Monthly Archives: January 2008

CAMPAIGN 08: An inability to recognize ourselves in one another

Islamofascism’s ill political wind
By James Carroll, Boston Globe, January 21, 2008

In contrast to the way militant zealotries of other religions have been perceived, there is a broad conviction, especially among many conservative American Christians, that the inner logic of Islam and fascism go together. Political candidates appeal to those Christians by defining the ambition of Islamofascists in language that makes prior threats from, say, Hitler or Stalin seem benign. The point is that there is a deep religious prejudice at work, and when politicians adopt its code, they make it worse.

The Democrats gain little by shaping their rhetoric to appeal to the Republicans’ conservative religious base, but a readiness to denigrate Islam shows up on their side, too. In last week’s debate, moderator Brian Williams put to Barack Obama a question about Internet rumors that claim he is a Muslim. The tone of the question suggested that Obama was being accused of something heinous. He replied with a simple affirmation that he is a Christian. He did not then ask, “And what would be wrong if I were a Muslim?” Had he done so, it seems clear, he would have cost himself votes in the present climate. [complete article]

Obama reaches the mountaintop
By John Nichols, The Nation, January 21, 2008

… in his Sunday speech at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Barack Obama went to a higher ground — to that mountaintop that King occupied until his death on April 4, 1968, and that Bobby Kennedy stood for a brief and remarkable political moment that played out between April and June of that fateful year.

“Unity is the great need of the hour – the great need of this hour. Not because it sounds pleasant or because it makes us feel good, but because it’s the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country,” Obama told a audience that hung on the every word of the most emotionally-effective orator to seek the presidency since Kennedy.

“I’m not talking about a budget deficit. I’m not talking about a trade deficit. I’m not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans,” explained Obama. “I’m talking about a moral deficit. I’m talking about an empathy deficit. I’m taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another; to understand that we are our brother’s keeper; we are our sister’s keeper; that, in the words of Dr. King, we are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.” [complete article]

What does it mean to be the pro-Israel candidate?
By Gershom Gorenberg, The American Prospect, January 18, 2008

The main reason that Democratic candidates are less frightening to a progressive Israeli worrying about his country’s future, as my progressive friends in Washington remind me, is that the Democrats may be jiving. That is, because they are sensible folks otherwise, we can assume they don’t really mean this stuff. They even hide small hints of moderation in their rhetoric. The Republicans’ sincerity is truly scary.

I suggest that it’s time to talk about what “pro-Israel” should mean. Not because the discussion will change campaign rhetoric: The candidates will stick to cliches. But after the election, one will have to govern. Members of Congress will need to decide how to vote on the usual strident resolutions backed by AIPAC. Debate now on what it means to support Israel might mean that a year from now, elected leaders will be able to refer to publicly recognized ideas to justify acting more sensibly. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: Collective punishment of Gaza

Strong in numbers
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, January 21, 2008

Here we have the yardstick for security success: the number of Palestinians killed. As in the most primeval wars, the heads of the defense establishment are boasting about the number of people Israel has killed. Their job is to ensure protection for the residents of the state. And, as we know, the residents of the “Gaza perimeter” are not receiving this protection. So the death toll has become the measure of their success.

Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin briefed the cabinet last week about the “achievements” of his organization: 810 Palestinians killed during the past two years. His predecessor, Avi Dichter, once appeared before the editorial board of Haaretz and proudly presented a sophisticated slideshow from his laptop computer: a pie chart of Palestinian casualties, in several colors. Last week, the brigade commander in Gaza, Colonel Ron Ashrov, defined the operation in the Zeitun neighborhood as “very successful.” Why? Because his troops killed 19 Palestinians in a single day and further inflamed the conflagration in the South. How depressing, morally and in practical terms, to think that this is the measure of success. [complete article]

Olmert: No fuel? Gazans can walk
By Amnon Meranda, Ynet, January 21, 2008

“We won’t allow a situation in which people in Sderot walk around in fear day and night, while Gazans lead a completely normal life,” olmert told his faction members. “We won’t allow for a humanitarian crisis, but have no intention of making their lives easier. And the harder their lives, excluding humanitarian damage, we will not allow them to lead a pleasant life.

