Politicians and Their Twisted Words

By George Carlin

Translating Securityspeak Into English

Kevin Carson writes,

One might wonder, reading the American “national security” community’s pronouncements, if they refer to the same world we live in. Things make a little more sense when you realize that the Security State has its own language: Securityspeak. Like Newspeak, the ideologically refashioned successor to English in Orwell’s 1984, Securityspeak is designed to obscure meaning and conceal truth, rather than convey them. As an example, take these 2010 remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Ambassador Jaime Daremblum, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Latin American Studies.

Daremblum, after praising Senators Lugar and Dodd for their promotion of “national security and democracy” in Latin America over the years, warned of the threat of “radical populism, which has taken root in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.” Perhaps most alarmingly, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has formed an alliance with Iran, “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The Nicaraguan government, having “returned to its old ways,” occupies a Costa Rican river island in defiance of an OAS resolution.

Chavez’s alliance with Iran, in particular, is “the biggest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War.” The Chavez regime poses a “serious threat to U.S. security interests.”

Wow! Sounds like a lot of bizarro-world gibberish, right? But if we break it down and translate it a bit at a time, we can actually distill some sense from it.

First, we have to remember that in Securityspeak, “democracy” doesn’t mean what it does in English. You probably think of democracy as meaningful control by ordinary people of the decisions that affect their daily lives. The false cognate Securityspeak term “democracy” sounds the same but can cause great confusion. It actually refers to a society in which the system of power is disguised by the existence of periodic electoral rituals in which the public chooses between a number of candidates, all selected from the same ruling class. These candidates may argue a lot, but it’s all about the 20% or so of secondary issues on which the different factions of the ruling class are divided among themselves. The 80% of primary issues, on which the ruling class agrees — issues that define the basic structure of power — never comes up for debate.

When the structure of power itself comes up for debate — when people start talking about, say, the concentrated ownership of land, or export-oriented development policy — it’s a sign that “democracy” is in danger of being replaced by “radical populism.” That’s a matter for the CIA or Marines to deal with. The whole point of Securityspeak’s version of “democracy” is to safeguard the fundamental structure of power by distracting the population with the illusion of choice.

It’s also important to keep in mind that in Securityspeak, the label “state sponsor of terrorism” — by definition — cannot include the United States. That’s because actions by the Sole Superpower and Hegemon to promote “democracy” cannot — by definition — be terroristic. Actions to promote “radical populism,” on the other hand, can.

As in Newspeak, actions that are considered laudable when practiced by one side are reprehensible when practiced by the other. Take, for example, the Nicaraguan action of occupying Costa Rican territory in defiance of an OAS resolution. That same action — defying an OAS resolution — was entirely commendable when practiced by the U.S. (i.e., the mining of Managua harbor as a means of combating “radical populists” 30 years ago).

Consider labeling the Iran-Venezuela alliance the “biggest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War.” You’re probably thinking he put that qualifier in there so U.S. actions during the Cold War wouldn’t count. After all the U.S. overthrew Guatemala’s democratic government in 1954, installing a military regime that terrorized the country for decades. It backed Central American death squads that killed hundreds of thousands of people and (starting with the overthrow of Brazil’s government in the 1960s and proceeding with Kissinger’s Operation Condor in the 1970s) put military dictators in power in most of South America.

But those things wouldn’t count anyway. When the United States overthrows government after government, with domino chains of military coups putting pro-U.S. dictatorships in power throughout most of the hemisphere, that’s protecting stability, not threatening it. It’s all for the sake of defeating that “radical populism,” which is by definition a threat to stability.

And in Securityspeak, saying a Venezuela-Iran military alliance is a “threat” doesn’t mean they might attack the U.S. and invade its territory. It means they might be able to fight back when the U.S. attacks them — that the U.S. might not be able to defeat them and put a stop to the threat of “radical populism.” In other words, they might get away with taking land away from oligarchs and patrons and distributing it to the people who actually work it, and their economies might start serving the interests of the people who live there instead of Norteamericano corporations. And that would be bad.

