The Third Reich Syndrome: George Will and the Collapse of Historical Knowledge
By Dr. Werther, CounterPunch, January 2, 2003
To paraphrase Aldous Huxley, "the only thing men learn from history is to endlessly invoke Adolf Hitler." Although this pseudo-historical bugaboo had its roots in the cold war, the gratuitous invocation of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich has become epidemic over the past dozen years among the foreign policy elite and their hangers-on as an all-purpose justification for whatever foreign policy the elite wants to execute. Beginning in 1989, the U.S. government justified its invasion of Panama and arrest of former CIA hirling Manuel Noriega with the excuse that he was like Hitler. On the eve of Desert Storm, President George H.W. Bush decried erstwhile ally Saddam Hussein as "worse than Hitler." With a change in administrations, the practice continued, this time to justify the overthrow of a ludicrously picayune rogue: to the Clinton administration, none other than Haiti's Raoul Cedras acquired the evil attributes of the long-dead Beast of Berlin.

The verge of explosion
By Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, 2 - 8 January 2003
Arab reactions to American Middle East policy may jeopardise Western interests in the region. -- The end of 2002 brought with it a complex set of developments. Throughout the year Israel continued its aggression against Palestinians, expanding the scale of its murder and terrorism and discounting the peace initiative presented during the Arab summit held in Beirut in March.  The Israeli army responded to that initiative with the reoccupation of most of the territories from which it had withdrawn; they embarked on acts of random killing in Jenin and Nablus and, had it not been for the American veto, their war crimes and crimes against humanity would not have gone quite so unnoticed. Indeed civilian and military leaders would have been tried in courts of international law for such atrocities, the intervention on the part of the international community conducted according to the principles conceived of and implemented to deal with the situations in Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor.

A Capitalist War?
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Some people dispute the claim that the US attack on Iraq is motivated – at least in part – by the desire for Iraq’s oil. What can we say about them? They may be hopelessly naοve about the public sector in general. Some of the same people who are pleased to finger greed and avarice as the root cause of all accounting problems on Wall Street are loath to consider that similar impulses might inspire politicians and bureaucrats as well. It could also be that those who deny an oil connection aren’t reading the newspapers. After all, it was the New York Times that carried no less than two large articles on Iraq’s oil resources in its prominent "Week in Review" section (November 3), one of which contained a map of reserves. The reporter noted: "112 billion barrels of proven reserves is also something nobody can overlook.… Iraq’s ‘ability to generate oil’ is always somewhere on the table, even if not in so many words."

Uranium Wars
The Pentagon Steps Up its Use of Radioactive Munitions
By Marc W. Heroldm Dissident Voice, December 30, 2002
Ever since the first Gulf War the U.S. military has increasingly used radioactive Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions. Against Iraq in 1991 they proved very effective at penetrating enemy armor (tanks). More recently in the Afghan campaign they were used extensively for destroying underground facilities and caves. The following table summarizes estimated usage of radioactive DU in three of America's recent wars. All these weapons will be almost certainly be heavily used should Gulf War II take place. DU burns intensely and is very hard. DU is also much cheaper than the substitute metal, tungsten. In effect, the U.S. military is trading off lower costs for increased health hazards. The health dangers of using DU-munitions have now been widely recognized, hotly debated and reported upon and need not be repeated here.[2]  Beyond just the health consequences, DU-munitions must be considered weapons of mass destruction insofar as the consequences of their usage are indiscriminate.

A letter from Rosa Parks to Thomas Friedman
By Arjan AlFassed, Middle East Times, January 3, 2003
I write as Rosa L. Parks the 'mother of the civil rights movement' would to Thomas L. Friedman, the columnist from the New York Times: "Just like black women in the civil rights movement in the United States, Palestinian women have played a key role throughout the struggle against occupation and discrimination. As happened with me in 1955, many of these brave women have been arrested. They are held in solitary confinement, forced to give birth in their prison cells, tortured, verbally and sexually abused and threatened. These women have been subjected to extreme brutal and violent conditions, deprived of basic human needs and prisoner's rights, in violation of internationally recognized human rights."

It's the Israeliness, stupid
By Doron Rosenblum, Ha'aretz, January 3, 2003
"..With suspicious, almost ardent, eagerness, immediately after the failure of Oslo, the attempt to forge Israeliness was savaged by all its longtime abhorrers and assailants - the haters of borders, the haters of compromise, the haters of secular legislation, the haters of normalization. We are now witnessing the results of the activity of this de-Israelizing, communal coalition - from Kach to Shas, from the settlers to Sharon himself - in the ignominious face of Israel today: the country's ethnocentricity, which is becoming ever more insular; the desire to join the herd; the monolithic culture; the deliberate alienation of the Arab minority; the attitude toward the foreign workers; the treatment of non-Jewish new immigrants; and even in the attitude toward foreign correspondents and ordinary visitors to the country. What can we say? The ghetto mentality has triumphed over Israeliness: Israel has become the largest and most insular Jewish ghetto in the world and also the most dangerous and most threatened of them.."

Making a prison of Palestine
By Brendan O'Neill, Spiked, December 30, 2002
'This is only the start of our nightmare. It is four or five miles long now, but in a few years' time it will be 200 miles long and we will all be prisoners.'
So said a Palestinian farmer in the northern part of the West Bank in December 2002, as he watched the Israeli authorities put the finishing touches to the first stretch of their controversial fence between Israel and the West Bank (1). Israeli contractors started building the 'anti-terrorist fence' in June 2002, stretching from the Salem army checkpoint outside the Palestinian town of Jenin down to the village of Umm el-Fahm, and finished it in late December. According to the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, 'The first five kilometres are [just] waiting for a landlord to take over the keys' (2). Israel's proposal to fence off the West Bank has met with international condemnation - and it isn't hard to see why. The first five-kilometre run is a huge concrete wall topped with electrical fencing and barbed wire. There is a 15-metre buffer zone - or 'killing zone' as local Palestinians call it - on either side. The final version will come complete with gun towers, x-ray machines and permanent checkpoints (or 'gateways'), so that everything that moves between this militant part of the West Bank and Israel can be 'sieved'. 'And we thought the checkpoints were bad', said one Palestinian.

Inside The Labyrinth – Part One
By Jaffer Ali, Viewpoint, January 2, 2003
Understanding Middle East politics is a treacherous endeavor. It is a labyrinth with many false paths, all designed to confuse any who seek to enter its corridors. Obfuscation is built into the very fabric of this political realm. Richard Feynman, famed physicist once said, “The truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought” and the truth behind US foreign policy is not necessarily that complicated. The elaborate labyrinth was specifically designed with the purpose to mislead. Why? Political motives once revealed lose their power…and the revelation itself becomes a clarion call for action. In the oil-rich Middle East, wrong actions by involved political players leads to severe economic consequences. What follows is an attempt to clarify misconceptions regarding the essence of American foreign policy.

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