My talk with Fareed Zakaria: Obama must face a post-American world
By Nathan Gardels, Huffington Post, June 3, 2008
If Barack Obama succeeds in his campaign against John McCain and becomes president of the United States, he will have to deal with much deeper issues beyond Iraq, namely the “rise of the rest” as China, India and the developing world aspire to catch up with America and want a seat at the table of global power. In such a world, the strategic vision of US leadership ought to be
to make the world safe for interdependence since we will not always be on top.

I discussed these issues recently with Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World.

Republicans begin to highlight Clinton’s criticism of Obama
By Mark Preston, CNN, June 3, 2008
Hours before the polls closed Tuesday in the final two Democratic presidential primaries, the Republican National Committee began circulating a video of Hillary Clinton questioning Barack Obama’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief, and acknowledging John McCain has this important presidential credential.

“Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002,” Clinton says in the one-minute video of CNN’s coverage of a news conference she held on March 8 – the day Obama won the Wyoming caucuses. “I think that is a significant difference. I think that since we now know Senator McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that.

“And I think it is imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold. And I believe I have done that. Certainly, Senator McCain has done that. And you will have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy.”

McCain calls Iran ‘foremost’ Middle East enemy
By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, June 2, 2008
Sen. John McCain called Monday for broad sanctions against Iran and a South African-style worldwide divestment strategy aimed at pressuring the country’s regime to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and encourage its people’s democratic aspirations.

In a speech to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC in Washington, McCain declared Iran the “foremost” enemy in the Middle East and said it could pose an “existential threat” to Israel if it succeeds in acquiring a nuclear bomb.

“A sponsor of both Hamas and Hezbollah, the leadership of Iran has repeatedly used violence to undermine Israel and the Middle East peace process,” McCain said. “It has trained, financed, and equipped extremists in Iraq who have killed American soldiers fighting to bring freedom to that country. It remains the world’s chief sponsor of terrorism and threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East, from Basra to Beirut.”

Both McCain, Obama exaggerating Iran’s nuclear program
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, June 2, 2008
The presumptive Republican nominee for president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination are exaggerating what’s known about Iran’s nuclear program as they duel over how best to deal with Tehran.

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project.

Cheney builds an explosive case
By Gareth Porter, Asia Times, June 4, 2008
For many months, the propaganda line that explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) that could penetrate United States armored vehicles were coming straight from Iran has been embraced publicly by the entire George W Bush administration. But when that argument was proposed internally by military officials in January 2007, it was attacked by key administration officials as unsupported by the facts.

Vice President Dick Cheney was able to get around those objections and get his Iranian EFP line accepted only because of arrangements he and Bush made with General David Petraeus before he took command of US forces in Iraq.

The initial draft of the proposed military briefing on the issue of EFPs, which asserted flatly that EFPs were being manufactured and smuggled to Iraqi Shi’ite groups directly by the Iranian regime, was met with unanimous objection from the State Department, Defense Department and National Security Council staff, as administration officials themselves stated publicly.

Terror and truth
By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, June 1, 2008
Sir Hugh Orde speaks rarely heard truth when he says that he has never heard of a terrorist campaign that was “policed out”, adding that he could not think of one that had not ended through negotiation.

There has been an unshakeable faith in Europe that western law-enforcement officers could pad around the bazaars of Rawalpindi and in the refugee camps of the Middle East hunting-down “bad actors”. It has been a fantasy fuelled by the conviction in the west that “secular” Muslim societies must at heart be pro-western – surely they must share the antipathy many in the west feel toward movements motivated by Islam? The flawed assumption has been that these seculars loathe movements such as Hizbullah, and would become the west’s ready collaborators in undermining them.

But as Sir Hugh evidently is aware from his own Irish experience of resistance movements, it was never this simple. In one family around the dinner table would sit one brother in one wing of the IRA; another would belong to Sinn Fein, and yet another would be in the employ of the British – and yet, all saw themselves as Irish nationalists.

And the winner is … the Israel lobby
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, June 3, 2008
They’re all here – and they’re all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates – John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.

Such star power wattage, a Washington version of the Oscars, is the stock in trade of AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crucial player in what is generally known as the Israel lobby and which holds its annual Policy Conference this week in Washington at which most of the heavyweights will deliver lectures.

‘Syria to meet with weapons inspectors about site bombed by Israel
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, June 3, 2008
Nine months after Israel bombed an alleged Syrian nuclear site, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to hold talks in Damascus with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency about the remote desert compound, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced yesterday, ending a long deadlock over access to the location.

Syria will allow international access to the al-Kibar site on the Euphrates River, but has turned down the IAEA’s request to go to at least three other facilities that U.S. intelligence says may be connected to a reactor and a clandestine nuclear weapons program, said Western diplomats familiar with the talks, which are scheduled for June 22-24. The other sites include possible reprocessing facilities, which are essential for production of fissile material.

The new face of Islam
By Christopher Dickey and Owen Matthews , Newsweek, June 9, 2008
Important Muslim thinkers, including some on whom bin Laden depended for support, have rejected his vision of jihad. Once sympathetic publics in the Middle East and South Asia are growing disillusioned. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, “Fundamentally, no one really liked Al Qaeda’s vision of the future.” At the same time, and potentially much more important over the long run, a new vision of Islam, neither bin Laden’s nor that of the traditionalists who preceded him, is taking shape. Momentum is building within the Muslim world to re-examine what had seemed immutable tenets of the faith, to challenge what had been taken as literal truths and to open wide the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) that some schools of Islam tried to close centuries ago.

We are all appeasers now
By Gary Kamiya, Salon, June 3, 2008
Of the major presidential candidates, only Obama has dared to unequivocally reject the Appeasement Paradigm. He has vowed to end not only the Iraq war but, crucially, also what he called “the mind-set that got us into war in the first place.”

