Category Archives: Editor’s comments

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The unraveling of Israel’s nuclear ambiguity

CIA reveals: We said in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons
By Amir Oren, Haaretz, January 11, 2008

The Central Intelligence Agency, backed by bodies including the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Defense Intelligence Agency, determined in August 1974 that Israel had nuclear “weapons in being,” a “small number” of which it “produced and stockpiled.”

Israel was also suspected of providing nuclear materials, equipment or technology to Iran, South Africa and other then-friendly countries.

This top secret document, consigned to the CIA’s vaults for almost 32 years, was suddenly released to the public this week, during U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to Israel and on the eve of his trip to the Persian Gulf. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — For several decades, Israel has adopted a position of so-called “nuclear ambiguity,” asserting that it would not be the first state to introduce atomic weapons to the Middle East. The United States has colluded in allowing this claim to rest unchallenged — even though it is widely understood that Israel does in fact possess a nuclear arsenal estimated to range from 70 to 400 warheads.

The first indications that the United States’ position might change occurred during Robert Gates’ confirmation hearings in which he included Israel among the nuclear states that surround Iran. Documents released by the Nixon Library a few weeks ago confirm that in 1969, Henry Kissinger warned President Nixon about Israel’s nuclear capabilities and that the “Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons.” A year ago, Ehud Olmert provoked a storm of criticism inside Israel by being the first Israeli prime minister to make reference to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

It seems to be a matter of time (months or even weeks?) before Israel decides to unambiguously come out of the nuclear closet. If this happens, the nuclear equation changes across the whole region. Will it trigger a Middle East nuclear arms race? Will it help empower those who argue that the only effective way of challenging Iran’s nuclear program is through turning the whole region into a nuclear-weapon-free zone? Or will the United States attempt to contrive a policy that claims that Israel has a unique “right” to possess nuclear weapons and exempt itself from international treaties?

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Unscrambling Iranian-U.S. communications

What to make of the Iranian videotape
By William M. Arkin, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

Iran has now aired a video of the incident in the Straits of Hormuz on Sunday, and according to the wire services (AP, AFP, Reuters) the video stresses routine and not confrontation.

As I said yesterday, the Iranians on Sunday wanted to send a not-so-subtle message to their Persian Gulf neighbors that they could disrupt the flow of oil and that any U.S.-Iranian confrontation would hurt the pocketbooks of the ruling sheiks. Now, by issuing a video that seems to call into question the authenticity of the Pentagon videotape, Iran seeks a bigger victory with international public opinion.

At this point, Washington has two choices: It can release every shred of intelligence and information it has in an attempt to show how the Iranians are lying. Or it can let the matter drop and focus instead averting these types of incidents in the future. If it chooses the latter, it may find that Iran is a more willing partner than it appears. What Tehran is saying, after all, is quite similar to what the U.S. Navy is saying. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Let’s suppose that the Pentagon had never released its own video (the one to which it added an audio track) — that it had simply issued a statement describing the Hormuz incident — and that the Iranian video that has now been broadcast came under critical scrutiny. Suppose the Pentagon then announced that after having analysed the Iranian videotape, they had determined that the audio came from a different source than the images. Would the Pentagon refrain from describing this as a “fabrication”? Almost certainly not — and neither would many news editors in the U.S. media be reluctant to run headlines referring to the “Fabricated Iranian Video.”

Official version of naval incident starts to unravel
By Gareth Porter, Antiwar, January 11, 2008

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to US ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a “battle at sea,” new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no US commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that US officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a US warship, as it appears to do on the video. [complete article]

Forging ties with Iran
By Mark Brzezinski and Ray Takeyh, Boston Globe, January 11, 2008

There is widespread feeling overseas that the consequences of the judgment that Tehran has suspended its nuclear weapons program should be positive, not punitive. To be sure, the Islamic Republic still has nuclear ambitions, and its expanded uranium enrichment capacity is certainly worrisome. Nonetheless, dialogue and diplomacy are still the best means of mitigating the Iranian challenge. And despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s odious rhetoric and the reckless behavior of Iranian speedboats, there is reason to believe that Tehran may be open to such an approach.

