http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/opinion/11fri1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
The London Plot NY Times Lead Editorial, August 11, 2006 For almost five years now, we have carried around the legacy of Sept. 11. There is no sunny morning that does not revive its memory. The news of a terrorist plot against America-bound airliners yesterday called up feelings that are never all that far below the surface. There is nothing Americans want more than to win the war on terror, to come to a place where people no longer feel it is a fine thing to forfeit their own lives and the lives of innocents in order to make the world notice their anger and frustration. It is a point on which the country is absolutely undivided. It is one matter about which subway commuters, airline passengers and mall shoppers feel no irony or cynicism whatsoever. It comes like a punch to the gut, at times like these, when our leaders blatantly use the nation's trauma for political gain. We never get used to this. It never feels like business as usual. On Wednesday, when the administration already knew that British agents were rounding up suspects in what they believed was a plot to blow up planes en route to the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney had a telephone interview with reporters to discuss the defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut in a Democratic primary. Mr. Cheney went off on a rather rambling disquisition, but its main point was clear: In rejecting Mr. Lieberman, who supported the war in Iraq, the Democrats were encouraging "the Al Qaeda types." Within the Democratic ranks, the vice president added, "there's a significant body of opinion that wants to go back - I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in." The man who beat Mr. Lieberman, Ned Lamont, lives in Greenwich, a suburb full of commuters who work in New York high-rise buildings. They are completely aware of the way international terrorism can come crashing down on an ordinary family, leaving the survivors stunned and bereft. A dozen of their neighbors died at the World Trade Center. They will never be able to go back to a "pre-9/11 mind-set." But that did not seem to deter Mr. Lieberman from scoring a cheap sound bite yesterday. Leaving Iraq, as Mr. Lamont advocates, "will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England," he said. "It will strengthen them and they will strike again." Here is what we want to do in the wake of the arrests in Britain. We want to understand as much as possible about what terrorists were planning. To talk about airport security and how to make it better. To celebrate what worked in the British investigation and discuss how to push these efforts farther. It would be a blessed moment in modern American history if we could do that without turning this into a political game plan. *** http://select.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/opinion/11krugman.html?th&emc=th Nonsense and Sensibility By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 11, 2006 After Ned Lamont's victory in Connecticut, I saw a number of commentaries describing Joe Lieberman not just as a "centrist" - a word that has come to mean "someone who makes excuses for the Bush administration" - but as "sensible." But on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered sensible? Take a look at Thomas Ricks's "Fiasco," the best account yet of how the U.S. occupation of Iraq was mismanaged. The prime villain in that book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose delusional thinking and penchant for power games undermined whatever chances for success the United States might have had. Then read Mr. Lieberman's May 2004 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, "Let Us Have Faith," in which he urged Mr. Rumsfeld not to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal, because his removal "would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America's presence in Iraq." And that's just one example of Mr. Lieberman's bad judgment. He has been wrong at every step of the march into the Iraq quagmire - all the while accusing anyone who disagreed with him of endangering national security. Again, on what planet would Mr. Lieberman be considered "sensible"? But I know the answer: on Planet Beltway. Many of those lamenting Mr. Lieberman's defeat claim that they fear a takeover of our political parties by extremists. But if political polarization were really their main concern, they'd be as exercised about the primary challenge from the right facing Lincoln Chafee as they are about Mr. Lieberman's woes. In fact, however, the sound of national commentary on the Rhode Island race is that of crickets chirping. So what's really behind claims that Mr. Lieberman is sensible - and that those who voted against him aren't? It's the fact that many Washington insiders suffer from the same character flaw that caused Mr. Lieberman to lose Tuesday's primary: an inability to admit mistakes. Imagine yourself as a politician or pundit who was gung-ho about invading Iraq, and who ridiculed those who warned that the case for war was weak and that the invasion's aftermath could easily turn ugly. Worse yet, imagine yourself as someone who remained in denial long after it all went wrong, disparaging critics as defeatists. Now denial is no longer an option; the neocon fantasy has turned into a nightmare of fire and blood. What do you do? You could admit your error and move on - and some have. But all too many Iraq hawks have chosen, instead, to cover their tracks by trashing the war's critics. They say: Pay no attention to the fact that I was wrong and the critics have been completely vindicated by events - I'm "sensible," while those people are crazy extremists. And besides, criticizing any aspect of the war encourages the terrorists. That's what Joe Lieberman said, and it's what his defenders are saying now. Now, it takes a really vivid imagination to see Mr. Lieberman's rejection as the work of extremists. I know that some commentators believe that anyone who thinks the Iraq war was a mistake is a flag-burning hippie who hates America. But if that's true, about 60 percent of Americans hate America. The reality is that Ned Lamont and those who voted for him are, as