Pakistani troops fired on U.S. helicopters patrolling eastern Afganistan Thursday, the Pentagon said, adding that it expects an explanation from Pakistani officials.

Two American OH-58 reconnaissance helicopters, known as Kiowas, were on a routine afternoon patrol in the eastern province of Khost when they received small arms fire from a Pakistani border post, said Tech Sgt. Kevin Wallace, a U.S. military spokesman. There was no damage to aircraft or crew, officials said.

"They did not cross the border and they did not fire back," Wallace said.

The Pakistani military disputed that assertion, saying its troops fired warning shots when the two helicopters crossed over the border — and that the U.S. helicopters fired back.

"When the helicopters passed over our border post and were well within Paskitani territory, own security forces fires anticipatory warning shots. On this, the helicopters returned fire and flew back," a Pakistani military statement said.

Pakistan's new president said that his military fired only "flares" at foreign helicopters that he claimed had strayed across the border from Afghanistan into his country.

"Sometimes the border is so mixed that they don't realize they have crossed the border," he told reporters before he began a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Pakistani military said the matter was "being resolved" in consultations between the army and the NATO force in Afghanistan. A NATO statement said the militaries were "working together to resolve the matter."

The U.S. has stepped up attacks on suspected militants in the frontier area, mostly by missiles fired from unmanned drones operating from Afghanistan. The incursions — especially a ground raid into South Waziristan by American commandos Sept. 3 — have angered many Pakistanis.

Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said last week that Pakistani field commanders have previously tolerated international forces crossing a short way into Pakistan because of the ill-defined and contested nature of the mountainous frontier.

"But after the (Sept. 3) incident, the orders are clear," Abbas said. "In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire."

On Wednesday, Pakistan's army said it had found the wreckage of a suspected surveillance drone in South Waziristan, but denied claims by Pakistani intelligence officials that troops and local people shot down the aircraft.

Abbas said Pakistan's military was awaiting a full report from Afghanistan on Thursday's shooting, but that Pakistani units had "very clear" orders not to fire across the border. "We are getting it investigated," he said.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the coalition immediately requested an explanation from Pakistan for what he described as "an unfortunate incident."

"The Pakistanis have to provide us with a better understanding as to why this took place," Whitman told Pentagon reporters.

He said the militants have always tried to exploit the border region.

"It's a challenge along the border and that's why we continue to look for ways to improve our coordination," Whitman said.

Asked how Pakistani forces could mistake U.S. helicopters for enemy forces — especially since Taliban and Al Qaeda forces don't have aircraft — Whitman said: "Only Pakistan can articulate their intent."

Pakistani civilian leaders have condemned the cross-border operations by U.S. forces, which have been authorized by President Bush, while the army has vowed to defend Pakistan's territory "at all cost."

"We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told journalists Wednesday. "We are fighting extremism and terror not for any another country, but our own country. This is our own war."

Pakistan's tribal areas have become a breeding ground for Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, who are launching attacks inside Pakistan but also across the border into Afghanistan, where the levels of violence have reached record heights since the ouster of the Taliban from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. More than 4,600 people — mostly militants — have died this year in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, and the levels of violence in the eastern Afghanistan are 30 percent higher compared to the same period last year, officials say.

In other violence, a remote-controlled bomb struck a police vehicle Wednesday in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, killing two officers, said provincial police chief Matiullah Khan.

FOXNEWS.COM

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US President George W Bush told Israel's prime minister in May that the US would not back an attack on Iran, a UK newspaper has reported.

A spokesman denied Ehud Olmert had said the words attributed to him in a working meeting with a foreign guest.

The Guardian quoted unnamed European diplomatic sources as saying Mr Olmert had used a one-to-one meeting with Mr Bush in May to raise the issue.

Israeli sees Iran's nuclear programme as its greatest threat.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only but has defied demands from the United Nations Security Council that it halt enriching uranium.

According to the sources quoted by the Guardian, Mr Bush turned down the proposal for an attack and said the US position was unlikely to change as long as he was in office.

Denial

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev denied the report when the Guardian put the claims to him:

"The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table.

"Your unnamed European source attributed words to the prime minister that were not spoken in any working meeting with foreign guests."

A US National Security Council spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said that diplomacy remained America's first course of action while all options remained on the table.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Israeli President Shimon Peres said Iran was "at the centre of violence and fanaticism" in the world.

He warned that the Tehran leadership was continuing to enrich uranium and develop long-range missiles.

