TONY BLAIR last night defiantly insisted: "I have never told a lie" as the Tories continued to target his character in an election campaign onslaught.

Mr Blair hit back in an interview for Adam Boulton of Sky News: "I have never told a lie. No. I don't intend to go telling lies to people. I did not lie over Iraq." [...]

A key question is whether there is in truth a need for an assessment of whether Iraq's conduct constitutes a failure to take the final opportunity or has constituted a failure fully to cooperate within the meaning of OP4 such that the basis of the cease-fire is destroyed. If an assessment is needed of that situation, it would be for the Council to make it....

In other words, we would need to be able to demonstrate hard evidence of non-compliance and non-cooperation....

you will need to consider very carefully whether the evidence of non-cooperation and non- compliance by Iraq is sufficiently compelling to justify the conclusion that Iraq has failed to take its final opportunity....

But a "reasonable case" does not mean that if the matter ever came before a court I would be confident that the court would agree with the view....

OPs 4 and 12 do requ1re a further Council decision in order to revive the authorisation in resolution 678....

If we fail to achieve the adoption of a second resolution we would need to consider urgently at that stage the strength of our legal case in the light of circumstances at the time.

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair last night faced a ferocious attack on his leadership and calls for Gordon Brown to take over.

The assault in the journal New Statesman - owned by Geoffrey Robinson, a supporter of Mr Brown - claimed that Mr Blair was technically a psychopath.

During a torrid few weeks Mr Blair has been accused of most things by his backbenchers. Madness has not besen among them and the charge was not taken too seriously.

Westminster's conspiracy theorists were given plentiful ammunition, however, by a series of articles in the New Statesman that highlighted the qualities of Mr Brown and suggested that Mr Blair might have outlived his usefulness.

The magazine denied any co-ordination and friends of Mr Robinson made plain that he had no role in determining the editorial line.

A leading article said that now that Mr Blair had lost so much public trust over the Iraq war "Mr Brown is probably the better bet for elections.

"Paradoxically, Mr Blair looks a rather dangerous, unpredictable figure given to foreign adventures and silly schemes for turning public services upside down . . . the reality is that a Brown government would have a sense of purpose that Blair governments lack."

This was followed by an item by a writer who said he had spent several weeks talking to psychologists about what drove Mr Blair.

He wrote: "One view emerged strongly: there appears to be something worryingly adrift in the mind of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, a man who doesn't really know who or what he is. More technically, he is diagnosed as a psychopath capable of reinventing himself with remarkable dexterity."

WASHINGTON -- More than 227 years into their democracy, Americans have come to distrust their political leaders and suspect them of lying a lot.

Some politicians say the public is dead right.

There are many explanations for all the lying, ranging from naked self-interest to a philosophical line of reasoning that some degree of deception is essential to effective leadership, according to scholars of political science and some of its practitioners.

"At an individual weakness level, politicians too frequently fall victim to a desire to please, and therefore they outline contrary positions to differing sides, and it is out of this dynamic that most truth-saying problems arise," said Rep. James A. Leach, R-Iowa, who has served in Congress for 27 years. "Lying and its first cousin, 'spinning,' are easily rationalized when power is at stake and personal careers are in jeopardy."

Democrats and Republicans alike tend to oversimplify complicated realities, and that, too, is a form of deceit, said Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

"It's easier to talk in absolutes than with ambiguity," Matsui said. "I think it goes on now more than it has in the past. Politicians now do it without any embarrassment. They believe it's justified. People want you to be firm."

Distortion is rewarded.

"If you are very provocative, you are more likely to be called to go on these TV shows and you get more attention," Matsui said.

Most political lying is about policy issues.

"Politicians regularly describe their positions as matters of principle when they are actually concessions to special interest pressures," said Tim Penny, a former Democratic representative from Minnesota with a wide reputation as a straight-shooter.

Politicians also lie "because we want them to," Penny said. "We say we don't want politicians to mislead us, but we really don't want to hear the truth. If they speak the truth, they will be punished more often than not."

Sometimes politicians lie unconsciously, said former House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, who admits that enthusiasm, momentum and partisan zeal occasionally led him over the borderline of truth.

"I've studied this business of lying for years," Armey told a group of reporters at a breakfast shortly before he retired from Congress last year. "The best liars are the guys who convince themselves before they try to convince somebody else."

There is even scientific evidence correlating deceptive behavior with leadership qualities. A 1993 study by Colgate University psychologists found that the best liars among preschool children emerge as leaders during play periods.

Caroline F. Keating, who helped design and conduct the research, also studied adults and came to the conclusion that "leaders are the best misleaders."

Keating found that "very young children successfully masked their deception by smiling. Successful adult deceivers made eye contact with the listener."

"To be an effective leader does take acting skills," she said in an interview. "You have to look confident even when you feel unsure. You must look like you feel well even when you may be sick. You must express emotions that are powerful, like anger and defiance, even when you are anxious."

