Why Has China Stepped Aside? Hillary Clinton’s Latest Lies

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, source

The BBC reported on July 4 that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the US ballistic missile base in Poland was not directed at Russia.  The purpose of the base, she said, is to protect Poland from the Iranian threat.

Why would Iran be a threat to Poland? What happens to US credibility when the Secretary of State makes such a stupid statement?  Does Hillary think she is fooling the Russians?  Does anyone on earth believe her?  What is the point of such a transparent lie? To cover up an act of American aggression against Russia?

In the same breath Hillary warned of a “steel vise” of repression crushing democracy and civil liberties around the world. US journalists might wonder if she was speaking of the United States. Glenn Greenwald reported in Salon on July 4 that the US Coast Guard, which has no legislative authority, has issued a rule that journalists who come closer than 65 feet to BP clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico without permission will be punished by a $40,000 fine and one to five years in prison. The New York Times and numerous journalists report that BP, the US Coast Guard, Homeland Security, and local police are prohibiting journalists from photographing the massive damage from the continuing flow of oil and toxic chemicals into the Gulf.

On July 5 Hillary Clinton was in Tbilisi, Georgia, where, according to the Washington Post, she accused Russia of “the invasion and occupation of Georgia.” What is the point of this lie?  Even America’s European puppet states have issued reports documenting that Georgia initiated the war with Russia that it quickly lost by invading South Ossetia in an effort to destroy the secessionists.

It would appear that the rest of the world and the UN Security Council have given the Americans a pass to lie without end in order to advance Washington’s goal of world hegemony.  How does this benefit the Security Council and the world? What is going on here?

After President Clinton misrepresented the conflict between Serbia and the Albanians in Kosovo and tricked NATO into military aggression against Serbia and after President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the secretary of state, the national security advisor and just about every member of the Bush regime deceived the UN and the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, thus finagling an invasion of Iraq, why did the UN Security Council fall for Obama’s deception that Iran has a nuclear weapons program?

In 2009 all sixteen US intelligence agencies issued a unanimous report that Iran had abandoned its weapons program in 2003.  Was the Security Council ignorant of this report?

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s weapons inspectors on the ground in Iran have consistently reported that there is no diversion of uranium from the energy program. Was the Security Council ignorant of the IAEA reports?

If not ignorant, why did the UN Security Council approve sanctions on Iran for adhering to its right under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty to have a nuclear energy program? The UN sanctions are lawless. They violate Iran’s rights as a signatory to the treaty. Is this the “steel vice” of which Hillary spoke?

As soon as Washington got sanctions from the Security Council, the Obama regime unilaterally added more severe US sanctions. Obama is using the UN sanctions as a vehicle to which to attach his unilateral sanctions. Perhaps this is the “steel vice of oppression” of which Hillary spoke.

Why has the UN Security Council given a green light to the Obama regime to start yet another war in the Middle East?  

Why has Russia stepped aside? At Washington’s insistence, the Russian government has not delivered the air defense system that Iran purchased. Does Russia view Iran as a greater threat to itself than the Americans, who are ringing Russia with US missile and military bases and financing “color revolutions” in former constituent parts of the Russian and Soviet empires?

Why has China stepped aside?  China’s growing economy needs energy resources. China has extensive energy investments in Iran.  It is US policy to contain China by denying China access to energy. China is America’s banker. China could destroy the US dollar in a few minutes.

Perhaps Russia and China have decided to let the Americans over-reach until the country self-destructs.

On the other hand, perhaps everyone is miscalculating and more death and destruction is in the works than the world is counting on.

Like the Gulf of Mexico.

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Clinton criticized for dodging question on “Israel” nukes

{Iran (written on the sign helpd by Obama)} taken from Al Jazeera.net

Sun, 21 Feb 2010, Press TV

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is criticized for dodging a question on Israel’s nuclear arsenal during a “town hall” meeting at a Jeddah college.

Mariyam Alavi, a Saudi student, asked Clinton last Tuesday about Washington’s stance on the existence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

“I did not get a straight answer,” Alavi said in a letter published in Arab News, AFP reported.

“My question was simple and direct enough,” she wrote, but Clinton’s response “was very unsatisfying.”

The 12th grader at the International Indian School in Jeddah, who attended the meeting at the elite Dar al-Hekma College, noted that the US top diplomat only detailed Iran’s nuclear program, without mentioning Israel.

If the Americans “so vehemently oppose Iran’s nuclear program,” she had asked, “then why isn’t the US asking Israel to give up their nuclear weapons?”

The student has questioned Washington’s double standard toward Iran’s nuclear program and accused Washington of hypocrisy.

“Clinton said that the United States, under the able leadership of President Barack Obama, was trying to repair and strengthen its ties with the Muslim world,” Alavi said.

“It is high time she realized it couldn’t be done without answering the questions uppermost in the minds of the Middle East people,” she added.

Clinton had been on a three-day trip to Qatar and Saudi Arabia to discuss the latest regional developments, including Iran’s nuclear program.

The world powers, led by the US, are attempting to stop the Islamic Republic’s nuclear enrichment program — which Tehran says it is entitled to as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

While the Western powers accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program, they have kept mum Israel, which reportedly has about 200 nuclear war head.

Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at the civilian application of the technology.

“One More Bundle of ‘Crippling Sanctions’-One More T List!”

{Iran sanctions} by Eli Saliba-Al Watan newspaper-Qatar

by Franklin Lamb, February 19, 2010, source

Beirut

“The West just has to cope with a strong and peaceful Iran, a country with thousands of years of civilization that is now a master of enrichment. I know it is hard for them to digest, but it is the reality. The language of American threats demonstrates a colonialist mentality. Threatening Iran with the Security Council, with more sanctions or military action further complicates the issue. It just doesn’t work.”

Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali-Asghar Soltanieh on 2/1710 to the British journal, the New Statesman

“The current situation in the region was David Welch’s worst nightmare and he saw it coming!, explained a demonstrably frustrated US Embassy staffer in Beirut as she mused about what Hilary Clinton was really doing in the region this week.

Welsh, the retired State Department’s former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs was a founding member of the multi-tasked “Welch Club” (comment: recall the US Kleit airbase bright idea, the US-Israel Sunni-Shia civil war plan, the Saudi Arabian bought and paid for ‘decisive’ pro-American June 2009 election results that backfired, the now discarded dream for a new mega US Embassy (think Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) smothered with US-Israel electronic equipment, overlooking the Hezbollah areas of Dahiyeh, (ironically, if true, the ‘bird’s eye view of Hezbollah’ site for the new US Embassy is now reportedly being sold by the US government to allies of Hezbollah-ed) corralling Hezbollah, pealing Syria away from Iran, elevating the political power of Samir Geagea and Cardinal Sfeir, currently Washington’s only reliable duo, given that Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman and now apparently even Prime Minister Saad Hariri, have jumped ship and plan to work with Hezbollah and Syria to defend Lebanon from US armed Israeli attacks. Welch left his seat warm for its current occupant Jeffrey Feltman. Jeffrey is apparently chastened a bit given that US credibility is at a record low in the region, and even appearing less arrogant recently as Lebanon and Syria resume relations, nevertheless urged his boss to come over and “rattle the Mullah’s cage” and round up a posse to corral more UN sanctions to beef up 34 months of failed ones.

It cannot be denied that Madame Secretary of State tried this week. Resurrecting her Presidential campaign slogan, “security umbrella” (apparently against the Persian Muslim hoards), coined in 2007 by WINEP’s Dennis Ross as she launched her quest for the White House (today Ross is an advisor of sorts on how to ‘deal’ with Iran— his recommendation is that Iran is best bombed sooner rather than later) , America’s top diplomat talked plenty tough. Clinton told al-Arabiyya television aired on 2/17/10 that the US was seeking the “strongest” possible UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work.
“We want to try to get the strongest sanctions we can out of the United Nations Security Council, mostly to influence their (Iran’s) decision-making.”

Forget all about Obama’s gesture ‘to extend an open hand ’, ‘ seeking the Muslim soul ’,‘ honest dialogue without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect’ rhetoric in last June’s Cairo speech. The lady came to declare that there will be no dialogue whatsoever- nada- until Iran’s nuclear program is history and it’s our way or take the bitter consequences.

And absolutely no copy cating the arguably successful approach of Richard Nixon’s 1972 offer to China’s Mao Tse Tung when he told the Great Helmsman after that stirring Chinese Opera performance in the Forbidden City of The East is Red, when the President had to nudge Henry Kissinger who had dozed off and began snoring: “We will listen to and discuss all of your concerns without any preconditions if you will listen to and discuss all of our concerns without any preconditions.” Nixon’s wimpy approach sounds downright Islamist these days since that is exactly what Iran has proposed.

Nope. The only thing that was China’s business on this trip is that they had better get on board quick with the soon to be presented fourth list of anti-Iranian sanctions at the UN Security Council or America’s Saudi friends may not supply China with oil to replace any lost shipments from Iran, if things go the way Israel & Co. hope and Iran is bombed.

When not bashing Iran, Ms. Clinton, acting as if she was Bashar Assad’s big sis, expressed regret that “Syrian arms supplies to Hezbollah will reflect negatively on Syria, and is not something positive for both Lebanon and Israel… Syria needs to focus on trying to resolve its differences with Israel, not aggravate them.”

At nearly every stop Clinton repeated her view that Iran’s government has been hijacked by its Revolutionary Guards, was becoming a ‘military dictatorship’, was horrible on human rights and had to be stopped now.

How many Iranian deaths from Sanctions would be ‘worth it’?

Evidently wanting to drive a wedge between “ordinary Iranians” and the privileged ‘ruling class” Mrs. Clinton intoned that a rift was growing within Iranian society and explained, “I think the trend with this greater and greater military lock, on leadership decisions should be disturbing to ordinary Iranians as well as to those of us on the outside.” Not a word about weekly Israel threats against the ‘ordinary Iranians, or Israel’s lock on US Middle East decisions. Not a word of concern for the human rights of the ‘ordinary Iranians’ who like their Iraqi neighbors in the recent past, will be the ones who will directly suffer from what she intends will be ‘crippling sanctions’, as they rally to support their government as they did when faced with US chemical weapons shipped to Saddam when the Reagan administration urged Iraq to invade Iran.

