…It is possible Norman Kember is a spy, as charged by the Swords of Righteousness brigade in Iraq. However, considering the work of the Christian Peacemaker organization and the fact Kember is 74 years old, it is unlikely he is a spy. Kember and three other Christian peace activists were abducted by the unknown terrorist group and a videotape of them was released yesterday. “Family and friends of Mr. Kember, a grandfather who lives with his wife Pat in Pinner, north-west London, appealed to the kidnappers to release him last night,” reports the Guardian.

“The Rev Alan Betteridge, from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which Mr. Kember is a member, said he was a ‘genuine peace activist’… Mr. Kember, who campaigned against the war in Iraq, was seized on Saturday from a mosque he was visiting in a Sunni area of western Baghdad with the three other hostages. It has been reported that they were talking to Muslim clerics about the abuse of Sunni detainees,” more than enough reason for Kember to be abducted by black op “insurgents” who ” just grabbed” the name Swords of Righteousness “out of the air, a tactic which goes back to Beirut,” according to the Guardian. It should be remembered that the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was also kidnapped as she prepared to interview survivors of Fallujah, now admitted to have been attacked with chemical weapons and a napalm derivative.

One look at the CPT (Christian Peacemaker Teams) in Iraq website and it becomes obvious who abducted Kember and his associates and why. CPT has worked as “an alternative voice to the reporters ‘embedded’ with Coalition forces,” have used “their bodies to protect critical civilian infra-structure such as water treatment facilities, electrical plants, and hospitals,” have documented “abuse of detainees by Coalition forces,” and “have ventured forth in response to urging from Iraqi human rights workers in Karbala.” No doubt all of this Christian activity sincerely upsets the Pentagon and the Bushcons.
kurtnimmo.com

…Pieces of the puzzle are clearly missing. But a clue to how things ultimately come together emerges from another source: Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. In a recent speech to the New American Foundation, Wilkerson argued that a secretive cabal led by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld made virtually all the decisions about Iraq. Wilkerson maintains that these decisions were “sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less.” Wilkerson seems to be implying that President Bush wasn’t always in the loop about Iraq.

When one pieces this together with another curious fact, that an unusual number of the Neoconservative advisors surrounding Cheney and Rumsefled (Libby and Wolfowitz in particular) were disciples of the philosopher Leo Strauss, one arrives at a startling but tidy conclusion. Strauss, in a nutshell, advocated a view that harkens back to Plato’s Republic, the notion that perceptive and visionary leaders must often tell “noble lies” to their intellectually inferior subjects for their own good. Strauss took Plato’s argument one step farther. He argued that today’s policy elites are frequently intellectually superior to the chief executives they serve and must sometimes deceive their own leaders into making the right decisions.

Wilkerson makes it clear that Bush would have been completely out of his depth had not men like Colin Powell “trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet.” As Wilkerson condescendingly adds, “[Powell] held a youthful and inexperienced president’s hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the Secretary of State, would fix it.” Powell, however, was not part of the Neoconservative cabal pushing for war. The Powell Doctrine — only commit to war when you have an overwhelming number of troops to insure total victory — was anathema to Neoconservatives who wanted to prove in Iraq that a light but high-tech U.S. military could win wars quickly and easily. Powell was the antithesis of the Neoconservative plotters, but he was effectively cut out of the decision to invade Iraq; Bush informed him of the pending invasion only after the decision had been made.

The secretive Neoconservative cabal that operated out of Dick Cheney’s office — with Lewis Libby at its center — may have been far less solicitous of their commander-in-chief than Powell was. It is highly probable that they steered Bush towards unreliable intelligence and prevented him from hearing dissenting opinions. Wilson claimed he wrote his NY Times Op-Ed piece debunking the administration’s Iraqi/Uranium claims because he was “outraged” that information the administration — particularly Cheney’s office — should have known was false was included in Bush’s speech.
interventionmag.com

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has a fickle stance on virtually every foreign policy issue thrown his way. None, however, are more telling of his party’s incompetence than his posture on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, which is virtually identical to that of the neocons.

Recently Dean returned from a week-long jaunt to Israel sponsored by the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). Shortly after his return Dean spoke to an elite crowd of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) friends and lobbyists in Philadelphia about his trip to Israel. And the audience was pleased with what they heard.

“Literally, from Israel’s birth, as that great Democrat Harry Truman took the courageous step to immediately extend America’s hand to recognize the State of Israel,” Dean espoused, “Democrats have done all we can to foster the special, enduring relationship between the two countries. Maintaining Israel’s security is a key U.S. national security interest . . .”

But Dean’s vision of Israel’s security is not without consequences for Palestinians or Arab Israelis.

The October 2003 issue of The Jewish Week quoted Gov. Howard Dean as saying that he had been very clear in his support for “targeted assassinations” of alleged Palestinian terror suspects. He believed these men were “enemy combatants in a war,” adding, “Israel has every right to shoot them before they can shoot Israelis.”
onlinejournal.com

11/30/05 “Truthdig” — — The ongoing trial of Saddam Hussein could prove increasingly uncomfortable for the Bush administration. The first crime of which the deposed dictator is accused, the secret execution of 143 Shiites arrested in 1982, seems an odd choice for the prosecution, and politics may be behind it. Hussein is accused of using poison gas against Iranian troops, of genocide against the Kurds and of massacring tens of thousands to end the 1991 uprising after his defeat in the Gulf War. The problem for the Bush administration with these other, far graver charges, is that the Americans are implicated in them either through acts of commission or omission.
informationclearinghouse.info

Flashback ’03: So Saddam Has Been Captured

…”Basically it’s always a question of the relationship of forces. If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward then you are going to become cowardly – it’s only a question of time. The same happened to the British when they were here… the same happened to the French in Algeria… the same happened to the Americans in Vietnam… the same happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan… the same happened to so many people that I can’t even count them.”

