Albion Monitor

Issue 160

AUGUST 2007

About...

THE SAD JOURNEY OF ALBERTO GONZALES

Alberto Gonzales went down dreaming.
While announcing his resignation earlier this week, Alberto Gonzales deployed one of his most powerful and romantic rhetorical weapons. "I often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country in the world and that I have lived the American dream," he stated. More than any public official in recent memory, the often smiley and sometimes smirking Gonzales -- and his supporters -- consistently framed his story as a brown embodiment of the American dream.
Gonzales' compelling personal story has nothing to do with whether or not he expanded the American dream (he didn't). It has everything to do with manipulating his story while he did the dirty work of defending powerful interests against the death of the dream. Rather than look at his story through the looking glass of political and media spin, it is best to view the story from the vantage point of its authors: the rich and powerful. For them, Alberto Gonzales did his job

Charities, Aid Groups Balk at Bush Terror Vetting Scheme

Plan supposed to block federal aid dollars to developing countries from terrorists' hands

Abu Ghraib Trials End, no Officers Convicted

Most of the blame to fall on 11 low-ranking soldiers

Bush Plays the Mushroom Bomb Card in Iran Speeches

Iran "threaten the security of nations everywhere," brings "shadow of a nuclear holocaust"

Pentagon Strains to Blame Iran for Increased Shiite Attacks in Iraq

Actually the result of more ops against al-Sadr's Mahdi Army

White House Demanding Iran Restrain Shiite Groups in Iraq

Ambassador Crocker says U.S. holding Iran responsible for Shiite militia's attacks in Iraq

Israel Warned Bush Not to Invade Iraq

"The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy -- Iran is the enemy"

Iraq War Predicted to Cost Another $500 Billion...In Best Case Scenario

Now over 10% of all appropriated funds

Iraq is Like Pre-Withdrawl Vietnam and Postwar Japan, Bush Tells Vets

Said earlier this year Iraq was like Korea

Russia, Canada, U.S. Race to Carve Up the Melting North

Never mind the Native communities living there

LEGACY OF ASHES: THE HISTORY OF THE CIA

PHOTO: Former CIA Directors George H.W. Bush and Robert Gates, now Secretary of Defense

The secret prison was set up on a secure U.S. Naval base outside the U.S. and so beyond the slightest recourse to legal oversight. It was there that the CIA clandestinely brought its "suspects" to be interrogated, abused, and tortured.
That description might indeed sound like Guantanamo 2002, but think again. According to New York Times reporter Tim Weiner's new history of the Central Intelligence Agency, Legacy of Ashes -- a remarkable treasure trove of grim and startling information you hadn't known before -- this actually happened first in the Panama Canal Zone in the early 1950s. It was there, as well as at two secret prisons located in Germany and Japan, the defeated Axis powers (and not, in those days, in Thailand or Rumania), that the CIA brought questionable double agents for "secret experiments" in harsh interrogation, "using techniques on the edge of torture, drug-induced mind control, and brainwashing." This was but a small part of "Project Artichoke," a 15-year, multi-billion dollar "search by the CIA for ways to control the human mind."
No book in recent memory has done such a superb job of illuminating the roiling, disastrous, thoroughly destructive path through history of America's top covert-operations agency over the last six decades, what Chalmers Johnson has often called "the president's private army." On first arrival at the Agency's "campus" in Langley, Virginia, Johnson reminds us, CIA Director James Schlesinger, in the typically highhanded fashion of CIA heads, immediately announced, "I am here to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon"

Texas Companies Urging Mexicans to Cross Border and Sell Blood

Chartered buses run between Mexico and blood collection centers in several Texas cities

Extreme Sweatshop Conditions in Guatemala's Maquiladora Textile Factories

Most owned by South Korean investors

Mexico City Child Sex Industry Flourishing

95% of Mexico City's 13,000 street children reportedly molested at least once

Stranded Migrants Wait for Trains That Will Never Come

"Train of death" used by Central Americans heading towards U.S. border stops running

