- March: Feeling that she isn't getting an accurate picture from Iraq, Condoleezza Rice sends her NSC deputy, Frank Miller, to Baghdad for some on-the-ground information. Miller downplays his NSC credentials, not wanting to receive a lot of happy-talk puffery; he also deliberately decides against asking for a briefing from Paul Bremer, not just because of the risk of being soft-soaped, but because Bremer might well refuse to see him. Bremer considers himself above NSC oversight. Miller is struck by how much the CPA, ensconsced in the Green Zone, has become a hermit city, isolated from the rest of the country. Miller tells one CPA official of his plans to fly around Iraq to visit with US division commanders in charge of the troops on the ground. "Wow, I wish we could do that," the CPA official replies. Miller gets the sense that most of the CPA officials are doing little except marking time and waiting for the June turnover of authority.
- Miller is appalled at the conditions in Sadr City, Baghdad, a year after the overthrow of Hussein -- "screaming poverty," he thinks. There is no fresh water and few working sewers, and the yards are filled with trash and human waste. American soldiers are working as much as engineers and infantrymen, setting up water distribution points and improving some roads, but the only money for these ad hoc projects comes from the military's emergency funds, the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP). Miller notes that the CERP funds need to be greatly expanded, as these are the only expenditures that are having any viable effect on the populace.
- Miller is pleased that the Iraqis he encounters seem friendly enough, with little children running up, saying hello, and giving the thumbs-up sign as they run off. Miller does not realize that the thumbs-up sign is the Arab equivalent of the extended middle finger in American society.
- Division commanders around Iraq make the same complaints to Miller, reflected in the exasperated questions from one commander: "Why won't Baghdad [CPA] give us money to do this, and to do the reconstruction projects that need to be done?" Vehicles and communications equipment are in desperately short supply, and the training for the new Iraqi Civil Defense Corps is a bad joke. The Iraqi police are lazy, venal, and ineffective. The Multinational Division, made of a variety of international soldiery, is crippled by a mazy chain of command. "I've got 23 separate international units," the Polish commander of the MND tells Miller. "They have 23 separate rules of engagement. I pick up the phone. I tell the colonel in charge of the Spanish Brigade what to do. He picks up his phone, calls Madrid, and says, 'I've been told to do this. Is it okay?" In effect, the MND has no fighting capability. Violence is steadily escalating, to around 1,000 attacks a month. The soldiers do a good job of protecting Miller and one another, but, as Miller reflects, "We ain't winning any hearts and minds this way."
- Preparing to leave the country, Miller tries to identify some of the bottlenecks interfering with CPA functions. Probably the biggest one was the relationship between Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez, the ground commander of US troops -- Bremer and Sanchez do not speak. Bremer's focus is dealing with internal Iraqi politics and the reconstruction effort, while Sanchez is slated to deal with security and quelling violence. But Bremer keeps saying that the central problem is the lack of security, Sanchez's bailiwick. Miller and Sanchez have dinner, where Miller explains his thinking to Sanchez about Bremer and the conditions around the country. Sanchez demands of Miller's companion, Colonel Jeff Jones, "Prove to me that Iraq is the number one priority, because I don't see it from here."
- In his week in Iraq, Miller believes he has seen more of the country, and has a better sense of what is going on, than most of the CPA people who have been in Iraq for months.
- Upon his return, he briefs Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley. "There's a lot of urgency outside the Green Zone, but I did not find a sense of urgency inside the Green Zone," he says. "It was slow, it was unresponsive, it was ineffective. ...Bremer didn't delegate and he doesn't have time to do everything." He sums up: "Bureaucracy kills." He stresses the need for more CERP funding. The CPA staff is merely marking time, Miller says, waiting for the June turnover, "running out the clock." They keep deferring to the Iraqi Governing Council, which is itself slow to the point of stagnation in making decisions. He calls the CPA personnel tired, bitter, and defeatist. "We need to pick our top ten issues," he says, and insist that they be addressed satisfactorily before the turnover.
- He addresses a number of other issues. Iraqis are far more influenced by al-Jazeera than the CPA officials are acknowledging. Electricity is a major problem, not just because it is usually not available, but because Iraqis are used to it being provided free of charge. Sanchez and Bremer don't communicate, and Sanchez isn't communicating effectively with his division commanders. One of the biggest problems is that no one from the CPA ever leaves the Green Zone. The people in the regional offices are tremendously effective, but the central adminstrators are essentially worthless. De-Ba'athification is a nightmare; many good people with only tenuous Ba'ath connections are being shut out. Miller isn't sure whether it is the CPA or the de-Ba'athification office, run by Ahmad Chalabi's nephew, that is primarily responsible, but he knows that Chalabi is hoarding files from the old Hussein intelligence network, making it almost impossible to determine levels of involvement. And the 90-day contracts are pointless. In 90 days, the CPA will be irrelevant.
