ORIGINAL MATERIAL PRODUCED BY THE GLOBAL BEAT SYNDICATE Conn Hallinan: on the oil connection between Bush and Sharon Ralp A. Cossa: on Taiwan, the ball is in Beijing's court

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Murals depicting American treatment of Iraqi prisoners on a wall in Teheran. For many in the Middle East,the U.S. occupation is now symbolized by pictures of abuse.

THE CIA'S GEORGE TENET RESIGNS
The timing of George Tenet's resignation as head of the CIA took most experts by surprise. If Tenet had made a major error, it was probably not to have resigned sooner when Pentagon neoconservatives road roughshod over the skeptical analysis of the CIA in order to promote questionable information in support of going to war with Iraq. The CIA was extremely skeptical about Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of Pentagon hardliners, who it is being investigated for allegedly eventually slipping critical classified information to Iran's intelligence service. Tenet's resignation also takes place as President Bush is hiring a personal attorney to represent him in the ongoing investigation of an alleged White House leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's undercover status to Washington newspapers. (BBC reports on the resignation, June 3, 2004)
•The New York Times reports that the announcement took place awkwardly as President Bush was leaving for Europe
•The Washington Post's Dana Priest answers questions on line
•The Post's Robert Kaiser also fields Q & A
•The Council on Foreign Relations hosts a discussion with three former CIA directors (May 12, 2004)

CHOOSING A NEW PRESIDENT UNDERSCORES THE WEAKNESS OF THE AMERICAN POSITION IN IRAQ

US proconsul Paul Bremer suffered a setback in picking the president of Iraq's incoming transitional government. Bremer had wanted to install Adnan Pachachi. The rest of Iraq's outgoing Governing Council insisted on a tribal leader, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer instead, and Pachachi quickly realized that he would not be able to muster enough support among Iraqis to hold onto the job. Although his role is largely ceremonial, Sheik Ghazi promises to be more difficult to manage. The Sheik is more religiously connected than the U.S. would like, and there is no guarantee that he will not ask the U.S. to leave. Bremer had more influence over the choice of Iraq's new transitional prime minister, Ayad Allawi. But the fact that Allawi is a former Baathist officer who worked closely with the CIA and Britain's MI6 in the past, has made his selection look suspect to many Iraqis. Juan Cole analyzes the significance of Sheik Ghazi's selection. (Juan Cole, Informed Comment, June 1, 2004)
•Sheik Ghazi's earlier declarations on key issues
•Transcript of Juan Cole's on-line background briefing for the Washington Post (June 1, 2004)
•Iraq's new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, inherits the job from hell (The Economist, May 29, 2004)
•A Brookings Institution panel of experts looks at how the transition will impact on security, public opinion and stability (Brookings, May 30, 2004)

CHALABI REPORTEDLY WARNED IRAN THAT THE U.S. HAD BROKEN IRANIAN SECRET INTELLIGENCE CODES
The New York Times reports that six weeks ago, Ahmad Chalabi tipped off the Baghdad station chief of Iran's secret intelligence service that the U.S. had cracked its codes and was now reading its secret communications. The New York Times and other news organizations knew about the allegations against Chalabi some time ago, but withheld the details for a limited time at the request of the Bush administration. (The New York Times, June 3, 2004)
•For more on Chalabi, click here...

DRAFT U.N. RESOLUTION SETS TENTATIVE TIMETABLE FOR U.S. WITHDRAWAL, BUT DOES NOT GIVE IRAQIS VETO OVER ACTIONS BY U.S. TROOPS
The new draft resolution proposed by Britain and the U.S. would give a democratically elected Iraqi government the right to demand a U.S. troop withdrawal when it assumes power at the end of 2005. The draft pointedly does not give the Iraqis the right to veto U.S. military actions until then. Iraq's new transitional interior minister will have control over Iraq's new police forces. (BBC, June 1, 2004)