Reckless Charges of Illegal Immigrant Crime Wave Follow Newark Slayings

Despite plunge in crime rates of cities with largest illegal immigrant populations

World's Tallest Skyscraper Being Built by Slaves

Workers on Burj Dubai tower at mercy of UAE government

Turkey Elects Ex-Islamist President

Military brass shuns swearing-in ceremony

Afghanistan Produces Another Record-Setting Opium Crop

"No other country in the world has ever produced narcotics on such a deadly scale"

Obama: U.S. Must Refocus Terror Fight on Afghanistan

Charges Bush " is fighting the war the terrorists want us to fight"

Murder of Journalist Won't Stop the Black Press

GRAPHIC: Pacific News Service

Despite the murder of Chauncey Bailey, the African-American press must continue to tell the stories that need to be told

Black on Black Murder and the Stigma of Snitching

Lack of witnesses willing to testify leads spiral of violence in poor black neighborhoods

Murdoch Takeover of Dow Jones Shocks Media Watchers

Wall St. Journal will be used to launch Fox Business Network run by by Fox News boss Roger Ailes

THE WAR IN IRAQ

Grim GAO Report on Iraq Belies Bush Optimism

Finds Iraq has met only three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for progress

Iraqis Flee Baghdad District as Gunmen Impose Sharia Law

Demands of Christian families that they convert to Islam or pay huge taxes

Iraqi Misery Grows as U.S. Forces Chase Al-Qaeda Phantoms

Operation Lightning Hammer goes after the fighters that Operation Arrowhead Ripper displaced

Up to 500 Feared Dead in Worst Attack of Iraq War

Civilians have been bringing in body parts from the streets

Iraqi Locals, Not U.S. Forces, Credited for Anbar "Turnaround"

But expected to be used to justify continued U.S. occupation

Baqouba Caught Between the U.S. Forces and Al-Qaeda

Operation Arrowhead Ripper made conditions worse for residents who remained after rebels had fled city

Water of Iraq's Great Rivers no Longer Safe

Illnesses due to water unfit for human consumption now filling hospitals

A Modest Iraq Proposal: Gerrymandering

A loose confederation of Iraqi mini-states -- with a central government that has clearly delineated, but limited power -- could work

Maliki's Ties to Iran Undermining Iraq Government

Entire Sunni bloc in parliament refuses to deal with Maliki

Shiite Militia Takes Over Diyala Province Police Force

Baqouba residents setting up roadblocks to keep police out of neighborhoods

Baghdad's Funeral Industry Booming

Coffinmaker business up 20x since U.S. invasion

Maliki's Troubles Mount as Iraq's Army Chief of Staff Resigns

Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political bloc also walks out of parliament

POLITICS AS USUAL

Gonzales Follows Rove out the Door

Bush family consiglieri resigns, gives no reason

House Investigating Cheney Role in Fish Kill

Former Interior Dept official says VP pressured agency to ignore endangered species, tribal water rights

Hillary in the Right's Crosshairs

"Hillary hunting" becomes Republican Party's crusade

The Jaundiced Rove of Texas

Getting out of Dodge just a few hoofbeats ahead of the sheriff's posse

COOPERATION ESSENTIAL FOR STABILITY IN IRAQ

It's almost comical how many times Muqtada, after provoking a reaction from U.S. forces, has gone to into hiding, and been declared irrelevant by wishful thinkers, only to return later, with his organization intact, drawing bigger crowds than before.
Far from being an Iranian instrument, among Iraqi Shiite leaders, Muqtada al-Sadr is probably the least susceptible to Iranian influence. He has fashioned a populist-Shiite political platform that has deep resonance among Iraq's long-oppressed Shiite underclass, whose votes helped install a bloc of his loyalists in the Iraqi Parliament, and put control of the Health and Transportation ministries in his hands.
Given his popular support and nationalist credibility, the cooperation of Muqtada al-Sadr is essential for stability in Iraq. One possible way to bring about Muqtada's cooperation is for the United States to offer him the one thing that he seems to want from us: the U.S. out