The U.S. State Department Is Now Openly An Organ Of Israeli Propaganda

The State Department has just submitted to Congress a report called "Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism". According to Reuters,

Anti-Semitism, including government-promoted hatred toward Jews and prejudice couched as criticism of Israel, has risen globally over the last decade, the State Department said on Thursday.

"Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event," it said in a report to Congress.
...

"The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that -- whether intentionally or unintentionally -- has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel's perceived faults to its Jewish character," it said.

This was common throughout the Middle East and in Muslim communities in Europe, but was even encouraged by some activity at the United Nations, the report said.

Various U.N. agencies are asked each year to investigate what are often "sensationalized reports of alleged atrocities and other violations of human rights by Israel," the document said.

Such unremitting criticism of Israel "intentionally or not encourages anti-Semitism." This hostility can translate into physical violence, as in the surge in anti-Semitic incidents worldwide during the 2006 war between Israel and the Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, the report said.

The message couldn't have been clearer:

The State Department now works for Israel.

So let's get this straight: Because of the atrocities committed against European Jews by Nazi Germany, Israel can now do whatever it wants to do.

And anyone who dares to criticize the policy of this rogue state "intentionally or not encourages anti-Semitism", which because of the Holocaust is infinitely more despicable than any other form of racial and/or religious prejudice known to man.

In fact, Israel uses the horror of the Holocaust as a human shield, but that's all right with our so-called "diplomats", who often act more like zombies under an evil spell than intelligent human beings.

The spell is so powerful that Israel's full-scale assault on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 is now referred to as a war against a "Shi'ite Muslim group". And atrocities committed by Israeli military forces are not even mentionable without words like "alleged" and "sensationalized".

I've got an idea: Let the State Department compile a summary of crimes against Arabs and Muslims over the last ten years. Skip the "alleged"; skip the "sensationalized"; let's stick to actual physical reality.

Is Anti-Muslimism growing? Are innocent Arabs and/or Muslims being killed or injured for no reason other than where they live? And if so, by whom? And for what reason?

Let the State Department answer those questions, and then we can talk.

Condoleezza Rice’s Right-Hand Man Is Retiring For Personal Reasons

Here's another late-Friday news release about the resignation of a top level diplomat.

AP via the New York Times:

R. Nicholas Burns, the country’s third-ranking diplomat and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s right-hand man, is retiring for personal reasons, the State Department said Friday.

The White House said that it was nominating William J. Burns, the United States ambassador to Russia, to replace him as under secretary of state for political affairs. The two men are not related. Like R. Nicholas Burns, William Burns is a career Foreign Service official. He has served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs as well as ambassador to Jordan.

“This is a very bittersweet time for us because Nick Burns has decided that it is time for him to retire,” Ms. Rice said in announcing Mr. Burns’s resignation in the State Department’s ornate Treaty Room. “He has decided that it’s the right moment to go back to family concerns.”

R. Nicholas Burns, 51, has led the administration’s efforts on Iran, serving as the United States negotiator with the five other countries — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — that have been seeking to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Burns has thrived under a succession of administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

He was the lead negotiator on an India nuclear agreement, and has had a role in almost all of the Bush administration’s major foreign policy initiatives. A senior administration official close to Mr. Burns said that he was retiring so that he could focus on getting his three daughters through college.

Mr. Burns has not lined up his next job, but has dismissed talk of running for office in Massachusetts, his home state.

During an interview, Mr. Burns said he was proud of the administration’s offer in 2006 to hold talks with Iran if it agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment. “It’s very important that we continue the effort to find a way toward negotiations with Iran,” he said.

He said that he believed that the United States and NATO still had some distance to go in managing the military presence in Afghanistan, where forces from the United States and several allies are working to end the Taliban-led insurgency. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help organize our efforts in Afghanistan, and that is a singular challenge for us,” he said.

They're dropping like flies, all on Friday afternoons; this one for personal reasons with no job lined up. What do you know?

A Humiliating Figure: State Department Offers Cash To Families Of Nisoor Square Victims

From Sudarsan Raghavan, Baghdad Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, a sequel to the stunning "Tracing the Paths of 5 Who Died in a Storm of Gunfire". I've added emphasis and the section headers.

