turkey then baker

A Baghdad Thanksgiving's Lingering Aftertaste
/////////////////////////////////
by Dana Milbank
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57870-2003Dec11
December 12, 2003

Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S.
military,
is bucking for a court-martial.

When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did
of
troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their
units'
moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not
plan
to reenlist.

With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is
blowing
the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying
the
cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up
for a
turkey dinner were turned away.

The newspaper, quoting two officials with the Army's 1st Armored
Division in
an article last week, reported that "for security reasons, only those
preselected got into the facility during Bush's visit. . . . The
soldiers
who dined while the president visited were selected by their chain of
command, and were notified a short time before the visit."

The paper also published a letter to the editor from Sgt. Loren Russell,
who
wrote of the heroism of his soldiers and then added: "[I]imagine their
dismay
when they walked 15 minutes to the Bob Hope Dining Facility, only to
find
that they were turned away from their evening meal because they were in
the
wrong unit. . . . They understand that President Bush ate there and that

upgraded security was required. But why were only certain units turned
away?"

Russell added that his soldiers "chose to complain amongst themselves
and
eat MREs, even after the chow hall was reopened for 'usual business' at
9
p.m. As a leader myself, I'd guess that other measures could have been
taken
to allow for proper security and still let the soldiers have their
meal."

The 1st Armored Division officials told Stars and Stripes that all
soldiers
had the opportunity to get a proper Thanksgiving meal -- possibly more
than
the newspaper's editors will get in Guantanamo next year.

It's been two weeks since Bush made that secret trip to Iraq, but the
flight
itself continues to cause turbulence.

The controversy began when the White House said Air Force One was
spotted
by a British Airways plane but the president's pilots told the dubious
British
Airways pilots by radio that they were flying a Gulfstream V. The White
House later said there was no British Airways plane involved and the
conversation took place between British air traffic control and another
plane while Air Force One was "off the western coast of England."

As it happens, Air Force One was flying across the North Sea, off the
eastern coast of England, when it was spotted by the mystery plane, a
German charter jet. But that's being picky.

Of more concern, air traffic controllers in Britain are seething over
the
flight, in which the president's 747, falsely identified as a
Gulfstream,
traveled through British airspace. Prospect, the controllers union in
the
United Kingdom, says the flight broke international regulations, posed a

potential safety threat and exposed a weakness in the air defense system

that could be exploited by terrorists.

"The overriding concern is if the president's men who did this can dupe
air traffic control, what's to stop a highly organized terrorist group
from
duping air traffic control?" asked David Luxton, Prospect's national
secretary. Luxton said the flight was in "breach" of regulations against

filing false flight plans set by the International Civil Aviation
Organization, which he said should apply to a military aircraft using
civilian airspace.

Luxton said that by identifying itself as a Gulfstream V instead of the
much
larger 747, Air Force One could have put itself and other airplanes in
danger. The Gulfstream can climb faster and maneuver more nimbly than a
747,
which means controllers could have assumed the president's plane was
capable
of a collision-avoiding maneuver that it couldn't actually do. And the
"wake
vortex" of a 747, much larger than a Gulfstream's, could jeopardize
smaller
planes that were told by unsuspecting controllers to follow in the
mislabeled plane's wake.

As it happens, Air Force One passed without incident. But Luxton said
that's
beside the point. "It's important air traffic control have an accurate
picture of what's up there in the sky they're controlling," he said.

The White House has declined to elaborate further on the flight plan and

other security measures for the trip.

***

BAKER TAKES THE LOAF

The President's Business Partner Slices Up Iraq
by Greg Palast

Monday, December 8, 2003

Well, ho ho ho! It's an early Christmas for James Baker III.

All year the elves at his law firm, Baker Botts of Texas, have been
working
day and night to prevent the families of the victims of the September 11

attack from seeking information from Saudi Arabia on the Kingdom's
funding
of Al Qaeda fronts.

It's tough work, but this week came the payoff when President Bush
appointed
Baker, the firm's senior partner, to "restructure" the debts of the
nation
of Iraq.

And who will net the big bucks under Jim Baker's plan? Answer: his
client,
Saudi Arabia, which claims $30.7 billion due from Iraq plus $12 billion
in
reparations from the First Gulf war.

