A Wide Gap * Brits Bend Over Backward to Appease Muslims * GOP Candidates Deserting The President's WarWho is Nursultan Nazarbayev ? President of Kazakhstan, an autocratic ruler who has a history of suppressing dissent. Reported to be involved in a bribery scandal, he is a friend of President Bush. Peter Baker writes in the Post: "President Bush launched an initiative this month to combat international kleptocracy, the sort of high-level corruption by foreign officials that he called "a grave and corrosive abuse of power" that "threatens our national interest and violates our values." The plan, he said, would be "a critical component of our freedom agenda." Three weeks later, the White House is making arrangements to host the leader of Kazakhstan, an autocrat who runs a nation that is anything but free and who has been accused by U.S. prosecutors of pocketing the bulk of $78 million in bribes from an American businessman. Not only will President Nursultan Nazarbayev visit the White House, people involved say, but he also will travel to the Bush family compound in Maine."Nazarbayev's upcoming visit, according to analysts and officials, offers a case study in the competing priorities of the Bush administration at a time when the president has vowed to fight for democracy and against corruption around the globe. Nazarbayev has banned opposition parties, intimidated the press and profited from his post, according to the U.S. government. But he also sits atop massive oil reserves that have helped open doors in Washington. ...

Women's Right to ChooseThe abortion issue has taken center stage in South Dakota. The Post: "South Dakota is the unlikely home of this year's most intense duel over abortion, a Nov. 7 referendum to decide the future of HB 1215, a measure that would institute a broad ban on the procedure. No exceptions would be allowed for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest -- abortion would be permitted only when the mother's life is in jeopardy."Partisans across the nation are delivering money and tactical advice on an issue that has divided residents of the state. South Dakota's fight could be a harbinger of political battles across the country should the Supreme Court strike down Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. ...

Same old, same oldEleanor Clift wrote in Newsweek about the Fear Factor and President Bush. Nothing new; others have remarked about the subject, that the president and offcials in his administration thrive on ramping up threat of terrorism at every opportunity. There are times when opportunities are created and the threats exaggerated. Ever since 9/11 terrorists have become their life rope, and they show no sign of giving it up. They cannot survive without it.With 876 days to go before this president leaves the White House we are stuck. We cannot stop him from continuing with his lies but we don't have to believe him. The failures -- from the war in Iraq to reconstruction of the area ravaged by Katrina -- of his administration can no longer be in hidden. More and more people are tuning him off. That is how it should be.Elenaor Clift - NewsweekBush’s original sin was to politicize U.S. intervention in Iraq. He used the war to transform an aimless presidency into one of Churchillian dimensions, and now that it’s all turned sour, he has nothing to fall back on. Bush is as beleaguered now as Lyndon Johnson was during Vietnam—with one key difference. The worse the news is from Iraq, the more positive Bush is that he’s right. As Vietnam raged on, Johnson became less certain he was doing the right thing.Victory no longer appears possible in Iraq, yet Bush’s rhetoric is more bullish than ever about the correctness of his course. U.S. forces are not leaving Iraq as long as he’s president. His model is Prime Minister Winston Churchill, defeated by an ungrateful British public after leading the country through war, a lonely figure vindicated by history. To achieve stability in Iraq, Thomas Ricks, Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post and author of “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” (Penguin 2006), says U.S. forces can expect to stay for 10 to 15 years, on top of the three they’ve already been there. “And that’s the optimistic scenario,” he says.A Republican Bigot Speaks Out in FloridaRemember Kathleen Harris and her role in the 2000 presidential election ? At that time she was Florida's Secretary of State. She won a seat in Congress in 2002 and is currently the Republican contender for U.S. Senate. This is what the Post reported "ORLANDO, Aug. 25 -- Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that the separation of church and state is a "lie we have been told" to keep religious people out of politics.""If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris told interviewers from the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention. She cited abortion and same-sex marriage as examples of that sin.Harris, a candidate in the Sept. 5 Republican primary for U.S. Senate, said her religious beliefs "animate" everything she does, including her votes in Congress.

