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| Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives |
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Conservative TV group to air anti-Kerry film By Elizabeth Jensen, Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2004 The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday. Sinclair's programming plan, communicated to executives in recent days and coming in the thick of a close and intense presidential race, is highly unusual even in a political season that has been marked by media controversies. Sinclair has told its stations -- many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida -- to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry -- a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester -- of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan. [complete article] Bush's mystery bulge By Dave Lindorff, Salon (via The Guardian), October 9, 2004 Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry? That's the latest rumour flooding the Internet, unleashed last week in the wake of an image caught by a television camera during the Miami debate. The image shows a large solid object between Bush's shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer. The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it's safe to say he wasn't packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the debate? [complete article]  'God has a plan. Bush will hold back the evil' By Gary Younge, The Guardian, October 9, 2004 Burton Kephart asks me for 10 minutes to see if he can save my soul. Opening his Bible to Matthew and Romans he tells me that I was born a sinner, God gave his only son for my sins and if I accepted Jesus into my heart I could be saved. I ask him what will happen if I don't. "Eternal judgment," he says. "Hell." Mr Kephart gave his first-born son, Jonathan, to the American army. In late March the 21-year-old went to Iraq to serve with the 230th Military Police Company. Ten days later he was killed in an ambush in Baghdad. [complete article] Afghan opposition boycotts election Associated Press (via NYT), October 9, 2004 Afghanistan's first direct presidential election was thrust into turmoil hours after it began Saturday, when the 15 candidates challenging interim leader Hamid Karzai said they would boycott the results, alleging fraud over the ink meant to ensure people voted only once. The boycott undermined hopes of Afghan voters who had braved threats of Taliban violence and crammed polling stations throughout this ethnically diverse nation. The election is seen as a crucial step toward bringing peace and prosperity to a country of 25 million nearly ruined by more than two decades of war. The opposition candidates, meeting at the house of Uzbek candidate Abdul Satar Sirat, signed a petition saying they would not recognize the results of the vote, saying mix-ups with the ink used to mark voters' thumbs opened the way for widespread fraud. "Today's election is not a legitimate election. It should be stopped and we don't recognize the results," said Sirat, who is an ex-aide to Afghanistan's last king. [complete article] Right now an election is the last thing Afghanistan needs By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, October 9, 2004 The ballot or the bullet - that's the choice. This simple maxim has become one of the favourite soundbites of our nation-building times. It is being trotted out again as Afghans prepare to vote in presidential elections today, and is already much in use in official circles as the countdown starts for polls in Iraq. On the one side are the insurgents, terrorists, men of violence, or whatever the current label is, who fear democracy and will do all they can to stop it. On the other is a people who have never had a chance to choose their leaders and want nothing more than to exercise it at last. The contrast is comforting, but rarely conforms to reality in any but the remotest way. Elections can be manipulated and misused. They are only one part of a long process of enabling people to speak, organise and hold their rulers to account. If they take place too early, they can be counterproductive and delay a society's transition to a culture of genuine debate and competition. That was the lesson of the Balkans in the 1990s, in particular in Bosnia, where the rush to vote (pressed mainly by the Clinton administration) entrenched hardline nationalists in power. Last week's local elections in Bosnia confirmed how hard it is to loosen the grip they acquired then. [complete article] "FREEDOM" IN IRAQ Reimposing controls on the Iraqi press By Monroe Price, International Herald Tribune, October 9, 2004 When Iyad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister, recently addressed the U.S. Congress, he predicted that the coming elections in Iraq would be free and fair. But back in Baghdad, at virtually the same time, a new agency that Allawi set up has been threatening to chasten and tame the Iraqi press, putting into doubt a vital element of a comprehensive voting process. Without a diverse press, capable of educating voters as to various sides of the political debate, capable of commanding popular respect, the integrity of the election would be suspect. The Higher Media Council, as the new agency is called, is headed by Ibrahim Al-Janabi, a close friend of the prime minister. Established in August, the council is in the regressive process of emulating Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information. The council has moved into the building of the ministry, re-employed some of its staff and is now threatening to license newspapers, impose requirements for publication that few existing news organizations can meet and punish unsubstantiated criticism of the government. [complete article] Bush to aid 'moderate' parties in Iraq election By Adam Entous, Reuters (via Yahoo), October 8, 2004 The Bush administration plans to give strategic advice, training and polling data to what it deems as "moderate and democratic" Iraqi political parties with candidates running in the country's upcoming elections, government documents show. The administration said its goal is to help the parties "compete effectively" in the campaign and "increase their support among the Iraqi people" in national, regional and provincial elections scheduled for January, according to the State Department documents obtained by Reuters on Friday. The White House had no immediate comment on who would qualify for the party-building support and it was unclear from the documents who would make those determinations. Non-governmental groups expected to take part in the efforts said they understood that religious groups and communist parties would be eligible for help. President Bush has made the upcoming elections his top priority in trying to stabilize Iraq amid a worsening insurgency and to shore up support for the war at home. Under pressure from lawmakers, the White House said last month that it would not try to influence the outcome of the elections by "covertly" helping individual candidates. Instead, the administration said it would provide "strategic advice, technical assistance, training, polling data, assistance and other forms of support" to "moderate, democratically oriented political parties," according to the documents. [complete article] Report cites U.S. profits in sale of Iraqi oil under Hussein By Judith Miller and Eric Lipton, New York Times, October 9, 2004 Major American oil companies and a Texas oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the United Nations oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency. The 918-page report says that four American oil companies - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil - and three individuals including Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. of Houston were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it. [complete article] Transforming the American military into a global oil-protection service By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch, October 8, 2004 In the first U.S. combat operation of the war in Iraq, Navy commandos stormed an offshore oil-loading platform. