FULL SPEED TO THE WHITE HOUSE? YEAH, RIGHT!

Will Hillary Clinton have (FINALLY! FINALLY!) dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination by the time I finish typing and publishing this blog? The signs look good, with Sky News currently reporting that the party’s former presidential nominee George McGovern has urged the former First Lady to pull out and the Clinton camp admitting that their candidate has had to lend herself (!) $6.4 million over the past month simply in order to stay in the race.

Let’s face the facts: she had to win Indiana by a big margin if she was to have any chance of convincing super-delegates that she is the more ‘electable’ candidate. She failed, and failed miserably. Obama cut her earlier twenty-point lead to just two percent, despite all his troubles over his controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Meanwhile over in North Carolina, where Hillary had acknowledged she had to either win or narrow the gap, the junior senator from Illinois managed to give the junior senator from New York a massive 14 percentage point whipping – 56% to 42%.

Yet the Hillary-Bill campaining combo (Billary?) have so far refused to give up and seem to be campaigning in a self-deluded, heads-in-the-sand, parallel universe. Despite being behind in the delegate count, behind in the popular vote and behind in the number of states won, this is what Senator Clinton had to say at her ‘victory’ rally in the Indiana state capital, Indianapolis, last night:

"Well, tonight we've come from behind. We've broken the tie, and thanks to you, it's full speed on to the White House.”

Full speed? Yeah, right! Maybe if her definition of full speed is 5 miles an hour. She is down and out but she doesn’t want to admit it to herself – and nor do her equally delusional friends and family members. As pointed out by Guardian America’s Michael Tomasky yesterday morning:

“She - and Bill, and Chelsea, and most of the people around them - surely can't believe that she's about to lose the Democratic nomination. There was supposed to be no question about her winning it. There's reason to think they won't stop until the door is closed and triple-locked and boarded and sealed shut around the edges with rubber cement.”

Hillary’s supporters cling to the idea that she is the ‘electable’ candidate by repeatedly pointing out that their candidate wins more white, working-class votes than Obama does. They keep asking the question: ‘Why is it that Obama can’t win the white vote?’ Of course, the reality is that he has won plenty of white votes in plenty of white states (Iowa anybody?) and so I personally would turn the question on its head: ‘Why is it that Hillary can’t win the black vote?’ After all, come the general election in November, the Democrats won’t be expected to win the white, working-class vote (just ask John Kerry and Al Gore!) but, on the other hand, they simply can’t win – and never have won! – without the all-important black vote. But Hillary (with Bill’s help) has alienated black Democrats on a hitherto unprecedented level – and do I need to ask what the effect would be on black Democratic voters if a white candidate, behind in elected delegates and behind in the popular vote, effectively stole the nomination from a black front-runner by twisting the arms of unelected (and largely white) ‘super delegates’?

In fact, the party’s most senior black Congressman had this ominous warning for the Clintons, and the Democratic Party high command, only a week ago:

“We’ll be playing with fire if we interfere with the voters’ choice,” James Clyburn, the party’s chief whip in the House of Representatives, told The Sunday Times. “African-Americans will feel cheated.”

That’s the understatement of the century.

WAR WITH IRAN – BACK ON THE AGENDA?

So, is the United States planning military action against Iran before the current White House incumbent vacates the Oval Office in less than nine months time? I have long believed that President George W. Bush would not leave office without taking some form of military action against Iran – either directly or indirectly (via the Israelis). Yet, in recent months, I had convinced myself that war with Iran was now off the agenda, especially in the wake of the US intelligence community’s official assessment that Iran halted its alleged nuclear weapons programme five years ago.

Was I wrong to relax? Does the Bush administration really want to provoke a third world war in the Middle East? Check out what top officials were saying on Wednesday alone (!)

CIA

"It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq".

This was the bold claim of CIA Director Michael Haydon, speaking at Kansas University, in what AP’s John Milburn actually described as “the boldest pronouncement of Iranian involvement by a U.S. official to date”. As I have repeatedly pointed out, the Bush administration’s best prospects of engineering a war with Iran, and getting the US public on side, is to pretend that any military action against Tehran is in response to alleged Iranian ‘attacks’ on Coalition forces inside of Iraq. Once again, a la Iraq, we sadly see the top officials at the CIA willing to endorse such blatant propaganda.

PENTAGON

“There is indication that the Iranian support of the Taliban has continued. Again, we don't believe it to be at the same level of which they have provided fighters and weapons into Iraq. But there is some clear evidence that it has occurred."

This was the surprising claim of the chief of operations for senior U.S. military staff, Lieutenant General Carter Ham. Ham wants us to believe that not only are the perfidious Persians responsible for American deaths in Iraq but in Afghanistan too. Two for the price of one! Of course, the thought of Shia-fundamentalist Iran providing support for the Sunni-fundamentalist, Shia-hating, Iranian-diplomat-killing Taliban is so ridiculous and impossible that only a Pentagon official would dare express it, let alone think it in the first place.

STATE DEPARTMENT

“It will come as no surprise to hear that Iran remained the most significant state sponsor of terrorism.”

This was the not-so-surprising claim of Dell Dailey, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, speaking at the launch of the Bush administration’s annual report on terrorism trends. But what else would you expect him to say? Wouldn’t you expect him to focus on a fantastical Iranian terror ‘menace’ rather than allow journalists to focus on the State Department report acknowledgement that suicide bombings around the world are up 50%, casualties from terrorist attacks are up 9% and injuries are up 15%? So much for the much-lauded, so-called ‘War on Terror’….