Citizens' expectations of their leaders thus add to the problem.

"We want them to look smart and strong, so a successful leader becomes very good at feigning those things even when he or she does not feel them," Keating said. "It makes them powerful and effective communicators."

So politicians lie by overpromising, to gain or keep power, to protect personal secrets and, often, to serve what they consider higher purposes, like national security or the common good.

Political leaders also represent a society where casual lying may be found among many groups: accountants, lawyers, creators of advertising campaigns, college professors, used car salesmen and journalists, too.

Politicians have a special excuse. A succession of thinkers, from Plato to Machiavelli to Disraeli, have told them that lying is a legitimate part of governing.

Sissela Bok, a Harvard philosopher who has studied and written extensively on the subject, said politicians often claim an ethical basis for deliberately misleading the public:

"They argue that vital objectives in the national interest require a measure of deception to succeed in the face of powerful obstacles. Negotiations must be carried on that are best hidden from public view; bargains must be struck that simply cannot be comprehended by a politically unsophisticated electorate. A certain amount of illusion is necessary for public servants to be effective."

Dissembling is contagious, easily spread by example -- especially when it is done by the men at the very top of the political order. Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook," Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky," and George H.W. Bush's "Read my lips -- no new taxes" were notorious examples, although history offers many more.

The false front has always been a feature of politics. President Franklin Roosevelt did all he could to hide his physical infirmities from public awareness, keeping his wheelchair out of sight. John F. Kennedy's outward vigor masked constant back pain and the fact that he was suffering degenerative Addison's disease and taking multiple drugs.

The public may be deceived, but not for long. Voters sense what is really going on.

In July 2000, pollster John Zogby asked people which professions they trusted the most. Dentists and doctors topped the list. Politicians were at the bottom, lower than car dealers, auto mechanics and lawyers. A national poll last November by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 55 percent of those asked did not believe that "most elected officials are trustworthy."

Lies from politicians can have serious consequences. Self-government presumes the consent of those governed. Lies "manufacture consent" by misleading people, authors Lionel Cliffe, Maureen Ramsey and Dave Bartlett wrote in their book, "The Politics of Lying: Implications for Democracy."

Those who run for public office agree, but compulsory truth-telling makes them uncomfortable.

In New Jersey, the State Senate once buried a bill that would have imposed fines up to $10,000 on candidates who make false accusations during a campaign. It simply wasn't realistic. Negative campaign ads designed to destroy an opponent are a favorite political forum for lies.

There was a flap in the U.S. Senate last year over some sensitive leaked information about terrorism from the Select Committee on Intelligence. The FBI was called in to find the leak. Investigators suggested polygraph tests for those with access to the information, including members of Congress.

Fat chance.

In a burst of candor, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., then vice chairman of the committee, declared: "I don't know who among us would take a lie detector test."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today Iran is co-operating with European countries in discussing its nuclear energy programme and that he did not foresee a military strike by the US, which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today Iran is co-operating with European countries in discussing its nuclear energy programme and that he did not foresee a military strike by the US, which accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons.

Until recently, the US said that while it would pursue diplomatic means to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear programme, it was not prepared to take the military option off the table.

But after Europe made clear it would not support the use of force against Iran, Washington changed tactics, toned down its rhetoric and agreed to offer Tehran economic incentives in return for permanently freezing its nuclear programme.

However, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has said no incentives exist that would persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. The current round of negotiations with the European powers is scheduled to end on Friday.

“There are serious discussions going on between Iran and three European countries – Germany, the UK and France. Iran has been co-operating with them very well,” Annan told reporters during a visit to India.

Asked whether he expected US military action against Iran, he said “I don’t think that is in the cards.”

The United States plans to sell Israel 100 of its most effective bombs designed to destroy deep underground facilities, amid growing concern in the Middle East that Israel might resort to military strikes to halt Iran's nuclear program.

US Defence Department officials say the proposed deal involves "bunker busting" bombs first used during the 1991 Gulf War to destroy Iraqi underground command and control centres.

The Israeli Air Force plans to arm its F-15 fighter jets with the bombs.

A state department report which showed an increase in terrorism incidents around the world in 2004 was altered to strip it of its pessimistic statistics, it emerged yesterday.

The country-by-country report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, has come out every year since 1986, accompanied by statistical tables.

This year's edition showed a big increase, from 172 significant terrorist attacks in 2003 to 655 in 2004.

Much of the increase took place in Iraq, contradicting recent Pentagon claims that the insurgency there is waning.

Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, ordered the report to be withdrawn and a new one issued minus the statistics.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, has written an angry letter about the change to Cameron Hume, the state department's inspector general, arguing that Ms Rice's decision "denies the public access to important information about the incidence of terrorism".

Mr Waxman said: "There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: favourable facts are revealed while unfavourable facts are suppressed."

