zmag.org
…There is a curious performance underway right now among Western commentators, who are solemnly debating whether the Bush administration downgraded the “war on terror” in favor of its ambitions in Iraq. The only surprising aspect of the revelations of former Bush administration officials that provoked the debate is that anyone finds them surprising – particularly right now, when it is so clear that by invading Iraq the administration did just that: knowingly increased the threat of terror to achieve their goals in Iraq.

But even without this dramatic demonstration of priorities, the conclusions should be obvious. From the point of view of government planners, the ranking of priorities is entirely rational. Terror might kill 1000s of Americans; that much has been clear since the attempt by US-trained jihadis to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. But that is not very important in comparison with establishing the first secure military bases in a dependent client state at the heart of the world’s major energy reserves – “a stupendous source of strategic power” and an incomparable “material prize,” as high officials recognized in the 1940s, if not before. full article

Operation Enduring Free Trade by Aziz Choudry @znet
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Journalist Allan Nairn: Reagan Was Behind “One Of The Most Intensive Campaigns Of Mass Murder In Recent History”

democracynow.org

… I think if accurate history is written in the future this will be seen as one of the great crimes of history, and I’m not in the U.S. now, but when I — I’m hearing about how Reagan is being celebrated, and I don’t know, I suspect that a lot of people in Central America when they hear about that, maybe feel the same way that a lot of Americans feel when they hear the stories about people in other countries wearing Osama bin Laden t-shirts. You know, a feeling of just complete dismay and disgust. How can people do that? How can people celebrate such a mass killer? That’s a complicated question.

There are various reasons why people celebrate mass killers. One of them that especially applies in the case of the U.S. is maybe they don’t know. Maybe they don’t know that he was a mass murderer, and that is largely the case with what happened in Central America because the way the U.S. press covered it and failed to cover it the facts never got through to the American public. If they did, people would not stand for it. But Reagan — one thing you have to say for Reagan, and one thing I think you also have to say for Bush now, they justly and appropriately for politics spoke in terms of good and evil. Because a lot of politics a good and evil. But he lied about it. What he did was evil. What Bush is doing now is evil when he causes the deaths of civilians. Americans have to face the facts. They have to look at things the way they really are, and then you can’t do anything about the victims of El Salvador and Guatemala now, but you can do something about those who are still alive. For example, I mentioned Coca-Cola and Guatemala: dozens of union organizers there were gunned down by death squads. Almost the exact same things has happened in recent years at the Coca-Cola franchise in Colombia. One union leader pops up and he’s gunned down. This practice is continuing and it has to stop.
full transcript

Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua
Tuesday, June 8th, 2004 democracy now
Fr. Miguel D’Escoto is a Catholic priest who was Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government in the 1980s.
The 8 years Reagan was in office represented one of the most bloody eras in the history of the Western hemisphere, as Washington funneled money, weapons and other supplies to right wing death squads. And the death toll was staggering – more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, 30,000 killed in the contra war in Nicaragua. In Washington, the forces carrying out the violence were called “freedom fighters.” This is how Ronald Reagan described the Contras in Nicaragua: “They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers.”

FATHER MIGUEL D’ESCOTO: First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I’m not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy.

More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was known as the great communicator, and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.
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Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn’t Bind Bush
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT
new york times
WASHINGTON, June 7 — A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors “except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful.”

“In order to respect the president’s inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign,” the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority.”

Senior Pentagon officials on Monday sought to minimize the significance of the March memo, one of several obtained by The New York Times, as an interim legal analysis that had no effect on revised interrogation procedures that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 for the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
full article

The Wrong Proliferation Message
Published: June 8, 2004 new york times

As the world’s strongest nuclear and conventional power, America should want to freeze weapons development and halt nuclear proliferation. Yet the Bush administration’s proposed military budget moves in a different and more dangerous direction by seeking a sharp increase in the funds for research on two new kinds of nuclear bombs. The Senate should halt this reckless folly by voting next week for an amendment sponsored by Senators Edward Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein.

One of the new nuclear weapons is a reduced-yield explosive, less than half as powerful as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Proponents call these low-yield bombs more “usable” than today’s versions. That means easing the taboo that has kept nuclear weapons sheathed since 1945 on behalf of a bomb that could still expose hundreds of thousands of people to death or radiation sickness. With nine countries now believed to have nuclear weapons, including North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel, the world does not need America’s encouraging the idea of more usable bombs.
full article

All Massacres are not Alike
By PHILLIP CRYAN counterpunch.org

From USA Today to the Washington Times, dozens of U.S. newspapers published reports of a May 22 bombing that killed seven people in a dance hall in Apartado, a municipality in the northwestern province of Antioquia, Colombia.

But not a single one of these papers reported on a massacre that killed 11 peasants two days earlier in Tame, a municipality in the northeastern province of Arauca. The only major English-language news of the carnage amounted to 191 words May 25 from London-based Reuters.

The discrepancy in coverage is not because one attack was more brutal than the other. If anything, the Tame massacre warranted the most attention because more people were killed and the bodies showed signs of torture.

The inconsistency likely stems, rather, from who did the killing and where. The military attributed the Apartado bombing to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest guerrilla group.

But the Tame massacre, by all accounts, was carried out by the Colombian government’s paramilitary allies. And it occurred just 30 miles from an oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. The United States is sending $100 million a year in military aid earmarked for protecting that pipeline. Last year, Washington stationed 70 U.S. Special Forces troops in the province to train Colombian soldiers for the effort.
full article

Gaddafi Regrets Reagan Died Without Facing Trial
By REUTERS
new york times

TRIPOLI, Libya (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi said Sunday he regretted that former U.S. President Ronald Reagan had died without ever being tried for 1986 air strikes that killed dozens of people, including the Libyan leader’s adopted daughter.