One wonders if the Secretary shares the views of her predecessor Madeline Albright who averred to CNN that the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians mainly children, due to harsh US initiated sanctions, was “worth it” since Saddam Hussein became ‘unreliable’ and needed to be overthrown.

The region, including the KSA’s King Abdullah appeared nonplused. About the only civil thing Secretary Clinton had to say was a vapid comment about “the importance of partnership between Washington and the Islamic world, saying she saw “a lot of common ground” between the United States and Islamic and Arab peoples.

What kind of diplomacy is this, some were left asking. Were the Washington rumors true that if Obama’s poll numbers dip below a 39% positive rating, Hilary Rodham, with Israel’s support, will save the Democratic party and challenge the President for the 2012 democratic nomination playing the ‘get tough with Iran/Syria/Hezbollah/Hamas’ card? Some in Tel Aviv and Washington are reportedly counseling her to do just that.

Hilary’s proposed solution to the alleged arms transferring of Iran, about which she offered no specific evidence during her three-day visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is to create yet another (the eighth?) US Terrorism list. This one will be targeting certain individuals (more than 350 names will likely make up the first batch, according to one Bekaa valley source close to Tehran) with ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who Clinton has gratuitously labeled, “the elite corps.”

If the US government moves to shut down Iran’s gasoline imports and its main civilian airport, named after the late Imam Khomeini, and perhaps some of Iran’s other 39 airports, claiming they are somehow connected to the RG organization, it might cause the US to run afoul of even more of its international legal obligations. Specifically those under the Convention on International Civil Aviation, (the Chicago Convention), which established the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations which obligates its signatories (both the US and Iran) to comply with coordinating, protecting and regulating international air travel. The Convention establishes rules of airspace, aircraft registration and safety, and specifically exempts air fuels from taxes and US sanctions. Additionally, all 230 member airlines comprising the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) could be affected directly or indirectly.

Iran responded to Secretary Clinton’s barrage before she left the region. Following a largely peaceful 31st anniversary celebration of its 1979 Revolution, by nearly 20 million Iranians without the violence or strife which the Secretary was accused of hoping to exacerbate, Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, accused the United States of war-mongering and of turning the Persian Gulf into an “arms depot.”

President Ahmadinejad, hitting back at US accusations that the Islamic state was moving toward a military dictatorship, repeated that its nuclear program is solely to generate electricity and that surely it was the US that more resembled a military dictatorship given its various wars in the region and non-stop regional and international arms transfers.

Just who is doing the invading and the arms shipping?

With respect to who is and isn’t turning the Middle East into an arms depot, the available data, fairly comprehensive, appears to strongly favor the Iranian position. Much rhetoric is coming from Washington and Tel Aviv concerning Iranian arms shipments, but to date a paucity of probative evidence.

On the other hand, studies by the US Congressional Research Service, housed in the Madison Library on Capitol Hill, as well as Pentagon statistics make clear what the Bush and Obama administrations have been supplying and to whom.

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the United States, in 2008, accounted for nearly $ 38 billion in weapons deals and transfers worldwide. This was close to 70% of every weapons sale on earth and is projected to rise each year. As Freida Berrigan, a keen and reliable student of this subject noted recently, “It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to recognize that, when one nation accounts for nearly 70% of weapons sales, the term “global arms trade” doesn’t quite cut it.” In fact the US so nearly totally monopolizes weapons transfers that the term “trade” and “competition” appear to be misnomers. The number two arms exporter is Italy with $ 3.7, followed by Russia with $ 3.5 billion. Nowhere among the top 80 countries is Iran to be found.

As visiting US officials to the region beat the ‘severe and crippling sanctions” drums and with the Middle East supposedly in urgent need of a US ‘security umbrella, not all countries are without protection. According to Pentagon figures the top five nations which made Foreign Military Sales agreements with the US in 2008 and accounted for more than $17 Billion in US arms transfers were:

Saudi Arabia $6.06 billion
Iraq $2.50 billion
Morocco $2.41 billion
Egypt $2.31 billion
Israel $3.32 billion

Meanwhile, Iran supplied no arms to these countries and an unproven amount to Syria as part of a defensive arrangement to deter Israeli attacks. Anything else is speculation until proved. The Pentagon is working to increase its lopsided market share by eviscerating US arms transfer regulations on open the weapon spigots wider. As expert Freida Berrigan has reported, “Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell explained in January 2010 that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to see “wholesale changes to the rules and regulations on government technology exports” in the name of competitiveness. Morell: “Tinkering with our antiquated, bureaucratic, overly cumbersome system is not enough to maintain our competitiveness in the global economy and also help our friends and allies buy the equipment they need to contribute to global security,” he continued, “[Gates] strongly supports the administration’s efforts to completely reform our export control regime, starting ideally with a blank sheet of paper.”

How much Military Aid is each American taxpayer sending to Israel?

With respect to US arms transfer to Israel, it is estimated that 9 out of 10 American tax payers have no idea that each of them donates $20 per year just for military aid to Israel or that total US aid to Israel amounts to approximately 10 million dollars per day—every day of the year-year after year.

American public ignorance about Israel is changing fast post-Gaza and opposition to funding Israel’s wars and brutal occupation is growing while Congress is trying to find ways to funnel more cash to Israel to pay for Israel’s just announced international “Image enhancing” PR campaign.