In June this year, the New York Times newspaper reported that Israel had carried out an apparent rehearsal for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

More than 100 Israeli fighter jets took part in manoeuvres over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece in the first week of June, US officials quoted by the newspaper said.

BBC NEWS

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An appeals court in Egypt has ordered newspaper editor Ibrahim Issa to be jailed for two months for publishing rumours about the president's health.

The ruling reduces the sentence of the editor of Al-Dustour from the six months imposed at his earlier trial.

Mr Issa said the verdicts were unjustified, and showed that Egypt was inhibiting freedom of expression.

The government says the false rumours about the health of Hosni Mubarak damaged Egypt's economy.

Mr Issa was charged with disturbing the peace and harming the economy after his independent daily newspaper published several stories in 2007 saying Mr Mubarak was dead or seriously ill. One alleged that Mr Mubarak sometimes lapsed into comas.

State prosecutors said the false rumours published by Mr Issa about the 79-year-old's health prompted investors to take $350m (£172m) out of the Egyptian economy in less than a week.

Mr Mubarak has ruled Egypt for more than 25 years and Mr Issa is a long time critic of the president.

BBCNEWS

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In Pakistan, at least six people have been killed in the latest attack from a US drone. The bombing took place in the tribal region of North Waziristan near the Afghan border.


US Launches Africa Military Command
Today marks the launch of the Pentagon’s new African-focused military operations center, the US Africa Command. AFRICOM is based out of Germany, following refusals from several African nations to host it


Senators John McCain and Barack Obama Debate Iraq, Pakistan, Russia During First Debate
For analysis on Friday’s debate, we speak with investigative journalist Robert Dreyfuss. He is a contributing editor with The Nation magazine and author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. In his latest blog posting about the foreign policy portions of the debate, he castigates Obama for not drawing a stark contrast with McCain

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Iran-Iraq Relations, Iran’s Persecution of Gays and the Future of Israel-Palestine
In part two of our interview, we ask Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about growing Iranian influence in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the persecution of Iran’s gay community, and his position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. And we get reaction from Iranian American activist Kourosh Shemirani of the Queer Iran Alliance.


JUAN GONZALEZ: The US Ambassador Ryan Crocker accused Iran late Thursday of trying to derail an agreement that would allow US troops to stay in Iraq beyond the UN mandate which expires at the end of the year. The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has reportedly called for all US troops to withdraw by the end of 2011. Ambassador Crocker also alleged that Iran is deepening its ties to Shiite militias inside Iraq that are affiliated with the radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.


AMY GOODMAN: We now turn to part two of our interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On Wednesday, we talked to him at his hotel in New York. We talked to the president about Iran’s relationship with Iraq, how it’s changed since the US-led invasion five years ago.


AMY GOODMAN: Oddly, Iran could be seen as one of the greatest beneficiaries of the occupation of Iraq. If you look at some of the most prominent Iraqi political and religious leaders, they have close ties to Iran, from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr militia to Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was actually born in Iran, built up his infrastructure in Iran. So, now Iran has some of the closest ties to the very groups in Iraq that are supported by the United States. Hasn’t Iran benefited from this US occupation?


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] It’s essential to pay attention to two or three points. Iran is a very vast country and a powerful country with a very rich culture and civilization.


Second point is with regards to relations between Iran and Iraq as peoples. These people have always been friendly. They have constant exchanges. They intermarry. Annually, millions of people travel between the two countries. The religious centers that are holy to Iranians and Iraq are in the two countries. The main part of our civilization and history is common. It’s only in the past forty years, and largely as a result of intervention by others, that relations between the governments was disrupted.


You’re aware that Saddam attacked Iran with the support of Western states. That incurred an eight-year war that was a very heavy one. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result. But as soon as Saddam was removed, the two nations and people became friendly again. So, our friendship has deep roots, extended in a long history.


These did not happen as a result of the occupation of Iraq. Of course, it’s natural that every country tries to benefit the most it can from developments in its neighborhood. But our interest lies in the stability and security of Iraq. The more secure Iraq is and the stronger the popular government there, it’s better for the people of Iran.


AMY GOODMAN: So, did the US’s toppling of Saddam Hussein, getting rid of Saddam Hussein, increase Iran’s influence in Iraq?


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] We don’t interpret it as influence, as such. That’s not how we observe our relations. We consider ourselves two friendly countries. It’s the people that bring about the friendship. On a very vast scale, they are interconnected. So, our relations come from history. And our outlook need not be one of influence or how to take advantage of the conditions there. We like to have a strong Iraq and a developed one and a unified one. That will benefit us.



