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| Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives |
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FAHRENHEIT 9/11 Michael Moore is ready for his close-up By Philip Shenon, New York Times, June 20, 2004 Michael Moore is not coy about his hopes for "Fahrenheit 9/11," his blistering documentary attack on President Bush and the war in Iraq. He wants it to be remembered as the first big-audience, election-year film that helped unseat a president. "And it's not just a hope," the Oscar-winning filmmaker said in a phone interview last week, describing focus groups in Michigan in April at which, after seeing the movie, previously undecided voters expressed eagerness to defeat Mr. Bush. "We found that if you entered the theater on the fence, you fell off it somewhere during those two hours," he said. "It ignites a fire in people who had given up." [...] For the White House, the most devastating segment of "Fahrenheit 9/11" may be the video of a befuddled-looking President Bush staying put for nearly seven minutes at a Florida elementary school on the morning of Sept. 11, continuing to read a copy of "My Pet Goat" to schoolchildren even after an aide has told him that a second plane has struck the twin towers. Mr. Bush's slow, hesitant reaction to the disastrous news has never been a secret. But seeing the actual footage, with the minutes ticking by, may prove more damaging to the White House than all the statistics in the world. [complete article] On 9/11, a telling seven-minute silence By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, June 19, 2004 You're at a photo op, reading a book with schoolchildren and an aide suddenly whispers that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center. "America is under attack." You're the president of the United States. What do you do? There have been other moments like this in American history, when the chief executive was suddenly plunged into a crisis, but they weren't caught on videotape. George W. Bush was on camera in an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He could see the pagers of reporters and photographers going off, one by one. He was on the spot like few people have ever been. From two different angles, Americans have new glimpses of that historic moment. One comes from rabble-rousing Michael Moore, whose Bush-eviscerating film "Fahrenheit 9/11" premieres next week, and includes an uninterrupted seven-minute segment showing Bush's reaction after hearing the news of the attack. He doesn't move. Instead he continues to sit in the classroom, listening to children read aloud. Moore lets the tape roll as the minutes pass painfully by. And now from a second angle: The staff of the 9/11 Commission this week released a report that summarizes Bush's closed-door testimony about his thoughts as he sat there. [complete article] Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands By Julian Borger, The Guardian, June 19, 2004 A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer. In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them. [complete article] Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, can be ordered here. WORD GAMES Leaders of 9/11 panel ask Cheney for reports By Philip Shenon and Richard W. Stevenson, New York Times, June 19, 2004 The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission called on Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know. "Probably," Mr. Cheney replied. Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either. [complete article] Comment -- Unless a few journalists pluck up the courage to try and force Bush or Cheney to spell out the nature and specifics of the so-called "relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda this story will keep on going round in circles. George Bush and John Kerry have a relationship: They are both candidates in the coming presidential election. Assuming that they participate in a debate or two, this will require some level of cooperation. Does this mean that Bush supports the Kerry campaign? Annan rebukes U.S. for move to give its troops immunity By Warren Hoge, New York Times, June 18, 2004 Secretary General Kofi Annan harshly criticized the United States on Thursday for seeking immunity for its peacekeeping troops from the International Criminal Court. He said the Security Council should resist the American move, which he said was "of dubious judicial value" and particularly deplorable this year "given the prisoner abuse in Iraq." "I think in this circumstance it would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it," Mr. Annan told reporters. "It would discredit the Council and the United Nations that stands for rule of law and the primacy of the rule of law." [complete article] Pressure at Iraqi prison detailed USA Today, June 17, 2004 The officer who oversaw interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad testified that he was under intense "pressure" from the White House, Pentagon and CIA last fall to get better information from detainees, pressure that he said included a visit to the prison by an aide to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, in a sworn statement to Army investigators obtained by USA TODAY, said he was told last September that White House staffers wanted to "pull the intelligence out" of the interrogations being conducted at Abu Ghraib. The pressure stemmed from growing concern about the increasingly violent Iraqi insurgency that was claiming American lives daily. It came before and during a string of abuses of Iraqi prisoners in October, November and December of 2003. Jordan, the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, described "instances where I feel that there was additional pressure" to get information from detainees, including a visit to the prison last fall by an aide to Rice that was "purely on detainee operations and reporting." And he said he was reminded of the need to improve the intelligence output of the prison "many, many, many times." [complete article] U.S. charges contractor over fatal beating of Afghan detainee By John Hendren and Mark Mazzetti, Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2004 The Justice Department charged a CIA contract interrogator with assault Thursday in the beating of an Afghan detainee who later died. It is the first prosecution of a civilian in the abuse of prisoners in the twin war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. David A. Passaro is accused of "brutally" beating Abdul Wali over two days of questioning in June 2003 after Wali turned himself in at the front gate of the Asadabad military base in northeastern Afghanistan, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft told reporters in Washington. U.S. troops have fought militants in the mountainous region as they have searched for Osama bin Laden. Wali was suspected of aiding in rocket attacks against the base. He surrendered June 18, was questioned June 19 and 20, and was found dead in his cell the next day. Passaro was arrested in North Carolina after a federal grand jury there handed up a four-count indictment charging that Passaro used his hands, feet and a large flashlight to beat Wali. He faces up to 40 years in prison and a $1-million fine if convicted on two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. Asked why Passaro, 38, did not face torture or murder charges, Ashcroft said that an investigation had not yielded strong enough evidence to justify such charges. "The investigation is an ongoing investigation, and the evidence which we have available to us at this time, currently available, provides the basis for these charges," he said. [complete article] PAKISTANI MILITANTS High-profile attacks force Pakistan to confront extremists By John Lancaster, Washington Post, June 19, 2004 Recent high-profile attacks by Islamic militants on government targets, including a nearly successful assassination attempt on a senior army general last week, are pushing security forces into an escalating confrontation with extremist groups they once embraced as instruments of state policy, according to diplomats and analysts. Until recently, Pakistani militants have avoided direct confrontation with the army, whose Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, has a long history of association with radical groups. The militants have seemed to distinguish between security forces and President Pervez Musharraf, an army general and supporter of the U.S.