Daily Archives: January 20, 2008

FEATURE: America’s Iranian invention

Bush’s Iran/Argentina terror frame-up
By Gareth Porter, The Nation, January 18, 2008

Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration’s pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush’s latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city’s Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing eighty-six and injuring 300, in 1994. Unnamed senior Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal January 15 that the bombing in Argentina “serves as a model for how Tehran has used its overseas embassies and relationship with foreign militant groups, in particular Hezbollah, to strike at its enemies.”

This propaganda campaign depends heavily on a decision last November by the General Assembly of Interpol, which voted to put five former Iranian officials and a Hezbollah leader on the international police organization’s “red list” for allegedly having planned the July 1994 bombing. But the Wall Street Journal reports that it was pressure from the Bush Administration, along with Israeli and Argentine diplomats, that secured the Interpol vote. In fact, the Bush Administration’s manipulation of the Argentine bombing case is perfectly in line with its long practice of using distorting and manufactured evidence to build a case against its geopolitical enemies.

After spending several months interviewing officials at the US Embassy in Buenos Aires familiar with the Argentine investigation, the head of the FBI team that assisted it and the most knowledgeable independent Argentine investigator of the case, I found that no real evidence has ever been found to implicate Iran in the bombing. Based on these interviews and the documentary record of the investigation, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the case against Iran over the AMIA bombing has been driven from the beginning by US enmity toward Iran, not by a desire to find the real perpetrators. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Suspect suspect “confesses”

PPP pushes for independent Bhutto probe
By Farhan Bokhari, Financial Times, January 20, 2008

Pakistan’s main opposition party, the Pakistan People’s party, on Sunday dismissed the arrest of a teenager in connection with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, and renewed calls for an international investigation into her killing last month.

The PPP’s response followed news on Saturday that Pakistani security forces had made the first arrest directly linked to the killing of Ms Bhutto on December 27.

The teenager was identified as Aitezaz Shah, 15. He was arrested last week in Dera Ismail Khan, a northwestern town close to the tribal areas that border Afghanistan. A second man in his 20s, named as Sher Zaman, was also arrested. He has been described as Mr Shah’s handler.

Mr Shah’s arrest comes amid growing disagreement between President Pervez Musharraf’s government and Ms Bhutto’s PPP over the circumstances surrounding her killing in Rawalpindi, the city outside Islamabad where Pakistan’s military headquarters are located. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — How difficult is it to get a fifteen-year old to confess? Is this why General Hayden has “no reason to question” Musharraf’s story about who killed Benazir Bhutto?

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CAMPAIGN 08 & EDITOR’S COMMENTS: Out with the old, in with the new

Just one more year! Good riddance to George W Bush
By Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, January 20, 2008

Arabia is the land of illusion and desert mirages. And as he jetted last week from kingdom to sheikdom, to be regaled with feasts and falcons, jewels and ornamental swords, George Bush might have imagined that all was well with his presidency. But this, his longest and most ambitious trip to the Middle East, will surely be remembered – if it is remembered at all – as a gaudy, irrelevant footnote to a presidency that has long since failed.

Today is a sombre milestone, marking the start of the last of Mr Bush’s eight years in the White House. This being a leap year, exactly 366 days remain until 20 January 2009, when his successor will be sworn into office. It is a time when incumbents look to their legacies. And for this President the view could scarcely be bleaker.

Is he the worst President in US history? Mr Bush faces stiff competition from the likes of James Buchanan, who watched as America slipped towards civil war, or Warren Harding with his corrupt administration, or Herbert Hoover, who failed to halt the slide into the Great Depression, or, more recently, Richard Nixon, the only President to be forced to resign. But in terms of dogmatism, incompetence, ignorance and divisiveness, Mr Bush surely compares with any of the above. [complete article]

Internal memo takes on Obama’s approach to Middle East
By Jennifer Siegel, The Forward, January 20, 2008

A confidential memo questioning Senator Barack Obama’s potential approach to Middle East policy was circulated earlier this month among staffers at a major American Jewish organization.

“The Senator’s interpretation of the NIE raises questions,” wrote Debra Feuer, a counsel for the American Jewish Committee, one day after the Illinois Democrat surged to victory in the Iowa caucus.

Referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she added that Obama “appears to believe the Israelis bear the burden of taking the risky steps for peace, and that the violence Israel has received in return does not shift that burden.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — God forbid the possibility that an American president might have the audacity to attempt an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!

The Israel lobby has to tread a fine line in going after Obama. Of course, AIPAC-friendly Clinton is the Democratic candidate of choice, but the lobby needs to hedge its bets. Candidate Obama, who is not AIPAC-unfriendly, could become an unfriendly president to a lobby he saw as being intent on keeping him out of the White House. There’s a stunning irony in the AJC referencing Ali Abunimah’s comments about Obama when Ali himself regards Obama as having shifted to the AIPAC camp. I guess in the eyes of the lobby, it is unforgivable that anyone should ever express any degree of sympathy with the Palestinians.

Hillary, Barack, experience
By Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, January 20, 2008

The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him. [complete article]

Obama’s age gap: is it race?
By Dick Meyer, CBS, January 19, 2008

Now that Democrats have voted or caucused in three states in three different parts of the country, it appears there is one crucial voting bloc that will not support Barack Obama: older Americans.

Obama was able to overcome a consistent age gap in Iowa because of an unusually high turnout by young voters who supported him overwhelmingly. And he may be able to carry South Carolina, where roughly half the Democratic primary voters are expected to be African-American.

But Obama’s weak performance so far among older voters substantially increases the odds against him scoring big victories in the slew of states voting on February 5th, “Super Duper Tuesday.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If old America isn’t ready for Obama, what’s young America supposed to do? Wait long enough until it too becomes set in its ways?

War, meet the 2008 campaign
By Michael R. Gordon, New York Times, January 20, 2008

The American officers I met were hardly of one mind on how to proceed in Iraq, but they were grappling with decisions on how to try to stabilize a traumatized country with a hard-headed sense that although there have been significant gains, a long and difficult job still lies ahead — a core assumption that has frequently been missing on the campaign trail.

The politicians, on the other hand, seemed more intent on addressing public impatience with an open-ended commitment in Iraq, either by promising prompt withdrawal (the Democrats) or by suggesting that victory may be near (the Republicans).

Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who regularly visits Iraq, put it this way: “You have to grade all the candidates between a D-minus and an F-plus. The Republicans are talking about this as if we have won and as if Iraq is the center of the war on terrorism, rather than Afghanistan and Pakistan and a host of movements in 50 other countries.

“The Democrats talk about this as if the only problem is to withdraw and the difference is over how quickly to do it.” [complete article]

Winning ugly
By Michael Tomasky, The Guardian, January 19, 2008

Well, it wasn’t big and it sure wasn’t pretty – in fact it was downright ugly – but Hillary Clinton’s win in Nevada gives her an advantage now over Barack Obama in the Democratic contest.

The effect of the result is perhaps most easily grasped by envisioning the counterfactual. Let’s say Obama had won. In that case, the media would have been full of reports about how the underdog (which he assuredly is) had regained momentum, had knocked the powerful Clinton machine back on its heels a second time, and seemed primed to win next Saturday’s match-up in South Carolina. In that state, and in the 22 states voting on February 5, sit hundreds or thousands of political operatives who, if Obama had won, would be on the phone with one another right now asking if they should go ahead and get with Obama, emboldening one another to buck the mighty Clintons. But now Clinton has held that effect off – at least for a week, perhaps for more, perhaps for good. [complete article]

Leading Democrats to Bill Clinton: pipe down
By Jonathan Alter, Newsweek, January 28, 2008

Prominent Democrats are upset with the aggressive role that Bill Clinton is playing in the 2008 campaign, a role they believe is inappropriate for a former president and the titular head of the Democratic Party. In recent weeks, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, both currently neutral in the Democratic contest, have told their old friend heatedly on the phone that he needs to change his tone and stop attacking Sen. Barack Obama, according to two sources familiar with the conversations who asked for anonymity because of their sensitive nature. Clinton, Kennedy and Emanuel all declined to comment. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — At what point does loyal support for one’s spouse turn into a passion for a vicarious (and maybe not so vicarious) third term?

