Where we go from here is largely up to us. Transparently, it requires some understanding of how we got here. The question where we are going now has a clear answer. It's given accurately by the leading academic specialist on the occupation, Harvard's Sara Roy. She writes that "under the terms of disengagement," Gazans are virtually sealed within the Strip while "West Bankers, their lands dismembered by relentless Israeli settlement, will continue to be penned into fragmented geographic spaces, isolated behind and between walls and barriers." Her judgment is affirmed by Israel's leading specialist on Jerusalem and the West Bank, Meron Benvenisti, who writes that the Separation wall snaking through the West Bank will create "three Bantustans," north, central and south, all virtually separated from East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian commercial, cultural and political life. He adds that the "soft transfer" from Jerusalem that is "an unavoidable result" of the Separation wall might "achieve its goal" of "disintegration of the Palestinian community," after many earlier efforts have failed. The "human disaster" being planned, he continues, will also "turn hundreds of thousands of people into a sullen community, hostile and nurturing a desire for revenge," another example of the sacrifice of security to expansion that has being going on for a long time. A European Union report concludes that US-backed Israeli programs will virtually end the prospects for a viable Palestinian state by cantonization and by breaking the organic links between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Human Rights Watch concurs.

There was no effort to conceal the fact that Gaza disengagement was, in reality, West Bank expansion. The official plan stated that Israel will permanently take over major "population centers, cities, towns and villages, security areas and other places of special interest to Israel." That was endorsed by the US Ambassador, as it had been by the President, breaking sharply with US policy. Along with the disengagement plan, Israel announced investment of tens of millions of dollars in West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Sharon approved new housing units in the town of Ma'aleh Adumim to the East of Jerusalem, the core of the salient that divides the southern from the central Bantustan, along with other expansion plans. Ha'aretz political commentator Aluf Benn added that the timing was "no coincidence." Rather, it underscores Sharon's determination that Gaza disengagement is a component of the plan to expand permanent control over the West Bank.

There is near unanimity that all of this violates international law. The consensus was expressed by US Judge Buergenthal, in his separate declaration attached to the World Court judgment ruling the Separation wall illegal. In his words, "the Fourth Geneva Convention, and international human rights law, are applicable to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and must [therefore] be faithfully complied with by Israel." Accordingly, "the segments of the wall being built by Israel to protect the settlements are ipso facto in violation of international humanitarian law" - which means 80% of the wall. Two months later, Israel's High Court rejected that judgment, ruling that the Separation Wall "must take into account the need to provide security for...Israelis living" in the West Bank, including their "property" rights. This is consistent with Chief Justice Barak's doctrine that Israeli law supersedes international law, particularly in East Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders. Practically speaking, he is correct, as long as the US continues to provide the required economic, military, and diplomatic support, as it has been doing for 30 years, in violation of the international consensus on a two-state settlement.

You can find documentation about all of this in work of mine and others who have supported the international consensus for 30 years. In Israeli literature, like Benny Morris's histories, you can find ample evidence about the nature of the occupation - in his words, "founded on brute force, repression and fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily intimidation, humiliation, and manipulation," along with stealing of valuable lands and resources. Like other Israeli political and legal commentators, Morris reserve special criticism for the Supreme Court, whose record "will surely go down as a dark day in the annals of Israel's judicial system."

Keeping to the diplomatic record, the first important step forward was in 1971, when President Sadat of Egypt offered a full peace treaty to Israel in return for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. That would have ended the international conflict. Israel rejected the offer, choosing expansion over security - in this case, expansion into the Sinai, where General Sharon's forces had driven thousands of farmers into the desert to clear the land for the all-Jewish city of Yamit. The US backed Israel's stand. Those decisions led to the 1973 war, a near disaster for Israel. The US and Israel recognized that Egypt could not be dismissed, and finally accepted Sadat's 1971 offer at Camp David in 1979. But by then, the agreement included the demand for a Palestinian state, which had reached the international agenda.

