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Andrew Cockburn, author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy, discusses Donald Rumsfeld’s flawed personality, and history of intrigue, naked ambition, torture and war.

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Antiwar Radio Exclusive: Revealed by Andrew Cockburn April 18, 2007: When Secretary of State Madeline Albright announced, on March 26, 1997, that Iraqi sanctions would stay in place despite the UN inspectors success it was an effort to preempt UN inspection chief Ralf Ekeus’s pending announcement that Iraq was to be certified “free” of “weapons of mass destruction.” (at 22:40)

This, as Cockburn explains, led Saddam to decide there was no further point in allowing the inspectors access to his palaces. (Former UN inspector Scott Ritter has maintained, including to this radio host, that the only purpose for the inspections after 1996 was to allow American spies the opportunity to assassinate Saddam Hussein.) This allowed Bill Clinton to falsely claim that Saddam had kicked them out of the country, launch his “Operation Desert Fox” bombing campaign (on the day the full House of Representatives were to begin debating Articles of Impeachment against him), and for the War Party to claim to this day that there must have been weapons there.

Also: Cockburn and General Anthony Zinni’s belief that the neocons’ plan B after installing Chalabi as dictator fell through was to deliberately destroy Iraq (that is, all this “failure” is on purpose), the suffering of the Iraq people, Rumfeld’s bogus “transformation” of the military and more…

Andrew Cockburn is a writer and lecturer on defense and national affairs, and is also the author of five nonfiction books. He has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and National Geographic, among other publications. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Anwar Alami remembers the exact date he began to work for the Civil Administration: July 17, 1983, exactly 25 years ago. A Palestinian who lives in the village of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, Alami has spent over half a lifetime among the Israeli soldiers and civilians who serve at the army base near the settlement of Beit El. About two and a half weeks ago, at an interview in his home, he told us in fluent Hebrew that he sees the Israelis from the base "more than I see my wife and children." But he did not know whether he would see his colleagues again, or whether he could continue to work as the accountant in charge of distributing salaries to the other Palestinian workers. This uncertainty is related to someone Alami will never see again: his son Mohammed, aged 15, who was killed 10 days earlier by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

It is hard to imagine a more tragic, more Kafka-esque situation than the one in which Alami finds himself. As one of the few Palestinians still working in the Civil Administration, he has been regarded by many of his fellow villagers as a kind of collaborator with the occupation. But since his son was killed by IDF fire and became a shaheed, or Islamic martyr, whose death Islamic Jihad threatens to avenge, his father's life and status have changed as well.

Immediately, as part of a routine response in such cases, the Shin Bet security services denied Alami the right to enter Israel. Thus, the shot that took the life of his son has turned the father from a dedicated and loyal employee of an IDF body into a potential security risk whose future is unclear. Some of his fellow employees, he discovered, are fearful of the urge for revenge that he may be harboring if he returns to work among them.

The heads of the Civil Administration decided to arrange a meeting with Alami to examine his mood and determine whether he could come back to work. A few days before the planned meeting, he expressed diplomatic optimism. "I hope they'll help me with this thing," he said. "If they don't let me work now, that would be a greater disaster, but whatever they decide in the administration is all right. Whether I return to work or not, my behavior will remain the same until my dying day."

Beit Ummar, a village that lies along Highway 60, between Hebron and Bethlehem, has a population of 13,000. At the entrance to the village there is a military guard post, a concrete pillbox from which the soldiers can see everyone who enters and exits. They also have a view of the highway that connects Gush Etzion and Hebron, the main traffic artery for settlers in the region. An old metal sign in Hebrew warns passersby not to enter the area controlled by the Palestinian Administration. The main street in the village is dusty and full of potholes, and very few people walk along it.

Musa Abu Hashhash, a researcher from B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, came to the village in order to collect testimony about the death of Mohammed Alami. "Where is the house of the latest shaheed?" Abu Hashhash asks one of the residents. In the "Alami neighborhood," named after the hamula, or clan that lives there. The house is easily located, and immediately several of Anwar Alami's relatives come out to greet the guests. "Anwar is running errands," explains his brother Ibrahim.

In Ibrahim's house, on the wall next to the door there is a sampler in English, with the motto: "God Bless Our Home." Alongside it is a picture of a young girl -- "That's my daughter who died of cancer," says the owner of the house -- and a poster of the latest shaheed, his nephew. The heavy green and white sofas and armchairs in the living room fill up immediately. It's a regular work day, but the unemployment rate is high, and in any case, the media interest in the dead family member is now more important than work. Many of the village residents are farmers, but one of the visitors explains that because it's impossible to send merchandise to Israel, the farmers are unable to sell their entire crop, and a substantial portion of it rots and is thrown out.

Among those seated in the room is Mohammed's older brother, Ala, a 23-year-old accounting student at the Al-Quds Open University. Like most members of his age group, and unlike the previous generation of Palestinians, Ala has never worked in Israel, not even visited, and does not speak Hebrew. In general, he speaks little and only nods occasionally in confirmation of the words of others.

Ahmed Awad, a village resident who serves as a muezzin and an occasional local journalist, pulls out the video camera he carries with him regularly and displays pictures of military jeeps that enter the village daily. At that moment, the bereaved father enters the room. Wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, with stubble on his face, he smiles sadly, sits down, takes out a red L & M cigarette and lights it.

In a calm, quiet voice, in nearly perfect Hebrew, Alami talks about himself and about the events leading to the death of his son. He is 49 years old, a native of Beit Ummar, married to Sabha. Aside from the two sons, one living and one dead, they also have four daughters; the youngest is seven. "One of the girls is doing her high school matriculation this year," he begins. "Mohammed, her brother, wanted to make a party for her and asked to paint the house. I told him I had no money. But he was earning money, because it's school vacation now and he did carpentry with a neighbor of ours, every day from 8 A.M. until 10 P.M.

"We began painting on Thursday. The first night we painted until 2 A.M. and the neighbors thought we were crazy. On the second night we stopped painting at about 10 P.M. and said we would make supper. I told Mohammed to get bread from the mini-market near the house. We waited for the bread and then we heard shouts. They said 'There's one who's wounded.' We didn't know it was Mohammed. We went to ask what was happening, and when we approached the people said 'Here, his parents are coming.' I couldn't believe it. He went out for only five minutes. But I said, 'That's it. Walla, there's nothing to be done.' He died on the spot and the next day we had the funeral.

"Now, when they ask me what happened, I have no answer. The papers wrote that the person who was killed threw a Molotov cocktail. No such thing happened. Even if someone threw one, it wasn't my son. Before he died, every time there was a demonstration in the village, every time there was a casualty here, as far as my son was concerned, nothing happened. Besides, after it all happened, they spoke to the owner of the mini-market, and he said that Mohammed had bought the bread."

Awad joins the conversation and tells us what happened that evening. "A friend of mine called me and said the soldiers had detained five people. I went down toward them, slightly beyond the junction at the entrance to the village. The detainees were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs. I stood next to the store and asked a soldier 'Why are you detaining them?' He laughed at me and got angry.

"At the time, nobody was throwing anything, there was no demonstration. Afterward, the soldiers advanced a little further and created a roadblock with their jeep. We heard that they were looking for a stolen car, but I don't know, because they come here almost every day and don't tell us why they're entering the village. The presence of the soldiers in the village is a provocation, and that's why the children begin to throw stones. That day they closed off another road leading to the village and didn't let anyone enter or leave. Everyone who entered they took to the wall and examined. There were about five or six children who started to throw stones, and then we heard two shots. Mohammed was the one who was wounded, just 20 meters from his house. They took him to a doctor in the village, but he died on the spot. He was just painting his house. He was wearing shorts and flip-flops."

Alami adds: "At the moment that he went to bring the bread there were some 'problems.' I don't know what happened, but according to the autopsy report he was hit in the back from behind and the bullet exited in front."

What mortal danger?

According to internal IDF reports, the incident occurred when an IDF force fired two bullets at a boy who was about to throw a Molotov cocktail at them. An IDF spokesman, who refused to tell Haaretz which unit was operating in the village, gave a somewhat different version: "Two Molotov cocktails were thrown at an IDF force during activity in the village of Beit Ummar for the purpose of preventing disturbances and protecting the traffic arteries. When the force discovered those who threw the Molotov cocktails it fired at them. The incident was investigated in accordance with the army's instructions. The investigation revealed that the force, which was in mortal danger, acted according to the army's orders and as it was expected to do."

The wording of the response raises the question of what mortal danger faced the members of the force, and whether they fired only after the Molotov cocktails had already been thrown. In any case, two days after his son was killed, Alami phoned his place of work in the offices of the administration in Beit El. The secretary answered. "I told her I wanted a two-week leave of absence because my son had died," he said. "My boss was abroad, but later I spoke to him and he said that he was sorry and that after the leave we would see how I could return to work."

The fact that Alami's son was killed by IDF fire became known to the heads of the administration only later, and they apparently didn't know just how to react. Only a few of his Palestinian friends who work for the Civil Administration came on condolence visits or telephoned. Apparently they were afraid, because the security services keep track of visitors to families of shaheeds. Condolence calls might cause them trouble later on.

Did your Jewish friends from work contact you?

Alami: "No. They didn't speak to me."

But your bosses know what happened.

"They know, but it's a difficult situation. Sometimes you can't even talk."

Brig. Gen. (res.) Ilan Paz, a former head of the Civil Administration, is not personally acquainted with Alami. But he expressed a certain surprise when we spoke to him of the way in which the administration is dealing with the case - particularly by comparison with the treatment of similar incidents during his term at the administration.

