee it will sound like it when you read it.

My advice for next week, if you want to keep some sanity, is to ignore the House and watch the Senate, where Senator Russ Feingold will introduce an amendment on the floor requiring that all US troops in Iraq be "redeployed" by December 31.

Get C-Span and watch it, because the media will not tell you about it. They will not tell you for two reasons. First, Feingold is running for president, and the warmongers have already deemed him unacceptable. Second, Senator Hillary Clinton will vote against the amendment, and the warmongers have already deemed her the appropriate peace candidate to lose the 2008 election. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/11672



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June 2006


Magazine






ISRAELIS GO BERSERK AS WORLD WATCHES
(June 30, 2006)
Dreaming or Waking? Reality or Nightmare? The Israelis have lost all perspective and all credibility. Over many years they have created the situation that is today exploding. Over many years they have provoked the response they are now getting. When will the world community step in and right the wrongs the UN itself, and so many of the western nations, most especially the US and the UK, are so complicitous in creating?

NEOCONS Attack - Prince of Darkness in the Washington Post
(June 26, 2006)
The "Neocons", that cabal of individuals and groups that planned and plotted the 'New World Order', many of whom are hard-line Zionist and Jewish, is at it big time. Behind the scenes as well as out front the "Neocons" are pushing and manuevering more than ever, even though they are more exposed and some say more on the defensive than in earlier years. Over the weekend none other than the Prince of Darkness himself, Richard Perle, made an unusually direct assault on the Bush Administration, however seemingly obliquely by targeting Condi more directly than George. Furthermore, more and more, it is the editorial page of The Washington Post, feeling the heat from such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times, that makes itself available to the "Neocons".

Bush Affair With Condi? Can It Be?
(June 20, 2006)
Who knows what to believe anymore about what's going on at the heart of the American Empire in this imperial capital. This is not our usual thing, that's for sure. But the 'mainstream media' has so discredited itself in recent years by missing, ommitting, and wrongly spinning so many critical stories that the Washington rumors about this one can't just be dismissed and poohooyed totally. I

US BUILDING STEALTH PERMANENT BASES IN IRAQ
(June 19, 2006)
When pressed in public American officials say they are not building 'permanent bases' in Iraq. But then just what is the definition of 'permanent bases' and just where are all those billions going and what are all those contractors doing in Iraq? Americans officials have certainly earned considerable skepticism and disbelief about what they say -- to say the least! Nearly half of the American public do not even believe the official 9/11 story and when asked by pollsters says another investigation not run by government is needed.

Israel and US Prepare Palestinians For Civil War
(June 18, 2006)
In recent weeks clandestine arms shipments have gone from the Jordanians via Israel to the forces of Mahmoud Abbas, long connected with the Americans and the CIA. Now rather buried and camaflouged in this Haaretz article published today is limited information how the Fateh forces are being built-up, armed and financed, by a coalition that includes the Israelis, the Americans, the Arab 'client regimes', and the more skeptical but nevertheless on board Europeans. Unless the Palestinians could be forced into a rump and unreal Palestinian State more imprisoning them than freeing them, the alternative Israeli policy has been for some time to foment a fratricidal Palestinian civil war. They are now closer to this goal than ever.

Imperial America - Democracy Slipping Away
(June 17, 2006)
The warnings that American Democracy itself is endangered have been coming from the heart of the political and intellectual establishment for some years now; but the public just doesn't get it and the corporate military-industrial media just won't focus on it. Walter Cronkite has tried to speak up, but he has been side-lined and muzzled. Bill Moyers has tried to speak up, but he has been exiled from PBS. Just yesterday, by 5 to 4 with the two Bush appointees voting with the government, one of the main 'exclusion laws' enshrined in British Common Law since the 14th century as well as long-held Supreme Court precedents was overturned. Now police can invade private homes without knocking and announcing - something Americans have always expected and indeed demanded. This article about the new 'Usurping King Called George' is published today in The Guardian in London, just as 'The Israel Lobby' article couldn't be published in the US but had to be published instead in The London Review of Books.

WHAT HAPPENED THEN WAS PRECURSOR TO NOW
(June 4, 2006)
Eight years ago the political manueverings with the CIA, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and of course Israeli, the Mossad, and Washington, were considerable. What was done then is precursor to what has happened since and what is being planned now. Now the CIA and Mossad are more involved with the Fateh movement headed by Mahmoud Abbas than ever before, arming them in fact for the civil war the Israelis have long considered a good alternative if the Palestinians couldn't be forced to sign away their rights and live as Indians on Reservations 'peacefully'. This MER Flashback to June 1998:

IRAQ: SHOCK AND AWE INDEED
(June 4, 2006)
Even the U.S.-approved and backed new Prime Minister of occupied Iraq has lashed out at the Americans declaring that what happened at Haditha was not an aberation but "common" -- yes indeed that's the actual word he used a few days ago. Hardly the kind of thing Americans will hear on their Sunday talk-shows, nor can they read Robert Fisk's pithy analysis and truth-telling in their newspapers.

Stealing America to Force the 'New World Order'
(June 3, 2006)
Using various deceitful and hidden techniques and methods they stole both elections in 2000 and 2004. They repeatedly big lied about the Iraq War, and so much else, maybe it now seems even 9/11 itself. They've brought both Iraq and Palestine to the verge of impoverishment and historic civil war. And now the plans of the corporate titans in league with the Zionist Neocons and the hard-right Evangelicals are to further enforce their unstable 'New World Order' come what may, truth be damned, even with both devastating climate change and the growing risk of World War III in the balance. The "mega-crisis" we've warned of all week may soon become the lasting legacy of so much historic political theft and debachery. It's a kind of criminal political bankruptcy far worse than the massive economic bankruptcy of Enron and Bush's dear friend 'Kenny Boy'.

American Chicanery in the Middle East - now 'mega-crisis' looming
(June 2, 2006)
What the U.S. has done in the past in the Middle East, nearly always in tandem with the Israelis of course for quite some time, is considerably responsible for the current explosive situation in the region. What the U.S., Israel, and the UK are doing now may well in the end result in the "mega-crisis" predicted in the important recent article by David Hirst which MER featured earlier this week.

MEGA-CRISIS LOOMS Warns Senior Journalist David Hirst
(June 1, 2006)
Iraq, Palestine, Iran - the plans for 'regime change' by the pro-Israeli US neocons is threatening a mega-crisis in the region that will be felt around the world



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