Ms Rice's spokesman, Richard Boucher, denied the change was politically inspired and said Ms Rice had decided the statistics would be better handled by the national counter-terrorism centre.

WASHINGTON - Terrorists staged nearly 200 significant attacks in Iraq in 2004, exceeding the record number of strikes worldwide the year before, according to data the Bush administration gave to Congress but has been withholding from the public.

The total didn't include some Iraqi insurgent attacks and more than 100 operations by foreign terrorists in Iraq, because they didn't fit the State Department's strict criteria of what constitutes an international terrorism attack.

The data raised questions about President Bush's claim that the United States and its allies are winning the war on terrorism and came as the Pentagon acknowledged that violence in Iraq remains as high as last year.

"In terms of incidents, it's right about where it was a year ago," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the House Governmental Affairs Committee, disclosed the data in a letter sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which he asked that the statistics be made public.

Rice had decided several weeks ago to replace a report, "Patterns of Global Terrorism," which has been published every year for 19 years, with a document stripped of country-by-country statistics on attacks and casualties for 2004. [...]

After three months of political deadlock, Iraq’s first government after the toppling of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was formed on Thursday.

Ending power vacuum the country suffered since January elections, the 275-seat parliament approved on Thursday the cabinet list submitted yesterday by the Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

The Cabinet was approved by 180 lawmakers out of the 185 present in the 275-member parliament, Parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani said.

The formation of the new Iraqi government coincides with 68th birthday of the country’s toppled leader Saddam Hussein.

In an attempt to accommodate almost all Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups amid growing tension, the cabinet, which consists of 31 ministers and four deputy prime ministers, includes members of Iraq's main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions.

But according to Iraqi officials, most of the posts went to the Shiites, who represent the majority of the country’s population.

Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people. The Kurds make up 20 percent, and the Sunni Arabs, represent only 15 to 20 percent of the country’s population.

Also the Kurds and Sunni Arabs were strongly represented. It is noteworthy that seven of the ministries went to women.

However, the new Iraqi PM failed to name permanent ministers to five ministries - oil, defense, electricity, industry and human rights.

Al Jaafari, a Shiite, will be acting defense minister, a position that was supposed to go to a Sunni Arab.

Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon ally, will be one of four deputy prime ministers and acting oil minister.

Rowsch Nouri Shaways, a Kurdish official and former Vice President will be another deputy and acting electricity minister.

Al Jaafari’s initial choices of a Sunni deputy prime minister and defense minister were strongly rejected by the Shiite leaders, who fear they might have ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Al Jaafari also has been struggling with his United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in parliament, over the oil and electricity portfolios.

The newly appointed Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and his two vice presidents signed off on the list before Thursday's historic vote.

Outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is expected to hand over power to the new Prime Minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari within days, Al Jaafari told reporters Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters, Al Jaafari said that "the Iraqis will find that this government has religious, ethnic, political and geographic variety, in addition to the participation of women".

"Now that the process has started, we will spare no effort to bring back a smile to children's faces."

Allawi’s party out

Allawi's party was excluded from the new Cabinet.

Allawi has long been resented by many Shiite leaders, who accuse his outgoing administration of including members of the Baathist party in the government and security forces. [...]

Unknown gunmen shot dead an Iraqi woman MP on the doorstep of her home in eastern Baghdad on Wednesday, an interior ministry official said.

"Armed men knocked at her door and when she answered, they shot her," the official said.

Lamiya Abed Khadawi was a member of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s coalition.

She was attacked shortly after she returned home following a meeting of the National Assembly in Baghdad.

The attackers escaped right after they killed her.

Khadawi is the first parliament member to be killed in Iraq since the January 30 elections. She was among 90 other women elected to Iraq’s National Assembly.

AMNESTY International blasted the United States today for failing to launch an independent probe into Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a year after images of abused detainees first shocked the world.

The London-based human rights organisation also condemned signs of fresh torture and sexual abuse in the country by the Iraqi prison authorities.

"People around the world will be recalling the horrific images they saw a year ago and wondering what happened to those prisoners," said Amnesty secretary general Irene Khan, noting that only a handful of low-ranking US soldiers had been prosecuted or disciplined over the outrage.

"But what was the role of those higher up, including, for example, the US secretary of defence?" she said, referring to Donald Rumsfeld.

A year after the dramatic revelations of sexual and physical abuse at the prison on Baghdad's western outskirts were leaked to the media, only five of seven US guards have been punished.

The senior commander of the US military in Iraq at the time of the scandal, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, was cleared on Saturday of any wrongdoing by a US military probe.

"The US government must set up an independent inquiry into all aspects of the USA's 'war on terror' detention and interrogation practices," said Ms Khan.

Torture was unacceptable and any government taking part in such abuse destroyed the values that it claimed to protect, she said.

"When a major power like the USA resorts to torture or ill-treatment, other countries may see a green light to follow suit," said Ms Khan in a statement.