- Miller repeats his briefing for most of the deputies on the NSC, including State's Richard Armitage and the Joint Chiefs' Peter Pace. He discusses his findings with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, hoping that the information will make its way back to Cheney. He conducts a third briefing for a roomful of Pentagon officials, chaired by Paul Wolfowitz. There's not a person in here who will do a thing about what I have to say, Miller thinks. The problem is, as always, implementation.
- He gives a number of pressing issues to Rice, who says, "I will fix it." One thing she does get done is ordering Bremer to disburse more CERP funds.
- Miller's reconstituted Executive Steering Group comes up with an impossibly unwieldly list of 90 things that need to be done before the June transfer of power. Miller says that the list is useless and needs to be pared down to the ten most critical items. He finds working with the ESG maddening, largely because of the lack of cooperation from Defense. Douglas Feith sends a different person from his staff to each meeting, each one needing to be brought up to speed, then refuses to discuss anything with Miller because, as Feith says, he hasn't yet discussed whatever the topic is with Rumsfeld. Then Feith would retreat into Rumsfeldian inflexibility. (Miller considers Rumsfeld a bully, and even tells Rice this one time, but Rice refuses to discuss it. Miller is sure Rice has no intention to challenge Rumsfeld on anything.) Miller thinks he's never worked with a group less capable to advance their own interests. He focuses on the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Richard Myers. Why isn't Myers pounding the table and yelling, "Why aren't my soldiers being supported?" (Bob Woodward)
- March: Robert Blackwill, the NSC's coordinator for strategic planning, is put in charge of re-engaging the United Nations in Iraq by Condoleezza Rice. The UN has essentially disengaged from Iraq after the August truck bombing of its headquarters in Baghdad. Blackwill finds that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have no interest in working with the UN. "We'll get the UN in, and we'll lose control," warns Rumsfeld. Blackwill forges ahead anyway, securing the involvement of the well-respected Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister who had headed the UN mission in Afghanistan. Brahimi, a secular Sunni, is, in Blackwill's view, a world-class diplomat who could help with everything from funding to stability to elections. The initially reluctant Brahimi eventually agrees to help Blackwill, and the two journey to Iraq, living virtually cheek to jowl in Baghdad for three months.
- As the time for turnover to an Iraqi government approaches, Brahimi warns that the Sunni minority in Iraq must be more heavily involved. They had run the country under Hussein, and were used to their privileges. Allowing the majority Shi'ites to completely control the new Iraqi government will lead to a tremendous problem, Brahimi warns. Blackwill works to bring the Sunnis into the nascent Iraqi government. He tells one Sunni leader, "I want to reassure you that it's our intent that the Sunnis in this new Iraq have in every dimension a status and privileges consistent with their role and number in Iraqi society." "Mr. Ambassador," the Sunni replies, "you don't understand. We want to run Iraq." (Bob Woodward)
Fraud behind the pardoning of Abdul Qadeer Khan exposed
- March 1: Eminent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposes the fraud behind Pakistan's pardon of nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who confessed that he is responsible for providing critical nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. Hersh calls Khan's televised pardon by Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf a "make-believe performance," Khan has been known to be a source for nuclear technology to so-called "rogue" countries for at least two decades by American, Israeli, and European intelligence as well as by many journalists; no one informed of the situation believes that either Pakistan or the US were surprised by Khan's confession. "It is state propaganda," Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, says. "The deal is that Khan doesn't tell what he knows. Everybody is lying. The tragedy of this whole affair is that it doesn't serve anybody's needs." Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a member of the Pakistani senate, says, laughing, "America needed an offering to the gods —- blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., 'Bend over for a spanking.'" A Bush administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues said in February, "One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels." The intelligence officer went on, "We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It's the second generation now."