-led war on terrorism whom they twice tried to kill last December. Over the past few months, however, some Islamic extremists now are seen to be broadening their anti-government campaign, according to the sources, staging frequent ambushes of army troops in the rugged borderlands near Afghanistan. In one high-profile attack on the morning of June 10, assailants sprayed automatic-weapons fire at the motorcade of Lt. Gen. Ahsan Saleem Hayat as he commuted to his office in downtown Karachi. [complete article] Pakistani rebel embraced then killed by military By Agence France Presse (via Yahoo), June 18, 2004 Nek Mohammad, the long-haired rebel tribesman and former Taliban commander who defied Pakistan's campaign to drive Al-Qaeda from its tribal belt, was being publicly embraced by generals just two months ago. Yet on Friday the military proclaimed major success in tracking, targetting and killing him, in a precision night-time strike on a mud-walled compound in the remote district of South Waziristan on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. On Friday morning thousands of tribesmen converged on Mohammad's dusty home village of Kaloosha, some 10 kilometers (six miles) from the outskirts of Wana where he was killed on Thursday night. The funeral ceremony was silent, residents said, devoid of customary speeches, and most of the stunned tribesmen had come to see whether the diehard warrior really was dead. [complete article] Ex-fighter for Taliban dies in strike in Pakistan By David Rohde and Mohammed Khan, New York Times, June 19, 2004 Local residents said they believed that a missile fired from an American drone killed the militant, Nek Muhammad, after he spoke over a satellite phone. But Pakistani military officials denied any American involvement. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, said Friday that Pakistani forces had been tracking Mr. Muhammad for several days. The general declined to say exactly how Mr. Muhammad was killed, but said Pakistani helicopters and artillery were both capable of striking a compound with pinpoint accuracy. He said reports of American involvement were "absolutely absurd." [complete article] U.S gets cosy with Taliban's point man By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, June 18, 2004 In the search for a single unifying force in chaotic Afghanistan, such as "moderate" Taliban, to bring political stability before November's US presidential elections, focus has once again fallen on the firebrand Pakistani cleric Maulana Fazlur Rehman, who during the Taliban regime was used to build bridges with the rest of the world. [...] Asia Times Online: Moves have been afoot for about a year to carve out "good Taliban" without leader Mullah Omar. Are you working on the same lines? Fazlur Rehman: After the Taliban fell [in late 2001] and a United Nations resolution called them terrorists, we conveyed the message to all Western powers that this was not the solution to the [country's] problems, and would result in instability in Afghanistan. Now the Taliban are underground ... the whole country is in deep chaos and without leadership. This is the threat we always pointed to in the past. Whenever there was a chance to interact with any Western country officials, we conveyed the same message [engage the Taliban]. ATol: Did you think your message got across? Rehman: Yes, of course. There is a visible change in behavior. They know that elections are the real pulse which reflects public opinion, and if the masses cease to participate in the process of elections, whether because they do not believe in the present election process or because of any other reason - like law and order - what credibility will the US leave behind? Mr Jack Straw came to Pakistan this year and I spoke to him about the same thing, saying, 'Please, do not abandon the Taliban as they are the real binding force in Afghanistan,' and Mr Straw agreed with me that the dialogue process should not be closed with any party in Afghanistan. [complete article] A Jewish state? 'Definitely' By David Landau and Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, June 18, 2004 Arafat is ready to sign an agreement that would give Palestinians 97 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza - with the rest in a land swap, and the right of return of not all, but at least some refugees. In a free-ranging interview with Haaretz, conducted in the carefully preserved ruins of the Muqata, the PA Chairman also spoke of the historical family bonds between the two peoples. "Definitely," says Yasser Arafat, waving his arm for emphasis. He definitely understands and accepts that Israel must be, and must stay, a Jewish state. The Palestinians "accepted that openly and officially in 1988 at our Palestine National Council," and they remain completely committed to it. Thus, the refugee problem needs to be solved in a way that will not change the Jewish character of the state. That is "clear and obvious." [complete article] Battle of flags By Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Al-Ahram, June 17, 2004 I travelled to my native Iraq in the last weeks of March, my second visit since the end of the war. I entered the country from Turkey, where a line of empty oil trucks more than two miles long queued up on the Turkish side of the border. On entering, a sign welcomed us to the "Kurdistan of Iraq", a clear message to Iraq's northerly neighbour that the Kurds are not willing to give up the relative autonomy they have enjoyed since their "safe haven" was established after the 1991 Gulf war. A portrait of Masoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), hangs on the wall at the border post, a reminder that we are not just entering Iraq, but Barzani's domain as well. The Kurdish flag -- red, green and white stripes with a sun in the centre -- is flying alongside the yellow KDP flag. The Iraqi flag is conspicuously absent. Entering the town of Dohuk, 45 minutes from the Turkish border, I was greeted by another sign: "God bless the coalition." Dohuk is the only town in Iraq where American soldiers can walk around unarmed. In fact, they come here for rest and relaxation from other parts of Iraq. Coalition troops may be welcome for now, but how long will this situation last? [complete article] Iraq as the 51st state Juan Cole interviewed by Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, June 18, 2004 JC: One of the reasons for getting rid of the Ba'ath army, according to Garner, was that they were afraid that the survival of any large Ba'ath institution like that might be an obstacle to the extreme liberalization of the economy. You can just imagine a situation in which the Americans wanted to denationalize Iraqi companies. If you had kept the Ba'ath army, they would come to the coalition and say, "No, you can't sell off these companies, my cousin helps to run them"... They [the Americans] thought that the army would remain a power center able to intervene in policy debates, on the side of state control of the economy. So they dissolved it not based on security purposes, but to remove a potential obstacle to Polish-style shock therapy. They brought Polish economic advisers - that's the reason for the Polish military involvement in Iraq. They tried to replicate the Polish experience. I don't believe that the neo-cons at the Defense Department wanted to use the US military to supplant the Iraqi army. In fact, [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz had told Congress that it's likely the US would be back to having only one division in Iraq by October 2003. They thought they could dissolve the army and just use the police to maintain order, and then they could do whatever they wanted to do with the economy: sell it off, bring in the big companies, open Iraq to Western investment. They hoped that the Iraqi bourgeoisie would emerge, there would be productivity gains, the country would be rich, and everybody else - the Iranians, the Syrians - would want to follow them. [complete article] Retired envoys, commanders assail Bush team By Peter Slevin, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 The Bush administration does not understand the world and remains unable to handle "in either style or substance" the responsibilities of global leadership, a group of 27 retired diplomats and military commanders charged yesterday. "Our security has been weakened," the former ambassadors and four-star commanders said in a statement read to a crowded Washington news conference. "Never in the 2 1/4 centuries of our history has the United States been so isolated among the nations, so broadly feared and distrusted." The statement fit onto a single page, but the sharp public criticism of President Bush was striking, coming from a bipartisan group of respected former officials united in anger about U.S. policy. The commentary emerges as public doubts about the Iraq invasion and Bush's handling of national security have risen. [complete article] Read the complete statement from Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change. Qaeda demons haunt Saudis By Tony Karon, Time.com, June 18, 2004 The world waited this week for news of another gruesome terrorist execution of an American hostage, and it finally came on Friday, posted on extremist web sites and reported on Arab TV. This time, however, the bad news came not from Iraq, but from Saudi Arabia. Lockheed-Martin engineer Paul Johnson, 49, of New Jersey, was kidnapped in Riyadh, last Saturday, and an al-Qaeda aligned web site on Tuesday posted video footage of him in captivity with a warning that he would be executed within 72 hours unless a list of named Qaeda