"The relative of an employee of the Civil Administration who lived in Bethlehem was severely wounded by soldiers in an incident in which she wasn't involved," says Paz. "She was hospitalized in Israel, and then the Shin Bet refused to allow this employee to enter Israel to visit her. We waged a battle over that, as well as about the payment of his salary during the time he was with his daughter. In the end he couldn't stop thanking us for the medical care and for our behavior towards him. It's not exactly the same story, but I don't understand why Alami is having a hearing."

Regarding the immediate reaction of the Shin Bet, Paz says: "That's an automatic response in order to stay on the safe side: A first-degree relative of someone killed by our forces, whether or not he is a terrorist, immediately becomes 'a preventee' because of the motivation to take revenge. But that does not replace good judgment. If you know the person, then you have to take the automatic response of the Shin Bet and limit it in light of your familiarity with him and with his commitment."

Paz believes that the hearing for Alami in the Civil Administration was set for positive reasons. "From my acquaintance with the people in the administration, I assume that this is an act that was done in order to placate the Shin Bet and enable his return to work, rather than the contrary. If the Shin Bet comes and says 'There is solid information that the man is planning to take revenge,' then it is justified not to allow him to enter Israel and perhaps not to continue working either. If he doesn't say that, and the people who know him say that they trust the man, there is no reason not to allow him to continue to work and even to remove his 'preventee' status."

'It's a job'

There have been three wars, two intifadas, the Oslo Accords and thousands of dead and wounded since Anwar Alami returned from studying accounting in Jordan at the age of 24 and was hired to work in the Civil Administration. "A cousin of mine was working there at the time," he says. "He told me they were looking for workers, and since then I've been there."

The Civil Administration, which is in effect a military unit, was established in 1981 by then defense minister Ariel Sharon. The administration was given the responsibility for running the civilian networks that provide services to the Palestinians in the territories: education, health, employment, granting various permits, and so on. The head of the administration, at present Brig. Gen. Yoav (Poli) Mordechai, is subordinate to the coordinator of government activities in the territories and operates according to orders of the head of Central Command, who is in charge of legislation in the territories.

Since 1993, in the wake of the Oslo Accords and the transfer of the cities in the West Bank to the control of the Palestinian Authority, the activity of the administration has been greatly curtailed. Its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees went for the most part to work for the PA. Today the administration directly employs slightly over 100 Palestinians, who deal with issues related to, for example, water, land and agriculture in areas that are under Israeli security control. Some of these workers receive a salary directly from Israel, and others have their salaries paid by Israel from money it deducts from the taxes it transfers to the PA each month.

Alami, who began to work at the administration about two years after its establishment, was responsible, in the years before the Oslo Accords, for paying the salaries of almost 30,000 Palestinian workers. Recently his responsibility has shrunk to paying the salaries of only a few dozen employees, but he is considered one of the two most senior Palestinian employees remaining in the administration.

"It takes me two to two and a half hours every day to get to work," says Alami. "At 5 or 5:30 A.M. I'm already on the main road. I take a taxi to Bethlehem, cross checkpoint 300 to Jerusalem, from there travel to the Qalandiya checkpoint, cross in the direction of Ramallah and from there arrive at Beit El. I walk 600-700 meters from the place where the taxi lets me off every morning, and do the same after work. At the entrance to the office I have to pass through a machine that checks me. I have no problem with that. I understand that it's a matter of security. Every day I work from 8 A.M. until 2:30 or 3 P.M. They told me that I can leave the base with the ride that transports the soldiers and the workers, but often I work later and don't make it."

His long years at this job has included difficult periods: the intifadas, suicide attacks in Israel, the killing, wounding and imprisonment of thousands of his people, including residents of his village. During the second intifada alone, 10 residents of Beit Ummar were killed, eight of them from his own extended family. Did these events affect his work and his relations with the Jewish employees? "No," he says definitively. "There's a separation. It's work, and what's at work stays at work and what's outside is outside. I never felt that there was a big difference between me and my Jewish friends, or my boss. I really felt comfortable. The PA asked me many times to come to work for them, but I didn't want to."

Why?

"I was satisfied, and they also wanted me to stay on."

In the village, how do they feel about the fact that you work on an Israeli military base?

"It's complicated, I won't tell you it isn't. There were times when it was very hard. At first things weren't so good; they would look at me, they would say: 'You work at headquarters, you work with the soldiers, with the Israelis.' People ask, 'How can you still work there?' The moment that people hear 'Beit El' they're afraid. I went through a very rough period here, but thank God, in the end people understood that it's a job, a living. I'm not tossing out the plate from which I eat. I received many benefits from the administration and I'm very grateful to them for that. They know it, they've known me for 25 years."

His brother Ibrahim adds: "Eighty percent of the people in the village are not stupid. They understand that it's just a job. If you look at the settlements, who are the people who are building there? It's also Palestinians. There's nothing to be done, it's a job."

Paz is not convinced that the Palestinians consider administration employees collaborators. "It also depends on the period," he says. "The Civil Administration is sometimes seen as the essence of impurity, a symbol of the occupation, but sometimes it is also seen in the opposite way. Sometimes you hear Palestinians saying that the administration is the only place where people listen to them. As it happens, both are true."

How do the Jewish workers relate to their Palestinian colleagues?

"It depends whom you ask. Some of the Jews have been working for decades with Palestinians. For some, that makes them hate them more, for others the opposite is the case."

He wants to carry on with a normal life

When Ala Alami awoke from his sleep last Sunday morning in the room he shared with his brother, his father was already on the way to a meeting arranged for him with the deputy head of the administration, Col. Ben Hur Ahavat. In the Alami brothers' room, on their two adjacent youth beds, there are still some stuffed animals. "He was still only a child," smiles Ala in embarrassment when I wonder to whom they belong. Opposite the beds is a computer. "He liked to play with it a lot, mainly car races," says Ala. Above the computer hangs a picture of an attractive girl, Nancy Ajram, a famous Lebanese singer. There are no religious or nationalist symbols in the room, or indeed in the house. They did not even hang up the poster of their dead son, which is pasted up all over the neighborhood. In general, aside from framed needlepoint pictures of serene landscapes, the walls of the spacious family home are very bare.

During the interview, Anwar Alami -- except for saying that he is convinced his son was not involved in a confrontation with the IDF -- is careful not to blame anyone. He does not conceal his desire to return to his job, and seems to fear that one wrong word could harm his chances.

On Sunday, his trip to the meeting in Beit El took longer than usual. Because he is not permitted to enter Israel now, he had to get there by traveling through Palestinian areas only, rather than by the usual route, which involves traveling through Jerusalem. As he sat before his bosses, he was asked what would happen if he returned to work, how he would be able to function among soldiers, knowing that his son had been killed by the IDF. He replied, he said, in the same words he said to us. "I believe that God gave and God took away and now life goes on. I have other children, and I want to carry on with a normal life. That's what's left for me, and all I want is to live in dignity. I will remain until the end the same Anwar I have been all these 25 years."

The meeting ended inconclusively; the administration needs more time to consolidate a decision. "They told me to stay on leave for another week and then they will inform me what's happening with me, whether I'll continue with the usual job, or perhaps they'll transfer me," says Alami. Another week has passed, but he has yet to receive a reply from the administration. For now, he continues to think positively, but fear is beginning to creep into his voice. "Do you think there are problems?" he asks.

The Civil Administration's response: "After the death of his son, the Civil Administration responded to the request of Abu Sara (Alami) and allowed him to take a leave of absence, which continues to this day. Recently senior members of the Civil Administration met with Mr. Abu Sara and discussed his situation with him. The final decision will be made in cooperation with the relevant security factors."

When I and other Palestinian-Americans first knew Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, he grasped the oppression faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He understood that an honest broker cannot simultaneously be the main cheerleader, financier and arms supplier for one side in a conflict. He often attended Palestinian-American community events and heard about the Palestinian experience from perspectives stifled in mainstream discussion.

In recent months, Obama has sought to allay persistent concerns from pro-Israel groups by recasting himself as a stalwart backer of Israel and tacking ever closer to positions espoused by the powerful, hard-line pro-Israel lobby Aipac. He distanced himself from mainstream advisers because pro-Israel groups objected to their calls for even-handedness.

Like his Republican rival, senator John McCain, Obama gave staunch backing to Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling them "self defence".

Every aspect of Obama's visit to Palestine-Israel this week has seemed designed to further appease pro-Israel groups. Typically for an American aspirant to high office, he visited the Israeli Holocaust memorial and the Western Wall. He met the full spectrum of Israeli Jewish (though not Israeli Arab) political leaders. He travelled to the Israeli Jewish town of Sderot, which until last month's ceasefire, frequently experienced rockets from the Gaza Strip. At every step, Obama warmly professed his support for Israel and condemned Palestinian violence.

Other than a cursory 45-minute visit to occupied Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians got little. According to an Abbas aide, Obama provided assurances that he would be "a constructive partner in the peace process." Some observers took comfort in his promise that he would get engaged "starting from the minute I'm sworn into office". Obama remained silent on the issue of Jerusalem, after boldly promising the "undivided" city to Israel as its capital in a speech to Aipac last month, and then appearing to backtrack amid a wave of outrage across the Arab world.

But Obama missed the opportunity to visit Palestinian refugee camps, schools and even shopping malls to witness first-hand the devastation caused by the Israeli army and settlers, or to see how Palestinians cope under what many call "apartheid". This year alone, almost 500 Palestinians, including over 70 children, have been killed by the Israeli army - exceeding the total for 2007 and dwarfing the two-dozen Israelis killed in conflict-related violence.