- Publicly the Bush administration accepts the confession and pardon at face value. According to past and present military and intelligence officials, however, Washington's support for the pardon of Khan was predicated on what Musharraf has agreed to do next: look the other way as the US hunts for Osama bin Laden in a tribal area of northwest Pakistan dominated by the forbidding Hindu Kush mountain range, where he is believed to be operating. American commanders have been eager for permission to conduct major sweeps in the Hindu Kush for some time, and Musharraf has repeatedly refused them. Now, with Musharraf's agreement, the administration has authorized a major spring offensive that will involve the movement of thousands of American troops. Musharraf has proffered other help as well. A former senior intelligence official notes, "Musharraf told us, 'We've got guys inside. The people who provide fresh fruits and vegetables and herd the goats'" for bin Laden and his al-Qaeda followers. "It's a quid pro quo: we're going to get our troops inside Pakistan in return for not forcing Musharraf to deal with Khan." Musharraf is taking a huge political gamble in allowing US forces in such numbers to operate in Pakistan; the populace is likely to view that extremely poorly.
- One of Musharraf's most vocal critics inside Pakistan is retired Army Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, a fundamentalist Muslim who directed the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI from 1987 to 1989, at the height of the Afghan war with the Soviets. If American troops start operating from Pakistan, there will be "a rupture in the relationship," Gul says. "Americans think others are slaves to them." Referring to the furor over A. Q. Khan, he adds, "We may be in a jam, but we are a very honorable nation. We will not allow the American troops to come here. This will be the breaking point." If Musharraf has made an agreement about letting American troops operate in Pakistan, Gul says, "he's lying to you." Former Pakistani ministry official Husain Haqqani says, "Much of this has been known for decades to the American intelligence community. Sometimes you know things and don't want to do anything about it. Americans need to know that your government is not only downplaying this but covering it up. You go to bed with our ISI. They know how to suck up to you. You let us get away with everything. Why can't you be more honest? There's no harm in telling us the truth —- 'Look, you're an ally but a very disturbing ally.' You have to nip some of these things in the bud." The former senior American intelligence official was equally blunt, saying, "Khan was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world and he's pardoned —- with not a squeak from the White House."
- Robert Gallucci, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is now dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, calls A. Q. Khan "the Johnny Appleseed" of the nuclear-arms race. Gallucci, a consultant to the C.I.A. on proliferation issues, says, "Bad as it is with Iran, North Korea, and Libya having nuclear-weapons material, the worst part is that they could transfer it to a non-state group. That's the biggest concern, and the scariest thing about all this —- that Pakistan could work with the worst terrorist groups on earth to build nuclear weapons. There's nothing more important than stopping terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons. The most dangerous country for the United States now is Pakistan, and second is Iran." Gallucci concludes, "We haven't been this vulnerable since the British burned Washington in 1814." (New Yorker)
- March 1: A raft of lawmakers and former politicians, led by former prime minister John Major, are calling on the Blair administration to publish the attorney general's full legal advice on the Iraq war. Major says that the government's refusal to publish is damaging: "I think the air does need clearing. This is poisoning the whole political atmosphere...domestically -- internationally as well." Major's demand is backed by an international law expert, Sir Franklin Berman, a former chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who also called on the government to disclose its full reasons for going to war. "For a decision to go to war, especially when the government claim to be acting on behalf of the international community, they ought to explain in the necessary detail the basis on which they were acting." Some editorialists and political observers feel that based on the evidence that Britain participated in an illegal war, and that Blair hid said evidence, that Blair could eventually face a prison sentence for his actions. The Daily Mail's John Laughland writes, "If it turns out that the Iraq war was illegal, then Mr Blair could go to prison. In 2000, the United Kingdom ratified the Rome Treaty which created the international criminal court. In the run-up to the conflict, therefore, the government was well aware that an illegal war could spark a prosecution against senior ministers.... The case against the British government over Iraq is strong.... There was no United Nations authorisation for the attack -- whatever Mr Blair and Geoff Hoon [the defense secretary] try to claim now, resolution 1441 was not a mandate for war -- and there was no claim that a war was necessary to combat an alleged humanitarian crisis, as in Kosovo...." (Guardian, Guardian)
Haitian president flees, alleging that US forces him out of office; evidence of Bush destabilization of Aristide since 2000 surfaces