AL QAEDA TAKES AIM AT SAUDI OIL
“You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.” The words are from Osama bin Laden, and there should be no doubt after this weekend's attack that Al Qaeda is now going to try to shut off U.S. access to Saudi oil. The exodus of American and international technicians who make Saudi Arabia's oil fields function may be even more damaging than this weekend's casualties. The Economist analyzes Saudi Arabia's ability to control prices at a time when the world's production capacity is already stretched to the breaking point. (The Economist, May 27, 2004)
•THE VIEW AT THE OXFORD ENERGY SEMINAR
Robert Mabro, writing for the Middle East Economic Survey, points out that oil prices are set by the futures markets in New York and London--not by OPEC. A wide range of factors are now combining to drive prices up. They include uncertainty over Iraq, insecurity in Saudi Arabia, fear of gasoline shortages in the U.S. The problem in the U.S. has more to do with the refining capacity than oil supply, since American refiners are now working at more than 95% capacity, and obviously have enough crude oil to do so. (Robert Mabro, MEES, May 31, 2004)

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE ABUSE AT ABU GHRAIB, AND THE PRESIDENT'S PREFERENCE FOR "MORAL CLARITY" OVER CONVENTIONAL NOTIONS OF REALITY
Writing on TomDispatch.com, Caroline Wakeman examines the role of women in the abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Robert Manoff raises intriguing questions about the extent that the president's notions of "moral clarity" take precedence over the more conventional analysis of political "realists." (Caroline Wakeman and Robert Manoff, TomDispatch.com, June 1, 2004)

HOW THE NEOCONS GOT US INTO IRAQ BY MISUNDERSTANDING THE REASONS BEHIND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
General Wesley Clark, writing in the Washington Monthly, argues that it took decades of patient diplomacy combined with a policy of containment supported by allies to break through the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union. By attributing the Soviets' fall exclusively to Ronald Reagan's notions of moral absolutism, the neocons have arrived at some dangerously faulty conclusions that are backfiring in Iraq. (General Wesley Clark, the Washington Monthly, May 2004)

TIME REPORTS A MEMO LINKING VICE-PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY TO HALLIBURTON'S MULTIBILLION DOLLAR CONTRACT BYPASSING COMPETITIVE BIDDING
Last September, Vice-President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert on Meet the Press that his office had had nothing to do with a controversial contract worth billions to his former company. The awarding of the contract had bypassed standard requirements for competitive bidding.Time Magazine says it has found an email that shows that contrary to Cheney’s denial, the vice-president’s office did, in fact, coordinate the deal. (Time, May 30, 2004)

IRAN WANTS A STABLE IRAQ, BUT WITHOUT APPEARING TO SIDE WITH THE U.S.
Abbas Ali, writing in Al Ahram Weekly, notes that Iran has its own reasons for wanting to see the situation in Iraq take a more predictable path. The Iranian dilemma is how to help the new government without appearing to ally itself with the U.S. (Abbas Ali, Al Ahram Weekly, May 27, 2004)

SUICIDE BOMB AT MOSQUE TRIGGERS VIOLENCE IN KARACHI
Police are convinced that the bomb which killed 18 people and wounded 35 at a mosque in Pakistan was intended to further destabilize Pakistan, a crucial ally in the U.S. war in Afghanistan. (The Dawn, May 31, 2004)
•Mufti killed by hit squad near Karachi (May 30, 2004)

THE U.S. SHORTCIRCUITED NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS THROUGH FOUR COLD WAR FALSE ATOMIC ALERTS
The Nation's Matt Bivens reports that Bruce Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information, recalls that during the 1970s, the launch codes, intended to protect against an accidental nuclear war, were ordered changed on Minute Man missiles to a string of zeros. That meant that any launch officer would have been able to fire a missile at will. Happily, the Russians were more cautious. In 1983, the U.S. was saved from annihilation when a Soviet Army officer, Stanislav Petrov, ignored computer signals that the U.S. was firing its missiles at Moscow. The false signals, it later turned out, had been the result of a computer glitch. (Matt Bivens, The Nation, May 28, 2004)
•The CDI's Bruce Blair discussed the short circuiting of safeguards with Robert McNamara