U.S. Offers Cash to Victims in Blackwater Incident

Family Members Of Some View Amount as Paltry

BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 -- The U.S. Embassy on Wednesday began offering tens of thousands of dollars in payments to victims and families of victims of the Sept. 16 shootings in Baghdad involving security guards from the firm Blackwater Worldwide, according to relatives and U.S. officials.

Family members of several victims turned down the compensation, out of concern that accepting the funds would limit their future claims against the North Carolina-based security contractor and its chief executive, Erik Prince. Others said that the money being offered -- in some cases $12,500 for a death -- was paltry and that they wanted to sue Blackwater in an American court.

Firoz Fadhil Abbas

"This is an insult," said Firoz Fadhil Abbas, whose brother Osama was killed in a barrage of bullets. "The funeral and the wake cost more than what they offered. My brother who got killed was responsible for four families."

The offers of compensation, while a standard practice in the U.S. military, are unusual for the U.S. Embassy, reflecting the diplomatic and political sensitivities raised by the shootings, which sparked outrage in Iraq and the United States.

Mirembe Nantongo

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo described the offers as "condolence payments" to support the relatives of the victims and said the money was not intended to be a final settlement of their claims. Relatives could still bring suits against Blackwater, she said.

"It's not an admission of culpability," Nantongo said. "And this is in no way a waiver of future claims."

Shortcomings

The offers came two days before the 40-day anniversary of the shootings, a traditional day of mourning in many Islamic societies. They also came a day after a panel, appointed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, found shortcomings in the embassy's compensation system for incidents involving private security contractors.

"The Embassy process for provision of payments, as is expected by Iraqi legal practice and custom, to the families of innocent civilians killed or seriously injured ... or for damage to property, is not as responsive or timely as that of the U.S. military," the report found.

Disputed claims

Blackwater guards contend that they were ambushed by Iraqi civilians and policemen. But eyewitnesses, police investigators and U.S. soldiers who later arrived at the scene say the guards opened fire on Iraqi civilians without provocation.

The Iraqi government has concluded that Blackwater is solely to blame for the shootings, which left 17 people dead in Nisoor Square near the affluent western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.

Legal Status

Blackwater's legal status is unclear. Foreign security firms are immune from Iraqi questioning and legislation under Order 17, a law created by Iraq's post-invasion U.S. authority. But the Iraqi government is mounting a determined effort to overturn the decree and clear the way for private security companies to be tried in Iraqi courts and for Iraqi citizens to file suit against them.

On Wednesday, Iraq's cabinet decided to create a committee to explore ways to repeal Order 17, according to Iraqi television reports citing anonymous Iraqi officials. An official in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he could neither confirm nor deny the action.

Iraq's Interior Ministry has been trying to repeal Order 17 since January and has referred its findings from an internal probe of the Sept. 16 incident for possible criminal prosecution. Iraqi investigators from the Defense Ministry have concluded that Blackwater should be expelled from Iraq and that $8 million should be paid as compensation for each victim. U.S. officials have said that any action against Blackwater must wait until the findings of an ongoing FBI probe are released.

Some victims have sued Blackwater and Prince in a U.S. federal court, seeking unspecified damages to compensate for alleged war crimes, illegal killings, wrongful death and emotional distress.

Haitham Ahmed

Haitham Ahmed, whose wife, Mehasin Muhsin Kadhum, and son, Ahmed Haitham, were killed in Nisoor Square, said justice has been elusive. He has written to Maliki seeking help, but as of Wednesday he had not been contacted by Iraqi officials, he said.

On Saturday, Ahmed met with a State Department official who asked him what he thought was fair compensation for his wife and son.

"They are priceless," Ahmed replied.

The official pressed him on an amount.

"Like Lockerbie," Ahmed replied, referring to the Pan American airline bombing over Scotland in which victims' families each reportedly received $8 million in compensation from the Libyan government.

"And you would have to deliver the criminals to an Iraqi court just like Libya delivered the criminals to the British," Ahmed told the U.S. official.

On Wednesday, Ahmed refused to go to the Green Zone to receive the payment from a team led by Patricia Butenis, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy. Later, Ahmed learned from Mohammad Hafud Abdul Razaq that $12,500 had been offered for the death of Abdul Razaq's 10-year-old son, Ali, who was seated in the back seat of a car near Nisoor Square when a bullet struck his head.