In 1976, the major Arab states introduced a resolution to the UN Security Council calling for a peace settlement on the international border, based on UN 242, the basic document as all agree, but now adding a call for a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. The US vetoed the resolution, again in 1980. The General Assembly passed similar resolutions year after year, with the US and Israel opposed. The matter reached a head in 1988, when the PLO moved from tacit approval to formal acceptance of the two-state consensus. Israel responded with the declaration that there can be no "additional" Palestinian state between the Jordan and the sea - Jordan already being a Palestinian state -- and that the status of the territories must be settled according to Israeli guidelines. The US endorsed Israel's stand. I can only add what I wrote at the time: it's as if someone were to argue that Jews don't need a "second homeland" in Israel because they already have New York.

In May 1997, Israel's Labor Party at last agreed not to rule out "the establishment of a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty (in areas excluding) major Jewish settlement blocs," that is, in the three cantons that were being constructed with US support. The highest rate of post-Oslo settlement was in 2000, the final year of Clinton's term, and Prime Minister Barak's.

Maps of the US-Israel proposals at Camp David in 2000 show a salient east of Jerusalem virtually bisecting the West Bank, and a northern one virtually dividing the northern from the central canton. The current map considerably extends these salients and the isolation of East Jerusalem. The crucial issue at Camp David was territorial; not the refugee issue, for which Arafat agreed to a "pragmatic" solution, Israeli scholarship reveals. No Palestinian could accept the cantonization, including the US favorite Mahmoud Abbas. Clinton recognized that Palestinian objections had validity, and in December 2000 proposed his "parameters," which went some way towards satisfying Palestinian rights. Clinton reported that Barak and Arafat had both "accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations."

The reservations were addressed at a high-level meeting in Taba, which made considerable progress, and might have led to a settlement. But Israel called it off. That one week at Taba was the only break in 30 years of US-Israeli rejectionism. High-level informal negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December 2002, welcomed by virtually the entire world, rejected by Israel, dismissed by Washington. That could have been the basis for a just peace. It still can be. However, by then, Bush-Sharon bulldozers were demolishing any basis for it.

SOMETHING BAD is happening to the election campaign of Amir Peretz. It is just shuffling around.

The surge that started with his election as leader of Labor has petered out. Events in the country are chasing each other: the "big bang" of the new Kadima party, the acts of prostitution of Shimon Peres and Shaul Mofaz, Ariel Sharon's minor stroke, the Likud primaries, the Qassam rocket hitting Ashkelon. Peretz has been pushed to the margins.

Of course, the real election campaign has not yet started. In 1999, it was said about Barak, at this stage, "Ehud is not taking off!" and still he soared to victory. Nevertheless, the situation does give cause for concern.

These days, no exciting initiatives are coming out of the Peretz camp. On TV and the radio, the same tired old Labor politicians are churning out the same tired old Labor messages. At the moment, the polls give Peretz 22 seats, compared to 39 for Sharon and 12 for Netanyahu.

There is not much time left. Peretz must make bold strategic decisions. Now. At once. This is a test of leadership. A fateful test, because a defeat would not only spell disaster for the Labor Party, but for the peace camp at large and, indeed, for Israel.

IN THIS battle, as we have said before, the advantage lies with the side that determines where the battle will be fought. It is in the interest of Peretz that the campaign be about social and economic issues, while both Sharon and Netanyahu want to fight it out in the national security arena. The polls show that the majority believes that Peretz is the best candidate to solve the social problems, but a large majority sees in Sharon the only one able to provide security.

The experts surrounding Peretz tell him: speak only about social matters. Don't speak at all about war and peace, and, if you can't avoid it, be vague. You must garner votes from the center, and the people there don't believe in peace.

Sounds logical. But it's bad advice, nevertheless.

FIRST OF ALL, the question arises whether Peretz is in a position to put the social problem at the center of the campaign and impose it on his opponents. That is almost impossible.

In Israel, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense , with the help of the army commanders, can create tension at any time and at any place. It works like this: the army kills a Palestinian militant in a "targeted elimination" and declares that he was a ticking bomb who was planning a suicide attack. His comrades respond with a salvo of Qassam rockets and mortar shells, in the cause of revenge. The army reacts to this "criminal terrorist outbreak" with more assassinations, as well as artillery fire and attacks from the air. And voila, we have our "security tension".