“As far as I am concerned, all of Gaza’s resident can walk and have no fuel for their cars, as they live under a murderous regime.” [complete article]

The poor and the sick suffer as Israel cuts power to Gaza
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, January 22, 2008

Mansour Rahal lay unconscious in the intensive care unit of Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, linked to an electrically powered ventilator, the coloured monitor above his head showing his heart, respiration and oxygen saturation rate.

On Thursday last week, he was driving his donkey cart through Beit Lahiya when it was destroyed by a missile which targeted militants in a nearby car – it also killed his mother and older brother. His hopes of survival yesterday depended on there being enough diesel to keep in operation the four generators which were Shifa’s only source of power.

His doctor, Kamal al-Geathny, said: “If the fuel runs out for the generators and we have no power, he and six other patients in this unit will die.”

This was the scene at the hospital before Israel authorised limited supplies of fuel and medicine to Gaza last night after a wave of international condemnation for its act of “collective punishment” in imposing a four-day total embargo, which had left much of the Strip without electricity. [complete article]

Defusing the Gaza time bomb
By Robert Malley, Boston Globe, January 20, 2008

The Gaza Strip suffers from sky-rocketing unemployment and poverty, and lacks medicine, fuel, electricity, food, and other essential commodities. It is virtually cut off. It also is the most likely trigger for the next Arab-Israeli war.

In the past few weeks, Palestinian militant groups have fired rockets and mortars into Israel. Israeli incursions and aerial attacks have resulted in Palestinian casualties, including one that killed the son of one of Hamas’s senior leaders. The situation is untenable, and both sides know it. Israel is unlikely to stand idly by as Hamas’s arsenal grows and attacks continue. Hamas undoubtedly will retaliate for the deaths. Neither can afford to back down. [complete article]

NEWS: Turkish-Israeli network sold nuclear secrets

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
The Sunday Times, January 20, 2008

The FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file. [complete article]

NEWS: Eye on Iran

Israel launches advanced spy satellite
AP, January 21, 2008

Israel launched an advanced spy satellite Monday that will be able to track events in Iran, the country it considers its top foe, even at night and in cloudy weather, defense officials said.

The TECSAR satellite is of particular importance for Israel because it can be used to keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear program, which the U.S. and Israel fear is a cover for pursuing nuclear weapons, they said. [complete article]

Iran’s supreme leader rebuffs Ahmadinejad in gas row
By Robert Tait, The Guardian, January 21, 2008

The political authority of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suffered a serious blow today after the country’s most powerful figure sided with MPs by ordering him to supply cheap gas to villages undergoing power cuts amid an unexpectedly harsh winter.

In a humiliating rebuff, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who has the final say over all state matters, ordered the enactment of a law requiring the government to provide £500m of gas supplies from emergency reserve funds.

Ahmadinejad had refused to implement the measure, accusing parliament of exceeding its powers in passing the bill in response to plummeting temperatures and gas cuts, which have left many areas without heating during the country’s coldest winter in years.

At least 64 people are reported to have died after gas supplies were turned off in sub-zero temperatures. The cuts, belying Iran’s status as possessor of the world’s second biggest natural gas reserves, have provoked public outrage and threaten to turn a mood of rumbling unhappiness into a winter of discontent for Ahmadinejad. [complete article]

Iran sanctions ripple past those in power
By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times, January 20, 2008

Sanctions weren’t supposed to hurt Majid Taleghani. But the Iranian book publisher says they have forced him to increase prices and scale back the number of titles he issues.

“In the past few weeks, the price of South Korean paper has soared at least 25%,” Taleghani complained, chain-smoking nervously. “Why? South Korean banks refuse to open letters of credit. They won’t work with Iranian banks anymore.”

President Bush’s recent tour through the Middle East was meant in part to rally U.S. allies against Iran before talks Tuesday in Berlin by members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany over the possibility of imposing a third round of sanctions on Iran to pressure the government to halt its nuclear program.