The Washington DC based U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, with more than 350 American affiliates, has recently launched a new website (http://www.aidtoisrael.org) that enables Americans to see how much money their state, congressional district, county, and city provide in military aid to Israel. The informative website also provides alternative ways the money could be used in each community for things such as healthcare, affordable housing, and education. The website also provides information about the impact of U.S. weapons transfers to Israel on Palestinian civilians.

The advocacy group points out that “between 2009 and 2018, the United States is scheduled to give Israel -the largest recipient of U.S. aid – $30 billion in military aid. Through its illegal 42-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, Israel misuses U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. law to kill and injure Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian civilian infrastructure, blockade the Gaza Strip, and build illegal settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

At his retirement dinner last year, David Welch is reported to have told his colleagues and friends that he considered himself an American patriot who did the best he could with the cards he was given by the ‘dealer’.

Granted.

As grass roots organizations such as the Washington DC based End the Occupation and their hundreds of affiliates and others such as the US Council for the National Interest, seek to alter US policy and change the ‘dealer,’ hopefully America will engage with the Middle East on a basis of mutual respect, non-interference and peaceful co-existence.

Franklin Lamb is working with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign in Lebanon on drafting legislation which, after 62 years, would, if adopted by Lebanon’s Cabinet and Parliament grant the right to work and to own a home to Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees. One part of the PCRC legislative project is its online Petition which can be viewed and signed at: http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html. Lamb is reachable at fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org.

White House Baffled by Clinton’s Gaffes

Al Manar

18/11/2009 US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s zigzagging and slips of the tongue, mainly on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, have been causing anger in the Middle East and complicating the peace process, sources in the White House told the New Republic magazine on Tuesday.

In May, Clinton revealed at a press conference that US President Barack Obama’s call for an Israeli settlement freeze included any “natural growth” within existing settlements. Two sources with detailed knowledge of the US-Israeli relationship told New Republic that the Obama team was not yet prepared to make public this departure from Bush-era policy. Rather than leave his secretary of state twisting in the wind, one of the sources said, Obama wound up repeating her formulation a few days later, touching off months of tension with the Israelis.

The second flap occurred on November 1 in Tel Aviv, where Clinton abruptly reversed course on settlements – this time saying that a proposal by the Netanyahu government that falls short of the freeze Obama has sought nevertheless amounts to an “unprecedented” concession by Israel.

The formulation – which infuriated Arab leaders and made it seem that Obama had surrendered to Netanyahu – had not been endorsed by the White House, which was not pleased with the statement. Clinton was forced to “fold” immediately, stating several days later during a visit to Morocco that there was no change in the American policy.

White House officials believe that Clinton’s zigzagging reveals in public things which the American policy makers would rather say in closed talks. Making public the American demand of Israel to stop the construction eventually sabotaged the US effort to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table before Israel freezes the construction. It also damaged Obama’s reliability among the Israelis.

The secretary of state’s second slip of the tongue, which expressed the American withdrawal from its demands on the settlement issue, after realizing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be able to meet the demands, practically and politically.

According to the sources, the White House’s Middle East team was busy minimizing the damages Clinton had caused days after she had made the remarks. Yet, it is unclear whether her remarks are made intentionally or are really slips of the tongue.

Sources involved in the State Department have a different opinion. One of them told Ynet that Clinton’s zigzagging “is not her fault, but her assistants’ fault. She receives contrasting advice before going to press conferences, and that’s the source of the problem. She has to be smart enough to know what to do when she receives contrasting advice.”

Hillary’s Ill Will Tour: A most undiplomatic diplomat

Photo: Everett Bogue; Photos: Getty Images, istockphoto

by Justin Raimondo, November 02, 2009, source

In what the Los Angeles Times described as “a fence-mending trip” to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to tear down more fence posts than she repaired. Abrasive, arrogant, and condescending, she fired a series of verbal RPG volleys that nearly demolished what remained of good relations between the U.S. and its principal ally in the region.

On the fight against al-Qaeda:

“Clinton told a group of journalists in Lahore that she found it ‘hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.’ Al-Qaeda, she said, ‘has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002.’”

It is astonishing that a U.S. diplomat would say this in a public forum – at a question-and-answer session with Pakistani journalists, no less. One U.S. official tried to justify this outburst with the “explanation” that “You’ve got to remember, she was a senator from New York on 9/11.” But what has that got to do with the plausibility of Hillary’s contention that the government of Pakistan is holding out on us as to Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts? Exactly nothing. If she has evidence Pakistan is knowingly harboring the world’s most wanted terrorist, then she should state it publicly, rather than engage in unfounded innuendo.

A more inflammatory remark would be hard to imagine – unless it’s what she said about U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory. Asked if she thinks attacks that kill innocent civilians constitute terrorism –
“execution without trial,” as one questioner put it – Clinton replied, “No, I do not,” and then refused to discuss the matter further, citing “security” reasons. The audience of Pakistani women sat there in stunned, horrified silence. Which was similar to the reaction of an audience of businessmen, who were told:

“’At the risk of sounding undiplomatic, Pakistan has to have internal investment in your public services and your business opportunities,’ she told the executives. The U.S. government taxes ‘everything that moves and everything that doesn’t, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.’”

