Correction, Please!

Arafat: Terrorist for Peace?

ITEM: The Bush administration isn't branding Yasser Arafat as a terrorist "because there is more he can do to further the peace process, Secretary of State Colin Powell said," reported the Press-Enterprise for April 4th. "'Chairman Arafat is the head of the Palestinian Authority, an organization we helped create,' and has been working within the process."

CORRECTION: Even Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, calls Arafat a terrorist. Barak admits it's time to "to tell the truth about him," saying Arafat "happens to behave like a terrorist, he looks like one and he walks like one so maybe he really is a terrorist."

Arafat repeatedly violates the Oslo Accords, and about half of the terrorist attacks on Israel are carried out by his faction; others are made by rival terrorists willing to work with Arafat when it suits them. Hamas leaders, who acknowledge siding with Arafat, recently boasted about how suicide bombers are now more deadly because they are using weapons-grade explosives. Hamas also acknowledges that they decide when their followers should attack. Hamas leader Abdel Randisi says the use of suicide bombers "is the same as their F-16."

Savimbi Betrayed

ITEM: Reuters reported on March 30th that the Angolan government and "arch-enemy UNITA rebels signed a preliminary cease-fire agreement aimed at ending Africa's longest civil war." General Geraldo Sachipengo Nunda, who signed for the government, said that the deal would "allow us to eradicate the evils of war."

Among those at the signing were representatives of the United Nations, Portugal, Russia, and the United States. "'It's obvious from the spirit we've seen here and the way this is evolving that this is something that comes from within the Angolans themselves,' U.S. Ambassador Christopher Dell told Reuters...."

CORRECTION: Dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos has long headed the regime in Angola, which sprang from a Communist group (backed by Moscow and Havana) called the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. It is "reputed to have the largest standing army in Africa with about 100,000 soldiers," as noted by the Financial Times.

Angolans were hardly in the driver's seat for this "peace." The U.S. government, which once backed UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, turned on him; he was killed earlier this year. During the last decade, The Economist has pointed out, "America has put little or no pressure on the dos Santos regime to become less crooked or despotic." Oil deposits were found offshore, and the West decided to back the Angolan government. This oil "accounts for almost 90% of the government's income [and] is pumped by Western companies and sold mainly in the West." Another reason for UNITA's continuing to fight: MPLA "soldiers habitually kill their prisoners...."

General Nunda, the leader quoted above, is more than just another officer. He was UNITA's chief of staff until defecting a decade ago. Fred Brigland, in The Scotsman for April 5th, reported of critical U.S. assistance to the dictatorship: "Supported by new equipment from Western nations and old Soviet bloc countries in eastern Europe, Gen Nunda gradually tightened the noose around UNITA. Crucial information supplied by US intelligence revealed the locations of UNITA troops to him, enabling him to anticipate their movements. Rebel communications were intercepted by the CIA and passed to him. Israeli specialists laid down a radar screen that made it impossible for Savimbi to fly in fresh supplies.... [In February, Nunda's forces trapped Savimbi] and riddled him with bullets."

Slighting the CFR 

ITEM: A USA Today analysis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, on April 4th, cited the Council on Foreign Relations -- calling it simply "an association of former diplomats and other experts...."

CORRECTION: This disingenuous description of the CFR grossly minimizes its dominant role. More accurate was the Washington Post portrayal as "the nearest thing we have to a ruling class in the United States." The Post's Richard Harwood said: "They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it,"

This is no right-wing chimera. Liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a CFR member, termed it a "front organization" for the "heart of the American Establishment." Its leaders, Richard Rovere wrote, comprise "a sort of Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as a nation." A longtime member, though a critic, was the late Admiral Chester Ward, judge advocate general of the U.S. Navy; the CFR's goal, Ward said, is "submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government."

Thus, consider the urging of Kenneth Pollack, deputy director of National Security Studies at the CFR and former director for Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council, in the latest Foreign Affairs: "The United States should invade Iraq, eliminate the present regime, and pave the way for a successor prepared to abide by its international commitments...." Such plans, unsurprisingly, are under active consideration.