A year after the Security Council first imposed sanctions, they clearly have begun to have an effect. But in an echo of the debate over sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, diplomats and economic analysts disagree sharply over whether such measures would pressure those in power to change their policies or merely hurt the Iranian people. [complete article]

NEWS: The foreign insurgent network; Sunni rivalries in Anbar

Papers paint new portrait of Iraq’s foreign insurgents
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, January 21, 2008

Muhammad Ayn-al-Nas, a 26-year-old Moroccan, started his journey in Casablanca. After flying to Turkey and then to Damascus, he reached his destination in a small Iraqi border town on Jan. 31, 2007. He was an economics student back home, he told the al-Qaeda clerk who interviewed him on arrival. Asked what sort of work he hoped to do in Iraq, Nas replied: “Martyr.”

Algerian Watsef Mussab, 29, who arrived in Iraq via Saudi Arabia and Syria, said he had come for combat. He complained that the Syrian smugglers who brought him to the border took his money, but he contributed what he had left to the insurgent cause — a watch, a ring and an MP3 player.

Hanni al-Sagheer, a computer technician from Yemen and aspiring suicide volunteer, gave the clerk his home telephone number and also that of his brother.

Their stories are among the individual records of 606 foreign fighters who entered Iraq between August 2006 and August 2007. The cache of documents was discovered last fall by U.S. forces in the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar.

Some include pictures — bearded men in a turban or kaffiyeh, some smiling and some scowling — in addition to names and aliases, home countries, birthdays and dates of entry into Iraq. Many list their occupations at home, whether plumber, laborer, policeman, lawyer, soldier or teacher. There is a “massage specialist,” a “weapons merchant,” a few “unemployed” and many students.

The youngest was 16 when he crossed into Iraq; the oldest was 54. Most expressed interest in a suicide mission.

The records [PDF] are “one of the deepest reservoirs of information we’ve ever obtained of the network going into Iraq,” according to a U.S. official closely familiar with intelligence on the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. [complete article]

In Anbar, Sunni rivalries surface
By Ned Parker and Saif Rasheed, Los Angeles Times, January 21, 2008

Hadi Hussein, a Sunni fighter working with U.S. and Iraqi forces, was receiving well-wishers Sunday when his 18-year-old cousin walked up with a box of chocolates. The teenager offered a candy, but didn’t wait for a response. He detonated hidden explosives, killing himself, Hussein and four others.

“This is life, we have two brothers, one is good, one is bad in the same family,” said Aftan Sadoun Aftan, the head of Hussein’s Sunni Arab paramilitary unit in the village of Ameriyat Fallouja in Anbar province.

Hussein had just been freed by the Americans after being wrongly detained for a week, said Aftan, who left the party a few minutes before the blast. About 20 clansmen were drinking juice and eating candies when the teen, Ali Abdullah Hussein, set off his explosives.

The bloodshed Sunday, one day after two suicide bombers killed a pair of policemen in nearby Ramadi, was a reminder of how complicated the dynamics remain in Anbar, where the violence is not just strictly a matter of tribesmen rising up against Islamic radicals. [complete article]

IDEAS: Developing a sustained capacity for realistic thinking

Only science can save us from climate catastrophe
By John Gray, The Observer, January 20, 2008

If there was ever an example of humankind being unable to bear too much reality, it is the current debate on climate change. No reasonable person any longer doubts that the world is heating up or that this change has been triggered by human activity. Aside from a dwindling band that rejects the clear findings of science, everyone accepts that we face an unprecedented challenge. At the same time, there is a pervasive belief that this is a crisis that can be solved by feelgood gestures such as eating organic foods and refusing to fly or installing a wind turbine on the roof

When it comes to deciding what should be done, most people, including the majority of environmentalists, shrink from the discomfort that goes with realistic thinking. George W Bush seems to have been persuaded that climate science is not a left-wing conspiracy to destroy the American economy. Along with the rest of our political leaders, however, he continues to insist there are no limits to growth. As long as we adopt new technologies that are supposedly environment-friendly, such as biofuels, economic expansion can go on as before.