The US-led invasion of Iraq was designed to end the suffering inflicted by former dictator Saddam Hussein on his people, but instead has led to new reports of torture carried out by the post-Saddam Iraqi security forces, Amnesty said.

In February, three men died in custody after being arrested at a police checkpoint, the rights body said.

The bodies "were found three days later, bearing clear marks of torture from beatings and electric shocks", it said.

The rights group also spoke about cases of torture carried out at Iraq's interior ministry and claimed that the US authorities were aware of them.

It cited one former prisoner, Ali Safar al-Bawy - an Iraqi resident in Sweden - describing how he was given an electric shock while held captive for three weeks in July last year. The man also alleged that a child prisoner had been sexually abused by Iraqi guards.

Amnesty International called for the anniversary of the publication of the photographs from Abu Ghraib "to be marked by the strongest condemnation of all forms of torture by the US and Iraqi governments".

"One year on, the US authorities must establish an independent investigation into the abuses and bring the perpetrators to justice."

A passenger on a cross-country flight Tuesday morning immediately tipped off flight attendants after noticing that the man seated beside him had odd vials of liquid in his pockets and electrical wires running into his coat.

Informed about the situation while the plane cruised about 6 miles above the ground en route to San Francisco from New York, the United Airlines captain declared an emergency and diverted to the closest landing strip that could handle a Boeing 757--O'Hare International Airport.

As the plane made an unusually rapid descent, the passengers were herded to the front of the cabin and belted into available seats to put as much distance as possible between them and the suspicious man and his companion.

The plane landed hard at O'Hare at 10:40 a.m. and was met by emergency vehicles and teams of heavily armored police officers and bomb-sniffing dogs who scrambled aboard.

The vials, it was soon discovered, held a homeopathic herbal lotion carried by a Japanese national who calls himself a "healer," authorities said. The wires were connected to his portable music player.

The incident appears to have been exacerbated by language differences. [...]

As the emergency played out Tuesday, a flight attendant brought the vials, which were secured tightly with rubber bands, to the cockpit for the captain to see, authorities said. Unsure what they could be, the captain declared an emergency and requested immediate clearance to O'Hare.

"The pilots and the flight attendants agreed the materials looked strange and wanted to have everything checked out by authorities," United spokesman Jeff Green said.

As a precaution before landing, flight attendants moved the 64 other passengers to seats in the front of the plane.

The crew did not speak Japanese, and the suspicious passenger did not speak much English, officials said. [...]

The Federal Aviation Administration cleared the airspace to allow the plane to make a quick descent.

"We took a dive out of the sky from 35,000 feet into O'Hare," said passenger Richard Myers, 63, of Manhattan, adding that the captain came on the cabin intercom to announce a security threat. "It was a very hard landing."

"It was a terrible situation. I've been on planes before when engines went out, but not on one where there was a bomb scare," Myers added. "It's terrifying when they dive down like that."

O'Hare air-traffic controllers taxied the plane to a holding pad known as "the bomb scare area." Armored police and bomb-sniffing dogs boarded and ran to the rear cabin.

Passengers said the two men seated there were taken off the plane, along with a travel case. Meanwhile, members of the police bomb and arson team began throwing carry-on baggage and airline pillows from overhead bins--plus virtually everything else that wasn't tied down in that section of the plane--out of emergency escape hatches.

Passengers were quickly led off the plane through the front door and down stairs to buses. Several dozen firetrucks and other emergency vehicles circled the plane.

"We could see them taking apart seats, throwing seat cushions off the plane," said Stan Rockson, 55, who watched the hunt for explosives while sitting in a bus with his son, Colin, 18.

"The thing that frightened me the most is the crew on the plane became very brusque in their behavior, barking to sit down, the attendants were moving back and forth," Rockson said.

Hours after the incident Tuesday, the man carrying the vials was released after questioning, Chicago police spokesman Carlos Herrera said.

The United plane later resumed its flight to San Francisco, arriving about 3 1/2 hours late and three vials lighter.

Saudi newspaper 'reveals' Israel's shame after Pentagon report finds no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, contradicting Mossad agents' findings

Do they know something we don't? The Mossad is one of the main organizations affected by the Pentagon's report revealing evidence that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, the Saudi "al-Wattan" newspaper reports Wednesday.  
 
The newspaper says that according to a European security official, the Mossad is "angry" at certain agents that were stationed in Iraq during the U.S.-lead attack on Saddam Hussein's regime.
 
According to the official, U.S. troops had searched sites in accordance with Mossad field reports, but found no unconventional weapons.  
 
As a result, says the official, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ordered the agents return to Israel and have them replaced with other operatives, trusted by the agency's head.
 
The agents removed from Iraq can no longer enter Arab countries and have been placed in office jobs in Israel or in the territories, al-Wattan says.
 