- March 1: Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is forced to flee Haiti as US Marines, dispatched by President Bush, and French troops are slated to arrive in the war-torn country to restore order. "The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," says Bush. "This is the beginning of a new chapter. I would urge the people of Haiti to reject violence, to give this break from the past a chance to work. And the United States is prepared to help." Aristide's departure was sparked by his late-night call to the US ambassador; that morning he was forced to board a Pentagon-dispatched 757 and taken to the Central African Republic. Aristide was denied exile in South Africa, his preference, because that country's president, Thabo Mbeki, did not want to provoke a political controversy at home, according to a senior State Department official. The White House reacted strongly to the report of an attack on Friday on a Haitian Coast Guard installation by a pro-Aristide mob. After a firefight at the Killick base, five miles from the main port, the Haitian Coast Guard workers were forced to take to boats and flee the site, says the State Department official. That incident persuaded White House officials that Aristide and his armed loyalists sought to shut down the process by which refugees were being intercepted by the United States Coast Guard and returned home. The White House issued a statement rejecting Aristide's intention to remain in power, insisting that Haiti's crisis "is largely of Mr. Aristide's making," prompting Aristide's departure. According to the US ambassador, James Foley, Aristide's decision to leave was his own, as was his choice of destination. The Bush administration has long opposed Aristide, and is widely suspected of assisting the Haitian rebels in ousting Aristide. Supreme Court justice Boniface Alexandre takes over the government. Rebel leader Guy Phillippe says he will support Alexandre. (China Daily, New York Times/Unknown News)
- March 1: Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to leave his office at gunpoint by US troops, say eyewitnesses. "The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," says one witness. The Americans forced him out with weapons. It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards. [Aristide] was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans." (Agence France-Presse/News.com Australia)
- March 1: Jean-Bertrand Aristide says in a telephone interview that he was "forced to leave" Haiti by US military forces. Aristide was put in contact with The Associated Press by the Rev. Jesse Jackson following a news conference, where the civil rights leader called on Congress to investigate Aristide's ouster. When asked if he left Haiti on his own, Aristide quickly answered: "No. I was forced to leave. They were telling me that if I don't leave they would start shooting, and be killing in a matter of time," Aristide says during the brief interview via speaker phone. It was unclear whether Aristide meant that rebels or US agents would begin shooting. When asked who the agents were, he responded: "White American, white military. They came at night. ...There were too many. I couldn't count them." Aristide told reporters that he signed documents relinquishing power out of fear that violence would erupt in Haiti if he didn't comply with the demands of "American security agents." US authorities have dismissed Aristide's claims as unfounded; Vice President Cheney says that Aristide simply "wore out his welcome" in Haiti and left voluntarily. Aristide says he was in his palace in Port-au-Prince when the military force arrived. He said he thought he was being taken to the Caribbean island of Antigua, but instead he has been exiled to the Central African Republic. Aristide described the agents as "good, warm, nice," but added that he had no rights during his 20-hour flight to Africa. Jackson says Congress should investigate whether the United States, specifically the CIA, had a role in the rebellion that led to Aristide's exile. Jackson encouraged reporters to question where the rebels in Haiti got their guns and uniforms. "Why would we immediately support an armed overthrow and not support a constitutionally elected government?" Jackson asks. Aristide, who fled Haiti under pressure from the rebels, his political opponents, the United States and France, arrived today in the Central African Republic. The White House, Pentagon and State Department have denied allegations that Aristide was kidnapped by US forces eager for him to resign. (AP/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Washington Times)
- March 1: US Representative Maxine Waters says she has been told by Haitian president Aristide that he was forced out of office by US Marines, and that he was forced to fly to the Central African Republic, where he is being held in something called the "Palace of the Renaissance." Waters says, "It's like in jail," according to Aristide. Waters says, "He said that he was kidnapped; he said that he was forced to leave Haiti. He said that the American embassy sent the diplomats; he referred to them as, to his home where they was lead by Mr. Moreno. And I believe that Mr. Moreno is a deputy chief of staff at the embassy in Haiti and other diplomats, and they ordered him to leave. They said you must go NOW. He said that they said that Guy Phillipe and US Marines were coming to Port Au Prince; he will be killed, many Haitians will be killed, that they would not stop until they did what they wanted to do. He was there with his wife Mildred and his brother-in-law and two of his security people, and somebody from the Steel Foundation, and they're all, there's five of them that are there. They took them where-- they did stop in Antigua then they stopped at a military base, then they were in the air for hours and then they arrived at this place and they were met by five ministers of government. It's a Francophone country, they speak French. And they were then taken to this place called the Palace of the Renaissance where they are being held and they are surrounded by military people. They are not free to do whatever they want to do. Then the phone clicked off after we had talked for about five -- we talked maybe fifteen minutes and then the phone clicked off. ...But one thing that was very clear and he said it over and over again, that he was kidnapped, that the coup was completed by the Americans that they forced him out. They had also disabled his American security force that he had around him for months now; they did not allow them to extend their numbers. To begin with they wanted them to bring in more people to provide security they prevented them from doing that and then they finally forced them out of the country. So that's where his is and I said to him that I would do everything I could to get the word out. ...I heard it directly from him, I heard it directly from his wife that they were kidnapped, they were forced to leave, they did not want to leave, their lives were threatened and the lives of many Haitians were threatened. And I said that we would be in touch with the State Department, with the President today and if at all possible we would try to get to him."