There are several variations on this theme. Hizballah is always ready to do its bit and "warm up" the northern border, if the Israeli army provides even the slightest provocation. And if nothing happens on the ground, there is always an army intelligence officer ready to sound the alarm: Iran will any minute now have an atom bomb and transport us straight to Alaska.

Sharon and Mofaz have no moral or practical problem with creating bloody headlines. As a matter of fact, one of Peretz's advisors said so on TV, but was immediately silenced by his colleagues. How can you slander the army in this way? In an election campaign, that will backfire on us! And, as usual, when the national flag goes up the pole, we must all stand at attention and salute. (It was Vladimir Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of the Likud, of all people, who once said: "I shall not stand at attention while somebody sings the national anthem and empties my pockets!")

If the impression gets around that Peretz has no convincing solution to our existential problems, or - even worse - that he has a solution but is afraid to voice it, his credibility as a candidate for Prime Minister will be zero.

There is no choice. He must speak up. And there is nothing to be afraid of.

LET'S TAKE the Jerusalem question.

For decades now all Israeli governments have been repeating the mantra: "United Jerusalem, capital of Israel for all eternity." Netanyahu has a bad habit of accusing all his opponents - from Shimon Peres in 1996 to Sylvan Shalom a week ago - of a sinister design to "divide Jerusalem".

Two weeks ago, Amir Peretz gave in to his advisors and repeated the sacred mantra: he, too, is for the United Jerusalem, Capital of Israel for all Eternity. Amen.

This is a mendacious statement. Every child knows that there will be no peace without East Jerusalem becoming the capital of the Palestinian state. Peretz knows this better than most. Worse, it is a politically stupid statement.

That became clear on the morrow, when Israel's largest mass-circulation daily, Yediot Ahronoth, published a poll that shocked the politicians: 49% of the Israeli public is ready to accept the division of Jerusalem, with another 49% opposed. Since an ordinary person is reluctant to give an answer that runs counter to the perceived consensus, it appears that a majority is now ready for the partition of the city.

I, for one, was not surprised at all. Eight years ago, after Gush Shalom had published a revolutionary manifesto that coined the phrase "United Jerusalem, Capital of the Two States", I talked about it with a taxi driver. Most of our taxi drivers are super-patriots, so I was not surprised when he cried out: "No! Never!" But his explanation did surprise me: "I don't want a united Jerusalem! I want the Arabs to get out of my sight! Let them take their neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the devil or to a Palestinian state, I don't give a damn!"

At that time, already, we broke the taboo surrounding Jerusalem. Within a few weeks, 800 artists, writers, poets and academics signed the manifesto, and thousands of citizens from all walks of life added their signatures. In 2000, when it was (mistakenly) assumed that Ehud Barak at Camp David was about to "give up" East Jerusalem, there was no outcry in the country. Bill Clinton's Jerusalem formula of January 2001 - "What is Arab should be Palestinian, what is Jewish should be Israeli" - is accepted by many. It is also included in the Geneva Initiative. If Peretz had openly and loudly supported this, he would have gained points.

That is true for the other peace issues, too. Vagueness is good for Sharon, it is bad for Peretz. His strength lies in the fact that his social-economic message is well integrated with his national-security message. They are the two sides of the same coin. That is a refreshing and new message for most of the public. A message that is accurate, moral and also good election tactics.

A PERSONAL note: Lest I be suspected of voicing an opinion as one of the inexperienced commentators who have never borne actual responsibility, I would like to point out that I have myself directed five election campaigns for the Knesset and succeeded in four of them. True, it was always for small parties, devoid of money and an apparatus, but as far as the problems and pressures are concerned, the difference is not so big.

One feels that the public is fed up with deceitful campaigns. Voters are becoming more and more suspicious. This time, more than ever, they expect straight talking. And, indeed, after all the upheavals of the last few weeks, the picture that emerges presents the voter with a clear choice between three different options:

- On the right, the Likud, under the leadership of Netanyahu, has clearly shifted to the radical fringe. Netanyahu will now try to don a "moderate" mask, but to no avail. Not only does the party include openly fascist groups, but it is apparent that the entire Likud opposes "giving up" any part of Eretz Yisrael, thus striking peace from the agenda.