Contradicting reports
 
The newspaper "reveals" that these recent changes by Sharon are due to an 80-page Mossad report concluding accounts by field agents of Iraq's weaponry until August 2004.
 
The report includes a description of Iraq's unconventional military capability and a list of arsenal storage sites.
 
Meanwhile, the newspaper also "reveals" that Israel is not satisfied with the new field agents stationed in Iraq and has sent a new network of operatives into Syria and Iran. 

Israel and the US today reacted coolly to an offer by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to host a Middle East peace conference as the Russian president began his historic visit to Israel.

Mr Putin, who arrived in Israel yesterday after travelling from Egypt, proposed that the conference should take place in Moscow in the autumn after Israel had completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.

He said he would raise the idea of a conference - which is called for in the road map peace plan and has been warmly welcomed by the Palestinians - in a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, later today.

However, a senior Israeli official said Israel "strongly opposes this idea of an international conference" at this stage.

The road map - sponsored by the so-called quartet of Middle East mediators, including Russia - calls for a conference to be held at its second stage. Israel argues the plan has not yet been implemented because the Palestinians have not fulfilled their obligation to disarm militant groups.

Israel has also failed to meet its initial obligations, including freezing settlement construction and dismantling illegal West Bank settlement outposts. [...]

Thank Odin for email. If not for this wonder of technology, I would have no idea what the “other side” thinks of my blog and articles. For instance, consider the following email, received after my article “Blackjack with Iran” appeared two weeks ago on the Counterpunch site. This email languished in my inbox for days—buried, as usual, by an avalanche of email and uninvited spam—and I only read this morning:

I take issue with the entirety of your ill-informed article (Blackjack with Iran). Your opinions are clearly based on your contempt for Israelis and self-loathing disdain for Americans. What happened in your sad childhood? Were you were bullied in school? Did the Jewish girl turn you down for the prom? Did you envy Epstein’s house?

As usual, it is all about the Israelis and any criticism of Israel stems from anti-Semitism, probably as a result of mistreatment at the hands of Jews or a burning envy of them from early childhood on. Of course, this is simply emotional nonsense, quite aside from the issues I addressed in the article. I find it interesting, however, that criticism of U.S. foreign policy is deemed “self-loathing disdain for Americans,” a sort of new take on the archetypal of the self-hating Jew, that is to say any Jew who doesn’t like what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

Your paranoid article is crammed with more lies than even the Mullahs can muster. The Iranians themselves will not deny the existence of their own Manhattan project—-they don’t blame the whole outrage on doctored Israeli photos as you do. How silly.

Of course, in order to lie, one has to know the facts and distort them, as Bush did with the “intelligence” on Saddam’s hallucinated weapons of mass destruction that crossed his desk. I merely speculated that the Israelis had contrived photos purporting to show the evil mullahs at work on nukes. I do not know this for a fact.

However, as history demonstrates, the Israelis are masters at contriving not only fake “intelligence” (consider Israel’s part in “developing a false picture of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction capability,” as admitted by retired Brigadier General Shlomo Brom), but also contrived situations, for instance the now well-known Lavon Affair, a bungled terrorist event directed against targets in Egypt—most notably, the United States Information Services Libraries in Cairo—and blamed on Arabs. Remarkably, this botched attack was recently “celebrated” in Israel and three of the surviving Egyptian Jews who carried out the bomb attacks in Cairo and Alexandria in the 1954 “received letters of thanks from Israeli President Moshe Katsav who also handed similar letters to the families of the six other culprits,” according to Magda El-Ghitany of the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram.

Unfortunately, there is nothing “silly” about this brazen attempt to honor terrorists, but then Israel has a nasty habit of honoring its terrorists. According to Clovis Maksoud, the former Arab League ambassador to the United Nations, “the Israeli government supports museums that honor assassins and terrorists—including one located on a street named for a terrorist (Avraham Stern),” as Jason Vest writes for the Village Voice. So beloved is the mass murdering Stern, Israel issued a stamp with his likeness. It is odd Israel would do this because, as Wikipedia notes, “Stern attempted to make an agreement with the German Nazi authorities, offering to ‘actively take part in the war on Germany’s side’ in return for ‘the establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich’. Another attempt to contact the Germans was made in late 1941, but there is no record of a German response in either case.” Of course, it makes perfect sense that Stern would be a hero in Israel since he was an adherent of the Revisionist Zionist movement founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual godfather of the Likudites.

You state that Israel will not unilaterally attack Iran due to the population imbalance? Pacifists like you should really not dabble in military matters. The Israeli Air Force alone could destroy much of Iran, with or without nukes. Population is as irrelevant as it was when Israel was attacked by the Egyptians and Syrians or when Israel attacked the Osirak reactor project in Iraq (which you no doubt denounce as an invasion of Iraqi sovereignty). I am sure you would have also denounced the invasion of Normandy and the bombing of Dresden because that’s the kind of fool that you are.