While some have depicted Iran as a rash, militant state imbued with messianic fervor, the clerical state today is an unexceptional opportunistic power seeking to exert preponderance in its immediate neighborhood. Gone are the heady revolutionary days when Iran viewed projection of influence as necessitating the subversion of the incumbent Arab regimes. [complete article]

See also, Iran shows its own video of vessels’ encounter in Gulf (NYT) and US protests Iran harassment of US ships (AP).

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Counting the dead

New estimate of violent deaths among Iraqis – 151,000
By David Brown and Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.

The survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, also found a 60 percent increase in nonviolent deaths — from such causes as childhood infections and kidney failure — during the period. The results, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of the month, are the latest of several widely divergent and controversial estimates of mortality attributed to the Iraq war.

The three-year toll of violent deaths calculated in the survey is one-quarter the size of that found in a smaller survey by Iraqi and Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Lancet in 2006. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The Washington Post‘s attention focuses on the fact that this number is lower than some other estimates. Another way of stating the number is to say that 151,000 people (and many more) are now dead as a result of the foreign policy that the U.S. government crafted in response to the deaths of 2,974 people on September 11, 2001. Or to put it another way: for every individual who lost his or her life on 9/11, another 50 people have died as a result. Or to put it yet another way, 50 non-Americans are supposedly worth less than one American.

U.S. bombs Iraqi insurgent hideouts
By Solomon Moore, New York Times, January 11, 2008

American bombers and fighter aircraft dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions in the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Thursday, the United States military said.

In one of the largest airstrikes in recent months, two B-1 and four F-16 aircraft dropped 38 bombs within 10 minutes near the Latifiya district south of Baghdad, the military said. The airstrikes were accompanied by a large Iraqi and American ground assault.

The air attack was part of a nationwide joint offensive that includes a continuing sweep in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, and raids Thursday in Salahuddin Province, northwest of the capital, between Samarra and Ramadi. [complete article]

See also, Blast kills 6 as troops hunt Iraqi insurgents (WP).

For U.S., the goal is now ‘Iraqi solutions’
By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

In the year since President Bush announced he was changing course in Iraq with a troop “surge” and a new strategy, U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves.

From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. “We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems,” said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah.

In many cases — particularly on the political front — Iraqi solutions bear little resemblance to the ambitious goals for 2007 that Bush laid out in his speech to the nation last Jan. 10. “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis,” he pledged. “Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year . . . the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.” [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The new Cambodia?

U.S. considers new covert push within Pakistan
By Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 6, 2008

President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s never enough just to know what was said; we need to know who was talking.

This is a report that illustrates well the need for newspapers to limit their use of anonymous sources. The key to unlocking the article’s significance is knowing who was talking to the New York Times. On that basis we could attempt to understand the sources’ motives for making this information public. For instance, if the sources are intelligence officials we’d have reason to think they might be talking to the press in an effort to kill a harebrained plan before it gains momentum. If on the other hand the sources are inside the White House, then we’d have to wonder whether a political agenda was trumping the need for operational security. Myers, Sanger, and Schmitt should know the answer, but of course their sacred duty to protect the confidentiality of their sources prevents them from adding meaning that currently only they are in a position to discern. Still, why call it reporting if the reporter is only willing to tell part of the story?

What’s more important? That the New York Times is able to protect the privilege of its access to those in power, or that it uses all its means to hold those in power accountable to the people they represent?

Since the Grey Lady is so firmly wedded to its institutional authority, what can we do but go back to parsing the Times as though we were reading Pravda.

This is what I’m able to glean. President Bush, who was in the White House on Friday, did not attend the meeting. The key players at the meeting are named in the article and since they didn’t include Bush, it seems reasonable to infer he wasn’t there. Too busy? We do know for sure that Defense Secretary Gates wasn’t there, so it looks like this was Cheney’s meeting.

