Marie Antoinette is notorious for her response to starvation among her subjects: "Let them eat cake."

Her callousness and arrogance surely accelerated the coming of the French Revolution. Hillary Clinton, in voting for a Senate resolution that labeled the Iranian army as a "terrorist force," has essentially made her own memorable declaration: "Let them eat yellowcake."

Unlike Marie Antionette, instead of infuriating the masses living in misery, Clinton's vote--as the leading Democratic presidential contender--warmed the hearts of Bush, Dick Cheney and the neo-con policymaking elites who have been hankering for a war with Iran. What could be more delightful than to garner the anti-Iran vote of the leading Democratic presidential contender for a resolution that draws Bush and Cheney closer to the new blank check for another war that they seek?

Despite the Bush Administration's long history of manipulating evidence on the Saddam Hussein's search for "yellowcake" nuclear material and uranium tubing (to cite just two examples in the contrived rush for war), Hillary Clinton for the voted anti-Iranian resolution on the basis of specious evidence about "sophisticated" armor-piercing improvised explosive devices known as "EFPs."

The vote to characterize Iran's army as a "terrorist:" force comes at a critical moment as the Bush-Cheney Administration moves to squeeze in a military action against Iran before the rapidly-approaching end of their regime. As one former intelligence official told Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, Oct. 8), "There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, 'You can't do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we're only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq. But Cheney doesn't give a rat's ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President."

WAS IRAN OR RADIO SHACK SOURCE OF 'SOPHISTICATED' WEAPONS?
Nor, evidently, does Hillary Clinton seem to give a "rat's ass" about the quality of the intelligence purporting to show Iranian government interference in Iraq. First, the "evidence" tying the EFPs to the Iranian government Iran is extraordinarily flimsy. A top American official was forced to admit that all the components of an EFP (except for the explosives), are available at "any RadioShack" and Iran is hardly the exclusive source of EFPs.

Yet Hillary Clinton voted to accelerate the mindless frenzy toward conflict with Iraq despite absence of any hard evidence linking the EFPs to the Iranian government (as outlined in detail by Gareth Porter at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gareth-porter/liebermankyl-vs-the-evi_b_66020.html. )

CLINTON EAGERLY WILLING TO BE 'FOOLED' AGAIN
As George W. Bush once tried to remark, "Fooled me once, shame on me. Fooled me twice, shame on, um, uh, you know…" Hillary Clinton, convinced that she is the untouchable front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, is shamelessly willing to be "fooled" again. She seemingly wants to establish credentials with hard-Right Republican voters in the general election, showing that she is just as mindlessly hawkish as any man, even the buffoonish warrior Sen. Joe Lieberman who co-sponsored the anti-Iran resolution.

At Wednesday night's debate at Dartmouth, she placed herself at the far right of all the Democratic primary contenders on virtually ever issue, ignoring the anti-war sentiment fueling the Democratic wave in 2006 while making every gesture possible to make herself acceptable to hard-Right voters in November, 2008.

HILLARY'S 'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' APPROACH
In playing to the Right at the most recent Democratic debate at Dartmouth on issue after issue, Clinton appeared to so sure of her eventual nomination that all she lacked was a Bush-style "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging behind her.

Yet some may still harbor the illusion that Hillary Clinton is intent on a fundamentally different course than George W. Bush and his doctrines of preventive war and US supremacy in the world. But recall that Hillary Clinton in October, 2002 not only voted unapologetically for the resolution that led us to war and endless occupation of Iraq.

She also voted against Sen. Carl Levin's resolution calling for all peaceful processes to be exhausted before the US launched the war. But as Clinton and Lieberman now add fuel to the drive for a military strike against Iran, they may wish to consider the results of the last major US intervention in Iran, an episode rarely mentioned in the US media despite the ongoing, disastrous results for the Iranian people.

In 1953, a CIA-British ended the democratic rule of Mohammed Mossadegh and restored the dictatorship of Shah Reza Pahlevi, whose 26-year reign was marked by grotesque torture, mass murders, and, not surprisingly, unconditional US support. Since the Shah's overthrow 29 years ago, Iran passed from the torture chamber of the Shah and plunged into the authoritarian rule of the mullahs.