"A humiliating figure," said Ahmed, who added that he was considering joining the U.S. lawsuit.

Abdul Razaq

Abdul Razaq, a 37-year-old car dealer, refused to accept the money. Butenis, he said, expressed her condolences, but he wanted Blackwater to acknowledge what it did.

"The manager of Blackwater didn't apologize, and he didn't admit the crime. He didn't apologize for his crime," Abdul Razaq said. Then he said that he told Butenis that the amount was far too little to compensate for his son's death.

"I told the ambassador, 'You are fighting terrorist groups who are offering $100,000 for people who blow themselves up.' "

Baraa Sadoun

Others were desperate. Baraa Sadoun, 29, a taxi driver, was shot in the abdomen. He took $7,500 in crisp $100 bills. He had already had two surgeries in a private hospital.

"I paid double this amount for the treatment and surgery," Sadoun said. "For more than a month now, I'm jobless and disabled. And my car is completely damaged. This incident totally ruined my life."

For more background, see "Speed Bump: Will Mass Murder In Nisoor Square Slow The Growth Of Blackwater?"

But not me; I've already read it. And I'm thinking about something different. I want to do the math.

Listen: Iraq is (or was) a nation of about 28 million people. At roughly $10,000 each, their lives would be worth a total of about $280 billion.

That's much less than the cost of the war so far, probably less than ten percent of what the war will wind up costing, and less than one percent of the $30 trillion worth of our oil that's hidden under their sand. So why don't we just kill them all, give them $10,000 apiece and get it over with already?

Richard Griffin, State Department Official In Charge Of Diplomatic Security, Resigns

Richard J. Griffin, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, resigned suddenly yesterday.

According to John M. Broder of the New York Times:

The State Department official responsible for overseeing Blackwater USA and other private security contractors in Iraq resigned abruptly today.

Richard J. Griffin, who has been the director of the department’s diplomatic security bureau since June 2005, faced stiff criticism from Congress over his handling of a Sept. 16 shooting episode involving Blackwater that left 17 Iraqis dead and other acts of violence by the State Department’s security guards.

You can find much more about that incident here.

Griffin's resignation comes amid increasing criticism of the State Department and its relationships with "security contractors" such as Blackwater and DynCorp, as Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times explains:

The State Department on Tuesday ordered additional revisions to the way it regulates its security contractors abroad after an expert panel issued a blistering report suggesting the current system was flawed and dangerous.

The changes are expected to be the basis for legislation governing overseas contractors, who are now beyond the reach of U.S. statutes, and will bring the contractors' looser rules on use of force into line with those of the military. The department will also speed up and improve investigations of incidents involving the use of force and will take steps to make the system for compensating victims more just.

The four-member panel's recommendations include cultural-sensitivity training for contractors and an effort by the State Department to boost the number of Arabic-speaking contractors in Middle Eastern countries.

The report also calls for the Iraqi government to improve the system for licensing contractors.

The recommendations stemmed from the involvement of guards from Blackwater USA, a private security firm that protects State Department personnel in Iraq, in the Sept. 16 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis. The incident provoked an international outcry and generated huge pressure for change.

On Oct. 4, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ordered changes in the way contractors do business, including the installation of vehicle cameras to ensure that incidents are recorded to aid investigations.

The State Department initially rebuffed criticism of the contractor system that the Sept. 16 incident elicited. But with the report's findings, its leadership acknowledges that the major criticisms have merit.

Will this sudden resignation change anything? Only the names of the people at the top of the heap, as Griffin noted in his letter of resignation:

As I submit my resignation and move on to new challenges, I do so with the realization that the senior management team that is in place in DS is extremely well qualified to confront the many challenges which lie ahead.

In other words, as Reuters noted,

Griffin will be replaced by his deputy, Gregory Starr, who will assume his duties from Nov. 1, the spokesman said.

But as the BBC reports, we aren't supposed to notice that the policy is at fault, not the man.

It was September's incident in particular, and the questions it raised in Iraq and the US, which led to Mr Griffin's sudden departure after 36 years in government service, our correspondent says.

For its part, the state department will hope a change at the top will start to restore confidence in the way America carries out and supervises diplomatic protection in Iraq, he adds.

But the only way they can restore our confidence is to stop doing what they're doing. And that is the one thing they will never do.