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," an overexcited reporter for the New York Times wrote on March 22, "Navy Seals seized two Iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming lightly-armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq's vast oil empire." A year and a half later, American soldiers are still struggling to maintain control over these vital petroleum facilities -- and the fighting is no longer bloodless. On April 24, two American sailors and a coastguardsman were killed when a boat they sought to intercept, presumably carrying suicide bombers, exploded near the Khor al-Amaya loading platform. Other Americans have come under fire while protecting some of the many installations in Iraq's "oil empire." Indeed, Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for control over Iraq's cities and the constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack. The first contest has been widely reported in the American press; the second has received far less attention. [complete article] Red Sea terror: A crisis for Mubarak By Tony Karon, October 8, 2004 Triple bombing in different locations of a similar symbolic nature is certainly an al-Qaeda operational signature. A taped message from Zawahiri broadcast by Al Jazeera on October 1 put Egypt at the top of the list of countries in which Muslims were urged to begin "preemptive" acts of resistance against the U.S. and its allies, including Israel. And Israeli officials indicated Friday that they suspect Qaeda involvement. If the attacks were, in fact, authored by Egyptian Qaeda operatives, they'd mark a bloody return home for some of the world's most hardened Islamist terrorists. Peace between Egypt and Israel was the issue over which Egyptian Islamic Jihad announced itself to the world, through the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. A combination of harsh repression and a conscious decision to "export" the problem by shipping off radical Islamists by the planeload to Afghanistan to wage jihad against the Soviets blunted much of Islamic Jihad's impact inside Egypt, although both Jihad and the Gama'a took up a more bloody domestic campaign in the 1990s was eventually crushed by Mubarak's secret police, leaving the radicals mostly either in prison or dispersed. But the Egyptians who honed their skills in Afghanistan made their mark elsewhere, whether in attacking Egyptian diplomats and leaders in Pakistan and Ethiopia, and by their participation in key Qaeda operations. [complete article] Faulty 'no-fly' system detailed By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post, October 9, 2004 The federal government's "no-fly" list had 16 names on it on Sept. 11, 2001. Today, it has more than 20,000. The list, which identifies suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes, expanded rapidly even though the government knew that travelers were being mistakenly flagged, according to federal records. The records detail how government officials expressed little interest in tracking or resolving cases in which passenger names were confused with the growing number of names on the list. More than 2,000 people have complained to the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines, at one point, were calling the agency at least 30 times a day to say that they had stopped a passenger whose name was similar to one on the list but after further investigation was determined not to be a terror suspect, according to a TSA memo. More than 300 pages of documents related to the no-fly and related lists were released late Thursday night by the TSA and the FBI in response to a federal court order. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit on behalf of Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, two peace activists who wanted to know why their names had turned up on a no-fly list. [complete article] Ignorance isn't strength By Paul Krugman, New York Times, October 8, 2004 I first used the word "Orwellian" to describe the Bush team in October 2000. Even then it was obvious that George W. Bush surrounds himself with people who insist that up is down, and ignorance is strength. But the full costs of his denial of reality are only now becoming clear. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have an unparalleled ability to insulate themselves from inconvenient facts. They lead a party that controls all three branches of government, and face news media that in some cases are partisan supporters, and in other cases are reluctant to state plainly that officials aren't telling the truth. They also still enjoy the residue of the faith placed in them after 9/11. This has allowed them to engage in what Orwell called "reality control." In the world according to the Bush administration, our leaders are infallible, and their policies always succeed. If the facts don't fit that assumption, they just deny the facts. As a political strategy, reality control has worked very well. But as a strategy for governing, it has led to predictable disaster. When leaders live in an invented reality, they do a bad job of dealing with real reality. [complete article] Lies, damned lies, and Bush's Iraq statistics By Fred Kaplan, Slate, October 7, 2004 George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lately been touting three sets of statistics to justify their claims of great progress in Iraq. First, they say, we've trained 100,000 Iraqi security forces. Second, 31 other countries are contributing troops as part of the vast international coalition. Third, Iraqi reconstruction is moving along on schedule, thanks to the $18.4 billion in U.S. economic aid. Yet the U.S. State Department's most recent Iraq Weekly Status Report, dated Oct. 6, reveals that all three of those claims are either false or so misleading that they might as well be. [complete article] Former Gen. Zinni says he expects U.S. to remain in Iraq for 5-10 years By Sam Dolnick, Associated Press (via Newsday), October 7, 2004 Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni criticized the Bush administration's run-up to war but said now that U.S. forces are in Iraq "we can't afford failure." Zinni said in a speech Thursday he expected American troops to remain stationed in Iraq for five to 10 years and called for creative thinking to stabilize the country, which faces a "witch's brew" of insurgents, criminals and "al-Qaida wannabes." [complete article] Getting out is the silent U.S. policy By Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times, October 7, 2004 When I reported in this column Sept. 20 that there is "strong feeling" in the "Bush administration policymaking apparatus" that "U.S. troops must leave Iraq next year," Republican politicians -- most recently Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman -- disagreed. But Don Rumsfeld has not contradicted me. Nobody from the administration has officially rejected my column. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, in his usual teasing of words, says pretty much what I did. While politicians such as Mehlman talk about "victory" in Iraq and President Bush implies it, war planners such as Rumsfeld do not. These realists recognize that aims in this ugly war have been reduced. Neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry, as campaigners, wants to risk advocating cut-and-run in Iraq. With the war looming as the decisive issue in this presidential campaign, neither candidate dares appear a defeatist. But it is a given that, whoever the winner is, he will not risk losing another 1,000 troops if that is what's needed to win the war. [complete article] Terror experts tie Sinai attacks to 'World Islamist Group' By Yossi Melman, Haaretz, October 8, 2004 Despite the fact that no organization had claimed responsibility for the series of explosions on Thursday night in the Sinai Peninsula and there is uncertainty regarding the identities of the attackers, Israeli terrorism experts believe the attacks bear the characteristics of a group known as "Jama'a Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group)." Internet sites identified with Al-Qaida contained reports on the attacks, but did not include claims of responsibility. The Web sites expressed joy over the attacks and related them to Al-Qaida. Experts suspect Palestinian terror organziations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not dare carry out terror attacks in Egyptian territory. Past experience indicates they have never carried out operations in Arab states out of fear of harming local Arabs and also due to apprehension of harming relations with Arab regimes. [complete article] The big freeze By Ari Shavit, Haaretz, October 8, 2004 Tell me about the dynamics of the relationship between you [and Condoleezza Rice], and whether it's an unusual relationship. "I am in ongoing and continuous contact with Rice. In complex times it could be every day, by phone. In less complex times it's a phone call a week. On average, I meet with her once a month. Since May 2002 I have met with her more than 20 times. And every meeting is a meeting. The shortest one was an hour and a half." [...] I don't want to boast. But the importance of this relationship is that it enables the president to speak with the prime minister and the prime minister to speak with the president without their speaking to one another. You have to understand that presidents and prime ministers don't prattle every day. For the president to phone the prime minister is an event. It is an act of state significance. So those conversations are very heavy. In large measure they are constrained. Whereas in this channel everything is more direct. Immediate. "For the Americans, it's convenient. They know they have someone who is ensconced not in the jaws of the lion but in the very gullet of the lion. It's also convenient for us. It makes it possible for us to talk to them in real time, informally. When my conversation with Rice ends, she knows that I walk six steps to Sharon's desk and I know that she walks twelve steps to Bush's desk. That creates an intimate relationship between the two bureaus and prevents a thousand entanglements." [...] ...what was the main factor that pushed you to the disengagement idea? "The concern was the fact that President Bush's formula was stuck and this would lead to its ruin. That the international community would say: You wanted the president's formula and you got it; you wanted to try Abu Mazen and you tried. It didn't work. And when a formula doesn't work in reality, you don't change reality, you change the formula. Therefore, Arik's realistic viewpoint said