However, it would be foolish to expect to hear any warnings from Hillary Clinton to Bush and Cheney. Each disastrous blunder by them, in her mind, insures her election. But she seems to forget the human toll these colossal missteps take, and that Democratic voters may ultimately decide that they cannot stomach the nomination of someone who has served chiefly as an enabler of Bush, Cheney, and Co.

Hillary Clinton's recent conduct underscores how willing she is to abandon principle--and potentially toss away countless thousands of lives--in her drive for the presidency. Let us speak plainly on the volatility of the situation with Iran: Hillary Clinton knows better; she simply has other calculations in mind. 

rom one end of the Mississippi to the other---from the washing away of the levees in New Orleans to the collapse of I-35 in Minneapolis--the results of starving the public sector's vital functions are becoming apparent.

First, governments have been deprived of the revenues that they need to conduct critical work like maintaining bridges, roads, and parks. (In Milwaukee, the decline of the once-prized park system --the legacy of our early Socialist mayors' commitment to public green space for all citizens--is shameful, as ballparks are becoming overgrown (with some implanted with toxic fertilizer), water fountains removed, bathrooms are closed, and supervisory staff, vtial to preventing the parks from becoming overrun by gangs and driving out families, are eliminated. Yet County Executive Scott Walker remains intransigent about opposing a tiny 1% sales tax.)

More and more of the remaining resources go to the war in Iraq and the prison-industrial complex. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will take $9.4 billion a year over the next 20 years--a sizable sum-- to restore our bridges to stable and safe condition. But meanwhile, the US occupation of Iraq is consuming at least $8 billion each month.

Further, at both the state and federal levels, corporations and the wealthy have jettisoned their share of the tax burden. In Wisconsin, for example, 62% of corporations with more than $100 million in revenues pay zero in state income taxes--including such giants as Johnson Controls, Kohl's Department Stores, and SC Johnson. Bush tax cuts for those earning $1 million or more have enjoyed tax breaks of about $93,000 a year, while major corporations like the drug companies continue to shield their huge profits from taxes by stashing them in offshore tax havens.

Second, the horrific tragedy in Minneapolis, like the aftermath of Katrina, has triggered a round of deceptive statements by public officials denying any neglect of vital infrastructure. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been maintaining that his administration did the equivalent of a "heckuva job" in monitoring the state's bridges:

Pawlenty insisted that inspections in 2005 and 2006 had found no structural problems with the bridge. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the bridge "was rated as 'structurally deficient' two years ago and possibly in need of replacement." The bridge was borderline -- with a 50 sufficiency rating; if a bridge scores less than 50, it needs to be replaced.

According to the Pioneer Press, the bridge's suspension system was supposed to receive extra attention with inspections every two years, but the last one had been performed in 2003. The governor had every reason to obfuscate; in 2005, he vetoed a bipartisan transportation package that would have "put more than $8 billion into highways, city and county roads, and transit over the next decade." At the time, he was applauded by many Republicans for his staunch fiscal "conservatism." ( from "Are the Dead From the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse Victims of Conservative Ideology?"By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. posted August 3, 2007) http://www.alternet.org/story/58716/

But Minnesota has not been alone in its systematic unwillingness to confront the need to protect the infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimated in 2005 that 160,570 bridges, or just over one-quarter of the nation's 590,750 bridge inventory, were rated "structurally deficient" or "functionally obsolete."

However, the ruling ideology of this age among political elites is still the philosopy articulated by conservative strategist (and the convicted Jack Abramoff's close pal) Grover Norquist: “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Of course, before government is completely drowned, Norquist and his allies in the corporate world are spewing anti-government rhetoric while simultananeously soaking the taxpayer for huge subsidies, tax breaks, low-cost mineral rights, and a host of other government-provided goodies.

That leaves very little money left over for building levees that will resist hurricanes, staffing a competent and professional FEMA, or re-constructing our sagging bridges.

But the situation will not change until Democrats re-frame the debate and insist that government can competently and compassionately help ordinary Americans. (It does not help, to say the least, when a prominent liberal Democrat like Sen. Charles Schumer defends the privileged tax status of earnings from hedge funds that flow to multi-millionaires and billionaires.)When Democrats echo Norquist's "no tax increase" message, they only reinforce the current paralysis over rebuilding New Orleans and our bridges, and tie their own hands if and when the Democrats achieve power.