Similarly, “national security” refers not, as you might expect in English, to the security of the American people. It refers to the security of the American state and the coalition of class interests that controls it. Economic populism is indeed a threat to “national security” in this sense. American economic elites are the heart of one of the opposing sides in the age-old conflict between those who own the world and those whose blood and sweat enrich those who own the world. When a functionary of the American state like Daremblum refers to a “threat to national security,” he means a threat to the ability of the hemisphere’s owning classes to extract wealth from the blood and sweat of the rest of us.

There — that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Via: "Anti-War"

West Speaks With A Forked Tongue On The Arab Spring

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, shown with army chief of staff Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, won the presidency in 1999 in an election widely viewed as fraudulent. Yet Algeria remains a western ally, while Egypt's democratically elected Mohammed Morsi is treated with suspicion. (June 27, 2012)

By Haroon Siddiqui
Published on Sunday July 08, 2012
Courtesy Of "The Toronto Star"

We profess fidelity to democracy, especially in the Arab world. But our commitment seems to come with the caveat that the will of the people is acceptable only if it confirms our prejudices. If not — as in Egyptians’ choice of the Muslim Brotherhood for both parliament and the presidency — some of our leaders, thinkers and media eminences get antsy and irrational.

They begin to echo the logic of Algeria, Iran, Israel and the dictatorships and monarchies of the Middle East that have resisted democratic outcomes.

In 1993, the Algerian military annulled the election of an Islamic party, tarring it as terrorist. In 2006, Israel did the same with the electorally victorious Hamas, with the full support of Stephen Harper. The Iranian clerical regime routinely rejects candidates it does not like, and fiddles with elections to favour those it prefers. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and others hold elections for councils and parliaments that have little or no power.

All these culprits are our allies, except Iran.

In varying degrees, Barack Obama, Harper and other western leaders have paid lip service to the Arab Spring. They have failed to stand by pro-democracy forces at key times.

They have been silent on the series of measures taken by the ruling Egyptian military junta to consolidate its power and even attempt to derail Mohammed Morsi’s election as president.

Yet Washington lectured him on the need to respect the rights of women and Coptic Christians.

This is not surprising coming from a capital that was complicit in the crimes of Hosni Mubarak, who banned the Brotherhood and jailed and tortured hundreds of its members for years.

Morsi himself was detained in 2006 for seven months. His sons Ahmed, Osama and Omar were detained during last year’s pro-democracy revolt and the latter two assaulted, as were thousands of others. But the White House remained mostly silent — as it has for decades about violations of human rights by tyrannical American client states.

When the West speaks up, it does so mostly on behalf of selected constituencies — non-Muslim minorities, in particular. When it advocates for the rights of women, it does so for certain types of women — secular, pro-western, often anti-Islamic. It did not go to bat for the women belonging to the Brotherhood who suffered for long periods under Mubarak.

All this contradicts the West’s cardinal position that there can be no cultural or religious exceptions to universal human rights.

The double standards get more pronounced when it comes to defaming election winners we don’t like.

 • Morsi and the Brotherhood are demonized for criticizing the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. But the treaty does not have popular legitimacy in Egypt. That’s why even Mubarak never fully normalized relations with Israel, and had the state media spew poison at Jews. 

So long as Israel does not end the occupation of Palestinian land, Arabs of all political and ideological stripes will remain antagonistic. Anti-Israeli sentiment is not confined to “Islamists” and it is not all motivated by anti-Semitism. 

Morsi’s position on Israel may be far more moderate than, say, that of those Americans, Israelis and Canadians who are advocating war on Iran. We treat the latter as acceptable political rhetoric or strategic positioning but go berserk at the far less radical positions of the Brotherhood.

 • Morsi and the Brotherhood are deemed dangerous radicals.

Sure, Morsi and colleagues have made extremist statements in the past, such as that Christians and women be barred from the presidency (a proposal never adopted by the Brotherhood) or that sharia law be implemented.

Arguably that’s no worse than a significant portion of Americans saying that a Mormon or a black should not be president. Or leading Americans insisting that Christian principles should guide public policy.

 • It is said that the Brotherhood does not show sufficient commitment to liberalism. Does the Republican party? The Brotherhood is also accused of being too centrally controlled. Are the Harper Conservatives not?