The New York Times editorial page put it, "irate moderates," whose views are in accord with those of most Americans and the vast majority of Democrats. But in his non-concession speech, Mr. Lieberman described Mr. Lamont as representative of a political tendency in which "every disagreement is considered disloyal" - a statement of remarkable chutzpah from someone who famously warned Democrats that "we undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril." The question now is how deep into the gutter Mr. Lieberman's ego will drag him. There's an overwhelming consensus among national security experts that the war in Iraq has undermined, not strengthened, the fight against terrorism. Yet yesterday Mr. Lieberman, sounding just like Dick Cheney - and acting as a propaganda tool for Republicans trying to Swift-boat the party of which he still claims to be a member - suggested that the changes in Iraq policy that Mr. Lamont wants would be "taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England." In other words, not only isn't Mr. Lieberman sensible, he may be beyond redemption. *** Talk about Terrorism! Ed The Independent - Aug 9, 2006 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1217827.ece Israel's promise of humanitarian corridors is exposed as a sham by Robert Fisk So much for Ehud Olmert's "humanitarian corridors". Two weeks after the Israeli Prime Minister's comforting assertion - which no one in Lebanon believed - the Israeli air force has blown up the last bridge across the Litani river, in effect ending all humanitarian convoys between Beirut and southern Lebanon. Requests from humanitarian organisations for clearance from the Israelis are now being refused. Even the Red Cross admits there is now, in effect, a blockade on a vast area along the Lebanese border where thousands of civilians are still cowering in their homes. David Shearer, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, has pleaded with the Israelis to end their attacks against the country's infrastructure and end all activities which threaten the transport of humanitarian aid to the displaced. But convoys since have been cancelled or forced to make long detours across the country and along the edge of the Lebanese-Syrian border. Truck drivers are frightened to risk their lives under Israeli air attack. I myself was on a Red Cross field trip from Qlaya to Jezzine when, close to the village of Arab Selim, an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on the road 80 metres in front of us. On the Litani river, north of Tyre, the main road bridge had been blasted away but the Lebanese army had constructed a temporary bridge over the water to the west. Now that, too, has been ripped to pieces by Israeli bombs. Mr Shearer warned of a "serious humanitarian crisis" if convoys were not allowed to move south. A Red Cross spokesman, Richard Huguenin, said his organisation had been denied permission by the Israelis to move humanitarian aid to the border. Without guarantees of safe passage, the organisation cannot leave Tyre for dozens of villages whose inhabitants are trapped. "At night, we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light, and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said. A Greek ship carrying Red Cross supplies was supposed to have docked in Tyre on Monday, but was refused permission to land and diverted to Sidon, north of the Litani. The French are still bringing boatloads of supplies into Beirut, accompanied - wisely, it has to be said - by a French warship equipped with anti-aircraft missiles. So are Mr Olmert's non-existent "humanitarian corridors" to be created by force? Or will they have to wait until the civilians of southern Lebanon are starving? ########### rescued when the missiles collapsed her home just after 7.30 on Monday night. Almost all the occupants of this doomed building were members of the Rmeiti family - again, they were from the dangerous south - and 15 of the dead were from the same village. It was a scene to provoke fury. One Hizbollah "watcher" demanded my press card and lost interest when he read it. But a Lebanese youth in a yellow shirt at the scene was grabbed by the same man, hauled away by his collar and handed over to a clutch of beefy, tall individuals who forced him into a car. Everyone now searches for spies, for the men - and women - who are reputed to "paint" the apartment blocks of Beirut for Israel's missile technology to lock on to their targets. A sad, grim meeting in the same Mount Lebanon Hospital suggested that the house had not been "fingered" by anyone. I found Ali Rmeiti, an employee at Beirut airport, covered in bloody wounds, his face distorted, shaking his head in disbelief. "I was on the balcony with my wife, Huda, and three of our children ... I heard nothing - nothing. I didn't realise what happened. It was black. Then came the second blast and we were all blown into the street with the balcony." Huda Rmeiti is lying next to her husband on a drip-feed, covered with even more bloody wounds than Ali. I know - and they do not - that three of their four children were killed. And why was the building struck? The Israelis have slaughtered hundreds of civilians, attacking convoys of refugees they themselves ordered to leave. But Saadieh, Ali Rmeiti's sister-in-law, has a story which matches those of two other survivors. Before the missiles exploded, she said, an Israeli drone flew over the Shiyyah district, a pilotless reconnaissance aircraft which sends live pictures back to Tel Aviv. "Um Kamel", as the Lebanese call them, whined around for a time and then, without warning, someone drove down Assaad al-Assad street on a motorcycle and fired into the sky with a rifle opposite the Rmeiti home. Then he left, some youth who wanted to prove his foolish manhood. You can't destroy drones with a rifle, as any Hizbollah member knows. But not long afterwards, the two missiles came streaking down on the homes of the innocent. Perhaps there are two moral lessons from this, one obvious, the other familiar. Don't shoot at drones. And don't believe for a moment the Israelis will care about firing missiles into your home when their little toy spots a man with a gun. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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