A slightly revised version of this article  appears in The Progressive Populist at

http://www.populist.com/07.15.bybee.html

he practice of literally corrupting the free press --at home or abroad-- is at odds with everything our nation stands for, but it has become a common practice.

 

So we have examples like conservative columnist Armstrong Williams being paid to write pieces favorable about school choice (heavily promoted by the ultra-rightist, Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation as a means of undermining public education and undermining teacher unions.)

On one hand, we have Pentagon personnel writing articles for Iraqi newspapers that give a positive spin on US military activities. On the other, former US proconsul for Iraq Paul Bremer shut down about a dozen non-approved newspapers, as Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen reported in "Iraqi Liberation: Bush Style" in Z magazine (9/2003) :

…the Coalition Provisional Authority chief, Paul Bremer, gave himself the power to squelch Iraqi media engaged in "incitement," which in practice means clamping down on those who oppose the occupation. Under the headline "Bremer is a Baathist," one paper editorialized, "We've waited a long time to be free. Now you want us to be slaves."

 

n a more lethal attempt at controlling the press, Al-Jazeera TV offices in Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad have been bombed by the US military. The Kabul bombing was particularly enlightening about the US high command's regard for press freedom, because the US military had earlier checked on the precise location of the Al-Jazeera studio supposedly to avoid hitting it, according an Al-Jazeera  staffer interviewed on National Public Radio. An Al-Jazeera cameraman has been imprisoned at Guanantanamo for 5 1/2 years because he has refused to act as an informant for the US military, reported Amy Goodman recently on her "Democracy Now!" TV program. Most shockingly, George W. Bush reportedly suggested to Tony Blair the idea of bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar and was talked out of it by Blair. According to the British Mirror 11/22/05:

President Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash. A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

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The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

As with many outrages connected with the Iraq War (e.g., the disappearance of more than $8 billion in cash provided by the US), this stunning revelation about Bush's impulses has disappeared down the Memory Hole for the media.

 

 

 

ut the most popular tactic by US military planners has simply to buy off the local media.  It's relatively easily done, since most poor nations have one dominant paper and these publications tend to be sympathetic to members of the local elite which own them and advertise in them.

 

Few people were shocked when the Pentagon found nothing wrong in allowing a US-based PR firm to pay Iraqi media to run positive articles about the US occupation.

 

Still, a handful of naïve Americans might think it unseemly for our government to hire a PR firm to bribe Iraqi media into carrying US-written propaganda. The US hardly appears to be teaching the Iraqis that democracy is dependent on a free and independent press, unshackled from financial pressures on its news and editorial content.

 

But the latest white-washing of high-level US conduct in Iraq should not be surprising, both because of the Bush administration’s unwillingness to punish high-level wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, and the central role that paid propaganda has long played in US interventions.

 

n Iraq, the Pentagon paid $5.4 million to a PR firm called the Lincoln Group to, among other things, pass along money to Iraqi media outlets so that they would carry articles written by US "information operations" personnel. The articles were designed to creative a positive image for the role of the US occupiers and convey a sense of growing stability, even amidst critical electrical, healthcare and water shortages coupled with mounting violence, both random and organized. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton in their book The Best War Ever, the articles were normally drafted by Pentagon staffers and then planted by the Lincoln firm:

 

 "When delivering the stories to media outlets in Baghdad, Lincoln's staff and subcontractors sometimes posted as freelance reported or advertising executives. The amounts paid ranged from $50 to $2,000 per story placed. All told, the Lincoln Group had planted more than 1,000 stories in the Iraqi and Arab press."

 

HUGE PENTAGON PROPAGANDA OPERATION

Moreover, Stauber and Rampton report, the work of Lincoln and another PR firm, the Rendon Group, "was closely coordinated with the Pentagon's psychological operations unit, a 1, 2000 person based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina." The enormous staff and well-equipped media center would be "the envy of any global communications company," the New York Times reported.

 

The total Pentagon allocation of $57.6 million to the Rendon Group and Lincoln Group "is more than the annual newsroom budget to most American newsrooms to cover all news from everywhere for an entire year," stated Paul McLeary of the Columbia Journalism Review.