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IDEAS: Third World first

Technology’s center of gravity is shifting
By Jeremy Kahn, Boston Globe, January 20, 2008

Bapi Das, seated next to an open sewer in a teeming slum on the outskirts of this Indian city, combs his hand through his hair, smooths his moustache, and prepares to enter the global financial system.
more stories like this

Das, a 42-year-old commercial painter, grins as a worker for a local micro-finance group frames his face with a digital camera and zooms in. It is an important moment. His photo will adorn a smart card that, with help from a mobile phone and a fingerprint reader, will allow Das to store money electronically, make small cash withdrawals, and send money to his family on the other side of the country. It is the first bank account he has ever had.

This might seem like a classic example of the Third World struggling to catch up with the First. After all, people in the United States and Europe have been using ATM cards and the Internet for years to perform the simple banking tasks Das is only now able to do. But look again: The technology used to bring slum-dwellers like Das their first bank accounts is so advanced that it isn’t available to even the most tech-savvy Americans – at least not yet. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: A deadbeat’s peace process

Gaza City plunged into darkness
BBC News, January 20, 2008

The only power plant in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has shut down because of a lack of fuel, Palestinian officials say, blaming Israeli restrictions.

Gaza City was plunged into darkness after the plant’s turbines stopped.

Israel’s closure of border crossings amid continued rocket fire from Gaza has brought the delivery of almost all supplies, including fuel, to a halt. [complete article]

Senior Saudi prince offers Israel peace vision
By Paul Taylor, Reuters, January 20, 2008

A senior Saudi royal has offered Israel a vision of broad cooperation with the Arab world and people-to-people contacts if it signs a peace treaty and withdraws from all occupied Arab territories.

In an interview with Reuters, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the United States and Britain and adviser to King Abdullah, said Israel and the Arabs could cooperate in many areas including water, agriculture, science and education.

Asked what message he wanted to send to the Israeli public, he said:

“The Arab world, by the Arab peace initiative, has crossed the Rubicon from hostility towards Israel to peace with Israel and has extended the hand of peace to Israel, and we await the Israelis picking up our hand and joining us in what inevitably will be beneficial for Israel and for the Arab world.” [complete article]

The march of cynics
By Meron Benvenisti, Haaretz, January 18, 2008

The prize for the most sharply cynical remark goes to President George W. Bush, who said in Ramallah of the Israel Defense Forces crossing points: “You’ll be happy to hear that my motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped.” No doubt, he was speaking ironically, but even if he added that he wasn’t “so exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person,” he should be reminded of the saying that one doesn’t mention rope in a hanged man’s home. Okay, so there’s a lack of political and human understanding here, but isn’t there even a drop of sensitivity and empathy?

This cynical remark made only the slightest impression on those who heard it. After all, the people who met with Bush are not the ones who are exposed to the humiliations that thousands go through at the barriers every day, and they even receive VIP treatment. Why should they express dissatisfaction with a spontaneous bit of nonsense when they feel no need to react to a stupid thing that someone in Bush’s retinue formulated for the president? “Swiss cheese isn’t going to work when it comes to the outline of a state. And I mean that,” declared Bush. Right after that he said the drawing up of the future border will reflect the current reality. But it is the reality of the settlement blocs that has created the “Swiss cheese.” [complete article]

Middle East triangle
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, Washington Post, January 17, 2008

Nervous about being left out, all three parties are laboring mightily to avert an understanding between the other two. Hamas threatens the nascent Israeli-Palestinian political process, challenging its legitimacy and intimating that it could resort to more violence. Israel warns that renewed Palestinian unity will bring that process to an abrupt halt. Abbas actively discourages any third-party contact with Hamas. The end result is collective checkmate, a political standstill that hurts all and serves none.

The truth is, none of these two-way deals is likely to succeed. In tandem, no two parties are capable enough to deliver; any one party is potent enough to be a spoiler. There can be neither Israeli-Palestinian stability nor a peace accord without Hamas’s acquiescence. Intra-Palestinian reconciliation will not last without Israel’s unspoken assent and willingness to lift its siege. Any agreement between Hamas and Israel over Abbas’s strong objection is hard to imagine.