Serious medication is required for this person, who shall remain anonymous (unlike many unethical scallywags on the right, I never post names or email addresses of the people who send hate email my way). It would seem, for this person, nuking Iran is not only doable, it is hunky dory, an actual foreign policy initiative. As for comparing this possibility to the invasion Normandy, again I believe this poor hateful and deluded soul needs a spot of medication, possibly thorazine. As for Dresden… yeah, well, I have on numerous occasions denounced the firebombing of Dresden, an egregious war crime resulting in the murder of 140,000 innocent civilians.

Finally, your assertion that the Israelis are “pathologically racist” to think that someone would want to attack them is laughable. Do you remember 1948? How about 1973? The Gulf War?

Here’s what I “remember” about 1948: the Zionists expelled 80 percent of the indigenous population (750,000 Palestinians), in other words they ethnically cleansed three quarters of a million people. “Chief among the Zionist leadership’s regrets in the aftermath of the 1948 war was its failure to conquer the whole of Palestine,” writes Norman G. Finkelstein, a professor of political theory at DePaul University in Chicago. “Come 1967, Israel exploited the ‘revolutionary times’ of the June war to finish the job…. The landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, for the first time ‘unequivocally prohibited deportation’ of civilians under occupation (Articles 49, 147). Accordingly Israel moved after the June war to impose the second of its two options mentioned above—apartheid.”

It should be noted that by May 1948 Zionist forces had already invaded and occupied large parts of the land which had been allocated to the Palestinians by the UN Partition Plan, well before the “war” of 1948. “The evidence that the Zionist colonizers started the 1948 war comes from Zionist sources. The History of the Palmach (a Zionist pre-state militia), which was released in portions in the 1950s (and in full in 1972), details the efforts made to attack the Palestinians and secure more territory than was allotted to the Jewish state by the UN partition plan (Kibbutz Menchad Archive, Palmach Archive, Efal, Israel),” writes Ahmad Nimer. “Israeli historians have also refuted the claim that the Arabs started the 1948 war. Benny Morris uncovered a June 30, 1948, report from the Israeli Defense Force Intelligence Branch which shows that it was Zionist policy to attack to expel the Palestinians.” In fact, the so-called Arab invasion was a defensive attempt to hold on to the areas allotted by the Partition Plan for the Palestinian state.

As for the 1973 “war,” this was a response on the part of Egypt and Syria after Washington and Tel Aviv ignored overtures by the two Arab states to negotiate the return of land stolen by Israel in earlier “wars.” As early as 1956, Israel had planned to grab the Sinai. As for the Golan Heights (actually the Syrian Heights), Israel engaged in continual border provocations (violating a July 20, 1949 agreement between the Zionist state and Syria) right up to the eve of the 1967 “war.” In the wake of this “war,” neighboring Arabs were angered by the fact Israel routinely expelled Egyptians, Syrians, and Palestinians while installing Jewish settlers in their thousands. By 1973 nearly 100 settlements had been established and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, expelled, imprisoned or deported. On 6 October 1973 the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights in an attempt to liberate their territory occupied by Israel. The Secretary-General of the Arab League explained the Arab action thus: “In a final analysis, Arab action is justifiable, moral and valid under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. There is no aggression, no attempt to acquire new territories. But to restore and liberate all the occupied territories is a duty for all able self-respecting peoples” (Sunday Times, 14 October 1973).

As for the so-called “Gulf War,” consider the following explanation by Mark Zepezauer, from his book, The CIA’s Greatest Hits:

The Gulf War further destabilized the region and made Kuwait more dependent on us. US oil companies can now exert more control over oil prices (and thus boost their profits). The US military got an excuse to build more bases in the region (which Saudi Arabia, for one, didn’t want) and the war also helped justify the “need” to continue exorbitant levels of military spending. Finally, it sent a message to Third World leaders about what they could expect if they dared to step out of line.

Your simple, isolationist views went out with Pearl Harbour (which I am sure you attribute to anti-Japanese propagandists) and 9-11 (which the Republicans manufactured).

Actually, if documents held formerly in bomb-proof vaults (a naval storage vault in Crane, Indiana) over the last 60 years are any indication (these documents were, under FOIA directive, eventually moved to the National Archives in Washington, D.C, in 1994), the United States had broken the Japanese code early on and knew an invasion of Pearl Harbor was imminent. Of course, this is hardly news, simply one example of a long record of government deception. Howard Zinn writes: “If more people knew something about the history of government deception, of the lies that were told getting us into the Mexican War, the lies that were told getting us into the Spanish-American War, the lies that were told getting us into the war in the Philippines, the lies that were told getting us into World War I, the lies that were told again and again in Vietnam, the lies on the eve of the Gulf War, they would have questions about what they are hearing from the government and the media to justify [Bush II’s] war.”