 

ut US military officials seemed to be less worried by the divergence between the articles and reality than the possibility that they might be reined in by American law. “The results of the investigation have been awaited with apprehension across the military and within the Bush administration, where officials have been struggling to find a way to improve the American image around the globe in the face of particular hostility in the Muslim world,”  the New York Times reported 3/22/07.  Clearly, the notion that media reports written by PR experts in Washington will somehow override the daily perceptions of ordinary Iraqis, winning their hearts and minds, is a preposterous one.

 

In this operation in Iraq, the US was following a pattern used repeatedly around the globe to alter local public opinion and international perceptions by gaining influence with the dominant news outlets In repeated instances, the US has used under-the-table payments to newspaper owners and journalists to turn leading publications against nationalist leaders who were democratically elected but whose economic policies clashed with the interests of US-based multinational corporations.

 

otable examples of this have occurred in Iran in the early 1950’s before the 1953 US-British coup against democratically elected President Mohammed Mossadegh; in Chile where El Mercurio was used as a weapon by the US against democratic socialist President Salvador Allende;  in Jamaica in the 1970’s where The Daily Gleaner waged a relentless campaign against another democratic socialist, Prime Minister Michael Manley;  and in Nicaragua, where La Prensa was an incessant source of attacks on the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega, democratically elected in 1984.

 

These papers relentlessly promoted false "news" aimed at undermining the governments' public standing, reported non-existent shortages to create a "run" on a particular item and thus induce an actual shortage as people hoarded it, defended hostile actions both economic and military by the US, and generally served as a central front against democratic leaders who offended powerful US interests.

 

No doubt further releases from the CIA files will turn up more interesting episodes. For example, the question of the Venezuelan media's role in the unsuccessful military coup against Huge Chavez in 2002 will be fascinating to examine.

 

hus far, the most complete account of US interference in foreign media to undermine democracy appears to be about Iran. In his book All the Shah's Men, Steven Kinzer reports that the CIA not only succeeded in regularly planting false stories about Prime Minister Mossadegh in most of the leading newspapers, but also sought to play upon anti-Semitic feelings.

 

(Ironically, one of the most potent and incendiary charges against current Premier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that he denies the existence of the Holocaust.)  As Kinzer explains:

"Press attacks on Mossadegh reached new levels of virulence. Articles accused him not just of communist leanings and designs on the throne, but also of Jewish parentage and even secret sympathy for the British. Although Mossadegh did not know it, most of the tirades were either inspired by the CIA or written by CIA propagandists in Washington. One of the propagandists, Richard Cottam, estimated that four-fifths of the leading newspapers in Tehran were under CIA influence.

 

"Any article I would write--it gave you something of a sense of power--would appear about instantly," Cottam recalled later. "They were designed to show Mossadegh as a Communist collaborator and a fanatic."

 

DEMOCRACY PROMOTION BY CONTROLLING MEDIA

The current US media operation in Iraq has dropped from the media radar screen as the military situation has shown troubling signs ( declining numbers of combat-ready Iraqi troops and increasing mortar and rocket attacks on the supposedly invulnerable Green Zone) despite the claims about the success of the US "surge" and the success just around the corner if the US extends its military presence.

 

owever, the US media/propaganda operation--built upon crushing dissident messages and secretly disseminating pro-US messages into the new Iraqi media-- will continue to represent the utter hollowness of the Bush administration claim that the war is aimed at "democracy promotion."

How healthcare reform opponents prevailed in 1993-94:

Intransigence plus exploiting Hillary's cumbersome plan

Denial of health care to those in need would seem to be unnecessarily cruel, but it is viewed as politically essential by right-wing ideologues like William Kristol, now the editor of The Weekly Standard.

The same cruel calculus is visible in President George W. Bush's all-out battle against expansion of the S-CHIP program for covering the health needs of uninsured children. (See below).

As we approach the latest round of America's on-again, off-again drive for healthcare, we must understand more clearly how the clever, if demented, elements of the Right blocked enactment of a universal healthcare program in 1993-94 when there appeared to be overwhelming momentum for such a plan. For example, a Wall St. Journal poll in 1993 showed 69% for a Canadian-style single-payer plan.

But Kristol managed to rally the Right, arguing that Republicans' had a critical political imperative to destroy any health plan that might emerge during the Clinton administration. Give the devil his due: Kristol assembled the then-despondent Right at a time when ultra-conservatives were feeling a national health plan was inevitable.

Kristol recognized that if the Democrats "delivered" on such a fundamental need as healthcare, the Deems would recapture the loyalty of their wavering base--and a chunk of the Republicans'-- for decades to come.

