Here and There

What’s Happening Here:

Mrs. Clinton has bellied up to the bar. I dunno — I’m wondering if Obama’s supporters would have been given a similar amount of time to “deal with their disappointment.” Sexism works both ways — a topic on our plates, and something that needs a good bit of air. As well, don’t you think it odd that the feminists are in war-mode over a candidate that won’t put a Ms. in front of her name? So unlikely a person as Pub pundit George Will had this to say, despite the obvious benefit of an energized party should Obama select Clinton as V.P.:

Clinton, having risen politically in her husbands orbit, is a moon shining with reflected light. Were Obama to hitch himself to her, he would reduce himself to a reflection of a reflection [...] Someone promising to “turn the page” should not revert to an earlier chapter.

Nonetheless, Hillary made her own name toward the end, and has now found her graciousness, as far as I know.

Please pardon my hesitation. There are op/ed’s and blog posts out there of every variety, from glowing to doubtful and on into scathing. Me, I’m more inclined to entertain this possibility, having watched the Clinton machine carefully for years; and it makes me even more hopeful that Obama will keep a respectful distance for awhile. But still, she did a fine job of putting her supporters in play for the nominee, even if she bit her lip doing it, and in her final hour she delivered.

MoDo, slinking along like the feline she is, kind of nailed it with one claw in her Sunday editorial. Marianne Williamson, a person I admire and an Obama supporter, wrote a piece that nails it as well, summoning the Higher Angels of this period; we got a bit of authentic Hillary in those last moments. It’s always like that, at the end … isn’t it.

And unity is the only way forward — The Young Turks have put together a lovely little Youtube retrospective that gives you a flavor of the wealth of riches we had in the Democratic race … every candidate made George Bush look like a mental and moral midget … that goes for Mini-Me, John McCain, as well. I hope all of them will find a stronger platform for their service in the coming years.

Meanwhile, Obama is moving along at a respectable clip. He will partner with Elizabeth Edwards on health care [did you hear that audible gulp in the Clinton camp?] and will court Hil’s gay supporters, having issued a statement on gay pride this weekend.

What’s Happening There:

Today we’ll look at the Iraq/Iran/oil debacle — these cogs continue to break down and cause us considerable angst. Cheney is being Cheney til the bitter end [his chip-off-the-old-block daughter slammed the Bushies today for being wussies] … Dubby is bubbling in his usual dementia … the Pentagon is in shambles with Air Force leadership being purged like crazy … and the country has come to a semi-halt due to gas prices. The reads include the Iraq deal and blow back; remember that Iran is implicit in most everything we read about either oil or Iraq. Toward the end, diverse topics about oil including the Saudis call for a summit.

Jude

“This Law Is a Bomb that May Kill Everyone”
Cheney Enrages Iraqis with Demands for New Laws
Gary Leupp, Dissident Voice
June 7, 2008

Dick Cheney wants the Iraqi government installed by the U.S. occupation to sign a “security pact” with Washington by the end of July. (The pact, including a status-of-forces agreement, would be signed by the U.S. president but not constitute a treaty requiring Congressional approval.) U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has been feverishly struggling to meet the deadline and to commit the next administration to the agreement’s terms. But that may be a tall order. Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki says negotiations are only in a beginning stage; public opinion is opposed to the pact based on leaked information about its content; and a majority of members of the Iraqi parliament have endorsed a letter to the U.S. government demanding U.S. withdrawal as the condition for “any commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States.”

Few Americans are familiar with the proposed treaty. If they were, they might be shocked at its provisions, ashamed about its naked sadism. It:

grants the U.S. long-term rights to maintain over 50 military bases in their California-sized country

allows the U.S. to strike any other country from within Iraqi territory without the permission of the Iraqi government

allows the U.S. to conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting with the local government

allows U.S. forces to arrest any Iraqi without consulting with Iraqi authorities

extends to U.S. troops and contracters immunity from Iraqi law

gives U.S. forces control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft.

places the Iraqi Defense, Interior and National Security ministries under American supervision for ten years

gives the U.S. responsibility for Iraqi armament contracts for ten years

Humiliating, right? The sort of conditions most Americans can’t imagine themselves accepting from a foreign occupying power.

What self-respecting people would ever agree to such provisions? Especially after their country’s been illegally invaded and occupied, on the basis of lies. Perhaps a million have been killed by the invaders and the civil strife they’ve unleashed. Two million have been driven into foreign exile, two million internally displaced.