that it was possible that the principle that was our historic policy achievement would be annulled - the principle that eradication of terrorism precedes a political process. And with the annulment of that principle, Israel would find itself negotiating with terrorism. And because once such negotiations start it's very difficult to stop them, the result would be a Palestinian state with terrorism. And all this within quite a short time. Not decades or even years, but a few months." I still don't see how the disengagement plan helps here. What was the major importance of the plan from your point of view? "The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." [complete article] Qureia tells Haaretz: U.S. may be guilty of collusion By Arnon Regular, Haaretz, October 8, 2004 Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) Thursday expressed dismay over remarks by the prime minister's adviser, Dov Weisglass, that the significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. The remarks by Weisglass - a top aide to Ariel Sharon - were made in an interview with Haaretz that appears in full Friday; excerpts were published Wednesday. Abu Ala said Thursday that Weisglass' remarks oblige Israel to reconsider its policies in the territories, and the United States and international community to redefine their demands of Israel if they would like to see a genuine peace process in the Middle East. He refrained from accusing the United States of coordinating positions with Sharon but queried whether its policy on disengagement was "innocent." [complete article] 3 Palestinians killed in Gaza; total of 85 killed in IDF raid By Arnon Regular, Amos Harel and Nir Hasson, Haaretz, October 8, 2004 Three Palestinians, including two teenagers, were killed by Israel Defense Forces troops in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, all of whom the IDF said were trying to carry out attacks. The total number of Palestinians killed in the IDF's ongoing "Days of Penitence" operation in the northern Gaza Strip climbed to 85 on Thursday, as the army went into the ninth day of its massive offensive in the area to root out militants firing rockets at Israeli targets. [complete article] U.S. releases senior aide to Sadr By Karl Vick, Washington Post, October 8, 2004 The U.S. military released a senior aide to the rebellious Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr on Thursday, and Sadr aides said momentum was growing toward an agreement to disband the cleric's militia, which would halt a major element of the insurgency in Iraq. Moayed Khazraji, a fiery Baghdad cleric whose arrest a year ago signaled the start of a U.S. crackdown on Sadr's movement, walked out of Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad on Thursday morning. No explanation for the release was offered by the U.S. military or Iraq's interim government. But Khazraji's freedom was taken as a gesture of good faith in talks aimed at transforming Sadr's following into a political movement before nationwide elections promised for January. The release of imprisoned senior aides has been a primary demand of the Sadr camp, which said it was encouraged. [complete article] COUNTERINSURGENCY: THEORY AND PRACTICE Pentagon sets steps to retake Iraq rebel sites By Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, New York Times, October 8, 2004 Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before nationwide elections can be held in January, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to senior administration and military officials. Recent military operations to quell the Iraqi insurgency in Tal Afar, Samarra and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of the new, six-pronged strategy for Iraq, approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the officials said. While elements of the plan have been discussed in generalities recently, the officials described it in much more detail, calling it a comprehensive guideline to their actions in the next few months. As American military deaths have increased in Iraq and commanders struggle to combat a tenacious insurgency and a deadly spate of bombings, even administration officials involved in creating the plan acknowledge that American forces face an extraordinarily difficult task and that success is far from guaranteed. Both the overall strategy and the specific military component were described by senior administration, Pentagon and military officials in interviews over the last two weeks in response to requests from The New York Times for an answer to the question, "Is there a plan for Iraq?" [complete article] Falluja raid 'hits wedding party' BBC News, October 8, 2004 At least 12 people have been killed and 17 others wounded in a US air strike on the rebel-held city of Falluja in Iraq. The US military said what it called a "precision strike" targeted a hideout used by associates of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But local hospital doctors reported that the raid had struck a house shortly after a wedding party. The groom is said to have been killed, while his bride was injured. Women and children were also among the wounded. US forces have stepped up operations in Falluja in recent weeks in a bid to regain control there ahead of planned national elections in Iraq in January. [complete article] For marines on raids, an eerie silence By Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, October 8, 2004 In the shadow of night, on the edge of the volatile town of Haswah, a convoy of humvees silently pulls to a stop and disgorges its marines. In the wake of daytime raids Wednesday, in which 200 US troops cordoned off the town and 100 Iraqi special forces arrested 17 men, the marines of Operation Phantom Fury, which began this week, expected resistance. [...] "I don't believe this - aren't there supposed to be people in the streets at 11 at night? Drinking tea?" asked one marine emerging from a side street in full combat gear, threatened by nothing more than clusters of wild dogs. "I've never seen it before - not a soul," says 2nd Lt. Mark Nicholson, a platoon commander of the 1st Battalion 2nd Marines, from Wheeling, W.Va. Previous visits at even 2 a.m. found people on the street - and always an armed reaction. "It's a good thing," says Lieutenant Nicholson. "But I'd like to see people in the streets, people who want us there, who greet us." The apparently lifeless town, a chronic hotbed of insurgent activity, may typify what control can be achieved in Iraq with joint US-Iraqi forces. But as marines prepare to return to Haswah and other insurgent strongholds day after day, officers say the calm may be misleading, and tough to maintain. [complete article] BREMER DAMAGE CONTROL Today, in a New York Times op-ed, What I really said about Iraq, Paul Bremer attempts to diminish the political impact of his recent comments that troop numbers in Iraq have never been adequate. In the mealy-mouthed language of a seasoned diplomat he says that he believes that "it would have been helpful to have had more troops early on," but that military commanders who asserted that this "would have been counterproductive because it would have alienated Iraqis," were expressing a "reasonable point of view." Bremer presents himself as a loyal trooper eager to serve the commander in chief and unwilling to forcefully challenge those with whom he disagreed. In so doing he makes it all the more clear that the decision to disband the Iraqi army was not his. Newsweek has quoted Bremer in reference to the decision to demobilize the army as saying, "I don't have any choice. I have to do this." He continued, "The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people." Bremer clearly places responsibility for this fateful choice in the hands of President Bush. Though he now wants to express his support for the Bush campaign, he apparently won't go so far as to absolve the president from responsibility for the consequences of his own decisions. BIGGEST POST-WAR BLUNDER BLAMED ON BUSH Inner circle no more? By Tamara Lipper and Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, October 6, 2004 Administration officials said today that this decision [to disband the Iraqi army] was made on the ground in Iraq, rather than in Washington. Before the war, the plan was to get rid of Iraqi Army officers but use regular troops for security and reconstruction after Saddam's ouster. But Bremer "flipped that around," said a White House official. He added that Bremer and his deputy, Walt Slocombe, made the decision by themselves. But Bremer and Garner have previously indicated the decision was made in Washington. According to one official who attended a meeting that Bremer had with his staff upon his arrival in Baghdad in mid-May of 2003, Bremer was warned he would cause chaos by demobilizing the army. The CIA station chief told him, "That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns." According to one source who was at the meeting, Garner then asked if they could discuss the matter further in a smaller meeting. Garner then said: "Before you announce this thing let's do all the pros and cons of this, because we are going to have a hell of a lot of problems with it. There are a hell of a lot more cons than there are pros. Let's line them all up then get on the phone to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld." Bremer replied: "I don't have any