Author claims White House knew Iraq had no WMD
By Bob Considine, NBC, August 5, 2008

President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.

The charge is made in “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, released today.

Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.

The battle for a country’s soul
By Jane Mayer, New York Review of Books, August 14, 2008

Seven years after al-Qaeda’s attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America’s security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country’s soul.

In looking back, one of the most remarkable features of this struggle is that almost from the start, and at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America’s interests in the world. These warnings came not just from political opponents, but also from experienced allies, including the British Intelligence Service, the experts in the traditionally conservative military and the FBI, and, perhaps most surprisingly, from a series of loyal Republican lawyers inside the administration itself. The number of patriotic critics inside the administration and out who threw themselves into trying to head off what they saw as a terrible departure from America’s ideals, often at an enormous price to their own careers, is both humbling and reassuring.

Instead of heeding this well-intentioned dissent, however, the Bush administration invoked the fear flowing from the attacks on September 11 to institute a policy of deliberate cruelty that would have been unthinkable on September 10. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and a small handful of trusted advisers sought and obtained dubious legal opinions enabling them to circumvent American laws and traditions. In the name of protecting national security, the executive branch sanctioned coerced confessions, extrajudicial detention, and other violations of individuals’ liberties that had been prohibited since the country’s founding. They turned the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel into a political instrument, which they used to expand their own executive power at the expense of long-standing checks and balances.

Why misgovernment was no accident in George W. Bush’s Washington
By Thomas Frank, TomDispatch, August 4, 2008

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past, that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.

I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president’s friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.

How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president’s former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president’s liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.

Secret deal kept British Army out of battle for Basra
By Deborah Haynes and Michael Evans, The Times, August 5, 2008

A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt.

Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.

US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts.

Radical Iraq cleric in retreat
By Gina Chon, Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2008

Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — long a thorn in the side of the U.S. military and Iraqi government — intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization.

The transformation would represent a significant turnabout for a group that, as recently as earlier this year, was seen as one of the most destabilizing anti-American forces in Iraq. For much of the past several years, the Mahdi Army, headed by Mr. Sadr, a Shiite cleric, controlled sizable chunks of Baghdad and other cities. Its brand of pro-Shiite activism had the side effect of pitting Iraqis against each other, helping to stir worries of civil war.

Recently, however, the group has been hit by a largely successful Iraqi military crackdown against militia members operating as criminal gangs. At the same time, Mr. Sadr’s popular support is dwindling: Residents who once viewed the Mahdi Army as champions of the poor became alienated by what they saw as its thuggish behavior.

Who’s really running Iraq?
By Patrick Cockburn, Counterpunch, August 2, 2008

American politicians and journalists have repeatedly made the same mistake in Iraq over the past five years. This is to assume that the US is far more in control of events in the country than has ever truly been the case. This was true after the fall of Saddam Hussein when President Bush and his viceroy in Baghdad Paul Bremer believed that what Iraqis thought and did could safely be ignored. Within months guerrilla war against American forces was raging across central Iraq.

The ability of America to make unilateral decisions in Iraq is diminishing by the month, but the White House was still horrified to hear the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki appearing to endorse Barack Obama’s plan for the withdrawal of American combat troops over 16 months. This cut the ground from under the feet of John McCain who has repeatedly declared that ‘victory’ is at last within America’s grasp because of the great achievements of ‘the Surge’, the American reinforcements sent to Iraq in 2007 to regain control of Baghdad.

Iraqis no longer ask, ‘Are you Sunni or Shiite?’
By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy, August 3, 2008

For years, when she approached Iraqi Army checkpoints and produced an identification card for soldiers to study for clues about her sect, Nadia Hashim used a simple formula to signal the mostly Shiite Muslim force that she, too, is a Shiite.

“I am one of you,” she’d say.

The soldiers would harass Sunnis, but they’d simply wave Hashim through.

Now her pat line gets her an official reproach.

When a relative used it recently, a soldier admonished the driver and the passengers. “‘We are Iraqis, and you shouldn’t say such a thing,’ ” recalled Hashim.

U.S. may have taped visits to detainees
By Josh White, Washington Post, August 5, 2008

The Bush administration informed all foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams visiting their citizens held at Guantanamo Bay that video and sound from their interrogation sessions would be recorded, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The policy suggests that the United States could possess hundreds or thousands of hours of secret taped conversations between detainees and representatives from nearly three dozen countries.

Numerous State Department cables to foreign government delegations in 2002 and 2003 show that each country was subject to rules and regulations “to protect the interests and ensure the safety of all concerned.” Condition No. 1 stated that U.S. authorities would closely monitor the interrogations, a practice that the Defense Department confirmed last week was also carried out to gather intelligence.

“The United States will video tape and sound record the interviews between representatives of your government and the detainee(s) named above,” read several of the nearly identical cables, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Accused Al Qaeda sleeper agent in custody
By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2008

One of the more elusive and mysterious figures linked to Al Qaeda — a Pakistani mother of three who studied biology at MIT and who authorities say spent years in the United States as a sleeper agent — was flown to New York on Monday night to face charges of attempting to kill U.S. military and FBI personnel in Afghanistan.

The Justice Department, FBI and U.S. military in Afghanistan said that Aafia Siddiqui, 36, was arrested in Ghazni province three weeks ago. She is accused of firing an automatic rifle at FBI agents and soldiers and is scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Manhattan today.

Authorities believe Siddiqui used the technical skills she acquired at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do what virtually no other woman has accomplished — work her way into the clubby inner circles of Al Qaeda’s command and control operation, including its chemical and biological weapons program.

US eyes up Pakistan’s lawless lands
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, August 4, 2008

The turbulent prospect of direct US intervention against al-Qaida and Taliban jihadi bases in Pakistani territory adjoining Afghanistan appears to have moved closer following last week’s visit to Washington by Pakistan’s new prime minister, Yousef Raza Gilani.

Far from reassuring his hosts that Islamabad is on top of the situation in the so-called tribal areas, Gilani’s uncertain performance seems to have convinced US officials of the need to move quickly. A sub-text to this dangerously fast-moving drama is George Bush’s desire to catch or kill his 9/11 nemesis, Osama bin Laden, before he leaves office in January.

Bin Laden and senior al-Qaida leaders are believed to be in the lawless, former princely state of Swat, in North-West Frontier province, or in areas such as Waziristan in Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas. Their support for Taliban efforts to drive Nato forces out of Afghanistan has brought escalating military and civilian casualties – and pressure from US commanders to strike back across the border.

Syrian general’s killing severs Hezbollah links
By James Hider, The Times, August 5, 2008

The mysterious assassination of a senior Syrian Army official has severed another link between the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and its military suppliers, prompting rumours of tumult in the shadowy Damascus regime.

Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman, a close associate of Bashar al-Assad, the young Syrian president who succeeded his father eight years ago, was shot dead in the Syrian coastal resort of Tartous on Friday, apparently by a sniper fire from a yacht.

The killing came just months after Hezbollah’s leading military planner, Imad Mughniyeh, was blow to pieces by a bomb planted in his car, causing speculation that Syrian intelligence may have been infiltrated by foreign agents, the most common suspects being Israel or the US.

Hamas and Fatah are a bigger threat to the Palestinians than Israel
Editorial, Daily Star, August 5, 2008

It is a damning indication of just how bad things have become in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip when Fatah militants there must look to Israel for protection from their Palestinian rivals. The Jewish state announced on Monday that it would help a group of 150 Fatah fighters who had fled weekend clashes in Gaza relocate to the West Bank, after determining that they would face “imminent danger” if they were to return home. The scenes of Israel coming to the rescue of Palestinians after a bout of Arab fratricide were reminiscent of the events of Black September, during which scores of Palestinians sought asylum in Israel to escape King Hussein’s crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization. The only difference this time around is that instead of seeking refuge from a heavy-handed Arab crackdown, Palestinians are fleeing from the murderous hands of their own Palestinian brothers.

Achievement of the Palestinian cause requires that all factions maintain a semblance of orderliness and keep their eyes on the price of independent statehood. In this both Fatah and Hamas have been miserable failures. Both have put partisan interests ahead of national ones and therefore have failed to maintain anything like a united Palestinian front. Even the mediation attempts of Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have not been enough to curb the political infighting and internecine bloodshed that have served to further threaten the Palestinians’ very right to existence.

In Gaza, a blurry line between enemies and friends
By Ethan Bronner, New York Times, August 5, 2008

The events of the past few days in and around Gaza — mortar and grenade battles, negotiations drawing in Israel and Egypt, and the bizarre denouement in which Israel both saved and interrogated scores of Palestinian fighters — offer a glimpse of the byzantine nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While broadly presented to the world as a fight between the two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, the developments in fact mirror a more complex set of relationships and shifting alliances that help explain why this conflict remains so difficult to resolve.

Any fight here has its origins in earlier violence, so where to begin is problematic. Nonetheless, these particular events began at dawn on Saturday when Hamas forces, which have ruled Gaza for the past year, surrounded the home of the sprawling, well-armed and once powerful Hilles clan, whose chief had been associated with Fatah.

Gazans’ access to care faulted
By Linda Gradstein, Washington Post, August 5, 2008

Israel’s domestic security service requires Gazans who wish to enter Israel for medical treatment to submit to detailed interviews about their knowledge of political and militant groups, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a nonprofit group based in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli security service “uses the weakness, the helplessness of the Palestinian patients in Gaza in trying to pressure them to be collaborators,” said Ruchama Marton, the group’s founder. In a report released Monday, the group documents 32 cases of Palestinians who said they were told that a permit to enter Israel for medical care was conditional on being willing to deliver information.

Is Google making us stupid?
By Nicholas Carr, Atlantic Monthly, July-August, 2008

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Southern discomfort
By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, August 2, 2008

For as long as I’ve been alive the old Confederacy has been a land without closure, where history keeps coming at you day after day, year after year, decade after decade, as if the past were the present, too, and the future forever. Cities grew and populations changed in the South, but the Civil War lurked somehow in the shadow of mirror-sided skyscrapers; the holocaust of slavery and the sweet-bitter victories of the civil-rights movement lingered deep in the minds of people on both sides of the color line. Yes there was change, progress, prosperity, and a lot of it. Southerners put their faith in money and jobs and God Almighty to get them to a better place and better times—and for a lot of them, white and black, those times came. The South got to be a more complicated place, where rich and poor—which is pretty much all there was before World War II—gave way to a broad-spectrum bourgeoisie with big-time aspirations. But as air conditioning conquered the lethargy-inducing climate and Northerners by the millions abandoned the rust belt for the sun belt, the past wasn’t forgotten or forgiven so much as put aside while people got on with their lives and their business.

Now this part of the country, where I have my deepest roots, feels raw again, its political emotions more exposed than they’ve been in decades. George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have unsettled the South: the first with a reckless war and a weakened economy, the second with the color of his skin, the foreignness of his name, the lofty liberalism of his language. Suddenly the palliative prosperity that salved old, deep wounds no longer seems adequate to the task.

Obama central: peace, harmony and deep secrecy
By Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post, August 3, 2008

The bustling Obama headquarters on North Michigan Avenue invites comparisons to a start-up, teeming with young people in jeans clutching BlackBerrys as they walk through the halls. Yet in Democratic circles, another, potentially less welcome, parallel is being made: to the tight-knit and tight-lipped organization eight years ago of George W. Bush.

Decisions are guarded with extreme secrecy, none more so than the upcoming vice presidential selection, and that has occasionally irked members of Congress. In recent days, as Republicans publicly accused Sen. Barack Obama of appearing presumptuous during his presidential-style trip to Europe, Democrats privately expressed concerns that Obama has become too Chicago-centric, relying on his inner circle rather than a broader group that encourages input from Washington and elsewhere.

The fog of war-crimes trials
By Jonathan Mahler, New York Times, August 3, 2008

Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson opened the proceedings at Nuremberg not with a list of Nazi atrocities but with a tribute to the war-crimes court itself: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

The ensuing trials, though not without their flaws, largely fulfilled this lofty promise, standing as a monument to the rule of law and the very idea of conducting public trials for war criminals. As civilized people, we have a natural desire to see criminals held responsible for their actions. The desire is that much stronger in the case of large-scale crimes like genocides or terrorist attacks, which seem to demand not just accountability but a reaffirmation of the moral order — a public enumeration of what is right and what is wrong — that can be delivered only in a courtroom.

As the fighting swells in Afghanistan, so does a refugee camp in its capital
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, August 3, 2008

On a piece of barren land on the western edge of this capital, a refugee camp is steadily swelling as families displaced by the heavy bombardment in southern Afghanistan arrive in batches.

The growing numbers reaching Kabul are a sign of the deepening of the conflict between NATO and American forces and the Taliban in the south and of the feeling among the population that there will be no end soon. Families who fled the fighting around their homes in Helmand Province one or two years ago and sought temporary shelter around two southern provincial capitals, Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, said they had moved to Kabul because of growing insecurity across the south.

“If there was security in the south, why would we come here?” said Abdullah Khan, 50, who lost his father, uncle and a female relative in the bombing of their home last year. “We will stay here, even for 10 years, until the bombardment ends.”