Thousands have been humiliated, terrified and tortured by the invaders. Millions’ electrical and water supply still lags behind Saddam-era levels. Millions’ personal security and enjoyment of human rights has deteriorated as a result of the invasion. Why should their leaders sign such an agreement?

No doubt some key figures in the Bush administration have asked themselves that, and here’s what they come up with. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds $ 50 billion of Iraq’s foreign exchange reserves as a result of the UN sanctions dating back to the first Gulf War. These include virtually all oil revenues that under UN mandate must be placed in the Development Fund for Iraq “controlled” by the Iraqi government. $ 20 billion of this is owed to plaintiffs who’ve won court judgments against Iraq, but a presidential order gives the account legal immunity. Bush can threaten to remove the immunity and wipe out 40% of Iraq’s foreign reselves if Baghdad doesn’t cooperate. At the same time, Bush can tell al-Maliki that if Iraq enters into a ’strategic relationship” with the U.S., the U.S. will arrange for Iraq to finally escape those lingering UN “Chapter Seven” sanctions. Perhaps Bush and Cheney are confidant that this carrot and stick approach will force the Iraqi government to sign the deal.

But Iranian political leader Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani hardly exaggerates in saying the proposed deal is designed “to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans” and to create “a permanent occupation.” Many Iraqis use similar language. “The agreement wants to put an American in each house,” claimed a supporter of Shiite cleric and nationalist firebrand Mutada al-Sadr. “This agreement is poison mixed in poison, not poison in honey because there is no honey at all.”

“Why,” he asks, “do they want to break the backbone of Iraq?”

The mainstream Shiite cleric and politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC; formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq or SCIRI), agrees that the proposed agreement would “violate Iraq’s national sovereignty.” He claims a “national consensus” against it has developed. (President Bush in December 2006 met with al-Hakim, calling his “one of the distinguished leaders of a free Iraq,” and he is sometimes mentioned as Washington’s first choice for prime minister if al-Maliki doesn’t adequately put out. So his opposition is especially significant.)

Al-Hakim is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most widely respected Shiite cleric in 60% Shiite Iraq. The ayatollah is thought to oppose the pact but has not yet made a pronouncement about it. Meanwhile the Association of Muslim Scholars, the largest Sunni political group in the parliament, warns that the pact paves the way for “military, economic and cultural domination” by the Americans.

Al-Sadr’s followers staged rallies around the country after prayers last Friday and plan to continue weekly peaceful demonstrations demanding that the Baghdad government hold a national referendum on the security treaty issue. The U.S. opposes such a referendum, aware that pact opponents would surely win.

So Al-Maliki is between a rock and a hard place. He can sign the agreement and continue to receive U.S. support, strengthening the popular perception that he is a U.S. puppet. Or he can submit to the referendum demand, alienating and embarrassing his country’s invaders, revealing to the world the depth of Iraqi antipathy to the occupation. That way he loses U.S. support. Either way he seems headed towards the door.

In January 2007 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Congress that if al-Maliki didn’t cooperate with U.S. forces in suppressing Shiite militias in Baghdad, “he has to face is the possibility that he’ll lose his job.” At the same time U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and President Bush were both threatening to end support for al-Maliki if he didn’t “follow through on his promises” to the U.S. In August 2007, after al-Maliki publicly praised Iran for its “constructive role” in Iraq, Bush warned him. “My message to him,” he told the press, “is, when we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.”

For his part al-Maliki has indicated there are limits to his servility. He sent forces against al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad in February of this year, but they fought poorly and had to be saved from embarrassment by the mediation of a commander of Iran’s vilified Quds Force friendly with both al-Sadr and al-Maliki. He has refused to break his strong ties with the Iranian government and politely asked the U.S. to leave his country out of its quarrel with Iran. He does not seem wedded to his post or determined to retain it at any cost; “I wish I could be done with it even before the end of this term,” he told the Wall Street Journal in January 2007. “I didn’t want to take this position. I only agreed because I thought it would serve the national interest, and I will not accept it again.” Doesn’t sound like a man who wants to go down in history as the man who sold Iraq to the Americans in the summer of 2008. Likely successor Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim has opposed the deal so far.