Van Creveld was speaking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the same principle applies to the Iraqi insurgency in spades, and I want to quote him at length because I have not read a clearer exposition of the strategic dilemma in which we now find ourselves.

“Question: Martin you used the word ‘cowardly’ yet what we’ve seen tonight – these commando units, the anti-terrorist squads – these aren’t cowardly people.

“Van Creveld: I agree with you. They are very brave people… they are idealists… they want to serve their country and they want to prove themselves. The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel… if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.”
antiwar.com

…The new National Strategy, therefore, appears a welcome and, indeed necessary sharpening of strategic focus for the United States on what needs to be done in Iraq. But it looks unlikely to achieve its goal of cutting off support for the until-now overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency.

That is because the more the U.S. goal of pushing through the new constitution and establishing a democratically-elected Iraqi government is achieved, the more resentment has grown across the entire Sunni community — 20 percent of the total Iraqi population — and the stronger the insurgency has become.

Nor can the new National Strategy guarantee that the ambitious goal of building up the Iraqi army stand on its own two feet will work in the long term.

That strategy was applied 35 years ago in Vietnam when the United States built up the Armed Forces of (South) Vietnam, or ARVN, to be being able to maintain security in the country after U.S. troops were withdrawn and in the short term that strategy, in fact, worked well. But the ARVN could not defend itself or its state from a full-scale military invasion launched with overwhelming force in 1975 by North Vietnam.

Similarly, even if the new Iraqi army serving a predominantly Shiite governing majority proves able to crush the Sunni insurgency, it may prove unwilling or unable to defend itself and its government against an eventual invasion from neighboring fellow-Shiite Iran.
upi.com

“Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” one official asked Hersh. “We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want.”

Then he added ominously, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

The authorization for the death squads comes straight from the Oval Office. According to Chris Floyd, “Through a series of secret executive orders, George W. Bush has given Rumsfeld the authority to turn the entire world into a ‘global free-fire zone’’
informationclearinghouse.info

Why School Achievement Isn’t Reaching The Poor
by Derrick Z. Jackson

We are at the point where any study that shows how low-income schools can reach the heights of academic performance is also an indictment of how the nation has no commitment to lifting all schools.

For instance, the California education think tank EdSource recently published a survey of 5,500 teachers and 257 principals in elementary schools in the state to see what factors correlate the most with high achievement. A median sample school was one in which 78 percent of students participated in free and reduced-price meal programs, 40 percent did not speak English as a first language, and 32 percent had parents who did not graduate from high school. Just 11 percent of students had parents who graduated from college.

The top factors for a higher-achieving school were lofty expectations for all students; clear, measurable goals; a consistent curriculum; and a staff that pores over data to see where teachers and students can improve. Such schools have teachers who are not only willing to push students but come armed with up-to-date textbooks and other modern resources.

The survey made some news for finding that parent involvement, while important, is not as influential a factor in a school as the ones above. Higher-achieving schools have a ”shared culture” that allows them to function in a sense as if there were no parents at all. In a Washington Post story on the survey, a parent said a principal told her: ”We don’t have an expectation of the home. We don’t blame the home. We can’t teach parents. We don’t worry about whose responsibility it should be. We just consider it ours.”

Such stoicism is admirable. But we keep getting reminders that the nation does not share that principal’s sense of responsibility. A classic example is teacher quality. It has long been known that students in low-income schools are less likely to have a teacher qualified to teach a particular subject than students in higher-income schools.

According to the Education Trust, the education reform think tank, 34 percent of classes in high-poverty schools are taught by ”out-of-field” teachers, compared with 19 percent of classes in low-poverty schools. The problem is particularly pronounced in math, where 70 percent of middle school classes in high-poverty and high African-American and Latino schools are taught by a teacher lacking even a college minor in math or a field related to math.

The problem worsened under President Clinton. President Bush has dragged his feet on teacher quality with his chronic underfunding of No Child Left Behind. Under that program, the states are supposed to staff all core classes with qualified teachers.

Defining a ”qualified teacher” is state-by-state roulette where college credentials and state certifications that satisfy No Child Left Behind requirements do not necessarily equate with credibility and connectivity with students. Education and psychology professor Robert Pianta of the University of Virginia, whose research involves observations of nearly 3,000 classrooms, estimates that only 25 percent of the nation’s first- through fifth-graders receive high-level instruction in what he calls ”gap-closing classrooms.”

The gap in gap-closing teachers is monumental. The Education Trust reported this year that California’s largest districts generally spend far less on teachers serving in high-poverty schools and schools with the highest percentages of African-American and Latino students. By the time a student at a high school that is mostly Latin American and Latino graduates, her district will have spent $173,000 less on her teachers than is spent on teachers in schools with few African-American and Latino students.
commondreams.org

A San Diego businessman under investigation in the bribery case of former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham is a well-known GOP fundraiser whose generosity to key members of Congress came at the same time his company saw large increases in its government contracts, public records show.

Brent Wilkes, the founder of defense contractor ADCS Inc., gave more than $840,000 in contributions to 32 House members or candidates, campaign-finance records show. He flew Republican lawmakers on his private jet and hired lobbyists with close ties to those lawmakers.

Wilkes’ charitable foundation, which aids sick children and military families, honored congressmen at black-tie banquets and donated to their favorite causes. Wilkes was also a “Pioneer” for President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, meaning he raised at least $100,000.

With help from two committee chairmen, ADCS got more than $90 million in government contracts since its founding in 1995, helping propel Wilkes from an obscure businessman to a millionaire prominent in Republican circles.
news.yahoo.com