choice. I have to do this." Garner then protested further, but Bremer cut him off. "The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people." [complete article] Comment -- Bush is running for re-election on the basis that he is a stronger, more decisive leader. Kerry needs to challenge Bush by forcing him to confirm (or deny) Bremer's claim that the Iraqi army was disbanded at Bush's behest. If the president sticks to the White House line that this was a decision made on the ground in Iraq, then portraying himself as such a hands-off overseer will undermine his claim to be a strong leader. A strong leader doesn't just sit back and watch while his subordinates are making a mess. If he acknowledges that the decision was his, he either has to insist that it was the right decision -- in spite of a mountain of evidence and opinion to the contrary -- or he has to admit that he made a mistake. A huge mistake! COMPREHENSIVE REPORT ON IRAQ'S WMD The verdict is in Lead Editorial, New York Times, October 7, 2004 Sanctions worked. Weapons inspectors worked. That is the bottom line of the long-awaited report on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, written by President Bush's handpicked investigator. In the 18 months since President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, justifying the decision by saying that Saddam Hussein was "a gathering threat" to the United States, Americans have come to realize that Iraq had no chemical, nuclear or biological weapons. But the report issued yesterday goes further. It says that Iraq had no factories to produce illicit weapons and that its ability to resume production was growing more feeble every year. While Mr. Hussein retained dreams of someday getting back into the chemical warfare business, his chosen target was Iran, not the United States. The report shows that the international sanctions that Mr. Bush dismissed and demeaned before the war - and still does - were astonishingly effective. Mr. Hussein hoped to get out from under the sanctions, and the report's author, Charles Duelfer, loyally told Congress yesterday that he thought that could have happened. But his report said the Iraqis lacked even a formal strategy or a plan to reconstitute their weapons programs if it did. For months, administration officials have tried to deflect charges that they invaded Iraq under false pretenses and have urged critics to wait for Mr. Duelfer's verdict on the weapons search. The authoritative findings of his Iraq Survey Group have now left the administration's rationale for war more tattered than ever. It turns out that Iraq destroyed all stockpiles of illicit weapons more than a decade ago and had no large-scale production facilities left after 1996, seven years before the invasion. This was a matter of choice by Saddam Hussein, who desperately wanted an end to sanctions and feared that any weapons programs, if discovered by inspectors, would only keep them in place. [complete article] U.S. 'almost all wrong' on weapons By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 7, 2004 The 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capability and, for the most part, Saddam Hussein did not try to rebuild it, according to an extensive report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq that contradicts nearly every prewar assertion made by top administration officials about Iraq. [complete article] Saddam's obsession was Iran, report says By Laura Meckler, Associated Press (via Toronto Star), October 7, 2004 Saddam Hussein was obsessed with his status in the Arab world, dreaming of weapons of mass destruction to pump up his prestige. And even as the United States fixated on him, he was fixated on his neighbouring enemy, Iran. That's the picture that emerges from interrogations of the former Iraqi leader since his capture last December, according to the final report of chief U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer, which gives a first glimpse into what the U.S. has gleaned about Saddam's hopes, dreams and insecurities. The report suggests Saddam tried to improve relations with the U.S. in the 1990s, yet basked in his standing as the only leader to stand up to the world's superpower. It says Saddam was determined that if Iran was to acquire nuclear weapons, so was Iraq. [complete article] Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD Iraq Survey Group (ISG) discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi Nuclear Program but found that Iraq's ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date. -- Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. -- Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years. [complete article] January election will not end the country-wide rebellion in Iraq By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent (via Canberra Times), October 5, 2004 American generals in Iraq triumphantly announced at the weekend that they had successfully taken over Samarra and killed 125 insurgents. They failed to mention that this is the third time they have captured this particular city on the Tigris river north of Baghdad in the past 18 months. The campaign to eliminate the no-go areas under rebel control in Iraq is getting into full swing. Fallujah is being bombed every night, and may soon be subjected to ground assault. Najaf was recaptured from Shia militiamen in August and much of the city is in ruins. The current US military campaign is very much geared to getting President George Bush reelected to the White House in November. The aim of the bombing is to prove to American voters that their army is on the offensive, but without substantially increasing US casualties. The situation on the ground in Iraq is far worse than what is portrayed by the media. Ironically, this is because it is now so dangerous for journalists and television crews to leave their heavily guarded hotels in Baghdad that they cannot refute claims by the American and British governments that much of Iraq is safe. Nothing could be more untrue. I have spent most of the past year-and-a-half travelling in Iraq, and I have never known it so bad. [complete article] U.S. soldiers will remain in Samarra indefinitely, officials say By Patrick Kerkstra, Knight Ridder, October 6, 2004 As many as 1,200 American troops will have to stay in the former insurgent stronghold of Samarra indefinitely to prevent the city from slipping back under insurgent control, Iraqi officials and American military commanders said Wednesday. The officials are still plainly savoring their surprisingly smooth takeover last week of the Sunni Muslim city, speaking with pride of the role Iraqi troops played in the quick seizure of the city of 250,000. But they also said there had been less fighting than they had expected, and the low total of just 255 insurgents killed and captured during the three-day offensive suggests that many fighters may have fled the city or gone into hiding rather than face the 5,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops who invaded last Friday. Iraqi officials say their success in Samarra will soon be followed by similar victories in cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi and most immediately in Babil province, south of Baghdad, where about 3,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops began a major operation Tuesday. But the long-term American commitment anticipated at Samarra suggests that the battles for other cities where insurgents are both more numerous and more firmly entrenched could be bloody, drawn-out affairs. [complete article] Sharon aide says goal of Gaza plan is to halt Road Map By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, October 7, 2004 A senior aide to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said in an interview published Wednesday that Sharon's plan to withdraw troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip had "frozen" the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and guaranteed that Israel would never have to remove 80 percent of its settlers from the occupied West Bank, with the "blessing" of the U.S. government. The aide, Dov Weisglass -- until recently Sharon's chief of staff, his personal attorney and still one of his closest advisers -- said the primary goals of the proposal to withdraw the 8,100 Jewish settlers from Gaza were to strengthen Israel's hold on its more numerous settlements in the West Bank and to freeze the political process as a way to indefinitely block the creation of a Palestinian state. "What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns," Weisglass said in an interview with the daily Haaretz newspaper. Under that formula, he estimated that "out of 240,000 settlers [in the West Bank], 190,000 will not be moved from their place." Weisglass, who has been Sharon's point man in talks with the Bush administration, said the U.S.