Gaza infighting could topple Israel-Hamas truce
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 3, 2008

Some of the Fatah loyalists who fled from the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority following Hamas’ takeover in June 2007 described Saturday’s events in the Shijaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City – four Hamas dead and 80 others injured – as “poetic justice.”

Ahmed Khiles, a senior Fatah strongman in the Gaza Strip, who was quick to blame another Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan and his men, for Hamas’ violence in the Strip Saturday became the main target of the Islamist group. There is no particular reason for this turn of events, except that Khiles who had allied his clan with Hamas and was allowed to keep their arms is no longer perceived by Hamas as being useful.

Defiant Iran spurns deal over uranium plant
By Anne Penketh, The Independent, August 3, 2008

Iran’s President has issued a defiant warning to his country’s “enemies” as Tehran ignored a deadline from world powers hoping to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Iran’s refusal to give a clear answer by yesterday to the offer of technological and political incentives in return for suspending uranium enrichment rekindled tensions with the West and led to fresh warnings from Israel that military strikes remain an option.

But Tehran yesterday accused the West of double standards in the wake of the US’s nuclear deal with India.

Ten rules for the US in the Middle East
By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, August 2, 2008

Discussions of US policy in the Middle East mostly focus on Iraq and Iran these days. Yet Americans who follow their country’s Middle East policy ask about their posture throughout the region. The question comes up regularly in discussions on the Middle East in Washington and in other parts of the United States: What should the US do differently in the Middle East? I’ve discussed this often with colleagues and friends in recent months, generating my list of 10 principles and policies that I believe should define American policies in the Middle East:

First, politically engage all legitimate actors. The American tendency to boycott or try and destroy major players in the region, like Hizbullah and Hamas, is childish and counter-productive. All those whom the US has held at arms’ length have tended to become stronger in the region, partly by garnering public support for defying and resisting the US.

Legitimacy should be the main criterion for engaging major players in the region, and legitimacy should be defined as emanating from two sources: validation from the people in the Middle East (especially through elections), and adherence to international norms and standards. Where a locally legitimate and powerful player comes up short on one of these (such as Hamas’ occasional terror bombs in Israel), the response should be to bring them into a process that leads to their stopping such deeds and achieving their legitimate goals peacefully, as the United States, the United Kingdom and others did with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland so deftly.

Second, seek peace, security and prosperity for all according to a single standard. Foreign powers in the Middle East must give Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and Turks fully equal weight in terms of their rights and interests, rather than giving some countries priority or even exclusivity in areas like security, nuclear technology and others.

‘Bomb bomb Iran’? Not likely
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, August 3, 2008

Analysts speculate about the danger of a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran before the Bush administration departs office next January. But if you read the tea leaves carefully, the evidence is actually pointing in the opposite direction.

One sign that the diplomatic track is dominant for now is that the administration plans to announce late this month that it will open an interest section in Tehran, a senior official disclosed Thursday. This will be an important symbol, as it will be the first American diplomatic mission in Iran since the U.S. Embassy there was seized in 1979. The official described it as an effort to “reach out to the Iranian people.” The Iranian government has long had an interest section in Washington.

The administration’s wariness of military options is also clear from recent efforts to dissuade Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, traveled to Israel in early June; he was followed in late June by Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both officials explained to their Israeli counterparts why the United States believes an attack isn’t necessary now, because the Iranians can’t yet build a nuclear weapon, and why an attack would damage U.S. national interests.

Why Pakistan is unlikely to crack down on Islamic militants
By Jonathan S. Landay, McClatchy, August 1, 2008

The Bush administration and its allies are pressing Pakistan to end its support for Afghan insurgents linked to al Qaida, but Pakistani generals are unlikely to be swayed because they increasingly see their interests diverging from those of the United States, U.S. and foreign experts said.

The administration sought to ratchet up the pressure last month by sending top U.S. military and intelligence officials to Pakistan to confront officials there with intelligence linking Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to the Taliban and other militant Islamist groups.

When that failed to produce the desired response, U.S. officials told news organizations about the visit, and then revealed that the intelligence included an intercepted communication between ISI officers and a pro-Taliban network that carried out a July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Behind the Indian Embassy bombing
By Robert Kaplan, The Atlantic, August 1, 2008

According to U.S. intelligence sources, Pakistan’s intelligence service provided support to pro-Taliban insurgents responsible for the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which killed more than 40 people. Shocking though Pakistani involvement may seem to some, it is thoroughly predictable, given the worldview and interests of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Unless we address what’s angering the ISI, we won’t be able to stabilize Afghanistan or capture al-Qaeda leaders inside its borders.

The war in Afghanistan is part of Pakistan’s larger struggle with India. Afghanistan has been a prize that Pakistan and India have fought over directly and indirectly for decades. To Pakistan, Afghanistan represents a strategic rear base that would (along with the Islamic nations of ex-Soviet Central Asia) offer a united front against Hindu-dominated India and block its rival’s access to energy-rich regions. Conversely, for India, a friendly Afghanistan would pressure Pakistan on its western border—just as India itself pressures Pakistan on its eastern border—thus dealing Pakistan a strategic defeat.

Pakistan concedes some ISI spies sympathetic to Taliban
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2008

Stung by U.S. allegations that elements in its premier spy agency colluded with Islamic militants in last month’s bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, Pakistan acknowledged Friday that there “probably” were Taliban sympathizers within the ranks of its powerful intelligence establishment.

The Pakistani government, which immediately and indignantly denied the reports of its spies’ involvement in the bombing, reiterated that there was no evidence that members of its Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence had aided Taliban militants in the July 7 attack on the embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, which left about 60 people dead.

But by Friday evening, senior Pakistani officials were offering a more nuanced response to U.S. intelligence officials’ allegations of ISI complicity, which were first reported Thursday by the New York Times.

Afghan bombings kill 5 soldiers and interpreter
By Eric Schmitt, New York Times, August 2, 2008

Roadside bombs killed five soldiers, at least four of them Americans, and an interpreter in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, allied and Pentagon officials said.

Four United States Army soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in Kunar Province by what the Taliban claimed was a remote-controlled bomb, Reuters reported.

Anthrax scientist Bruce Ivins stood to benefit from a panic
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times, August 2, 2008

Bruce E. Ivins, the government biodefense scientist linked to the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001, stood to gain financially from massive federal spending in the fear-filled aftermath of those killings, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Ivins is listed as a co-inventor on two patents for a genetically engineered anthrax vaccine, federal records show. Separately, Ivins also is listed as a co-inventor on an application to patent an additive for various biodefense vaccines.

Ivins, 62, died Tuesday in an apparent suicide in Maryland. Federal authorities had informed his lawyer that criminal charges related to the mailings would be filed.