Obama said nothing about Israel's relentless expansion of colonies on occupied land. Nor did he follow the courageous lead of former President Jimmy Carter and meet with the democratically elected Hamas leaders, even though Israel negotiated a ceasefire with them. That such steps are inconceivable shows how off-balance is the US debate on Palestine.

Many people I talk to are resigned to the conventional wisdom that aspiring national politicians cannot afford to be seen as sympathetic to the concerns of Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims. They still hope that, if elected, Obama would display an even-handedness absent in the campaign.

Without entirely foreclosing the possibility of change in US policy, the reality is that the political pressures evident in a campaign do not magically disappear once the campaign is over. Nor is all change necessarily for the better.

One risk is that a President Obama or President McCain would just bring back the Clinton-era approach where the United States effectively acted as "Israel's lawyer", as Aaron David Miller, a 25-year veteran of the US state department's Middle East peace efforts, memorably put it. This led to a doubling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an upsurge in violence and the failed 2000 Camp David summit where Clinton tried to pressure Arafat into accepting a bantustan. A depressing feature of Obama's visit was the prominent advisory role for Dennis Ross, the official in charge of the peace process under Clinton, and the founder of an Aipac-sponsored pro-Israel think-tank.

Whoever is elected will face a rapidly changing situation in Palestine-Israel. A number of shifts are taking place simultaneously. First, the consensus supporting the two-state solution is disintegrating as Israeli colonies have rendered it unachievable. Second, the traditional Palestinian national leadership is being eclipsed by new movements including Hamas. And, as western and Arab governments become more craven in the face of Israeli human rights violations, a Palestinian-led campaign modelled on the anti-apartheid strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions is building global civil society support. Finally, the demographic shift in Palestine-Israel toward an absolute Palestinian majority in all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be complete in the next three to five years.

Making peace in this new reality will take leaders ready to listen and talk to all sides in the conflict and to consider alternatives to the moribund two-state solution, such as power-sharing, confederation or a single democratic state. It will require, above all, the courage, imagination and political will to challenge the status quo of Israeli domination and Palestinian dispossession that has led to ever more violence with each passing year.

by: Bob Herbert, The New York Times

You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney, but without the vice president's sense of humor.

In her important new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, Dick Cheney's main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy for the so-called war on terror.

She quotes a colleague as saying of Mr. Addington: "No one stood to his right." Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Mr. Cheney, was reported to have summed up Mr. Addington as follows: "He doesn't believe in the Constitution."

Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington's existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration's Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror - regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say - was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.

This is the mind-set that gave us Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the C.I.A.'s secret prisons, known as "black sites."

Ms. Mayer wrote: "The legal doctrine that Addington espoused - that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries if national security demanded it - rested on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars shared."

When the constraints of the law are unlocked by the men and women in suits at the pinnacle of power, terrible things happen in the real world. You end up with detainees being physically and psychologically tormented day after day, month after month, until they beg to be allowed to commit suicide. You have prisoners beaten until they are on the verge of death, or hooked to overhead manacles like something out of the Inquisition, or forced to defecate on themselves, or sexually humiliated, or driven crazy by days on end of sleep deprivation and blinding lights and blaring noises, or water-boarded.

Continued . . .

As November’s American presidential elections approach, Barack Obama’s message on Iraq is being widely interpreted as “flip-flopping” and a “retreat” from a previously unequivocal stance of fully withdrawing the US occupation forces. This is to misunderstand Obama, who is not someone who shoots from the hip. There is much more to his words than cursory reading could unravel.

His remarks before the 2003 invasion resonated well within the American antiwar movement. His scathing references to the Bush administration’s folly and his demands for “ending the war” were probably decisive in winning him the Democratic party nomination against Hillary Clinton, whose vote for war in 2003 ultimately crippled her credibility as the commander-in-chief who would bring it to an end.

Obama himself has reacted angrily to claims of a policy U-turn: “For me to say I’m going to refine my policies is I don’t think in any way inconsistent with prior statements and doesn’t change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I’m going to end it as president.” Earlier this month he resorted to an op-ed article in the New York Times to emphatically state: “On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.”

As always in examining the words of politicians, let alone Obama (who now has 300 foreign policy advisers), the devil is in the details. Here, Obama’s “ending the war” declarations begin to look far from reassuring, even before he “refines” his line after meeting the US commander, General Petraeus, in Iraq.

Obama sees Iraq as part of a wider theatre of war and potential wars engulfing the entire Middle East, where US strategic goals and interests are at stake. So his obvious shift on the “surge” operations in Iraq (underlined by deleting criticisms of it from his website last week) is strengthening his call for “redeployment” from Iraq to Afghanistan. His current strategy could be summed up as: de-escalate the war in Iraq, escalate it in Afghanistan, and talk to Iran. On Iran, his offer of talks was coupled with an alarming, Bush-style threat. “I’ll do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything,” Obama told a gathering of the pro-Israel lobby group, Aipac, in April. He is echoing the sentiments of his famous anti-Iraq war speech in 2002, in which he repeatedly stressed that he was not opposed to all US wars.

It is worth noting that the term withdrawal, let alone a full unconditional withdrawal that will satisfy most of the Iraqi people, has never been part of Obama’s vocabulary. His first carefully considered statement on Iraq was made in January last year, when he introduced the Iraq war de-escalation act to Congress. It was then that he envisaged stationing troops in Iraq on a longer-term basis: “A residual US presence may remain in Iraq for force protection, training of Iraqi security forces and pursuit of international terrorists.” Using similar phrases, this is what he outlined in the New York Times last week.

To distinguish his policy from that of his rival for the White House, Obama declared: “Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea.” But it doesn’t require rocket science to know that keeping “residual” forces requires heavily fortified areas, installations and a state of readiness to go to war. Unless Obama has discovered something new, such areas are known as military bases. So it is the word “permanent” that separates the two, as McCain may want to stay “100 years” in Iraq. The comparison with South Korea is not heartening, considering massive US bases have been in that country for over half a century.

Obama has even pre-empted a possible line of attack from hawks by chillingly suggesting he would possibly invade Iraq again if necessary. His website states: “He would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.” The word potential is worth pausing over; it is salutary to remember Bush and Blair occupied Iraq and caused the death of perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people for “humanitarian” reasons.

Neither is Obama opposed to signing a military treaty with Iraq. He has two conditions to make Bush’s current attempts to impose a pact acceptable: the pact should get Congressional approval, and renounce “permanent” military bases. However, leaked drafts of this colonialist-style pact do not mention the word “permanent” at all. And his “benchmarks” for continued support for the corrupt Iraqi politicians protected by US forces in Baghdad’s Green Zone are strikingly similar to those of the Bush administration.

Tactical differences and issues of style aside, Obama’s message on occupied Iraq is deeply troubling - not because it has U-turned but because it has been consistent. His 300 foreign policy advisers are making sure that he will not stray from protecting US imperialist interests, even if it does mean launching new wars and bolstering puppet regimes and corrupt dictatorships throughout the “greater Middle East”.

Sami Ramadani, a political exile from Saddam’s regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University.

Once Zionism tried to hide its original ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Then Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris uncovered and published the facts. For men of integrity such as Pappe, these facts made it impossible to identify with the Zionist narrative. For men of no integrity, on the other hand -- men such as Benny Morris -- the facts made it necessary to justify ethnic cleansing, if committed by Jews. In A Brazen Evil Justin Raimondo condemns the further moral degeneration of Morris as he calls for an American attack on Iran.

Evil usually hides its face, because the sight of it repulses all but the depraved. However, in the case of Benny Morris, writing in Friday's New York Times, we see something new: a proud evil, glorying in pure malevolence. His piece is a cold, calculated attempt to simultaneously shock and intimidate, one that succeeds at the former but fails miserably at the latter.

Here's the shocker, really a double jolt: "Israel," he avers, "will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months." Either that, he writes, or else Israel will eventually have to launch "a preemptive nuclear strike." His message to the West: take out Iran, or we'll nuke 'em!

The Israelis have been threatening to strike for the past six months, so nothing new there, except for the tone of certainty. Morris is no fringe nut-job flailing away on his obscure blog; he's a prominent Israeli historian writing on the most noted opinion page of them all, a veritable bulletin board for governing elites worldwide. As such, he is almost certainly speaking with some insight into Israeli government plans. It is, in any case, almost inconceivable that he wrote his piece without the foreknowledge and consent of Israeli government officials.

As to whether he – and they – are bluffing, well, I wouldn't count on it. With all this talk of Iran's alleged attempt to build nuclear weapons – which our own intelligence services say was abandoned years ago – Israel is the one country in the region we know is armed to the gills with nukes. Given their history, the increasing extremism of their leadership and polity, and their fanatical devotion to the doctrine of preemption – indeed, they invented it, while George W. Bush merely adopted it – the Israelis are far more likely than any other member of the nuclear club to actually use nukes, as Morris makes all too clear.

In what has to be the most widely circulated blackmail note ever written, Morris announces, "It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike" – so take out the Iranians, or we will. To be fair, he also says it won't be a good thing if "both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate," but since Iran has no nuclear weapons and has given up all attempts to make them, this is just window-dressing for a genocidal agenda.

Morris's rationale for mass murder is oddly hollow and formulaic: Well, you see, "Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power." To begin with, this has got to be a misprint. Surely what Morris meant to say was that every Israeli intelligence agency thinks Iran is on the verge of acquiring nukes. Why else are the Israelis slated to make a series of trips to the U.S. to convince their American counterparts that they are right, and the Americans' National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong?