suspects currently in Saudi custody were released. The webcast ultimatum and Mr. Johnson's murder highlights a growing sense of crisis over the apparent inability of Saudi authorities, despite tough talk and often effective police action against Qaeda cells, to snuff out the terror campaign that has raged on their own soil for more than a year. [complete article] See also, U.S. man beheaded in Saudi Arabia (WP), Saudis show slain al-Qaeda chief (BBC) and Profile: Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin (BBC). How the holy warriors learned to hate By Waleed Ziad, New York Times, June 18, 2004 "Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist factory sending thousands of killers into the world," President Bush announced on Tuesday, as he stood in the White House Rose Garden next to his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai. And, true, Afghanistan has been a success story, at least compared with Iraq. Still, the offensive against militants who fled into northwestern Pakistan continues, and Osama bin Laden remains on the lam. Achieving lasting peace and democracy in this trouble spot will take more than Special Operations troops -- we must gain a far better understanding of the militants and their motivations. A good place to start is a hand-scrawled inscription I saw on a crumbling wall in a border town in northern Pakistan that read, "Jihad of the sword, like prayer, is a religious obligation." Most Westerners probably assume that this is an ancient dictum -- and I bet the man who wrote it did, too. But the fact is, the slogan was conjured up no more than 25 years ago. Here's the point: contrary to popular theories, the fight against militant religious groups in South Asia is not a clash of age-old civilizations or a conflict between traditionalism and modernism. Rather, it is a more recent story of political ineptitude and corruption, and of a postcolonial class struggle between the disenfranchised poor and these countries' elites. [complete article] MUSHARRAF'S FRIENDS AND FOES Bush names Pakistan 'major ally' BBC News, June 17, 2004 President George W Bush has upgraded relations with Pakistan by formally naming it as a major non-Nato ally. The move is in recognition of Islamabad's contribution in the fight against al-Qaeda, and is being seen as Washington's way of saying thank-you. [...] Pakistan now finds itself in the same exclusive club as such close American friends such as Israel and South Korea. US plans to upgrade relations with Pakistan were first announced by US Secretary of State Colin Powell during a visit to Pakistan in March. President Bush's formal announcement is unlikely to be well received by India which does not have special status with the US. But in what our correspondent says is a strange irony of timing, the president's announcement coincided with a report from the commission investigating the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre. It accused Islamabad of helping the Taleban to shelter Osama Bin Laden, saying that it had "significantly facilitated" his stay in Afghanistan prior to the attack. [complete article] New Waziristan offensive starts BBC News, June 17, 2004 The BBC's Rahimullah Yusufzai in Peshawar says that the latest manoeuvres are highly significant, because they are taking place in the mountainous Angor Adda area - regarded as one of the last strongholds of foreign militants. He says they will be regarded by the army as the culmination of their ongoing efforts to flush foreign forces out of South Waziristan. [complete article] Pakistan kills pro-Al Qaeda tribal fighter By Hafiz Wazir, Reuters, June 18, 2004 Pakistani security forces killed a top tribal warrior wanted for sheltering al Qaeda militants in an overnight swoop on his hideout in a remote region bordering Afghanistan, officials said Friday. Nek Mohammad, who protected foreign fighters with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal area, died with four supporters in the raid on a mud-walled compound near the region's main town of Wana, 250 miles southwest of Islamabad. [...] The death of Mohammad raises fresh fears of a violent backlash by militants in Pakistani cities. Recent deadly attacks on religious and military targets in Karachi have been linked to operations against militants in tribal areas. [complete article] Tribal leader's last interview BBC News, June 18, 2004 Tribal leader Nek Mohammed has been killed by the Pakistani military in an overnight raid. Twice this week, the BBC's Imtiaz Ali interviewed the targeted militant. Mohammed spoke to our correspondent by telephone from an undisclosed location. [complete article] The Pathan 'Robin Hood' thumbs his nose at Islamabad By Peter Foster and Imtiaz Ali, The Telegraph, June 5, 2004 He is the Robin Hood of Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, a bearded outlaw who is a hero to his people, but a villain to the forces of law and order. Meet Nek Mohammed, a Pathan tribesman who is rapidly gaining notoriety for his stand against American and Pakistan forces trying to round up the remnants of the Taliban. For the past eight months Nek Mohammed, a member of the fiercely independent Ahmadzai Wazir tribe, has refused to hand over 600 mujahideen fighters who have taken refuge in the hills above the frontier town of Wana in south Waziristan. [complete article] Iraqi leaders would consider martial law By Ashraf Khalil, Los Angeles Times, June 18, 2004 On a day when two suicide bombings killed 41 Iraqis and injured more than 130, Iraq's interior minister said Thursday that the interim government would consider all options to quell the country's bloody insurgency -- including declaring martial law. That tactic is among those that will be discussed if the violence continues after June 30, when the interim government is scheduled to take over from the U.S.-led coalition, said Interior Minister Falah Fakib. "If we see the need to do it, we won't hesitate," he said. [...] Last week, Allawi said he and his ministers were prepared to use "drastic measures" to end the insurgency. He didn't provide specifics Thursday about how civilians and members of the nation's security forces could be protected. Nor did Nakib give details on how martial law would be implemented in a country that has been occupied for more than 14 months, after a regime with a harsh security apparatus was deposed. It remains unclear whether Iraq has enough forces to use such a strategy. [complete article] Liberation will only come when the Americans leave By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, June 17, 2004 With less than two weeks until the much-vaunted transfer of power from the Americans to an Iraqi government, a few hints of independence have emerged from the men Washington approved. Sheikh Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, the civil engineer and tribal leader who is to be the new president, contradicted George Bush's suggestion that the notorious prison of Abu Ghraib be torn down. It is not that the sheikh has any affection for the place, but he probably foresaw another fat new contract looming for some foreign building company. Anyway, the damage done to the American image in Iraq cannot be undone by removing the scene of the crime. More importantly, the sheikh came out against last week's American order banning the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, from taking part in Iraq's first democratic elections in January. It was an odd decision for a country which claims to be bringing democracy to Iraq. It appeared to have the support of the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, who issued a statement welcoming the tough US line on illegal militias. The larger Shia parties in the government also went along with it. The cleric is their political rival, and to have him off the ballot would no doubt be in their short-term interest. The sheikh, by contrast, argued that it is far better to get radicals to join the political process than leave them outside the tent, a sentiment that al-Sadr seems to share. [complete article] Muqtada: From outlaw to politician By Charles Recknagel, Asia Times, June 18, 2004 There are mounting indications that radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr intends to seize the inauguration of a sovereign Iraqi government on June 30 as the moment to transform from an insurgent leader into a politician. One sign came on Wednesday as news agencies reported that Muqtada had told all members of his Mahdi Army who were not from the holy city of Najaf to return to their home areas. The formal call could mark the end to an uprising by Muqtada's supporters that began in April and saw bloody clashes between US troops and militiamen within the Shi'ite shrine city and elsewhere. Muqtada's order to his militiamen follows weeks of negotiation between the cleric and mainstream religious and secular leaders of the Shi'ite community. Some of those leaders are also key members of the new Iraqi government. The negotiators have pressed Muqtada to end fighting that puts religious sites at risk. They