MI5 misled MPs over Briton’s secret rendition, court told
By # Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, August 2, 2008

MI5 misled MPs about what it knew of the whereabouts of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who says he was tortured before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay, the high court was told yesterday.

Mohamed’s lawyers also accused MI5 of not looking “too hard” at what was being done to him. The claims were made as the government came under renewed pressure after a former senior American official told Time magazine that the US imprisoned and interrogated at least one terrorist suspect on Diego Garcia, the UK territory in the Indian Ocean, contradicting repeated assurances by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.

Source: British territory used for US terror interrogation
By Adam Zagorin, Time, July 31, 2008

Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terror suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. “This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill,” the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program’s specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania.

According to a former senior American official, it appears another locale can be added to the international roster of interrogation sites — one both more obscure and potentially more controversial than the alleged sites in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

PHR demands trans-Atlantic investigation and International Red Cross access to all detainees in US custody
Physicians For Human Rights, July 31, 2008

Physicians For Human Rights calls on the House and Senate committees on Intelligence and Armed Services to hold CIA Director Hayden and senior Bush Administration officials accountable. PHR also calls on Parliament to determine what current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, current Foreign Secretary David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and other members of the Privy Council knew about US detention activities at Diego Garcia and when they knew it.

Since the publication of its landmark report in 2005 documenting the use of torture against detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces, PHR has been a leading voice in the effort to end the use of abusive interrogation techniques during interrogations of detainees held by the US military and intelligence services. PHR published in June the report Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of US Torture and its Impact, an analysis of medical and psychological evaluations of detainees held at US detention facilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The thirty-year war, revisited
By Paul Rogers, Open Democracy, July 31, 2008

What is the most realistic description of the conflict the United States launched after the attacks of 11 September 2001? As the seventh anniversary of this founding event approaches, and with no end to the conflict in sight, leading analysts are seeking to consign the formerly potent notions of the “war on terror” (or its sobering successor the “long war”) to early retirement. Some offer in their place a focus on “counter-terrorism”, implying opposition to the idea that a “battlefield solution” to the military campaign is possible. A new report by the RAND Corporation, for example, concludes that “the U.S. approach to countering al Qa’ida has focused far too much on the use of military force. Instead, policing and intelligence should be the backbone of U.S. efforts” (see Seth G Jones & Martin C Libicki, How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida, RAND Corporation, July 2008).

Apparent suicide in anthrax case
By David Willman, Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2008

A top government scientist who helped the FBI analyze samples from the 2001 anthrax attacks has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him for the attacks, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the last 18 years worked at the government’s elite biodefense research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Md., had been informed of his impending prosecution, said people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and the FBI investigation.

Ivins, whose name had not been disclosed publicly as a suspect in the case, played a central role in research to improve anthrax vaccines by preparing anthrax formulations used in experiments on animals.

A combat troop withdrawal from Iraq?
By Ned Parker and Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times, August 1, 2008

Iraqi officials said Thursday that they were close to finalizing a new security arrangement that would set out the goal of withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from the country, while stopping short of establishing a strict timetable for their departure.

The pact would outline a conditional time frame for Iraqi troops to take charge of the country and U.S. combat troops to be withdrawn, according to Iraqi officials familiar with the talks.

The Iraqis said the new arrangement would allow Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to claim that he has enshrined the principle of an American withdrawal, a key demand for a government eager to show independence from Washington while keeping the flexibility to extend the U.S. military presence if security deteriorates.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader may be in Afghanistan
By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post, July 31, 2008

The leader of the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and several of his top lieutenants have recently left Iraq for Afghanistan, according to group leaders and Iraqi intelligence officials, a possible further sign of what Iraqi and U.S. officials call growing disarray and weakness in the organization.

U.S. officials say there are indications that al-Qaeda is diverting new recruits from going to Iraq, where its fighters have suffered dramatic setbacks, to going to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they appear to be making gains.

Pakistanis aided attack in Kabul, U.S. officials say
By Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, August 1, 2008

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Israel and Hizballah ready to rumble?
By Nicholas Blanford, Time, August 1, 2008

Ever since they fought to a tie in their 2006 clash in southern Lebanon, Israel and Hizballah have assumed they will tangle again. And the date of their rematch may be drawing closer if some of the rhetoric on both sides is to be believed.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, on a trip to the United States this week, has been warning officials that Hizballah’s rocket arsenal has “doubled, if not tripled” since the end of the month-long war in the summer of 2006, during which the militia of the Shi’ite movement fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish State. “Israel considers this to be a real and serious danger,” Barak said.

But Hizballah has complaints of its own, this week accusing Israel of repeatedly violating Lebanese sovereignty on land, sea and particularly in its airspace, which is breached almost daily by Israeli jets and reconnaissance drones.

Into no-man’s land
By Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway, Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2008

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki are poised to conclude a bilateral “memorandum of understanding” that would authorize U.S. troops to continue military operations in Iraq. There is only one problem — the memo won’t be the binding law of the United States.

A memo isn’t a “treaty,” which requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate under Article 2 of the Constitution. It isn’t a “congressional-executive agreement,” which requires the approval of a majority of both houses of Congress under Article 1. It is just a statement of intent. According to the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, “memo” is the term that is “common for nonbinding documents.”

The United States is moving into legal no-man’s land because the president refuses to ask the U.N. Security Council to renew the annual resolution that provides the legal foundation for the presence of our troops in Iraq. If this resolution is allowed to expire on Dec. 31, it will create a legal vacuum — a vacuum that can’t be filled by a presidential memo.

Taliban winning the war of words
By Aunohita Mojumdar, Asia Times, July 26, 2008

In the first week of July, several people were killed in a village in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar by international forces. The US-led coalition forces described the operation as a precision air strike which had killed militants. Locals said they were civilians. Claims. Counter-claims. It seemed business as usual until investigations revealed that the air strike had in fact bombed a wedding party, killing 50, including the bride.

Though the incident was reported widely with concern for the civilian casualties, there was less attention on the other “collateral damage” it caused – the casualty of credibility.

The war of words between anti-government militants and pro-government forces has become so routine that little attention is paid to the contradictions in the claims. In the process, the anti-government insurgents are gaining, a dangerous situation when the government’s legitimacy is already under question.

The power of the militants’ propaganda is evident from a new report published by the Brussels-based independent International Crisis Group (ICG) this week. The report, “Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words“, argues that the Taliban are “successfully tapping into the strains of Afghan nationalism and exploiting policy failures by the Kabul government and its international backers”. The result, it says, “is weakening public support for nation-building, even though few actively support the Taliban”.

Obama’s popularity as anti-Bush is telling
By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times, July 26, 2008

In stop after stop across the Middle East and Europe, Obama was embraced as the man whose promise of change meant a change from Bush: on Iraq, Mideast peace, the treatment of terrorism suspects, climate change, alliance relations and more.