Aside from that, there is a dispute as to where to draw the "red line," the point-of-no-return, the passage of which acts as a tripwire provoking military intervention. The Israelis have a far tighter timeline, as you might imagine, and their forecast – "one to four years" – is wildly improbable. It is based on the development of the ability to weaponize nuclear processes in a purely theoretical sense, quite aside from the problems posed by construction, possible detection, and delivery.

Reading the Morris screed, one wonders how he came to write such an unimaginative apologia for what would rank among the worst crimes in human history: "everybody knows" the Iranians are trying to build nukes (where have we heard that before?), the sanctions aren't working, the Russians and the Chinese won't cooperate, oh, and "the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands."

As anyone with the least amount of historical or common sense could easily figure out, even if Iran did develop a nuclear weapons arsenal, it would create a nuclear stalemate analogous to the Cold War standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Morris claims this example doesn't apply, due to "the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran." Aside from the ruling by Iranian Shi'ite religious authority Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the real leader of Iran – that forbids the development, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons, what about his own genocidal mindset, which glories in the prospect of ethnic cleansing? No Iranian personage of any prominence has called for the nuclear extermination of Israel in quite the same terms as Morris, not even Iranian President Ahmadinejad, whose vague remark about Israel "disappearing from the page of history" has been interpreted as a threat to use nukes.

Morris neither knows nor cares about Iran's alleged nukes. Lurking behind his mundane laundry list of complaints is, I fear, a darker motive: sheer bloodlust. Morris simply wants to kill as many Muslims as possible, so why doesn't he just come out and say it? After all, it isn't like he hasn't said it before:

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing."

It isn't very often that we get to see pure, unmitigated evil, in all its Satanic darkness, expressed openly on the printed page. Morris and the Times have given us one of the rare modern examples of the genre. One might compare it to Hitler's maleficent vision in Mein Kampf, but that would be giving Morris too much credit. Unlike the Nazis, who blamed their victims for the horrors visited upon them, Morris also blames Israel's friends and allies – the West, and specifically the antiwar American public, which "curtails the White House's ability to begin yet another major military campaign in pursuit of a goal that is not seen as a vital national interest by many Americans."

We must forget our national interests and go to war for Israel's sake, or else the Israelis will unleash their illegal and unaccounted-for nukes, killing tens of thousands, poisoning the atmosphere, and forever scarring human history with the mark of their heinous crime. This is like one of those hostage dramas in which a mad gunman grabs someone and uses them as a human shield, braying his demands to horrified onlookers.

Americans must reject this attempt at moral blackmail with the contempt it deserves – and perhaps begin to reexamine the "special relationship" that enables Israel to even contemplate such crimes against humanity. As for Morris, he should be shunned by every decent human being, although perhaps that description doesn't apply to the editors of the New York Times.

The blood of the victims is screaming out at us; the blood of the innocent is calling on all of us to wake up; to make the Arabs of east Jerusalem realize that terrorism comes with a price. A painful price. A price paid by the terrorist’s family, his relatives, brothers, and brothers-in-law.

The above quote was written by an Israeli journalist in the largest circulation daily Yediot Aharonot a day after Hussam Dwaiyat, a 30-year-old Palestinian from occupied East Jerusalem, ran a bulldozer into several vehicles in Jerusalem, overturning a bus, killing three people and injuring several dozen others.¹ Calling for “collective punishment,” the commentator added, “It has to be the kind of punishment that has a revenge component.” Meanwhile, dozens of Israeli protestors gathered outside the Dwaiyat family home in the Sur Bahir neighborhood chanting, “Right here, right now, destroy this house.”²

These sentiments were not marginal; they reflected the mood of Israeli political and military leaders, many of whom declared Palestinians to be collectively guilty and called for measures of collective punishment against Dwaiyat’s relatives, specifically, and the Palestinian civilian population more generally.

This paper examines Israel’s use of collective punishment of Palestinians and its affording of collective immunity to Israeli Jews who commit crimes against Palestinians.

Collective Punishment in International Law

Because collective punishment was a common and horrifying feature of armed conflict in earlier times, involving reprisal killings and property destruction against noncombatant civilians, it became one of the fundamental prohibitions enshrined in the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, protecting civilians in time of armed conflict and military occupation. The United Nations Security Council has reaffirmed on dozens of occasions that this Convention applies to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem.³

Article 33 of the Convention states that:

"No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited".

The authoritative ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) commentary on this article explains that:

"This paragraph then lays a prohibition on collective penalties…penalties of any kind inflicted on persons or entire groups of persons, in defiance of the most elementary principles of humanity, for acts that these persons have not committed".⁴

The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflict states that collective punishments:

"may take different forms, such as a curfew preventing the inhabitants from fulfilling their daily duties, punishment or detention of several members of a group or family for an alleged offense by one member, or the destruction of the house belonging to the family of an alleged offender. Such acts are prohibited, without exception, by Article 33".⁵

Amnesty International views the prohibition on collective punishment as “a cardinal rule of human rights law” and affirms that under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the vast majority of house demolitions by Israeli occupation forces, including the punitive demolitions, are illegal.⁶

Consensus View on Israeli Collective Punishment

There is a firm consensus among U.N. officials, many governments, human rights organizations and international civil society that many of Israel’s policies and practices against Palestinians constitute illegal collective punishment and a “grave breach” of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

In 2006, Switzerland, the depository of the Geneva Conventions, condemned Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip which “violated the principle of proportionality and are to be seen as forms of collective punishment, which is forbidden.” These included the destruction of Gaza’s only power station, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of electricity and the arbitrary arrest of democratically-elected officials.⁷

Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, including restricting the import of fuel, raw materials and vital supplies and preventing the entry and exit of patients in need of urgent medical care, has been condemned as “collective punishment” by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon⁸ as well as by the European Union and France.⁹ In January, the Vatican’s ambassador to Israel also urged the country to refrain from “collective punishment” in Gaza.¹⁰

Major humanitarian and human rights organizations agree. A coalition of groups comprised of Amnesty International, CARE International UK, CAFOD (the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development), Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save The Children UK and Trócaire jointly condemned Israel’s “collective punishment” and noted that the humanitarian situation was worse than at any time since the occupation began in 1967.¹¹ By July 2008, at least 50 medical patients, denied treatment outside the Gaza Strip, had died as a result of this collective punishment, Amnesty reported.¹²

Seven Israeli human rights organizations jointly warned that the Israeli blockade of Gaza constituted “a violation of one of the absolute prohibitions of international law: the ban on collective punishment.”¹³

House Demolitions as Collective Punishment

A specific category of collective punishment is house demolition, which the Dwaiyat case highlights.

Since 1967, Israel has used house demolitions or sealings as a way to punish the Palestinian population. According to B’Tselem, “the declared objective of house demolitions was deterrence, achieved by harming the relatives of Palestinians who carried out, or were suspected of involvement in carrying out attacks against Israeli citizens and soldiers.” Its main victims, therefore, were “family members, among them women, the elderly, and children, who bore no responsibility for the acts of their relative.” In the vast majority of cases, the person whose alleged actions Israel used to justify the demolition no longer lived in the house either because he was in hiding, was imprisoned or had been killed by Israeli forces.¹⁴

From the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000 up to November 2004, Israel carried out 628 punitive demolitions (accounting for about 15 percent of all house demolitions), making 3,983 people homeless. These demolitions were carried out because of the alleged acts of 333 individuals; thus on average, twelve persons were punished for the suspected act of one person. Even more shocking, almost half of those houses (295), home to 1,286 people, were never home to anyone suspected of carrying out any act against Israel; they were simply unfortunate enough to be adjacent to the targeted homes.¹⁵

In 2005, then Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz suspended the practice of punitive demolitions after a classified Israeli army report found that house demolition was ineffective as a deterrent and could be “counterproductive.”¹⁶ According to a former chief of Israel’s military courts in the occupied West Bank, the report found that “nowhere was it demonstrated that home demolition put an end to terrorist activity or even substantially curbed it; the move perhaps even increased it.”¹⁷

In light of these facts, the chorus of calls for a renewal of punitive house demolitions and other measures of collective punishment in the wake of the bulldozer incident demonstrated a “lack of logic and lack of control” on the part of Israel’s leaders, according to a Haaretz editorial.¹⁸

On the day of the Jerusalem bulldozer attack, even before it had been thoroughly investigated, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for the home of the bulldozer driver’s family to be destroyed and for the family’s social benefits to be cut off. Defense Minister Ehud Barak issued preliminary orders for the destruction of the Dwaiyat family home, as well as the home of the gunman who killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in March. Israel’s Attorney General affirmed that such demolitions would not be illegal under Israeli law.

Israeli police later confirmed that Dwaiyat had acted alone, and there was no evidence that he had been involved with any militant organization.¹⁹ Dwaiyat was shot dead on the scene.