Moreover, a successful health plan would demonstrate several inconvenient truths: That government can take the side of the people against the powerful; that government can be a constructive tool for extending democracy and improving people's lives; and finally, that government can be far more efficient than the bureaucracy-ridden, profit-driven insurance companies who impose such huge costs on the US health system.

Thus, Kristol came to this bald conclusion in a memo widely disseminated on the Right: "Sight unseen, the Republicans should oppose it."

Enactment of a successful national health plan, he warned, would "re-reinitiate middle-class dependence for 'security on government spending and regulation" and "revive the reputation of the…Democrats as the protector of middle-class interests."

Kristol's strategy called for raising doubts about reform proposals, trying to suggest that they valued efficiency over quality and would erode personal relationships between the doctor and patient.

Two additional factors intervened to help Kristol and his allies:

1) NAFTA DEMORALIZES POTENTIAL ACTIVISTS Bill Clinton's all-out push for the job-exporting, corporate-supremacy NAFTA severely alienated the rank and file of labor and its retiree groups, who saw it as an unprecedented sell-out of their interests. When Clinton prevailed on NAFTA in November, 1993, it took the wind out of the sails of working people. They felt that they had been betrayed by a Democrat who won passage of a reactionary measure sending jobs to low-wage, high-repression Mexico that no Republican could have possibly won.

2) SINGLEPAYER BLOWN OFF BY CLINTONS Second, Bill and Hillary Clinton dismissed without consideration the single-payer healthcare plan that has been so successful from Canada to Taiwan. Instead, the Clintons opted for a plan that would keep large insurers at the wheel of our healthcare system, assuring their support for the healthcare plan as well as huge campaign contributions (that is, until control of Congress switched to the Republicans in 1994.

The incredibly complex and secretive process around the Hillarycare plan, plus the cumbersome final product calling for "managed care," gave the Right a huge, slow-moving dirigible that was easy to shoot down.

Americans' experience with "managed care" up to that point had been far from positive, and was often perceived as "mangled care": HMOs denied free choice of doctors, blocked additional testing, refused to authorize needed operations, and took other ruthless cost-cutting steps.

The infamous "Harry and Louise" ads launched by medium and small insurers--cut out by the Clinton plan--coupled with relentless Rush Limbaugh-style talk radio attacks--completed the task of blasting the managed care blimp out of the sky.

(I discuss some lessons of the lost HillaryCare opportunity of 1993-94 in the July 11 issue of Progressive Populist at http://www.populist.com/07.11.bybee.html)

*******************************************************************

The S-CHIPS are down: Bush battles child health program while fighting to subsidize insurers

All the chips are down, as President Bush is waging an all-out hold crusade against the expansion of the S-Chip program to provide healthcare to uninsured American children.

Bush claims that this battle is over "philosophy," reflecting his belief that healthcare must include a substantial rake-off for the insurance companies as parasitic middlemen. (Bush is fighting this same battle in still-ravaged New Orleans, where he is pushing the sale of private insurance policies rather than rebuilding a charity hospital that could provide far more medical coverage for the same money. (See my July 25 post below).

Even the drug industry's lobbying arm, PHRMA--always eager to polish its sordid image among the American public-- and ultra-conservatives like Sens. Orrin Hatch and Charles Grassley are deserting Bush on this issue and pushing for S-CHIP's expansion. No wonder they're backing away:  both a poll by Republican public-opinion research firm and a recent Georgetown University survey show 86%-90% support for S-CHIP expansion, including 83 percent of self-identified Republicans.

As Paul Krugman astutely observes in his New York Times column 7/30/31,

It [the conflict] must be about philosophy, because it surely isn’t about cost. One of the plans Mr. Bush opposes, the one approved by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the Senate Finance Committee, would cost less over the next five years than we’ll spend in Iraq in the next four months. And it would be fully paid for by an increase in tobacco taxes.

The House plan, which would cover more children, is more expensive, but it offsets S-CHIP costs by reducing subsidies to Medicare Advantage — a privatization scheme that pays insurance companies to provide coverage, and costs taxpayers 12 percent more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare.

Strange to say, however, the administration, although determined to prevent any expansion of children’s health care, is also dead set against any cut in Medicare Advantage payments.