And the Fallout from KatrinaDuring the Vietnam war President Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard but the records of his service are somewhat murky. Our hawkish Vice-president Cheney never served in the army; he took deferments during the Vietnam war. In 1989 he said to Joseph Wilson of the Washington Post "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service".Current and former officials of the Bush Administration who never served: Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense George Tenet, former CIA Director Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of StateElliott Abrams, Deputy National Security AdviserKarl Rove, Head,Office of Political AffairsProminent Republicans who never served: John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House Tom Delay, former House Majority Leader Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader Roy Blunt, House WhipSaxby Chambliss, (attacked Max Cleland) Jon Kyl, Senator (R-AZ) Phil Gramm Rick Santorum, Senator (R-PA) Trent Lott, US SenatorNewt Gingrich, Former Speaker Rudy Giuliani, Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor New York City George Pataki, NY Governer Jeb Bush, Florida Governor Source: Political Intelligence by Alan Simpson(updated by the writer)What brought this up? An article by Gary Younge in The Guardian. In "We shall not be moved", he wrote about soldiers who deserted from the war in Iraq and their feelings about it. "Some joined the US military as a patriotic duty, some to better themselves, but the horrors of serving in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, changed everything. Deserters tell Gary Younge why they had to quit." Excerpts:For Camilo Mejia there was no epiphany. In fact, his refusal to rejoin his regiment in Iraq barely represented a decision at all. It was more a weary submission to months of anxiety that had gnawed at his sense of duty until there was nothing left but his conscience. "I didn't wake up thinking I wouldn't go," he says. "I just went to bed and didn't get up in time to catch the plane. But I kept thinking maybe I would go back sometime."Mejia, 30, never did go back. He went on the run for five months, staying with friends and relatives, using only cash, travelling by bus and not calling his mother or daughter, before he turned himself in as a conscientious objector. A military tribunal sentenced him to one year in prison.Like Mejia, 24-year-old Darrell Anderson went on the run just a few days before he was due to redeploy. "I was supposed to leave for Iraq on January 8th. On the 3rd I started to talk to people about the war. By the 6th I woke up and had hit a brick wall. I just knew I wasn't going to be able to live a normal life if I went back."He told his mother, Anita, who said she "had been hoping for that". "I packed up the car and took him to Canada. It was the first time I slept through the night in two years," she says. Anderson is now essentially a fugitive seeking asylum in Canada.And then there was Joshua Casteel, an interrogator at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. His turning point came when a 22-year-old Saudi who came to Iraq for jihad was brought before him for questioning. "He admitted it," says Casteel, 26, a deeply religious Catholic convert from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I asked him why he had come to Iraq to kill. Then he asked me why I had come to Iraq to kill. He said I wasn't following the teachings of Jesus, which was pretty ironic. But I thought he sounded just like me. He was not a maniacal kind of killer. He had never fired a weapon in his life ... I know what it's like to proselytise. At one time I had been a pretty nationalistic kid. I understood where he was coming from but in order to do my job I couldn't look at him as a human being. I had to look at him as an object of exploitation."Two days later Casteel went to Qatar on leave. When he came back he told his commander that he would be applying for conscientious objector status. "I said I wouldn't turn in my weapon while I was there or talk to the media but would carry on doing my job and when I got back home I would ask to leave the military." He filed his application on February 16 and was granted an honourable discharge on May 31.Whether you call them deserters, conscientious objectors or resisters, every story of American soldiers who left the army prematurely because of the Iraq war shares the same emotional trajectory. They begin with doubt and end with determination. And somewhere along the way comes that ill-defined but crucial moment when the psychological struggle and moral angst overwhelm their military commitment.The number applying for conscientious objector status has quadrupled since 2000 but remains small, though many more simply go awol. In 2004, 110 soldiers filed, of whom around half were successful. The rest went back to war, refused to serve, were jailed or are still in hiding. Yet there has been a huge increase in enquiries, according to JE McNeil, director of the Centre on Conscience and War. Before 9/11, she says, its GI hotline received roughly one phone call a month from those seeking information about how to get out of the military. In the year after, it went up to one or two a week. Currently it stands at more than one a day.As of August 25th, U.S. military fatalities total 2,621 including 43 who died this month. Source: Iraq Coalition Casualties*It is not only the mess that he created in Iraq but also the ghost of Katrina that President Bush is unable to shake off. Jonathan Weisman and Michael Abramowitz in the Post: "From the demise of his Social Security overhaul to the war in Iraq, many factors have contributed to Bush's slide in popularity in the past year. But the winds of Katrina may have been the force that finally wrenched the Bush presidency off its moorings, these observers said."