A Pretext for Discrimination

Israeli leaders are certainly aware that house demolitions of the kind they demand in response to the Jerusalem attacks have no deterrent effect, even if they remain unconcerned about their absolute illegality under international law. Why then would they once again resort to them? One likely reason is domestic politics; Israeli leaders often compete for popularity on the basis of who can be more hard-line towards Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Another is that incidents such as the bulldozer attack or the March shooting at Mercaz HaRav provide Israeli leaders with an opportunity to advance policies aimed at further eroding the citizenship and rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, who are considered a demographic burden to Israel.²⁰

In the wake of the bulldozer attack, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, for instance, called for Israel to revoke the “permanent residency” rights of Palestinians in the East Jerusalem areas of Jabal Mukaber and Sur Bahir (combined population approximately 30,000)—Israel treats most Palestinians native to East Jerusalem occupied in 1967 as if they were merely foreign residents in Israel living there at its pleasure.²¹

Infrastructure Minister Eli Yishai called for the movement of East Jerusalem Palestinians to be restricted by law. A legislator from the Yisrael Beitenu Party, formerly a member of Olmert’s governing coalition, declared of Palestinians that “they are all plotting evil” against Israel.²² Another legislator suggested that in addition to demolishing their house, Dwaiyat’s family members should be exiled to the Gaza Strip.²³

Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, went even further using the bulldozer attack to justify a loyalty test for Palestinian citizens of Israel; those who voluntarily chose to serve in the Israeli army and refrained from any criticism of the state could keep their Israeli citizenship. Those who refused these terms “would enjoy only residency rights” and would only be able to elect representatives to a separate parliament. Palestinian citizens of Israel, he said, would have to be completely loyal or “pay the price.”²⁴

Just hours after the bulldozer incident, the Knesset preliminarily approved, by large margins, two previously introduced bills allowing Israel to confiscate the property and revoke the citizenship of Palestinian citizens of Israel involved in “terror” activities as well as that of their family members.²⁵

Collective Impunity

Despite constituting a serious violation of international law, Israel does not consider house demolitions and other collective punishments to be illegal under its own laws. At the same time, Israel claims to be a modern liberal democracy comparable to those in Western Europe or Canada.

On its face, collective punishment fundamentally contradicts liberal principles. But, given that Israel views Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel to be subject to its domestic laws (as distinct from the military laws it applies to Palestinians in the West Bank outside Jerusalem), they should be treated the same as Israeli Jewish citizens when they commit similar crimes. We should expect that Israeli Jews too would experience collective punishment. This is emphatically not the case, however. The record shows that while Palestinians suffer collective punishment, Israeli Jews are accorded individual liberal rights when they are punished but very often enjoy lenience or impunity if their victims are Palestinians.

Israel has never demolished the home of an Israeli Jew for punitive reasons; it has not even moved to demolish the West Bank settler outposts that even it considers “illegal” and that it has pledged to remove under its Road Map commitments. Neither Yigal Amir nor his family were threatened with having their citizenship revoked after Amir was convicted of assassinating Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, the gravest act of treason any state could countenance. Nor was his family home demolished either as punishment or to deter other Israeli Jewish extremists from assassinating government officials, despite frequent warnings from Israeli security agencies that more attacks were possible. Indeed, Amir has received extraordinary benefits in prison, including the right to marry, have conjugal visits, father a son and attend the infant’s circumcision ceremony.

Although Israeli Jewish citizens have carried out lethal attacks on Palestinians inside Israel, often for political reasons, Jewish families or communities have never been subjected to collective punishment.

On 4 August 2005, for example, Eden Nathan Zada, an Israeli army deserter, opened fire on a bus in the northern Israel town of Shfaram killing four Palestinian citizens of Israel and wounding 12 others. Then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Zada, who was enraged by Israel’s planned removal of settlements from the Gaza Strip, “a bloodthirsty terrorist.”²⁶ Zada was beaten to death on the spot by survivors. Israel alleged that he had already been subdued and handcuffed and subsequently arrested a number of Palestinians accusing them of “lynching” Zada. Almost three years after the incident, Israeli prosecutors said they were still preparing charges against 12 people for attacking Zada. Palestinian community organizations in Israel strenuously objected to what they saw as persecution of people who were acting on the spur of the moment to defend themselves just as anyone else might.

Adel Turki, the father of two sisters killed by Zada pointed out what many considered a bitter irony:

"If the [suspect] had been Arab, it doesn't matter from where, from the territories, from Gaza, from Shfaram, it doesn't matter, and he came to an Israeli neighborhood, and he killed four people, what would they have done to him? They would have killed him, destroyed his house. The government should be ashamed.^"27

Zada’s family were not subjected to any form of collective punishment although, the families of his victims were: the Israeli defense ministry ruled that the dead could not be legally defined as “victims of terror” because Zada was a Jew, hence the families could not by right receive compensation.²⁸

Just weeks later, another Israeli Jew, also motivated by a desire to disrupt the removal of settlers from Gaza, murdered four Palestinians laborers prompting Amnesty International to call on Israel to end the “impunity” for those who attack Palestinians. Amnesty noted that despite a consistent rise in such violence, settlers “continue to be allowed to carry weapons and the Israeli authorities have taken no concrete measures to prevent the daily harassment and attacks against Palestinians and their property.”²⁹

In other cases, Israeli Jewish killers of Palestinians have been pardoned by the Israeli state and have continued to take part in anti-Palestinian incitement even as Israel insists it can never release Palestinians “with blood on their hands” as part of negotiated prisoner exchanges. For example, Uzi Sharbav, one of three Israeli Jews convicted of murdering three Palestinian students and injuring dozens in a bomb attack on a school in Hebron in 1983, was freed from prison by Israel’s president in 1990. In March 2008, Sharbav signed a widely distributed statement calling for revenge attacks against Arabs following the Mercaz HaRav shootings.³⁰

These examples fit into a much wider pattern of severe, indiscriminate and collective punishment of Palestinians, combined with impunity for Israeli Jews who commit crimes against the lives and property of Palestinians.

Haaretz recently noted an upsurge in settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, including the firing of rockets bearing the names “Sharon 1” and “Sharon 2” at a Palestinian village. The newspaper noted, however, that most incidents go unreported because “cases are usually closed, for various reasons; even those that are heard by a court usually end in acquittal or a light sentence.”³¹

Most of this discussion has focused on the impunity enjoyed by Israelis in a domestic context. Perhaps, an even more important layer of impunity is international; the Israeli officials and military officers who order and carry out collective punishments and other violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention can do so because none of the High Contracting Parties to Convention —states legally committed to enforcing it—have moved to take action against alleged Israeli violations. Palestinian human rights advocates believe that world governments’ failure “to fulfill their legal and moral obligations” to hold Israel accountable under the Convention “has encouraged Israel to act as if it is above the law and encourages Israel continue to violate international human rights and humanitarian law.”³²

Seeking Justice Abroad

The impunity that Israelis have enjoyed domestically and internationally has forced Palestinians and others to seek justice in foreign jurisdictions. Most famously, 28 Palestinian survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres attempted to prosecute Ariel Sharon under Belgium’s universal jurisdiction laws. This effort failed when Belgium changed its laws under foreign pressure.³³

In 2005, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a class action lawsuit in United States federal court in Washington, D.C. against retired Israeli Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon accusing him of war crimes and extra-judicial killing for his role in the 1996 Israeli attack on a United Nations compound in Qana, Lebanon that killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians seeking refuge there. The case was dismissed by the judge on the grounds that Ya’alon could not be sued because he was acting in an official capacity—a seemingly flagrant violation of the Nuremberg Principles.³⁴

This month, Palestinians from the West Bank village of Bil’in filed suit in the Superior Court of Quebec against two Canadian companies that have been involved in constructing, marketing and selling residential units in the Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit built on land seized from the village.³⁵

In perhaps the most ambitious current case, the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights last month filed a war crimes lawsuit in Spain’s highest court against seven former senior Israeli military and political leaders for the July 2002 bombing of an apartment complex in Gaza City, which killed the leader of the military wing of the Hamas movement along with 17 civilians. The accused officials include former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Ya’alon and former Air Force Chief Dan Halutz.³⁶

Whether any of these cases is more successful than previous ones at curbing Israeli state vigilantism and impunity and bringing a measure of justice to Palestinians remains to be seen.

Ali Abunimah is a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC. He is an expert on Palestine, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada, an online publication about Palestine and the Palestine-Israeli conflict, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.