- Waters continues, "...I think the people in this country should be outraged that our government led a coup de'tat against a democratically elected President. They should call, write. Fax with their outrage, not only to the State Dept. but to all of their elected officials and to the press. We have to keep the information flying in the air so people will get it and understand what is taking place. And for those of us who are elected officials we must not only get to the President, we must demand that he is returned to claim his presidency if that is what he wants. If you can recall what happened in Venezuela when Mr. Chavez was...they tried to force him out and they had someone step into the presidency and he had not resigned his presidency and he got it back. I did not have that conversation with President Aristide but we must meet with him and we must talk with him and be prepared to protect him." White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the claim "complete nonsense" and says, "It was Mr. Aristide's decision to resign." Secretary of State Colin Powell also vehemently denied the charges, calling them "absolutely baseless, absurd." Randall Robinson, former head of TransAfrica and a longtime Aristide friend, also spoke with Aristide and Aristide's wife and relayed a similar account. He said Aristide was "fairly impassioned" and "said he did not resign. ...He said he was taken at gunpoint," Robinson says. "Now I don't know that hands were laid on him. I think when you have big guns, the hands aren't necessary, you get the point." (Democracy Now, San Jose Mercury News)
- March 1: The Bush administration blocked a last-minute attempt by Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to bolster his bodyguards, mostly former U.S. Special Forces members, fearing he wanted them to organize and lead a counterattack against the rebels who threatened his presidency, according to sources close to Aristide. US officials also forced a small group of extra bodyguards from the San Francisco-based Steele Foundation to delay their flight from the United States to Haiti, ensuring that they would arrive too late to help Aristide. The Steele Foundation, which despite its name is a private executive-protection firm, has long held the contract, approved by the U.S. State Department, to provide Aristide's personal security detail. Most of them are veterans of the Special Forces and the State Department's VIP protection service. Aristide's Steele guard rose from about 10 to about 60 in 2000 after an apparent coup attempt the previous December, but it had dropped to around 20 to 25 as of recent weeks. After the Haitian government had recently contacted Steele to provide a large group of extra bodyguards, US Embassy officials in the Haitian capital contacted Steele representatives and warned them off. Reports floating around the capital in recent weeks had Aristide asking Steele to help professionalize his security forces. Other reports indicated he wanted them to organize and command a counterattack against the rebels. Haiti's National Police, made up of barely 4,000, virtually evaporated in the face of a rebel force estimated at a few hundred since the uprising against the president began February 5. Aristide abolished the army in 1995. "The embassy took it as if the Steele guys were going to go after these guys," says one source, who would not confirm whether Aristide had indeed intended to have the new bodyguards prepare his forces for a counterattack. The smaller group of bodyguards that was scheduled to join Aristide "was just additional protection, not a number large enough to go after these guys," the source adds. Most of the Steele Foundation's contracts to protect foreign dignitaries, including its contract to provide security for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, must be approved by the US government.