Oh, and on a side note, while U.S. officials were talking up the Iranian ‘threat’, so too were the Israelis. And on Wednesday too! On a conveniently-timed visit to the United States, Israel’s Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz (a former defence minister and chief of the general staff) said Iran could possess nuclear bomb technology by the end of 2008, citing an updated Israeli intelligence assessment (and contradicting both U.S. intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Authority).

So Wednesday really was, for American and Israeli officials, ‘Get Iran Day’.

US ELECTIONS UPDATE

I haven’t had a chance to blog this week. It’s time for the weekend now but let me cast a critical eye back over the previous four days of US presidential politics. As you’ll all have noticed by now, Senator Hillary Clinton remains in the Democratic race after winning the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday. She and her acolytes have been spinning her victory against Senator Barack Obama as ‘against all odds’ and as a victory for the ‘underdog’ and the mainstream media seems to be buying her crap. This blog, however, has no qualms about reminding the army of Beltway pundits and pontificators that opinion polls actually had Hillary in a 20-point lead over Obama only ten days before the primary – a lead she had built up since January. So it was Obama who was actually the underdog in this particular race and it was Obama who deserves credit, and plaudits, for halving Hillary’s initial lead on Tuesday to just 10 per cent (and that too after his rather unfortunate and offensive gaffe about "bitter" working-class people "clinging to guns or religion" in Pennsylvania.)

Now, as regular readers of this blog may have guessed by now, I am an Obama supporter. He is the best of a bad bunch. The other two remaining members of the ‘bad bunch’ – Senators McCain and Clinton – are pro-war hawks who say ludicrous things. Consider the evidence of this week alone:

Hillary Clinton

On ABC’s “Good Morning America” breakfast-news show, Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could "totally obliterate" Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel:

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran.

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Not only is this a nonsensical statement – does she really want to be known as the ‘Genocide Candidate’? – but it is also deeply hypocritical. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has long been castigated and condemned for his alleged desire to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. Why should the US president now harbour an equally bizarre and immoral desire to wipe Iran off the map?

But, most troubling of all, is the fact that such a hawkish question was even asked in the first place. Can you imagine a politician in any other country in the world being asked such a question by a journalist on a breakfast show or answering in such a nakedly populist and hawkish manner? And on what grounds does a journalist even ask a presidential candidate about a hypothetical Iranian ‘nuclear’ threat to Israel when American’s own intelligence agencies have publicly and categorically confirmed that Iran has no nuclear weapons nor even a nuclear weapons programme (as I have blogged about here)? The mainstream media is pathetic, ignorant and biased – which is one of the many reasons behind me setting up this blog.

John McCain

On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, April 20, McCain called one-time (and distant) Obama friend William Ayers “an unrepentant terrorist” (trying to smear Obama in a ‘guilt by association’ accusation). What was McCain’s evidence? McCain said that Ayers “was engaged in bombings which could have or did kill innocent people…” So McCain is saying that someone who engages in bombings which could have killed or did kill innocent people is a terrorist.

Now consider what McCain did. McCain flew a bomber, an A-4E Skyhawk, over North Vietnam. I don’t know whether he actually dropped his bombs before being shot down and taken prisoner by the Vietcong. But certainly he was engaged in actions that, if he had succeeded, could have killed innocent people – and was part of a war effort which did kill millions of innocent people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Which makes McCain, in his own words, a terrorist.

By the way, while the US press continues to devote acres of print to the presidential primaries, it ignores the rather shocking case of the FBI arresting retired US military engineer Ben-Ami Kadish on charges of spying for Israel (!) Imagine that! America’s best buddy in the world, it’s closest ally, the biggest recipient of US aid, continues to spy on it even now, more than twenty years on from the infamous Jonathan Pollard case. There’ll be more on the spying case here on the Radical Opinions blog next week. Stay tuned!

TOP US GENERAL IN IRAQ CONTRADICTS THE WAR HAWKS

This week, 'America's General' David H. Petraeus - he who ludicrously claimed, back in 2004 (!), that there were signs of "tangible progress" and "optimism" in Iraq – returned to Capitol Hill to once again brief Senators and Congressmen on the security situation in Iraq in the wake of the recent US military 'surge'.

Surprisingly, under pointed questioning from Senator Evan Bayh (Democrat, Indiana), General Petraeus painted a much more sombre and restrained picture of Iraq than many of his Republican cheerleaders:

"It's why I've repeatedly noted that we haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible."

Contrast that with, say, the words of a certain senator from Arizona currently running for President, speaking on the same morning:

"But today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the future of Iraq and the outcome of our efforts there. For while the job of bringing security to Iraq is not finished, as the recent fighting in Basra and elsewhere vividly demonstrated, we're no longer staring into the abyss of defeat and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success."

Notice the difference?

HAIL TO THE TORTURER-IN-CHIEF!

Outgoing US President George W. Bush gave a rare interview this week to a non-American, non-deferential, non-fawning interviewer, the BBC’s Matt Frei.

The main focus of the interview was (predictably, depressingly) the President’s preference for torturing his way to victory in the so-called ‘War on Terror’. These are some of the main (outrageous) points which the BBC interview highlighted:

• Bush believes that the London bombings – among other things – justifies the American use of torture (sorry, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’!)
  