also have sought to defuse tensions over US-backed demands that Muqtada be arrested in connection with the murder of a rival Shi'ite cleric last year. [complete article] Al-Qaida's next action hero By Daniel Kimmage, Slate, June 16, 2004 On June 1, al-Qaida terrorists conducted one of their most spectacular operations -- a brutal assault on the Saudi oil town of Khobar, replete with seek-and-destroy missions targeting non-Muslims and gun battles with security forces. Now, on the Internet, an insider has posted his account of the attack. As a factual document, the report reeks of exaggeration and may even be invented. But as a specimen, it affords a true and valuable glimpse into the ideology and propaganda style -- including Hollywood theatrics, rhetorical bravado, and anti-crusader ideology -- that al-Qaida uses to rally support and recruit followers. Al-Qaida supporters use the Internet avidly. In an ever-shifting matrix of Arabic-language forums, they thrill to the latest successes against crusaders and Jews. These sites are quick to publicize Osama Bin Ladin's calls to arms, and they're the place where boasters falsely claim responsibility for disasters ranging from last year's electrical blackout to California brush fires. Purportedly factual materials from this "jihadist Internet," as it's called, should be taken at face value no more than what you read on the Drudge Report. But unlike Drudge, the jihadist forums hone a hard core of ideology, making up for what they lack in veracity with their zeal to draw recruits. [complete article] It depends what the meaning of "relationship" is President Bush's Clintonian calibrations on al-Qaida By Fred Kaplan, Slate, June 17, 2004 Talking to reporters after his Cabinet meeting this morning, President Bush disputed the 9/11 commission's conclusion that no "collaborative relationship" existed between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. "There was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Bush insisted. Then the president drew a distinction: The administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence agents met with bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda in Sudan.Let's examine these words closely because President Bush clearly chose them carefully. The latest chapter of the 9/11 commission's report, which was released Wednesday, notes that there were -- as Bush put it -- "numerous contacts" between the two entities. It cites the same meetings with Iraqi intelligence agents that Bush cited. So Bush's "dispute" with the commission's findings isn't a dispute at all. He just meant to make it look like a dispute -- to make some people think the commission might be wrong. [complete article] The Air Force has a long-delayed reckoning By Michael Moran, MSNBC, June 17, 2004 Intelligence and law enforcement activities, even at their most competent and coordinated, might never glean the evil plans of a small group of well-disciplined attackers. Foreign policy at its most enlightened will still fail to dissuade those bent on blaming the world's injustices (and their own culture's myriad failures) on the dominant nation of the times. Even the Federal Aviation Administration, which repeatedly failed to do the right thing that day, can legitimately argue that its core mission did not include command and control of American air defenses. Ready or not, that was the job of the Air Force, and its domestic defense branches, North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and the Air National Guard. "Regardless of the color of the plane or what flag it had on its tail, NORAD and the Air Force for 50 years have been tasked with the job of going up, intercepting them and making sure they never get close," says Dan Goure, a senior defense official in the Reagan administration and now an NBC News military analyst. "No failure on 9/11 was more complete." [complete article] Air defenses faltered on 9/11, panel finds By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 Vice President Cheney did not issue orders to shoot down hostile aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, until long after the last hijacked airliner had already crashed, and the order was never passed along to military fighter pilots searching for errant aircraft that morning, according to a new report issued this morning by the panel investigating the attacks. A painstaking recreation of the faltering and confused response by military and aviation officials on Sept. 11 also shows that fighter jets never had a chance to intercept any of the doomed airliners, in part because they had been sent to intercept a plane, American Airlines 11, that had already crashed into the World Trade Center. The jets also would probably not have been able to stop the last airplane, United Airlines Flight 93, from barreling into the White House or U.S. Capitol if it had not crashed in Pennsylvania, according to the report. "We are sure that the nation owes a debt to the passengers of United 93," the report's authors wrote, referring to an apparent insurrection that foiled the hijackers' plans. "Their actions saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction." [complete article] Al Qaeda scaled back 10-plane plot By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were originally envisioned as an even more audacious assault involving 10 hijacked jetliners on the East and West coasts, but the plan was scaled back and later plagued by conflicts among al Qaeda's leaders and some of the hijackers themselves, according to a report issued yesterday by the panel investigating the attacks. The date for the attacks was uncertain until about three weeks before they were carried out, and there is evidence that as late as Sept. 9 ringleader Mohamed Atta had not decided whether one aircraft would target the U.S. Capitol or the White House, according to the report. Atta finally chose a date after the first week of September, the report says, "so that the United States Congress would be in session." The 20-page document represents the most vivid, detailed and authoritative account of the plot to emerge since the 19 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people by crashing four jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside. The document, brimming with new details, features a revealing examination of the thinking and actions of al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, and demonstrates how relentlessly the terrorists pursued the plan to its deadly ends. [complete article] See the report, Outline of the 9/11 Plot (PDF format). Bin Laden portrayed as a hands-on leader By David Von Drehle, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 The bin Laden revealed by his associates is a hands-on leader, a prod at times and a brake at others, aggressive, audacious -- but not reckless within the warped framework of his murderous enterprise. He has a knack for choosing the right men for a job and demands from his inner circle an oath of loyalty directly to him. The planning and execution of the strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were steered by bin Laden through a process that might be familiar to business executives the world over. [complete article] Al Qaeda-Hussein link is dismissed By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq. [...] The finding challenges a belief held by large numbers of Americans about al Qaeda's ties to Hussein. According to a Harris poll in late April, a plurality of Americans, 49 percent to 36 percent, believe "clear evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found." As recently as Monday, Cheney said in a speech that Hussein "had long-established ties with al Qaeda." Bush, asked on Tuesday to verify or qualify that claim, defended it by pointing to Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has taken credit for a wave of attacks in Iraq. [complete article] Rumsfeld, Tenet linked to secret detention of a prisoner By John Hendren, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2004 Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in October ordered a suspected terrorist captured in Iraq to be held in secret, a Pentagon official said Wednesday in what administration officials acknowledged was one of two violations of international law. The unidentified detainee, believed to be a leader of the outlawed Ansar al Islam group, was held without being given a prisoner number, and the International Committee of the Red Cross was not told about him, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The Pentagon acted at the request of CIA Director George J. Tenet, Whitman said. A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged Tenet's role. [complete article] Spy work in Iraq riddled by failures By Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2004 A pair of British-recruited spies in Iraq, whose alarming reports of Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons were rushed to the White House shortly before the U.S.