Meanwhile, there’s this other Iraqi item on Cheney’s urgent to-do list: the passage of the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law by the Iraqi Parliament. This was drafted by BearingPoint (a McLean, Virginia-based management consulting provider listed by the Center for Corporate Policy as the number 2 top war profiteer of 2004) in February 2006 and then presented to the newly-appointed Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Al-Shahristani. Shahristani then met in Washington DC with representatives of Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips to get their comments on the draft. He promised the International Monetary Fund that the Iraqi parliament would pass the law by the end of 2006, but its members hadn’t even seen the 33-page draft law yet. Months earlier an Oil Ministry official had said that Iraqi civil society and the general public would not be consulted at all on this matter.

A secret appendix to the draft law, according to London-based Iraqi political analyst Munir Chalabi, “will decide which oil fields will be allocated to the Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) and which of the existing fields will be allocated to the IOCs [international oil companies]. The appendices will determine if 10% or possibly up to 80% of these major oil fields will be given to the IOCs.” This, in other words, is another national humiliation in the offing. As six women Nobel Peace Prize recipients wrote in September 2007, it “would transform Iraq’s oil industry from a nationalized model to a commercial model that is much more open to U.S. corporate control. Its provisions allow much (if not most) of Iraq’s oil revenues to flow out of Iraq and into the pockets of international oil companies.”

It is one of those “bench marks” the Bush administration has imposed on Iraq, with Congressional support, as conditions for U.S. withdrawal, but even the most recent revised version, hammered out between Kurdish representatives and the Maliki cabinet, faces tough political opposition. Cheney was hoping this would be a done deal—done quickly on the sly—as of last summer. But al-Maliki still hasn’t delivered, and as a State Department report to Congress in April 2008 notes, labor opposition is formidable: “The 26,000 member Iraq Federation of Oil Unions has voiced its members’ strong opposition to the current draft of the hydrocarbon framework legislation and has demonstrated a capacity to disrupt oil production and refinery operations with strikes.” Last year union chief Subhi al-Badri declared, “This law cancels the great achievements of the Iraq people. If the Iraqi Parliament approves this law, we will resort to mutiny. This law is a bomb that may kill everyone. Iraqi oil. … belongs to all future generations.” Even the Iraqi minister of planning and development, Ali Baban, has vowed to “resign one hour after [the] passing [of the] oil and gas draft law.” And the Sadrists of course are bitterly opposed.

Add the globalization of the oil industry to the security treaty provisions listed above. Imagine how Iraqi public opinion will react if Cheney and the neocons succeed in forcing this package of laws through the Iraqi parliament. Everybody knows the “return of sovereignty” is a sham, and claims of “democracy” a cover for continued occupation. The “benchmark” capitulations the Americans demand add insult to injury, inscribing in law and veneer of multilateralism that which has been seized by brute force. They oblige those under the boot to kiss it.

The Cheney cabal (exuding Islamophobia and contempt for poor and working people everywhere) seems to actually suppose it will be able to win that degree of slavishness, and to celebrate such crowning imperialist triumphs in Iraq, by the end of the Bush term. They also seem to think they can attack Iran, expanding the “Long War” before handing it over to the next administration. But that would mean provoking the outrage of the overwhelming majority of Iranians and Iraqis simultaneously. Seems just too stupid to believe, even from a rational imperialist’s own point of view. But aside from Rep. Dennis Kucinich, few in Congress have made issues of the security treaty, hydrocarbon law, or plans for a strike against Iran. The mainstream media is for the most part unquestioning, subdued, as the Bush administration continues to subject the Muslim world to unbearable provocations. ++

Iran, Iraq vow to expand defense co-op
Peoples Daily Online
June 09, 2008

Iran and Iraq vowed Sunday to expand their defense cooperation, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Abdul Qadir Mohammed Jassim Obeidi al-Mifarji voiced the intention during their meeting.

During the meeting, Najjar highlighted the strategic status of Iran and Iraq, saying that consolidation and bolstering of defense ties between the two countries would play a significant role in safeguarding peace, stability as well as ensuring durable security in the region, IRNA reported.

The Iranian defense minister noted that both Iran and Iraq are highly capable of broadening and bolstering mutual relations especially in the defense and security fronts.

Iran’s principles are based on supporting the legal Iraqi government, Najjar said adding that the country is to support Iraqi military forces restore security in the war-torn country.

The Iraqi defense minister, who are accompanying Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a visit to Iran, also underlined the need for expansion of defense relations between the two countries.