  
• Bush believes America still supports human rights and occupies the international moral high ground (!!)
  
  
• Bush will veto any attempt by the Senate to ban waterboarding
  
  
• Bush does not consider waterboarding to be a form of torture
  

Yet, as the Guardian noted, on the very same day, one of the Bush administration’s very own Justice Department officials – Steven Bradbury, head of the Office of Legal Counsel – pointed out in congressional testimony,

“Let me be clear, though: There has been no determination by the justice department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law.”

Outside of the delusional corridors of the White House and the right-wing thinktanks of the neocrazy neocons, there are few sane souls who would dispute that waterboarding is indeed wholly, totally, undeniably, unquestionaly, indisputably and self-evidently an immoral, inhumane and brutal act of torture.

Former POW, Iraq war supporter and Republican Party presidential-candidate-to-be, Senator John McCain, is opposed to waterboarding, which he considers to be torture. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage – who happens to have been second-in-command at Bush’s State Department during the invasion of Iraq, and also happens to be a former US naval commando – also has a dim view of waterboarding:

“Of course water-boarding is torture. I can't believe we're even debating it. We shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff."

What precisely is “that kind of stuff”? Former US military psychologist Bruce Lefever, who underwent a diluted form of ‘waterboarding’ during his training, said it was “terrifying”, and that “you're strapped to an inclined gurney and you're in four-point restraint, your head is almost immobilized, and they pour water between your nose and your mouth, so if you're likely to breathe, you're going to get a lot of water. You go into an oxygen panic." It is not waterboarding – it is, put simply, water torture.

You can watch a mocked-up, diluted version of a waterboarding below, courtesy of MSNBC:


The reality is that waterboarding has long been a weapon not simply of Mr Bush’s heroic and hallowed counter-terrorism operatives, but of torturers and tyrants throughout history. Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge were amongst the 20th century’s most infamous practioners of waterboarding, as you can see below in a photo of one of the actual ‘waterboards’ used by the torturers of the Khymer Rouge.

And, most damning of all, the United States itself prosecuted Japanese officers in the wake of World War II, for waterboarding American prisoners of war – including an officer named Yukio Asano. As Senator Edward Kennedy has pointed out:

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.”

How ironic! The US president declares in 2005, “We don’t do torture”, and then admits to, and defends, the use of waterboarding against terror suspects; while almost half a century earlier, the US government prosecuted Japanese officers for carrying out the very same practice against Americans. Hypocrisy? Double standards? Short-sightedness? All of the above. And all in the name of justifying, defending, and apologizing for torture, carried out by the supposed leader of the ‘free’ world, the United States of America. Waterboarding joins Abu Ghraib, Guatanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition in the long list of ignominious (and unAmerican!) legacies left to America, and to the world, by George Bush and his pathetic and immoral ‘War on Terror’.

TOP FIVE REASONS WHY ONLY OBAMA CAN BEAT MCCAIN

Sitting here watching the election race on this side of the ‘pond’, I am delighted and genuinely bemused to see that my preferred presidential candidate – the lesser of all the various evils – Senator Barack Obama is on a roll, having won five primaries on the trot and now having captured more states and amassed more delegates than former front runner and former first lady, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

With the Republicans on the verge of crowning Senator John McCain as their candidate, it is time for undecided Democrats and wavering independents to think long and hard about who the best candidate would be to deal with the specific threat from McCain – who has cross-party appeal, an affable and likeable personality, a ‘maverick’ reputation and a distinguished military background as a former prisoner of war.

Nonetheless, according to the most recent Associated Press poll, Barack Obama (unlike Hillary Clinton) would narrowly defeat John McCain if they were matched today in the presidential election. This doesn’t really surprise me, as I believe that there are five overwhelming and undeniable reasons why Obama is the only man (sorry, person) who can beat McCain, come November:

1. IRAQ

The issue of Iraq remains bitterly divisive in modern America and is unlikely to go away any time soon. It was a major factor in the Republicans' defeat in the November 2006 mid-term elections and – despite the supposed success of the General David Petraeus’ recent troop ‘surge’ in Baghdad – polls continue to suggest a majority of Americans view Iraq as a top concern and want US troops home as soon as possible.
Here’s how New York Times columnist Frank Rich reported the story in January:

"The continued political import of Iraq could be found in three different polls in the past six weeks -- Pew, ABC News-Washington Post and Wall Street Journal-NBC News . .. the percentage of Americans who believe that the war is going well has risen strikingly in tandem with the diminution of violence -- from 30 percent in February to 48 percent in November, for instance, in the Pew survey. Even so, these same polls show no change at all in the public's verdict on this misadventure or in President Bush's dismal overall approval rating. By the same margins as before (sometimes even slightly larger), a majority of Americans favor withdrawal no matter what happened during the 'surge.' In another poll (Gallup), a majority still call the war a mistake, a finding that has varied little since February 2006."

On the same day, The Times concluded: "Concern over the war in Iraq, despite recent advances in security there, also remains on the minds of independent voters and has contributed to a shift toward Democrats..."