- The Aristide contract also called for a "weapons package" for the guards worth just under $1 million, one of the officials said at the time. Aristide's reliance on foreign bodyguards reflected the political crisis facing the controversial president, toppled in a military coup in 1991, restored after a US invasion in 1994 and then reelected in 2000. "The government of Haiti, like any government after a violent incident such as happened, would be interested in improving security," says a spokesman for Steele. On December 17, 2001, two dozen heavily armed men had attacked the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, killing two policemen and two passersby. The apparent coup attempt allegedly was led by Guy Philippe, a former police commissioner in northern Haiti. Aristide was not in the palace at the time. Philippe escaped into exile in the neighboring Dominican Republic, but returned last month at the head of the Haitian Liberation Front, a rebel group of some 50 to 60 former soldiers who captured Haiti's second-largest city, Cap Haitien, in late February. (Miami Herald)
- March 1: The US Congressional Black Caucus vows to get to the bottom of allegations that the United States engineered a coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, says she plans to raise the issue at the next meeting of the House International Relations Committee. Representative Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who spoke to Aristide earlier from the Central African Republic where he landed, says the Haitian president told him he signed a resignation dictated to him over the phone from the US Embassy which told him "they could no longer be responsible for his safety." Rangel says, "Unlike the reports coming out of the State Department, Aristide feels that it was a coup. That he felt he was kidnapped. That he was told by United States authority that they could no longer protect his life. That for 20 hours, he was placed on a plane and taken to an unknown country." In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld both deny the kidnapping allegations. "He was not kidnapped. We did not force him on the airplane. He went on the plane willingly," says Powell. But many members of the Black Caucus delegation were visibly angered at Aristide's alleged treatment. Representaive Major Owens, another New York Democrat, says: "I'm very concerned that this was a terrorism takeover." Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings, who chairs the Black Caucus, said the 43 members will not allow the issue to die. "As far as what has happened to president Aristide, we, members of Congress, will not stand around and watch a democracy being taken apart by our own country," he says. "That concerns us greatly. ...We are not only the conscience of the Congress, we consider ourselves the conscience of the country, and we will get to the bottom of this," Cummings vows. Represtative Donald Payne, a New Jersey Democrat, says that if there was a coup, it would call into question the legitimacy of the government that takes over in Haiti. Referring to the United Nations, he says, "It would be very difficult and irresponsible for a responsible body and world organization to deal with an illegal government taking over by force." Rangel says he was concerned that Aristide's claim to have been kidnapped could fan violence on the streets in Haiti and put US soldiers in danger. "That's why the question of resignation is so important," he said. " I would suggest this: the most important thing is to let Aristide speak. The man on Thursday and Friday was saying he would die in the palace in order to protect the constitution of Haiti." Rangel says that statements from Powell and other US officials suggesting to Aristide that he step down indicated that President George W. Bush's administration was on the side of "the opposition and the coup people." "You know, Secretary Powell says, 'We recognize he was elected, we recognize constitutional government, we recognize democracy, but he was a bad guy,'" Rangel observes. "You know, I don't even say that about Bush." (AP/Miami Herald)
- March 1: Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, details the three-year deliberate destabilization of the Aristide regime in Haiti by the Bush administration. After Aristide rose to power in the 1980s preaching liberation from the ruthless, but US-friendly, Duvalier regime, US conservatives tarred Aristide as "the next Fidel Castro" and began plotting his downfall. Sachs writes, "They floated stories that Aristide was mentally deranged. Conservative disdain multiplied several-fold when then-president Bill Clinton took up Aristide's cause after he was blocked from electoral victory in 1991 by a military coup. Clinton put Aristide into power in 1994, and conservatives mocked Clinton for wasting America's efforts on 'nation building' in Haiti. ...Attacks on Aristide began as soon as the Bush administration assumed office. ...Haiti was clearly in a desperate condition: the most impoverished country in the Western Hemisphere, with a standard of living comparable to sub-Saharan Africa despite being only a few hours by air from Miami. Life expectancy was 52 years. Children were chronically hungry. Of every 1,000 children born, more than 100 died before their fifth birthday. An AIDS epidemic, the worst in the Caribbean, was running unchecked. The health system had collapsed. Fearing unrest, tourists and foreign investors were staying away, so there were no jobs to be had. But Aristide was enormously popular in early 2001. Hopes were high that he would deliver progress against the extraordinary poverty." After the Bush administration took office, they began pressuring the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Organization of American States to deny Haiti funds and assistance until Aristide made accomodations with the US-backed rebel movement.
