Monthly Archives: October 2007

NEWS: Turkish incursion into Iraq

Turkish planes bomb Iraq village
By David Clarke and Thomas Grove, Reuters, October 25, 2007

Turkish warplanes attacked a village in northern Iraq on Wednesday, an Iraqi Kurdish security official said, but Turkey said it wanted to hold back from a major incursion to give diplomacy a chance.

The Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a Kurdish village in mountainous country near Shiranish Islam, 25 km (15 miles) northeast of the northern town of Dahuk, had been heavily bombed at midday. He gave no details of damage.

The Turkish government is under great domestic pressure to strike separatist PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) guerrillas in northern Iraq who killed 12 Turkish soldiers on Sunday as part of an intensified campaign against government troops.

Washington and Baghdad fear a major Turkish incursion into northern Iraq could destabilise the whole region.

Turkish security sources said earlier that Turkish warplanes had flown a series of sorties 20 km (12 miles) into Iraq in the past three days, while some 300 troops had advanced about 10 km (6 miles) into northern Iraq. [complete article]

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NEWS: Torture and forced confessions

Second court ruling redacts information about interrogation
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The FBI interviewer allegedly gave Abdallah Higazy a choice: Admit to having a special pilot’s radio in a hotel room near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, or the security service in his native Egypt would give his family “hell.” Higazy responded by confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.

“I knew I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew my family was in danger,” Higazy said later. “. . . If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent [Michael] Templeton made it quite clear that ‘cooperate’ had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

The new details about the FBI’s allegedly aggressive tactics in the Higazy case were included in a ruling briefly issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit [PDF], which reinstated a civil lawsuit brought by Higazy against the FBI and Templeton. In an unusual move, however, the appeals court withdrew the first opinion within minutes on Thursday and issued a second opinion Friday, with the details of Higazy’s allegations removed.

“This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal,” the new ruling reads. “For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.” Such redactions are imperfect in the Web age, and the original document remains accessible through links on sites and blogs devoted to appellate-court and legal issues.

Higazy was jailed for a month as a suspected accomplice to the World Trade Center attack, until a pilot showed up and asked for his radio back. The fresh details about his interrogation in December 2001 illustrate how an innocent man can be persuaded to confess to a crime that he did not commit, and the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go in its terrorism-related investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As this report says, the ruling was briefly issued, but much as the US government might wish otherwise, once something goes out onto the Web, it’s too late to redact the embarrasing details. They can all be read here: Higazy v. Millenium Hotel [PDF]

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NEWS: The terrorists under the bed

Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000
By Mimi Hall, USA Today, October 24, 2007

The government’s terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list’s effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

“It undermines the authority of the list,” says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. “There’s just no rational, reasonable estimate that there’s anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists.”

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings. [complete article]

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FEATURE: Endgame for Iraqi oil?

The sovereignty showdown in Iraq
By Jack Miles, TomDispatch, October 24, 2007

By December 31, 2008, according to Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, the government of Iraq intends to have replaced the existing mandate for a multinational security force with a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States, an agreement of the sort that Washington has with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and several other countries in the Middle East. The Security Council has always paired the annual renewal of its mandate for the multinational force with the renewal of a second mandate for the management of Iraqi oil revenues. This happens through the “Development Fund for Iraq,” a kind of escrow account set up by the occupying powers after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime and recognized in 2003 by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483. The oil game will be up if and when Iraq announces that this mandate, too, will be terminated at a date certain in favor of resource-development agreements that — like the envisioned security agreement — match those of other states in the region.

The game will be up because, as Antonia Juhasz pointed out last March in a New York Times op-ed, “Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?”:

“Iraq’s neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia…. have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced.”

By contrast, the oil legislation now pending in the Iraqi parliament awards foreign oil companies coveted, long-term, 20-35 year contracts of just the sort that neighboring oil-producers have rejected for decades. It also places the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.

The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the U.S. occupation of Iraq may “safely” end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves — 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today’s prices — a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset? [complete article]

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NEWS: The biggest spender since LBJ

Bush is the biggest spender since LBJ
By David Lightman, McClatchy, October 24, 2007

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors. [complete article]

Wars may cost $2.4 trillion over decade
AP, October 24, 2007

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions.

According to analysis, the U.S. has spent about $604 billion on the wars, including $39 billion in diplomatic operations and foreign aid.

If the U.S. were to reduce the number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to 75,000 six years from now, it would cost the U.S. $1 trillion more for military and diplomatic operations and $705 billion in interest payments to pay for the wars through 2017. [complete article]

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OPINION: Pseudo-antiwar Democrats

The trap that is Iraq
By Tom Oliphant, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

Hidden in plain sight is the one issue still capable of blowing up the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It isn’t Iran, outsider-insider, lobbyist relations or healthcare.