The tour has brought into focus how world leaders already are positioning themselves for a new American president.

Obama’s debut appearance on the international stage was the most vivid demonstration yet that the world is moving beyond the Bush era, even while the White House works frantically in its last six months to salvage what it can of its foreign policy agenda.

The trip had to come as a jolt for administration officials, said Wayne White, a senior State Department intelligence official in Bush’s first term. “I’m sure it was a bit rattling for the administration to see someone treated with such deference,” he said.

Power rising, Taliban besiege Pakistani Shiites
By Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, New York Times, July 26, 2008

It was once known as the Parrot’s Beak, a strategic jut of Pakistan that the American-backed mujahedeen used to carry out raids on the Russians just over the border into Afghanistan. That was during the cold war.

Now the area, around the town of Parachinar, is near the center of the new kind of struggle. The Taliban have inflamed and exploited a long-running sectarian conflict that has left the town under siege.

The Taliban, which have solidified control across Pakistan’s tribal zone and are seeking new staging grounds to attack American soldiers in Afghanistan, have sided with fellow Sunni Muslims against an enclave of Shiites settled in Parachinar for centuries. The population of about 55,000 is short of food. The fruit crop is rotting, residents say, and the cost of a 66-pound bag of flour has skyrocketed to $100.

Driver told FBI agents U.S. could have killed bin Laden
By Carol Rosenberg, McClatchy, July 25, 2008

In his seventh of month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden’s driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America’s fault that the al Qaida leader was alive.

The message was, ”You had these opportunities, America. You didn’t do anything,” FBI agent George Crouch Jr. testified Friday at Salim Hamdan’s war crimes trial.

The United States could have killed bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, before he moved to Afghanistan in 1996, Hamdan told his interrogators. They could have killed him after al Qaida’s 1998 twin bombings at the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Or after the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, at the port of Aden in Yemen, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead.

Instead, ”Bin Laden was emboldened.” So he struck with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leaving nearly 3,000 dead.

Israeli leaders find generous donors in U.S.
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, July 26, 2008

American businessman Morris Talansky has riveted Israel with tales of bankrolling the plush lifestyle of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: the expensive cigars and five-star suites, a fine watch and an Italian vacation.

While most Israelis have been galled at the extent of the alleged corruption, no one has been surprised by the source of the funds. Politicians in Israel have long known that if they want to raise large amounts of money, for whatever reason, they’ll find it in the United States.

Foreign donations are banned for general elections, but Israeli leaders routinely get half or more of their campaign contributions for party primaries from overseas, and mostly from American donors.

Obama’s balancing act
By Dan Balz, Washington Post, July 25, 2008

Barack Obama’s foreign trip has been a balancing act. It is a presidential-style tour by someone who is not president. It is a campaign event that his advisers dare not acknowledge as such. It is a tour designed to leverage his popularity abroad to appeal to voters at home, but not at the cost of appearing captured by anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment.

All of those tensions came together on Thursday evening in Berlin. This was the big public event of Obama’s foreign tour, his only major speech and the moment in the trip when everything would come together to scream out “change!” to both sides of the Atlantic. Yet there was almost a mismatch between image and oratory, setting and substance.

Obama plays — or seeks to play — the game of politics at a different level than many politicians. How many others could have drawn 200,000 people to the middle of Berlin on a soft summer evening? How many would have dared try? Those realities send a distinctive message about Obama’s candidacy, but also invite distinctive scrutiny.

No. 44 has spoken
By Gerhard Spörl, Der Spiegel, July 24, 2008

Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin’s Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious — he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.

It was a ton to absorb — and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America’s errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It’s amazing anyone could pack such a potpourri of issues into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.

So what sticks? That Barack Obama is a passionate politician who is fixated on — and takes very seriously — his desire for a better world. That he is an impressive speaker who knows how to casually draw his audience into his image of the world — one who doesn’t have any need to resort to the kind of cheap effects that tend to prompt the uproarious applause of an audience. That he is a typical American — an idealist in the true spirit of the American success story who is now very casually making his claim to becoming something akin to the president of the world.

Tough love for Israel?
By Nicholas D Kristof, New York Times, July 24, 2008

On his visit to the Middle East, Barack Obama gave ritual affirmations of his support for Israeli policy, but what Israel needs from America isn’t more love, but tougher love.

Particularly at a time when Israel seems to be contemplating military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, the United States would be a better friend if it said: “That’s crazy” — while also insisting on a 100 percent freeze on settlements in the West Bank and greater Jerusalem.

Granted, not everybody sees things this way, and discussions of the Middle East usually involve each side offering up its strongest arguments to wrestle with the straw men of the other side. So let me try something different.

After I wrote a column last month from Hebron in the West Bank, my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, was flooded with counterarguments — and plenty of challenges to address them. In the interest of a civil dialogue on the Middle East, here are excerpts from some of the readers’ defenses of Israel’s conduct in the West Bank and my responses:

Editor’s Comment — It’s always refreshing — largely because it’s all too rare — to see a columnist in the mainstream American media stick their neck out and dare to say anything critical of Israel or America’s relations with the Jewish state. On at least one point though, Kristof echoes the conventional and blinkered wisdom: In Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, “Israel has its most reasonable partner ever.”

Sure, Mahmoud Abbas may well be an eminently reasonable and decent fellow, but these are not the pivotal requirements in an effective “peace partner.” Whoever the Israelis deal with needs to unambiguously be a representative of the Palestinian people – someone who embodies the will of the people. In fact, both sides need leadership that is genuinely empowered by the will of the people and this is what both sides now lack.

Obama on the brink
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig, July 22, 2008

Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.

Yes, just like former maverick John McCain, who has refashioned himself as a mindless rubber stamp for the most inane policies of the miserably failed Bush administration. Both candidates are embracing, rather than challenging, the fundamental irrationality of Bush’s “war on terror,” which substitutes hysteria for rational analysis in appraising the dangers the country faces.

Terrorism is a social pathology that needs to be excised with the surgical precision of detective work, inspired by a high level of international cooperation, the very opposite of the unilateral war metaphor that recruits new generations of terrorists in the wake of the massive armies we dispatch. At a time when we desperately need a president to remind us we have nothing to fear but fear itself, we are increasingly being treated to a presidential campaign driven by fear.

How much does John McCain really know about foreign policy?
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, July 23, 2008

After Barack Obama’s opening day in Iraq this week, the New York Times headline read, “For Obama, a First Step Is Not a Misstep.” The story, by Richard Oppel Jr. and Jeff Zeleny, noted, “Mr. Obama seemed to have navigated one of the riskiest parts of a weeklong international trip without a noticeable hitch.”