- Sachs writes, "The more one sniffed around Washington the less America's position made sense. People in positions of responsibility in international agencies simply shrugged and mumbled that they couldn't do more to help Haiti in view of the Bush veto on aid. Moreover, by saying that aid would be frozen until Aristide and the political opposition reached an agreement, the Bush administration provided Haiti's un-elected opposition with an open-ended veto. Aristide's foes merely had to refuse to bargain in order to plunge Haiti into chaos. That chaos has now come. It is sad to hear rampaging students on BBC and CNN saying that Aristide 'lied' because he didn't improve the country's social conditions. Yes, Haiti's economic collapse is fueling rioting and deaths, but the lies were not Aristide's. The lies came from Washington. Even now, Aristide says that he will share power with the opposition, but the opposition says no. Aristide's opponents know that US right-wingers will stand with them to bring them violently to power. As long as that remains true, Haiti's agony will continue." (Taipei Times)
- March 1: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calls President Bush an "a**hole" on Sunday for meddling, and vowed never to quit office like his Haitian counterpart as troops battled with opposition protesters demanding a recall referendum against him. Chavez, who often says the US is backing opposition efforts to topple his leftist government, accuses Bush of heeding advice from "imperialist" aides to support a brief 2002 coup against him. "He was an asshole to believe them," Chavez tells a rally of supporters in Caracas. Chavez is fighting a sometimes-violent movement to recall him from office. (Reuters/CommonDreams)
- March 1: Senator Edward Kennedy gives a powerful speech on the future of progressive politics that goes almost completely unreported by the US media. "One by one," Kennedy says, "issue by issue, program by program, the Republican Right has methodically turned away from policies which brought about a century of progress for working Americans. They want to build the 21st century economy on 19th century economic values, as if the last 100 years had not occurred. For them the law of the jungle is the best economic policy for America -- not equal opportunity, not fairness, not the American dream. Their ideas will inevitably result in a lesser America, and have already meant a growing gulf between rich and poor." "Today's Republicans are very different from those who led their party in earlier years," he continues. "The Republican Party is now controlled by ideological extremists who reject any meaningful role for government in expanding economic opportunity or preventing the abuses of private economic power. Some of them even openly proclaim that their goal is to 'starve the beast' -- cut taxes so low that government will not have the resources to play a meaningful role in the economy. These latter day Social Darwinians clearly believe those who assemble great concentrations of wealth should be unfettered and permitted to dominate the nation's economic life, as much as they did in the late 19th century." He warns, "Progressives cannot continue to play defense in the battle of ideas. The stakes are too high. Nor can we allow ourselves to be cast as mere defenders of the status quo. We must make the debate between our vision of the future versus theirs. In reality, it is the Republican Right which is wedded to the ideas of the distant past, 19th century ideas which America rejected in the early years of the last century. We should portray them for what they are, Neanderthal merchants of outmoded ideas recycled from long ago." About taxes, Kennedy notes, "Republicans love to quote President Kennedy on cutting taxes, but as I remind them, the top tax bracket on his Inaugural Day was 91 percent." Kennedy also comes out in support of greater and wiser use of the trillions of dollars in pension funds: "At least a small portion of the trillions could be invested in public projects for public investment. If just five percent of the nation's pension funds were invested, at competitive rates, directly in job-creating and economy-building activities, more than $300 billion in assets could be made available, in a manner consistent with both the security and growth of the pension funds." (City University of New York)
- March 1: British lawyers expect a "flood" of lawsuits from servicemen claiming compensation for their injuries and suffering in Iraq. Such a claim would require the courts to decide whether the war was lawful and force disclosure of the attorney general's full advice, says Jeremy Carver, a prominent international lawyer. Battlefield immunity, which protects the government from claims for soldiers' injuries or death during military operations, might not be effective in the case of an unlawful war, Carver says. Carver, who represents governments and has helped them draft alternative UN resolutions, said he had initially formed no view on the war's legality. "I didn't know then whether there was any sufficient basis on which to say the war was lawful. From everything we have learned since then, it has become obvious there was no valid basis for the war and therefore the war was illegal." (Guardian)
- March 1: A 17-year old Iraqi soldier and former high school football star is crippled from receiving a barrage of vaccines, including anthrax and flu shots. "They gave us, I'd say, seven shots...at one time," says Tyran Duncan. First he got a rash, then flu symptoms. "It got to where I couldn't walk at all," he says. "I couldn't even hold my glass up with both hands to take a drink out of it. Basically they accused me of faking it." But Duncan wasn't faking, reports CBS. Within days, he was paralyzed, on a respirator and certain he'd die, until his grandmother who raised him came to help. "There was nothing wrong with him when they got him," says Duncan's grandmother Faye Harville. "It had to be the vaccines. I'll never see it another way." Rehabilitation video chronicles his difficult fight back. At one point last January, he weighed 96 pounds. Months after his paralysis hit, he was finally back at home, but he still couldn't feed himself or put on his shoes. Today, he remains unsteady, and muscle and joint pain are constant companions. Duncan's paralysis was diagnosed as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which is clearly listed under "adverse reactions" on the anthrax vaccine label. But soldiers don't get to see that vaccine label when they get their shots. And the Pentagon publicly claims there are no long-term adverse events from the anthrax vaccine. So soldiers may end up misdiagnosed, then discharged with serious illnesses. Incredibly, Duncan has been listed as "active duty" all this time, meaning the Army has yet to process his medical case or decide on compensation. "Looking back on what I used to be and what I am now, it's heartbreaking," says Duncan. (CBS)