The coming election is shaping up to be a referendum not just on Iraq but on that black-and-white mind-set. McCain and the GOP will relentlessly attack Obama as weak, inexperienced and cowardly, pointing to his willingness to talk to our enemies as evidence. But the fact is that what Obama is proposing is simply rational, realistic foreign policy. And the proof is that the rest of the world, including Israel, has defied the Bush administration and is talking to the “terrorists.”

If it’s appeasement to talk to “evildoers,” we are all appeasers now. Everywhere you look, our allies — or we ourselves — are negotiating with members of the “Axis of Evil” and their allies.

Americans favor president meeting with U.S. enemies
By Lydia Saad, Gallup, June 2, 2008
Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even about half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States. Overall, 67% of Americans say this kind of diplomacy is a good idea.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships
By Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, June 2, 2008
The United States is operating “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

McCain’s McClellan nightmare
By Frank Rich, New York Times, June 2, 2008
Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution.

That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem. Even if he locks the president away in a private home, the war will keep seeping under the door, like the blood in “Sweeney Todd.”

Mr. McCain and his party are in denial about this. “Elections are about the future” is their mantra. On “Hardball” in April, Mr. McCain pooh-poohed debate about “whether we should have invaded or not” as merely “a good academic argument.” We should focus on the “victory” he magically foresees instead.

Iraqi officials worry about security deal with U.S.
By Leila Fadel, McClatchy, May 30, 2008
Thousands of followers of militant Muqtada al Sadr peacefully took to the streets Friday following his call to protest a bilateral pact that would govern the economic, security and political relationship between Iraq and the United States.

The Status of Forces Agreement and an economic and political accord are expected to be completed by July and must pass the parliament before being finalized. Already voices of dissent are in the air.

The United Nation’s mandate that allows foreign forces to occupy Iraq will not be renewed at the end of the year. So any future U.S. military involvement in the war-torn nation can only continue with such an agreement.

Taliban leader flaunts power inside Pakistan
By Jane Perlez, New York Times, June 2, 2008
With great fanfare, the Pakistani Army flew journalists to a rugged corner of the nation’s lawless tribal areas in May to show how decisively it had destroyed the lairs of the Taliban, including a school for suicide bombers, in fighting early this year.

Then, just days later, the usually reclusive leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, held a news conference of his own, in the same region, to show just who was in charge.

He rolled up in an expensive-looking Toyota pickup packed with heavily armed Taliban fighters, according to the Pakistani journalists invited to attend. Squatting on the floor of a government school, Mr. Mehsud, clasping a new Kalashnikov, announced he would press his fight against the American military across the border in Afghanistan.

Bhutto dealt nuclear secrets to N. Korea, book says
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, June 1, 2008
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment — a route to making a nuclear weapon — to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well.

The assertion is based on conversations that the author, Shyam Bhatia, had with Bhutto in 2003, in which she said she would tell him a secret “so significant that I had to promise never to reveal it, at least not during her lifetime,” Bhatia writes in “Goodbye, Shahzadi,” which was published in India last month.

Bhutto was slain in December while campaigning to win back the prime minister’s post.

The account, if verified, could advance the timeline for North Korea’s interest in uranium enrichment. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a research organization on nuclear weapons programs, said the assertion “makes sense,” because there were signs of “funny procurements” in the late 1980s by North Korea that suggested a nascent effort to assemble a uranium enrichment project.

Washington trip lets suspect be statesman
By Paul Woodward, The National, June 2, 2008
“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s departure for the US on Monday night may well turn out to be a tour to bid farewell to his friends in Washington. But Olmert is doing his best to make the visit look like everything is under control: He even extended his stay in the US by one day,” Barak Ravid wrote for Haaretz.

“Indeed, Olmert’s entourage is comforting itself with the strong friendship struck up with US President George W Bush. Olmert is also slated to meet with presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”

Jeffrey Heller writing for Reuters saw parallels with an earlier excursion: “Denying any wrongdoing in an investigation that was gathering speed, the embattled leader set off on a foreign visit to discuss issues at the heart of US-Israeli relations and the Middle East conflict.

“Richard Nixon landed in Israel in June, 1974 at the height of the Watergate scandal to a red-carpet welcome and trumpet fanfare that struck a note far different from the political discord he left back home.

A year later, Hamas rule deepens in Gaza
By Steven Gutkin, AP, June 1, 2008
A year into Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip, courts are meting out justice, police are arresting thieves, motorists are paying for licenses and authorities are blocking Internet porn sites.

At the same time, Gazans are stocking up on vegetable oil — not for cooking, but to run their cars during a severe fuel shortage. A punishing Israeli-led blockade has forced 80 percent of the people to rely on United Nations food handouts. With sanitation services collapsing, millions of gallons of raw sewage are flowing into the sea. Enemies of the regime have been silenced.

A year after Hamas militants seized power in five days of bloody fighting that included tossing rivals off high-rise rooftops, it’s become clear that Israel’s boycott of Gaza has not significantly weakened Hamas and its control is deepening.

Saudi clerics criticize Shiites for destabilizing
By Donna Abu Nasr, AP, June 1, 2008
Hardline Sunni clerics accused Shiites Sunday of destabilizing Muslim countries and humiliating Sunnis, just days before a Muslim interfaith conference called by Saudi Arabia’s king.

The attacks on Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah — though contrary to official policy — highlight the sharp, growing distrust between Islam’s two arms, and its potential to cause more unrest.

In a strongly worded statement, the 22 clerics savaged Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, saying the Lebanese Shiite group has tricked other Muslims into believing it is against Jews and Americans.