Hillary is miffed Pakistan doesn’t plunder its citizens to the extent we do, but that doesn’t mean the central government in Islamabad scores high points in any index of economic freedom. Pakistan’s poor bear the lion’s share of the tax burden in that country to such an extent that their Supreme Court recently intervened to lower the gasoline tax, overruling the national legislature. The lower and middle classes cheered, but Hillary will have none of it: how dare those Pakistanis lower taxes!

What’s scary is that Hillary considers this to have been a “charm offensive” – and, by her standards, it is. Having inflicted maximum damage on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, she took her bull-in-a-china-shop routine to Israel, where, standing next to Netanyahu, she declared:

“What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements … is unprecedented.”

Well, yes, Netanyahu’s absolute refusal to freeze all “settlement” activity is unprecedented – in its stubborn intransigence. This is specially evident in the context of the U.S. demand that, as Hillary put it not long ago, we “see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” So much for taking the administration’s pronouncements seriously.

The Palestinian reaction was to declare that the peace talks – which Hillary had been sent to the region to kick-start – are indefinitely stalled. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority head honcho Mahmoud Abbas, averred, “The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s backpedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”

It is often said that the election of Barack Obama boosted our image in the world: suddenly, after eight years of unmitigated hatred directed against George W. Bush’s America, we’re popular again. Yet it looks like Hillary is trying as hard as she can to undo all that with her ill-will tour. The woman is John Bolton in a dress.

Just as I predicted upon her appointment to State, Clinton is conducting her own foreign policy while Obama, preoccupied with domestic matters, dithers and lets his “team of rivals” carry the ball. The problem is that the Clintonian policy is a blunt instrument with which our remaining allies are being hit over the head, and the results aren’t pretty. Hillary left Pakistan even more destabilized – and hostile to the U.S. – than it was when she arrived, and her trip to Israel is similarly disastrous.

This administration is hopelessly divided when it comes to foreign policy, with the Obama loyalists sending out hopeful signals in the form of the Dear Leader’s matchless rhetoric (e.g., the Cairo speech) and the Clintonians in effective control of the foreign policy apparatus, contradicting and neutralizing whatever positive effects result from the president’s pronouncements.

Not only that, but at the policy level, where words are translated into concrete actions, Queen Hillary and her minions are carrying out another policy altogether, one virtually indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s in style and content. The same blundering crudity is used to express and justify a policy of unmitigated aggression and complete disregard for human life.

There is nothing diplomatic about Hillary’s words or the tone in which they are uttered; she speaks with the bold assertiveness of Obama’s co-president, rather than as a member of the cabinet. Which is, indeed, precisely what she is, having been ceded the entire realm of foreign affairs by a chief executive clearly staggering under the burden of his office.

The point is that, once again, American voters are faced with a coup at the top. They never voted for a more belligerent foreign policy – quite the opposite, in fact – and yet that is precisely what they are being given. Obama is the happy, smiling, politically correct face of a policy that remains essentially unchanged, which is why his secretary of state feels free to travel the world recklessly pushing her weight around and insulting everyone within range of her smug, grating, hubris-inflected voice.

So you thought you were getting change, eh? Not a chance, not as long as Obama refuses to rein in his secretary of state. It is going to take more than a mere presidential election to effect fundamental change in our interventionist foreign policy. We are in for a long, hard slog. So dig in, check that you have enough rations, and get ready for a protracted struggle against the War Party – which has by no means retired from the field.

The Biden and Clinton Mutinies

by Carlos Latuff

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN, counter punch

Time bombs tossed seemingly casually in the past month by his vice president and his secretary of state disclose president Obama, in the dawn of his first term, already the target of carefully meditated onslaughts by senior members of his own cabinet.

At the superficial level Obama is presiding over an undisciplined administration; on a more realistic and sinister construction, he is facing mutiny, publicly conducted by two people who only a year ago were claiming that their qualifications to be in the Oval Office were far superior to those of the junior senator from Illinois .

The great danger to Obama posed by Biden’s and Clinton’s “time bombs” (a precisely correct description if we call them political, not diplomatic time bombs) is not international confusion and ridicule over what precisely are the US government’s policies, but a direct onslaught on his presidency by a domestic Israeli lobby that is so out of control that it renders ridiculous Obama’s puny attempt to stop settlements–or to curb Israeli aggression in any other way.

Take Joe Biden. Three weeks ago he gave Israel the green light to bomb Iran, only to be swiftly corrected by his boss. At the time it seemed yet another,somewhat comical mile marker in a lifetime of gaffes, perpetrated in the cause of self-promotion and personal political advantage.

But Biden’s subsequent activities invite a darker construction. In the immediate aftermath of Obama’s Moscow visit, the air still soft with honeyed words about a new era of trust and cooperation, Biden headed for Ukraine and Georgia, harshly ridiculing Russia as an economic basket case with no future. In Tbilisi he told the Georgian parliament that the U.S. would continue helping Georgia “to modernize” its military and that Washington “fully supports” Georgia’s aspiration to join NATO and would help Tbilisi meet the alliance’s standards. This elicited a furious reaction from Moscow, pledging sanctions against any power rearming Georgia.