- In the middle, the new Kadima party, under the leadership of Sharon, has given up the idea of a Greater Israel in the whole of the historical country, but opposes a real compromise with the Palestinians, arrived at by negotiation and agreement. Sharon wants to impose by force new permanent borders for Israel, by annexing most of the West Bank and all of East Jerusalem.

- On the left, Labor, under the leadership of Peretz, proposes negotiations with the Palestinians with the aim of achieving peace by compromise.

Peretz will have no chance, if the impression arises that there is no real difference between him and Sharon. He must convince the Labor Party refugees who are attracted by Sharon, that there is a profound difference between his program (negotiations and agreement) and that of Sharon (unilateral diktat). Sharon is interested in downplaying this difference, and by the same logic, Peretz must be interested in emphasizing it.

People in love with ambiguity will vote for Sharon. But a large part of the public, especially in the center, is longing for bold leadership with a clear message. Here - and only here! - lies Peretz's big chance.

As Rabbi Nachman of Braslav said many years ago: "All the world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all!"
(c) 2005 Uri Avnery Gush Shalom

You can talk dirty to me, Bill.

Bill O'Reilly is fighting a war for Christmas, against the dark, Satanic forces arrayed against St. Nick and Yuletide logs and Jingle Bells. He doesn't want anyone saying, "Happy Holidays" or "Happy Hanukkah" or "Happy Kwanzaa." He wants everyone to say, "Merry Christmas" -- OR ELSE. O'Reilly is Santa's little hit-man.

Now there's a lot of civil liberties freaks out there who think it's wrong to use tax money paid by a lot of non-Christians to support O'Reilly's choice of religious celebrations. But I'm sure our republic will survive seizure of City Hall for a tree-lighting ceremony. I'm not worried about the offence the Merry Christmas Crusaders will cause Jews, Muslims and Sikhs. They have greater dangers to deal with right now.

What I'm really concerned about, Bill, is the offence you've caused to Jesus -- on his birthday, no less. Remember, Bill, Christ didn't celebrate Christmas. If He took any time off in December, it would have been to celebrate Hanukkah.

Who first celebrated "Christmas"? Who lit the Yule log and decorated trees and lit candles? The Yule log is a Norse tradition, Thor's thing. And the Romans, like all pagans and idolaters, celebrated the Winter Solstice feasts and songs, and like you, wanted to beat the crap out of anyone who didn't join in the festivities.

Christ, even now, doesn't celebrate Christmas. He's immortal, and the last thing some immortal guy needs is another birthday party. Furthermore, Bill, if you'd read your Scriptures, you'd know that displaying the graven image of Santa Clause is outlawed by the First Commandment not the First Amendment.

So what does He want you to do, Bill, in December? I know that "peace on Earth" is not one of your favorite lines, and "good will to all men" only applies, in your book, to men who follow your strange little way of celebrating His arrival.

I remember last December when US tanks rolled into the Muslim burg of Falluja with Santa Clauses tied to the front. Now THAT'S real Christmas spirit. But not the Christian spirit.

Freud called the arrogant desire to impose one's religious rituals on others, "the vanity of small differences." Its by-product is war, hijackings and drunken office parties requiring embarrassed apologies the next week. This vanity takes many forms. When the September 11 hijackers reportedly screamed "Allah Akbar" they were not convincing anyone that "God is Great;" they were saying, "WE are great, and YOU aren't." Now O'Reilly, as vain as they, is shrieking, "Santa Akbar! Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer uber alles!"

So what's this all about, Bill? Why suddenly does Santa need an overweight, best-selling oafish big-mouth to act as his hit-elf? What's wrong, Bill?

I suspect it's personal frustration. I know you spent other holiday (oops, Christmas) seasons making obscene phone calls to your young, female producer. Once she filed a complaint, that avenue of personal satisfaction was cut off.

So, in the holiday/Christmas/Solstice spirit, let me offer you this gift: you can talk dirty to me, Bill. But unlike the woman whose career you held hostage, I'll listen to your nasty, filthy talk voluntarily.

It's true, I'm a bald, middle-aged guy, but you can pretend I'm some new assistant producer you can threaten if she doesn't want to take your tawdry little calls. You want to tell me you got a big Candy Cane to lick? It might disgust me, Bill, but it's better I relieve you of your pornographic fantasies than have the public violated by your war-nographic viciousness.