At the other end of the spectrum, greens put their faith in sustainable growth and renewable energy. The root of the environmental crisis, they say – and here they agree with Bush – is our addiction to fossil fuels. If only we switch to wind, wave and solar power, all will be well.

In political terms, Bush and the greens could not be further apart, but they are as one in resisting the most fundamental fact about the environmental crisis, which is that it cannot be resolved without a major reduction in our impact on the Earth. This means curbing the production of greenhouse gases, but here fashionable policies can be self-defeating. The shift to biofuels, led by Bush but which is also underway in other parts of the world involves further destruction of rainforest, a key natural regulator of the climate. Reducing emissions while destroying the planet’s natural mechanisms for soaking them up is not a solution. It is a recipe for disaster.

Yet standard green prescriptions are not much better. Many renewables are not as efficient or as eco-friendly as they are made out to be. Unsightly and inefficient wind farms will not enable us to give up fossil fuels, while large-scale hydroelectric power has major environmental costs. Moving over to organic methods of food production can have significant benefits in terms of animal welfare and reducing fuel costs, but it does nothing to stop the devastation of wilderness that goes with expanding farming to feed a swelling human population. [complete article]

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]

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?

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?

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

EDITORIAL: Having reason to doubt the CIA

Having reason to doubt the CIA
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 19, 2008

On the basis of an interview with CIA director Michael V. Hayden, the Washington Post reports that “The CIA has concluded that members of al-Qaeda and allies of Pakistani tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud were responsible for last month’s assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and that they also stand behind a new wave of violence threatening that country’s stability.” Describing this as the “most definitive public assessment by a U.S. intelligence official,” the Post says that Hayden’s “view mirrors the Pakistani government’s assertions.” The New York Times cites an anonymous American intelligence official who “said that ‘different pieces of information‘ had pointed toward Mr. Mehsud’s responsibility, but he would not provide any details.” The Los Angeles Times says that, “The CIA assessment concurred with that of Pakistani officials.” Washington and Musharraf see eye to eye when it comes to the Bhutto assassination.

What the leading American newspaper’s have done is to gently massage a story in such a way that they avoid pointing out that either the director of the CIA is a fool or that he regards the reporters he talks to as suckers. Hayden told the Post that the assassination “was done by that network around Baitullah Mehsud. We have no reason to question that.” An intelligence official told the New York Times that there were “powerful reasons” for believing this, and the Los Angeles Times was told that “There is certainly no reason to doubt that Mahsud was behind this.”

This is the epitome of faith-based intelligence. It is no more conclusive than any other expression of faith. To report Hayden’s statement as a “definitive public assessment,” is to dress up an opinion with the trappings of authority for no other reason than that it came out of the mouth of the director of the CIA. Hayden said it. It is therefore a definitive statement. He’s bald and appears to have a big brain. It must be true.

In response to demands for an international inquiry into Bhutto’s assassination, President Musharraf acquiesed by allowing investigators from Scotland Yard to visit Pakistan. In the parts of the Hayden interview that were reported, he made no reference to that inquiry. That should perhaps come as no surprise, since according to Raw Story‘s Larisa Alexandrovna, “British investigators are not examining the question of who killed Benazir Bhutto. They were only charged with identifying the cause of her death.” She cites both Scotland Yard and an MI6 spokesman as her sources.

There seems little reason to doubt that the CIA and the White House think that their interests are not going to be served by efforts to unravel the mystery around this event. But even if that is the case, General Hayden could boost his own credibility and that of the Agency by avoiding treating conjecture as conclusive. Intelligence might be described as a craft of informed conjecture, but speculation is only as good as the information on which it is based. If Hayden can only say that he has no reason to doubt that Meshud was behind the killing, it seems reasonable to infer that he has yet to be shown any compelling evidence for reaching that conclusion.