-led invasion last year, were never interviewed by the CIA and are now viewed as unreliable, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say. The CIA's reliance on the two Iraqis, who were recruited by Britain's MI6 in late 2002 and thought to have access to Hussein's inner circle, is the latest example to come to light of the failures in human intelligence gathering in Iraq. U.S. agencies were also beset by broader, more systemic problems that included failures in analyzing communications intercepts and spy satellite images, the officials interviewed by The Times said. U.S. experts, for example, still have not been able to determine the meaning of three secretly taped conversations that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell played to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 in making the case for war. Investigators have been unable to identify who was speaking on the tapes or precisely what they were talking about. [complete article] Explosion outside Iraqi recruiting station kills dozens By Edward Cody, Washington Post, June 17, 2004 A car bomb steered to its target by a suicide driver exploded in a tremendous blast outside an Iraqi security forces recruiting station in downtown Baghdad Thursday, killing several dozen people and wounding scores from a line of men waiting to sign up. [...] The same recruiting center was hit by a bomb Feb. 11 that killed 47 people, including passersby and Iraqi men signing up for duty. The bomb, which unleashed its fury into a line of more than 100 men hoping to find jobs in the army or the paramilitary ICDC, was the latest in a daily drumbeat of explosions and assassinations designed to shake popular confidence in the 14-month-old U.S. occupation and the U.S.-sponsored interim government in the countdown to Iraq's recovery of limited sovereignty scheduled for June 30. [complete article] Insurgents go for Iraq's lifeline: oil By Nicholas Blanford, Christian Science Monitor, June 17, 2004 Recent attacks that have virtually shut down Iraq's oil industry are just the latest in a prolonged campaign to choke the country's reconstruction. Strikes against Iraq's oil sector have averaged more than one a week since last June. Bombings Tuesday and Wednesday on the southern pipeline halted oil exports from Basra and could cost Iraq about $65 million a day until repairs are made over the next several days. The interim government is relying on oil revenues to bolster its authority and shepherd Iraq toward a self-sufficient future. But the ongoing attacks could undermine Iraq's stability as well as rattle the global oil market. With global production stretched to its limits, and prices near a record high, even the loss of Iraq's limited export volumes could have a major effect on prices, analysts say. [complete article] How much is that Uzi in the window? By Evan Wright, New York Times, June 17, 2004 To the American troops in Iraq being subjected to a daily rain of fire from roadside bombs, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, it often seems that the insurgents have limitless stocks of munitions. In fact, in the time I spent embedded with a platoon there, I heard more than one marine joke that the insurgents must have more bullets to spare than the Americans. But it's no joke: some military officials told me that the Iraqis have so many weapons that they are suspected of exporting them over the Syrian border. And for this bounty, they can thank the Pentagon. Of all the blunders American military leaders have made in Iraq, one of the least talked about is how they succeeded in arming the insurgents. [complete article] Pentagon waste in Iraq may total billions, investigators say By T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2004 The Pentagon may have wasted billions of dollars in Iraq because of a lack of planning and poor oversight, top congressional and Defense Department investigators said Tuesday. David M. Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, told a congressional panel that Defense Department planners had failed to adequately determine the needs of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and to effectively oversee the billions of dollars' worth of contracts issued. Though Pentagon officials blame any mistakes on the pressure of the war's early days, the investigators said they had found ongoing waste in the contracting process a year after the invasion was launched in March 2003. In remarks to reporters, Walker speculated that the total losses from waste could amount to "billions." [complete article] Lessons from Wal-Mart and the Wehrmacht: Team Wolfowitz on administration in the information age By Leila Hudson, Middle East Policy Council Journal, Summer, 2004 Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has introduced a panoply of new techniques of government in the areas of intelligence processing, public relations, data collection and government secrecy. The blueprint that links many of these innovations to a unified theory of information and management can be found in an essay entitled "Military Organization in the Information Age: Lessons from the World of Business" by Francis Fukuyama and Abram Shulsky in a 1999 Rand Corporation volume edited by Zalmay Khalilzad. While the essay focuses on corporate self-improvement tips for the U.S. military, over the last three years these techniques have crept into the civilian functioning of the executive branch. There they seem to account for some of the most radical, and to critics, provocative innovations in domestic security policy and government management by the Bush administration. Like the policy statements from the Project for the New American Century, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," and most recently, Richard Perle's and David Frum's manifesto The End of Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, "Military Organization in the Information Age" lays out an ambitious and radical agenda that appears to have influenced the Bush administration. Unlike these other projects, "Military Organization in the Information Age" is not specifically about the Middle East region, nor does it lay out directives for strategy and action in international relations. Rather it presents a vision for the reformation of the military that would take advantage of the information revolution in order to maximize efficiency in corporate style. [complete article] See Fukuyama and Shulsky's Military Organization in the Information Age: Lessons from the World of Business (PDF format) Saboteurs halt all oil exports from Iraq By Danica Kirka, Associated Press (via WP), June 16, 2004 Saboteurs halted all oil exports from Iraq after blasting a key pipeline Wednesday for the second time in as many days. Gunmen also killed the top security official of the state-run Northern Oil company as insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraq's infrastructure. The security officer for the Northern Oil Company was killed in an ambush Wednesday in a crowded public market in Kirkuk. The victim, Ghazi Talabani, was a Kurd and a relative of the leader of one of Iraq's main Kurdish parties, Jalal Talabani. The Wednesday attack north of the town of Faw crippled two already damaged pipelines, forcing a halt in all Iraqi oil exports southward through the Gulf, Southern Oil Company spokesman Samir Jassim said. [complete article] U.S. business presence in Saudi Arabia strained by attacks By Dave Montgomery, Knight Ridder, June 15, 2004 A year of terrorism has cast a chill on U.S. businesses in Saudi Arabia, forcing expatriate enterprises to hunker down and reassess their presence on increasingly hostile terrain. While American companies apparently are remaining in place, many are re-evaluating the risk of doing business in a country where their workers have become al-Qaida targets. Potential new investors are backing away from putting money into a danger zone. It's a worrisome trend because of the crucial role foreign companies play in Saudi Arabia's oil-dominated economy. To the extent that the terrorist attacks scare away foreigners and damage the economy, al-Qaida may succeed in working toward its long-term goal of undermining the Saudi government, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East and the world's largest oil exporter. [complete article] CIA classifies much of a report on its failings By Douglas Jehl, New York Times, June 16, 2004 The Central Intelligence Agency has ruled that large portions of a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that is highly critical of the agency includes material too sensitive to be released to the public, Congressional and intelligence officials said Tuesday. Between 30 and 40 percent of the material in a 400-page report was deleted by the C.I.A. in a version that was returned to the committee on Monday as approved for public release, the officials said. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee had been pressing the agency and the White House for broad declassification of the report, which focuses on mistakes and miscalculations in prewar intelligence about Iraq and its weapons program. Congressional officials said members of the committee were disappointed by the C.I.A. action, and were considering various options, including an appeal to the agency and the White House to reconsider the decision. Other options would be to release the heavily edited report, to rewrite the documents around the deletions, or to seek approval of the full Senate to make public the classified portions of the document despite the agency's objections. [complete article] In 'Control Room,' the splitting image of war coverage By Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, June 16, 2004 Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian American filmmaker at home in two cultures, observed a war with dramatically different meanings in each of them. She was in Doha, Qatar, hanging out with journalists when a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled from its plinth in Baghdad by American soldiers, an iconic moment in the war in Iraq. Through the lens of her video camera, at the media center set up by U.S. Central Command, she watched as Western journalists laughed and cheered. But things were very different at al-Jazeera, the pioneering Arab television network, where the mood was morbid. "They were asking, 'Where is the Republican Guard? Where is the Iraqi army? Even though we hate Saddam, it is embarrassing to be ripping apart a statue in front of the whole world.' " When she needed footage of the Jessica Lynch rescue, another event played over and over by U.S. media, Noujaim went to al-Jazeera's video library and asked. She got a blank look. "They didn't know what the hell we were talking about," says Noujaim. The immediate subject of Noujaim's documentary "Control Room" is al-Jazeera, but its real theme is the huge gulf in understanding that exists between Americans and the Arab world and the way events, big and small, connected to the war in Iraq have taken on markedly different weight, meanings and emotional import. [complete article] Prison tactics a longtime dilemma for Israel By Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, June 16, 2004 The accounts of physical abuse of Iraqis by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad sounded achingly familiar to Anan Labadeh. The casual beatings, the humiliations, the trophy photos taken by both male and female guards were experiences he said he underwent as a Palestinian security detainee at an Israeli military camp in March of last year. There was, he added, a significant difference: The Israelis have rules, he said, and their techniques for breaking down prisoners are far more sophisticated. "What the Israelis do is much more effective than beatings," he said. "Three days without food and without sleep and you're eager to tell them anything. It just shows us the Americans are amateurs. They should have taken lessons from the Israelis." Many of the questions raised by the Abu Ghraib scandal, and by the United States's self-declared war on terrorism, are the kinds that Israel has been wrestling with for decades. Where is the line in a democracy between coercion and torture? What kinds of interrogation techniques are morally acceptable when dealing with a suspect who may have knowledge of a "ticking bomb" -- an imminent attack? And what about the damage those techniques inflict on relations between an occupying power and its subjects? [complete article] The occupier is not convinced By Amira Hass, Haaretz, June 16, 2004 The unilateral disengagement plan is also progressing in the West Bank. And, just as in the Gaza Strip, it is less a security disengagement between Israel and the Palestinian areas than it is a political plan for isolating each Palestinian area from every other via a network of fortifications that includes fences, walls, enclaves and settlement expansions. Gaza's isolation from the West Bank is a geographic fact. But the process of disconnecting Palestinian areas from each other within the West Bank constitutes a brutal change in both the natural geography and the political geography determined by the Green Line. It destroys the natural and national fabric by insulating each Palestinian district from every other, the suburbs from the cities, the villages from their urban centers, the cities from their land reserves, the villages from their agricultural land. Consistent supporters of peace with the Palestinians view this isolation plan as a means of thwarting any chance of establishing a viable Palestinian state, which constitutes the only basis for a fair and secure arrangement in our region. But they are discovering, with deep frustration, to what degree even the most stubborn of protests are impotent to stop the planners and the implementers. [complete article] The challenge to the two-state solution By Gary Sussman, Middle East Report, Summer, 2004 Talk of disengagement obscured the growingdebate, during 2003 and 2004, over alternatives to the two-state model—a discourse that increasingly has tested the long-standing conventional wisdom that the two-state solution is "the only game in town." Purveyors of conventional wisdom took note. In October 2003, the editors of the New York Times described arguments against the two-state solution as "insidious," but acknowledged that they were gaining ground. In the same month, the state-controlled Israel Broadcast Authority's prestigious "Popolitika" program hosted a debate on the continuing viability of the two-state solution. Research published by the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz suggests that 67 percent of the Israeli public "strongly or moderately fear" a scenario in which Israel finds itself in a one-state reality.[2] Two alternatives to the two-state endgame are discussed. One is a binational state, offering power-sharing to two separate peoples with distinct collective identities within one polity. The binational model encompasses federal, confederal and consociational variants. The second alternative proposes a single democratic polity, where there is no ethnic or national distinction between citizens. Whereas the former alternative is premised on collective entitlements, as developed in the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the latter is premised on individual rights, as in post-apartheid South Africa. The two concepts are often used interchangeably, and the word "binational" is understood by most Israelis to denote the South African endgame. Some, like Meron Benvenisti, suggest that the conflation of terminology is designed to "prevent any debate about... attractive alternatives" to the two-state solution. [complete article] 9/11 panel finds no collaboration between Iraq, Al Qaeda By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, June 16, 2004 There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, including the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackings, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the hijacking plot. Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein's secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons, the panel's report says. The findings come in the wake of statements Monday by Vice President Cheney that Iraq had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, and comments by President Bush yesterday backing up that assertion. [complete article] Read the 9-11 Commission staff statement, Overview of the Enemy (PDF format). Bush and Cheney still drinking Qaeda Kool-Aid (Boston Globe). Panel investigating 9/11 attacks cites confusion in air defense By Philip Shenon, New York Times, June 16, 2004 The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has found that the Pentagon's domestic air-defense command was disastrously unprepared for a major terrorist strike on American soil and was slow and confused in its response to the hijackings that morning, according to officials who have read a draft report of the commission's findings. [...] The 9/11 commission draft summarized the response of the military, the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies with this passage: "On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen. What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced." [complete article] U.S. terror report misses the mark By Ajai Sahni, Asia Times, June 16, 2004 The US State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 (PGT 2003) Report has been pilloried by a number of American experts, who note that, "its maths defies reality". The report contains a number of internal totaling errors that "even a third-grader could have found", according to one commentator at The Washington Times. The State Department has now taken cognizance of these errors and admitted that "the data in the report is incomplete and in some cases incorrect". It has promised to issue a "revised analysis" after a review. But poor arithmetic and peripheral incompleteness is the least of the PGT 2003's problems. A review of the contents of the report with regard to South Asia (the only region treated in this assessment) exposes a capriciousness that does not suggest perverse intent, but utter incomprehension