…On Wednesday, Cheney called critics of the war “dishonest” and “reprehensible” and said Democrats accusing the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence were “opportunists.”

But aides to Sen. Levin rebutted that, saying they have smoking-gun proof that they were lied to by Bush and Cheney about not only the existence of weapons of mass destruction but also claims that Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger.

In building their case against the administration, Levin, with the help of Congressman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has obtained the December 2002 letter sent to the White House and the National Security Council by Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warning that the Niger claims were bogus and should not be cited by the administration as evidence that Iraq was actively trying to obtain WMDs.

Waxman had written ElBaradei in March 2003, inquiring about the Niger documents and the allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium there in order to determine if the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence it had relied upon. Waxman received a three-page response from ElBaradei on June 20, 2003, around the same time that Joseph Wilson had started to publicly question the Bush administration’s rationale for war and around the same time White House officials had disclosed his wife’s CIA status to a handful of reporters. Baradei’s response letter lays out in full detail the play-by-play in his attempt to get to the bottom of the Niger uranium story.
informationclearinghouse.info

Senior French politicians have been accused of “blatant racism” after linking the suburban riots to polygamy among African immigrant families.

The head of the ruling centre-right party in the national assembly and an employment minister both suggested unruly teenagers from large, polygamous families had helped to cause the four-weeks of violence in the country’s poor suburbs.

Bernard Accoyer, leader of President Jacques Chirac’s UMP party in the national assembly, said that polygamy was “certainly one of the causes” of France’s worst urban violence for four decades.

Gérard Larcher, the junior employment minister, was also quoted as saying that polygamous families generated “antisocial” behaviour. He said his remarks were “an appeal for a debate on the issue, rather than a value judgement”. A shortage of jobs in the suburbs, some of which have 40 per cent youth unemployment, was a more direct cause of the unrest.

Although officially illegal in France, multiple marriages are tolerated if they took place before the family emigrated. Women’s rights groups say there may be as many as 30,000 polygamous families in France. But anti-racism campaigners expressed revulsion yesterday that mainstream politicians should give such a “prejudiced and distorted” view of the riots.

MRAP, an anti-racist group, said the rioting youths were mostly French citizens, from ethnically Arab, African, French and eastern European families. “Blaming such a complex problem on polygamy among a minority of African families is blatant racism. We will consider whether to bring legal actions against these people.”
independent.co.uk

Fawzi al-Odah weighed just 44.5kg (7st) last week when his lawyer, Thomas Wilner, visited him in Guantánamo. In August 2002 he weighed 63.5kg (10st). The young Kuwaiti is one of the hundred or so men in the US prison camp who have been on sporadic hunger strikes since August. During Wilner’s previous visit in September, he tried, on Fawzi’s father’s instructions, to persuade him to end his hunger strike. But Fawzi told him: “Tell my father I’m trying to be a hero like him, and if he was here he would do the same as I am doing.” Khalid al-Odah, Fawzi’s father, was a US-trained Kuwaiti fighter pilot who fought in the underground during the Iraqi invasion.

Fawzi was brought to that meeting with his lawyer from the prison hospital with a plastic tube protruding from his nose, which bled intermittently. He has since been in Camp Delta, where the force-feeding continues.

He appears to be completely innocent: his story has been investigated and told in detail twice, by two respected US journalists, Roy Gutman in Newsweek and Peter Jennings in a special TV report on Guantánamo. Both reports were devastating to the official line on the war on terror. Fawzi was also the man named in one of the supreme court cases that successfully challenged the refusal of habeas corpus to the prisoners. Is he still being held precisely because his case has deeply hurt the Bush administration’s credibility before the country’s highest lawyers, and in the mainstream media?

Fawzi was a university student in Kuwait who spent two vacations teaching in poor areas of Pakistan, and who went on to help refugees on the Afghan border when they fled US bombing in October 2001. Those who sold them to the Pakistani authorities, who handed them over to the Americans, told both US reporting teams that the soft city boys from Kuwait were clearly nothing to do with any of the Afghan fighters.