Midway through the article, our steely reporters toss in an idle piece of speculation about why the discussions in the White House were taking place: “In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.” Does this mean that the Times was told by its sources, this was the main reason for the discussions, but you can’t attribute that to your sources, or was this just some journalistic day-dreaming? Let’s assume the former. And if that’s the case, this discussion may have more to do with domestic American politics than a desire to bring stability to Pakistan.

Perhaps the most revealing lines in the report are these: “The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf…. But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority [of the CIA] in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country.” In this changing power structure, the administration’s focus remains unchanged: its interest in working more closely with Pakistan’s military than with its civilians. At the same time, the administration appears to want to communicate indirectly with Pakistan’s military by getting its ideas floated in the press. Is this a case of putting the word out to see if it provokes civil unrest?

It’s starting to sound like Cheney might be on the war path again. Iran is off the table, but maybe Pakistan will provide the CIA with an opportunity to help the administration pull its chestnuts out of the fire before November ’08. If they haul in or kill America’s most-wanted men, the presidential race might be nudged back onto national security, and maybe Bush and Cheney won’t go down in history as the men who destroyed the Republican Party.

Could Pakistan go up in flames in the process, al Qaeda’s leaders elude capture and the war in Afghanistan expand into a full-fledged regional war? These are all risks the vice president might be willing to take.

But I digress. The reporters at Pravda — I mean the Times — could do a bit more to enlighten us, couldn’t they?

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NEWS, FEATURE & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pakistan’s complex political landscape

Next-gen Taliban
By Nicholas Schmidle, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The intelligence officer I met in Dera Ismail Khan, whose area of operations included the Taliban-ruled enclave of South Waziristan, maintains that his contacts with the militants were severed long ago. “We can hardly work there anymore,” he told me. “The Taliban suspect everyone of spying. All of our sources have been slaughtered.”

maulana-fazlur-rehman.jpgI asked [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief, Maulana Fazlur] Rehman, who used to refer to the Taliban as “our boys,” if he still considered the Taliban, even those who might be firing rockets at his house, his boys. “Definitely,” he replied. “But because of America’s policies, they have gone to the extreme. I am trying to bring them back into the mainstream. We don’t disagree with the mujahedeen’s cause, but we differ over priorities. They prefer to fight, but I believe in politics.”

Mushahid Hussain, secretary general of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, told me that no one can negotiate the politics of the North-West Frontier Province better than Rehman. “We know that we need a bearded, turbaned guy out there,” Hussain told me. It is perhaps a measure of how inextricable Islamism and politics have become in Pakistan that even the United States would deal with an anti-American like Rehman. In September, he had the first meeting of his 30-year political career with an American ambassador. What did Rehman and Anne Patterson, the American envoy, discuss? “She urged me to form an electoral alliance with Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf,” he told me a few days after the meeting. “I am not against it. But politically, because of the American presence in Afghanistan and rising extremism, it is a bit hard for us to afford.” Plus, the fact that the Americans thought Bhutto could tackle the Taliban had simply baffled him. “She has no strategy in those areas, and nothing to do with those people,” he said.

When asked if Patterson’s meeting signaled a change in American attitudes, an embassy spokeswoman said it “reflects our approach to democratic politics in Pakistan” and was “part of a process of talking to all those who represent political movements in Pakistan, across the spectrum.” The U.S. has given more than $5 billion to Pakistan in the past few years to fight Islamist militants, but recent reports suggest that the aid has not been effective. Late last month, Congress put restrictions on some military aid and called for the restoration of democratic rights. [complete article]

Democracy gets small portion of U.S. aid
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, January 6, 2008

Two years before Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leading her Pakistan People’s Party in its campaign against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration devoted this much new aid money to strengthen political parties in Pakistan: $0.

The entire U.S. budget for democracy programs in Pakistan in 2006 amounted to about $22 million, according to State Department documents, much of it reserved for aiding the Election Commission — an entity largely controlled by Musharraf. That $22 million was just a small fraction of the $1.6 billion in aid the United States gave Pakistan that year, and it was equivalent to the value of jet engine and helicopter spare parts that Pakistan purchased in 2006 with the help of U.S. funds.