-backed peace plan called the "road map" is dead. The plan calls for the creation of an independent Palestinian state by the end of next year and is a cornerstone of President Bush's Middle East policy. [complete article] Grim picture of Gaza's mayhem By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post, October 7, 2004 Jumaa Saqqa, a senior physician at Gaza's Shifa Hospital, shuffled through a thick stack of photographs like a deck of playing cards. These are cherished possessions -- pictures of friends and neighbors, babies and children, famous people, militants, elderly men and women. Occasionally his eyes lit up as if he'd found an ace, and he flipped the picture on the desk. "Look at this girl," he said. Staring up was the blackened face of a horribly burned child, teeth sparkling white, eyes open, hair singed. Amany Awawda, about 11, killed 18 months ago, Saqqa explained. "An Israeli tank bombing while she was at home with her mother. Her mother also died in the same incident. She was sleeping beside her." He stopped at the picture of his former neighbor, Jehad Amarin, a leader of the militant al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the father of eight, killed a year ago. It was a particularly difficult case, not just because he was a friend for 10 years, but because the body was in so many pieces and Saqqa had to sew it back together for the funeral. "I had his scalp. There was no head at all. He was driving in a car and was shot by a rocket. He was sitting beside the driver. The rocket came directly to his head." Most of Saqqa's photos showed little more than mangled body parts -- heads without bodies, bodies without heads, hands holding a heart. No one would recognize most of the people depicted, but Saqqa appeared to know every one of them. [complete article] After convictions, the undoing of a U.S. terror prosecution By Danny Hakim and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, October 7, 2004 Publicly, federal prosecutors declared in the summer of 2002 that they had thwarted a "sleeper operational combat cell" based in a dilapidated apartment here. Privately, senior Justice Department officials had doubts about the strength of the case even as they were moving to indict four Middle Eastern immigrants on terrorism charges. The evidence was "somewhat weak," an internal Justice Department memorandum obtained by The New York Times acknowledged. It relied on a single informant with "some baggage," and there was no clear link to terrorist groups. But charging the men with terrorism, the memorandum said, might pressure them to give up information. "We can charge this case with the hope that the case might get better," Barry Sabin, the department's counterterrorism chief, wrote in the memorandum, "and the certainty that it will not get much worse." But the case did get worse. After winning highly publicized convictions of two suspects on terrorism charges in June 2003, the Justice Department took the extraordinary step five weeks ago of repudiating its own case and successfully moving to throw out the terrorism charges. In a long court filing, the government discredited its own witnesses and found fault with virtually every part of its prosecution. [complete article] Army denies detainee-release remark By John Mintz, Washington Post, October 7, 2004 An Army officer at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yesterday denied making statements attributed to him in a British newspaper that suggested many of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban detainees were no threat to the country and would be freed. In a statement released yesterday, the military unit running the detention facility said remarks by its deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Martin J. Lucenti Sr., were "misquoted or taken out of context" by the Financial Times in an article Tuesday. The newspaper quoted Lucenti as saying "most of the [detainees], the majority of them, will either be released or transferred to their home countries." The military's statement yesterday said Lucenti "did not use the word 'most' in this context." [complete article] Urging fact-checking, Cheney got site wrong By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, October 7, 2004 Vice President Cheney dropped a dot-bomb Tuesday night when he inadvertently directed millions of viewers of the vice presidential debate to an Internet site critical of the Bush administration. After Democratic nominee John Edwards raised some nasty allegations about Halliburton Corp., the company Cheney once ran, Cheney angrily responded to the "false" charges. "If you go, for example, to FactCheck.com, an independent Web site sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, you can get the specific details with respect to Halliburton," he said. But when people followed Cheney's instructions, they wound up at a site sponsored by administration antagonist George Soros. "Why we must not re-elect President Bush," the site blared. "President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values." [complete article] Rewriting history By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, October 6, 2004 With virtually all of the administration's original case for war in Iraq in tatters, Vice President Dick Cheney provided shifting and sometimes misleading arguments in last night's debate with John Edwards about Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorists and his access to weapons of mass destruction. Cheney, responding to moderator Gwen Ifill's first question, said that "concern" about Iraq before the war had "specifically focused" on the fact that Saddam's regime had been listed for years by the U.S. government as a "state sponsor of terror," that Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal operated out of Baghdad, that Saddam paid $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and that he had an "established relationship" with Al Qaeda. But except for the allegation about Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda -- a claim that is now more in question than ever -- the other examples cited by Cheney in Tuesday night's debate never have been previously emphasized by Bush administration officials, and for good reasons. [complete article] Iraqi arms threat was waning, inspector says By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 6, 2004 Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, told Congress today that Saddam Hussein destroyed his stocks of chemical and biological weapons and agents in 1991 and 1992 and that his nuclear weapons program had decayed to almost nothing by 2003. Duelfer, a former U.N. inspector and the personal representative of the CIA director, said the former Iraqi dictator had intentions to restart his program, but after weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998, Hussein instead focused his attention on ending the sanctions imposed by Western governments following his incursion into Kuwait and the Persian Gulf war of 1991. The Bush administration said in its justification for going to war in Iraq that Hussein had an active weapons program. Duelfer's account is expected to reinforce claims by Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry that President Bush and Vice President Cheney took the country to war based on inaccurate information. [complete article] Funds to rebuild Iraq are drifting away from target By Jonathan Weisman and Robin Wright, Washington Post, October 6, 2004 As little as 27 cents of every dollar spent on Iraq's reconstruction has actually filtered down to projects benefiting Iraqis, a statistic that is prompting the State Department to fundamentally rethink the Bush administration's troubled reconstruction effort. Between soaring security costs, corruption and mismanagement, contractors' profits, and U.S. governmental costs, reconstruction funding is being drained away, leaving little left to improve the lives of Iraqis, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. Senior administration officials and congressional experts on the reconstruction effort called the analysis credible. One senior U.S. official familiar with reconstruction suggested as little as a quarter of the funding is reaching its intended projects. The State Department will acknowledge the problem in a quarterly report to Congress today and say that the United States is trying to accelerate aid and redirect how it is spent, U.S. officials said yesterday. But the Bush administration is still not meeting the goal it set this summer to inject $300 million to $400 million monthly into Iraq's economy by Sept. 1, the officials said. [complete article] See the CSIS report, Following the money to Iraq... (PDF format). Negotiations seek peace in Fallujah By Thanassis Cambanis, Boston Globe, October 6, 2004 Iraqi government officials said yesterday they were quietly negotiating with leaders from the rebel-held city of Fallujah to end a months-long standoff there and avoid a full-scale invasion to take it back from insurgents. [...] A man who identified himself as Khalid Homoud al-Humaidi told Al-Arabiya television that he was a resistance leader who was also leading the Fallujah delegation in the talks. "The government has made promises," Humaidi said. "We are now negotiating how Iraqi forces might enter the city." Humaidi also said there was serious disagreement between the Fallujah delegation and the Iraqi government on whether American forces could enter the city to search houses or make arrests. The Fallujah delegation is insisting that under no circumstances should US troops be allowed into the city, even in the company of Iraqi forces. [...] Iraq's president, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawer, told Iraqi television that negotiations were going well. "We should expect something good in coming days," he said. In April, while head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Yawer was a vociferous critic