Ehud Olmert On Shaky Grounds Less than two weeks after the cease fire agreement, a movement calling for resignation of Prime Minister Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz for mishandling the war is gaining strength. In a report filed from Jerusalem, Rory McCarthy of The Guardian wrote: "A poll in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper showed 63% want Mr Olmert to go. The defence minister, Amir Peretz, appears even more vulnerable with 74% calling for his resignation, while 54% want the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, to resign as well." And in the mess that is Iraq Shias and Sunnis continue to kill each other in a frenzy. Ellen Knickmeyer in the Post: "These cases do not need to go back to the religious courts," said the commander, who sat elbow to elbow with a fellow fighter in a short-sleeved, striped shirt. Neither displayed weapons. "Our constitution, the Koran, dictates killing for those who kill."The GuardianThe poll reflects growing disillusionment within Israeli society about the 34-day conflict with Hizbullah and the fact that the country emerged without any clear victory over the Lebanese militia. The two Israeli soldiers whose capture triggered the conflict are still not free. The war claimed the lives of more than 1,100 people in Lebanon, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.Hundreds of protesters, many of them waving Israeli flags, gathered at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem to call for Mr Olmert's resignation. Among them were military reservists who have led criticism of the war as well as Moshe and Riva Moskal, whose son Rafael, a 21-year-old staff sergeant, was killed in the fighting."We think this country deserves better leadership," said Mrs Moskal. "The north was bombed and they didn't do anything. They failed there, they failed here," she said. "We feel lost. We feel there is no leadership and we feel as parents that we lost the most precious thing we had."We believe it was our duty to raise a voice of protest. This beautiful Israeli nation is strong but has values which seem to have been lost in the last few years."*Washington PostHis comments offered a rare acknowledgment of the role of the Mahdi Army in the sectarian bloodletting that has killed more than 10,400 Iraqis in recent months. The Mahdi Army is the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, now one of the most powerful figures in the country.