It’s the war in Iraq.

The mass media illusion – and also delusion – is that the Democrats, generally, are “anti-war”, especially in contrast to the Bush/Cheney-tethered Republicans. Vaguely, anti-war is meant to suggest favourable disposition to ending the madness.

But the suggestion is false. The truth that could yet destabilise the race and consign consultant Mark Penn’s inevitability lectures about client Hillary Clinton to the trash can is that the major candidates are not as anti-war as they seem. [complete article]

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NEWS: Sadr says freeze of militia’s military activity remains in force

Iraq’s Al-Sadr says freeze of militia’s military activity remains in force
AP, October 24, 2007

Anti-American Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr has urged members of his Mahdi Army to respect his order for a six-month freeze of military activity, threatening offenders in the feared militia with expulsion.

A statement by al-Sadr’s office in the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad said the cleric’s call on the militiamen to respect the freeze, announced in August, was issued in response to questions from followers about whether the order to stand down still applied.

It was not clear why al-Sadr’s office issued the statement now, but U.S. forces appear to have escalated of their campaign against what the military calls rogue, Iranian-backed Mahdi Army militiamen.

Clashes between suspected Mahdi Army militiamen and rival Shiite groups are on the rise in parts of the mainly Shiite south of Iraq.

Al-Sadr said the freeze remained in force and may be renewed if such a move was found to be beneficial. “Enemy parties are spreading this news (that the freeze ended) to tarnish the image of this heroic ideological army that has shown loyalty to its leadership by implementing the freeze.” He, however, said some did observe the freeze.

“So, we appeal to everyone to obey the order in every respect or risk being expelled from this … army in which there is no place for renegades.” [complete article]

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OPINION: Bush’s special talent for failure

At last, consensus in the Middle East: all agree these talks are bound to fail
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

It takes a special kind of genius to unite the warring parties of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but George Bush may just have pulled it off. His proposal for what the US administration calls a “meeting”, rather than a peace conference, in Annapolis, Maryland, before the end of the year has elicited a unanimity unheard of in the Middle East. From the hardmen of Hamas to the hawks of Likud, there is a rare consensus: Annapolis is doomed to failure.

“On the Palestinian street, no one has a good word to say for this exercise,” says the analyst and longtime negotiator Hussein Agha: “At best people are sceptical, at worst they are calling for a boycott.” Two recent opinion polls on either side of the divide show emphatic majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians convinced that success is impossible. That sentiment is shared at the highest level. Yesterday Gordon Brown, at a press conference with the visiting Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, lowered expectations so far that they were somewhere around his ankles. “We’re not complacent about the outcome,” he said by way of understatement. “We don’t have false hopes.”

Even the US administration cannot muster much faith in its own initiative. In a long and detailed speech on Middle East policy at the weekend, Vice-President Dick Cheney made only one passing reference to Annapolis, in just a single paragraph on the Israel-Palestine conflict. One suspects the Cheney-led hawks within the administration would not be too downhearted if Annapolis fails, thereby reducing the standing of its chief patron, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, regarded as dangerously soft by the Cheney camp. Ominously, the date for the event is already slipping. Once pencilled in for November 26, it’s now scheduled only for some time “before the end of the year”. [complete article]

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NEWS: Israel expands collective punishment of Gaza

Israel moves to further isolate Gazans
By Joshua Mitnick, Christian Science Monitor, October 25, 2007

Ratcheting up pressure on Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Israel prepared to cut electricity supplies to Gazans in retaliation for an escalation in cross-border rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants.

After declaring Gaza an “enemy entity” in September, Israel has kept Gaza’s borders sealed save for humanitarian foodstuffs and medicines. The policy has triggered dramatic inflation, shuttered businesses, and spurred demand for black-market goods smuggled through tunnels that were once used by gun runners and drug dealers.

“The market now takes all food that you smuggle, also spare parts and medication,” says Hashem, a tunnel-owner from the border town of Rafah who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used.

Analysts say the goal of Israel’s policy of isolating Gaza seems to be to pressure Gazans to turn against Hamas, which has led the area since it wrested control from the Palestinian Authority in June. Other observers warn that the pressure is likely to backfire, creating more volunteers for militant groups and stirring sympathy for Hamas. [complete article]

An economic tailspin in Gaza
By Dion Nissenbaum, Checkpoint Jerusalem, October 24, 2007

Life in Gaza has entered a state of suspended animation.