of the US military's use of force in Fallujah, which he said was indiscriminate and killed many civilians. Since becoming president, Yawer has condemned the tactics of insurgents, guerrillas, and terrorist groups. But he has also warned he would not countenance unnecessary violence by his own government or the US military. [complete article] To torture or not? By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, October 6, 2004 President Bush today distanced himself from his administration's quiet effort to push through a law that would make it easier to send captured terror suspects to countries where torture is used. The proposed law, recently tacked onto a much larger bill despite the fallout from last spring's interrogation scandal, is seen as an attempt to counter a recent Supreme Court decision that would free some terror detainees being held without trial. In a letter published in The Washington Post, White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales said the president "did not propose and does not support" a provision to the House bill that removes legal protections from suspects preventing their "rendering" to foreign governments known to torture prisoners. Gonzales said Bush "has made clear that the United States stands against and will not tolerate torture." But John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who introduced the bill last Friday, said the provision had actually been requested by the Department of Homeland Security. "For whatever reason," Feehery said, "the White House has decided they don't want to take this on because they're afraid of the political implications." [complete article] Policy analyst is said to have rejected plea deal By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2004 A Pentagon analyst being investigated for allegedly helping pass secrets to Israel has stopped cooperating with authorities and retained a new lawyer to fight possible espionage charges, sources familiar with the case said Tuesday. The analyst, Larry Franklin, has been a key witness in a continuing FBI investigation looking into whether classified intelligence was passed to Israel by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential Washington lobbying firm. Franklin has been accused of passing the contents of a classified document about U.S. policy on Iran to two AIPAC officials, who in turn may have given the information to Israeli officials in Washington, sources have said. Federal prosecutors had proposed an agreement under which Franklin would plead guilty to some of the charges. Such agreements usually are done in exchange for leniency and are accompanied by a pledge of cooperation. But sources said Franklin had rejected a proposed deal because he believed the terms were too onerous. He recently replaced his court-appointed lawyer. "It looks like there is going to be a battle," a source familiar with the case said. [complete article] U.S. asks Israel to clarify comments made by top Sharon aide By Ari Shavit, Aluf Benn, Yair Ettinger, Haaretz, October 6, 2004 The United States on Wednesday evening asked Israel to clarify statements made by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's senior advisor, Dov Weisglass, during an interview to Haaretz that the disengagement plan means a "freezing of the peace process," Israel Radio reported. "The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process," Weisglass, one of the initiators of the disengagement plan, said in an interview for the Friday Magazine. "And when you freeze that process," Weisglass added, "you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. "Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress." "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde," he said. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." [complete article] Comment -- The United States might seek "clarifications", but Sharon and Weisglass most likely assume that whatever they say or do will not produce even the smallest ripple between two US presidential candidates neither of whom appears to have the courage to question Israel. 50,000 trapped by Israeli assault on Gaza By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, October 5, 2004 Israeli forces have demolished the homes of hundreds of Palestinians, bulldozed swaths of agricultural land and destroyed infrastructure in their bloodiest assault on the Gaza Strip in years. More than 70 people have died in Operation Days of Penitence, launched in northern Gaza six days ago after a Hamas rocket attack killed two Israeli children. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said that the dead included 31 civilians. Nineteen were under 18. Most of the nine people killed yesterday were Palestinian fighters, but a teenage girl was among the dead, shot in her home. In southern Gaza Israeli forces killed a four-year-old boy in Khan Yunis refugee camp, where several Palestinian children have been shot dead in recent weeks. Last night the Israeli army said it had killed a Palestinian gunman who had tried to infiltrate a nearby settlement. Early today an Israeli missile strike in Jabaliya killed one Palestinian militant and wounded two others. But shielded from view is the suffering of about 50,000 Palestinians trapped in areas seized by hundreds of Israeli troops, backed by about 200 tanks and armoured vehicles. [complete article] Iraqis debating new relationship with Israel, but most favor long-standing hostility By Nancy A. Youssef, Knight Ridder, October 4, 2004 A recent series of events, including a handshake between Iraq's interim prime minister and Israel's foreign minister at last month's United Nations meetings in New York, has set off public debate over whether the Iraqi government is trying to change Iraq's long-standing enmity with Israel. Iraqi officials deny that any changes are afoot. They say Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was merely being polite when he took the hand of Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, who was sitting next to him because countries' delegates were arranged in alphabetical order at the United Nations. But many Iraqis are viewing developments with suspicion. "I knew after America invaded Iraq, the first thing that would happen (is) we would have a relationship with Israel," said Mohammed Saleem, 24, a student in Baghdad. "I have nothing against having relations with the Israelis on the condition they give the Palestinians their rights and their own country." Any warming in Iraqi-Israeli relations would be a major change in the Middle East's power equation. Saddam Hussein was widely revered in Arab nations for his anti-Israel stance. [complete article] Iraqi indicted for proposal to open talks with Israel By Eric Eckholm, New York Times, October 6, 2004 A court of Iraq's interim government has brought criminal charges against a prominent politician for attending an antiterrorism conference in Israel and publicly suggesting that Iraq should open talks with Israel. The indictment and arrest warrant, based on a 1969 law promulgated by the Baath Party that bars Iraqis from having contacts with enemy states, are likely to anger the United States government, which has sponsored Iraq's new courts and is a close ally of Israel. Late Tuesday, State Department officials said they were seeking to learn more before issuing a statement. "We are looking into this through our embassy," said Greg Sullivan, a department spokesman. The politician, Mithal al-Alusi, was until recently a leader of the Iraqi National Congress, the former exile movement and now one of Iraq's most powerful political parties, and was a close associate of the party's chairman, Ahmad Chalabi. He served in the previous and current interim national legislatures and was director general of Iraq's National Commission for De-Baathification, which works to bar senior officials of Saddam Hussein's government from office. [complete article] Breaking their silence By Elizabeth Mehren, Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2004 In Love Plaza, about 75 people mingled in bright sunshine, chatting noisily while one speaker after another droned on at a campaign rally. Vendors hawked T-shirts, and children frolicked in a fountain opposite ornate City Hall. Then Celeste Zappala stepped onstage. Standing between columns of red, white and blue balloons, she held up the Purple Heart awarded posthumously to her oldest son. The plaza fell silent. In calm, measured tones, Zappala talked about her opposition to the war in Iraq. She spoke with pride and tenderness about her son, Sherwood Baker, who was killed in April in Baghdad. "Sherwood was a patriot," Zappala said. "He was brave and faithful and loyal. He believed in America, and he believed in democracy. And I made an oath to him not to be quiet, not to be cynical in my grief." Before her son left for Iraq early this year, Zappala, 57, joined a group of military families that supports the troops but opposes the war. Today, Military Families Speak Out has more than 1,700 member families across the country who participate in protests, appear on radio and television and confront public officials. By telling stories about their loved ones, they hope to sway hearts and minds and help bring an end to the war. [complete article] Pastor Bush By Jonathan Raban, The Guardian, October 6, 2004 In the secular, liberal, top-left-hand corner of the US where I live, the