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Developments in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Pakistan military retreats from Musharraf’s influence
By Tim Johnson, McClatchy, January 18, 2008

As President Pervez Musharraf grows more unpopular in Pakistan, his newly named successor as army chief is seeking to distance the institution from the Musharraf regime and pull back its virtual occupation of the top senior ranks of civilian ministries and state corporations.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was named to the top military job in late November, took two steps this week. First, he barred all senior military officers from meeting directly with Musharraf without prior approval and prohibited officers from having any direct involvement in politics. Second, he recalled many army officers from civilian job assignments.

Kayani’s new path could help restore the image of a military that’s bruised by association with Musharraf’s excesses during eight years of rule since a 1999 coup and weakened by the worsening domestic security situation. [complete article]

Frontier insurgency spills Into Peshawar
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, January 18, 2008

At the core of the troubles here, many say, lie demands by the United States that the Pakistani military, generously financed by Washington, join in its campaign against terrorism, which means killing fellow Pakistanis in the tribal areas. Even if those Pakistanis are extremists, the people here say, they do not like a policy of killing fellow tribesmen, and fellow countrymen, particularly on behalf of the United States.

The Bush administration is convinced that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have gained new strength in the past two years, particularly in the tribal regions of North and South Waziristan and Bajaur. It has said it is considering sending American forces to help the Pakistani soldiers in those areas. Mr. Musharraf has scoffed at the idea.

Any direct intervention by American forces would only strengthen the backlash now under way against soldiers and the police in Peshawar, said Farook Adam Khan, a lawyer here. That reaction spread last week to Lahore, the capital of Punjab Province, where a suicide bomber killed almost two dozen policemen at a lawyers’ rally, he said.

“Pakistani soldiers never used to be targets,” Mr. Khan said. “Now we have the radicals antagonized by Musharraf and his politics of cozying up to the United States.” [complete article]

Militants make a claim for talks
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, January 18, 2008

Islamabad has tried to defuse the situation by negotiating with selected Taliban leaders. Most recently, a Pakistani Taliban shura (council) headed by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan responded positively to a government offer of a ceasefire, despite opposition from Takfiri elements who view non-practicing Muslims as infidels.

The backlash was immediate. Militants launched attacks in Mohmand Agency, followed by Wednesday’s mass assault.

This response is orchestrated by al-Qaeda from its camps around the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan. Al-Qaeda views any peace agreements with the Pakistani Taliban as a government maneuver to split the militants, and also says Islamabad has been consistently intransigent over the years.

Al-Qaeda demands that it be the chief interlocutor in any peace talks, and it has set its bottom line: guarantees of the withdrawal of all security forces from the tribal areas; enforcement of sharia law, the release of Maulana Abdul Aziz of the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), who was apprehended last year; and that President Pervez Musharraf step down. [complete article]

Talking to the wrong people
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, January 19, 2008

Throughout 2007, the British Embassy in Kabul under Sherard Cowper Coles made desperate overtures in southwestern Afghanistan to find a political solution with the Taliban, but without Mullah Omar. Multiple clandestine operations were launched and millions of dollars were funneled to the Taliban.

However, it all came to nothing and only caused serious differences between the two major allies – Britain and the US. And all the time the Taliban consolidated their position in the south.

The case of Irishman Michael Semple, who was acting head of the European Union mission in Kabul, is instructive. The fluent Dari-speaking Semple had spent over 18 years in Afghanistan in various capacities, including with the United Nations and as an advisor to the British Embassy in Kabul, before being expelled last month after being accused of talking to the Taliban. [complete article]

NATO hears ‘noise before defeat’
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, January 19, 2008

Ashdown’s real mission [– Paddy Ashdown is the UN’s newly appointed special envoy to Afghanistan –] lies elsewhere, in addressing the core issue: What do we do with the Taliban? No doubt, the Taliban’s exclusion from the Bonn conference seven years ago proved to be a horrible mistake. That was also how the Afghan and Pakistan problem came to be joined at the hips.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf made a valid point in his interview with the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel this week when he said al-Qaeda isn’t the real problem that faces Pakistan. “I don’t deny the fact that al-Qaeda is operating here [Pakistan]. They are carrying out terrorism in the tribal areas; they are the masterminds behind these suicide bombings. While all of this is true, one thing is for sure: the fanatics can never take over Pakistan. This is not possible. They are militarily not so strong they can defeat our army, with its 500,000 soldiers, nor politically – and they do not stand a chance of winning the elections. They are much too weak for that,” Musharraf said.