Wilner, a quintessential establishment Washington lawyer, has represented the 12 Kuwaitis in Guantánamo since April 2002 and has been to the prison camp 10 times. Five of his clients were recently released and are back in Kuwait. Fawzi remains in Cuba. Last week the US Senate approved a plan, sponsored by Senator Lindsay Graham, that would severely limit the chance of Fawzi, and the other prisoners, ever being given access to the US courts. The plan defies a supreme court decision of June 2004 – although not one prisoner has been brought to court since, amid legal battles between the Bush administration and lawyers such as Wilner.
guardian.co.uk

Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, has declared that God will pardon him for human rights abuses committed during his 17-year rule, according to newly released court documents.

Asked by Chilean judge Victor Montiglio about the killing of 3,000 Chilean civilians during the military government, Mr Pinochet, 89, said: “I suffer for these losses, but God does the deeds; he will pardon me if I exceeded in some, which I don’t think.”
guardian.co.uk

Guatemala’s top anti-drug investigator, Adan Castillo, has been charged in the US with drug-trafficking.

Mr Castillo, who is accused of conspiring to import and distribute cocaine in the US, was detained after arriving in the country.

His deputy and another investigator were also arrested and indicted.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration said the arrests followed a four-month investigation in the United States and Central America.

‘Strong blow’

Mr Castillo was in the US state of Virginia for a training course on how to fight drug trafficking through ports when he was arrested, Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Vielman said.

The arrests were “a strong blow to the infiltration of organised crime in the structures of the Guatemalan government”, Mr Vielman said at a news conference in Guatemala City.

US officials confirmed the arrest.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Mr Castillo said he was frustrated in his job because corruption in the Guatemalan government made fighting drug smugglers impossible, and that he was ready to quit after just six months in his post.
bbc.co.uk

Of course the PR-sucking Fox News blowhard is off his nut. Again. Question is, Should you care?

…And he is one who now suggests that because San Francisco dared to ban aggressive military recruiting in our high schools so disadvantaged 18-year-olds won’t be unwittingly sucked into the brutish military vortex so they can be shipped off to Iraq to die for appalling and indefensible reasons, al Qaeda should blow up Coit Tower.

What do you do with that? You laugh. Sure, file a formal complaint with the Fox network. Sure, demand that Billy be fired, which is a bit like demanding Ronald McDonald be canned from the McDonald’s corporation for poisoning our children. Yes, you have to do it, even if such complaints come from someone like San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, not exactly the poster child for tact and grace when it comes to political maneuvering.

But of course, it won’t make one bit of difference. BOR is still Fox’s cash cow. He draws big ratings, even here in the Bay Area. And even if O’Reilly’s cultural relevance is tanking right along with the bad ship BushCo, he’s still getting PR for miles out of the childish comment. Hell, you’re reading a column about it right now, which means all those extremist right-wing inbreeding sites get to squeal “San Francisco in Uproar Over O’Reilly Comments,” and grunt and revel in our displeasure. Ah well. It matters not.

Here’s the takeaway, the only thing you need to know: Bill O’Reilly is a walking, snorting cautionary tale. For those of us who occasionally tread similar terrain of barbed political commentary (tempered, I hope, with satire and hope and sex and humor and fire hoses of divine juice), he is the Grand Pariah, the threshold, the Place You Do Not Want To Go as an intellectually curious human soul. He is the guy you can always look to, no matter how bad it gets, and say, Wow, at least I’m not him.

In a way, we should be grateful for O’Reilly and Robertson and Limbaugh and Coulter and their slime-slinging ilk. They live in those black and nasty psycho-emotional places, so we don’t have to. They show us how ugly we can be, how poisonous and ill, so we may recoil and say, Whoa, you know what? I think I need to be more gentle and less judgmental and kinder to those I love. BOR works an inverse effect on anyone with a vibrant and active soul — he makes us better by sucking all the grossness into himself and blowing it out via a TV channel no one of any spiritual acumen really respects anyway.
sfgate.com

he United States made a “big mistake” when it invaded Iraq, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday, citing the lack of planning for what would happen after dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

“Saddam is gone. It’s a good thing, but I don’t agree with what was done, ” Clinton told students at the American University of Dubai.

“It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors … one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country.”