Georgia could play a vital, enabling role, in the event that Israel decides to attack Iran’s nuclear complex. The flight path from Israel to Iran is diplomatically and geographically challenging. On the other hand, Georgia is perfectly situated as the take-off point for any such raid. Israel has been heavily involved in supplying and training Georgia’s armed forces. President Saakashvili has boasted that his Defense Minister, Davit Kezerashvili and also Temur Yakobashvili , the minister responsible for negotiations over South Ossetia, lived in Israel before moving to Georgia, adding “Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews.”

On the heels of Biden’s shameless pandering in Tbilisi, Secretary of State Clinton took herself off to Thailand for an international confab with Asian leaders and let drop to a tv chat show that “a nuclear Iran could be contained by a U.S. ‘defense umbrella,’” actually a nuclear defense umbrella for Israel and for Egypt and Saudi Arabia too.

The Israel lobby has been promoting the idea of a US “nuclear umbrella” for some years, with one of its leading exponents being Dennis Ross, now in charge of Middle Eastern policy at Obama’s National Security Council. In her campaign last year Clinton flourished the notion as an example of the sort of policy initiative that set her apart from that novice in foreign affairs, Barack Obama.

From any rational point of view the “nuclear umbrella” is an awful idea, redolent with all the gimcrack theology of the high cold war era, about “first strike”, “second strike”, “stable deterrence” ,“controlled escalation” and “mutual assured destruction”, used to sell US escalations in nuclear arms production, from Kennedy and the late Robert McNamara(“the Missile Gap”) to Reagan (“Star Wars”).

Indeed, as one Pentagon veteran remarked to me earlier this week, “the Administration’s whole nuclear stance is turning into a cheesy rerun of the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction, all based on a horrible exaggeration of one or two Iranian nuclear bombs that the Persians may be too incompetent to build and most certainly are too incompetent to deliver.”

The Biden and Clinton “foreign” policy is: 1) to recreate the same old Cold War (with a new appendage, the US versus Iran nuclear confrontation) for the same old reasons: to pump up domestic defense spending; and 2) to continue sixty years of supporting Israeli imperialism for the same reasons that every president from Harry to Dubya (perhaps barring Ike) did so: to corner Israel lobby money and votes. Regarding the latter, Obama did the same by grabbing the Chicago-based Crown and Pritzker family money very early in his campaign and by making Rahm Emanuel his very first appointment (the two are hardly unrelated).

So right from the start Obama was already an Israel lobby fellow traveler. The Mitchell appointment and the toothless blather about settlements were simply cosmetic, bones tossed to the increasing proportion of the American electorate that’s grossed out by the ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from the Holy Land. Obama does have a coherent strategy: keep the defense money flowing and increasing, but without making so much noise as the older generation did about ancient Cold War enemies (e.g. Russia and Cuba). The F-22 — to date, the one and only presidential issue on which he’s shown any toughness at all — is in no sense a departure from keeping the money flowing, since he is indeed increasing the defense budget, in part by using the F-22 cancellation to push spending on the even worse F-35 and to hide his acquiescence to all the other pork in the Congressional defense budget.

The window for any new president to impose a decisive change in foreign policy comes in the first three months, before opposition has time to solidify. Obama squandered that opportunity, stocking his foreign policy team with tarnished players such as Ross. As the calculated indiscretions of Biden and Clinton suggest, not to mention the arrogance of Netanyahu and his political associates, the window of opportunity has closed.

Would it have been that hard to signal a change in course? Not really. Obama could have excited the world by renouncing the Bush administration’s assertion, in the “National Defense Strategy of the United States” in 2005, of the right and intention of the United States to preëmptively attack any country “at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing.” As William Polk, the State Department’s middle east advisor in the Kennedy era, wrote last year: “As long as this remains a valid statement of American policy, the Iranian government would be foolish not to seek a nuclear weapon.”

But Obama, surrounded with Clinton-era veterans of NATO expansionism and, as his Accra speech indicated, hobbled with an impeccably conventional view of how the world works, is rapidly being overwhelmed by the press of events. He’s bailed out the banks. He’s transferred war from Iraq to Afghanistan. The big lobbies know they have him on the run.

Hence Biden and Clinton’s mutinies, conducted on behalf of the Israel lobby and designs to seize administration policy as Obama’s popularity weakens. When the results of the lastest Rasmussen presidential poll were published, showing Obama’s declining numbers, there were news reports of cheering in Tel Aviv.

Hillary Shatters Condi’s Beirut Record

Hillary shatters Condi’s Beirut Record but can she propel the US team to electoral Victory?

by Franklin Lamb, source
Beirut
April 27, 2009

On June 17, 2008, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice set a remarkable American and World Record for the shortest visit to Lebanon ever recorded by a serving US Secretary of State. The objective was to express love, affection, and non-interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs. Some wags in Beirut will tell you it was George Bush’s’ Secretary of State’s greatest single achievement. History will judge, but Ms. Rice was definitely in and out of Lebanon ten months ago in a breadth taking 275 minutes!

Today, April 26, 2009, that record was shattered. With the authority of a Shack O’Neal slam dunk in sudden death overtime in a NBA playoff, current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the awe of her advance team and bedazzled entourage, shaved no fewer than 110 minutes off Condi’s Record. Let the word go forth, that as of today, the new record for an American administration expressing eternal love to Lebanon is: 165 minutes flat–touchdown to wheels up!