-- Notes --

¹ Daum, Hanoch, “This is no time for mercy,” Yediot Aharonot, 4 July 2008, [http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3563582,00.html].
² “Israeli demo calls for razing of bulldozer attacker’s home,” Agence France Presse, 6 July 2008.
³ For example, U.N. Security Council Resolution 465 (1980), 607 (1988), 636 (1989), 641 (1989), 1322 (2000) all affirm the applicability of the convention to all the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967, including Jerusalem.
⁴ ICRC, Commentary: IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, p. 225. (Geneva: ICRC, 1958), cited in Under the rubble: house demolition and destruction of land and property, Amnesty International, May 2004, p. 60, [http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/033/2004/en/dom-MDE150332004en.pdf].
⁵ Fleck, Dieter (ed.), The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflict, p. 249, cited in Amnesty International, May 2004, p. 61.
⁶ For legal analysis: Amnesty International, May 2004, pp. 58-60.
⁷ “Near East: Switzerland calls on Israel to uphold international humanitarian law,” Switzerland Department of Foreign Affairs, 3 July 2006, [http://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=5978].
⁸ See: “Transcript Of Press Conference By Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon At Palais Des Nations, Geneva, 23 January 2008,” SG/SM/11386/Rev.1*, [http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/sgsm11386.doc.htm] and Charbonneau, Louis, “Collective punishment for Gaza is wrong -U.N.,” Reuters, 18 January 2008, [http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18343083].
⁹ See: Kershner, Isabel, “Israel allows some supplies into Gaza,” The New York Times, 22 January 2008, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html].
¹⁰ “Vatican envoy urges Israel to refrain from collective punishment in Gaza,” Jerusalem Post, 26 January 2008, [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1201367872361&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull].
¹¹ “British aid agencies denounce 'collective punishment' in Gaza,” Ekklesia, 6 March 2008, [http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/6862].
¹² “Gaza Blockade – Collective Punishment,” Amnesty International, July 2008, [http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/021/2008].
¹³ “Cabinet decision will impose collective punishment on a civilian population, lead to grave breach of International Law,” B’Tselem, 20 September 2007, [http://www.btselem.org/english/press_releases/20070920.asp].
¹⁴ “House demolitions as punishment,” B’Tselem, (undated resource), [http://btselem.org/English/Punitive_Demolitions/Index.asp].
¹⁵ Quoted figures are from: Through No Fault of Their Own: Punitive House Demolitions during the al - Aqsa Intifada, B'Tselem, November 2004, [http://www.btselem.org/download/200411_Punitive_House_Demolitions_Eng.pdf]. Also see: Under the rubble: house demolition and destruction of land and property, Amnesty International, May 2004, [http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/033/2004/en/dom-MDE150332004en.pdf].
¹⁶ Stoil, Rebecca Anna, “MK’s debate effectiveness of demolishing terrorists’ homes,” Jerusalem Post, 7 July 2008, [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1215330889598].
¹⁷ Straschnov, Amnon, “Don’t destroy terrorists’ homes,” Haaretz, 6 July 2008, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999127.html].
¹⁸ “Sanity now,” Haaretz, 4 July 2008, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998856.html].
¹⁹ “Israeli demo calls for razing of bulldozer attacker’s home,” Agence France Presse, 6 July 2008.
²⁰ See Abunimah, Ali, “Palestinians on the Verge of a Majority: Population and Politics in Palestine-Israel,” Palestine Center Information Brief No. 162 (12 May 2008), [http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/informationbrief.php?ID=192].
²¹ “Barak orders demolition of Jerusalem, yeshiva terrorists’ homes,” Haaretz, 4 July 2008, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998668.html].
²² “PM Olmert following attack: Destroy the terrorist’s house,” Jerusalem Post, 2 July 2008, [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1214726189976].
²³ Ilan, Shahar, “New laws aim to revoke Israeli Arab terrorists’ citizenship,” Haaretz, 2 July 2008, [http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998347.html].
²⁴ Sharon, Gilad, “Biting the hand that feeds you,” Yediot Aharonot, 6 July 2008, [http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3564643,00.html].
²⁵ Ilan, Shahar, “New laws aim to revoke Israeli Arab terrorists’ citizenship,” Haaretz, 2 July 2008, [http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998347.html].
²⁶ “Israeli gunman kills four on bus,” BBC News, 5 August 2005, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4746591.stm].
²⁷ “Zada killers dealt blow to rule of law,” Jerusalem Post, 15 June 2008, [http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659736&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull].
²⁸ They were later granted compensation as an “exceptional measure.” See Shafir, Gershon, “The Israeli Model,” in Alison Brysk and Gershon Shafir (eds.), National Insecurity and Human Rights: Democracies Debate Counterterrorism, (University of California Press, 2007), p.100.
²⁹ On 17 August 2005, Asher Weisgan shot dead four Palestinian laborers at Shilo settlement. In September 2006, he was sentenced to four life terms but committed suicide weeks later. For Amnesty quote, see: “Amnesty International condemns killing of Palestinians by Israeli settler, calls for urgent measures to end settlers' impunity,” Amnesty International, 18 August 2005, [http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/046/2005/en/dom-MDE150462005en.html].
³⁰ See Abunimah, Ali, “Anti-Arab Racism and Incitement in Israel” Palestine Center Information Brief No. 161 (25 March 2008), [http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/informationbrief.php?ID=191].
³¹ “Too easy on settler crime,” Haaretz, 9 July 2008, [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000239.html].
³² “Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 9 July 2008, [http://pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/09-07-2008.htm].
³³ For comprehensive resources on this case, see http://www.indictsharon.net.
³⁴ See: http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/belhas-v.-ya’alon.
³⁵ “Seeking Justice Abroad: Bil’in Village Council Submits Case before Canadian Court Against Canadian Corporations for Involvement in Illegal Settlement Construction,” press release, Al-Haq, 10 July 2008, [http://www.alhaq.org/etemplate.php?id=379].
³⁶ “PCHR Submits Lawsuit against Israeli Officials via Spanish National Court,” press release, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 25 June 2008, [http://pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/60-2008.html].

Riz Khan looks at what a change in the White House will do to America's foreign policy with voices from different sides of the American political spectrum.

The British Government has commissioned a report thats found they can't trust what the yanks tell them about torture.  No shit.  The British Government outsourcing torture?  Again, no shit.  Not to mention the systemic use of it by British forces...

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs' report to be published today claims. They also call for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government has itself 'outsourced' the torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used 'waterboarding'. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured. During waterboarding, a person is tied to a board with their feet raised and cellophane wrapped around the head. Water is then poured on to the face, causing the victim to start to drown.

Today's committee report said there were 'serious implications' of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. 'The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,' said the committee. 'We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.'

It also urges the government to press the US authorities for information on whether any American military flights landing in the UK were part of the 'rendition circuit', even if they did not have detainees on board at the time.

The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that UK territory has not been used for 'rendition', the extra-judicial transfer of suspects between countries. But in February, Miliband told the Commons he had been informed by the US that two rendition planes refuelled on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The MPs also urged the Foreign Office to investigate a Guardian report that six British nationals claimed to have been detained and tortured by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, where they were also interrogated by British intelligence officers. Foreign Minister Lord Malloch-Brown told the committee: 'We absolutely deny the charge that we have in any way outsourced torture to Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] as a way of extracting information, either for court use or for use in counter-terrorism.'

The report also called on the Foreign Office to seek consular access to all British citizens, including those of dual nationality, detained in Pakistan and asked for an explanation from ministers why one of those detained was apparently denied consular access but was visited by a British official, who may have been an intelligence officer.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses his recent article on the probable Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran, Israel’s need for new war in Iran to keep the U.S. military in the Mideast due to the failure in Iraq, the outspokenness of the military brass against an attack on Iran, AIPAC’s drafting of the new Iran war resolutions, Bush and Cheney’s loyalty to Israel, the never-ending conflicts created by the Israel occupation of Palestine, the need for the American people and Congress to understand the catastrophe that would ensue from attacking Iran and the urgency of impeachment.

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years – from the John F. Kennedy administration to that of George H. W. Bush and is a co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Pepe Escobar on Obama's speech on Iraq and Afghanistan

Obama, McCain Allergic to New Iraq Reality

You say you expected more rhetoric than reality from Senators Obama and McCain yesterday in their speeches on Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, that’s certainly what you got.

What I find nonetheless amazing is how they, and the pundits, have taken such little notice of the dramatic change in the political landscape occasioned by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s bombshell on July 7 — his insistence on a “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops before any accord is reached on their staying past the turn of the year.

Responding to a question at his press conference yesterday, President George W. Bush showed that he was vaguely aware that the timetable is, as Robert Dreyfuss says (in Truthout, July 7), a “big deal.” Bush even alluded haltingly to the possibility of extending the UN mandate still further.

But it is far from clear that Maliki, who is under great domestic pressure, would be able to sell that to the various factions upon which he depends for support, much less to those which he must keep at bay. As Dreyfuss points out, Maliki and his Shiite allies are also under considerable pressure from Iran, which remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites. Most important, Maliki is by no means in control of what happens next.

Israel

Here’s where it gets sticky. No one who knows about third rails in US politics would expect the candidates or the fawning corporate media (FCM) to address how those now running Israel are likely to be looking at the implications of a large US troop withdrawal from Iraq next year.

I am remembering how I was pilloried on June 16, 2005, immediately after Congressman John Conyers’ rump-Judiciary Committee hearing in the bowels of the Capitol, for a candid answer to a question from one of his colleagues; i. e., if the invasion of Iraq was not about WMD, and not about non-existent ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, then why did we attack?

In answer, I used the acronym OIL. O for oil; I for Israel; and L for Logistics, meaning the military bases deemed by neoconservatives as necessary to protect both. Neither the House members present nor the media people seemed to have any problem with oil and military bases as factors-in itself an interesting commentary.

However, the suggestion that one main motive was an attempt to make that part of the Middle East safer for Israel (yes, folks, the neocons really thought that attacking Iraq would do that) — well, that was anathema.

As it is anathema today to suggest that this is still one of the main reasons, besides oil, that Elliott Abrams, other neocons — not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney and his team — insist we must stay, Maliki and his associates be damned. (See the cartoon in the Washington Times today showing Maliki and words telling him “We are NOT leaving.”)

Here in Washington we can sit back and quibble over the implications of such remarks by Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. The Israelis have to take such statements seriously. No agreement on US forces staying into 2009 without a timetable for withdrawal? For Tel Aviv, this is getting very serious.

My guess is the Israeli leaders are apoplectic. The fiasco in Iraq clearly has made the region much more dangerous for Israel. There are actually real “terrorists” and “extremists” now in Iraq, and the prospect of US troops leaving has got to be a cause of acute concern in Tel Aviv.

Keeping the US Entangled: Iran

This dramatic change — or even just the specter of it — greatly increases Israel’s incentive to ensure the kind of US involvement in the area that would have to endure for several years. The Israelis need to create “facts on the ground” — something to guarantee that Washington will stand by what U.S. candidates, including Sen. Obama, call “our ally.” (Never mind that there is no mutual US-Israel defense treaty.) Israel is all too painfully aware that it has only six more months of Bush and Cheney.

The legislation drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) being so zealously promoted in Congress calls for the equivalent of a blockade of Iran. That would be one way to entangle; there are many others.

The point is that the growing danger that the Israelis perceive will probably prompt them to find a way to get the US involved in hostilities with Iran. Cheney and Bush have pretty much given them that license, with the president regularly pledging to defend “our ally” if Israel is attacked.

All Israel has to do is to arrange to be attacked. Not a problem.