PUPPET STRINGS

Let's ponder what's going on here.

We are talking about something called "sovereign debt." And unless
George
Bush has finally 'fessed up and named himself Pasha of Iraq, he is not
their
sovereign. Mr. Bush has no authority to seize control of that nation's
assets nor its debts.

But our President is not going to let something as trivial as
international
law stand in the way of a quick buck for Mr. Baker. To get around the
wee
issue that Bush has no legal authority to mess with Iraq's debt, the
White
House has crafted a neat little subterfuge. The official press release
says
the President has not appointed Mr. Baker. Rather Mr. Bush is
"responding
to a request from the Iraqi Governing Council." That is, Bush is
acting on
the authority of the puppet government he imposed on Iraqis at gunpoint.

I will grant the Iraqi 'government' has some knowledge of international
finance; its key member, Ahmed Chalabi, is a convicted bank swindler.

The Bush team must see the other advantage in having the rump rulers of
Iraq
pretend to choose Mr. Baker; the US Senate will not have to review or
confirm the appointment. If you remember, Henry Kissinger ran away from
the
September 11 commission with his consulting firm tucked between his legs

after the Senate demanded he reveal his client list. In the case of
Jim
Baker, who will be acting as a de facto US Treasury secretary for
international affairs, our elected Congress will have no chance to ask
him
who is paying his firm.. nor even require him to get off conflicting
payrolls.

This takes the Bush administration' Conflicts-R-Us appointments process
to a
new low.

Or maybe there's no conflict at all. If you see Jim Baker's new job as

working not to protect a new Iraqi democracy but to protect the loot of
the
old theocracy of Saudi Arabia, the conflict disappears.

Iraq's debt totals something on the order of $120 billion to $150
billion,
depending on who's counting. And who's counting is VERY important.

Much of the so-called debt to Saudi Arabia was given to Saddam Hussein
to
fight a proxy war for the Saudis against their hated foe, the Shi'ia of
Iran. And as disclosed by a former Saudi diplomat, the kingdom's sheiks

handed about $7 billion to Saddam under the table in the 1980's to build
an
"Islamic bomb."

Should Iraqis today and those not yet born have to be put in a debtor's
prison to pay off the secret payouts to Saddam?

James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, says 'No!' Wolfensohn
has
never been on my Christmas card list, but in this case he's got it
right:
Iraq should simply cancel $120 billion in debt.

Normally, the World Bank is in charge of post-war debt restructuring.
That's why the official name of the World Bank is "International Bank
for
Reconstruction and Development." This is the Bank's expertise. Bush
has
rushed Baker in to pre-empt the debt write-off the World Bank would
certainly promote.

"I FIXED FLORIDA"

Why is our President so concerned with the wishes of Mr. Baker's
clientele?
What does Bush owe Baker? Let me count the ways, beginning with the
2000
election.

Just last week Baker said, "I fixed the election in Florida for George
Bush." That was the substance of his remarks last week to an audience
of
Russian big wigs as reported to me by my somewhat astonished colleagues
at
BBC television.

It was Baker, as consiglieri to the Bush family, who came up with the
strategy of maneuvering the 2000 Florida vote count into a Supreme Court

packed with politicos.

Baker's claim to have fixed the election was not a confession; it was a
boast. He meant to dazzle current and potential clients about his Big
In
with the Big Boy in the White House. Baker's firm is already a top
player

in the Great Game of seizing Caspian Sea oil. (An executive of
Exxon-Mobil,
one of Baker Botts's clients, has been charged with evading taxes on
bribes
paid in Kazakhstan.)

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Over the years, Jim Baker has taken responsibility for putting bread on
the
Bush family table. As Senior Counsel to Carlyle, the arms-dealing
investment group, Baker arranged for the firm to hire both President
Bush 41
after he was booted from the White House and President Bush 43 while his

daddy was still in office.

Come to think of it, maybe I'm being a bit too dismissive of the Iraqi
make-believe government. After all, it's not as if George Bush were
elected
by voters either. It would be more accurate to say that TWO puppet
governments have agreed to let the man who has always pulled the strings

come out from behind the curtain, take a bow, take charge -- then take
the
money and run.
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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