So what kind of philosophy says that it’s O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?

To be blunt, Bush's brand of philosophy is willing to accept chronic illnesses and reduced life-chances for children due to preventable conditions if two overriding concerns are at stake:

1) The health system retains a central, guiding role for private interests despite their proven record of inefficiency, as the private insurers most surely do Total administrative costs in the US are 31%; in Canada it is 16.7%, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

2) It prevents the spread of the dangerous example of government acting positively in behalf of ordinary people. The possibility of the government acting as the public's democratic voice, expressed in policy that actually gets implemented efficiently, could easily re-kindle the expectations that fueled the New Deal and Great Society. Thus, much of current right-wing propaganda is devoted to extinguishing the very notion that it is possible for government to ever act effectively. (See for example Daniel Popeo's ludicrous argument in the 7/30/07 NY Times, placed by the Washington Legal Defense Fund on the op/ed page)

Thus, the Bush administration's shameful performance around Katrina is attributed to the inherent flaws of government inefficiency, not the fact that this particular government was stacked with pet poodles of corporate power in the agencies that matter to Bush and filled with utterly inexperienced and uncaring incompetents in agencies that don't count with Bush, like FEMA.

But not content with re-fighting the battle of Katrina, Bush and his dwindling band of bitter-end allies are now choosing to risk a lot of political chips in their war against S-CHIPS.

Having liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, the Bush-Cheney administration apparently felt that they had liberated themselves from any need to seriously consider Iraqi public opinion--or the US public's feelings, for that matter.

When the Bush and Cheney administration promote continuing the Iraq war long after the supposed September deadline for the "surge," perhaps maintaining an ongoing US presence for decades as in Korea, they betray the utter irrelevance of the opinions of the "liberated" about determining their own futures.

This disdain for authentic democracy in Iraq has long been evident, as with the imposition of Paul Bremer's hallucinatory free-market plan for restructuring Iraq's economy that resulted in enormous economic dislocation and surely helped to fuel the early stages of the insurgency. (For an exceptionally well-written and compelling account, see Naomi Klein's "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in Prusuit of a Neo-Con Utopia" from Harper's magazine at http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html )

Contempt for the liberated Iraqis' views was also apparent when the US held off elections as long as possible, resisting demands from genuine leaders until they could no longer be ignored without acute international embarrassment for the Bush administration. When the elections were finally scheduled, the US claimed credit for promoting the very democratic process that they had sought to defer indefinitely.

Finally, polling data shows precisely how the continuing US military presence is totally at odds with the overwhelming majority sentiment of the Iraqis:

• 80% of Iraqis believe that the presence of US forces increases violence; 60% regard attacks on US forces as legitimate (mid-2006 polls by US State Dept. and the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes).
• "About 90% of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the US-led invasion than it is today, reported the United Press International in Nov., 2006, based on a study of residents in Baghdad, Anbar, Najaf, conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, based in Baghdad.
• Two-thirds of Baghdad residents want an immediate withdrawal, according to a US State Dept. poll taken in mid-2006.
• 80% of Iraqis favor "near-term troop withdrawal, according to a Nov., 2005 Brookings Institution poll.
• 82% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of US-British forces and under 1% believe that they have enhanced security. (British Ministry of Defence study, Aug. 2005)

I may be going out on a limb, but could there possibly be a consistent pattern here suggesting what  the overwhelming majority of Iraqis feel?Perhaps the Iraqi people are trying to say something. Something like, the very presence of US invaders fuels violence; the removal of US troops will help create a path toward peace.

But the opinions of the Iraqis clearly carry no more weight with Bush and Cheney than do those of the American public. Recent polls like the May 24 CB/NY Times poll show 61% of Americans believing that the US should have never invaded Iraq, with 76% convinced that the war is "going badly," including 52% of Republicans.

The Bush administration has incessantly tried to cast those opposing the war as failing to "support the troops." But similar anti-war attitudes are held by the US troops in Iraq, as suggested by a 2006 poll by James Zogby showing that 72% of US soldiers in Iraq felt that they should be withdrawn by the end of that year.

As Noam Chomsky in his recent book Interventions (which provides the above opinion data on the Iraqi people) trenchantly observes, "Generally, however, public opinion--in Iraq, the United States, is not considered relevant to policy-making, unless it may impede their [elite policymakers'] preferred choices."