There are endless possibilities among which Israel can choose to catalyze such a confrontation — with or without a wink and a nod from Cheney and Abrams. The so-called “amber light” said to have been given to the Israelis is, I believe, already seen as quite sufficient; they are not likely to feel a need to wait until it turns green.

So far, the resistance of U.S. senior military has been the only real obstacle to the madness of hostilities with Iran. (And one need only read Scott Ritter’s article on Truthdig this week to get a sense for why they would be chary.)

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, has been described as warning the Israelis that a “Third Front” in the Middle East would be a disaster. I think, rather, he was trying to warn anyone who might listen in Washington, including until now tone-deaf lawmakers.

Even if the pundits are correct in suggesting that Mullen is joined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in trying to resist the neocons and Cheney, Mullen’s tone at his press conference two weeks ago suggested he is fighting a rear guard action-against the “crazies” in the White House, as well as those in Tel Aviv. And when is the last time the crazies lost a political battle with such implications for Israel?

Mullen had just returned from Tel Aviv. He appreciates better than most the fecklessness of endless speculation over whether Israel or the U.S. might strike Iran first. Even if the Israeli leaders have no explicit assurances from the White House, they almost certainly calculate that, once a casus belli is established, their friends in Washington — and the troops they command — are likely to be committed to the fray big time.

Seatbelts Please…

Viewed from Tel Aviv it appears an increasingly threatening situation, with more urgent need to “embed” (so to speak) the United States even more deeply in the region — in a confrontation involving both countries with Iran.

A perfect storm is brewing:

– Petraeus ex Machina, with a record of doing Vice President Dick Cheney’s bidding, takes command of CENTCOM in September;

– Sen. McCain’s numbers are likely to be in the toilet at that point (because of the economy as much as anything else);

– McCain will be seen by the White House as the only candidate with something to gain by a wider war (just as by another “terrorist incident”);

– The Bush/Cheney months will be down to three;

– And Maliki will not be able to cave in to Washington on the timeline requirement he has publicly set.

In sum, Israel is likely to be preparing a September/October surprise designed to keep the US bogged down in Iraq and in the wider region by provoking hostilities with Iran. And don’t be surprised if it starts as early as August. Israel’s leaders may well plead for understanding on the part of those U.S. officials not tipped off in advance, claiming that they could not distinguish amber from green with their night-vision goggles on.

Would they hesitate? Please tell me who…just who is likely to turn on the siren, pull them over, and even think of giving them a summons-once the patrol car computer confirms their privileged licenses?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst, he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

A shorter version of this article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.

To recapitulate. After Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last December, her will was read out to the family’s assembled political retainers. Her 19-year-old son, Bilawal, inherited the Pakistan People’s Party, but until he came of age her husband, Asif Zardari, would act as regent. The general election, postponed following her death, took place in February. The immediate impact of the stunning electoral defeat suffered by General Musharraf’s political party and his factotums was to dispel the disillusionment of the citizenry. Not for long. Musharraf is still clinging on to the presidency; Zardari is running the government with the help of his old cronies; the judges dismissed by Musharraf have still not been reinstated; the economy is a mess; and the US Air Force has started dropping bombs on the North-West Frontier Province again. Poor Pakistan.

I urge you to pick a copy to read the rest.

A US air strike killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, as they were travelling to a wedding in Afghanistan, an official inquiry found today. The bride was among the dead.

Another nine people were wounded in Sunday's attack, the head of the Afghan government investigation, Burhanullah Shinwari, said.

Fighter aircraft attacked a group of militants near the village of Kacu in the eastern Nuristan province, but one missile went off course and hit the wedding party, said the provincial police chief spokesman, Ghafor Khan.

The US military initially denied any civilians had been killed.

Lieutenant Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the US-led coalition, told AFP today the military regretted the loss of any civilian life and was investigating the incident.

The US is facing similar charges over strikes two days earlier in another border area of Afghanistan.

The nine-member inquiry team appointed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to look into the wedding party incident found only civilians had been killed in the attack.

"We found that 47 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in the air strikes and another nine were wounded," said Shinwari, who is also the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's senate.

"They were all civilians and had no links with the Taliban or al-Qaida."

Around 10 people were missing and believed to be still under rubble, he said. The inquiry team were shown the bloodied clothes of women and children in a visit to the scene.

The Red Cross said 250 people had been killed or wounded in five days of military action and militant attacks in the past week.

The toll included the US-led air strikes and a suicide blast outside the Indian embassy in Kabul on Monday that killed more than 40 people, including two Indian envoys.

The UN said last month that nearly 700 Afghan civilians had lost their lives this year - about two-thirds in militant attacks and about 255 in military operations.

Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for western troops to take care not to harm civilians, and in December wept during a speech lamenting civilian deaths at the hands of foreign forces.

A most widely-cited factor behind the recent U.S. wars of choice is said to be oil. “No Blood for Oil” has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war. While some of these opponents argue that the war is driven by the U.S. desire for cheap oil, others claim that it is prompted by big oil’s wish for high oil prices and profits. Interestingly, most antiwar forces use both claims interchangeably without paying attention to the fact that they are diametrically-opposed assertions.

Not only do the two arguments contradict each other, but each argument is also wanting and unconvincing on its own grounds; not because the U.S. does not wish for cheap oil, or because Big Oil does not desire higher oil prices, but because war is no longer the way to control or gain access to energy resources. Colonial-type occupation or direct control of energy resources is no longer efficient or economical and has, therefore, been abandoned for more than four decades.

The view that recent U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and the broader Central Asia are driven by energy considerations is further reinforced by the dubious theory of Peak Oil, which maintains that, having peaked, world oil resources are now dwindling and that, therefore, war power and military strength are key to access or control of the shrinking energy resources.

In this study I will first argue that the Peak Oil theory is unscientific, unrealistic, and perhaps even fraudulent. I will then show that war and military force are no longer the necessary or appropriate means to gain access to sources of energy, and that resorting to military measures can, indeed, lead to costly, not cheap, oil. Next, I will demonstrate that, despite the lucrative spoils of war resulting from high oil prices and profits, Big Oil prefers peace and stability, not war and geopolitical turbulence, in global energy markets. Finally, I will argue a case that behind the drive to war and military adventures in the Middle East lie some powerful special interests (vested in war, militarism, and geopolitical concerns of Israel) that use oil as an issue of “national interest”—as a façade or pretext—in order to justify military adventures to derive high dividends, both economic and geopolitical, from war.

Has Oil Really Peaked—and Is It Running Out?

Peak oil thesis, as noted above, maintains that world oil reserves, having reached their maximum capacity, are now dwindling—with grave consequences of oil shortage and high energy prices. While this has led many to call for more vigorous conservation, it has led others to argue in favor of unrestrained exploration and extraction of oil reserves, especially those located in the Alaskan Wildlife regions.

Significant policy and/or political implications follow from the view that oil is running out. For one thing, this view provides fodder for the cannons of war profiteering militarists who are constantly on the look out to invent new enemies and find new pretexts for continued war and escalation of military spending. For another, it tends to disarm many antiwar forces that accept this thesis and, therefore, “internalize responsibility for U.S. foreign policy every time they fill their gas tank. Thus they own the wars.”[1]

The Peak Oil thesis serves as a powerful trap and a clever manipulation in that it lets the real forces of war and militarism (the military-industrial complex and the pro-Israel lobby) “off the hook; it is a fabulous redirection. All evils are blamed on a commodity upon which we are all utterly dependent.”[2]

The fact, however, is that there is no hard evidence that oil has peaked, or that global oil reserves are shrinking, or that the current skyrocketing price of oil is due to a supply shortage. (As shown below, there is actually an oil surplus, no shortage.)

Peak oil theory is not altogether new. It was originally floated around in the 1940s, arguing that world oil reserves would be exhausted within the next two decades or so. It then resurfaced in the 1970s and early 1980s in reaction to the oil price hikes of those years—which were, incidentally, precipitated not by oil shortages but by international political convulsions, revolutions and wars. But it died down once the price of oil fell back to pre-crises levels.

As recent geopolitical convulsions in the Middle East (especially the U.S. war on Iraq, and the resultant booming speculation in oil markets) have triggered a new round of oil price hikes, Peak Oil theory has once again become fashionable. The theory is being promoted not only by war profiteers and proponents of an unbridled domestic oil exploration and extraction, especially in Alaska, but also by some apparently antiwar liberals such as Michael T. Klare and James H. Kunstler.[3]

Peak oil theory is based on a number of assumptions and omissions that make it less than reliable. To begin with, it discounts or disregards the fact that energy-saving technologies have drastically improved (and will continue to further improve) the efficiency of oil consumption. Evidence shows that, for example, “over a period of five years (1994-99), U.S. GDP expanded over 20 percent while oil usage rose by only nine percent. Before the 1973 oil shock, the ratio was about one to one.”[4]

Second, Peak Oil theory pays scant attention to the drastically enabling new technologies that have made (and will continue to make) possible discovery and extraction of oil reserves that were inaccessible only a short time ago. One of the results of the more efficient means of research and development has been a far higher success rate in finding new oil fields. The success rate has risen in twenty years from less than 70 percent to over 80 percent. Computers have helped to reduce the number of dry holes. Horizontal drilling has boosted extraction. Another important development has been deep-water offshore drilling, which the new technologies now permit. Good examples are the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and more recently, the promising offshore oil fields of West Africa.[5]

Third, Peak Oil theory also pays short shrift to what is sometimes called non-conventional oil. These include Canada's giant reserves of extra-heavy bitumen that can be processed to produce conventional oil. Although this was originally considered cost inefficient, experts working in this area now claim that they have brought down the cost from over $20 a barrel to $8 per barrel. Similar developments are taking place in Venezuela. It is thanks to developments like these that since 1970, world oil reserves have more than doubled, despite the extraction of hundreds of millions of barrels.[6]

Fourth, Peak Oil thesis pays insufficient attention to energy sources other than oil. These include solar, wind, non-food bio-fuel, and nuclear energies. They also include natural gas. Gas is now about 25 percent of energy demand worldwide. It is estimated that by 2050 it will be the main source of energy in the world. A number of American, European, and Japanese firms have and are investing heavily in developing fuel cells for cars and other vehicles that would significantly reduce gasoline consumption.[7]

Fifth, proponents of Peak Oil tend to exaggerate the impact of the increased oil demand coming from China and India on both the amount and the price of oil in global markets. The alleged disparity between supply and demand is said to be due to the rapidly growing demand coming from China and India. But that rapid growth in demand is largely offset by a number of counterbalancing factors. These include slower growth in U.S. demand due to its slower economic growth, efficient energy utilization in industrially advanced countries, and increases in oil production by OPEC, Russia, and other oil producing countries.