Obama, unliked Clinton, opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning, calling it a "dumb" war. His anti-war stance is in tune with the majority of Americans. McCain, on the other hand, has been a passionate and ardent supporter of the Iraq misadventure and now bizarrely agitates for war against Iran too. In a recent town-hall meeting, he confessed to being perfectly okay with American troops staying in Iraq for another hundred years (!) Obama has already begun referring, cleverly and accurately, to the ‘Bush-McCain Republicans’, tying the Arizona Senator to the unpopular president and his even more unpopular war. Let’s hope for more of this in the run-up to November…

2. RHETORIC

Whatever you think of Obama, it is impossible to deny his verbal virtuosity. Ever since his barn-storming, eye-catching, heart-lifting speech to the Democratic Convention in July 2004, Obama has drawn crowds wherever he has gone, inspiring and motivating the masses with lofty and soaring rhetoric. McCain, on the other hand, sends people to sleep with his stump speeches (unless, of course, he is singing songs about bombing Iran). Blogger Democrashield makes an interesting comparison, in this regard, between the Republican frontrunner in 2008 and the losing Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, in 2004:

“Kerry was seen as a passionateless and boring speaker, more suited to long-winded tirades in the Senate than rousing speeches on the stump; similarly, McCain is also a passionateless speaker who fails to rouse crowds of even his most ardent supporters.”

And the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky has this rather astute observation:

“Tonight's memorable moment as a television-watching experience came when CNN switched from Obama's victory speech to John McCain's. McCain started his speech before Obama finished his - a little tacky, but not a capital crime. Well, as Keith Olbermann dryly noted on MSNBC, someone needs to remind McCain that in the future he'd better speak before Obama. The Illinois Democrat was leading 18,000 attendees to fever pitch in his speech when CNN cut away. McCain, by contrast, was talking to what could have been mistaken for a bingo game in a church parish hall. The contrast was striking, and not lost on anyone imagining the two of them on a stage together at some point this fall.”

3. AGE

Senator Barack Obama is 46 years old. He will be a healthy and youthful 47 come November. Senator John McCain is 71 years old. He will be 72 come November - making him the oldest first-term president ever in the United States.

Now, of course, this quarter-century age gap could be used by McCain to remind voters of his greater experience, maturity and wisdom; on the other hand, the trend across democratic countries in the West is to pick younger politicians as party and as national leaders (from Blair to Sarkozy, from Cameron to Clegg). In a poll conducted for the New York Times and CBS television last year, just over half of Americans said the best age for a US president was the 50s. Fewer than one percent said a president in their 70s would be best.

For me, fundamentally, Obama’s relative youth fits in with his popular message of change, hope and the future. McCain’s age serves to remind voters that he was a candidate before (in 2000), that he served in a distant and unpopular former war (Vietnam) and that he could die of a heart attack (or simply ‘old age’) while sitting in the Oval Office (making his choice of vice-presidential running-mate even more crucial and relevant). Ultimately, it is difficult for someone in the eight decade of their life, with a recent history of skin cancer, and a head of white hair, to make the case for change and renewal and a fresh start – especially in a self-professed ‘young’ country like the United States!

4. INDEPENDENTS

In a close election, which November ‘08 is likely to be, the votes of independents could be crucial, if not decisive.

John McCain’s entire campaign rests – and has always rested – on his appeal to independents, his big-tent approach to politics, whereby he wins over as many (if not more) independents, waverers and even Democrats as he does Republicans. On the Democrat side, only Obama has proved that he can reach out to independents in a big way. In yesterday’s Virginia primary, two-thirds of the independents who cast their ballots in the Democratic race went for Obama over Clinton. (In fact, Obama has won more independents than Clinton in every single primary so far.)

Meanwhile, as The Nation reported, also in Virginia:

“…in the single most stunning number of the night, McCain actually lost among independents who cast their ballots in the Republican primary. His margin of victory came not from independents, but from Republicans--a terrible omen for his "electability." Huckabee also beat McCain in those bastions of independent (but also, of course, megachurch) voting, the suburbs, while Obama was pulling 60 percent of suburbanites on the other side. The other prime indicators of how independents might vote in November looked equally good for Obama and lousy for McCain: While Obama won big with under-45 voters, who are the most likely to register independent, McCain lost big among the youngest voters (under 30) while taking 47 percent of the 30-44 age group. To add just one more bit of sour news for McCain, fewer independents voted in the Republican primary in Virginia this year -- 76 percent of the voters were card-carrying GOPers, as opposed to just 63 percent in 2000.”

5. PARTY UNITY

Obama, if/when he wins the nomination, can rely on Democrats rallying around ‘their’ candidate. Only die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool partisan Clintonites – and they are, actually, few in number – will continue to question his credentials and his leadership. The rest of the Democratic Party is likely to fall in line behind him – in fact, exit polls in yesterday’s important Virginia primary showed the Illinois Senator making inroads into Hillary Clinton’s supposedly ‘core’ constituencies; the parts of the Democratic Party that those not named ‘Clinton’ had previously found difficult to reach.

As US pollster John Zogby writes:

“In addition to his momentum of victories, he has made significant inroads into constituencies that were the core of his opponent's support.

“Thus, in Virginia and Maryland, exit polls revealed that he tied with Senator Clinton among white voters, and actually defeated her among women, lower-income voters, rural voters, those over 65 years of age, Catholics, and Hispanics.”