AMY GOODMAN: We continue our interview with the Iranian president after break.


AMY GOODMAN: When the Iranian president visited New York last year, he gave a speech at Columbia University. He was asked about attitudes to homosexuality in his country.

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PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.



AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, I asked the Iranian president to clarify his statement.


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] I didn’t say they don’t exist; I said not the way they are here. In Iran, it’s considered as a very unlikable and abhorrent act. People simply don’t like it. Our religious decrees tell us that it’s against our values, and all divine laws, actually, believe in the same. Who has given them permission to engage in homosexual acts? It’s considered as an abhorrent act. It shakes the foundations of a society, the family foundation. It robs humanity. It brings about diseases.


It should be of no pride to the American society to say that they defend homosexuals and support it. It’s not a good act, in and by itself, to then hold others accountable for banning it. And it’s not called freedom, either. Sure, if somebody engages in an act in their own house without being known to others, we don’t pay any attention to that. People are free to do what they like in their private realms. But nobody can engage in what breaks the law in public.


Why is it that in the West all moral boundaries have been shaken? Just because some people want to get votes, they are ready to overlook every morality? This goes against the values of a society. It is the divine rule of the Prophets. And then, of course, in Iran, it’s not an issue as big as it is of concern here in the United States. There might be a few people who are known. In general, our country would not accept it. And there’s a law about it, too, which one must follow.


AMY GOODMAN: July 19th is a day that is honored around the world, where two gay teenagers, Iranian teens, were hung. This is a picture of them hanging. They were two young men, named Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni. Do you think gay men and lesbians should die in Iran?


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] No, there is no law for their execution in Iran. Either they were drug traffickers or they had killed someone else. Those who kill someone else or engage in acts of rape could be punished by execution. Otherwise, homosexuals are not even known who they are to be hung, in the second place. So, we don’t have executions of homosexuals. Of course, we consider it an abhorrent act, but it is not punished through capital punishment. It’s basically an immoral act. There are a lot of acts that can be immoral, but there’s no capital punishment for them.


I don’t know where you obtained these pictures from. Either they’re a network of drug traffickers or some other—or people who generally might have killed someone else. You know that we take our sort of social security seriously, because it’s important. What would you do in the United States if someone picked up a gun and killed a bunch of people? If there is a person to complain, then there’s capital punishment awaiting the person. Or drug traffickers, if they carry above a certain amount, volume, of drugs with them, they can be executed in Iran.


AMY GOODMAN: There is the death penalty in the United States, but many in the progressive community feel that it is wrong and are trying to have it abolished.


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] Well, there are different opinions about it. It’s lawmakers, legal professionals and sociologists that must examine it, see what best suits every society, because the rights of the society sit above the rights of the individual. I don’t wish to say anything about it, to make a comment, because there are experts who must do it.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to turn for a moment to the Palestinian struggle. Our program has often reported on the fight for self-determination of the Palestinian people. But over the decades, most groups within the Palestinian national movement have concluded that the eventual peace between Israelis and Palestinians will come through a two-state solution, although there are still problems of the right of return, of the fate of Jerusalem, the boundaries of that state that have not been worked out. What is your view of how peace will be achieved, through a one-state solution or through a two-state solution?

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PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] I believe that we should look at the problem from another perspective. To find cure for a disease, we do not necessarily just deal with how it looks, but with the root causes of a disease. We must destroy the root causes of it.


You’re aware that over a hundred peace plans have been offered to this day for the Palestinian crisis. But all have failed. Why? If we can answer that why, then we’ll find the right solution.


The first reason is that none of the solutions have actually addressed the root cause of the problem. The root cause is the presence of an illegitimate government regime that has usurped and imposed itself on, meaning they have brought people from other parts of the world, replaced them with people who had existed in the territory and then forced the exit of the old people out, the people who lived there, out of the country or the territories. So there have been two simultaneous displacements. The indigenous people were forced out and displaced, and a group of other people scattered around the globe were gathered and placed in a new place.


It’s kind of one of those rare instances in history that some powers decided to do for their own interest. Look at the consequences. Ever since it came into being, this regime, there’s only been nothing more than wars, aggression, displacement and usurpation. It seems this is what this regime is out there to do, to fight wars, to threaten, as if if they stop doing that, they will get destroyed themselves. It seems that that was their mission, to start with. That’s the problem.


A second reason is that none of those peace plans offered so far have given attention to the right to self-determination of the Palestinians. If a group of people are forced out of their country, that doesn’t mean their rights are gone, even with the passage of sixty years. Can you ignore the rights of those displaced? How is it possible for people to arrive from far-off lands and have the right to self-determination, whereas the indigenous people of the territory are denied that right?


