Bush: God told me to invade Iraq

President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.

The President made the assertion during his first meeting with Palestinian leaders in June 2003, according to a BBC series which will be broadcast this month.

The revelation comes after Mr Bush launched an impassioned attack yesterday in Washington on Islamic militants, likening their ideology to that of Communism, and accusing them of seeking to "enslave whole nations" and set up a radical Islamic empire "that spans from Spain to Indonesia".

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Gus: Although this may be be new to The Independent, the silly notion that god told Bushot to invade Iraq has been a running feature on this site for a long time. What a crock, what an escape route for a mediocre routing. Go and visit this Mishun accumplished cartoon as well... see toon at top too.

This BBC thingy has been on the cutting room floor for more than 3 years now and it's about time it was fully revived to show how inept and silly our bushot of the day is... Now in the middle of the east, celebrating El Nakbar with the Israelis, Bushot is a bit like a common Pom who celebrates Waterloo, by going to the public gents, while the other side go to the cemetery.

The evidence from the court martial into Mousa's death is compelling. Hooding and stressing was written policy. Interrogators were trained in these techniques which reflected "verbal and written Nato policy". The head of the Army's legal service in Iraq, Lt Col Nicholas Mercer, and the Red Cross complained bitterly about hooding and stressing and tried to get the chain of command to apply basic human rights, but were rebuked.

The policy continued even after Mousa's death because, it seems, the United States was already complaining that British interrogation techniques were too "soft", as they put it. Sexual and religious humiliation and coercive interrogation are among the psychological and physiological techniques used by both the US and Britain during the Cold War, yet they are prohibited by numerous human-rights conventions.

Phil Shiner: The MoD blames 'a few bad apples'. I blame the MoD 

WE know what a criminal White House looks like from “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic account of Richard Nixon’s unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.

“The Final Days” was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book “The Dark Side” connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.

Some of “The Dark Side” seems right out of “The Final Days,” minus Nixon’s operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become “so paranoid” that “they actually thought they might be in physical danger.” The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.

The men were John Ashcroft’s deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House’s don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the “torture memos” and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won’t shut the door firmly on torture even now.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. “The Dark Side” is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television’s “24,” all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

So what if they cut corners, the administration’s last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.

But are we safe? As Al Qaeda and the Taliban surge this summer, that single question is even more urgent than the moral and legal issues attending torture.

On those larger issues, the evidence is in, merely awaiting adjudication. Mr. Bush’s 2005 proclamation that “we do not torture” was long ago revealed as a lie. Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated detainee abuse for the Army, concluded that “there is no longer any doubt” that “war crimes were committed.” Ms. Mayer uncovered another damning verdict: Red Cross investigators flatly told the C.I.A. last year that America was practicing torture and vulnerable to war-crimes charges.

More confusion has emerged from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over whether it did a deal with China to allow internet censorship during the Olympic Games.

China has appeared to partially ease access for journalists to some previously blocked websites.

The IOC now says that no deal was done to allow sites to be blocked.

"The IOC would like to stress that no deal with the Chinese authorities to censor the internet has ever in any way been entered into," the committee said yesterday in a statement on its website.

But the head of the IOC Press Commission, Australian Kevan Gosper, who spent yesterday apologising to the media for censorship that was occurring in recent days, says his reputation has been damaged and that he has been humiliated.

However the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games remains adamant that journalists do not need certain sites to cover the Games.

Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president John Coates has admitted to journalists to being confused.

"I hope that there will be no restrictions, that's our view. We've been getting mixed messages on this," Mr Coates said at a media conference in Beijing.

"Kevan Gosper's felt it necessary to come out and apologise. He clearly at some stage has been under the impression and, you showed me the bit of paper saying there would be restrictions, he didn't know that, he's apologised.

"Others in the IOC say there are no restrictions so we'll see. I'm finding it a little confusing.".

After a wave of international outrage about the lack of access in Beijing to various websites, and a series of high level meetings between Beijing organisers, Chinese authorities and the IOC, web access in China today suddenly loosened, though ABC Olympics reporter Karen Barlow has told The World Today that limitations are still evident.

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China relaxes internet bans for journos

By Olympics correspondent Shane McLeod and reporters

Internet restrictions for journalists at the Beijing Olympics appear to have been eased.

Chinese authorities have been blocking sensitive websites used by the international media, and using spyware to monitor internet use in hotels used by journalists and other visitors to Beijing.

But journalists working at the Games' main press centre in the Chinese capital can now access internet sites that were blocked earlier this week.

Those sites include the home page for human rights group Amnesty International and the BBC's Chinese language news homepage. 

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see toon at top.

Cuba looks like it's stuck in 1959... China often looks as if it has decided to skip ahead to 2059
James Reynolds
BBC Beijing corresondent

"My visit is aimed at increasing friendship and co-operation between our two nations, and working together with our Cuban comrades to build a promising future," Mr Hu said in a statement.

Mr Hu had arrived in Cuba from Costa Rica, which last year switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China.

Costa Rican officials said at the time that the move was designed to attract Chinese investment.

China regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and refuses to have diplomatic ties with nations that recognise it.

Correspondents say Mr Hu's two-day visit to Cuba is also aimed at boosting economic ties, and securing trade access to raw materials.

see toon at top.

 China Tops Japan in U.S. Debt Holdings
Beijing Gains Sway Over U.S. Economy

By Anthony Faiola and Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 19, 2008; D01

China passed Japan to become the U.S. government's largest foreign creditor in September, the Treasury Department announced yesterday, reflecting the dramatic expansion of Beijing's economic influence over the American economy.

China's new status -- it now owns nearly $1 out of every $10 in U.S. public debt -- means Washington will be increasingly forced to rely on Beijing as it seeks to raise money to cover the cost of a $700 billion bailout. China, in fact, may be the government's largest creditor, period. The Treasury does not keep records on domestic bond holders. But analysts said China's holdings are so vast that the existence of a larger stakeholder in the United States now seems unlikely.

The growing dependence on Chinese cash is granting Beijing extraordinary sway over the U.S. economy. Analysts say a decision by China to move out of U.S. government bonds, for economic or political reasons, could lead a herd of other investors to follow suit. That would drive up the cost of U.S. borrowing, jeopardizing Washington's ability to fund, among other things, a stimulus package to jump-start the economy. If China were to stop buying or, worse, start selling U.S. debt, it would also quickly raise interest rates on a variety of loans in the United States, analysts say.

see toon at top

China angrily dismisses US congressional report

Posted 2 hours 32 minutes ago

China has reacted angrily to a US congressional report that accused Beijing of developing sophisticated cyber warfare and militarising its space program.

The annual China report to Congress of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was aimed at misleading the public and impeding bilateral cooperation, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

"The commission has all along seen China through dark glasses and has deliberately attacked China with slanderous accusations aimed at misleading public opinion and obstructing the development of Sino-US relations," Mr Qin said.

"The report is unworthy of rebuttal and the aims of the commission are doomed to failure," he said in a statement on his ministry's website.

The report issued in Washington Thursday (local time) accused China of developing a sophisticated cyber warfare program aimed at penetrating US computer networks to extract sensitive information.

"China has an active cyber espionage program," the report said.

see toon at top...