McCain, however, is struggling to win over his party’s conservative Christian base. Despite being within spitting distance of his party’s nomination, he still seems wholly unable to win over evangelicals (not to mention influential, right-wing, talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham), with rival candidate (and former pastor) Mike Huckabee still winning the occasional state (e.g. Kansas, Louisiana), and with self-professed conservative Republicans voting 51 percent for Huckabee and 35 percent for McCain in yesterday’s Virginia primary, and ‘evangelical’ Republicans splitting 61 per cent to 28 per cent in favour of Huckabee. Conservatives don’t trust McCain on the economy (he voted against the Bush tax cuts), nor on immigration (he supported President Bush’s unpopular ‘amnesty’ proposals), while evangelicals question his commitment to Christian fundamentalism and his flip-flopping on key ‘moral’ issues like abortion and homosexuality. Time magazine calls it his ‘two front battle’ – but does McCain really have the time, energy or resources to be fighting on two fronts come November, and would a Democratic nominee like Senator Clinton (who would, presumably, have her own two or even three front battle with the youth, black and anti-war wings of her own party) be the best person to capitalize on McCain’s obvious internal problem?

So, in conclusion, I do hope it is Senator Barack Obama who wins the Democratic nomination – not simply because he is the best of a bad bunch but because he is the only candidate with a real chance of beating the worst of the current bunch, Senator John “bomb, bomb, bomb” McCain. As I have said, I have serious worries about the Arizona senator, who despite his maverick image and media love-in, remains the hawk in hawk's clothing. If Obama wins the nomination, and carries on inspiring friends and foes alike, then I believe he can win the election in November, with a campaign narrative contrasting his positives with McCain’s negatives: youth versus age, the future versus the past, inspiration and hope versus tough-talk and fear-mongering. Good luck Barry!

BEWARE MCCAIN: THE HAWK IN HAWK'S CLOTHING

Super Tuesday is almost upon us. While the Democratic race is likely to carry on until the summer, with Obama breathing down Clinton's bony neck until the bitter end (and, fingers crossed, triumphing against all odds!), Tuesday's tsunami of nationwide Republican primaries could easily see Senator John McCain wrap up the GOP's presidential nomination.

Since McCain's victory in Florida over his quiffed millionaire chief rival Mitt Romney, the pundits have anointed him as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and the Democrats have begun asking which of their two candidates (the pro-war white woman or the anti-war black man) is best placed to beat the maverick Republican senator from Arizona.

McCain, as usual, has benefited from an uncritical and unthinking wave of positive, flattering and semi-adulatory press coverage (including an endorsement from the supposedly liberal New York Times). He is often described, bizarrely, as a "moderate" and a "liberal". In fact, one newspaper described McCain and his two newest best friends in the GOP - Governor Arnold Schwarznegger of California and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani - as the three "liberal Republican amigos":

Yet, the only liberal or moderate criteria which these three subscribe to relate to social issues - they are all pro-homosexuality and pro-abortion. Is that how we now define liberalism? How we now define moderation? Whether or not you vote for gay marriage? Whether or not you support the killing of foetuses? Forget issues of war and peace, forget econonomic issues; it's all about trendy and amoral 'social liberalism'.

The fact is, as Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo has outlined in great detail, John McCain is more pro-war than even George W. Bush or Dick Cheney. He was perhaps the only Republican in Congress to attack the then US Defense Secretary -and bloviating warmonger-in-chief - Donald Rumsfeld from the right. He ludicrously believes the US military 'surge' in Iraq is working - despite swathes of evidence to the contrary. He thinks American Muslims should stay out of politics and are unsuited for high office. And his solution to the 'problem' of Iran's nuclear programme is - wait for it - to BOMB! Don't believe me? Watch him sing - yes, sing - his solution to a crowd of cheering (and presumably bloodthirsty) Republican supporters:


As for his new best friend - and, God forbid, potential vice-presidential running-mate - Rudy Giuliani, his views on the need to bomb the Middle East into submission and declare World War III against Islamists (or does he really mean Islam?) are well-known and well-documented. In fact, the man who, according to Senator Joe Biden only has three words in his vocabulary ('a noun, a verb, and 9-11"), came close to describing all Muslims as a "perverted people" in one of his campaign ads. Again, don't believe me? Watch for yourself how naked appeals to redneck Islamophobia and knee-jerk militarism have become the defining characteristics for Republicans who are supposed to be 'liberals' and 'moderates':


In fact, Middle East scholar and blogger Professor Juan Cole has an excellent piece in Salon this week, entitled 'Blowback from the GOP's holy war'. Cole points out:

"Why might all this rhetoric targeting Muslims be unwise? For one thing, allowing the Christian conservative base to set an agenda that demonizes Muslims contains the danger of turning off more moderate segments of the GOP and American voters at large. McCain's comment on the importance of a president's being Christian appeared to have backfired on him in precisely that way.

"Moreover, Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans are swing voters in key states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. While they tended to vote for George W. Bush in 2000, by 2004 these groups overwhelmingly supported John Kerry, and the heavy-handed and bigoted rhetoric of the Republican candidates may drive them away from the GOP altogether."

Here's hoping - and here's hoping that US Muslims, combined with US lefties, liberals and independents who see through the McCain-Giuliani-Arnie 'liberal/moderate' charade, elect a Democrat to the White House in November.