We have to really resolve these two issues. Then the problem will be resolved. Otherwise, it won’t. We look at a government that has come to power through the vote of the people, called Hamas. It was economically besieged, no medicine getting in, attacks carried out every day on them. How exactly are they to resolve the situation, unless they pay attention to those two causes?


This Zionist regime does not have a chance of remaining in the region, because it has not established roots with the region. It’s like an alien creature that’s come into your body. Imagine an extra piece of metal like a pin going into your body, a nail. Your body will reject it. As long as the nail is in your body, your body just doesn’t function. And as long as it’s not removed, you won’t have a cure. You just can’t bring others from elsewhere, kill the rights of the indigenous people and force yourself on the place. Our links and ties with the body of the Palestinian people is very strong.


None of the people in Palestine agree with what you just said. If there were to be elections right now today, the Hamas would get reelected, even with more votes than it got last time.


AMY GOODMAN: So, do you think Israel should be eliminated?


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] We believe that people have to decide and choose their own fate, the right to self-determination. If they would like to keep the Zionists, they can stay; if not, they have to leave. What do you think the people there want?


AMY GOODMAN: You would support a two-state solution, if they do?


PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: [translated] Wherever people decide, we will respect it. I mean, it’s very much in correspondence with our proposal to allow Palestinian people to decide through free referendums. We’ve been saying this for several years as a proposal. But those who use democracy as a pretext everywhere else are not—don’t think the Palestinians need democracy.



AMY GOODMAN: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.


Right now, we’re joined on the phone by the Iranian American activist Kourosh Shemirani from Queer Iran Alliance. He’s published widely on the subject of how international gay rights advocacy about Iran can face the danger of slipping into pro-war propaganda.


Kourosh, welcome to Democray Now! Your overall response to the Iranian president’s comments on the issue of the hanging of the young gay teens to Israel and Palestine?


KOUROSH SHEMIRANI: Thank you, Amy. Well, it seems like this year President Ahmadinejad is under stress more and more. He’s trying to be more diplomatic in what he’s been saying in the past few years.


About the execution of the supposed gay teenagers, that has not really been proven. There’s been big debate about that from the human rights organizations about whether they were hung because they were gay. So, even, you know, bringing that up with him, I think, is a little tricky. And he was able to dismiss the—actually, I mean, the government has been able to dismiss that accusation easily, because the case itself was never brought to light and is not—the facts that are not known. And he—but what he basically said that was quite interesting is that he said that, you know, homosexuality or sodomy is not punishable by death in Iran, which is, of course, not true. There is that law in Iran. And another thing, that is true, because there are so many different laws on the book that negate this one law, that he can say that it doesn’t exist on the books. I mean, the legal system in Iran is so complicated that you can have a law that says one thing and many laws that negate it. And that’s the case with sodomy. So, in a way, with him being forced to say that the law doesn’t exist is a continuation of him trying to sort of cover for himself.


In a Larry King interview the day before, two days ago, he basically said that we do not—the government does not go into people’s private lives, and people’s private homes is their own place, we do not intervene in what they do in their own home, which is again not true. So he’s trying to sort of put an act of faith on the various policies and the various things that happen to Iranians, in general, gay Iranians, in particular. And at this point, I’m not really sure where it’s going.


He’s been recently playing cat and mouse with the media, is asking about these questions. Before coming, he had a very long interview with an official Iranian news agency, Press TV, about the question of Palestine-Israel, and he has been stressing the fact—the idea that the Iran government is not against Israeli people, they’re just against Zionism. And this has become a very big sort of debate in Iran about whether or not, you know, Iranians and the Iranian president should say that we’re friends with the Israeli people, and he stood by that. So, he’s changed his rhetoric on that to a large extent. And this year, he’s getting a lot more play with the way he’s talking about Israel. I think he has said—this point that he’s made about the Palestinian people having the right to choose their own destiny, and the referendum, choosing whether they want to live in a Zionist regime, he’s said these things before. It’s just the US media has not reflected it until this year.


AMY GOODMAN: Kourosh Shemirani, we’re going to have to leave it there. I want to thank you for being with us.