The Arab world is going through a historic transition. So are several religiously inspired groups, from Egypt to Tunisia and Libya. Emerging from oppression and moving into the democratic arena, they are learning to moderate their ideology, just as Christian and Communist groups did in Europe in another era.

This is a slow and painful but peaceful process. If we hope to influence it, we need to be credible on democracy and human rights. We need to be more principled, less hypocritical.

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca

Breaking The Golden Rule

Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Friday, June 1, 2012 - 12:02 PM
Courtesy Of "Foreign Policy"

Remember the Golden Rule? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It's not normally regarded as a cardinal rule of foreign policy; in that realm, "an eye for an eye" seems closer to the norm. But lately I've been thinking that Americans ought to reflect a bit more on the long-term costs of our willingness to do unto others in ways we would most definitely not want them to do unto us.

This past week, the New York Times has published two important articles on how the Obama administration is using American power in ways that remain poorly understood by most Americans. The first described Obama's targeted assassination policy against suspected terrorists, and the second describes the U.S. cyber-warfare campaign against Iran. Reasonable people might disagree about the merits of both policies, but what I find troubling is the inevitable secrecy and deceit that is involved. It's not just that we are trying to fool our adversaries; the problem is that we end up fooling ourselves, too. 

As I've noted before, when our government is doing lots of hostile things in far-flung places around the world and the public doesn't know about them until long after the fact, then we have no way of understanding why the targets of U.S. power might be angry and hostile. As a result, we will tend to attribute their behavior to other, darker motivations.

Remember back in 2009, when Obama supposedly extended the "hand of friendship" to Iran? At the same time that he was making friendly video broadcasts, he was also escalating our cyber-war efforts against Iran. When Iran's Supreme leader Ali Khamenei reacted coolly to Obama's initiative, saying: "We do not have any record of the new U.S. president.  We are observing, watching, and judging.  If you change, we will also change our behavior. If you do not change, we will be the same nation as 30 years ago," U.S. pundits immediately saw this as a "rebuff" of our supposedly sincere offer of friendship. 

With hindsight, of course, it's clear that Khamenei had every reason to be skeptical; and now, he has good grounds for viewing Obama as inherently untrustworthy. I'm no fan of the clerical regime, but the inherent contradictions in our approach made it virtually certain to fail. As it did.

We keep wondering: "Why do they hate us?" Well, maybe some people are mad because we are doing things that we would regard as unjustified and heinous acts of war if anyone dared to do them to us.  

I'm not really surprised that the U.S. is using its power so freely -- that is what great powers tend to do. 

I'm certainly not surprised that government officials prefer to keep quiet about it, or only leak information about their super-secret policies when they think they can gain some political advantage by doing so. 

But I also don't think Americans should be so surprised or so outraged when others are angered by actions that we would find equally objectionable if we were the victims instead of the perpetrators. 

And if we keep doing unto others in this way, it's only a matter of time before someone does it unto us in return. 

Obama's Letter Exposes Forked Tongue On Iran

By Steve Hynd
May 28, 2010
Source: "NewsHoggers" --May 27, 2010
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

Via Robert Naiman, it appears that President Lula of Brazil has decided to shine some light on the Obama administration's machinations on Iran. He has finally released the full text of Obama's 20th April letter to Brazil about the proposed TTR fuel swap deal and the entire thing appears today in Brazilian Foreign Policy.

The letter reads, in part:

The letter also specifically mentions the compromise of using Turkey as the location for Iran's fuel to be held "in escrow".

I would urges Brazil to impress upon Iran the opportunity presented by this offer to "escrow" its uranium in Turkey while the nuclear fuel is being produced.

This letter's authenticity is not disputed by the White House. It exposes the Obama administration's forked-tongue response to the Brazil and Turkey brokered swap. The White House is now in full spin mode, but the spin has already been undercut by the release of the letter's full text. Of late, Hilary Clinton has been the main vehicle for the White House's double-talk, which is now entirely aimed at closing down opportunities to find a negotiated settlement to the Iran nuclear issue no matter what the new National Security Strategy might say. But Obama must also bear the burden of blame, his is the desk where the buck stops.