Both ladies arrived, as others had before them, with identical objectives. To shore up the US backed ‘ruling team’ amid disturbing signs that Lebanon’s population wants change they can believe in.

Each had the same itinerary, a quick visit with smiles and sweet words for the much admired Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, followed by a dash downtown to Martyr’s Square (one of several such Squares in Lebanon) to lay a wreath on the shrine of murdered former Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri. This was followed by a breathtaking breakneck speed dash to the Airport through the Hezbollah area (!) of South Beirut called Dahiyeh, with, this time, bright Hezbollah billboards featuring the Party’s just released Campaign Billboards. Presumably the new Secretary of State had one translated: “Our Lebanon, Their Lebanon (rejected in favor of) One Lebanon” to the airport.

In fairness to Ms. Rice, she should be granted a handicap because she did meet with some local March 14 leaders, whereas Ms. Clinton saw personne but Suleiman and March 14 Team Leader, Saad Hariri. Still, Secretary Clinton beat former Secretary Rice bad when the stopwatch results were announced.

For Hillary Clinton, it was a quick and, on the surface at least, smooth and politically symbolic, as it coincided with the fourth anniversary of the pullout of Syrian forces from Lebanon. The coming election is all about symbolism.

165 minutes!

10:45 am (tick tick) Beirut time, on this beautiful Sunday spring morning, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down in Beirut.

11:25 am (tick, tick) Madam Secretary was in Baabda Palace for a photo op with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman with her Deputy, Jeffrey Feltman and US Ambassador Michele Sison in tow. The Secretary of State reportedly told the President that the US supports “voices of moderation” and will supply more arms.

12:32pm Clinton explains to the media at a news conference at Baabda Palace that there must be no “foreign interference” in the Lebanese election. She added that “We believe these elections are crucial for an independent and sovereign Lebanon”. At least two journalists’ present giggled at her solemn declaration and received a scowl by beefy Secret Service security. The Secretary did not seem to notice, and continued, “Our ongoing support for the Lebanese Armed Forces remains a pillar of our bilateral cooperation.”

A senior State Department official ( one Jeffrey Feltman) s later cautioned that Ms. Clintons pledge should not be taken as a guarantee that the United States would continue the military assistance that it has provided in the past. Rather, he explained the Obama administration would have to take a look at the composition of the next Lebanese government and make decisions about its aid in that light.

Finally, Secretary Clinton said the United States will continue to “protect the Lebanese borders.” It was left unclear if this included the daily Israeli invasions of Lebanese airspace and Israel’s “at will” land border crossings, criticized regularly by UNIFIL and the UN in New York but practically never mentioned in Washington these days.

12:38pm Secretary Clinton: “Washington will not reach any deal with Syria at Lebanon’s expense.” Clinton seemed not to hear a reporter’s question about the collapsing security situation in Iraq and the killing of nearly 150 people in the past 48 hours except to assure those present that the killings “do not reflect any divergence from the security progress that has been made.” That comment seemed to lead to some head scratching from a few in the media gathering.

12:53pm Clinton arrives in Down Town Beirut to visit the tomb of Rafic Hariri and was met by MP Saad Hariri, leader of the US-Saudi-Egyptian June election slate. She laid a wreath on the resting place of, and election symbol for, the US backed March 14 candidates, the much admired assassinated Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. The Clinton ‘endorsement’ was immediately and repeatedly broadcast by Saad Hariri’s Future Movement March 14 Campaign, on Future (Hariri) TV, LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, MTV (Murr TV) and their other media allies.

Watching Clintons back but no dialogue this trip

Despite being under the unseen protection of Hezbollah security at Beirut’s airport, from the moment of touch-down to lift-off, there was zero chance Secretary Clinton would be meeting with anyone from the Party of God or, Hamas. In fact, just to make sure that no one would accuse her of interfering with the internal affairs of Lebanon (emphasis mine) and the coming election (which many here believe was the only reason she dropped out of the sky) Secretary Clinton declined to meet with other participants in the elections (except US Team leader, Saad Hariri). The exclusions included former Bush-Cheney favorite, Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.

Where’s Walid?

Given his multiple invitations from Washington over the past two years, Druze and Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt would normally be assumed to spend plenty of time with a visiting US Secretary of State as a US loyalist. Now it not so clear what he is up to. His perhaps auto-leaked sharp criticisms last week of the US backed majority upset Washington has caused political ripples across Lebanon.

Currently viewed with dismay by some at the State Department, Jumblatt is acting as if he might jump ship and join the Hezbollah led opposition, or some are suggesting he appears at least to be hedging his bets so he can be an ally of the June election winners. Others, including, a pro-March 14th Sunni Muslim English teacher from the Aisha Bakkar section of Hamra, Ghada Jilani, sighed, “that is just Jumblatt being Jumblatt, in his role as Lebanon’s quintessential compleat Politician. That man is always able to sniff out the latest political trend!”

In defense of Walid Jumblatt, it should be noted that he is Kamel Jumblatt’s son, and his assassinated father was one of Lebanon’s most charismatic and inspiring leaders who was aligned with progressive forces, including the PLO and Lebanon’s Communist Party, during the early years of the Civil War until his murder on March 16, 1977.