and abysmal ignorance on the part of those who have been charged with its compilation. The State Department indicates that the data was compiled by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which comprises "elements from the [Central Intelligence Agency], [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and Departments of Homeland Security and Defense". If this reflects the levels of intelligence available to these agencies, or their competence, that should certainly disturb not only the American taxpayer, but people across the world who have to deal with the often disastrous consequences of American errors of policy and perception. There is, throughout the report, a comprehensive failure to identify and consistently apply clear definitions and norms and a systemic tendency to both grossly underestimate and distort the actual patterns and magnitude of terrorism globally. [complete article] See the US State Department's report, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 The war on terrorism: The big picture By P.W. Singer, Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Summer, 2004 ... by far the most interesting and useful of the five books reviewed here is Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. An incredibly fascinating read, it follows Stern's journeys as she seeks to understand what impels organizations and individuals to use religion as a means to organize for violent purposes. The book is filled with remarkable anecdotes that will grab the reader, from her dining with a militant "Identity Christian" in his trailer park home to conversing with young Muslim boys being trained in radical madrassas on the Pakistani-Afghan border. As in Laqueur's work [No End To War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century], her meetings with radicalized mullahs, ministers, and rabbis, who have all created organizations wedded to the concept that God has instructed them to cleanse society through killing, goes a long way toward dispelling the idea that any one religion is predisposed to violence. Stern is to be congratulated for doing what too few dare to these days, actually confronting the issue she writes about. The ultimate finding of Terror in the Name of God is that in this increasingly networked but still distant world, the most vulnerable in populations are particularly at risk to succumbing to the sway of a charismatic leader or a deeply believed and holistic ideology. These range from the abject poor to those who are dispossessed or disconnected in some way (such as the Muslim middle-class youth, with no job prospects in broken authoritarian states, who make up the al Qaeda middle management). At the core of the religious radicals' doctrine is the creation of an "us vs. them" view of the world. [complete article] Jessica Stern's, Terror in the Name of God, is available here. Dozens of other titles on war and empire, Iraq and the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan and South Asia, militant Islam, and nuclear proliferation, are available through this site's Amazon-affiliated bookstore. Poll of Iraqis reveals anger toward U.S. By John Solomon, Associated Press (via Yahoo), June 15, 2004 A poll of Iraqis commissioned by the U.S.-governing authority has provided the Bush administration a stark picture of anti-American sentiment -- more than half of Iraqis believe they would be safer if U.S. troops simply left. The poll, commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority last month but not released to the American public, also found radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is surging in popularity, 92 percent of Iraqis consider the United States an occupying force and more than half believe all Americans behave like those portrayed in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos. [...] The poll, conducted by Iraqis in face-to-face interviews in six cities with people representative of the country's various factions, conflict with the generally upbeat assessments the administration continues to give Americans. Just last week, President Bush predicted future generations of Iraqis "will come to America and say, thank goodness America stood the line and was strong and did not falter in the face of the violence of a few." The current generation seems eager for Americans to leave, the poll found. [complete article] See details, Public Opinion in Iraq: First Poll Following Abu Ghraib Revelations (for navigation, use arrows beneath slides) Iraq abuse 'ordered from the top' BBC News, June 15, 2004 The US commander at the centre of the Iraqi prisoner scandal says she was told to treat detainees like dogs. Brig Gen Janis Karpinski told the BBC she was being made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others. Top US commander for Iraq, Gen Ricardo Sanchez, should be asked what he knew about the abuse, she told BBC Radio 4's On The Ropes programme. One soldier has been sentenced and six others are awaiting courts martial for abuses committed at Abu Ghraib jail. Gen Karpinski said more damaging information was likely to emerge at those trials. [complete article] Listen to the 30-minute interview with Gen Karpinski (Real Audio) See also Prepare for the worst of Abu Ghraib (Slate) "SUCCESS" IN AFGHANISTAN Under fire on Iraq, Bush touts Afghanistan progress Agence France Presse (via Yahoo), June 15, 2004 US President George W. Bush cited progress towards democracy and prosperity in Afghanistan, including elections set for September, and promised: "The same thing's going to happen in Iraq." During a joint appearance in the sweltering White House Rose Garden with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush stressed that "Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist factory sending thousands of killers into the world." The US president, facing criticism over the deadly unrest and unreliable services in post-war Iraq, said "hard work" in Afghanistan had yielded progress on fighting malnutrition, on providing drinking water, and on women's rights. [complete article] Let the Afghans vote when they're ready By Barnett R. Rubin, International Herald Tribune, June 15, 2004 Afghanistan is currently planning to hold its first ever direct presidential election and elections to the lower house of Parliament in September. Since harsh weather makes some regions inaccessible soon after, the next possible date for elections is spring 2005. Yet none of the elements needed for free and fair elections is in place. Security continues to deteriorate because of Taliban attacks, power struggles among warlords and banditry. The burgeoning opium trade funds all of these. Voter registration is accelerating, but may not meet the target for credible participation. In the face of resistance from warlords, the government and the United States continue to avoid dissolving the militias that threaten security. The Afghan cabinet passed the electoral law only four months before the planned elections, leaving many potential candidates little time to register and campaign. The president and other key political figures have not even decided whether the election should be a legitimation of the status quo, a referendum on a new order, or an all-out contest among different political visions. Many Afghans believe that the only reason for the rush to elections is to provide Washington with an exit strategy. After both the U.S. and Afghan elections, they believe, Washington wants to declare victory in Afghanistan and focus all available resources on Iraq. [complete article] New twist in the Afghanistan story By Ricardo Grassi, Asia Times, June 16, 2004 It is the US elections in November that make the Afghan vote [scheduled for September] credible, because it is believed that Bush will want to announce in his campaign effort that he has "pacified and democratized" the Central Asian nation, invaded by US forces shortly after September 11. The US was looking in Afghanistan for the man thought to be the mastermind behind the attacks, Saudi national Osama bin Laden, and, on the way, sought to liquidate the Taliban regime and capture its leader, Mullah Omar. Both men remain at large. And now the war is intensifying. One clue: there are 20,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan today. Two months ago there were 13,500. Another sign is that the US television networks have also returned. They left practically as soon as the B-52s had done their job, the Taliban government was overthrown, and Hamad Karzai was brought back from his exile in the US to serve as interim president. [complete article] Bombings take toll on families By Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, June 13, 2004 Mazin's mother lies on his bed and drapes his clothes over her face to catch his fading scent. His grandfather wanders the house calling his name. The rest of the family sits in the darkened living room, afraid to leave the house and paralyzed with grief since the high school senior died in a recent car bombing that barely made the news. His aunt, among the first Iraqis to return to