Death of the Neocons' Scenario * Albert Camus and G.W. BushThey being the people of the predominantly Muslim regions -- Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia. Then there are countries where the presence of Muslims is strong (Britain, India). Some among them participate in acts of terrorism. President Bush described them as "Islamo-Fascists".Think about what we have done to generate hate against the American government and its policies.The WMD story used by the neocons to take the nation to war against Iraq is now a dead horse. Operation Iraqi Freedom is a joke but Bush and the Republicans continue to exploit Iraq as the center of al-Qaeda activities. More than 40,000 Iraqi civilians have died, not counting the victims of sectarian violence now raging between the Sunnis and Shias. The much vaunted elections in Iraq resulted in Shiites gaining power. The neocons' scenario for postwar Iraq went up in flames. Yes, majority of Iraqis hate the army of occupation.We wanted, and encouraged, elections in Palestine. To our consternation the Palestinians voted Hamas into power. We shunned Hamas and allowed Israel to continue military actions against civilian population in Gaza. No wonder that we are detested by the Palestinians.The recent war in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah had our fingerprints all over the map. No American boots on the ground but we were a party "by proxy". An uneasy peace prevails in Lebanon but only after its infrastructure was destroyed and large number of civilians died. Can we expect the Lebanese to love us ?Now we are taking a leading role in the drumbeat for war against Iran. We don't want them to possess nuclear technology beyond what we consider to be "safe". We describe them as a rogue nation and we want their oil. We rule over a nuclear club with restricted membership. We don't even mention that Israel has nuclear weapons. It does not take much imagination to visualize what is going to happen if we decide to liberate Iran. You can bet that Iranians will not be greeting us with flowers and chocolates.Saad Eddin Ibrahim's article 'The New Middleast' Bush Is Resisting in the Post goes to the heart of the matter. "President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. In fact, their policies in support of the actions of their closest regional ally, Israel, have helped midwife the newborn. But it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. For one thing, it will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States. For another, it is going to be a rough birth." What is happening in the broader Middle East and North Africa can be seen as a boomerang effect that has been playing out slowly since the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001. In the immediate aftermath of those attacks, there was worldwide sympathy for the United States and support for its declared "war on terrorism," including the invasion of Afghanistan. Then the cynical exploitation of this universal goodwill by so-called neoconservatives to advance hegemonic designs was confirmed by the war in Iraq. The Bush administration's dishonest statements about "weapons of mass destruction" diminished whatever credibility the United States might have had as liberator, while disastrous mismanagement of Iraqi affairs after the invasion led to the squandering of a conventional military victory. The country slid into bloody sectarian violence, while official Washington stonewalled and refused to admit mistakes. No wonder the world has progressively turned against America. What the President is "reading" this summer Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker writes about the president's summer reading list. It includes The Stranger by Albert Camus. Wow, the president has hidden depths of which we are unaware. Seriously though, I don't believe he read Camus or can understand Camus. The summer reading list is just another prop used by the White House. And all this brings us no further than book one on the President’s stack, with Oppenheimer and Lincoln still to be chewed on. Bush may have emerged from his syllabus as little altered as most undergraduates emerge from theirs. Still, it is encouraging to think that he has spent the summer reflecting on the inscrutable origins of human violence and on the unimaginable destructive powers now available through American science, while contemplating the achievements of a great man who hated wars, made a necessary one, and wandered the halls of the White House agonized by the consequences. It sounds almost like the beginnings of wisdom, or, at least, a compulsory fall reading list for us all. Comments Anonymous — 2006-09-11 Dear Musafir,First of all let me congratulate you for your courage to speak out, a priviledge not readily available in the know religious repressed world. Religion & politics is a well known hot potato by todays standards. It is unfortunate that we as humanity have not matured with tolerance, but rather have stooped down to the lowest denomination available in human behaviour with very grave results. We can only hope that the moderate populus of any ethnic & religious groups are able to see beyond thier just cause & accept another human being for who they are rather than vilify them by political or religious means. That is the hope. The main resolve in our human conflict is to letting go of our tendencies for control over one another,& learning to negotiate rather than irritate. We only have to look at the world wide propoganda from every nation on this planet & see for ourselves that we are responsible for our own demise. Some countries claiming "war on (fill this blank)" are only doing injustice for thier population & thier economies. The average person on this planet needs to be able to express thier autonomy & enjoy the company of thier fellow human being without prejudice. A very long term prospect remaining contentious to the end. May you find peace in your pilgramage & help another human being find joy in living.

"The Lies Behind the Truth......"©Don Asmussen, sfchronicle.com 8/20/06It was a long press conference. The suprise was in his admission that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on the World Trade Center but he maintained that the decision to go to war was right! From the transcript: :Q What did Iraq have to do with that? THE PRESIDENT: What did Iraq have to do with what? Q The attack on the World Trade Center? ...

Going, Going, GoneGood news. A large number of Republican voters have had it with President Bush and their anger is affecting the incumbents running for reelection. Jim Vanderhei in the Post: "PHOENIXVILLE, Pa. -- When it comes to President Bush and the Republican Congress, Rep. Jim Gerlach says voters in his suburban Philadelphia district are in a "sour mood."That's why when it comes to his reelection, the two-term incumbent says "the name of the game" is to convince those same voters that he can be independent of his own party. He has turned his standard line about Bush -- "When I think he's wrong, I let him know" -- into a virtual campaign slogan, repeated in interviews and TV ads."It is a combination of things, from the war in Iraq to gas prices to what they are experiencing in their local areas," Gerlach said of the surly electorate whose decision he will know on Nov. 7.The Iraq war and Bush's low approval ratings have created trouble for Republicans in all regions. But nowhere is the GOP brand more scuffed than in the Northeast, where this year's circumstances are combining with long-term trends to endanger numerous incumbents.Robbing the PoorThe report by Larry Margasak of Associated Press is not a surprise to most of us -- that our elected representatives are by and large unethical is a generally accepted fact. Nevertheless, the details about their blatant waste of taxpayers' money are sickening. Scandal after scandal and yet they shamelessly carry on feeding their egos. The term "corrupt politician" has become an oxymoron.WASHINGTON -- The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn't stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.Agency documents obtained by The Associated Press detail the luxuries that executives of the Legal Services Corp. have given themselves with federal money -- from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within taxi distance of their offices.The government-funded corporation also has a spacious headquarters in Washington's tony Georgetown district -- with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building.And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.