Democracy Now.com

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In Iraq, about two dozen people were killed in two suicide attacks in Baghdad. The bombings targeted two Shiite mosques during a holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

US Soldier Jailed for Iraq Shootings
In other Iraq news, a US soldier who admitted to involvement in the shooting of Iraqi prisoners has been sentenced to eight months in prison. Specialist Steven Ribordy says he helped stand guard when four handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners were shot dead near a Baghdad canal last year. Six other troops face charges in the killings. Another soldier was sentenced to seven months in jail last month.

Firms Awarded $300M for Pro-US Propaganda in Iraq
The Pentagon has awarded a total of $300 million in new contracts to produce pro-US propaganda for Iraqi audiences. According to the Washington Post, four American companies have been awarded the deals to generate news stories, entertainment programs and so-called “public service advertisements” to run in the Iraqi media. The four contractors are the Washington-based Lincoln Group, the LA-based Leonie Industries, as well as MPRI and SOSI, both based in Virginia.

Officer Who Ordered Fatal Tasering Takes Own Life
Here in New York, an officer involved in the tasering that sent a mentally handicapped man plunging to his death has committed suicide. Lieutenant Michael Pigott had been stripped of his badge and gun for ordering an officer to taser Inman Morales as he stood on a second-story building ledge. Morales fell headfirst to the ground below, dying instantly. Police say they had called for an inflatable bag to break Morales’s fall. But it had not arrived before the officer fired the taser.



Tens of Thousands Mark 1968 Student Massacre in Mexico
In Mexico, tens of thousands of people marched through Mexico City to mark the fortieth anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre of student protesters. Human rights groups estimate up to 300 people were killed when government forces opened fire on students gathered in Tlatelolco Plaza. Marcelino Perello, a university professor who helped organize the protests in 1968, said their legacy should inspire movements for social justice today.

Marcelino Perello: “I think that the 1968 legacy is yet to become a reality. We are still suffering from a hangover. We are living through a dark moment in history, but the same story will again lead us to sweeter times, to the resurrection of the popular struggle for freedom and justice.”

The Mexican government has been accused of failing to investigate the massacre properly. Former government officials have been accused of ordering police to open fire. Earlier this week, Amnesty International asked the Mexican government to launch an extensive probe.


The Age of the Warrior”: Robert Fisk on the US Elections, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine
Robert Fisk is Britain’s most celebrated foreign correspondent and has borne witness to countless tragedies in the Middle East for over three decades. With the publication of a new collection of essays, Fisk joins us to talk about the US elections and their bearing on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel-Palestine.

Robert Fisk, bestselling author and journalist. He has reported from the Middle East for more than three decades and covered eleven major wars. He is one of the world’s most celebrated foreign correspondents and has been named British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times. He is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His previous books include Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanonand The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. His latest is a collection of his essays from The Independent called The Age of the Warrior.

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JUAN GONZALEZ: The US strategy in Afghanistan is back in the news, just ahead of the vice-presidential debate tonight. The British ambassador to Afghanistan has been quoted in a French newspaper as saying that the American military strategy in that country is “destined to fail.” Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles’s critical comments about the NATO operation in Afghanistan were part of a leaked memo from a French diplomat. He also said, “The coalition presence—particularly the military presence—is part of the problem, not the solution.”


The British ambassador’s leaked statements were published just as the top US commander in Afghanistan called for three additional combat brigades—that is, over 10,000 soldiers—to be immediately deployed to Kabul. General David McKiernan told reporters in Washington, D.C. Wednesday that Americans were facing a “tough fight” in Afghanistan that “might get worse before it gets better.”


AMY GOODMAN: As the US-led wars in the Middle East show no sign of abating, we turn now to a man who has chronicled eleven major wars in this part of the world and shows no sign of abating, himself. Robert Fisk is Britain’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, has borne witness to countless tragedies in the Middle East for over three decades.


Robert Fisk has been named British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times. He is currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His previous books include Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon and The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. His latest is a collection of his essays and articles from The Independent; it’s called The Age of the Warrior. Robert Fisk joins us here in New York in our firehouse studio.


Welcome to Democracy Now!


ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.


AMY GOODMAN: Well, you’re traveling through this country in the midst of a major crisis and a war abroad. Talk about your observations.


ROBERT FISK: Well, I suppose the first thing is how similar the two things are. I mean, first of all, the Europeans were constantly advising more banking regulation, in case they got infected by any economic crisis. The United States, this had to be a free market, deregulation totally. In other words, once more, the United States did not listen to its foreign partners and allies, on economic issues this time.


Number two is, rushed into a quick fix for a rescue bailout without any really serious planning, like crossing the Tigris River without a plan for post-war Iraq.