For any of these dances to go forward, all will have to go forward. Synchronicity is key. Fatah and Hamas will need to reach a new political arrangement, this time not one vigorously opposed by Israel. Hamas and Israel will need to achieve a cease-fire and prisoner exchange, albeit mediated by Abbas. And Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will need to negotiate a political deal with Abbas, who will have to receive a mandate to do so from Hamas. The current mind-set, in which each side considers dealmaking by the other two to be a mortal threat, could be replaced by one in which all three couplings are viewed as mutually reinforcing. For that, the parties’ allies ought to cast aside their dysfunctional, destructive, ideologically driven policies. Instead, they should encourage a choreography that minimizes violence and promotes a serious diplomatic process. Otherwise, no matter how many times President Bush travels to the region, there is no reason to believe that 2008 will offer anything other than the macabre pattern of years past. [complete article]

Not on the itinerary
By Daniel Levy, The Guardian, January 18, 2008

Take a president who rarely travels overseas and certainly not for extended periods of time. Add the region of the world most associated with this administration and most in turmoil. Throw in the president’s first visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories after seven years in office. What do you get? Remarkably little, as it turns out.

President Bush’s eight-day tour of the Middle East registered barely an above-the-fold headline in the major American and international newspapers. Perhaps the subject of greatest speculation was how a president, famous for maintaining a schoolboy’s bedtime curfew, would cope with the late Arabian nights. But Bush’s Middle East trip was of some importance – as much for what didn’t happen, as for what did. Paradoxically, an administration guided by a transformational vision of the application of American power was now displaying the limitations of its role – limitations partially created by its own failures. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: Sadr’s shift; surge to nowhere; war comes home

The great Moqtada makeover
By Babak Dehghanpisheh, Newsweek, January 19, 2008

In the West Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriya, 25-year-old Saif Awad was known as “the Assassin.” He didn’t look like a killer. Handsome and well groomed, Awad made a show of attending prayers and Shiite religious celebrations. But, locals say, he also ran a brutal kidnapping ring linked to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and shook down newcomers to Hurriya—even other Shiites—for protection money. In recent months he’d taken to wearing flashier clothes and flaunting his two new cars. He was driving one of them to the shop last November when three men on motorcycles roared up and riddled the Toyota with bullets, killing Awad. An eyewitness, who asked to remain anonymous for his own safety, says the killers were fellow members of the Mahdi Army. “Death is the punishment for those who disobey the Mahdi Army,” says Bassim Abdul Zahra, a Hurriya resident close to the militia. “By killing these dissenters, the leadership sends a warning.” [complete article]

Surge to nowhere
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Post, January 20, 2008

As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the “surge” is working.

In President Bush’s pithy formulation, the United States is now “kicking ass” in Iraq. The gallant Gen. David Petraeus, having been given the right tools, has performed miracles, redeeming a situation that once appeared hopeless. Sen. John McCain has gone so far as to declare that “we are winning in Iraq.” While few others express themselves quite so categorically, McCain’s remark captures the essence of the emerging story line: Events have (yet again) reached a turning point. There, at the far end of the tunnel, light flickers. Despite the hand-wringing of the defeatists and naysayers, victory beckons.

From the hallowed halls of the American Enterprise Institute waft facile assurances that all will come out well. AEI’s Reuel Marc Gerecht assures us that the moment to acknowledge “democracy’s success in Iraq” has arrived. To his colleague Michael Ledeen, the explanation for the turnaround couldn’t be clearer: “We were the stronger horse, and the Iraqis recognized it.” In an essay entitled “Mission Accomplished” that is being touted by the AEI crowd, Bartle Bull, the foreign editor of the British magazine Prospect, instructs us that “Iraq’s biggest questions have been resolved.” Violence there “has ceased being political.” As a result, whatever mayhem still lingers is “no longer nearly as important as it was.” Meanwhile, Frederick W. Kagan, an AEI resident scholar and the arch-advocate of the surge, announces that the “credibility of the prophets of doom” has reached “a low ebb.” [complete article]

An Iraq veteran’s descent; a prosecutor’s choice
By Deborah Sontag, New York Times, January 20, 2008

Not long after Lance Cpl. Walter Rollo Smith returned from Iraq, the Marines dispatched him to Quantico, Va., for a marksmanship instructor course.