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, claims of “peaked and dwindling” oil are refuted by the available facts and figures on global oil supply. Statistical evidence shows that there is absolutely no supply-demand imbalance in global oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of Peak Oil and champions of war and militarism, the current oil price shocks are a direct consequence of the destabilizing wars and geopolitical insecurity in the Middle East, not oil shortages. These include not only the raging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the threat of a looming war against Iran. The record of soaring oil prices shows that anytime there is a renewed U.S. military threat against Iran, fuel prices move up several notches.

The war also contributes to the escalation of fuel prices in indirect ways—for example, by plunging the U.S. ever deeper into debt and depreciating the dollar, or by creating favorable grounds for speculation. As oil is priced largely in U.S. dollars, oil exporting countries ask for more dollars per barrel of oil as the dollar loses value. Perhaps more importantly, an atmosphere of war and geopolitical instability in global oil markets serves as an auspicious ground for hoarding and speculation in commodity markets, especially oil, which is heavily contributing to the recently soaring oil prices.

As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. . . . Since the advent of oil futures trading and the two major London and New York oil futures contracts, control of oil prices has left OPEC and gone to Wall Street. It is a classic case of the ‘tail that wags the dog.’[8]

Wall Street financial giants that created the Third World debt crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tech bubble in the 1990s, and the housing bubble in the 2000s are now hard at work creating the oil bubble. By purchasing large numbers of futures contracts, and thereby pushing up futures prices to even higher levels than current prices, speculators have provided a financial incentive for oil companies to buy even more oil and place it in storage. A refiner will purchase extra oil today, even if it costs $115 per barrel, if the futures price is even higher.[9]

This has led to a steady rise in crude oil inventories over the last two years, “resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices. . . . In fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy.”[10]

The fact that the skyrocketing oil prices of late have been accompanied by a surplus in global oil markets was also brought to the attention of President George W. Bush by Saudi officials when he asked them during a recent trip to the kingdom to increase production in order to stem the rising prices. Saudi officials reminded the President that “there is plenty of oil on the market. Iran has put some 30 million barrels of oil that it can't sell into floating storage. ‘If we produced more oil, it wouldn't find buyers,’ says the Saudi source. It wouldn't affect the price at all."[11]

And why producing more oil “wouldn’t affect the price at all”? Well, because what is driving the soaring oil prices is not shortage but speculation: “with so much investment money sloshing around in the commodities markets, the Saudis calculate they have no hope of controlling short-term price fluctuations. They blame the recent price run-ups on speculation and fear of shortages [not real shortages], factors they say are beyond their control.”[12]

War for Cheap Oil?

The widely-shared view that the U.S. desire for access to abundant and cheap oil lurks behind the Bush administration’s drive to war in the Middle East rests on the implicit but dubious assumption that access to energy resources requires direct control of oil fields and/or oil producing countries. There are at least three problems with this postulation.

First, if control of or influence over oil producing countries in the Middle East is a requirement for access to cheap oil, the United States already enjoys significant influence over some of the major oil producers in the region—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and a number of other smaller producers. Why, then, would the U.S. want to bring about war and political turmoil in the region that might undermine that long and firmly-established influence?

Let us assume for a moment that the neoconservative militarists are sincere in their alleged desire to bring about democratic rule and representational government in the Middle East. Let us further assume that they succeed in realizing this purported objective. Would, then, the thus-emerging democratic governments, representing the wishes of the majority of their citizens, be as accommodating to U.S. economic and geopolitical objectives, including its oil needs, as are its currently friendly rulers in the region? Most probably not.

Secondly, and more importantly, access to oil no longer requires control of oil fields or oil producers—as was the case in times past. For more than a century, that is, from the early days of oil extraction in the United States in the 1870s until the mid-1970s, the price of oil was determined administratively, that is, by independent producers operating in different parts of the world without having to compete with each other. Under those circumstances, colonial or imperial wars of conquest and occupation were crucial to the control of oil (and other) resources.

Beginning with the 1950s, however, that pattern of local, non-competitive price determination began to gradually change in favor of regional and/or international markets. By the mid 1970s, an internationally competitive oil market emerged that effectively ended the century-old pattern of local, administrative pricing. Today, oil prices (like most other commodity prices) are determined largely by the forces of supply and demand in competitive global energy markets; and any country or company can have as much oil as they wish if they pay the going market (or spot) price.[13]

To the extent that competitive oil markets and/or prices are occasionally manipulated, such subversions of competitive market forces are often brought about not so much by OPEC or other oil producing countries as by manipulative speculations of financial giants in New York and London. As was discussed earlier, gigantic Wall Street financial institutions have accomplished this feat through “innovative” financial instruments such as establishment of energy hedge funds and speculative oil futures markets in New York and London.[14]

It is true that collective supply decisions of oil producing countries can, and sometimes does, affect the competitively determined market price. But a number of important issues need to be considered here.

To begin with, although such supply manipulations obviously affect or influence market-determined prices, they do not determine those prices. In other words, competitive international oil markets determine its price with or without oil producers’ supply manipulations. Such supply managements are, however, designed not to create volatility in energy markets, or chronic oil price hikes. Instead, they are designed to stabilize global oil prices because oil exporting countries prefer stability, predictability and long-term planning for their economic development and industrialization projects. Here is how Cyrus Bina and Minh Vo describe this relationship:

As a result, we conclude that the global oil market is the prime mover [i.e., prime determinant of oil price] and OPEC indeed follows its trajectory accordingly and consistently. . . . When market price (both spot and futures) is falling, OPEC decreases its output; when market price is rising, OPEC attempts to increase its output; and when market price is steady, OPEC keeps its output unchanged. . . . And, this is a kind of oil market we have experienced after the dust settled following the crisis of de-cartelization and globalization of oil industry in the 1970s.[15]

Producers’ policy to sometimes curtail or limit the supply of oil, the so-called “limited flow” policy, is designed to raise the actual trading price above the market-determined price in order to keep high-cost U.S. producers in business while leaving low-cost Middle East producers with an above average, or “super,” profit. While for low-cost producers this limited flow policy is largely a matter of making more or less profits, for high-cost U.S. producers it is a matter of survival, of being able to stay in or go out of business—an important but rarely mentioned or acknowledged fact.

A hypothetical numerical example might be helpful here. Suppose that the market-determined, or free-flow, price of oil is $30 per barrel. Further, suppose this price entails an average rate of profit of 10 percent, or $3 per barrel. The word “average” in this context refers to average conditions of production, that is, producers who produce under average conditions of production in terms of productivity and cost of production. This means that producers who produce under better-than-average conditions, that is, low-cost, high productivity producers, will make a profit higher than $3 per barrel while high-cost, low efficiency producers will end up making less than $3 per barrel. This also means that some of the high-cost producers may end up going out of business altogether. Now, if the limited flow policy raises the actual trading price to $35 per barrel, it will raise the profits of all producers accordingly, thereby also keeping in business some high-cost producers that might otherwise have gone out of business.

Furthermore, supply manipulation (in pursuit of price manipulation) is not limited to the oil industry. In today’s economic environment of giant corporations and big businesses, many of the major industries try, and often succeed in controlling supply in order to control price. Take, for example, the automobile industry. Theoretically, automobile producers could flood the market with a huge supply of cars. But that would not be good business as it would lower prices and profits. So, they control supply, just as do oil producers, in order to manipulate price. During the past several decades, the price of automobiles, in real terms, has been going up every year, at least to the tune of inflation. During this period, the industry (and the economy in general) has enjoyed a many-fold increase in labor productivity. Increased labor productivity is supposed to translate into lower costs and, therefore, lower prices. Yet, that has not materialized in the case of this industry—as it has in the case of, for example, pocket calculators or computers.

Another example of price control through supply manipulation is the case of U.S. grain producers. The so-called “set aside” policy that pays farmers not to cultivate part of their land in order to curtail supply and prop up price is not different—nay, it is worse— than OPEC’s policy of supply and/or price manipulation.

It is also necessary to keep in mind that OPEC’s desire to sometimes limit the supply of oil in order to shore up its price is limited by a number of factors. For one thing, the share, and hence the influence, of Middle Eastern oil producers as a percentage of world oil production has steadily declined over time, from almost 40 percent when OPEC was established to about 30 percent today.[16] For another, OPEC members are not unmindful of the fact that inordinately high oil prices can hurt their own long-term interests as this might prompt oil importers to economize on oil consumption and search for alternative sources of energy, thereby limiting producers’ export markets