“Rebuilding a new powerful army in Iraq requires benefiting from Iran’s invaluable experience and capabilities,” al-Mifarji said. “We try to make the Iraqi army independent.”

Friendly ties between Iran and Iraq would be to the benefit of security and stability of the region, he said.

At the meeting, the two sides also discussed expansion of defense cooperation and agreed to continue exchange of visits by defense officials of the two countries, according to IRNA.

Their vow to expend defense cooperation came as the United States is pressuring Baghdad to sign an agreement that would allow U.S. soldiers in the country to stay beyond 2008.

Iraqi critics of the agreement said that it means Iraq will be a client state in which the United States will keep more than 50 military bases and American soldiers will enjoy legal immunity.

Iran fiercely opposes the agreement, which is expected to be signed by midsummer, and has always called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. ++

Let’s ask the Iraqis if we should stay or go
Steve Chapman, Baltimore Sun
June 9, 2008

“I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude,” President Bush said last year, a bit resentfully. “That’s the problem here in America: They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”

Apparently not. It seems the rarest person in the world is a grateful Iraqi. Last week, the Baghdad government said it would reject any agreement on U.S. forces that “violates Iraq’s sovereignty.” That came days after tens of thousands of Shiites took to the streets to protest a proposed agreement that would keep U.S. forces there for years to come.

Followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who rejects any such accord, turned out to hear a sheik who warned, “The cancer has spread and has to be removed.” Afterward, reports The Washington Post, they chanted, “Get out, get out, occupier.”

Cancer? Occupier? That’s not quite how it looks to American supporters of the war. They see the United States as the savior of the ordinary Iraqis who survived Saddam Hussein only to be victimized by violent extremists. We certainly have made some sacrifices on their behalf, including more than 4,000 troops killed in the war and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on it.

In light of the improvement in security over the last year, you would expect most Iraqis to have a new appreciation for our efforts. Before the surge, Iraqi civilians were dying at the rate of more than 3,000 a month. This year, it’s been fewer than 1,000 a month. So it might make sense to keep the Americans around for a while.

But that was not the prevailing sentiment last week among Mr. al-Sadr’s followers. The proposed deal has also been denounced by the head of a Shiite party that is part of the ruling government, as well as the country’s premier Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

It’s not the prevailing sentiment among the Shiites’ main rivals, either. A February poll found that 73 percent of Iraqis oppose the presence of foreign troops in Iraq - including 77 percent of Shiites and 95 percent of Sunnis.

Americans spend a lot of time debating the question of whether we should remain in Iraq. What never seems to occur to us is to ask the Iraqis the same question. Mr. al-Sadr is demanding that any agreement be put to a national referendum. We ought to endorse that approach, asking the government to let Iraqis vote on whether we should stay or go.

The U.S. went into Iraq five years ago to liberate the country from a tyrant. We have made war on al-Qaida in Iraq, whose tactics managed to alienate even their Sunni allies. Lately, we’ve also established comparative tranquillity. If there was ever a time when Iraqis could calmly and peacefully weigh in on our presence, it’s now.

Every major group has obvious grounds to want us around. We facilitated elections that let the Shiites gain dominance, allowed the Kurds to maintain their autonomy in northern Iraq and brought Sunni militias over to our side. In short, we’ve done something for everyone.

Yet all indications are that Iraqis can unite behind only one proposition: Yankee, go home! If that’s the case - or even if it’s not - how can we justify not letting them express their preference? How can we say that the people we have tried to bless with democracy should be denied a democratic means of resolving the issue?

And why on Earth should we mind? If the issue were put to a vote, one of two things could happen. The first is that Iraqis would make it clear they don’t want us around anymore and are ready to take over full responsibility for their affairs. In that case, we can hit the exits with a clear conscience. The second is that they would have a sudden change of heart, realize they can’t manage without us and ask us to stay. That would not convince many Americans who think the potential gains to our security are not worth the cost, but it would surely strengthen the argument for staying.

In November, Americans will get to vote in what amounts to a referendum on the U.S. role in Iraq. Why should we be the only ones? ++

Oil, Israel, Iran, America and the High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark
Dave Lindorff, Smirking Chimp
June 7, 2008

One remark by a minor Israeli cabinet officer hinting at a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran has sent oil prices up by a record $11/barrel to a record $139 per barrel Friday. That should tell us what would happen if the Bush administration were crazy enough to attack Iran, or to let its vassal state of Israel do it.