The heart of the matter is Pashtun alienation. The Taliban represent Pashtun aspirations. As long as Pashtuns are denied their historical role in Kabul, Afghanistan cannot be stabilized and Pakistan will remain in turmoil. Musharraf said, “There should be a change of strategy right away. You [NATO] should make political overtures to win the Pashtuns over.”

This may also be the raison d’etre of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s intriguing choice of a Briton as his new special representative. Conceivably, the inscrutable Ban has been told by Washington that Ashdown is just the right man to walk on an upcoming secretive bridge, which will intricately connect New York, Washington, London, Riyadh, Islamabad and Kabul. [complete article]

REVIEW: Leaderless Jihad, by Marc Sageman

A fresh look at terrorism’s roots
Leaderless Jihad by Marc Sageman, reviewed by David Isenberg, Asia Times, January 19, 2008

Among Sageman’s most useful points is his description of al-Qaeda both as a social movement and an ideology. The most important thing the United States can do, in countering global Islamic terrorism, is to avoid the mistakes of the early Cold War era when policymakers assumed that communism was one global monolithic movement. It wasn’t and neither is al-Qaeda. Even before September 11 it had evolved beyond the group that had first formed in the aftermath of fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and it has evolved several times since, and will continue to do so. Increasingly, to paraphrase, the old cliche about politics, all terrorism is local.

Sageman also does an excellent job of debunking the conventional wisdom as to how people become terrorists, ie, that they are brainwashed when they are immature children or teenagers, that they lack family obligations, act out of sexual frustration, that there is something intrinsically wrong with them (the “bad seed” school of thought).

Sageman finds that one of the greatest motivators for joining an Islamic terrorist social movement is the one that is most easily understood; relationships with friends and kin. In other words, there is no to-down recruitment into al-Qaeda. Rather, the movement forms through the spontaneous self-organization of informal, trusted friends. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: New torture tapes?

Lawyers for detainee refer in filing to more CIA tapes
By Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post, January 19, 2008

Attorneys for a former detainee at a secret CIA prison said in a court filing this week that intelligence officials had falsely claimed in public statements that his interrogations were not videotaped, that all videotaped interrogations stopped in 2002 and that only a small number of CIA detainees were subjected to unusually harsh interrogation techniques.

The basis of the assertions was redacted from the filing by the Bush administration, under an unusually stringent security order that blocks the attorneys for Majid Khan from disclosing evidence of the alleged falsehoods or detailing how Khan was treated while in CIA custody.

Khan, one of 14 detainees whom the CIA secretly imprisoned before transferring them last year to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has said he was systematically tortured. His attorneys at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights have been pressing for a court order to prevent the government from destroying evidence of his treatment. [complete article]

The official story unfolds
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, January 18, 2008

The destruction of the CIA torture tapes is still a fairly young scandal as Washington scandals go. It hasn’t even acquired a “gate” suffix. But the Administration is already busily choreographing it, with the dozens of shiny metal parts clicking away in synchronicity, like a finely designed mechanical watch. There is an admirable efficiency to the political process. If only these people were a fraction as good at the work of government as they are at political shenanigans, I keep thinking. The Bush Administration plan is simple: let’s think of this as a movie–Abu Ghraib, The Sequel. Instead of offering up a group of young grunts for the sacrifice, this time it will be a retired senior management figure at the CIA and some of his subordinates. And this sacrifice will, in the White House’s view, divert attention from the real source of both scandals, which is high in the upper reaches of the Executive Branch. Inside the White House, in fact. [complete article]