A Glossary Of Terms In Foreign Affairs

By Glenn Greenwald
Monday Sept. 28, 2009 07:29 EDT
Courtesy Of The Salon Media Group

As we debate the many scary enemies and exciting possibilities for new wars -- escalation in Afghanistan, our very own "Cuban Missile Crisis" against the Persian Hitlers, the Socialist Menace in Venezuela -- events can become very confusing. Compounding that problem are the many complex, technical terms often used in media discussions of foreign affairs. It's therefore helpful to keep track of the relevant terms --- ones just from the events of the last week alone -- to maximize clarity as we debate our imperial responsibilities:

__________

The act of dangerous, threatening Hitlers -- NYT, today:

Iran was reported Monday to have test-fired long-range missiles capable of striking Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf in what seemed a show of force.

The acts of a peace-loving democracy - Telegraph, January 18, 2008:

Israel has carried out the successful test launch of a long-range, ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, in what was intended as a clear show of strength to Iran.

Washington Post, May 2, 2000:

An Israeli short-range ballistic missile splashed down in the eastern Mediterranean last month near a U.S. Navy Aegis cruiser, causing momentary fear that the ship was under attack, Defense Department officials said yesterday.

The Jericho 1 missile, which can carry nuclear warheads or about 1,000 pounds of chemicals or high explosives, was launched from a missile-testing facility at Yavne, Israel, on April 6 and landed about 40 miles from the USS Anzio, they said. . . . [O]ne of the Defense Department officials ... said the repeated "no-notice" launches have made the Pentagon think that the Israelis are trying to prevent the United States from monitoring the tests and acquiring technical data about the operation of the Jericho.

__________

A nation up to no good -- USA Today, last week:

President Obama said today that Iran has been building a covert nuclear enrichment facility for several years and warned that Tehran would be "held accountable" if it did not immediately demonstrate its peaceful intentions by opening the site to international inspectors. . . .

The Iranian leader says Iran had informed the IAEA early about the facility. . . . The Iranian leader tells reporters that Iran doesn't have any problems with IAEA inspections of the new facility.

A peaceful and law-abiding ally - Foreign Policy, last week:

The UN nuclear assembly voted on Friday to urge Israel to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and place all atomic sites under UN inspections. . . .

This is a major victory as the Israel's representative on the council has already promised to "not cooperate in any matter with this resolution which is only aiming at reinforcing political hostilities and lines of division in the Middle East region."

It also probably won't do a whole lot for the credibility of the IAEA to have one more country over which it is powerless to enforce its rulings.

__________

A thuggish dictator crushing democracy -- Washington Post, February 16, 2009:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won a referendum Sunday to eliminate term limits, paving the way for him to rule far into the 21st century to carry out his socialist transformation of this oil-rich country.

A criminal Leftist abolishing freedom - National Review, June, 2009:

But make no mistake: The Honduran soldiers who escorted Pres. Manuel Zelaya from his home on Sunday were acting to protect their country’s democracy . . . . Zelaya’s ultimate goal was to extend or abolish presidential term limits, mimicking the example of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez and other Latin American populists.

A stalwart reformer devoted to democratic values -- CSM, September 2, 2009:

Colombian lawmakers voted Tuesday to call a referendum on whether conservative President Álvaro Uribe – a key US ally in a region now dominated by leftist leaders – should be allowed to seek a third straight term in office. . . .

But the vote, which has been dogged by allegations of irregularities, has angered critics and even some of Uribe's staunchest allies. They worry that if Uribe wins a third term, it could endanger Colombian democracy in the same way that many of the region's leftist leaders have done in recent years.

Democracy in action -- Bloomberg, last year:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would seek re-election next year and is working with the City Council to amend a 15-year-old law limiting elected officials to two terms, as the Wall Street slump imperils the city's economy. . . .

Bloomberg, the billionaire founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, ran for mayor in 2001 and 2005 as a Republican, after having been a lifelong Democrat, spending about $158 million on both races combined.