That was the big nail-biter: Would Obama, the first-term senator and foreign-policy newbie, utter an irrevocably damaging gaffe? The nightmare scenarios were endless. Maybe he would refer to “the Iraq-Pakistan border,” or call the Czech Republic “Czechoslovakia” (three times), or confuse Sunni with Shiite, or say that the U.S. troop surge preceded (and therefore caused) the Sunni Awakening in Anbar province.

But, of course, it was Obama’s opponent, John McCain—the war hero and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee—who uttered these eyebrow-raisers. “Czechoslovakia” was clearly a gaffe, and understandable for anyone who was sentient during the Cold War years. What about the others, though? Were they gaffes—slips of the tongue, blips of momentary fatigue? Or did they reflect lazy thinking, conceptual confusion, a mind frame clouded by clichéd abstractions?

Back to the future in Iraq and Afghanistan
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, July 24, 2008

Consensus is not a word usually associated with Iraq, but as security improves in the wake of the US troop surge, interested parties – the Bush administration, Iraq’s Shia-led government, the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, the Arab Gulf states and Iran – all agree, to varying degrees and for different reasons, that the time has come to start planning the withdrawal of US combat troops.

The corollary of this proposition is that additional US and Nato forces should be sent to Afghanistan where, in contrast, security is deteriorating. Again, there is a surprising amount of agreement. Democrat Barack Obama argues Afghanistan, not Iraq, is the “central front in the war on terror”. The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, says reinforcements will be sent “sooner rather than later”. The Republican candidate, John McCain concurs. So too does Britain’s Gordon Brown.

But the fact that everyone broadly agrees on a certain course of action does not mean it is necessarily wise or sensible. Military commanders and regional experts cite plenty of reasons why a drawdown in Iraq, whether fast or slow, risks tipping that country back into quasi-anarchy. It is likewise far from obvious that sending more troops to Afghanistan will bring “victory” over the Taliban. It could simply make matters worse.

Is Afghanistan a narco-state?
By Thomas Schweich, New York Times, July 27, 2008

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I took to heart Karzai’s strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake.

Over the next two years I would discover how deeply the Afghan government was involved in protecting the opium trade — by shielding it from American-designed policies. While it is true that Karzai’s Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters. At the same time, some of our NATO allies have resisted the anti-opium offensive, as has our own Defense Department, which tends to see counternarcotics as other people’s business to be settled once the war-fighting is over. The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs — and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When I attended an Afghanistan briefing for Anne Patterson on Dec. 1, 2005, soon after she became assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law-enforcement affairs, she turned to me with her characteristic smile and said, “What have we gotten ourselves into?” We had just learned that in the two previous months Afghan farmers had planted almost 60 percent more poppy than the year before, for a total of 165,000 hectares (637 square miles). The 2006 harvest would be the biggest narco-crop in history. That was the challenge we faced. Patterson — already a three-time ambassador — made me her deputy at the law-enforcement bureau, which has anti-crime programs in dozens of countries.

At the beginning of 2006, I went to the high-profile London Conference on Afghanistan. It was a grand event mired in deception, at least with respect to the drug situation. Everyone from the Afghan delegation and most in the international community knew that poppy cultivation and heroin production would increase significantly in 2006. But the delegates to the London Conference instead dwelled on the 2005 harvest, which was lower than that of 2004, principally because of poor weather and market manipulation by drug lords like Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, who had been governor of the heroin capital of the world — Helmand Province — and then a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. So the Afghans congratulated themselves on their tremendous success in fighting drugs even as everyone knew the problem was worse than ever.

Plan would use antiterror aid in Pakistan on attack jets
By Eric Schmitt, New York Times, July 24, 2008

The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

Some members of Congress have greeted the proposal with dismay and anger, and may block the move. Lawmakers and their aides say that F-16s do not help the counterterrorism campaign and defy the administration’s urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal areas.

The timing of the action caught lawmakers off guard, prompting some of them to suspect that the deal was meant to curry favor with the new Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, who will meet with President Bush in Washington next week, and to ease tensions over the 11 members of the Pakistani paramilitary forces killed in an American airstrike along the Afghan border last month.

Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power
By Tim Shorrock, Salon, July 23, 2008

The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA’s working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.

US elections: Obama’s political straitjacket
By David Hearst, The Guardian, July 23, 2008

Mr Obama’s schedule of meetings today also speaks volumes about the straitjacket of policy positions he has slipped into for the duration of this visit. After breakfast with the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who has burnished his hawkish credentials as a tough and unyielding defence minister, Mr Obama went on to meet another strong contender for the premiership – the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

After that, the now compulsory visit to Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, followed by a meeting with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres. The afternoon beckons with a helicopter tour of the “seam” between Israel and the West Bank, which ends in Sderot, the southern immigrant town that has born the brunt of rocket fire from Gaza.

In between these two sections of Mr Obama’s itinerary, he meets the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in his office in the Muqata in Ramallah. In other words, of the 36 hours Mr Obama has devoted to this visit, he will spend around 45 minutes talking to Palestinian spokesmen. This is one measure of Mr Obama’s concern to court Israeli opinion.

What Obama missed in the Middle East
By Ali Abunimah, The Guardian, July 23, 2008

When I and other Palestinian-Americans first knew Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, he grasped the oppression faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He understood that an honest broker cannot simultaneously be the main cheerleader, financier and arms supplier for one side in a conflict. He often attended Palestinian-American community events and heard about the Palestinian experience from perspectives stifled in mainstream discussion.

In recent months, Obama has sought to allay persistent concerns from pro-Israel groups by recasting himself as a stalwart backer of Israel and tacking ever closer to positions espoused by the powerful, hard-line pro-Israel lobby Aipac. He distanced himself from mainstream advisers because pro-Israel groups objected to their calls for even-handedness.

Like his Republican rival, senator John McCain, Obama gave staunch backing to Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling them “self defence”.

Abizaid: “Iran is not a suicide state; deterrence will work”
By Nathan Gardels, Huffington Post, July 23, 2008

Monday evening at a meeting of the Pacific Council, retired General John Abizaid, the former commander of the US Central Command for Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003-2007, offered lots of wisdom and an impressive analysis of the Middle East. In this election season, every American, including Barack Obama and John McCain, should hear what he has to say.

ON IRAN: Although he didn’t say it outright, General Abizaid’s implicit view seemed to be that the world would not be able to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and that we would have to learn to live with it. He questioned whether war with Iran to stop that eventuality would be a wise idea “at this particular time” not only because world oil flows would be shut down and turmoil would spread across the Middle East where Iran’s Shia allies hold sway, but also because the US armed forces lacked strategic flexibility, bogged down as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan with “our ground forces tapped out.”