ASHCROFT'S TERRORIST WARNING MAY HAVE BEEN TRIGGERED BY A LONE PERSON WITH A FAX MACHINE
Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, notes that the "Al Qaeda spokesman", who allegedly declared that plans are 90% complete for a new attack against the U.S., was none other that the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group that intelligence experts think may consist of one person with an overactive fax machine. NBC news analyst Roger Cressey, a former deputy to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, notes, “The only thing they haven’t claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington.” Why did Ashcroft deliver such a dire warning with no evidence to base it on? McGovern suggests that Bush's sinking ratings in the polls may have had a lot to do with it. (Ray McGovern in Tom Paine.com, June 1, 2004)

CHALABI, THE MANIPULATOR
The New Yorker's Jane Mayer looks at the erratic career of the man who may have done more than anyone else to lure the neoconservatives of the administration into a lethal Middle Eastern quagmire. (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, May 29, 2004)

CHALABI AND THE NEW YORK TIMES
When the New York Times apologized for misleading coverage leading up to the war in Iraq, it turned out that the majority of the articles the Times had trouble with had been written by its correspondent, Judith Miller, based on information provided by Chalabi and his informal "intelligence" service. James Moore looks at the parts the Times left out of the story in Salon. (James C. Moore, Salon, May 27, 2004)

•SLATE'S JACK SHAFER ON THE NEW YORK TIMES' "MINI CULPA"
Shafer points out that Judith Miller's material had to pass through a battery of editors before making it into the newspaper, but at least the Times has the courage to admit its errors. (Jack Shafer, Slate, May 26, 2004)

BRAHIMI APPEARS TO BE ANGLING FOR A NEW ROLE AS TROUBLESHOOTER IN IRAQ's RECONSTRUCTION
The U.N. negotiator was moderately successful at bringing opposing sides together in Afghanistan. Iraq may be more difficult if for no other reason than the fact that this time around the 70-year old Brahimi will have to simultaneously fight off both the neocons in the Pentagon and a death threat from Osama bin Laden. (Eurasianet.org, May 30, 2004)

RUSSIA: VLADIMIR PUTIN'S STATE OF THE NATION SPEECH WAS NOTEWORTHY FOR WHAT IT DID NOT SAY
While not mentioning Iraq by name, the Russian leader made it clear that he wants closer ties with Europe, and that international crises are best left to the U.N. (Caroline McGregor, Moscow Times via Center for Defense Information, May 27, 2004)

SUDAN GOVERNMENT AND TWO REBEL GROUPS AGREE TO INTERNATIONAL MONITORS IN DARFUR
Friday's deal in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa provides for an international Darfur ceasefire commission including representatives from the African Union, European Union, Khartoum government and the two main Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement.
The African Union (AU) Commissioner for Peace and Security, Said Djinnit, said the first seven military observers would go to Darfur next week.
The AU's Peace and Security Council said at its launch on Tuesday in Addis Ababa that it would soon send an observer mission composed of 60 military officials and about 30 civilians to five flashpoints in Darfur to monitor ceasefire violations. (Reuters Alertnet, May 28, 2004)
•Susan Rice and Gayle Smith call for action to prevent genocide
Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Gayle E. Smith, special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council from 1998 to 2001, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. They call for the U.S. to prepare for military intervention if no other countries are prepared to act. (Washington Post, May 30, 2004)

SOMALIA ERUPTS AGAIN
Three days of clashes between rival militias in Mogadishu have killed around 60 people. The latest violence stems from a clash between rival militias, which broke out in a hotel. (Grant Ferret, BBC, May 27, 2004)

