Daily Archives: October 11, 2007

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Time for Israel to cut the crap

Syria tells journalists Israeli raid did not occur
By Hugh Naylor, New York Times, October 11, 2007

Israel has been unusually quiet about the attack on Sept. 6 and has effectively imposed a news blackout about it. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli opposition leader, on Sept. 19 became the first public figure in Israel to acknowledge that an attack had even taken place. Some Israeli officials have said, though not publicly, that the raid hit a nuclear-related facility that North Korea was helping to equip, but they have not specified where.

On Monday, journalists toured the agricultural center at the government’s invitation to prove, Mr. Mehdi said, that no nuclear weapons program or Israeli attacks occurred there. “The allegations are completely groundless, and I don’t really understand where all this W.M.D. talk came from,” Mr. Mehdi said, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

“There was no raid here — we heard nothing,” he added. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s much harder to prove that something didn’t happen than that it did but Syria has shown where the bombs didn’t fall. The onus is now on Israel. Stop playing games. Release the IAF in-flight videos so that we can see the time, the coordinates, the targets, and the explosions. If no such evidence is forthcoming, then the Syrians should be believed. And in that event, the press needs to engage in some serious self-examination. Why is it still so willing to allow itself to be the delivery system for imaginary weapons of mass destruction?

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FEATURE: Bush administration strengths the regime they oppose

Meddling aggressively in Iran
By Selig Harrison, Le Monde diplomatique, October 9, 2007

Covert action to undermine the Tehran regime has already been under way intermittently for the past decade. Until now, however, the CIA has operated without a finding (authorisation for covert action) by using proxies. Pakistan and Israel, for example, provide weapons and money to insurgent groups in southeast and northwest Iran, where the Baluch and Kurdish ethnic minorities, both Sunni Muslim, have long fought against the repression of Shia-dominated Persian regimes.

The presidential finding [in April] was necessary to permit accelerated non-lethal activities by US agencies. Besides expanded propaganda broadcasts, a media disinformation campaign and the use of US and European-based Iranian exiles to promote political dissent, the programme focuses on economic warfare, especially currency rate manipulation and the disruption of Iran’s international banking and trade.

Although the finding was nominally secret, it did not stay secret for long after it was reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as required by law.

On a recent visit to Tehran, everyone was talking about it, and both conservatives and reformers agreed that it came at an unusually damaging moment of genuine opportunity for cooperation with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior officials in the foreign ministry, the National Security Council, the office of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and pro-government think tanks all said that stability in Iraq and Afghanistan is in Iran’s interest. Cooperation with the US is possible, they said, but only in return for a gradual accommodation between Washington and Tehran, starting with a complete cessation of covert and overt regime change policies.

“The United States is like a fox caught in a trap in Iraq,” said Amir Mohiebian, editor of the conservative daily Reselaat. “Why should we free the fox so he can eat us? Of course, if the US changes its policy, there is scope for cooperation.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Democracy cannot be imported

Cut Iran democracy funding, groups tell U.S.
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

More than two dozen Iranian American and human rights groups have launched an appeal to Congress to reduce or eliminate new financial support of up to $75 million aimed at promoting democracy inside Iran.

The U.S. program, launched in 2006, backfired in its first year, undermining democracy efforts in Iran and leading to wider repression against activists as foreign agents or traitors, the groups said. Among those detained were four Iranian Americans, all charged with “crimes against national security” linked to the U.S. program. A second year of funding will further endanger democracy efforts, the groups added.

“Iranian reformers believe democracy cannot be imported and must be based on indigenous institutions and values. Intended beneficiaries of the funding — human rights advocates, civil society activists and others — uniformly denounce the program,” according to an open letter organized by the National Iranian American Council, the American Conservative Defense Alliance and the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. The letter was signed by 23 other liberal and conservative pro-democracy groups. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Beware the principles of Congress

Worried Iraqi officials urge calm as Turkish-Kurdish conflict escalates
By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

Turkish armed forces’ escalation of bombing and shelling in northern Iraq, along with threats of a broad ground incursion across the border, has alarmed and surprised Iraqi officials, who say the problems Turkey faces from rebel groups can be solved peacefully through diplomacy.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said officials in his government are preparing to get parliamentary approval for a cross-border military operation aimed at disrupting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a guerrilla group that operates on both sides of the border. [complete article]

Righteousness before realism
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, October 11, 2007

Imperial delusions die hard – and once again the US Congress is trying to legislate for the world. As most Turks see it, this week’s committee vote in the House of Representatives accusing Turkey of genocide against the Armenians in 1915-17 is an insulting, gratuitous interference in their sovereign affairs. As the 27 Democrats and Republicans who backed the bill see it, it is a matter of putting the world to rights, according to America’s lights.

Congress has a long history of extraterritorial meddling. It regularly slaps unilateral sanctions on “rogue” governments, and orders foreign businesses and individuals to obey its strictures, regardless of nationality. Its attempts to direct US foreign policy are resisted by the executive branch to varying degrees. On Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Israel, White House and legislature mostly agree. On Turkey, like Iraq, they are at noisy loggerheads.

“We oppose the bill. We think it is a bad idea that will do nothing to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. It will not do anything to advance American interests,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary for Eurasian affairs, told Turkish television this week. President Bush, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and defence secretary, Robert Gates, all chimed in. They even mobilised all former living US secretaries of state in joint opposition, but to no avail. It was a measure of the lame-duck president’s chronic weakness. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s often said that politics is all about timing. Some members of Congress might think this is a perfect time to win a few Armenian-American votes. But really, in 2007 the United States Congress decides it’s time to recognize the Armenian genocide from 1915-17?

