Author Archives: News Sources

NEWS: No big shifts planned after report on Iraq

No big shifts planned after report on Iraq
By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, August 25, 2007

Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They said that next month’s report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year and that they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches. [complete article]

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NEWS: Hear a general, hug a sheik: Congress visits Iraq

Hear a general, hug a sheik: Congress visits Iraq
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Damien Cave, New York Times, August 26, 2007

The meal was just one stop in a jam-packed tour that included visits with Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders (”a sheik engagement,” the Pentagon itinerary said), a chat with the Kurdish deputy prime minister and the all-important photographs with hometown soldiers to show constituents at election time. Just another day in Baghdad in August, high season for Congressional travel to Iraq.

The trips, highly choreographed affairs known as codels, for Congressional delegations, are an annual rite of summer for lawmakers, but they have taken on fresh urgency. With Democrats running Congress and Mr. Bush’s troop increase due for an intense re-evaluation in September, roughly 50 lawmakers have tromped through Iraq this summer, and their impressions are having a profound effect on the debate. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I don’t imagine Congressional tourism is much different from tourism in general: it’s about the convenience packaging of experience for those who lack the time or interest to accumulate real depth of understanding and a true sense of place.

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NEWS: Brzezinski embraces Obama over Clinton for president

Brzezinski embraces Obama over Clinton for president
By Janine Zacharia, Bloomberg, August 24, 2007

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.

Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world,” Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Spying program may be tested by terror case

Spying program may be tested by terror case
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, August 26, 2007

The case is significant in a second way, as a vivid illustration of a new form of pre-emptive law enforcement intended to stop terrorism before it happens, even at the expense of charges of entrapment.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an obligation to use all available investigative tools,” prosecutors wrote in a brief urging the court to impose harsh sentences in February, “including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets.”

The lead prosecutor, William C. Pericak, an assistant United States attorney, said the sting had worked perfectly.

“You can’t put a percentage on how likely these guys would have been to commit an act of terrorism,” Mr. Pericak said in an interview in his office at the federal courthouse here. “But if a terrorist came to Albany, my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The idea of “pre-emptive law enforcement” comes straight out of movies like “Minority Report” (representing a future in which criminals are caught before they’ve committed a crime). Anyone who finds comfort in this kind of security should kiss goodbye to democracy. This approach to national security doesn’t present the risk of leading to an authoritarian state; it exemplifies the operation of such a state.

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NEWS: Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah; Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel

Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

The London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Sunday that Israeli mediators are involved in efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

The southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by MK Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur, is involved in the mediation efforts, according to the report.

The newspaper also reported that the Hamas leadership is considering an initiative proposing it hand back Gaza Strip security compounds seized from Fatah in June in order to achieve reconciliation with the rival group. [complete article]

Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday he opposes the exchange of populated territory between Israel and the PA within the framework of a peace deal.

At a meeting with Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh,
Abbas stated he is against a final status accord under which areas in Israel containing Arab Israelis would become part of a future Palestinian state’s territory. This would be in return for settlement blocs in the West Bank remaining under Israeli sovereignty. [complete article]

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NEWS: Taliban raise poppy production to a record again

Taliban raise poppy production to a record again
By David Rohde, New York Times, August 26, 2007

Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to touch off renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been hampered by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Has Iran paused its uranium enrichment program?

Has Iran paused its uranium enrichment program?
By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy, August 25, 2007

Iran appears not to have significantly expanded its uranium enrichment program this summer, a development that has many experts wondering whether the threat of sanctions finally has had an impact on the Iranian government.

Experts won’t know for sure if Iran has paused its program until a report this week from a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who were in Iran last week for the third round of inspections this summer. A public debate on the report is scheduled for the IAEA’s Sept. 10 meeting.

But after five years of frustration at a lack of Iranian cooperation, those who closely follow Iran’s nuclear program believe that Iran’s resumption of IAEA inspections coupled with the apparent halt in expansion may signal that the Islamic Republic is willing to compromise. [complete article]

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NEWS: Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal

Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal
By Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, August 26, 2007

After two years of painstaking negotiations, a historic nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India appears to be unraveling as a broad spectrum of political parties calls on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, saying it limits the country’s sovereignty in energy and foreign policy matters.

The landmark accord that just weeks ago looked like a major foreign policy triumph for this energy-starved subcontinent has become a political liability for India’s fragile ruling coalition.