Clinton did however say that the United States had done some good things in Iraq: the removal of Saddam, the ratification of a new constitution, and the holding of parliamentary elections.
jpost.com

This from Mr. Bomb Them Every Day for 8 Years

Speakers in a Russian radio discussion have discerned an ” Israeli connection” in the recent Amman bomb attacks and accused the USA of being behind the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri. Member of the State Duma International Affairs Committee Shamil Sultanov said the bombs furthered the chances of Muhammad Dahlan to replace Mahmud Abbas as leader of the Palestinian National Authority. Middle East expert Vladimir Akhmedov said the Americans had targeted al-Hariri to get at Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and French President Jacques Chirac. The following is an excerpt from the programme in the “Panorama” series broadcast by Russian Mayak radio on 11 November. The subheadings have been added editorially:
globalresearch.ca

“Mary Nazzal-Batayneh, whose family owns the Radisson,” explains the Arab Media Watch blog, “sent out the following press release:”

“We are the owners of Radisson SAS Jordan. As the owners we want to send deep condolences to all the staff and guests. We are deeply shocked and obviously condemn such acts. We very briefly want to set the record straight on 2 points.

Firstly, news reports have been indicating that the Radisson SAS was specifically attacked because it is an American hotel and has hosted Israelis. I want to make it clear that the Radisson SAS is a Scandinavian chain and owned by Palestinian-Jordanians.

Furthermore, the Radisson SAS owners and staff represent the strongest supporters out of all the hotels in Jordan for the Palestinian and Iraqi people. We have expressed our support throughout the decades and will continue to do so.”

You’d think al-Zarqawi’s Tanzim Qa’idat Al-Jihad fi Bilad Al-Rafidayn (Al-Qaeda Organization of Jihad in the Land of the Two Rivers) would bomb a Jordanian target, not one jointly owned by Palestinians and Jordanians (recall the Israelis consider Palestinians Jordanians and vice versa). If we are to believe the propaganda dispensed by the corporate media (based on an impalpable internet message) al-Zarqawi targeted the hotels because he considered them to be “centers for launching war on Islam and support the crusaders’ presence in Iraq and the Arab peninsula and the presence of the Jews on the land of Palestine… They also were a secure place for the filthy Israeli and Western tourists to spread corruption and adultery at the expense and suffering of Moslems.”
kurtnimmo.com

Did al Zarqawi Really Bomb Amman?

Most people believe that Al-Zarqawi sent four suicide bombers, including husband and wife, to Amman to bomb three hotels “centers for launching war on Islam” and “a backyard for the enemies of faith. the Jews and the crusaders” as claimed on the webpage of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

As in Iraq the bombing succeeded in killing only Arabs, who happen to be Sunni Moslems, the group Al-Zarqawi claims to defend in Iraq.

“The bombing came in response to the conspiracy against the Sunnis” in Iraq, Al-Qaeda webpage stated.

Al-Zarqawi is a myth created by American psychological operation to benefit the colonial expansion of the “American/Israeli/British Triad” in the Arab World. Accusing Al-Zarqawi of Amman’s bombing is just a cover up for a more sinister political assassination.

Al-Zarqawi was declared killed by the Americans during their invasion of Afghanistan. Then suddenly he re-appeared in Iraq to stage car bombings that killed only Iraqis rather than Americans, Al-Zarqawi’s real enemies.

Now it is claimed that Al-Zarqawi’s terror is spilling over to the neighboring Arab countries.

Al-Zarqawi is just a cover name for terror operations perpetrated by the “American/Israeli/British Triad” to perpetuate its myth of “war against Islamic global terrorists” as a cover front for their war against the Arab World.

Q: As one of the pioneers of the Dalit movement in Gujarat and one of the few surviving leaders of the Gujarat Dalit Panthers, how do you account for the relative weakness of the movement in the state today?

A: Not only is the movement weak and fractured, it has actually rapidly declined over the years, because of the role of Hindutva forces as well Gandhians and the Congress, all of whom represent different faces of ‘upper’ caste hegemony. Another cause is petty politicking among Dalit leaders. Yet another factor is the role of many NGOs, who, by pumping in money in the name of Dalit welfare, have caused a widespread de-politicisation of educated Dalit youth associated with them and who, otherwise, could have been in the forefront of radical Dalit politics.
zmag.org