Turkmen Rep. On Iraqi Council Wants Kirkuk Police Disarmed/New WMW

See what Liz Cheney is up to! And Sandra Day O'Connor and Cherie Blair!!

Full excerpts, links up now at
http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical/current.htm
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com

WORLD MEDIA WATCH For August 25, 2003

1//The Observer/Guardian, UK--FAREWELL AMERICA (After six years, The Observer's award-winning US correspondent Ed Vulliamy takes his leave from a wounded and belligerent nation with which, reluctantly, he has now fallen out of love: “I still love that adrenaline rush, the desert light, those big shoulders; but something else has happened to America during my six years to invoke that bitter love song by a great American, BB King, 'The Thrill is Gone': 'And now that it's all over / All I can do is wish you well...' “)


2//Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt--PUSHING REGIONAL REFORM (Liz, daughter of US Vice-President Dick Cheney who is known as a key hard-liner in the Bush administration together with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, has been supervising the implementation of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), officially announced by Secretary of State Colin Powell in December. The aims of the initiative, which received an initial funding of $29 million in 2002 and $100 million for 2003, are to provide support for "economic, political, and educational reform efforts in the Middle East and champion opportunity for all people of the region, especially women and youth". Critics of the MEPI in the Arab world, however, see this initiative as a means for imposing US-backed reforms in the region following the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington… Two major programmes happening in the next two months include a forum in Bahrain to be held from 15 to 17 September on judicial development across the Middle East, and a meeting in Qatar in October, which will bring together women from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Yemen for a week-long course on leadership and communication skills to promote the role of women in the political process. US Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor will lead the US delegation at the judicial conference in Qatar, while Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will lead the British delegation.)



3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--THE PLOT THICKENS (Whatever goes terribly wrong in Iraq is not enough to force the Pentagon to change its script. It still refuses to acknowledge the indigenous broad-based Iraqi resistance against the occupation, which, as Asia Times Online has reported, spreads out from Sunni mosques and is guided by patriotism. The Pentagon keeps repeating what it wants to hear - and it all comes from none other than Chalabi, according to whom there was an important meeting between the notorious "remnants of Saddam's regime" and "international terrorists" before the UN bombing.)



4//The Turkish Daily News, Turkey--TURKEY DEFINES ITS IRAQ ROLE (The deliberations of the MGK are secret by law, but according to well placed sources the top civilian and political leaders established a consensus at the meeting that it was in Turkey's best interest to contribute in any way possible, and compatible with the realities of the country, to the eradication of the instability and the chaotic atmosphere in the next-door country and help rebuild Iraq "with a humanitarian perspective", avoiding an image of "occupier" like the American and British presence there.)
http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=4225


Related story: GUL: TURKISH TROOPS UNDER TURKISH COMMAND (Gul said Turkey was considering sending troops to areas north and west of Baghdad. News reports have said the troops would number around 10,000. "There will be a separate sector under Turkish command and a separate chain of command," Gul said.)



5//KurdishMedia.com, UK--TURKMEN REPRESENTATIVE ON IRAQI COUNCIL WANTS KIRKUK POLICE DISARMED (Police in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk should be disarmed in order to prevent a repetition of Turkmen-Kurdish strife that left three Turkmen dead, the Turkmen’s representative on Iraq’s interim Governing Council said Sunday. "I call for disarming Kirkuk’s police because weapons are the source of the problem we are going through," Shangul Shapuk told AFP a day after the unrest. "The situation in the city is tragic. The Kurds control everything, including the police ... I urge them not to try to dominate the Turkmen," said Ms Shapuk, warning against "an explosion in the town.")

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1028186,00.html


<snip>
It is incumbent upon journalists, I think, to distrust conspiracy theories. But the problem with the conspiracy theory of the machine that lifted George 'Dubya' Bush to high office is that it never lets you down; you wait for the trip wire, but walk on. This is hardly the place to recount my inspections of that mechanism but I did spend many weeks listening in Texas and days at the Securities and Exchange Commission sifting through box files, to become acquainted with its workings.
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As Le Monde's headline put it: 'Now, We Are All Americans'; never before had America so many friends across the planet - or so we thought. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice used that same word, 'opportunity'. But opportunity for what? The White House and Le Monde did not, it turned out, share the same notion of what 'We Are All Americans' meant. The other day the same paper carried another headline about America: 'Seul contre tous' - alone against everyone. Well, almost everyone.
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'I think what we are seeing now, represented by the policies of the Bush administration, is an old American tradition, an imperialist tradition that has existed since the middle of the nineteenth century. But we are in for a busy ride. Reality has a way of landing in your lap and punching you in the nose. "Empire Lite" may not work; and are the Americans really ready for heavy Empire?'
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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EH23Ak01.html

<snip>
As the Iraqi resistance is so multi-faceted, there's every possibility that the UN bombing was perpetrated by elements of this Wahhabi network, already in existence in the Saddam era. And as unfortunate as it may seem, the UN for them is a pretty legitimate target. Human rights groups have extensively documented how UN Resolutions 661 and 687 may have been responsible for the deaths of at least 500,000 Iraqi children in the 1990s, due to entirely preventable diseases. For many strands of the Iraqi resistance, the UN is just a tool of the occupying power.
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On top of it, the Baghdad office of the World Bank was also in the UN building . Many Iraqi patriots in fact welcomed the fact that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) "suspended" their activities in Iraq after the bombing. Educated Iraqis are very much aware of the dreaded IMF-imposed "structural adjustments" and the ghastly record of the World Bank in terms of alleviating poverty in the developing world. The rationale of the Iraqi resistance is that there are no holds barred to prevent an occupation designed to steal Iraq's fabulous oil resources and also plunder its already devastated economy,
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So not only soldiers are legitimate targets. Corporate employees of Kellogg Brown and Co (a subsidiary of Halliburton) or any other corporation likely to make a killing out of Iraq's resources are legitimate targets. UN employees are legitimate targets. The IMF and the World Bank are legitimate targets. The Pentagon's response is predictable. It will send more troops. Not regular troops, but most of its 29,000 specialists in repression of urban guerrilla and terrorist groups with military training. They may kill thousands more Iraqis, but they won't kill a national liberation movement, operated by people who lived for years in a militarized society awash with weapons. And the message of this national liberation movement to those who concocted and want to profit from the invasion of their country is stark: welcome to hell.
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