The usually busy streets are free of traffic. Stores and factories are closed. Unemployment is on the rise as tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the last four months.

Israel stages regular air strikes on suspected militants and keeps warning that it might launch a military invasion if the daily rocket and mortar attacks continue.

And residents say they are waiting for the other shoe to drop. [complete article]

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NEWS: Waxman’s on the job

White House feels Waxman’s oversight gaze
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

For months, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, has been threatening, subpoenaing and just plain badgering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come before his panel to answer questions about the run-up to the Iraq war, corruption and State Department contracting.

Today, Rice will finally appear. But Waxman (D-Calif.) has not spent the week on a victory lap. He has found time to produce evidence accusing State Department security contractor Blackwater Worldwide of tax evasion, to fire off a letter to Rice demanding information about alleged mismanagement of a $1 billion contract to train Iraqi police, and to hold a hearing on uranium poisoning on Navajo land.

Waxman has become the Bush administration’s worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran — with a staff renowned for its depth and experience — who has been waiting for this for 14 years. [complete article]

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NEWS: Blackwater fallout

State Dept. ousts its chief of security
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The State Department’s security chief was forced to resign yesterday after a critical review found that his office had failed to adequately supervise private contractors protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Richard J. Griffin, a former Secret Service agent who was once in charge of presidential protection, was told by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, John D. Negroponte, to leave office by Nov. 1. Griffin’s chief deputy, Gregory B. Starr, will become acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

Griffin is the first senior official to lose his job over the widening private-contractor scandal. Under fire from Congress, the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Sept. 16 contractor killing of 17 Iraqi civilians, Rice on Tuesday ordered extensive changes in diplomatic security arrangements in Iraq and pledged stronger oversight. A high-level panel she appointed to review the Iraq operation recommended Griffin’s departure along with the other changes, according to State Department sources. [complete article]

Under siege, Blackwater takes on air of bunker
By Paul von Zielbauer and James Glanz, New York Times, October 25, 2007

The Blackwater USA compound here is a fortress within a fortress. Surrounded by a 25-foot-high wall of concrete topped by a chain-link fence and razor wire, the compound sits deep inside the heavily defended Green Zone, its two points of entry guarded by Colombian Army veterans carrying shotguns and automatic rifles.

In the mazelike interior, Blackwater employees live in trailers stacked one on top of the other in surroundings that one employee likens to a “minimum-security prison.”

Since Sept. 16, when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square, the compound has begun to feel more like a prison, too. On that day, employees of Blackwater, a private security firm hired to protect American diplomats, responded to what they called a threat and killed as many as 17 people and wounded 24. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pinpointing what?

Photographs said to show Israeli target inside Syria
By Robin Wright and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, October 24, 2007

Independent experts have pinpointed what they believe to be the Euphrates River site in Syria that was bombed by Israel last month, and satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction roughly similar in design to a North Korean reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year, the experts say.

Photographs of the site taken before the secret Sept. 6 airstrike depict an isolated compound that includes a tall, boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, say experts David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

U.S. and international experts and officials familiar with the site, who were shown the photographs yesterday, said there was a strong and credible possibility that they depict the remote compound that was attacked. Israeli officials and the White House declined to comment. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — There is now a “strong and credible possibility” that satellite photographs reveal the target of Israel’s strike on Syria. Which is to say, the photographs reveal where Israel hit — not what Israel hit.

It’s thus curious that with mantra-like repetition we keep on being told that the site in Syria resembled a “North Korea-style reactor.” No such thing exists. There is no North Korean style of nuclear reactor. All the North Koreans did was make use of the declassified design of the Magnox reactor first used in the UK at Calder Hall — it’s a design that has been publicly available for 50 years! It involves the use of unrefined uranium, there is no containment dome; gas — not water — is the coolant. The facility is housed in non-descript industrial buildings which means it’s almost impossible for satellite imagery to provide hard evidence that such buildings would have been designed to contain a reactor. Such evidence would have to be gathered by IAEA inspectors on the ground and since Syria — unlike Israel — is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Syria would presumably be legally required to provide inspectors access to the site. Rather than push for the evidence to be exposed, Israel preferred to destroy it.

Israel, we are being led to assume, has a greater interest in disregarding international law than in demonstrating to its allies and the rest of the world that Syria might have been engaged in developing a clandestine weapons program. Given that Israel clearly has complete contempt for world opinion, why should the world not with equal contempt dismiss Israel’s fears?