Turkey has just recalled its ambassador in protest, a billion dollars worth of Boeing defense contracts now hang in the balance, and while the US asks Turkey not to invade Iraq who in Ankara is now likely to listen?

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Accounting for Blackwater

Blackwater case highlights legal uncertainties
By Alissa J. Rubin and Paul von Zielbauer, New York Times, October 11, 2007

Roughly 100,000 American contractors are working in Iraq, but there has yet to be a prosecution for a single incident of violence, according to Scott Horton, a specialist in the law of armed conflict who teaches at Columbia University.

“Imagine a town of 100,000 people, and there hasn’t been a prosecution in three years,” Mr. Horton said. “How do you justify the fact that you aren’t addressing this?”

One remedy is not being discussed: the State Department can waive immunity for contractors and let the case be tried in the Iraqi courts under Order 17, which is the section of the Transitional Administrative Law approved in 2004 that gives contractors immunity.

L. Paul Bremer III, who supervised the drafting of the immunity order as administrator of the United States occupation authority, said: “The immunity is not absolute. The order requires contractors to respect all Iraqi laws, so it’s not a blanket immunity.” [complete article]

See also, State Dept. may phase out Blackwater (AP).

Editor’s Comment — While the moral, legal, and political dimensions of the Blackwater story have been given most attention, the other part to which there are merely allusions is Blackwater as an expression of American culture. Yet the fantasies being lived out by that these “GI Joe-looking guys” — “They think they’re bloody Rambo!” — are not simply products of youthful imagination. Blackwater’s Iraqi rampage has been inspired as much, if not more, by Hollywood as by 9/11 and a Pentagon addicted to outsourcing.

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ANALYSIS: What can we still achieve in Iraq?

Reconcilliation’s off the table, but there are other decent ways out
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, October 10, 2007

One of the more disturbing articles, in a spate of almost nothing but disturbing articles, about Iraq lately is Joshua Partlow’s front-page dispatch in the Oct. 8 Washington Post, reporting the widespread view among Baghdad politicians that “reconciliation”—the prospect of a unified national government—is an illusory goal.

“Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government,” Partlow writes. (Italics added.) He quotes Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih as saying, “I don’t think there is something called ‘reconciliation,’ and there will be no reconciliation. To me, it’s a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power.”

Two inferences can be drawn from this story, each dismaying, the two together more dismaying still.

First, the “surge,” at least as originally designed, seems hopeless. The idea of the surge, recall, was to provide enough security in Baghdad to give Iraq’s political leaders the “breathing space” to reconcile their differences. Yet if there simply is no way for the leaders to settle their disputes—if sectarian animosity is not merely rife but “entrenched in the structure of their government”—then the surge has no strategic purpose. (It may reduce civilian casualties, and that’s a notable accomplishment; but unless it makes Iraqis feel secure, and unless that facilitates political order, it’s like plugging a few leaks in a wall riddled with holes. It’s not a sustainable mission.)

However, the Post story also casts doubt on the proposition, advanced by many critics of the war, that if the United States merely sets a timetable for withdrawal, Iraq’s political leaders would realize that they had to get their act together. The Post story suggests there is no act. [complete article]

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NEWS: Tribesman in Waziristan bury the dead

Tribesmen urge Pakistan to halt air raids
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, October 11, 2007

Tribesmen appealed to the Pakistani military on Wednesday to cease air raids in the tribal regions near Afghanistan so they could bury some 60 people killed in heavy fighting with militants over the last few days.

The military was also counting its losses, and one security official, who asked not to be named, said that more than 60 members of the security forces had been killed in the four days of fighting. Scores of people have fled the area and taken refuge with the wounded outside the region.

The fighting has been the fiercest in the tribal areas in several years and has been concentrated in the area of Mir Ali in the tribal region of North Waziristan, which the Taliban and Al Qaeda have long used as a base. It seems to have halted after heavy casualties on both sides and among the civilian population. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Selling death and destruction

Arms sales: How the U.S. is not winning friends
By Zia Mian, Asia Times, October 12, 2007

The United States sells death and destruction as a fundamental instrument of its foreign policy. It sees arms sales as a way of making and keeping strategic friends and tying countries more directly to US military planning and operations.

At its simplest, as Lt Gen Jeffrey B Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the New York Times in 2006, the United States likes arms deals because “it gives us access and influence and builds friendships”. South Asia has been an important arena for this effort, and it teaches some lessons the United States should not ignore.

A recent Congressional Research Service report on international arms sales records that last year the United States delivered nearly $8 billion worth of weapons to Third World countries. This was about 40% of all such arms transfers. The US also signed agreements to sell over $10 billion worth of weapons, one-third of all arms deals with Third World countries. [complete article]

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NEWS: “Jimmy” Mubarak ready to become next pharaoh

In Egypt, a son is readied for succession
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

In Egypt, “we didn’t choose Sadat, we didn’t choose Mubarak, and we’re not choosing the next one,” Zakaria Nahla, a 52-year-old salesman of cheap furniture, said in a Cairo market crowded with beeping scooters and veiled women picking through racks of clothes.

Asked if they expected to have any say about Mubarak’s succession, a group of men with their arms full of round loaves of bread answered in unison, “No, no, no.” One underscored the point by wagging a finger and shaking his head.

“We take it as a given” that it will be Gamal Mubarak, said Sayida Amin, 46, a nanny who works for a family in one of Cairo’s wealthier districts. “People don’t know who he is. We only know he’s the president’s son, and he’s imposed on us.” [complete article]

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