PENTAGON PROPAGANDA

So, we now know that Iranian boats were not threatening to attack the United States Navy in the Straits of Hormuz on January 6th and even the Pentagon’s propagandists have acknowledged that “the threat could have come from anyone on shore with a radio”. Perhaps, hilariously, the radio threat came from the so-called 'Filipino Monkey', who (I kid you not!) has a 25-year history of shouting anonymous threats and obscenities, over the airwaves, at US sailors.

Regardless, the most important and perhaps underreported aspect of this rather disturbing story is the role played by Bush administration officials in Washington D.C., in deliberately hyping the ‘Iranian threat’ and making (unfounded) accusations against Tehran. Gareth Porter, of IPS, concludes his detailed analysis of the Pentagon’s propaganda in recent days, with this insight:

“The decision to treat the Jan. 6 incident as evidence of an Iranian threat reveals a chasm between the interests of political officials in Washington and Navy officials in the Gulf. Asked whether the Navy's reporting of the episode was distorted by Pentagon officials, Cmdr. Robertson of 5th Fleet Public Affairs would not comment directly. But she said, "There is a different perspective over there."

As the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins points out today, in a typically cogent and well-argued column, the current US propaganda campaign against Iran serves only one purpose – to (counter-productively) strengthen the hand of America’s Persian ‘bogeyman’, President Ahmadinejad. Jenkins writes:

“Only one man can rescue the embattled Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from his growing domestic unpopularity. That man is George Bush. Ahmadinejad faces elections in March and an increasingly disaffected clergy, but he feeds on Bush's antagonism. This week Bush has duly oliged. He has raced round the Middle East drumming up support for his Iranian foe.

“Bush has denounced Ahmadinejad at every turn. He has offered to sanction him, embargo him, isolate him, even bomb him. He has portrayed him as a monster of evil and "leading sponsor of terror". He has showered the Saudis and the Gulf states with $20bn of weapons to confront him "before it is too late". When Ahmadinejad thanked "divine intervention" for making him president in 2005, he should also have thanked God for having first selected Bush. To have Washington as your enemy in these parts is to have every man your friend.”

KEEP WATCHING IRAN IN 2008

Michael Hirsch of Newsweek writes on the magazine’s website that George W. Bush, America’s great ‘thinker-president’ (to quote Tariq Ali), has now fully rejected his own intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on nuclear-weapon-free Iran while on a visit to, of all places, nuclear-weapon-armed Israel. Dubya now sees his own ‘intelligence’ as greater and deeper than the collected and considered ‘high-confidence’ judgements of the (hundreds of) spies, scientists, analysts and researchers who make up the multi-billion-dollar U.S. intelligence community.

As the Newsweek piece reveals:

“In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran, as a threat, while not disavowing his administration's recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. "He told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views" about Iran's nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.

“Bush's behind-the-scenes assurances may help to quiet a rising chorus of voices inside Israel's defense community that are calling for unilateral military action against Iran. Olmert, asked by NEWSWEEK after Bush's departure on Friday whether he felt reassured, replied: "I am very happy." A source close to the Israeli leader said Bush first briefed Olmert about the intelligence estimate a week before it was published, during talks in Washington that preceded the Annapolis peace conference in November. According to the source, who also refused to be named discussing the issue, Bush told Olmert he was uncomfortable with the findings and seemed almost apologetic.”

The NIE’s conclusions “don’t reflect his own views” because Bush’s views are always based on fantasy and prejudice, rather than on facts and figures. I mean, when was the last time Bush read a book on Iran? Or a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (from cover to cover)? Or even a newspaper report on Iran’s nuclear activities? Why should we take seriously the “views” of a leader who pays so little attention to facts, figures, numbers, details, policies, reports, etc, and who prefers to go with his gut over his (miniscule) brain?

As the veteran Bush-watcher Jacob Weisberg writes in his excellent and perhaps definitive article – "How Bush Chose Stupidity?" – the current president takes great pride in his anti-intellectualism:

“A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).”

So, Bush “believes” Iran is a threat, no matter what the evidence (or lack of) suggests. Just as he ‘believed’ Iraq had WMDs, and he ‘believed’ Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda.

(On a side note, am I the only one who finds the media’s silence, as well as President Bush’s silence, on Israel’s real nukes versus Iran’s phantom nukes truly disgusting, dishonest and depressing?)

Keep watching Iran in 2008 (this blog will be). Dubya still has a year left in office and a year is a long time in international relations.

OBAMA v CLINTON, ROUND 2

He lost.

The robot won.

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in the second round of the Democratic primaries, winning New Hampshire by a narrow three percent of the vote.

I am depressed. Disheartened. Above all, surprised – nay, shocked! The momentum seemed to be with Obama, the pundits seemed to be with Obama, the polls showed a massive lead for Obama – but still Obama lost.

So, should we all avoid making political predictions from now on? The FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman writes on his blog this morning:

“To be fair to the pundits and the pollsters, it wasn’t just journalists who were confidently predicting an Obama victory. Even people in the Hillary camp were talking about trying to keep margin of their defeat in New Hampshire down to below double digits.”

So what helped Hillary to her surprise victory? I would point to two obvious incidents earlier in the week.