prevailing mood was one not far short of despair as incredulity mounted that the daily avalanche of bad news from Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit, Samarra, Najaf, Nasiriyah, Kufa, Ramadi, Baquba and elsewhere was apparently failing to make any significant dent in Bush's poll numbers, or expose his claim that freedom and democracy are on the march in Iraq as a blithe and cynical fiction. What would it take? people asked: How many more American and Iraqi deaths? When would it sink in that the occupation of Iraq is a bloody catastrophe? Why was the electorate so unmoved by the abundant empirical evidence that the administration's policy in the Middle East wantonly endangers America as it endangers the wider world? Kerry's performance in the first presidential debate brought a much-needed lift of spirits to this neck of the woods, but the Democratic candidate is up against something more formidable than the person of George Bush: he has to deal with the unquiet spirit of American puritanism and its long and complicated legacy. [complete article] Report discounts Iraqi arms threat By Mike Allen and Dana Priest, Washington Post, October 6, 2004 The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday. The officials said that the 1,000-page report by Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, concluded that Hussein had the desire but not the means to produce unconventional weapons that could threaten his neighbors or the West. President Bush has continued to assert in his campaign stump speech that Iraq had posed "a gathering threat." The officials said Duelfer, an experienced former United Nations weapons inspector, found that the state of Hussein's weapons-development programs and knowledge base was less advanced in 2003, when the war began, than it was in 1998, when international inspectors left Iraq. [complete article] A new CIA report casts doubt on a key terrorist's tie to Iraq By Douglas Jehl, New York Times, October 6, 2004 A reassessment by the Central Intelligence Agency has cast doubt on a central piece of evidence used by the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq to draw links between Saddam Hussein's government and Al Qaeda's terrorist network, government officials said Tuesday. The C.I.A. report, sent to policy makers in August, says it is now not clear whether Mr. Hussein's government harbored members of a group led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the officials said. The assertion that Iraq provided refuge to Mr. Zarqawi was the primary basis for the administration's prewar assertions connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda. The new C.I.A. assessment, based largely on information gathered after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is the latest to revise a prewar intelligence report used by the administration as a central rationale for war. Other reports have cast doubt on the idea that Iraq provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda, and the report of the Sept. 11 commission found no "collaborative relationship" between the former Iraqi government and Al Qaeda. [complete article] AFGHAN ELECTIONS U.S. envoy accused of being the power pulling Karzai's strings By Catherine Philp, The Times (via The Australian), October 5, 2004 As Hamid Karzai stepped forward to cut the ribbon across the entrance to Kabul's rebuilt national museum, a tall grey-haired man in a sharp suit stood beside him. The same man was present when the Afghan President opened a new dormitory at Kabul university. And he was there again as Mr Karzai arrived by helicopter in a dusty northern province to open a new road. He is the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been nicknamed "The Viceroy" for the influence he wields over the Karzai Government. In recent weeks, candidates in the presidential election to be held on Saturday have accused the US envoy of taking on a new role -- that of campaign manager for Mr Karzai -- in an exercise whose success is vital for the re-election hopes of George W. Bush. [complete article] Afghan race shaping up as battle of the modern and traditional By Pamela Constable, Washington Post, October 6, 2004 More than 1,000 leathery, turbaned men gathered in a cavernous village mosque Friday for a presidential campaign rally. They no longer carried rifles, and some had even brought their small sons. But the assembly of mujaheddin, or former anti-Soviet fighters, crackled with esprit de corps. The veterans were all ethnic Pashtuns, and the rally was held in Kandahar province, the heartland of Afghan Pashtun culture and the birthplace of President Hamid Karzai, who comes from a prominent Pashtun tribe and has courted Pashtun votes in his bid to be elected president this Saturday. But these tough ex-fighters had come to show their support for someone else: Yonus Qanooni, the former interior and education minister and an ethnic Tajik, who is Karzai's major challenger. To them, the candidate's ethnicity mattered far less than his credentials as a fellow mujahid and defender of Islam. [complete article] Fearful choice for Afghan women: To vote or not to vote By Amy Waldman, New York Times, October 6, 2004 When Afghanistan votes Saturday in its first presidential election, three women, Hajira, Roshana and Farida, will face a choice, but not the one many people expect. Choosing their candidate was the easy part. All three women, residents of this southern city, favor the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai. But in the face of threats from Taliban insurgents to attack the election process, they cannot decide whether to vote at all, let alone whether to work at the polls as they have been asked to do. The women say they do not fear death. They fear the shame a public death would bring their families. "My biggest fear is that if something happens election day, the whole town will talk afterward," said Farida, who is 23 and unmarried, and who, like the others, uses only one name. "There is already a general rumor that women who work outside the home are prostitutes to Americans or foreigners, that women who work outside the home lose their honor." There is a saying in the culture, she said. For a woman, a death in the home - with purdah, which literally means curtain - is a death of honor. A death outside the home is a death with dishonor. "I just don't want to die on the street," she said. [complete article] Warlord politics heats Afghan vote By Scott Baldauf, Christian Science Monitor, October 6, 2004 As the hometown of the current Afghan president, Kandahar should be wrapped up for Hamid Karzai. But look around, and you'll see campaign posters - lots of them - for Mr. Karzai's chief opponent, Yunis Qanooni. That Mr. Qanooni, former education minister and ethnic Tajik northerner, would even venture into the ethnic Pashtun heartland of Kandahar is shocking enough, but to have southern Pashtuns supporting him by the thousands, that's the stuff of fantasy. It's as if Howard Dean had shown up at a NASCAR event and sung the national anthem - and the crowd went wild. Qanooni's campaign draws its greatest support by courting the substantial number of Afghan veterans who fought against the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. In effect, he is creating Afghanistan's own "greatest generation," a powerful voting bloc that fears losing power and influence in the next government. [complete article] Most at Guantanamo to be freed or sent home, officer says By John Mintz, Washington Post, October 6, 2004 Most of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely to be freed or sent to their home countries for further investigation because many pose little threat and are not providing much valuable intelligence, the facility's deputy commander has said. The remarks by Army Brig. Gen. Martin Lucenti in yesterday's edition of London's Financial Times appeared to conflict with past comments by U.S. military commanders who have stressed the value of the information obtained from the detainees and the danger many would pose if released. [complete article] Next wave of Al Qaeda leadership By Owais Tohid, Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 2004 [Atta-ur] Rehman, along with nine other "comrades," is charged with carrying out a deadly June attack against a senior Pakistani Army general in Karachi. The general escaped narrowly but 10 people, including seven soldiers, were killed. Rehman's circle call themselves Jundullah (God's Army) and have close ties to Al Qaeda. Most are young, educated men, whom Rehman allegedly sent to training camps in Pakistan's remote tribal areas. Rehman doesn't fit the mold of the typical Al Qaeda leader. Traditionally, most were Arabs who gained status by resisting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Younger, educated recruits tapped for suicide missions like 9/11 typically came from Middle Eastern countries with long histories of pan-Islamic resistance. What sets this new breed apart is that they are joining from places like Pakistan, where the focus has been on regional grievances, like independence for the disputed area of Kashmir. But as the Al Qaeda leadership ranks begin to thin, men like Rehman are starting to climb the ladder. "It is a new generation of Al Qaeda," says Riffat Hussain, a leading defense and security analyst based in Islamabad, Pakistan. "These are new converts to Al