work for Iraq's government after the invasion last year in her eagerness to help rebuild the country, now wonders, "What for?" His father, once optimistic about Iraq's future, now calls it "hopeless." "How can you live, how can you shop, how can you work?" he said, speaking stiffly as his 21-year-old daughter stared into space beside him. "You are walking on the street and every minute you think a bomb could go off." Car bombs and suicide attacks have killed more than 800 Iraqis since the fall of Saddam Hussein -- 600 of them this year and 30 this month, according to media reports. They have become part of the background noise in the conflict in Iraq. Explosions like the one on June 2 that killed Mazin, who was 17, get only brief mentions in Iraqi and international news reports, drowned out by assassinations of political leaders or attacks that kill dozens. Although they do not grab headlines, the blasts that often strike several times in a week, killing two Iraqis here and five there, are destroying the lives of Iraqi families, braking their economic progress, and draining their trust in the US and Iraqi authorities who cannot seem to defend them from faceless attackers. [complete article] Extremism sweeping Iraq among Sunni, Shiite Muslims alike By Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder, June 14, 2004 Instead of becoming a Middle Eastern model of pro-Western democracy, as the Bush administration had hoped, Iraq is being swept by Sunni and Shiite Muslim extremism. High unemployment, little visible progress toward rebuilding the country and dissatisfaction with leaders appointed by foreigners are herding thousands of disenchanted Iraqis into the hands of hard-liners, according to political parties, Islamic scholars and social scientists. The city of Fallujah, for example, once a cornerstone of Saddam Hussein's secular rule, has become a seething no-man's land of Islamic militancy where women must be veiled, alcohol sellers are flogged and an American passport is a death sentence. Since U.S. Marines pulled out in May after a month-long siege, a mix of homegrown guerrillas and foreign holy warriors have taken over Fallujah, now nicknamed "Little Saudi Arabia" for its extremist brand of Sunni Islam. [complete article] British troops face abuse charges By Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, June 15, 2004 Four British soldiers face charges of assaulting Iraqi prisoners, including a charge that they photographed detainees whom they had forced to engage in sex acts with each other, Britain's attorney general announced on Monday. In a statement to the House of Lords, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith said the case was the first of eight involving British troops that had been turned over to army prosecutors for possible trial. A ninth case, involving the killing of an Iraqi civilian who was beaten to death while in custody, was being examined by civilian prosecutors, Goldsmith said. The armed forces minister told Parliament last week that the military was investigating 75 cases involving the deaths, injuries or alleged mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. Many of the allegations echo those made against U.S. military personnel charged with assaulting and mistreating Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, although British officials have insisted that the cases so far do not suggest the degree of systematic and widespread abuse allegedly practiced at Abu Ghraib. Officials have promised to investigate all allegations thoroughly. [complete article] Soldier's injuries spur criminal probe Associated Press (via WP), June 15, 2004 The Army has opened a criminal investigation into injuries suffered by a soldier who was posing as an uncooperative detainee during training with military police at Guantanamo Bay, the soldier's attorney said Monday. Sean Baker, who was a specialist in a military police unit, suffers from seizures he blames on a head injury from the training session in January 2003 at the base in Cuba. He received a medical discharge in April and returned home to Georgetown in central Kentucky. Baker's lawyer, Bruce Simpson, said he was notified recently that the Army had begun a criminal investigation into the case. He said military investigators are scheduled to meet with Baker on Wednesday.[complete article] Abu Ghraib informer feared a cover-up By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2004 Sgt. Samuel J. Provance III began his Army career as a brush-cut idealist determined to join the Special Forces. He ended up in a military intelligence unit assigned to Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where he heard stories about U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees. The 30-year-old Pennsylvania native said he grew troubled that prisoners were harassed, ridiculed, stripped naked and beaten. He spoke out to military investigators and last month stunned the Army when he disobeyed an order and became the first military intelligence soldier to discuss the abuse with newspapers and television stations. Provance says he broke ranks because he believed the military was trying to cover up the scandal. Now, as the story shifts away from him, his experience is quietly turning into a cautionary tale about the price of becoming a whistle-blower. Fellow soldiers avoid him. His security clearance has been yanked. And there's a possibility that Provance, who once studied to be a preacher, could end his Army days in disgrace with a court-martial. [complete article] Nation builders and low bidders in Iraq By P.W. Singer, New York Times, June 15, 2004 From the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison to the mutilation of American civilians at Falluja, many of the worst moments of the Iraqi occupation have involved private military contractors "outsourced" by the Pentagon. With no public or Congressional oversight, the Pentagon has paid billions of dollars to companies that now have as many as 20,000 employees carrying out military functions ranging from logistics and troop training to convoy escort and interrogations. Yet despite the problems and the widespread accusations of overbilling, it appears the civilian leadership at the Pentagon has learned absolutely nothing from the whole experience. Last month the Pentagon awarded a $293 million contract for coordination of security support to a British firm called Aegis Defense Services. The huge contract has two aspects: Aegis will be the coordination and management hub for the more than 50 other private security companies in Iraq, and it will provide its own force of up to 75 "close protection teams," each made up of eight armed civilians who are to protect staff members of the United States Project Management Office. The contract is a case study in what not to do. To begin with, a core problem of the military outsourcing experience has been the lack of coordination, oversight and management from the government side. So outsourcing that very problem to another private company has a logic that would do only Kafka proud. In addition, it moves these companies further outside the bounds of public oversight. [complete article] Comment -- Ever since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher became the champions of privatization and outsourcing, debate about its merits has tended to focus on the validity of the claim that the shift from public to private leads to greater efficiency and thus better use of taxpayers money. What the debate should really center on is whether the political goal behind this economic process has been nothing less than a systematic effort to dismantle democracy. Travesty of justice By Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 15, 2004 No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history. For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure. We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise. [complete article] GOP refusing to allow testimony on Halliburton spending By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder, June 14, 2004 Democrats in the House of Representatives, who are feuding with House Republicans over whether the spending should be publicly aired at a hearing on Tuesday, released signed statements Monday by five ex-Halliburton employees recounting the lavish spending. Those former employees contend that the politically connected firm: -- Lodged 100 workers at a five-star hotel in Kuwait for a total of $10,000 a day while the Pentagon wanted them to stay in tents, like soldiers, at $139 a night. -- Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat tires and minor problems. -- Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry cleaned as part of a million-dollar laundry contract in peaceful Kuwait. The price for cleaning the same amount of laundry in war-torn Iraq was $28. -- Spent $1.50 a can to buy 37,200 cans of soda in Kuwait, about 24 times higher than the contract price. -- Knowingly paid subcontractors twice for the same bill. [complete article] In race to give power to Iraqis, electricity lags |