As for nine eleven… fact of the matter is we have no idea who “manufactured” it (and I agree, it was manufactured), although we have a good idea who benefited (as in cui bono)—and it sure the hell wasn’t those alleged Saudi hijackers (seven who are still alive), Osama bin Laden, or the Taliban (or the Afghan people, who were bombed mercilessly). Considering nobody in Washington is serious about an impartial investigation of nine eleven, chances are we will never know who “manufactured” the attacks. As I have written elsewhere, though, I consider it an absurdity the attacks were hatched and launched by cave-dwelling Muslims in Afghanistan.

You will never amount to anything, because you write out of hate as opposed to fact and reason. Stick to photography, ass-fucker.

Nice finale, wouldn’t you say? But then, of course, this is exactly the sort of response I expect from right-wingers and rabid apologists for Zionism, especially the new crop, many of them former Maoists (like Horowitz) and assorted disillusioned commies and political malcontents. I almost pine for the days of polite and more or less benign John Birchers, guys like Pat Buchanan who are loony right-wingers without all the overt hatred, venom and expletives (this is the second reference to buggery I’ve read in a 24 hour period from a maniacal right-winger). I guess, though, this email is innocuous enough, considering a few months ago a guy wanted to take a baseball bat to my head. Others simply want to send me to Iran to be tortured by mullahs (or thrown to the myhtical Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi), one guy even offered to buy a one-way ticket to some dismal third world country. It appears the worst are unrepentant Zionists, such as Steve Plaut, who excel at viciousness, as does the anti-Muslim nark Debbie Schlussel, who takes special pride in dissing the dead.

Toronto adman contacted by U.S. Senate committee
Calls White House nominee for post at U.N. `a thug'

WASHINGTON - A Toronto man has emerged as a key player in a debate roiling the U.S. capital, confirming details of mistreatment of an underling by John Bolton, the man George W. Bush wants as his ambassador to the United Nations.

Uno Ramat, the creative director of a Toronto ad agency, described the embattled Bolton yesterday as a "really creepy guy" who harassed and threatened a female colleague of his when they worked together in Kyrgyzstan in 1994.

He confirmed the latest in a litany of tales of abuse and harassment by Bolton, when he was contacted by the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee.

The colleague — Melody Townsel of Dallas, who is a former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development — added her voice to a string of former associates who have outlined often bizarre behaviour by the man Bush wants as his top U.N. diplomat. In an open letter to the Senate foreign relations committee, she told of being chased around a Moscow hotel by the "madman" Bolton.

The Bush administration tried anew to rally support for Bolton yesterday, a day after an attack of "conscience" by an Ohio Republican threatened to derail confirmation of Bush's handpicked nominee as the next U.N. ambassador.

The nomination of Bolton, 56, has become the president's most contentious selection amidst the elevation of a string of loyalists who were intimately involved in planning the Iraq war. But the undersecretary of state's promotion has faltered on his allegedly abrasive management style and is emerging as a cautionary tale for any boss on this continent whose bullying and autocratic style is resented by underlings.

In Bolton's case, the underlings are coming back to bite their boss.

In earlier testimony, Bolton has been described as a "kiss-up, kick-down guy" who kicked harder the further down the ladder his underlings were and who pressured intelligence analysts at the state department to come up with findings that he wanted.

In Kyrgyzstan, Townsel was in daily phone contact with Ramat, who described her as being harassed and "under a great deal of pressure."

He said he met Bolton in Bishkek.

"He was a thug. He was a hired hit man. He had been hired to come and get Melody to shut up and get her off the project," he said. "He was incredibly intimidating and threatening, not just to me but to the entire office, expats and the locals. The entire office was terrorized after he left.

"He blew into town and left after two or three days."

At the time, Ramat was working for IBTCI, a subcontractor for USAID, the U.S. development agency, which was working on a project to privatize services in Kyrgyzstan.

Townsel said she had to take refuge in her Moscow hotel room after being chased through the lobby by Bolton, who threatened her and threw items at her.

Bolton then was a lawyer representing a client that was in a dispute with USAID.

She said even when she sought solace in her room, Bolton pounded on the door and tried to shove items through a mail slot.

With new Senate hearings on his nomination set for the second week of May, the Bush administration appears to be swimming upstream in continuing their support of Bolton.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters travelling with her to Lithuania that she understands the Senate needs more time to consider the appointment.

"I continue to believe that John Bolton would be a really great U.N. permanent representative," Rice said.

"We make a mistake in that suddenly management style is part of the confirmation process."

Scott McLellan, the president's spokesperson, said Democrats are playing politics with Bolton's nomination.

"I think what you're seeing is the ugly side of Washington, D.C.," he said.

Late Tuesday afternoon Bolton appeared headed for narrow approval at the Senate foreign relations committee, a 10-8 vote strictly along party lines, which would have sent the nomination to the Senate floor where Republicans have a majority.

But as Democrats, led by Joe Biden of Delaware and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, pushed for further hearings because more allegations about Bolton had come to light, George Voinovich stunned his Republican colleagues with a quiet intervention.