LebanonAfter Israel launched a full scale military offensive on July 12,2006, it became apparent that the United States did not want a quick stop to the war. Secretary of State Rice (who,in her appearances before the media,looked like the cat who had swallowed the canary) and President Bush issued statements about "a lasting peace" and "an enduring peace" while expediting supply of weapons and technology to assist the Israelis. It was part of a strategy to hit back at Syria and Iran through the Hezbollah.....the human toll be damned. It was part of an agenda. Now Seymour Hersh has exposed the damning facts. There are doubts about the effectiveness of the UN peace agreement as there are doubts about gains made by the United States and Israel from this episode and consequent deaths and destruction. Molly Moore and Edward Cody in the Washington Post: "JERUSALEM, Aug. 14 -- The Israeli military halted its combat operations against Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah rockets stopped raining on Israel early Monday morning as a tenuous U.N.-imposed cease-fire took effect after more than a month of fighting that devastated parts of Lebanon and sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters."Bush 'helped Israeli attack on Lebanon'The GuardianThe US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday.The veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials travelled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hizbullah.Quoting a US government consultant, Hersh said: "Earlier this summer ... several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear'."The Israeli action, current and former government officials told Hersh, chimed with the Bush administration's desire to reduce the threat of possible Hizbullah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran."A successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign ... could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations," sources told Hersh.Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel's attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran."An unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh: "It was our intention to have Hizbullah diminished and now we have someone else doing it."Officials from the state department and the Pentagon denied the report. A spokesman for the National Security Council told Hersh that "The Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack."Hersh has a track record in breaking major stories. He was the first to write about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and has written extensively about the build-up to the war in Iraq. He made his name when he uncovered the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war. Most recently he has written about US plans for Iran, alleging that US special forces had already been active inside the country.

Is a victor going to emerge from the dust ? Did the United States get what it wanted ? For the beleagured civilians it is a long and anxious day. The UN peace agreement takes effect tomorrow. Until then the war continues, with both sides claiming victory. Victory, as they see it. Indications are that at best it is an uneasy truce, far from the objective of the parties that took part in the war and the negotiations. Robin Wright in the Post: "It was a very close call. U.N. diplomats assembled at 3 p.m. in the cavernous Security Council hall to get the U.S.-French proposal to end an excruciating month of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. The United States had Lebanon's approval but still had not received word from Israel. U.S. Ambassador John R. Bolton did a "diplomatic tap dance" to stall, U.S. officials said. Then at 3:53 Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the third time during a tense day of diplomacy. Despite its decision just hours earlier to launch a ground invasion, Israel agreed to the terms of the resolution. It was a deal. "But the future of the Middle East may be markedly different as a result of the bloody drama that erupted July 12 after the seizure of two Israeli soldiers by Lebanon's Shiite militia. So, too, the image of the United States. What many now consider to be the sixth modern Middle East war has some distinct winners and losers, interviews with a range of former U.S. officials and Middle East analysts reveal.Although the outcome will be long debated, big losers at this stage appear to be Israel's government, the Lebanese people, and the Bush administration's struggle against terrorism and its campaign for democracy, these observers said.In waging the longest Arab war against Israel, the big winner may be Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah -- for now. One surprise has been the strong leadership of neophyte Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.Yet every party has lost something.Olmert In A Shaky PositionHow quickly the tides turn. The Guardian:The future of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, was last night hanging on how successfully he could sell his citizens the idea that the country had been 'victorious' in the 'war in the north' as criticism of his shaky performance began to escalate amid the first calls for his resignation.While Olmert's allies and government officials lined up to express satisfaction about the outcome of the UN ceasefire resolution passed while the fighting continued, attempts to present a 'victory' to the Israeli public could not disguise the deep sense of disquiet over the operation's failures and fears that Hizbollah might manage to emerge 'victorious' in the coming days.