> As they and their
> minions were burning down the capital city of Dili in September,
> murdering and rampaging, the Pentagon announced that "A US-Indonesian
> training exercise focused on humanitarian and disaster relief
> activities concluded Aug. 25," five days before the referendum that
> elicited the sharp escalation in crimes -- precisely as the political
> leadership in Washington expected, at least if they were reading their
> own intelligence reports.
The question remains whether or not they were reading their own (or anyone else's) intelligence reports. What intelligence reports is Chomsky referring to?
> credible Church sources
The Vatican is certainly not a credible source in this matter. It has a very determined interest in what it deems to be the protection of catholicism in Asia against the advances of Islam.
> Clinton watched silently, until compelled by domestic and
> international (mostly Australian) pressure to make at least some
> gestures. These were enough for the Indonesian Generals to reverse
> course at once, an indication of the latent power that has always been
> in reserve. A rational person can readily draw some conclusions about
> criminal culpability.
mmm. It was the Australian Government that lobbied the UN against an armed presence, against the remonstrations of the US. And it was the Australian Govt which delayed an armed UN intervention after the ballot and when the violence exploded by refusing to go unless the US went as well. The US said it was stretched in Kosovo, and wanted the UN to put together a predominantly Asian force, as per various Asian govt requests. Portugal was prepared to go it pretty much alone, but with a UN mandate. Indonesia threatened to regard a UN intervention as an act of war until sovereignty was ceded. Australia used this to threaten an impending war between Australia and Indonesia as a means to delay until after the APEC meeting.
I've said it on numerous occassions: it was all a matter of timing, and those who knew about the timing and scope of the plan to eradicate the CNRT and East Timor's infrastructure were (unless Chomsky can cite actual occassions of US intelligence on the matter, which he hasn't) the Indonesian and Australian Governments.
> the veteran Australian diplomat Richard Butler
Butler? Butler is the guy who, as should already be well-known, transformed the UN Weapons Inspection Team in Iraq into a bombing reconnaissance mission for the US.
> the failure to act
> -- at once, and decisively -- to save the remnants of one of the most
> terrible tragedies of this awful century.
I've also said before that Chomsky's narratives on East Timor were always designed with one conclusion in mind: US intervention. That's why he needs to make the US culpable, because, strangely enough, he wants the US to act as a good, rather than bad, global cop -- but still the gobal cop. I think I've just parted company with Chomsky.
Angela