__________

A thuggish dictator crushing dissent - Associated Press, two weeks ago:

The government said Monday a leading TV channel aligned with Venezuela's opposition could lose its broadcast license for allegedly airing a viewer's text message calling for a coup and the assassination of President Hugo Chavez.

Responsible leaders defending freedom and the rule of law -- Guardian, today:

Honduras's interim leaders suspended key civil liberties last night in response to "calls for insurrection" by ousted president Manuel Zelaya, empowering police and soldiers to break up "unauthorised" public meetings, arrest people without warrants and restrict the news media.

__________

A conspiracy of aggressors -- Fox News, December, 2007:

Russia is selling Iran a new and sophisticated air defense system that experts say is capable of dealing a serious blow against would-be attackers.

The new S-300 air defense system signals growing miitary cooperation between Moscow and Tehran

A nations that merely wants peace -- NYT, September 9, 2009:

Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier . . . The United States signed weapons agreements valued at $37.8 billion in 2008, or 68.4 percent of all business in the global arms bazaar, up significantly from American sales of $25.4 billion the year before.

Italy was a distant second, with $3.7 billion in worldwide weapons sales in 2008, while Russia was third with $3.5 billion in arms sales last year . . . The United States was the leader not only in arms sales worldwide, but also in sales to nations in the developing world, signing $29.6 billion in weapons agreements with these nations, or 70.1 percent of all such deals.

__________

State sponsors of Terrorism -- BBC, November, 2006:

A senior Hezbollah official has told the BBC that Iran is providing the group with money to help fund its reconstruction activities in Lebanon. . . .

Lebanon's Finance Minister, Jihad Azour, also acknowledged that Iranian money is going directly to Hezbollah.

Peace-loving nations -- Irish Times, February 23, 2009:

DETAILED EVIDENCE has emerged of Israel’s extensive use of US-made weaponry during its war in Gaza last month, including white phosphorus artillery shells, 500lb bombs and Hellfire missiles.

NYT, July, 2006:

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah.

BBC, March 21, 2003:

The long-awaited move began on the third night of the war, with US cruise missiles and carrier aircraft precision bombs raining down on Baghdad and other major cites. . . . The doctrine of "shock and awe" is based on a book by military strategist Harlan Ullman, who is admired by both Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Mr Ullman wrote that the use of air power to achieve "nearly incomprehensible levels of mass destruction" could achieve "an overwhelming level of shock and awe against an adversary on an immediate basis to paralyse its will to resist".

__________

Monsters with contempt for their own people - WashPost, June, 2009:

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate in last month's disputed election, released documents Saturday detailing a campaign of alleged fraud by supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that assured his reelection.

Freedom Is On The March -- CNN, last week:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday warned Western observers not to "delegitimize" the results of his country's presidential election, which has been marred by allegations of fraud.

Results of the completed count, announced Wednesday, gave Karzai 54 percent of the vote in the August 20 poll, but the numbers won't be certified until authorities investigate allegations of irregularities. More than 200,000 of the nearly 5.7 million votes cast have been thrown out, including 29,000 in a swath of Afghanistan where Karzai has strong support, and European Union observers have raised questions about 1.5 million more.

Liberating a nation -- Economist, September, 2009:

The Shia-led government has overseen a ballooning of the country’s security apparatus. Human-rights violations are becoming more common. In private many Iraqis, especially educated ones, are asking if their country may go back to being a police state.

Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. “Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional standards,” says Samer Muscati, who works for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby.

His outfit reports that, with American oversight gone (albeit that the Americans committed their own shameful abuses in such places as Abu Ghraib prison), Iraqi police and security people are again pulling out fingernails and beating detainees, even those who have already made confessions. A limping former prison inmate tells how he realised, after a bout of torture in a government ministry that lasted for five days, that he had been relatively lucky. When he was reunited with fellow prisoners, he said he saw that many had lost limbs and organs.