Most analysts say an actual attack on Iran would send oil almost immediately to past $300 per barrel–a level that would strangle economies worldwide and send the world into an economic collapse not since the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs kicked off the Great Depression. The repercussions of that would be staggering.

America, which runs on oil, would grind to a halt. Gasoline and home heating oil would double or triple in price, leading to desperation in the coming winter for those living north of the Mason-Dixon line, and to a mass exodus of the elderly from Florida and Arizona, where air-conditioning would no longer be affordable.

In China, an economy almost wholly dependent upon the manufacture of goods for sale to American consumers, hundreds of millions of workers would suddenly find themselves unemployed. With their remittances to their peasant relatives halted, half the country would be kicked back to the pre-capitalist era, only without guaranteed wages, homes, food and healthcare. It is likely that unrest unprecedented since the Cultural Revolution would erupt.

The Middle East would explode.

In Iraq, Shia fighters would rise up in solidarity with their Shia neighbor, Iran, and begin attacking American forces in Iraq in earnest, probably making the Tet Offensive in 1968 Vietnam look like a picnic. Where the US had half a million troops in Vietnam in that offensive, the military is already stretched to the breaking point in Iraq, with supply lines barely defended.

It makes you wonder what is going on in the higher reaches of the US bureaucracy. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has in the past intimated that he’s no fan of war with Iran, just sacked the two top men in the Airforce–the most gung-ho of the service branches in terms of Iran war mongering. The unprecedent surprise firing of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and the Air Force’s top officer, Gen. T Michael “Buzz” Moseley, was officially blamed on their poor handling of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, in the wake of last year’s unauthorized and improper removal from storage and cross-country aerial transfer of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles in launch position on a B-52 Stratofortress, and the discovery this year of an earlier “inadvertent” shipment of ICBM missile warhead nuclear triggers to Taiwan. While it is possible that those two incidents were the cause of the firings, there remain serious unanswered questions about both incidents, and particularly about the cruise missile flight.

As I reported earlier on this site and in Counterpunch magazine and American Conservative magazine, there were a half dozen unexplained deaths of US airmen, including two suicides, which occurred just before and after that flight last August 30, none of which were investigated at least publicly by the Pentagon or the FBI according to local prosecutors and medical examiners contacted. A number of experts in nuclear weapons handling have said that it would be “impossible” for the six warheads to have been removed from guarded bunkers at Minot AFB in North Dakota, mounted on cruise missiles, loaded onto launch pylons under the wing of a B-52, and flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, all as a “mistake.”

This leads inexorably to the question: What was being planned for those warheads, if they were not being removed from storage by mistake, and if they were being moved without the knowledge of the top brass, including Gates, at the Pentagon? Recall that the only reason anyone learned about the incident was that it was reported outside the military chain of command to a reporter at Military Times newspaper by several Air Force whistle-blowers upset by what they were seeing.

We already witnessed the sudden resignation from the post of CentCom Command of Adm. William Fallon, whose outspoken opposition to the Bush/Cheney administration’s talk of attacking Iran led to his being pushed aside in favor of the more pliant Gen. David Petraeus. Fallon was pushed out by Iran war hawks because of his opposition to an attack. Were the Air Force Secretary and Chief of Staff forced out by Gates because of their pro-attack position?

Plenty to ponder here, but the concerns of oil speculators, who have driven up the price of oil by 8.6 percent (and the stock market down by 3.2 percent) in a single day, in large part on war rumors, should have us all concerned.

It’s not just about the price of gasoline. ++

Gates ousts Air Force leaders in historic shake-up
ROBERT BURNS, AP
Fri Jun 6

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force’s top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix-ups.

Gates announced at a news conference that he had accepted the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne — a highly unusual double firing.

Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

The report drew the stunning conclusion that the Air Force’s nuclear standards have been in a long decline, a “problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade.”

Gates said an internal investigation found a common theme in the B-52 and Taiwan incidents: “a decline in the Air Force’s nuclear mission focus and performance” and a failure by Air Force leaders to respond effectively.

In a reflection of his concern about the state of nuclear security, Gates said he had asked a former defense secretary, James Schlesinger, to lead a task force that will recommend ways to ensure that the highest levels of accountability and control are maintained in Air Force handling of nuclear weapons.

