Other Breaking News
Lebanon: Lebanese opposition leader Walid Jumblatt has said the Shia resistance group Hizbullah should keep its weapons until Israel withdraws from a disputed border area.Read here for more
Iraq: US soldiers have stormed a women and children's hospital in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, a hospital director says.Dr Ahmad Ibrahim, the assistant director of the city's paediatric hospital, told Aljazeera on Saturday that the soldiers entered the hospital on Friday after an explosion on Ramadi's main road.The soldiers ordered medical staff and patients to leave, he said, before destroying the hospital's doors and detaining members of staff.Ibrahim said the forces stormed an operating theatre where a doctor was carrying out caesarean surgery. Read here for more
Iraq: Iraqi politicians fought over the oil ministry and the role of Islam in the next government on Sunday, while an al-Qaeda website posted a video of the purported execution of an Iraqi colonel. Read here for more
Pakistan: US Ambassador to Pakistan Ryan Crocker has said a team of US experts would visit Islamabad shortly to work out details of the sale of multi-role F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan.In an interview with The News, the envoy said no ceiling for the supply of the planes has been fixed and Pakistan is free to decide on any number according to its requirements. Read here for more
India: India is considering buying American F-16 fighter jets for its air force, a news report said Sunday, just days after New Delhi protested a U.S. decision to sell the same aircraft to India's neighboring archrival, Pakistan. India's air force now depends mainly on aging Russian planes. American fighter aircraft and weapons' manufacturers have submitted proposals to India, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying in the eastern city of Calcutta. Read here for more
North Korea:The UN World Food Program has warned that because of a lack of donations it will have to gradually stop supplying rations to 6.5 million North Koreans, and called on Pyongyang to lift restrictions on distribution of aid.Because its stocks are exhausted, the WFP has stopped providing vegetable oil to 900,000 old people, and as of this week will have to stop delivering essential nutritional supplements to 600,000 children in creches and nursery schools, Mr Banbury said. Read here for more
United Nations: Kofi Annan, struggling to survive as the United Nations Secretary-General, plans to blame his son for embroiling him in the oil-for-food scandal when a UN inquiry issues a harsh report tomorrow. UN officials are hoping to deflect criticism of the UN chief by insisting that his son misled him about payments that he, Kojo, 29, received from a UN contractor.Read here for more
Turkey :What were thought to be the remains of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey were discovered to be natural formations by a group of Russian scientists. Scientists from the Kosmopoisk Scientific Research Center announced Friday at a press conference that there were NO remains of Noah’s Ark on the mountain, the Interfax news agency reported. Read here for more
Related article on AIPAC Saga
- USA: In 1992, Harry Katz phoned the President of AIPAC, David Steiner, to offer contributions. Steiner proceeded to claim he negotiated with then-candidate Bill Clinton over who would be Secretary of State, and had already "cut a deal" with Baker for more aid to Israel.Unknown to Steiner, Katz taped the phone call and gave the recording to the media, worried that AIPAC's influence had grown to dangerous levels. Following the release of transcripts of the phone conversation, David Steiner was forced to resign the Presidency of AIPAC. Read here for more Click here on transcript of the recorded phone conversation
- Read HERE on AIPAC's contribution to US Federal Candidates for 2004 Election Cycle To download, need Acrobat Reader
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by
Helen Thomas
25 March 2005
Read here full article in Sun-Sentinel
Edited article
One way of manipulating public opinion away from any negative thoughts that the Bush administration messed up by invading Iraq is to promote Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, one of the leading architects of the weapons-of-mass-destruction theory.
Make him President of the World Bank.
Not only are you not admitting a mistake, you're daring the American public to think otherwise.
The Wolfowitz appointment follows
The stunning selection of hard-liner John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, an organization he has openly disdained.
The nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.
Wolfowitz -- the principal architect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- has been wrong so many times that it's a wonder he is still in office.
It's simply astonishing that he's up for a big promotion.
But if Wolfowitz had been put out to pasture or given a second-tier post in the second term, the public would have interpreted such a step as a quiet way of getting a policy embarrassment out of sight.
How to foil such a perception? Promote the heck out of him.
Make him more prominent than ever.
There's a note of presidential in-your-face defiance here.
Forget the awkward absence of weapons of mass destruction or the zero links between Saddam Hussein and the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Reality is as the administration defines it.
And that's how Wolfowitz got this plum reward at the World Bank.
- Wolfowitz, the No. 2 civilian at the Pentagon, told Gen. Eric Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff, that he was "wildly off the mark" when he told Congress a month before the invasion that the United States would need at least 200,000 occupation troops in Iraq.
For speaking truth to power, Shinseki was eased out of his Pentagon job ahead of his scheduled departure. To drive the point home, none of the top Pentagon civilians had the grace to attend his formal retirement ceremony.
There are some 150,000 American forces in Iraq, scores of whom have been redeployed there two and three times.
- Wolfowitz also is known for falsely forecasting a jubilant welcome for the American invaders. Iraqis would shower them with bouquets of flowers and greet them as liberators.
Wrong again.
- He also predicted those Iraqi oil revenues would more than pay for the costs of war and reconstruction.
That has not happened.
- My favorite Wolfowitz utterance came when he was winding up his first visit to conquered Iraq in July 2003. "Foreigners," he told reporters, "should stay out of Iraq." (Duh.)
- When asked why the Bush administration hyped the nonexistent threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, Wolfowitz admitted that the WMD script was chosen because it was the most saleable argument to persuade the American people to support the war.
The Wolfowitz appointment to head the World Bank was a downer for a number of the 184 member nations of the bank and its career staff.
His reputation had preceded him.
Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the bank and a Nobel laureate, opposes the Wolfowitz nomination on grounds that Wolfowitz could make the bank "an explicit instrument of U.S. foreign policy."
But the major European nations appear resigned to the controversial appointment.
After all, the bank is traditionally headed by an American.
The World Bank is the main lender to poor countries to help fight poverty and disease. Wolfowitz said he supports the bank's "noble mission."
The bank appointment of a high Pentagon personage follows the career path of former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who moved from Lyndon B. Johnson's Cabinet to the World Bank after he developed second thoughts about the wisdom of the Vietnam War.
McNamara served as the World Bank president from 1968 to 1981 and focused on reducing poverty.
I saw a very distraught McNamara leave the Johnson inner circle. Johnson -- who was not prepared to brook McNamara's newfound anti-war sentiments -- was happy to see him go.
Since he left the Pentagon, McNamara has spent a lot of time revealing his remorse over the mistakes and miscalculations about the Vietnam War.
I'll wager we won't be getting any apologies or confessions of mistakes about Iraq from Wolfowitz down the road.
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