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NEWS: Adminstration of torture

General claims Bush gave ‘marching orders’ on aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo
By Nick Juliano, Raw Story, October 2, 2007

More than 100,000 pages of newly released government documents demonstrate how US military interrogators “abused, tortured or killed” scores of prisoners rounded up since Sept. 11, 2001, including some who were not even suspected of having terrorist ties, according to a just-published book.

amazon-administrationoftorture.jpgIn Administration of Torture, two American Civil Liberties Union attorneys detail the findings of a years-long investigation and court battle with the administration that resulted in the release of massive amounts of data on prisoner treatment and the deaths of US-held prisoners.

“[T]he documents show unambiguously that the administration has adopted some of the methods of the most tyrannical regimes,” write Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh. “Documents from Guantanamo describe prisoners shackled in excruciating ‘stress positions,’ held in freezing-cold cells, forcibly stripped, hooded, terrorized with military dogs, and deprived of human contact for months.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Iran’s policy of nuclear ambiguity

Iran has new nuclear negotiator, but similar stance
By Elaine Sciolino and Peter Kiefer, New York Times, October 24, 2007

Iran’s new chief nuclear negotiator made his international debut in Rome on Tuesday, to a chorus of unusually blunt criticism by politicians in Tehran that the departure of his predecessor was unwise.

Saeed Jalili, the negotiator, met with the European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who has been asked by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to find a formula to persuade Iran to suspend key nuclear activities.

Curiously, at Mr. Jalili’s side was Ali Larijani, his predecessor, who took the lead in the closed-door talks and in remarks afterward to reporters.

Mr. Solana described the talks as “constructive,” and Mr. Larijani called them “good.” But there was no movement on the one issue that matters, said participants in the meeting who spoke under normal diplomatic rules: Iran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment as required by the United Nations Security Council. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The ambiguous missile threat

Administration diverges on missile defense
By Michael Abramowitz and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 24, 2007

President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is “definitive proof” of such a threat.

The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington’s plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin considers the program a potential threat to its own nuclear deterrent and has sought to play down any threat from Iran. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s always struck me as odd and transparently contradictory for the Bush administration to push the line that missile defense is essential for protection against Iran and at the same time to assert that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But it now sounds like Gates is trying to inject an element of rationality into the equation — no doubt Bush and Cheney will regard his suggestion — that their policies should be commanded by reason — as an act of subordination.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Divide and rule might fail

Fresh violence feared if peace talks collapse
By Rory McCarthy and Ian Black, The Guardian, October 24, 2007

Palestinians are warning that the failure of a coming Middle East peace conference, convened by the US, could undermine chances of a two-state solution and may threaten a return to violence.

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, reiterated after talks with Gordon Brown in London yesterday that the conference, scheduled for Annapolis, Maryland, next month, would focus on core issues rather than detailed negotiations, fuelling fears that it carries unacceptably high risks.

“We can live without a conference but we can’t live with a conference that fails,” said a close adviser to the Palestinian president and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas. “It will be good not just for Hamas, but for al-Qaida too.” Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of the Gaza Strip, says the conference is an American-Israeli trap. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The catastrophe that Fatah and its Israeli and American lukewarm friends really fear is that if Annapolis comes to nothing — as it surely will — then Fatah will have to bow to the inevitable: it will have to talk to Hamas. In other words, the fear is not of renewed violence; it is of the reconcilliation of Palestinian divisions.

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The unwritten contract requiring the American media to bow before the Israel lobby

The Israel lobby targets Haaretz
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, October 23, 2007

When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. “This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact..”

Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.

Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — There’s another name for this “unwritten contract” between the U.S. media and the Israel lobby: cowardice and self-interest. Journalists and editors would rather be gelded than jeopardize their professional advancement. In the contest between the dollar and the truth, the dollar always wins.

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OPINION: Why the U.S. government is losing its war on Islam

Anti-terrorism on trial
By David Cole, Washington Post, October 24, 2007

The government’s failure in the Holy Land case suggests that the administrative processes for designating groups as terrorist organizations are flawed. The president has asserted the power to designate any organization or individual he chooses, here or abroad, without formal charges, a trial or hearing of any kind; without a statement of reasons; and on the basis of secret evidence. While full-scale criminal protections are not necessary, surely groups should be afforded a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves before they are shut down.

We’ve seen this kind of regime before. In the McCarthy era, the government, working behind closed doors, created lists of “subversive organizations” and then held individuals responsible for any association with such groups, often using secret evidence to support its charges. Such actions invited abuse, harmed innocents and infringed on the very rights the government claimed to be protecting. As the Supreme Court said in a 1967 decision belatedly declaring unconstitutional the “guilt by association” tactics of the McCarthy period: “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties — the freedom of association — which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.” The administration seems to have forgotten that lesson; American juries, thankfully, still remember. [complete article]

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