And three, it’s the little people who get hit: the little Iraqis, in the hundreds of thousands, who’ve died; and, of course, poor Americans, for the most part, who join the Marines or the Reservists because they want to have a university education, they end up in Iraq, and they get killed. The little people, once more, are the people who are getting hit. They’re very parallel things, in my view. I can see it all the time.


JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, here, in this country, as the number of US casualties has declined, so has the attention in the media or in the public to the situation in Iraq, and everyone has now bought into the thought that things are getting better.


ROBERT FISK: Ha ha ha, yes. Look, the degree of ethnic cleansing that actually took place—genocidal, in some ways—and the fact that the Americans have now built walls through every community in every major city in Iraq, which has divided between the communities, means that there isn’t, in fact, any free flow of movement. There isn’t a country operating anymore.


But now, I mean, if you stand back a little bit and look at it like this, first of all, we went to Afghanistan, we won the war. Then we rushed off to Iraq and won the war. Then we lost the war in Iraq, or maybe we won it again. And then we’re going back to Afghanistan, where we seem to have lost the war, to win it all over again. And in due course, perhaps we’ll have to go back to Iraq. I mean, in my reports, I’m calling this Iraqistan. And now, we’ve actually got soldiers on foot turning up in Pakistan. I mean, has nobody actually stood back and said, “What on earth are we doing out there?” I mean, I calculated for our Sunday magazine that we now have twenty-two times as many military personnel per head of population as the Crusaders had in the twelfth century. You know, what are we doing?


It was a baker in Baghdad who asked me this very obvious question. He said, “Why are you”—“you” meaning Western military—“Why are you in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, French air base at Dushanbe running close as support for the British in Helmand province in Afghanistan? Why are your people going into Pakistan? Why are you in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why are you in Turkey? Why are you in Jordan and Egypt and Algeria? US Special Forces have a base outside Tamanrasset in the southern Sahara. Why are you in Bahrain? Why are you in Oman? Why are you in Yemen? Why are you in Qatar? Biggest US air base.” I didn’t have a reply.


But I was struck when I was having lunch on the West Coast a few days ago, by a very educated lady sitting next to me, saying, “But the Muslims wanted to take over the world, and they had already taken over France.” I mean, how does this happen? I mean, she might have told me that Martians had landed in New Mexico, only thing you could do to counter that kind of argument. It looks like somehow we’re on a brainwashing trip. And we’ve all bought the narrative. You know, we even have Mrs. Palin talking about victory in Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you go to Iraq. It doesn’t feel it if you live there.


AMY GOODMAN: She also has talked about Iraq as being God’s war.


ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, we’ve had some generals who’ve talked about that, too—haven’t we?—and kept their uniform on in church when they said it. You know, more and more, I look back on the early statements by bin Laden, statements we never actually read. The narrative is always “Is this bin Laden?” when he appears. “Is he ill? When did he make the statement? And have the CIA confirmed it’s his voice?” What his voice actually says is never of any interest to us.


But if you remember, he went on and on about crusaders, and he actually made a very important statement before we invaded Iraq, in which he called upon Muslims in Iraq to collaborate with Baath Party officials against the crusaders, on the grounds that Salahadin had collaborated with the non-Muslim Persians against the crusaders in the twelfth century. We missed all this. And this was the detonation that set off the insurgency.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, at the debate, the presidential debate last Friday, we had the situation where the so-called candidate of peace—


ROBERT FISK: Yeah, yeah.


JUAN GONZALEZ: —Barack Obama, is talking about, well, we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, as if this is a game here that’s being played and we made a mistake in the game. And so, now we must go back to Afghanistan and possibly even into Pakistan.


ROBERT FISK: Look, I think you have to realize—and the Arabs do not, and I’ve been trying on Al Jazeera Arabic service to say this—it’s not going to make any difference who is the next president of the United States, as far as Southwest Asia and the Muslim world is concerned. I was in Qatar, actually, in the Al Jazeera Arabic studios when Obama made his famous Middle East trip. You know, he gave forty-five minutes to the Palestinians, twenty-four hours to the Israelis. And the Arabic anchorman turned to me. He said, “So, Robert, do you think Obama will win the election?” I said, “He’ll win the election for the Israeli Knesset. I don’t know if he’s going to get the presidency of the United States.” You know, we’ve got here a one-track policy into the Middle East by the United States, and it’s not going to change.


AMY GOODMAN: But, Robert, is that true? On the one hand, you have, yes, they don’t sound that different when it comes to, for example, Afghanistan. They agree that’s the main site of the war, the main candidates. But I guess it’s the question of what could happen next and what approach McCain or Obama would take.