Walid was weaned on his extremely literate father’s (Kamel authored more than 1200 articles and editorials) theories of secularism, socialism, Arabism and abolition of the Lebanese sectarian system and the alliance Kamal tried to forge of Sunni, Shia and leftist Christians into a national opposition movement.

This observer has noticed that middle aged men, and certainly himself, at times lapse into deep and emotional appreciation of their Fathers and Mothers. Jumblatt may be moving toward or revisiting his martyred Fathers views, after years of self analysis and dabbling with various political philosophies, local Lebanese tribal traditions and substances.

1:30 pm Clinton was up and away. Some locals watched her aircraft fade in the azure sky over the calm, pellucid Mediterranean Sea and wondered to what extent her “Hello-Goodbye gotta go check on Bill!” visit would influence the fast approaching election.

‘Unhelpful’ voter trends: the current scorecard

On her flight back to Washington, Hilary Clinton presumably has in her Lebanon Briefing Book a current snapshot of the June election.

According to the US State Department Lebanese Election Unit, if the election were held today the Hezbollah led opposition would capture 69 of the 128 seats in Parliament, a nightmare for Washington and Tel Aviv since the Opposition could then pretty much call the shots in Parliament.

The LEU is not assuaged by Hezbollah assertions that they want a unity government no matter who wins, nor its repeated signals that the Hezbollah led opposition wants to work with the current US-team, win or lose, to bring good government and sound fiscal policies to Lebanon.

State Department staff likely revealed to the Secretary Clinton the following details based on a State Department analysis of the fast approaching June 7th election. These current predictions are shared by some observers in Lebanon including political analyst Ibrahime Al-Amine, writing in Beirut’s Al Akbar daily newspaper on April 24, 2009. Its shows:

• Hezbollah’s eleven (11) announced candidates will likely all win since their districts are heavily Shia;

• Hezbollah’s alliance with Christians and others needs to add seven seats to the 58 seats the Opposition currently holds in order to achieve the critical one-half plus one (65) Deputy seats.

• The LEU believes 30 seats are too close to call at the moment (mainly Christian seats due to pro Resistance sentiments among many Christians hence their power base fractured) and Clinton has been told that as these districts go so goes Lebanon’s political direction for the next four years.

• The Opposition’s 58 seats in the 128 seat Lebanese Chamber of Deputies (Majles al-Nouwwab) will likely increase by seven (7) seats giving it solid control of the government with all that means for Lebanese becoming a “Resistance State”, incorporating Hezbollah arms into the Lebanese Armed Forces and moving Lebanon from US-Israeli domination to better relations with all States in the region.

So why did Hillary Clinton come to Beirut?

“For sure Clinton’s visit will benefit the ruling team”, explained Lebanese Human Rights Ambassador Ali Khalil sarcastically. “That was the whole idea. You know non-interference with Lebanon’s independence, sovereignty and freedom to choose.”

The motivation and purpose of the Clinton visit seems fairly clear. Recently she and others in Washington have voiced concerns over “a possible Hezbollah victory in the June legislative polls” and underlined the need for efforts to “boost the command of the current government. Her objective in visiting Lebanon was to weaken Hezbollah, and shore up Egypt’s President Mubarak who personally ordered desperate, terrified and wounded Palestinians sealed inside a Gaza pogrom during last Decembers Israeli slaughter, and whose attacks on Hezbollah are eroding the patience of Egypt’s population for his repressive regime”.

On April 24, 2009, a wide-eyed Clinton told a skeptical Congress that the recent arrests in Egypt somehow connected to an alleged Hezbollah cell “served as a wakeup call” for the Egyptian authorities. Suddenly the Mubarak regime became aware of “the increasing alliance between Hezbollah and Hamas and their connection to organizations inside Egypt seeking to destabilize the government,” she explained, while adding that the “United States serves best its own interests by supporting and funding” the Lebanese government in order to “prevent fundamentalism from making more infiltrations”.

Hilary tries to shore up the US backed team.

Evidently the Embassy decided to call Hillary Clinton to Lebanon in an attempt to salvage the election for the US-Israel team.

With two years and hundreds of electoral stump speeches under her belt the hope is that Clinton could ‘Wow’ the Lebanese with her star quality and turn the tide in what some of the Embassy staff increasing believe will be a Hezbollah victory.

Some are not sure Secretary Clinton succeeded in her assignment.

“Only President Obama can maybe save the Majority in the June election and none of us knows if he is willing to spend his current political capital and risk it on the Lebanese election. Obama risks losing prestige by coming to Lebanon to try to rescue March 14. If he comes to Lebanon and the US team still loses, the Israelis will jump for joy because Obama will have been weakened in his plans to confront Lieberman and Netanyahu over a Two-State solution”, Ambassador Khalil explained sarcastically.

Hezbollah’s response to Clinton’s visit

Hezbollah criticized Clinton’s visit as interference in Lebanese affairs. “The policy of the United States is one of interference,” the Party’s spokesman, Dr. Ibrahim al-Mousawi told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. “This interference is not in the interest of the countries they interfere in but are meant to serve the American interests in the region.”

Lebanon’s Election Day: 42 days and counting.