In somber tones, Gates told reporters his decision to remove Wynne and Moseley was based on the findings of an investigation of the Taiwan debacle by Adm. Kirkland Donald. The admiral found a “lack of a critical self-assessment culture” in the Air Force nuclear program, making it unlikely that weaknesses in the way critical materials such as nuclear weapons are handled could be corrected, Gates said.

Gates said Donald concluded that many of the problems that led to the B-52 and the Taiwan sale incidents “have been known or should have been known.”

The Donald report is classified; Gates provided an oral summary.

“The Taiwan incident clearly was the trigger,” Gates said when asked whether Moseley and Wynne would have retained their positions in the absence of the mistaken shipment of fuses. He also said that Donald found a “lack of effective Air Force leadership oversight” of its nuclear mission.

The investigation found a declining trend in Air Force nuclear expertise — not the first time that has been raised as a problem, Gates said — and a drifting of the Air Force’s focus away from its nuclear mission, which includes stewardship of the land-based missile component of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, as well as missiles and bombs assigned for nuclear missions aboard B-52 and B-2 long-range bombers.

Gates also announced that “a substantial number” of Air Force general officers and colonels were identified in the Donald report as potentially subject to disciplinary measures that range from removal from command to letters of reprimand. He said he would direct the yet-to-be-named successors to Wynne and Moseley to evaluate those identified culprits and decide what disciplinary actions are warranted — “or whether they can be part of the solution” to the problems found by Donald.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush knew about the resignations but that the White House had “not played any role” in the shake-up.

Early reaction from Capitol Hill was favorable to drastic action.

“Secretary Gates’ focus on accountability is essential and had been absent from the office of the secretary of defense for too long,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The safety and security of America’ nuclear weapons must receive the highest priority, just as it must in other countries.”

Gates said he would make recommendations to Bush shortly on a new Air Force chief of staff and civilian secretary. Gates has settled on candidates for both jobs but has not yet formally recommended them, one official said.

Gen. Duncan J. McNabb is the current Air Force vice chief of staff.

Moseley, who commanded coalition air forces during the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, became Air Force chief in September 2005; Wynne, a former General Dynamics executive, took office in November 2005.

Wynne is the second civilian chief of a military service to be forced out by Gates. In March 2007 the defense secretary pushed out Francis Harvey, the Army secretary, because Gates was dissatisfied with Harvey’s handling of revelations of inadequate housing conditions and bureaucratic delays for troops recovering from war wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Wynne and Moseley issued their own written statements.

“As the Air Force’s senior uniformed leader, I take full responsibility for events which have hurt the Air Force’s reputation or raised a question of every airman’s commitment to our core values,” Moseley said.

Wynne said he “read with regret” the findings of the Donald report. ++

United States pulls out of UN human rights body
Nick Langewis, Raw Story
Sunday June 8, 2008

In a State Department briefing on Friday, it was announced that the United States will no longer be regularly attending meetings held by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council unless specifically compelled to, citing the Council’s stance on relations between Israel and Palestine.

While not an official member, the United States had been an involved observer since the 47-seat Council’s creation in March 2006 to replace the 53-member Commission on Human Rights.

“It will be ad hoc,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a reporter on Friday when asked of the United States’ continued participation. “I’m not going to try to tie our hands diplomatically one way or the other.”

“Look,” he said, “our skepticism regarding the function of the UN Council on Human Rights in terms of fulfilling its mandate and its mission is well known. It has a rather pathetic record in that regard. Instead of focusing on some of the real and deep human rights issues around the world, it has really turned into a forum that seems to be almost solely focused on bashing Israel.”

“[Today] they were speaking about Burma,” the reporter responded. “Isn’t that something of deep national interest to the United States?”

McCormack responded: “You know, simply put, Matt, because we don’t think it is a serious institution in dealing with human rights–human rights issues, we are going to take a more reserved approach in terms of engaging the Council, just because the–our ability and the ability of others to really influence this body is proven to be rather minimal over the past couple of years, and as a result we are just–we’re going to choose more selectively how and when to engage the Council.”

“The US decision to walk away from the Human Rights Council is counter-productive and short-sighted,” said Human Rights Watch advocacy director Juliette de Rivero. “Whatever the council’s problems, this decision is a victory for abusive states and a betrayal of those fighting for their rights worldwide.”

Human Rights Watch says that the United States’ move amounts to the abandonment of people worldwide who suffer as a result of human rights abuses, and the principles for which the Council stands.

