The Independent - May 21, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2565126.ece
Scores dead as Lebanese army battles Islamists in bloodiest day since civil war by Robert Fisk Butchery was the word that came to mind. Twenty-three Lebanese soldiers and police, 17 Sunni Muslim gunmen. How long can Lebanon endure this? Just before he died, one of the armed men - Palestinians? Lebanese? - we still don't know - shot a soldier right beside me. He fell down on his back, crying with pain, and I thought he had slipped on the road until I saw the blood pumping out of his leg and the Red Cross team dragging him desperately out of the line of fire. Not since the war - yes, the Lebanese civil war that we are all still trying to forget - have I heard this many bullets cracking across the streets of a Lebanese city. And the dead. Five of the 17 gunmen were killed after paramilitary police stormed an apartment block in 200 Street in the centre of Tripoli. One lay on his back like a child, water from a broken hydrant streaming over his corpse. Another lay crumpled in a doorway amid glass and the Kalashnikov rifle he was still firing when he died. "How young they all were," a woman remarked with a kind of weariness, and I noticed the dead were also bearded, the little stubble beards al-Qaida's men like to wear. The bloody events in Lebanon yesterday passed so swiftly - and so dangerously for those of us on the streets - that I am still unsure what happened. Clearly, an al-Qaida-type group tried to ambush the Lebanese army - and succeeded all too appallingly; 23 dead soldiers and police is a fearful figure for a tiny country such as Lebanon. But was it really a Syrian plot, as Fouad Siniora's government suggested? Was this the long hand of Syria stretching out once more across Lebanon's green and pleasant land? So here are a few facts. A group of armed men tried to rob a Tripoli bank on Saturday and got cornered in an apartment block. Others holed up in the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp north of the city. When I arrived yesterday, army tank fire was bursting in the camp and black-hooded policemen were preparing to storm, Iraqi-style, into the city-centre building. But the robbers were said to have stolen only $1,500. Was that worth this massacre? And is "Fatah al-Islaam" - which has existed in the shadows of the camp for months - really a 300-strong armed group? Certainly the dead gunmen were real. I found two more heaped together in Tripoli, covered in spent ammunition clips, the apartment building on fire - so hot I could not get up the stairs - but families still struggling down. One woman carried a baby. "Only four days old, he is only four," she wailed at me. One family I found huddling in their bathroom, 12 terrified Lebanese who had spent 24 hours in this tiny room as bullets swept the walls of their home. So what in God's name happened in Lebanon yesterday? Well, Mr Siniora claimed it was an attempt to destabilise Lebanon - a good guess, to put it mildly - and Saad Hariri, son of the former prime minister murdered here more than two years ago, called the armed men "evil-doers who had hijacked Islam". This is the same Saad Hariri whom at least one American reporter - I refer to Seymour Hersh - suggested was indirectly helping to funnel Saudi money to these same gunmen in a recent article in The New Yorker. The Shia Muslim Hizbollah are supposed to be the bad guys in this scenario, not a Sunni group. But Tripoli is the most powerful Sunni city in Lebanon - so powerful that not a drop of alcohol wets its restaurant tables - and the men and women running in terror across Tripoli's streets yesterday were also Sunnis. So are the Syrians really concocting an "al-Qaida" in Lebanon? And who are its enemies? The Nato army of the UN force in southern Lebanon, perhaps? But surely not the Lebanese army, the very same army which bravely prevented civil war last January? Yet in 2000, an al-Qaida-type group also ambushed the Lebanese army in northern Lebanon. Was this, too, supposed to be a Syrian invention? Showers of bullets were still tracing their way over Tripoli last night and the army was said to be preparing to move into the camps. Fatah, Yasser Arafat's clapped-out organisation, announced it was on the side of the army, a wise decision after yesterday's bloodbath. "A dangerous attempt to undermine Lebanon's security," was the response of a government whose Shia cabinet ministers abandoned it last year in the hope of bringing the whole Siniora administration down. But where do we go from here? And who were the dead men I saw yesterday, perforated by bullets, partly torn open by grenades? Silent testimony is all we receive from the dead. One of them had big eyes above his fluffy beard, eyes which stared at us and at the police who jeered at his corpse. I wonder if they will not come to haunt us soon. And if we will discover what lies behind this terrible day in Lebanon. *** From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent by Tim Carpenter - May 20, 2007 Progressive Democrats of America http://pdamerica.org/ Mass Dems Keep National Momentum Going Impeachment momentum stretches now from one corner of our country to another. On Saturday, the Massachusetts Democratic Party resoundingly passed a resolution to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney just 20 days after the California Democratic Party passed its impeachment resolution. With ever more revelations of an out-of- control White House (now with sick-bed coercion), support for impeachment is growing generally and is becoming mainstream inside the Democratic Party. . .except for a few national leaders. === After Downing Street - May 