ROBERT FISK: Look, the Taliban now control half of Afghanistan, not just at night, but in the day—during the day, too. There’s no doubt that Petraeus has got it right when he talks about things are going to get worse.


AMY GOODMAN: Petraeus.


ROBERT FISK: Petraeus. And there’s no doubt, too, that the famous British ambassador, Mr. Cowper-Coles—by the way, he’s in my book, and he’s the guy who persuaded the British, when he was ambassador to Saudi Arabia, not to continue with the bribes inquiry by the British fraud squad into arms sold to Saudi Arabia. He’s the guy who actually advised the fraud squad people to drop it.


AMY GOODMAN: And this involved Bandar Bush. This involved the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.


ROBERT FISK: Absolutely, it’s the same guy. I should add—I should just add that more than twenty years ago, a young diplomat in the Egyptian embassy—in the British embassy in Cairo advised me to drop one of our stringers in the region and take on another stringer who was rather favorable to the foreign office. I didn’t do as I was told. But that man was also Cowper-Coles. What a strange career he has!


However, let’s go back to your Obama thing. Look, at the end of the day, we cannot win in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not crossing porous borders. They don’t even acknowledge the border, because, for them, it’s Pashtunistan. The border was drawn by a British civil servant called Sir Mortimer Durand in the Victorian age, and no one there, apart from us, accepts that it’s there—and, I suppose, the Pakistani army.


And the fact of the matter is that we have no policy there. The Karzai government is totally discredited. Karzai himself only rules his palace, with the help of American mercenaries to protect him. His government is full of drug barons, warlords and criminals. And that includes the people down in Kandahar, which is virtually a lost city. The troops cannot enter Kandahar anymore. It’s gone, effectively, especially at night. You can’t go there. No Westerner can walk through the streets of Kandahar. And you don’t see any women, except in Kabul, who are not wearing burqas. You remember the famous liberation of women, equality, gender equality was coming? It’s all turned out to be totally false. And we’re going to win there? We’re going to win there?


JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, and, of course, the issue of Pakistan, to me, is the most frightening one of all, because—


ROBERT FISK: Absolutely.


JUAN GONZALEZ: —you’re talking about a country that is really almost a failed state at this point.


ROBERT FISK: We’ve been told that—the narrative is that the mad mullahs with black turbans and the crackpot Ahmadinejad of Iran—and he is a crackpot—are going to destroy Israel, and then, of course, they’re going to destroy the Palestinians, and they’ll get destroyed with all these nuclear weapons.


I’ve been saying for more than two years there is one nation in Southwest Asia, which is packed with Taliban supporters and al-Qaeda supporters, and it’s got a bomb, and it’s totally corrupted, from the shoeshine boy to the president, via its intelligence services and army, and it’s called Pakistan. And only now are we beginning to see Pakistan pop up. I bet you if you run a computer check in the next few months, Iran will go right down to the bottom of the page, unless Israel chooses to bomb it, and up will go Pakistan.


And suddenly, how do we deal with this country? It will be a whole crazed mixture, which is already symbolized by the fact that, first of all, we put troops in on the ground in Pakistan and infringed its sovereignty. Then, when the Marriott Hotel blows up, the FBI offers its help in finding out the criminals. I mean, are we friends, or are we enemies of Pakistan? We don’t even know that.


And we start talking, using phrases like “victory.” We should be talking about phrases like "justice for the people of the Middle East.” If you have justice, you can build democracy on it, and then we can withdraw all these soldiers. We’re always going—promising people in the Middle East democracy and packages of human rights off our supermarket shelves, and we’re always arriving with our horses and our Humvees and our swords and our Apache helicopters and our M1A1 tanks. The only future in the Middle East is to withdraw all our military forces and have serious political, social, religious, cultural relations with these people. It’s not our land.


AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, just before we went on air, this came over AP: suicide bombers targeted Shia worshippers as they left morning prayers at two Baghdad mosques, killing nineteen people, injuring fifty others. In a separate attack, gunmen fatally shot six people as they traveled in a minibus at Wajihiyah, a town sixty miles north of Baghdad.


ROBERT FISK: Yeah, well, and we won, and the surge was successful, and everything’s going back to ordinary life, and people—I mean, that map which we saw, the two maps coming up—it’s preposterous. I mean, I get phone calls from Iraqis in Damascus, when I’m in Beirut, saying, you know, “Can you help us stay in Syria? Can we come to Lebanon? We cannot go back to Baghdad.” And they’re still getting calls saying, you know, “If you come back to your house, you’ll be murdered.” This is not a success; it’s a hell disaster for all the peoples of the Middle East. I mean, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, southern Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank—I mean, is no one waking up to say that there is no hope there at the moment? You know, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel out in the Middle East.


JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, you mentioned the West Bank, obviously, the original center of this entire conflict. The—


ROBERT FISK: I’m not sure it is the center anymore, by the way, but, yeah.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Right. But the comments recently by Ehud Olmert, saying that—


ROBERT FISK: Look, Ehud Olmert is a has-been. He’s gone.


AMY GOODMAN: But he is prime minister.


ROBERT FISK: Just.


AMY GOODMAN: And he said you should give back the West Bank.


ROBERT FISK: Yes, but he’s going, Amy. He’s going. This is the same as all your generals who go out to fight in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and when they’re asked to comment to the press, they say, “Everything is going fine; it may be a tough battle,” and they salute and click their heels to Rumsfeld, or they did. And the moment they retire, they demand Rumsfeld’s resignation and say it’s all gone wrong. I mean, if only just one of them, just one, would say it in a press conference when they still had their uniform on, we might see a few changes coming about, but they don’t. They keep their—they go heel.


AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, we’ll end it there, but we’re going to do part two. Robert Fisk, bestselling author, journalist, writes for The Independent, currently the Middle East correspondent for The Independent of London. His latest collection of essays and articles is called The Age of the Warrior.

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When An Elder Passes On To Higher Life , Its Like One Of The Library Have Shut Down

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers was the host of NOW with Bill Moyers for three years, until he came under tremendous pressure by CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson. Over the past three decades he has become an icon of American journalism. He was one of the organizers of the Peace Corps, a special assistant for Lyndon Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, senior correspondent for CBS News and a producer of many groundbreaking series on public television. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmys, nine Peabodys, three George Polk awards and is the author of three best-selling books.

June 09, 2008: Broadcast Legend Bill Moyers on Media Reform: ‘Democracy Only Works When Ordinary People Claim It as Their Own’
More than 3,500 people gathered in Minneapolis this weekend for the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, organized by the group Free Press. The thousands of participants took part in panel discussions and strategized on efforts to fight media consolidation and democratize the airwaves. We play the electrifying keynote address by legendary journalist Bill Moyers.

June 09, 2008: Bill Moyers Takes on Fox News Producer Sent by Bill O’Reilly to Media Reform Conference
Before the National Conference for Media Reform began, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News attacked it on the air as a gathering of “crazy” people. O’Reilly also sent a producer to confront Moyers in what became an animated confrontation.

May 07, 2008: Broadcasting Legend Bill Moyers on the 2008 Elections, the Rev. Wright Controversy, the Media, Vietnam and More
Legendary broadcaster Bill Moyers helped organize the Peace Corps and served under President Johnson before going on to a distinguished career in journalism that continues today with the PBS series Bill Moyers Journal. His latest book, just published, is Moyers on Democracy. Moyers joins us to talk about the 2008 elections, the media and war. He addresses the controversy over Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It was nearly two weeks ago on Bill Moyers Journal where Wright first spoke out since his criticism of US government policies became a major issue in the 2008 Democratic presidential race.

April 25, 2007 Legendary Broadcaster Bill Moyers Returns to Airwaves With Critical Look at How U.S. News Media Helped Bush Admin Sell the Case for War
The debut episode of his new series Bill Moyers Journal is titled “Buying the War.” Moyers makes the case that the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses. Moyers joins us to play excerpts of “Buying the War” and talk about the media, the late journalist David Halberstam, corporate consolidation of the airwaves, and the hope he sees from the grassroots.

January 16, 2007 Bill Moyers: Big Media is Ravenous. It Never Gets Enough. Always Wants More. And it Will Stop at Nothing to Get It. These Conglomerates are an Empire, and they are Imperial.

May 16, 2005 Bill Moyers Responds to CPB’s Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing
In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson–the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting–of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers’ PBS show “Now.”

November 28, 2003 Journalist Bill Moyers: Our Democracy Is In Danger of Being Paralyzed
Bill Moyers has retired from his weekly public affairs show “Now” on PBS. Over the past three decades, he became an icon of American journalism. He recently gave the keynote address before 2,000 people at the first ever National Conference on Media Reform where he warned, “What we’re talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized. Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t exist without an informed public.”


Democracy Now . com

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When An Elder Passes On To Higher Life , Its Like One Of The Library Have Shut Down