In the first, her husband and (popular) former president took a (rhetorical) hammer and tongs to Obama’s (antiwar) record on Iraq, pointing out the latter’s inconsistent voting and seemingly hawkish comments since arriving in the Senate in 2004. Speaking at a campaign event at Dartmouth College, an indignant, finger-pointing Bill Clinton said in response to a pro-Obama question from a student:

"That is the central argument for his campaign. 'It doesn't matter that I started running for president less a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois State Senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I'm the only one who had the judgment to oppose this war from the beginning. Always, always, always.' "

"…it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your website in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since?' Give me a break.

"This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen...Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media, doesn't mean the facts aren't out there.”

Despite my soft spot for Barack, I cannot help but sympathize with Bubba’s rant. Obama’s campaign has been given a certain ‘fairytale’ hue by a rather uncritical press corps (and his position on Iraq has certainty not been as fervently or consistently antiwar and anti-occupation as, perhaps, that of Dennis Kucinich or, on the Republican side, Ron Paul. But is the ‘fairy tale’ now over, or do voters simply respond badly to anyone (be it Clinton or Obama) that the media tends to put up on a pedestal and then crown king (or queen)? As one reader of Andrew Sullivan’s excellent blog puts it:

“I think Obama won Iowa because voters resented Hillary's coronation.

“I think Hillary won New Hampshire because voters resented Obama's coronation.”

The other incident that cannot be overlooked is Hillary’s emotional moment. She was asked by a woman in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, "How do you do it?" The woman wanted to know how Hillary, despite all her stress, remains "so wonderful"?

Hillary answered, fighting back tears, "I couldn't do it if I just didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do." The New York Times noted that her eyes were "visibly wet." Later Hillary told the Times she became all choked up because "it was just so touching when this woman said: well, what about you. I just don't think about that. I just think about what I can do for other people. I have spent a lifetime trying to help others. I’m very other-directed."

Despite being mocked by right-wingers (and some Obama supporters) for her unexpected show of emotion, the fact is that Hillary’s ‘crying’ (or ‘choking’, or ‘wet eyes’, or semi-crying, or whatever you want to call it) humanized her. The political automaton for, a moment, became a real human person; a woman with whom other women could empathize, sympathize and identify. (Consequently, and retrospectively, it is therefore unsurprising that a "surge" of women voters in New Hampshire, turning out in record numbers, helped propel Hillary to victory there).

However, the Clintons’ antics aside, is there a third, perhaps darker, factor at work in this campaign? I am referring here to the notoriously infamous 'Bradley effect'. The Guardian explains it here:

“The phenomenon was named after Tom Bradley, the long time mayor of Los Angeles, and describes the difference between what members of the public will say in relation to a black candidate when asked by pollsters and the change in their behaviour when they actually vote.

“Bradley, who is black, ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1982, but, after polls showed he was consistently in the lead, he was a surprise loser.

“It was suggested that voters may have told pollsters they supported the black candidate, because they were embarrassed to admit they were racist, but that when it came to voting in private they supported his white opponent, precisely because he was not black.”

Having won Iowa (95% white), and having led in the polls since Iowa, sadly, tragically, depressingly, the black Senator from Ilinois failed to win New Hampshire (96% white). But let’s see what happens on the January 26th in South Carolina (50% black). Here’s hoping…

Incidentally, the (Bill) Clinton ‘rant’ video is here:


The (Hillary) Clinton 'crying' video is here

IS IRAN STILL GOING TO GET BOMBED? – update

I hate to say 'I told you so', especially about an occurrence that I continue to pray will not happen, but the possibility of a war between the United States and Iran in 2008 remains perilously high.

In only my second posting on this blog, in December, I wrote: “So the military option is still on the table, says Bush, and – forget the nukes! - it will be used in response to provocations by the Iranians, say his neocon supporters.”

And what’s been reported today? From CNN:

“The U.S. military reported Monday on a "significant" confrontation involving five Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats that "harassed and provoked" three U.S. naval ships in international waters over the weekend.

“U.S. military officials said the incident occurred early Sunday morning in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping channel leading in and out of the Persian Gulf.

“The five Iranian ships made "threatening" moves -- in one case coming within 200 yards of a U.S. ship, the U.S. officials said.

“In one radio transmission, the Iranians told the U.S. Navy: "I am coming at you. You will explode in a couple of minutes," the U.S. military officials told CNN.

“When the U.S. ships heard that radio transmission, they took up their gun positions and officers were "in the process" of giving the order to fire when the Iranians abruptly turned away, the U.S. officials said.”

Phew! A close call. But how many more close calls can the region survive? As I said in the earlier post, God help us all if World War III breaks out between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

BRITS NOW ‘RICHER’ THAN AMERICANS

Despite all the doom and gloom about falling British house prices, the global credit crunch and a looming UK recession, a new report from a bunch of pointy-headed economists at Oxford claims we are now – for the first time in over a hundred years! – better off than our American cousins.

From the Daily Telegraph:

“Analysts at the respected Oxford Economics consultancy say that increasing incomes, free healthcare and longer holidays make the average Briton better-off than his or her US counterpart.

“They predict that gross domestic product (GDP) per head in the UK, an indicator of average incomes, will be £23,500 in 2008, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting the strength of the pound against the dollar and the steady growth of the British economy.

“Adrian Cooper, managing director of Oxford Economics, said: "The past 15 years have seen a dramatic change in the UK's economic performance and its position in the world economy.

"No longer are we the 'sick man of Europe'. Indeed, our calculations suggest that UK living standards are now a match for those of the US.