I'm waiting here by the phone, you big hunk of Santa-Claws!

December 28, 2005 - Why is it not bigger news that those infamous Iraqi female scientists once routinely referred to in the media as "Dr. Germ" and "Mrs. Anthrax" have been quietly released from imprisonment in Iraq without any charges being brought by their U.S. captors? Don't the newspapers and TV networks that all but pre-convicted them of crimes against humanity owe them - and us - the courtesy of an explanation for the sudden presumption of their innocence?

After all, it was to stop these mad leaders of Saddam Hussein's allegedly booming weapons-of-mass-destruction programs that the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. We were told at the time by the White House that the U.N. inspectors scouring the country were being blocked by lying officials and scientists, themselves complicit in breaking U.N. sanctions, and so we wouldn't get the truth until we could interrogate them as prisoners.

Yet, when Rihab "Dr. Germ" Taha and Huda "Mrs. Anthrax" Ammash, both of whom were once on a Pentagon most-wanted list, were released after two-and-a-half years, their U.S. captors didn't even announce it.

When questioned afterward as to why no war crimes charges had been brought against the pair, U.S. commander Gen. George Casey said in a joint statement with the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, that they "no longer posed a security threat to the people of Iraq and to the Coalition forces." U.S. forces "therefore, had no legal basis to hold them any longer."

Nor was the acknowledgement that the Iraqis were still presumed innocent deemed worthy of comment by the very news outlets that had previously reduced them to cartoon-character villains, with only slim wire reports generally announcing the news.

No editorials apologized for the publication in major American media outlets of wild and unattributed charges against them -- including the gruesome accusation that deadly weapons had been tested on Abu Ghraib prisoners under Hussein. NBC had bluntly called Taha typical of a "new breed of third world weapons designers ... willing to violate any international norms or scientific ethics," while Judith Miller in the New York Times referred to her as "Dr. Death," based on the testimony of a disgruntled former co-worker of hers then in the "protective custody" of known false-intelligence pusher Ahmed Chalabi.

The American-educated Ammash, a high-ranking Baath Party official conveniently labeled as the five of hearts in the media-friendly deck of "most wanted" playing cards produced by the Pentagon, also was given a variety of horror movie-style nicknames, such as "Chemical Sally." She was routinely described in news reports as being the primary force behind Hussein's campaign to rebuild his bioweapons arsenal -- an effort that seems to have produced little or no results, if it ever even happened.

The fact is, all of the top scientists in Iraq consistently told first U.N. and then U.S. inspectors before and after the invasion that Iraq, hobbled by inspections and sanctions, had no functioning WMD programs or usable WMDs in recent years. This squared with what the U.N. inspectors, as well as former U.N. inspector and U.S. Marine Scott Ritter and the most informed voices inside the U.S. intelligence community, were saying before the invasion.

In other words, while nobody doubted that Hussein, a regional bully, longed to have WMDs such as those developed and stockpiled by the United States, the best experts and inspectors believed he didn't possess them.

Unfortunately, the mass media, cowed by post-Sept. 11 jingoism, showed no stomach for fact-checking the White House's war propaganda, instead proving alarmingly pliant in simply passing along a distorted portrait that transformed a run-down and hamstrung autocracy into a world-threatening juggernaut. The media still struggle to make themselves accountable.

One notable exception this past week was an online report by Newsweek reporter Melinda Liu, who had interviewed Ammash when Hussein was still in power, and now is re-examining a widespread faith in U.S. government sources. "When Saddam was still in power, most of us journalists reporting in Iraq simply assumed it was impossible to get a straight story out of his officials," Liu wrote. "Now we know Saddam's aides weren't the only ones spinning the truth. It's hard to know what to believe anymore."