“Washington’s hands-off approach to the Human Rights Council undermined it from the start,” continued de Rivero. “It’s ironic that the US shares responsibility for the shortcomings it’s now using to justify further distancing itself from the council.”

The Council has garnered past criticism from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in addition to the State Department over Israel. “…I am worried by [the Council's] disproportionate focus on violations by Israel,” Annan said in his address to mark International Human Rights Day on December 8, 2006. “Not that Israel should be given a free pass. Absolutely not. But the Council should give the same attention to grave violations committed by other states as well.”

“We believe that the Human Rights Council has thus far not proved itself to be a credible body in the mission that it has been charged with,” said the State Department’s McCormack on March 6, 2007. “There has been a nearly singular focus on issues related to Israel, for example, to the exclusion of examining issues of real concern to the international system, whether that’s in Cuba or Burma or in North Korea.

“So we are going to remain as observers to the Human Rights Council and we hope that over time, that this body will expand its focus and become a more credible institution representative of the important mission with which it is charged. But nonetheless, the United States will remain actively engaged not only in the UN system but also outside of the UN system in promoting human rights.”

The Council voted in June of 2006 to make suspected human rights abuses by Israel a permanent point of discussion for each meeting. Human Rights Watch had urged the Council to give equal time to suspected abuses on the Palestinian side of the ongoing conflict as well.

In addition to voting against the Council’s original inception, Human Rights Watch noted, the United States is further divorced from the philosophy of the Council by utilizing questionable interrogation tactics on “War on Terror” detainees and being uncooperative with those within the Council that sought to investigate the treatment of those housed at Guantánamo Bay.

“Instead of ceding the field to those who want to shield abusers from scrutiny,” added de Rivero, “the US should have redoubled its efforts to make the council work as it should.” ++

Oil Prices Raise Cost of Making a Range of Goods
LOUIS UCHITELLE, NYT
June 8, 2008

Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average
CLIFFORD KRAUSS, NYT
June 9, 2008

European Truckers, Farmers Blocking Borders In Protest Against Gas Prices
Alan Cowell, HuffPo
June 9, 2008

Saudi Arabia To Hold Meeting On Soaring Oil Prices
HuffPo
June 9, 2008

[I'm leaving the following picture credit info in, says a lot with a few words -- J]

A SUV is reflected in the window of another SUV as Saudi Arabian youths hang out with the gas guzzling motors, after prayers in central Riyadh, Friday, June 6, 2008. As oil prices continue to rise the Saudi’s enjoy the cheapest petrol in the world at US$ 0.12 a liter. (AP Photo/Odd Andersen)

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia will call for a summit between oil producing countries and consumer states to discuss soaring energy prices, Information and Culture Minister Iyad Madani said Monday.

The kingdom will also work with OPEC to “guarantee the availability of oil supplies now and in the future,” the minister said following the weekly Cabinet meeting, held in the seaport city of Jiddah.

The Saudi announcement comes just three days after the biggest single-day price leap ever, when oil surged more than $11 to surpass $139 per barrel.

Retail gas prices rose further above $4 Monday in the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer, following the unprecedented price rally.

The kingdom will work to ensure there will be no “unwarranted and unnatural oil price hikes that could affect international economies, especially those of developing countries,” said Madani.

“There is no justification for the current rise in prices,” he said.

Thomas Petrie, a vice chairman at Merrill Lynch and an energy markets expert, said he expects oil to be in a range of $120 to $150 a barrel between now and the fall, though he acknowledged trying to pigeonhole a price point is “a bit of a pointless exercise.”

“I’d be surprised if we don’t end the year having reached a point where we begin to see demand patterns changing, and we start to see prices come in some from that range, but not a lot.”

On Monday, light, sweet crude for July delivery fell $2.39 to $136.15 a barrel in volatile trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The world’s leading economies and largest oil consumers have urged oil producers to boost output, which has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day since 2005.

Energy experts say most producers have little ability to expand output. The exception is Saudi Arabia, which is producing about 9.4 million barrels a day and has the ability to increase production by about 2 million barrels a day, but has not done so.

“The Saudi Cabinet has instructed Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi to call for a meeting in the near future that will include representatives of oil-producing countries, consumers and companies that work in extracting, exporting and selling oil to look into the price hike, its causes and how to deal with it,” said Madani.

The current president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Chakib Khelil, has said that the cartel will make no new decision on production levels until its Sept. 9 meeting in Vienna. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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