20, 2007 http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/22706 13 State Democratic Parties Demand Impeachment By David Swanson It took 13 colonies to throw out the last King George. Thirteen state Democratic parties have now passed resolutions demanding impeachment, nine of them since Nancy Pelosi ordered the Democratic Party away from impeachment. In May 2004, the Nevada Democratic Party led the way, passing a resolution demanding Bush's impeachment. On June 12, 2005, the Wisconsin Democratic Party passed a resolution demanding the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. On January 28, 2006, the North Carolina Democratic Party Executive Committee called for the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales, a call echoed by the full state party in June with the focus on Bush alone. On March 21, 2006, the New Mexico Democratic Party backed impeaching Bush and removing him from office. In April 2006, the Vermont Democratic Party resolved that Bush should face impeachment immediately. Not a bad start: Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Vermont. Of course, Rumsfeld's gone (though not yet prosecuted), and we all know where Gonzales is. At this point in our story, a year ago now, the Republican National Committee made its baseless claim that talk of impeachment would benefit Republicans in the November 2006 elections, and Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi immediately announced that impeachment was off the table. But it wasn't. On May 20, 2006, The Colorado Democratic Party included in its platform a call for Bush and Cheney to be "investigated, censured or if appropriate, impeached." On May 21, 2006, the Alaska Democratic Party passed a resolution "calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney; and . the recall of Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank and the dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense." In June 2006, the Hawaii Democratic Party voted to call for the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Gonzales and their prosecution for war crimes. Also in June, Maine called for Bush and Cheney to be impeached, New Hampshire asked for Bush to be impeached, and the full North Carolina Party, as noted above, called for Bush's impeachment. Now we're rolling. Look at this list: Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, New Mexico, Vermont, Colorado, Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and New Hampshire. That's 10 state Democratic Parties demanding impeachment by June of last year, and seven of them after Pelosi ordered impeachment off the table, and before the elections. Predictably, these states did very well for the Democrats in the elections, as Nevada did in 2004 as well. And, of course, Wolfowitz is on his way out (though not yet prosecuted). In September 2006, still pre-elections, Washington State's Democratic Party called for Bush and Cheney to be impeached. In March 2007, the Oregon Democratic Party did the same. In April 2007, California called for "appropriate remedies and punishment, including impeachment," for Bush and Cheney. And now Massachusetts has joined the list. On May 19, 2007, the Massachusetts Democratic Party passed a resolution calling on "the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate these charges and if the investigation supports the charges, vote to impeach George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney." The charges were as follows: "Whereas George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have: . Deliberately misled the nation about the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war; . Condoned the torture of prisoners in violation of the Geneva Convention & US law; . Approved illegal electronic surveillance of American citizens without a warrant." The majority of these resolutions have never been reported in the media. Therefore, this list is almost certainly incomplete. So are the following tallies: * Cities and towns that have backed impeachment by resolution, public vote, or both: 79. * Largest cities: Detroit, home of the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and San Francisco, home of the Speaker of the House. * Earliest and most frequent city: Santa Cruz beginning in 2003. * States where impeachment has been introduced into the legislature at least once: 10 (California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont). * State legislative bodies that have voted on impeachment: 3 (Vermont Senate, Vermont House, New Mexico Senate). * State legislative bodies that have passed impeachment resolutions: 1 (Vermont Senate). * National political parties backing impeachment: 1 (Green). * Non-Democratic state political parties backing impeachment: 2 (Vermont Progressives, California Greens). * Democrats Abroad Chapters backing impeachment: 1. * Local political party organizations that have backed impeachment: 32. * Labor unions backing impeachment: 1. * Page listing all these resolutions: http://impeachpac.org/resolutions-list * How to make corrections or additions to the list: http://afterdowningstreet.org/listadditions * Organization helping promote Democratic Party resolutions, including those recently passed in Massachusetts and California: http://pdamerica.org * Articles of impeachment introduced against Bush: 3 (by Rep. Cynthia McKinney). * Articles of impeachment introduced against Cheney: 3 (by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, H Res. 333, http://www.impeachcheney.org ). * Impeachment Resource Center: http://afterdowningstreet.org/resourcecenter --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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