In the end, this disgracing of the model of a free media in a free society will turn out to be the greatest cost of the invasion. We regularly hector the world as to the virtues of a government held accountable by a free press and yet routinely mock that ideal with media that often act as nothing more than a conveyor belt for government propaganda.
(c) 2005 Robert Scheer

The Bush Administration's reaction to the 9/11 attacks has been almost incomprehensibly weird. The nation was profoundly traumatized by the Al Qaeda assault. Our leaders promise us over and over that the next catastrophic attack is imminent. Yet not only do they do nothing to prepare for such an eventuality, they actively seek to sabotage those who do. Again and again the Bush Administration has slashed Congressionally mandated funding for precautionary measures in the areas of port security and nuclear and chemical security. They withdrew troops and intelligence agents from Afghanistan, where they were tracking Osama bin Laden and a reconstituted Al Qaeda, in order to throw them into Iraq, where no terrorist threat existed. Together with the Republican majority in Congress, they have treated "homeland security" as a pork distribution program. What money is appropriated receives little or no oversight. Columbus, Ohio, is free to spend homeland security funds on bulletproof vests for fire department dogs; Newark, New Jersey, on air-conditioned garbage trucks; and the District of Columbia, on leather jackets and self-improvement seminars for sanitation workers.

What has been the reaction of the political and journalistic establishment to the Administration's criminal dereliction of duty? This too is a puzzle. Some institutions have, indeed, attempted to hold our leaders responsible. The Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, have published studies delineating the inadequacies of the Bush Administration's approach--if it can be called that--to protecting America. And yet, almost congenitally, these institutions find themselves unable to make these issues matter politically. They are, after all, run by and for insiders who risk their precious "credibility" and personal connections to power should they bend the rules of political politeness.

By far the most vocal and valuable of these establishment voices has been the 9/11 commission. Typically, after failing to prevent its creation, the Administration initially sought to undermine its effectiveness. The dogged members of the commission produced an extremely useful 567-page report, nevertheless skirting questions that might have revealed too much. The report, to take just one example, fails to address why it fell to Dick Cheney to OK the shoot-down of civilian jets, if necessary, when he enjoyed absolutely no constitutional authority to do so. (Was Bush suffering a breakdown and deemed by the veep to be mentally incapacitated? Did Cheney even ask?)

Where the 9/11 commission has been perhaps most impressive, however, is in its members' insistence on sticking around long enough to insure that its recommendations are not forgotten or ignored. When its mandate expired with the issuance of the report, the commission obtained private funding to monitor and report on the Administration's implementation schedule.

Well, the follow-up report is in, and the news could hardly be worse. The Administration's record remains one of consistent, and apparently willful, failure. The commission gave Bush & Co. a grade of F for:

§ Failing to provide "adequate radio spectrum for first responders" from a variety of agencies to coordinate their actions in emergencies;

§ Allocating homeland security funding based on pork-barrel politics, not on risk;

§ Failing to make critical improvements in airline passenger pre-screening;

§ Refusing to declassify the intelligence budget, thereby precluding effective Congressional oversight of budget priorities;

§ Failing to set international standards for the treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism.

The panel also gave the government two incompletes, twelve D's, twelve B's and nine C's, but the grading process seems awfully generous. For instance, the panel did not issue a failing grade for the Administration's efforts to "secure WMD," even though it invaded Iraq and found nothing. Nor did it give an F regarding the creation of a "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board," despite the fact that "funding is insufficient, no meetings have been held, no staff named, no work plan outlined, no work begun, no office established."

Almost as amazing--and disturbing--has been the collective yawn with which the mainstream media greeted this shocking assessment. As Editor & Publisher discovered in a survey of forty major newspapers, only six thought the report worthy of front-page coverage. The New York Times buried the story in its back pages and then ignored it entirely in Sunday's news coverage. As veteran Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall admitted in an online chat, he was "surprised to see" that unlike the Post, the Times "played the story inside. Insofar as the press drives a story, that will diminish public reaction." Moreover, the report came on the heels of another report, in October, by the Government Accountability Office warning that "the US government lacks an integrated strategy to coordinate the delivery of counter-terrorism financing training and technical assistance to countries vulnerable to terrorist financing." Republican Senator Charles Grassley termed this "just inexplicable in light of the war on terrorism.''

Try this, Senator. The Administration just does not care. As former White House aide John DiIulio once explained, "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." And politically, as GOP über-strategist Grover Norquist explains, this issue simply cannot hurt the Republicans no matter what. The public perception is that "Republicans are tough on crime to the point where they'll take away your civil liberties. Republicans are so tough on foreign policy that they'll flatten cities." Once the attack happens, Democrats do not get to say I told you so: They must rally 'round their President.

Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war. "In an interview with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to Baghdad," the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald Rumsfeld "hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go below the 138,000 baseline" of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Throughout 2006, until Election Day in early November, this kind of story will be a frequent media refrain as the Bush regime does whatever it can to prevent a loss of Republican majorities in the House and Senate. By continuing to fortify large military bases in Iraq -- and by continuing to escalate an air war there courtesy of U.S. taxpayers but largely outside the U.S. media frame -- the White House is determined to exploit every weakness and contradiction of antiwar sentiment inside the United States.

There's a lot for the pro-war propagandists to exploit. American opponents of this war often emphasize the deaths and injuries of U.S. troops and the anguish of loved ones at home. At the same time, to whatever extent it's a conscious strategy or a genuine nationalistic form of narcissism, Americans who denounce the war commonly seem to be playing to a media gallery that can easily acknowledge the importance of American lives -- but downplays the loss of Iraqi lives unless those tragedies can be pinned on enemies of the U.S. occupation.

What's on the horizon for 2006 is that the Bush administration will strive to put any real or imagined reduction of U.S. occupation troop levels in the media spotlight. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will use massive air power in Iraq.

It's a process already underway, as independent journalist Dahr Jamail -- who worked on the ground in Iraq for more than eight months of the U.S. occupation -- pointed out in a mid-December article titled "An Increasingly Aerial Occupation." As he put it: "The American media continues to ignore the increasingly devastating air war being waged in Iraq against an ever more belligerent Iraqi resistance -- and, as usual, Iraqi civilians continue to bear the largely unreported brunt of the bombing."

Yes, we should demand swift withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But, at this point, to do so without also demanding an end to U.S. bombing of Iraq is to fall into a trap laid by the war makers in Washington. This kind of thing has happened before -- with devastating results for people trying to survive a Pentagon air war that was receiving little U.S. media attention.

The Nixon administration was eager to divert attention from the slaughter in Southeast Asia to peace talks in Paris -- and to the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam over a period of more than three years. In general the networks were all too willing to oblige.

The negotiations and withdrawals served as diversions from bloody facts of the continuing war. The tonnage of U.S. bombing actually increased -- while the networks' focus moved away from the ongoing bloodshed. At NBC, for instance, "although combat footage was sent to New York from the Saigon bureau every day for two months following the [early November 1968 U.S.] decision [initiating peace negotiations in Paris], it was aired only three times on the evening news," journalist Edward Jay Epstein noted. "The preceding year, when there had been almost the same number of American combat deaths during the same period, combat stories were shown almost every night of the week."

With the media wisdom determining that the main Vietnam story had become the negotiations, NBC News producer Robert Northshield said that "combat stories seemed like a contradiction and would confuse the audience." Other networks came to similar conclusions. And the media evasions were to become more extreme as Washington reduced the number of American troops in Vietnam.

A typical approach was embodied in edicts handed down at ABC, where the executive producer of the evening news, Av Westin, put out a March 1969 memo that explained: "I have asked our Vietnam staff to alter the focus of their coverage from combat pieces to interpretive ones, pegged to the eventual pull-out of the American forces. This point should be stressed for all hands." In a telex to the network's Saigon bureau, Westin gave the news of his decree to the news correspondents: "I think the time has come to shift some of our focus from the battlefield, or more specifically American military involvement with the enemy, to themes and stories under the general heading 'We Are on Our Way Out of Vietnam.'"

For U.S. media, the Vietnam story had been front-and-center when American soldiers were firmly deployed there. But as the White House gradually pulled troops from Vietnam, the media shifted farther away from the actual destruction of people, villages, farmland and ecosystems -- even while the U.S. air war and coordinated ground assaults in Southeast Asia persisted at a very high rate of killing.

During 2006, reductions of U.S. troop levels in Iraq -- accompanied by intensive media spin about prospects for U.S. military disengagement -- are likely even while the already-horrific air war escalates. Those who die under U.S. bombs will rarely make the TV network news or the newspapers back in the United States.