__________

A rogue nation showing contempt for international law -- NPR, this week:

In a dramatic joint statement, Obama — flanked by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy — said the existence of the site "deepens a growing concern" that Iran has failed to live up to its international obligations to fully disclose its nuclear ambitions. Obama said Iran "is breaking rules that all nations must follow. . . . "

Honoring treaty obligations -- David Cole, New York Review of Books, this week:

The United States is legally bound by the Convention Against Torture to submit any case alleging torture by a person within its jurisdiction "to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." President Obama and Attorney General Holder have both stated that waterboarding is torture. Accordingly, the United States is legally obligated to investigate not merely those CIA interrogators who went beyond waterboarding, but the lawyers and Cabinet officers who authorized waterboarding and other torture tactics in the first place. . . . Absent a reckoning for those responsible for making torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment official US policy, the United States' commitment to the rule of law will remain a hollow shell -- a commitment to be honored only when it is not inconvenient or impolitic to do so.

Article 2, U.N. Charter:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

__________

Once those terms are systematically laid out in glossary form like this, everything becomes much clearer. Perhaps the ultimate confusion is that "the Left" has long been accused of "moral relativism" for pointing out the use of these terms when the essence of "moral relativism" is judging an act not based on what it is, but on who is doing it. It's the adolescent self-love of believing that "X, by definition, is good when I do it and bad when you do it."

-- Glenn Greenwald

The Cost Of Betraying Our Sunni ‘Sons’

By Kelley B. Vlahos,
June 26, 2009
Courtesy Of Anti-War News

Administration officials and mainstream pundits — especially keepers of the Surge flame eager for the war in Iraq to be over — have been dismissing the last few months of bloodshed as the work of al-Qaeda "remnants." The indigenous Sunni insurgency, on the other hand, might be able to rally a car bomb or an assassination or two, but it’s pretty much cooked — finished, finito, all washed up.

They just may be right. But what if instead of a defeated minority quietly assimilating into the political and social fabric of a new Iraqi nation, the United States is leaving some 90,000 former Sunni allies, their families and neighbors with a big giant target on their backs? What if it turns out the U.S. military helped to paint the bulls-eye?

Behind the PG version of the insurgency’s demise is tacit acknowledgement that Nouri al-Maliki, the Shi’ite prime minister heading one of the most ineffectual and corrupt governments in the world, has at his disposal a huge American-compiled database that includes the individual names, addresses and biometric information — including iris scans and fingerprints — of some 90,000 Sunni fighters, also known as the "Sons of Iraq," who helped the U.S. decimate al-Qaeda in Iraq during the 2007-2008 Surge.

When pressed in a recent conversation, one military official confidently predicted the Sunni opposition would no longer be a problem, even after the supposed drawdown of U.S forces from Iraqi cities June 30. Why? "Because we know where they live," he said easily. Their families and neighbors too. And they know it.

An interesting way to talk about the guys often referred to (for the benefit of hopeful U.S domestic audiences) as brave volunteers of the "Sunni Awakening," or Sahwa, who, without their help, might have left Gen. David Petraeus looking for another job. Today, according to such widely accepted sources as Nir Rosen, our former partners are feeling fairly betrayed. The Americans have washed their hands of their "sons," and Maliki seems bent on proving who is boss.

No doubt engaging his own American-trained Special Forces and at times, direct U.S back-up, Maliki’s government has been "systematically eliminating the perceived threat" of the Sahwa, as described in detail by independent journalist Dahr Jamail back in May.

Rosen, too, has interviewed a number of former "sons" who say they have been dragged out of their homes, arrested, tortured, extorted for large sums and set free. The unlucky ones languish in Saddam-era dungeons — the unluckiest are shot on the spot.

"We are watching this happen daily," Jamail says in a recent email exchange. "Hardly a day goes by that we don’t see an attack on some Sahwa somewhere in Iraq." He called the attacks "physical evidence" that the American-compiled databases (supplemented, ironically, with Saddam Hussein’s own criminal dossiers, obtained after the invasion) were being used.

Maliki contends that the crackdown is not politically motivated, but an attempt to get bad guys off the street. No doubt that among the thousands of Sahwa there are some real thugs — ex-Baathists and al-Qaeda sympathizers, revivified guerrillas. But recent pressure by parliament and human rights groups to investigate false arrests, torture and abuse in the prisons there suggest innocent men now rot in the same hellholes political prisoners withered in for years under Saddam Hussein.