"The UK has been catching up steadily with living standards in the US since 2001, so it is a well-established trend rather than simply the result of currency fluctuations."

As the Observer so aptly put it: “…at least we’ve got one up on the Yanks”.

HUSSEIN FOR PRESIDENT!

So Barack Hussein Obama has won the Iowa caucus – the first step on a journey that could, potentially, possibly, tantalisingly, take this half-Kenyan, half-Kansan, black, forty-something, junior Democratic senator from Illinois, of Hawaiian birth, Muslim descent and Indonesian upbringing, with only three years experience in Congress, right through the front door of the White House come November.

Obama won – and won by a clear margin (of 8%), leaving the former front-runner and favourite (and pro-war political automaton) Hillary Rodham Clinton struggling in third place. (Incidentally, the only thing that delighted me more than Obama’s victory and Hillary’s poor showing was the fact that, on the Republican side in Iowa, the nasty former New York mayor – and, also, his party’s former front-runner – Rudy Giuliani came an embarrassing sixth (!) with a miniscule 3.5% of the vote, having been outpolled 2-1 by the only anti-war Republican in the field, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas).

Despite my normally cynical and pessimistic view of US domestic politics and politicians, and despite Obama’s shameful U-turn on Israel in recent years (he used to be a vocal critic but now the wannabe president, coincidentally, happens to have become a strong supporter of Israeli belligerence and intransigence), I cannot help but like him. He seems truly genuine, palpably decent and refreshingly normal and down-to-earth. Above all, after seven years of divisions and splits in American politics (and culture), with Red State vs Blue State, liberals versus conservatives, the secular versus the religious, he seems to be the only candidate capable of uniting the United States and rising above the partisan fray. (Preliminary indications from Iowa suggest Obama’s victory was heavily dependent on independents and Republican switchers, and his continuing electoral success will depend on them too).

As liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias acknowledges:

“I think the manner of Barack Obama's win is pretty impressive. I can't be the only one who was a bit inclined toward a cynical roll of the eyes at the idea of winning on the back of unprecedented turnout, mobilizing new voters, brining in young people, etc. That sounds like the kind of thing that people say they're going to do but never deliver on. But he did deliver. That's impressive.”

Yglesias also points readers in the direction of a December 1995 profile of Obama in the Chicago Reader newspaper which suggests the candidate’s social conscience has not at all been exaggerated or faked in recent months but in fact has deep roots in Obama’s political and personal past.

Fundamentally, however, the key reason why all sane, reasonable, decent, antiwar progressives should support Obama as a realistic, though not perfect, presidential candidate is his unstinting opposition to the Iraq war. Unlike his two chief rivals, Senator Clinton and former Senator John Edwards, Senator Obama opposed the Iraq misadventure from the very beginning. Here is Barack speaking in October 2002, five months before Bush and his cronies launched their illegal and unilateral invasion:

“I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

There is also – let’s not beat around the bush - the issue of his skin colour. Obama is not simply a black man who is so comfortable with his colour that – unlike, say, Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton – he has not chosen to run on a ‘black’ or ‘race’ platform but has instead managed to seemingly transcend racial politics and win over more white Republican voters than Clinton or Edwards; he also happens to be a man whose skin colour, ethnic origins, foreign upbringing, Muslim ties and religious moderation make him the perfect person to lead the United States in the era of the so-called ‘War on Terror’.

Why? As right-wing conservative blogger (and Sunday Times columnist) Andrew Sullivan, an unexpected yet fervent Obama supporter, perceptively and eloquently argues:

“What does he [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it’s central to an effective war strategy. The war on Islamist terror, after all, is two-pronged: a function of both hard power and soft power. We have seen the potential of hard power in removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen its inherent weaknesses in Iraq, and its profound limitations in winning a long war against radical Islam. The next president has to create a sophisticated and supple blend of soft and hard power to isolate the enemy, to fight where necessary, but also to create an ideological template that works to the West’s advantage over the long haul. There is simply no other candidate with the potential of Obama to do this. Which is where his face comes in.

“Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.”

Winning Iowa does not, however, mean that Obama now has the Democratic presidential nomination (let alone the presidency itself) all sewn up. Far from it. Thankfully, the 330,000-odd Iowan crowd of largely ethanol farmers, pensioners and grassroots political activists who turned out to caucus in that tiny Midwestern state do not necessarily always determine the fate of the US presidential elections as some pundits and journalists might wrongly have us believe. In 1988 [15], for example, Congressman Richard Gephardt won in Iowa but failed to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for president - instead, third-placed candidate Michael Dukakis went on to win the rest of the Democratic primaries (before sadly succumbing in the general election to George Bush Snr).

As the BBC points out:

“Very often it is not so much about winning in Iowa but doing better or at least as well as expected. Democrat Howard Dean was leading his party's polls in 2004 but after his third place in Iowa his campaign stuttered and never recovered. But an Iowa victory, while important, is no guarantee of national success. The 1992 winner for the Democrats was Tom Harkin. Trailing way behind him was Bill Clinton, who went on to capture the presidency.”

Mrs Clinton will presumably be hoping this morning that she can repeat her husband’s comeback in the coming days and weeks, beginning in New Hampshire on Tuesday. I personally hope she won’t and doubt she will. My money is on Obama and, if I had a vote, it’d be for Obama.

Who do you want?