Will deal with Iran be worked out?
Gary G. Sick interviewed by CFR, July 21, 2008

Gary Sick, a longtime expert on Iran who served as the Iran officer in the National Security Councils of the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, says there is pressure on both the Iranian and U.S. governments to accept a compromise to move negotiations forward on eventually halting Iran’s uranium-enrichment program. “Neither side wants to show that it is losing face, or that it is caving in or appeasing the other side, but both sides are interested in finding a way out of this conundrum,” he says.

There was considerable anticipation in advance of Saturday’s meeting in Geneva between the Security Council permanent five plus Germany and the Iranian nuclear negotiator. There had been reports of a softening in Iran’s position, and the United States sent its third-ranking State Department official to sit in on these talks. Are we nearing some kind of breakthrough or are we just going to keep going more or less as we’ve been going?

It’s really impossible to predict, and I don’t like to make predictions about these things. It is clear that Iran is in a good bargaining position. It has been given an offer that they certainly have not rejected straight out of hand, [namely to] stop building new centrifuges and keep your production where it is and we’ll then use that as the basis to talk. Thus far, they have not bought that, but they have shown great interest in it, and there is enough domestic pressure in Iran that it is going to be hard for them to reject it outright.

Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe’s electricity, says EU
By Alok Jha, The Guardian, July 23, 2008

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe’s carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe’s energy needs.

All the hysteria that’s fit to print?
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, July 21, 2008

You’d think the once-gray lady would have learned from the Edward Luttwak debacle earlier this year, when its public editor was forced to apologize for the paper publishing an op-ed premised on utter nonsense. But no. Instead, the paper asks us to take seriously a manic rant from Israeli historian-turned-hysterian Benny Morris, warning that “Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.”

For a man who once applied the historian’s method of carefully weighing evidence from a wide variety of sources to establish the complex motives at work in historical conflict, the reasoning in Morris’s rant was shockingly adolescent, and bereft of precisely the craft through which he made his name.

Israel’s slap in the face from America
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, July 23, 2008

Israel gives the impression that it was completely unprepared for the recent dramatic switch in American policy toward Iran. The Bush administration did not consult with Israel before deciding to add a senior American diplomat to the talks the Europeans are conducting with the Iranians, nor did Washington inform Jerusalem of its intentions to open an interests section in Tehran. The Prime Minister’s Bureau received word of America’s new policy almost at the last minute, just in order to ensure that Israel would not be taken totally by surprise. If clandestine diplomatic feelers between Washington and Tehran preceded the announcement, Israel was left completely in the dark as to their existence.

The American “detente” with Iran has one obvious consequence: As long as the diplomatic game continues, there is not the slightest chance in the world of any aggressive action being taken against Iran’s nuclear program. Which means no bombing of nuclear facilities. And no naval blockade and no prevention of commercial flights from Iran, as Israel has proposed. If even a minor-ranking American diplomat is posted in Tehran, to ostensibly “speak with the people,” the Iranian regime will enjoy total immunity.

Mideast sees more of the same if Obama is elected
By Michael Slackman and Isabel Kershner, New York Times, July 22, 2008

For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: If elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America’s relationship with Israel, or the Arab world.

From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel’s other Arab neighbors.

“What we know is American presidents all support Israel,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. “It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don’t expect change.”

McCain’s Iraq dilemma
By Ross Douthat, The Atlantic, July 21, 2008

When John McCain, out of money and plunging in the polls, staked his Presidential campaign on his support for the surge of American forces in Iraq, he no doubt did so out of a sincere belief that the policy would dramatically improve conditions on the ground. But he probably never dreamed that only a year later, conditions would have improved so dramatically that Barack Obama’s “out in 16 months” plan, drawn up as a way to extricate the U.S. as rapidly as possible from a costly fiasco, would look instead like a potentially appropriate response to American success – or that the feeling-his-oats Iraqi Prime Minister would be more or less endorsing it. Where Iraq is concerned, McCain is suddenly in the odd position of playing Winston Churchill in 1945, or George H.W. Bush in 1992 – a leader whose successes in crafting wartime policy don’t translate into electoral victory – without having ever been elected President in the first place.

Evidence against terrorism suspect barred at Guantanamo trial
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times, July 22, 2008

The military judge overseeing the first war crimes trial against a terrorism suspect at Guantanamo Bay agreed Monday to bar some evidence against Osama bin Laden’s former driver because it was obtained in “highly coercive environments and conditions.”

On the trial’s opening day, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred denied defense appeals to exclude other statements Salim Ahmed Hamdan made during interrogation by U.S. agents in Afghanistan as well as during his more than six years’ imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The judge said he would withhold judgment on a May 2003 interrogation until the defense had time to review 600 pages of detention records, which the government did not turn over until Sunday — the night before trial.

The exclusion of evidence Allred considered coerced could set a standard for admissibility in other war crimes cases due before the tribunal in the coming months, including that of the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind.

Obama lands in Afghanistan for first tour of war zones
By Jeff Zeleny, New York Times, July 20, 2008

Senator Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan early Saturday morning, opening his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to meet with American commanders there and later in Iraq to receive an on-the-ground assessment of military operations in the two major U.S. war zones.

Mr. Obama touched down in Kabul about 11:45 a.m., according to a pool report released by his aides. In addition to attending briefings with military leaders, he hoped to meet with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan before flying to Iraq later in the weekend.

Obama going abroad with world watching
By Dan Balz, Washington Post, July 19, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama will make his international debut as a Democratic presidential candidate in the coming days with a weeklong tour of the Middle East and Europe designed to deepen his foreign policy credentials, confront questions at home about his readiness to be commander in chief, and signal the possibility of a new era in U.S. relations with the rest of the world.

Obama’s visit is among the most unusual ever undertaken by a presumptive White House nominee, planned with the attention to detail of a trip by a president and as heavily hyped abroad as at home. The senator from Illinois will meet with a succession of foreign leaders, make symbolically important visits and hold at least one large public event — all with an eye to how the trip is playing in the United States.

But the tour is fraught with risks. The large media contingent that will follow Obama means that any misstep or misstatement will be magnified and potentially read as evidence of his inexperience, adding to doubts about him. If he successfully navigates his itinerary, however, the political payoffs could be significant enough to affect the outcome of his race against Republican Sen. John McCain this fall.

Soldiers recount deadly attack on Afghanistan outpost
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes, July 19, 2008

The first RPG and machine gun fire came at dawn, strategically striking the forward operating base’s mortar pit. The insurgents next sighted their RPGs on the tow truck inside the combat outpost, taking it out. That was around 4:30 a.m.