"I've heard enough today that I don't feel comfortable about voting for Mr. Bolton," he said. "I think one's interpersonal skills and their relationship with their fellow man is a very important ingredient in anyone that works for me."

Voinovich was immediately branded a "traitor" to Republicans in radio ads running in his home state sponsored by the conservative MoveAmericaForward.org.

Yesterday, Townsel said she felt under siege and was a target of right-wing bloggers who accused her of being with a group called Moms Against Bush in the last campaign.

She confirmed she was part of that group, but she wouldn't back down.

"The last time I looked, your political leanings didn't make you a liar or not," she said.

Ramat said he has no political agenda, does not even follow U.S. politics and can't even remember the name of the U.S. senator who phoned him.

Bolton, a Yale-educated lawyer, is undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and served as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 1989 to 1993.

He would replace John Danforth, who left the U.N. post after a very brief tenure in January and has since been critical of the influence the Christian right wields in the Republican party.

Initially, criticism of Bolton's nomination centred on his unilateralist beliefs where American interests were paramount and his disdain for the U.N. itself.

"I'm less concerned about the interests of the U.N. than I am the interests of the United States of America and how we can look straight-faced in the mirror and say, `this guy is the face we want to put forward to the whole world,'" Biden said.

"We're setting ourselves up for failure here. This is not a good choice."

Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican and critic of the U.N., said Bolton has what's needed to reform the U.N.

"It is about having somebody who has the experience and has the passion and has the intellect to do some very heavy lifting — very heavy lifting," he said.

"Whether it's oil-for-food, whether it's sexual abuse in Africa, whether it's harassment, the U.N. is in trouble. And it's in our interest to have the kind of strength that you need to work reform."

A full month before Bush announced he was attacking Iraq and even publicly admitted it was going to happen, regardless of national and international protests against it or that there were no facts to support it, Bolton was telling people he had "no doubt" it was going to happen. From HaaretzDaily.com, Feb. 18, 2003:

U.S. official says Syria, Iran will be dealt with after Iraq war

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards.

Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings about preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

In a meeting with Bolton on Monday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel is concerned about the security threat posed by Iran. It's important to deal with Iran even while American attention is turned toward Iraq, Sharon said.

Bolton also met with Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Housing and Construction Minister Natan Sharansky.

Somone should send warmongers like Bolton to stand at a checkpoint in Fallujah, not to represent the U.S. at the United Nations.

A common complaint is that revelations from the Gomery inquiry have brought the operation of the federal government effectively to a halt. One front that Ottawa seems to keep doggedly moving ahead on - regrettably - is our military integration with the U.S.

Indeed, while the Gomery issue built to a crescendo last week, hardly any attention was paid to the release of a defence policy review that signalled Ottawa's intention to make the Canadian military more part of the U.S. war machine — a change that would likely offend most Canadians if they were aware of it.

Of course, it wasn't stated like that. Rather, the change was billed as part of our "new, more sophisticated approach to our relationship with the United States."

In essence, this "more sophisticated" approach boils down to linking our military operations more with Washington's. "Today our ships integrate seamlessly with U.S. Navy formations," the review notes enthusiastically, holding up this model of "interoperability."

Of course, Canada has a long history of military co-operation with the U.S., but the Bush administration's more aggressive military stance has threatened to change the nature of that relationship. Washington wants us to join their global war against "terror" — a murky, open-ended war that allows the U.S. to intervene anywhere in the world.

A report in the Wall Street Journal last month described a new top-level Pentagon planning document which calls for the U.S. military to become more "proactive" and "focused on changing the world instead of just responding to conflicts."

This is hair-raising stuff that goes beyond even the frightening notion of pre-emptive war. Now Washington seems to be talking about using its unsurpassed military might to force nations to behave as it wants them to. Only the most rabid pro-Washington zealot would fail to see the opportunities for abuse in such unchallenged power.

Canadians have no interest in being part of an aggressive force bent on remaking the world. But Ottawa's defence review, part of its overall foreign policy review, portrays our defence needs as essentially the same as Washington's: "(M)ost of the new dangers to the United States are no less risks to Canada."

In fact, our situations are very different. Few terrorists want to attack us, because we don't have a long history of intervening in other countries the way Washington has. For that matter, Washington exaggerates its own vulnerability in order to keep Americans willing to go to war.

Canadians are overwhelmingly resistant to the kind of military adventurism favoured by hawks in the Bush administration. At the same time, we're willing to put money and manpower into maintaining peacekeeping forces around the world.

If we associate our military with peacekeeping — as the government no doubt hopes we will — we'll be more inclined to accept the massive $13 billion increase in military spending Ottawa has proposed.

But, with Ottawa's emphasis on integrating Canada's defence policy with Washington's, it's not peacekeeping but war-making that's likely to be on the agenda.