Plus, weren’t they all good enough to put on the American payroll? We’ve been told over and again that these Sunnis served a critical purpose, stanching the bloodshed long enough to declare victory over al-Qaeda and to prepare a real withdrawal. Ultimately, breaking faith by delivering them up to Maliki’s agenda seems like a peculiar way to repay them.

Of course, this was all predicted. Back in August 2008 it was suggested pretty straightforwardly that a reignited post-Surge Sunni insurgency could be quickly thwarted if the biometric databases fell into "the right hands" (meaning Maliki). "(The databases) provide a useful enemies list to the Government of Iraq, if they choose to use it," said Colin Kahl, a former fellow at the Center for a New American Century, now deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

There was certainly an overriding sense at the recent CNAS annual meeting that any "resurgence" of the Sunni opposition had already petered out. More than one speaker and conversant in the swelling hallways outside the main hall pointed to Rosen’s April article for The National, "The Big Sleep", as providing credible, establishment-worthy evidence that the "the war between Sunnis and Shi’ites is now over."

Consequently, Rosen’s piece has also been picked up by writers crafting tepid analyses about "Victory in Iraq," namely Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, who wrote this month, "An adviser to surge commander Gen. David Petraeus told the reporter Nir Rosen that the civil war in Iraq would end when the Sunnis knew that they’d lost and the Shi’ites knew that they’d won. Both now seem to be true."

What they don’t talk about is the relentlessly bleak tone of Rosen’s 4,200-word piece, which left no question that the Sunnis feel ruthlessly betrayed by their American patrons. And yes, the biometric information they had yielded to U.S forces upon the initial bargain was indeed playing a role in their demise:

In September 2008 Maliki — in a concession to the Americans — issued an order calling for the integration of 20 per cent of the eligible Awakening men into the ministries of defence and interior… But as of today less than five per cent have joined the Iraqi Security Forces. At the same time, senior Awakening leaders and many of their men have been arrested, while others have been relieved of their duties (and their pay) and told to go home. It is a quiet and slow process, but one that continues to emasculate one of the last groups that rivalled the authority of the Iraqi state.

… Now the former resistance fighters-turned-paid guards are publicly known, and their names, addresses and biometric data are in the hands of American and Iraqi forces. They cannot return to an underground that has been cleared, and they still face the wrath of radical Sunnis who view them as traitors. They have failed to unite and as their stories demonstrate, they are on the run.

Rosen suggests Maliki is becoming an "authoritarian prime minister," accepted by the general Sunni population in exchange for the decline in overall violence. The government painted by Rosen’s Sunni sources hardly reflects a regime that has learned from its history; in fact, it sounds perfectly third world.

Maliki has not taken such characterizations lightly. In May, he launched a defamation suit against The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom for an April report that said he was becoming "increasingly autocratic."

It really doesn’t matter. That Maliki has effectively filled our "strong man" ideal seems more important to Washington now than any potential backslide into the despotism we supposedly invaded Iraq for in the first place. Sadly, President Barack Obama seems content to pursue this perversity, set into motion by his predecessor, in order to focus more deliberately on his other headaches in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Again, as so many times throughout history, our leaders’ reach for the moral high ground — to make things better — has fallen short, caught mid-air by the persistent lure of political and tactical expediency. Mired in moral ambiguities, things are done that would never be tolerated by "free" people back home — like handing over what could be used to as a political hit list against our supposed allies to authorities obviously bent on crushing them.

It may all be as they say — "finished" — as Maliki has the last vestiges of the Sunni opposition by the throat. But as we race to put Iraq, like so many other disappointing foreign adventures, behind us, don’t miss al-Qaeda in the rearview, the wild card feeding on festering resentments, picking up where our expediency left off.

DoubleSpeak & Language Mind-Control

By Anonymous Truther
Courtesy Of YouTube

A few examples of language to disguise and deceive.

Several defining attributes of doublespeak:

* misleads

* distorts reality

* pretends to communicate

* makes the bad seem good

* avoids or shifts responsibility

* makes the negative appear positive

* creates a false verbal map of the world

* limits, conceals, corrupts, and prevents thought

* makes the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable

* creates incongruity between reality and what is said or not said