“I express my profound regrets over Reagan’s death before he appeared before justice to be held to account for his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children,” Gaddafi told the official JANA news agency.

Well I was thinking more along the lines of Iran-Contra and The October Surprise. One thing we have to thank Reagan for is the investigative journalism of Peter Dale Scott and others who uncovered the international fascist network that worked so closely with the Reagan White House to assure the success of their outrageous and treasonous actvities all over the world. It was Reagan who lauded the gangster Mobutu of the Congo as ‘a voice of reason’ in Africa and rewarded him to the tune of $4 billion for his retirement fund.
I honestly believed that the Reagan years were the worst this country would ever see. Ha.
We are being barraged at this moment by a truly nauseating media blitz celebrating the ‘optimism’ and ‘leadership’ of Mr. Gosh Golly Gee-Whiz. His ‘get tough’ stance with the Soviets ultimately brought the Soviet Union crashing down and ended The Cold War, we’re told. What was ushered in was, I now see, a far more dangerous era of total American impunity. This ‘celebration’ of Reagan is nothing more than a manipulation of history and memory, and its purpose is to prime the public for the horrors which await. The red, white, and blue is blinding.

An Historical Perspective:
The Grenada 17: The Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black by Rich Gibson counterpunch.org
Venezuela 2004: Nicaragua’s Contra War Reprised by Toni Solo counterpunch.org
Reagan, Goodbye and Good Riddance by Phil Gaspar counterpunch.org
Reagan Didn’t End the Cold War by William Blum
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By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, capitol hill blue
Jun 4, 2004,

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
full article

by William Greider the nation

When President Bush called Americans to enlist in his “war on terror,” very few citizens could have grasped the all-encompassing consequences of the proposition. The terrifying events of 9/11 were like a blinding flash, benumbing the country with a sudden knowledge of unimagined dangers. Strong action was recommended, skeptics were silenced and a shallow sense of unity emerged from the shared vulnerabilities. Nearly three years later, the enormity of Bush’s summons to open-ended “war” is more obvious. It overwhelmed the country, in fact deranged society’s normal processes and purposes with a brilliantly seductive political message: Terror pre-empts everything else.

What this President effectively accomplished was to restart the cold war, albeit under a new rubric. The justifying facts are different and smaller, but the ideological dynamics are remarkably similar–a total commitment of the nation’s energies to confront a vast, unseen and malignant adversary. Fanatical Muslims replaced Soviet Communists and, like the reds, these enemies could be anywhere, including in our midst (they may not even be Muslims, but kindred agents who likewise “hate” us and oppose our values). Like the cold war’s, the logic of this new organizing framework can be awesomely compelling to the popular imagination because it runs on fear–the public’s expanding fear of potential dangers. The political commodity of fear has no practical limits. The government has the ability to manufacture more.
full article

It just occurred to me while posting the article below that ‘terrorism’ serves precisely the same purpose that “communism” did to this same bunch of Cold War fascists (which is no overstatement-read the history of post-WWII international fascism). Boo. Terrorists! Suspend the constitution! Occupy the planet! The terrorists are coming! Bush says as much when drawing parallels between the ‘war on terror’ and WWII. And under the cover of their ‘good fight,’ the imperial capitalists tighten their lock on all the world’s resources. Duh.

That’s the difference between then and now: now they have it in their means to attack the whole world. And so confident are they that we are treated daily to tales of their brazen lawlessness. The war on Iraq is itself a distraction.

“The proposition that the United States is fighting a ‘war on terrorism’ is the biggest fallacy in the whole debate or lack of debate about the war…the framing of United States military attacks attacks on Afghanistan as a ‘war on terrorism’ is a strategy used by our political elites to advance their own political economic interests while limiting the truth-telling about the causes behind the terrorist attacks and the nature of the US response. Our political leaders and media are constructing a narrative that helps Americans to sleep at night despite the fact that their military is killing innocent people just like the 9-11 terrorists killed innocent people. A narrative that relies on such abstract values and dichotomies as good/evil [‘Axis of Evil’ anyone?] and freedom/terror works at concealing the truth of what is taking place and ‘manufacturing consent’ a la Chomsky.”
from “A Critical Analysis of the ‘War on Terrorism Discourse.’

This article by Eric Wilkinson in 2002 in reference to the Afghani war reads like a prophetic piece, as we are now faced with the choice of either re-electing a pro-war, pro-Israel, pro-corporate globalization president or one just like him to take his place. The American public has been beaten senseless and silent by the media bludgeon labeled ‘War on Terror.’ Rumsfeld made an interesting and ominous rhetorical shift the other day when he referred to the ‘global insurgency,’ a term that suggests that the US is within its rights to go in and ‘put it down’ anywhere in the world as it is trying and failing to do in Iraq. Meanwhile, the corporate takeover is proceeding apace.

“The military and the monetary
They get together when they think it’s necessary
They turn our sons and daughters into mercenaries.
They are turning the world into one big cemetery.”
Gil Scott Heron 1991

If we were smarter, we would have seen this coming. For Cold War crazies like Rumsfeld, the ‘war on terrorism’ is their dream come true.

The website thecriticalvoice.com from which I got the Wilkinson article seems to be defunct, but here are links to some of the articles he appended to his piece:
Unintended Consequences by John Tirman
Islam Through Western Eyes by Edward Said
Orwellian Logic 101-Terrorism by Norman Solomon
Blowback by Chalmers Johnson