This was not a haphazard attack. The reportedly 200 insurgents fought from several positions. They aimed to overrun the new base. The U.S. soldiers knew it and fought like hell. They knew their lives were on the line.

“I just hope these guys’ wives and their children understand how courageous their husbands and dads were,” said Sgt. Jacob Walker. “They fought like warriors.”

The next target was the FOB’s observation post, where nine soldiers were positioned on a tiny hill about 50 to 75 meters from the base. Of those nine, five died, and at least three others … were wounded.

Afghanistan hit by record number of bombs
By Bruce Rolfsen, Air Force Times, July 18, 2008

Air Force and allied warplanes are dropping a record number of bombs on Afghanistan targets.

For the first half of 2008, aircraft dropped 1,853 bombs — more than they released during all of 2006 and more than half of 2007’s total — 3,572 bombs.

Driving the increasing use of air power are fights in southern Afghanistan, where the Marine Corps arrived last winter, and battles in eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban and other insurgents use the border region with Pakistan as a safe haven.

For first time, Bush agrees to ‘time horizon’ for Iraq pullout
By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy, July 18, 2008

The United States and Iraq have agreed to a “general time horizon” for further reductions of U.S. combat troops in Iraq, the White House said Friday, the first time the Bush administration has agreed to set any kind of timeline for troop withdrawals.

The agreement appears to be a political favor to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, but the White House said it wasn’t a reversal of President Bush’s long opposition to any fixed schedule for troop reductions, including the veto of bills that included timetables for withdrawal.

But Democrats — including presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama — hailed it as belated recognition of the need to hasten the end of the Iraq war.

U.S. position complicates global effort to curb illicit arms
By C J Chivers, New York Times, July 19, 2008

Diplomats from the world’s governments met throughout this week on agreements to cut the global illicit trade in small arms, but their work was curtailed in part by the near-boycott of the meetings by the United States.

The tone of the meetings underscored the political complexities of gaining full support for international small-arms agreements from the United States. The American view has balanced recognition of the dangers of illegal proliferation with the government’s own arms-distribution practices and with the American gun lobby’s resistance to the United Nations’ proposals.

Since 2001, United Nations members have endorsed a broad but loosely defined initiative, called the program of action, for a collective effort against illegal arms circulation. The agreement in part encourages governments to tighten controls on manufacturing, marking, tracing, brokering, exporting and stockpiling small arms and to cooperate to restrict illicit flows, particularly to regions perennially in armed conflict. It addresses hundreds of millions of weapons, ranging from pistols to shoulder-fired rockets, that the United Nations says are in circulation worldwide.

Talks signal Mideast shift
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, July 18, 2008

After years of escalating tensions and bloodshed, the talk in the Middle East is suddenly about talking. The shift is still relatively subtle, but hints of a new approach in the waning months of the Bush administration are fueling hopes of at least short-term stability for the first time since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Much is happening, adding up not to any great diplomatic breakthrough, but to a distinct change in direction. Syria is being welcomed out of isolation by Europe and is holding indirect talks with Israel. Lebanon has formed a new government. Israel has cut deals with Hamas (a cease-fire) and Hezbollah (a prisoner exchange).

On Wednesday, the United States agreed to send a high-ranking diplomat to attend talks with Iran over its nuclear program, and was considering establishing a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since the 1979 revolution and hostage crisis.

“The overall picture is moving in the direction of cooling the political atmosphere,” said Muhammad al-Rumaihi, a former government adviser in Kuwait and the editor of Awan, an independent daily newspaper there.

Many underlying problems, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, are not on the verge of resolution. Afghanistan has recently seen a sharp spike in violence. In the Middle East, optimism can fill the void left by even a temporary lull in violence, like the recent — and still fragile — stability gains in Iraq. Nevertheless, not long ago, the fear was that Lebanon would descend into civil war and that either Israel or the United States, or both, would attack Iran. That seems less likely at the moment.

How to save Afghanistan
By Rory Stewart, Time, July 17, 2008

Many policymakers want to throw more money and troops at the problem. Both Barack Obama and John McCain say that as President, they would send additional combat brigades — from 7,000 to 15,000 troops — to tame the insurgency in Afghanistan. At a June conference in Paris, Western governments committed an additional $20 billion in aid, in the hope that this would finally bring success in counterinsurgency, counternarcotics, rule of law, governance and state-building — and eventually allow us to withdraw from Afghanistan with honor.

But just because Afghanistan has problems that need to be solved does not mean that the West can solve them all. My experience suggests that those pushing for an expansion of our military presence there are wrong. We don’t need bold new plans and billions more in aid. Instead, we need less investment — but a greater focus on what we know how to do.

The Pentagon and the hunt for black gold
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch, July , 2008

For years, “oil” and “Iraq” couldn’t make it into the same sentence in mainstream coverage of the invasion and occupation of that country. Recently, that’s begun to change, but “oil” and “the Pentagon” still seldom make the news together.

Last year, for instance, according to Department of Defense (DoD) documents, the Pentagon paid more than $70 million to Hunt Refining, an oil company whose corporate affiliate, Hunt Oil, undermined U.S. policy in Iraq. Not that anyone would know it. While the hunt for oil in Iraq is now being increasingly well covered in the mainstream, the Pentagon’s hunt for oil remains a subject missing in action. Despite the staggering levels at which the Pentagon guzzles fuel, it’s a chronic blind spot in media energy coverage.

Let’s consider the Hunt Oil story in a little more detail, since it offers a striking example of the larger problem. On July 3, 2008, according to the New York Times, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that Hunt Oil had pursued “an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government.” Despite its officially stated policy of warning companies like Hunt Oil “that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law,” the State Department in some cases actually encouraged a deal between the “Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush” and Kurdistan that “undercut” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad.

Development: US fails to measure up on ‘human index’
By Ashley Seager, The Guardian, July 17, 2008

Despite spending $230m (£115m) an hour on healthcare, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy.

These are some of the startling conclusions from a major new report which attempts to explain why the world’s number-one economy has slipped to 12th place – from 2nd in 1990- in terms of human development.

The American Human Development Report, which applies rankings of health, education and income to the US, paints a surprising picture of a country that spends well over $5bn each day on healthcare – more per person than any other country.

Warming is major threat to humans, EPA warns
By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, July 18, 2008

Climate change will pose “substantial” threats to human health in the coming decades, the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday — issuing its warnings about heat waves, hurricanes and pathogens just days after the agency declined to regulate the pollutants blamed for warming.

In a new report, the EPA said “it is very likely” that more people will die during extremely hot periods in future years — and that the elderly, the poor and those in inner cities will be most at risk.

Other possible dangers include more powerful hurricanes, shrinking supplies of fresh water in the West, and the increased spread of diseases contracted through food and water, the agency said.