Mr. Smith, then a 21-year-old Marine Corps reservist from Utah, had been shaken to the core by the intensity of his experience during the invasion of Iraq. Once a squeaky-clean Mormon boy who aspired to serve a mission abroad, he had come home a smoker and drinker, unsure if he believed in God.

In Quantico, he reported to the firing range with a friend from Fox Company, the combined Salt Lake City-Las Vegas battalion nicknamed the Saints and Sinners. Raising his rifle, he stared through the scope and started shaking. What he saw were not the inanimate targets before him but vivid, hallucinatory images of Iraq: “the cars coming at us, the chaos, the dust, the women and children, the bodies we left behind,” he said. [complete article]

Scenes from a marriage in Baghdad
By Damien Cave, New York Times, January 20, 2008

A soldier screamed out a warning. And as we began to walk slowly in each other’s footsteps, leaving a safe distance between us, I started to think about Diana. I needed to contact her, to keep her out of the fields.

Safely on the road, I grabbed a tall soldier with a radio and asked for a favor. “There’s one of our reporters with another squad, and I need to get her out,” I told him.

Sergeant Wisniewski’s unit was heading back to the base, and another squad was preparing to take its place. Humvees and soldiers swirled around us.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you with this. It’s just that the reporter isn’t just a colleague. She’s also my wife.”

His eyes widened, and he said he’d help. I felt awkward raising the issue. After all, Diana and I had willingly come to Iraq for The New York Times — I’m a reporter, she’s a videographer — and we had agreed to keep our relationship out of our work, especially around soldiers who already had enough to worry about. But I couldn’t help it. [complete article]

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NEWS: Canadian government embarrasses itself

Torture awareness manual ‘wrongly’ lists Cdn allies, to be rewritten: Bernier
Canadian Press, January 19, 2008

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier found himself backtracking Saturday over his department’s training manual that lists the U.S. and Guantanamo Bay as sites of possible torture – alongside such countries as Iran and Syria.

In a statement, Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, adding that it contains a list that “wrongly” includes some of Canada’s closest allies.

Bernier said the manual is neither a policy document, nor a statement of policy, and that he has directed it to be reviewed and rewritten. [complete article]

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NEWS ROUNDUP: January 20

Israel test-fires ballistic missile after Iran warning
Israel successfully test-fired a long-range ballistic missile on Thursday, a senior official told AFP, days after warning “all options” were open to prevent archfoe Iran from obtaining atomic weapons.

U.S. plays down chance of Iran resolution soon
The United States on Friday played down the chance of major powers agreeing on new U.N. sanctions against Iran when ministers meet in Berlin next week, underlining discord over how to proceed with Tehran.

Discontent Surges in Iraq
In the depths of a strangely cold winter in the Middle East, Iraqis complain that the lights are not on, the kerosene heaters are without fuel and the water doesn’t flow — and they blame the government.

Violence increases and tensions rise among Iraqi Shiites
A police raid Saturday on an extremist Shiite Muslim mosque thought to be the headquarters of an extremist cult capped a weekend of violence in southern Iraq, while elsewhere tensions between Iraq’s Shiite-led government and renegade Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr continued to escalate.

Hamas police force recruits women in Gaza
The policemen of Hamas now have company: since the Islamic group took over here last June it has been recruiting policewomen as well.

Hezbollah taunts Israel with claims of soldiers’ remains
Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, on Saturday made his first public appearance here since the 2006 war with Israel, restating his claim that the militant group possessed the remains of several Israeli soldiers left on the battlefields of southern Lebanon.

Israel closes all Gaza border crossings, citing Palestinian rocket attacks
Israel closed all border crossings with the Gaza Strip on Friday, cutting off at least one aid shipment, and bombed the empty Interior Ministry building of the Palestinian Authority, which was already a ruin after a previous Israeli bombing.

Right-wing party quits Israeli coalition
A right-wing party quit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s governing coalition Wednesday in protest of the revived peace talks with the Palestinians, but the move poses no immediate threat to his rule.

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