President Bush discusses Iraq with reporters in the Rose Garden 12 QUESTIONS FOR THE PRESIDENT FROM CHALMERS JOHNSON Chalmers Johnson is the author of The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic and of an earlier volume, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, among other works. His questions for George W. Bush ran in TomDispatch.com: 1. Please tell us more about your notion of "full sovereignty" for Iraq. Will this be like our returning Okinawan sovereignty to Japan in 1972, when we retained exclusive control over the 38 military bases on the island and the deployment and behavior of American forces on them? 2. Please tell us: If we plan to return Iraq to the Iraqis, why is the U.S. currently building fourteen permanent bases there? 3. Presumably the American troops to be stationed on these bases will remain under the control of the Pentagon and beyond the legal reach of any "sovereign" Iraqi state. Such arrangements are usually covered by a "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) that we normally impose on the government in whose territory our bases are placed. Who will sign the SOFA on the Iraqi side? What are its terms? Will it be binding on the new government you hope the Iraqis will elect early next year? 4. The sovereignty discussion has been focused mainly on the question of who will control the actions of what troops -- Iraqi or American -- in the coming months. But American advisers will be stationed in every Iraqi "ministry"; the new government will evidently be capable neither of passing, nor abrogating laws or regulations laid down by the occupying power; and the economy, except for oil, will remain open to all foreign corporate investors. Please tell us if this really strikes you as "full sovereignty"? 5. You say that we will tear down Abu Ghraib prison if the Iraqis so wish. What if they wish to preserve it as a monument to our cruelty as well as Saddam Hussein's? 6. Your administration has recently confirmed that while captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters were not, in your eyes, covered by the Geneva Conventions, Iraqi prisoners and detainees were. The acts in Abu Ghraib prison contravened those conventions. We now know that teams of interrogation experts were sent by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commandant of our Guantánamo prison from Cuba to Abu Ghraib to teach Americans working there "better" interrogation techniques. If these contravened the Geneva Conventions, should General Miller be brought to trial for this? If General Miller acted at Guantánamo and elsewhere on the basis of guidelines and urgings from his superiors in the Pentagon and the military chain of command, should they face the same? Your views on this would be appreciated. 7. If it turns out to be true that some of the acts of torture in Abu Ghraib prison were, in fact, committed by members of the Israeli intelligence services, who were placed in the prison via our independent contractors, does this not further confuse American policy in the Middle East with that of Ariel Sharon's Israel? Is this really a good idea? 8. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the war and occupation in Iraq by 130,000 U.S. troops now costs close to $5 billion per month, or $60 billion a year. So far the war has cost American taxpayers $186 billion in direct military expenses. You've asked for another $425 billion in defense appropriations for the 2005 Pentagon budget, plus another $75 billion for Iraq, $25 billion for the development of new generations of nuclear weapons, and untold billion for such things as military pensions and veterans' health care. Not included in these figures are the multibillions in secret amounts spent on the CIA and other intelligence activities, not to speak of other Department of Defense "black budget" activities kept out of the appropriations process. Where is all this money going to come from? Why is our government putting all this money on the tab for future generations to deal with? 9. Speaking of military pensions and health care, would you please address the fact that something like 30% of the troops who participated in the first Gulf War are now seeking disability payments for illnesses contracted there -- chiefly as a result of our use of depleted uranium shells. Would you please discuss some of these long-term dangers of modern warfare (even when our initial short-term casualties seem relatively modest)? How will our military hospitals be able to care for all the soldiers who are likely to develop cancer or give birth to children with birth defects as a result of the current war? 10. On June 1, 2002, in your West Point speech enunciating your new doctrine of preventive war, you said there were 60 countries that were potential targets for regime change. Would you please list those 60 countries for us, and are you still determined in a second term to proceed down this list? 11. If you are determined to start new wars, or if the Iraq war drags on and not enough soldiers re-enlist, will you reinstate the draft? 12. Why do you usually give your speeches to the American people before audiences of servicemen and women at military academies, on bases, and the like, where they have been ordered by their superiors to attend and to applaud? Why not give one of your speeches -- especially if you're going to propose reinstating the draft -- at a large state college? (Chalmers Johnson, TomDispatch.com, June 1, 2004)

The Security Policy Working Group
William Hartung, Marcus Corbin, Winslow T. Wheeler
Lucy Webster

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