Qaeda. They may have no links with Al Qaeda in the past, but now they are willing to sacrifice their lives for the cause as they feel Al Qaeda is the name of defiance to the West. They are young and angry, and their number has swelled in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq." [complete article] Why the insurgency won't go away By Ahmed S. Hashim, Boston Review, October/November, 2004 The stealthy manner in which power was formally handed over to the Iraqis two days ahead of schedule on June 28, 2004, was designed to forestall the widespread violence that coalition forces expected for the original date. It was also an acknowledgment by coalition officials that the violent insurgencies they insisted would not derail Iraq's reconstruction now threaten the emergence of a sovereign nation. Iraq is overridden with partisan warfare by former regime loyalists, organized rebellions by disgruntled Iraqis, terrorism by foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and a wave of crime by organized gangs. Rather than an all-out war of national liberation against coalition forces and Iraqi authorities, groups with nothing in common -- except the demand that the coalition leave -- are fighting against U.S. forces in an insurgency that spikes and ebbs. We may also see different ethnic or sectarian groups pitted against one another in a massive fight over who gets what, and when and how. Signs of such multi-layered conflict do not augur well for Iraq's future stability. [complete article] Comment -- Anyone considering the merits of a US withdrawal from Iraq should disregard the legitimacy of America's presence in Iraq -- clearly it has none -- but needs to try to understand the nature of the insurgency. Only by looking at the insurgency is it possible to make an educated guess about how things might unfold in the absence of occupying forces. US and other foreign forces have not brought peace to Iraq and have fueled and initiated much of the violence. But the fragmented nature of the insurgency suggests that disparate groups that now have a common purpose in trying to end the occupation, if successful, will then refocus their campaigns of violence on each other. Then, as now, ordinary Iraqis will end up caught in the crossfire. A withdrawal of US troops might be in the short term interests of America, but it's wishful thinking to simply assume that it help the people of Iraq. A Shiite-Sunni Islamist 'high command' may be forming By Patrick Seale, October 4, 2004 There are ominous signs that, far from dying down, the conflicts in the Middle East are set to widen in the coming months, sucking in new actors and posing new threats to the United States and its allies. In the eyes of Arab and Islamic militants, the war against American forces in Iraq and Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation are increasingly seen as one and the same battle. In the absence of any prospect for peace on either battlefield, alliances are being formed and command structures established which suggest that the struggle is entering a new and more lethal phase. Western intelligence sources report that a new high command is emerging made up of Hizbullah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood (represented in the occupied Palestinian territories by Islamic Jihad); and, last but not least, the Islamic Republic of Iran. The striking features of this alliance are that it bridges the Sunni-Shiite divide and unites Arab nationalists and Islamists in a common cause. As a member of one of these groups put it to me: "There is today no difference between resistance and jihad." Several factors lie behind the new, more organized and determined militancy. First, American backing for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - for his expansion of Jewish settlements, his separation wall in the West Bank, and his all-out war against the Palestinians - has ruled out any prospect of a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The international consensus of a two-state solution seems increasingly unrealistic. [complete article] Bremer critique on Iraq raises political furor By Elisabeth Bumiller and Jodi Wilgoren, New York Times, October 6, 2004 The administration, without disputing Mr. Bremer's statements that he had wanted more troops when he arrived in May 2003, said that the force levels had been set by military commanders there. By the end of the day, Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, was insisting that Mr. Bush's instructions to his commanders about more troops were "just let me know, you'll have them." If administration officials were defending Mr. Bush's decisions in public, in background conversations they were clearly furious with Mr. Bremer, who in recent weeks they have blamed for much that has gone wrong in Baghdad. Still, two senior officials confirmed Tuesday evening that Mr. Bremer had sought more troops before he took up his post as the head of the coalition authority in Iraq, and that once he arrived in Baghdad he repeated his belief that the United States and its allies had committed insufficient forces to the task. "The reality is that Paul kept pressing the issue, because it was immediately clear that a lot of facilities - even arms stockpiles - were unguarded," said one senior official who was part of that debate but insisted on anonymity. [complete article] White House won't say if troops sought By Scott Lindlaw, Associated Press (via Yahoo), October 5, 2004 The White House refused to say Tuesday whether the top U.S. civilian official in Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster had asked the president for more troops to deal with the rapid descent of postwar Iraq into chaos. In remarks published Tuesday, the official, L. Paul Bremer, said he arrived in Iraq on May 6, 2003 to find "horrid" looting and a very unstable situation -- throwing new fuel onto the presidential campaign issue of whether the United States had sufficiently planned for the post-war situation in Iraq. [complete article] HOW MANY TROOPS? "As I have said, we should have had significantly more troops in Iraq -- perhaps twice as many more as we now have there." Testimony of Larry Diamond to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, May 19, 2004. (Larry Diamond was senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad from January to March 2004.) Bremer criticizes troop levels By Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, October 5, 2004 The former U.S. official who governed Iraq after the invasion said yesterday that the United States made two major mistakes: not deploying enough troops in Iraq and then not containing the violence and looting immediately after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, administrator for the U.S.-led occupation government until the handover of political power on June 28, said he still supports the decision to intervene in Iraq but said a lack of adequate forces hampered the occupation and efforts to end the looting early on. "We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said yesterday in a speech at an insurance conference in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. "We never had enough troops on the ground." Bremer's comments were striking because they echoed contentions of many administration critics, including Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, who argue that the U.S. government failed to plan adequately to maintain security in Iraq after the invasion. Bremer has generally defended the U.S. approach in Iraq but in recent weeks has begun to criticize the administration for tactical and policy shortfalls. [complete article] Comment -- As Larry Diamond's statement above makes clear, Paul Bremer's recent comments about troop levels in Iraq should be no source of surprise. Neither should it be any surprise that while he was a representative of the Bush administration, Bremer didn't contradict the White House in his public statements. The White House is sticking to its line, we said that the military could have whatever they wanted -- they didn't ask for more troops. But they did. Army Chief of Staff Gen. John Shinseki, said before the war that several hundred thousand troops would be needed, only to be told by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that his estimate was "wildly off the mark." The truth, as Wolfowitz demonstrated, is that before the war, civilian war planners expressed contempt for the cautious advice they were getting from the military. Now the hawks want everyone to believe that they dutifully respond to every request from a commander in the field. They portray themselves as humble, yet they admit no errors. U.S. faces complex insurgency in Iraq By Jim Krane, Associated Press (via Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 4, 2004 The U.S. military is fighting the most complex guerrilla war in its history, with 140,000 American soldiers trained for conventional warfare flailing against a thicket of insurgent groups with competing aims and no supreme leader. The three dozen or so guerrilla bands agree on little beyond forcing the Americans out of Iraq. In other U.S. wars, the enemy was clear. In Vietnam, a visible leader - Ho Chi Minh - led a single army fighting to unify the country under socialism. But in Iraq, the disorganized insurgency has no single commander, no political wing and no dominant group. U.S. |