- March 1: Prominent conservative Patrick Buchanan writes in the American Spectator, "[Neoconservatives] want Bush to expand the war, broaden the theater of operations, multiply our enemies, and ignore our allies. If Bush should adopt this strategy, it would be America and Israel against the Arab and Islamic world with Europe neutral and almost all of Asia rooting for our humiliation." (Intervention Magazine)
- March 1: A former professor of George W. Bush, Yoshi Tsurumi, has this to say about his former student: "...George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that 'people are poor because they are lazy.' He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to 'free market competition.' To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was 'socialism.'" (Glocum Platform/Intervention Magazine)
- March 2: The Bush administration refused to act on numerous opportunities to kill or capture al-Qaeda's #2 leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, who is responsible for the deaths of over 700 Iraqi civilians and one of the architects of al-Qaeda's terror strategies. MSNBC writes, "In June 2002, US officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaeda had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to US government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council. 'Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn't do it,' said Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution. Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq. 'People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists,' according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey. In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq. The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it. Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam. The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late —- Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. 'Here's a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we're suffering as a result inside Iraq,' Cressey added. And despite the Bush administration's tough talk about hitting the terrorists before they strike, Zarqawi's killing streak continues today." (MSNBC)
- March 2: The Pentagon says that up to 2,000 US Marines could be deployed in Haiti in the following days to assist in the transition from the democratically elected Aristide government to a new regime. The Marines are expected to be in Haiti for around three months. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says the Marines will be part of an international peacekeeping force numbering around 5,000 total troops. "We are the lead element of the interim force and will be the lead...until circumstances are as such that we can pass the lead to another country," Rumsfeld says. (Stars and Stripes)
- March 2: Author Peter Hallward analyzes the reasons behind the overthrow of Haitian president Aristide, who won re-election in 2000 with over 90% of the popular vote. Hallward writes, "He was elected by people who approved his courageous dissolution, in 1995, of the armed forces that had long terrorised Haiti and had overthrown his first administration. He was elected by people who supported his tentative efforts, made with virtually no resources or revenue, to invest in education and health. He was elected by people who shared his determination, in the face of crippling US opposition, to improve the conditions of the most poorly paid workers in the western hemisphere.
Aristide was forced from office on Sunday by people who have little in common except their opposition to his progressive policies and their refusal of the democratic process. With the enthusiastic backing of Haiti's former colonial master ['Baby Doc' Duvalier], a leader elected with overwhelming popular support has been driven from office by a loose association of convicted human rights abusers, seditious former army officers and pro-American business leaders."
- He continues, "It's obvious that Aristide's expulsion offered [French president] Jacques Chirac a long-awaited chance to restore relations with an American administration he dared to oppose over the attack on Iraq. It's even more obvious that the characterisation of Aristide as yet another crazed idealist corrupted by absolute power sits perfectly with the political vision championed by George Bush, and that the Haitian leader's downfall should open the door to a yet more ruthless exploitation of Latin American labor. If you've been reading the mainstream press over the past few weeks, you'll know that this peculiar version of events has been carefully prepared by repeated accusations that Aristide rigged fraudulent elections in 2000; unleashed violent militias against his political opponents; and brought Haiti's economy to the point of collapse and its people to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe. But look a little harder at those elections. An exhaustive and convincing report by the International Coalition of Independent Observers concluded that 'fair and peaceful elections were held' in 2000, and by the standard of the presidential elections held in the US that same year they were positively exemplary. ...One of the reasons why Aristide has been consistently vilified in the press is that the Reuters and AP wire services, on which most coverage depends, rely on local media, which are all owned by Aristide's opponents. Another, more important, reason for the vilification is that Aristide never learned to pander unreservedly to foreign commercial interests. He reluctantly accepted a series of severe IMF structural adjustment plans, to the dismay of the working poor, but he refused to acquiesce in the indiscriminate privatisation of state resources, and stuck to his guns over wages, education and health. What happened in Haiti is not that a leader who was once reasonable went mad with power; the truth is that a broadly consistent Aristide was never quite prepared to abandon all his principles. Worst of all, he remained indelibly associated with what's left of a genuine popular movement for political and economic empowerment. For this reason alone, it was essential that he not only be forced from office but utterly discredited in the eyes of his people and the world. As Noam Chomsky has said, the 'threat of a good example' solicits measures of retaliation that bear no relation to the strategic or economic importance of the country in question. This is why the leaders of the world have joined together to crush a democracy in the name of democracy." (Guardian)
Blair facing war crimes charges in international court?