The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived as having caved in to key Indian demands. The administration had assured the government here that it could receive uninterrupted nuclear supplies from the United States and maintain the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — a potentially dangerous prospect because reprocessing technology can also be used to make weapons-grade plutonium. To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence. [complete article]

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COMMENTARY: “There is no question that we are less safe today as a result of this administration’s policies.” John Edwards

Reengaging with the world
By John Edwards, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2007

The “war on terror” approach has backfired, straining our military to the breaking point while allowing the threat of terrorism to grow. “War on terror” is a slogan designed for politics, not a strategy to make the United States safe. It is a bumper sticker, not a plan. Worst of all, the “war on terror” has failed. Instead of making the United States safer, it has spawned even more terrorism — as we have seen so tragically in Iraq — and left us with fewer allies.

There is no question that we are less safe today as a result of this administration’s policies. The Bush administration has walked the United States right into the terrorists’ trap. By framing this struggle against extremism as a war, it has reinforced the jihadists’ narrative that we want to conquer the Muslim world and that there is a “clash of civilizations” pitting the West against Islam. From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, the “war on terror” has tragically become the recruitment poster al Qaeda wanted. Instead of reengaging with the peoples of the world, we have driven too many into the terrorists’ arms. [complete article]

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NEWS: White House isn’t backing Iraq Study Group follow-up

White House isn’t backing Iraq Study Group follow-up
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, July 12, 2007

Despite an overwhelming House vote last month to revive the Iraq Study Group, the White House has blocked reconvening the bipartisan panel to provide a second independent assessment of the military and political situation in Iraq, said several sources involved in the panel’s December 2006 report.

Co-Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, several panel members and the U.S. Institute of Peace, which ran the study group, were willing to participate, according to Hamilton and the congressionally funded think tank. But the White House did not give the green light for co-chairman and former secretary of state James A. Baker III to participate, and Baker is unwilling to lead a second review without President Bush’s approval, according to members of the original panel and sources close to Baker.

White House support is critical for any follow-up review. “It is not likely to happen unless the White House approves it,” Hamilton, a Democratic former congressman from Indiana, said in an interview. “The group can’t go ahead without its concurrence or acquiescence, as we need travel support and access to documents.” [complete article]

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COMMENTARY: “The Bush administration is testing a new rationale for attacking Iran” – Stephen Kinzer

The new drumbeat on Iran
By Stephen Kinzer, The Guardian, July 11, 2007

Why attack Iran? War hawks in Washington are having trouble answering that question. Even their dire warnings about Iran’s nuclear program have not been enough to alarm Americans already weary of Middle East conflicts.

Now the war drums have taken on a different tone. The Bush administration is testing a new rationale for attacking Iran: We must strike because Iranians are killing our soldiers in Iraq.

This is not simply a charge made by one state against another in the hope that a misguided policy will be changed. It is also part of a calculated effort to find an argument for bombing Iran that Americans will accept.

The politically ambidextrous Senator Joseph Lieberman, a vigorous supporter of Israel and the Iraq war, floated the new gambit a couple of weeks ago. He calculated that Iran-trained units fighting in Iraq, and weapons from Iran or manufactured with Iranian help, have been responsible for the death of 200 American soldiers.

If Iran does not change course, he said, the United States should “take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.” [complete article]

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NEWS: New U.S. intelligence assessment casts doubts on Bush’s Iraq policy

New U.S. intelligence assessment casts doubts on Bush’s Iraq policy
By Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, July 11, 2007

The Shiite Muslim-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has made only “halting efforts” to end the power struggle fueling the war between Iraq’s religious and ethnic communities, a new U.S. intelligence report said Wednesday.

Even if the bloodletting can be contained, Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders will be “hard pressed” to reach lasting political reconciliation, the report stated.

The report, reflecting the consensus of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, cast new uncertainty about the chances of success for President Bush’s plan to contain the war through the deployment of an additional 28,000 U.S. troops, mostly in and around Baghdad.

The conclusions also appeared to be bleaker than a White House assessment produced by the top U.S. officials in Baghdad, which found that Iraqi politicians have made satisfactory progress on some of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress in May. [complete article]

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NEWS: The impossible task set for an embattled government

The impossible task set for an embattled government
By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, July 11, 2007

The benchmarks the Iraqi government is meant to achieve in exchange for US support were never realistic and have more to do with American than Iraqi politics.

The weak and embattled Iraqi government is supposed to make changes which the US at the height of its power in Iraq failed to make stick. At stake are policies deeply divisive among Iraqis that are to be introduced at the behest of a foreign power, the US, in a way that makes the Iraqi government look as if it is a client of America.

One US benchmark is for the elimination of militias and an end to sectarian violence. But the Shia-Kurdish parties that make up the ruling coalition almost all have their own powerful militias that they have no intention of dissolving. In much of southern Iraq the militias and the local police forces are the same. In almost all cases units of the security forces are unwilling to act against their own community. [complete article]

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