In the past year, as Musharraf’s grip on power became increasingly fragile, the Bush administration has scrambled to build contacts with the opposition and to provide expertise to opposition parties. The money devoted to democracy programs in the 165 million-person country was almost doubled in the fiscal 2008 budget, to $41 million, but that is still less than the $43 million set aside for such efforts in Kosovo, the former Albanian enclave of Serbia with a population of 2 million. In the region, U.S. democracy programs aimed at Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt are all larger than the effort in Pakistan. [complete article]

At the heart of Pakistan, life keeps a normal beat
By Jason Burke, The Observer, January 6, 2008

The presence of a Western journalist provokes rowdy debates. The collective answer to the question ‘Is the West anti-Islamic?’ is that governments are, but people are not. Razzaq, the teashop owner, answers the question of whether the dozen or so men there feel themselves to be Pakistani, Sindhi or Muslim. ‘We are Muslim and then Pakistani,’ he says to general approbation. The television, momentarily ignored, is tuned to a satellite TV station broadcasting in the local Sindhi, not Urdu, the national language.

Faith and politics are intertwined with local identity, too. Radical Islam that probably led to the killing of Bhutto is seen as foreign here, where the folksy, pluralistic Barelvi strand of the faith is dominant.

‘We are not extreme,’ said Maja Ali, Old Jatoi’s storekeeper. ‘We are Sindhis. We are secular and democratic people. We are not sectarian. We are not like people in other parts of Pakistan.’ The regional pride is sometimes hidden, but always there in the background. When one of the rare local supporters of Benazir Bhutto blames ‘the Punjab’ for her death, he is at the same time accusing the army, dominated by Pakistanis originating in the eastern province, and expressing a long-standing resentment against the politically and economically dominant north.

But the political debate does not last long. The villagers return to topics of more interest: the cricket, inflation and the interesting stories about the barber’s wife who, everyone agrees, is as beautiful as the heroine of a Bollywood movie, the highest possible praise. [complete article]

See also, It’s troubled, but it’s home (Mohsin Hamid).

Editor’s Comment — It’s not that the United States needs to be spending more on “democracy promotion” in Pakistan or anywhere else. Such efforts can rightly be regarded as intrusive. The need is simply to spend less on butressing governments that suppress the rights of their own people to self-determination. The will of the people has to be expressed — guess what? — by the people.

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: How stable is “stability”?

Ghosts that haunt Pakistan
By John F. Burns, New York Times, January 6, 2008

The legend cultivated by Pakistani politicians like Ms. Bhutto and her principal civilian rival, Nawaz Sharif, cast the generals as the main villains in stifling democracy, emerging from their barracks to grab power out of Napoleonic ambition and contempt for the will of ordinary Pakistanis. It is a version of history calculated to appeal strongly to Western opinion. But it has been carefully drawn to excuse the role the politicians themselves have played in undermining democracy, by using mandates won at the polls to establish governments that rarely amounted to much more than vehicles for personal enrichment, or for pursuing vendettas against political foes.

William Dalrymple, a British author who has written widely about India and Pakistan, put it bluntly in an article for Britain’s left-of-center Guardian newspaper in 2005. “As Pakistan shows, rigid, corrupt, unrepresentative and flawed democracies without the strong independent institutions of a civil society — a free press, an independent judiciary, an empowered election commission — can foster governments that are every bit as tyrannical as any dictatorship,” he wrote. “Justice and democracy are not necessarily synonymous.” [complete article]

Musharraf apparently riding out crisis
By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

In the first days after the Dec. 27 attack, the already unpopular Musharraf’s grip on power seemed to hang in the balance. Riots raged for three days in Karachi, Bhutto’s hometown, and across her home province of Sindh.

Much of the fury over the killing of the former prime minister and one of the most popular politicians in the country’s history was aimed directly at one man: the president. In a dozen cities, demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Musharraf, dog!” and “Musharraf, killer!”

But a scant week later, analysts and observers said the Pakistani leader appeared to have weathered the storm, methodically taking a series of steps aimed at shoring up his position, at least in the short term. [complete article]

See also, Bhutto was killed by single assassin, say investigators (The Observer), U.S. relying on two in People’s Party to help stabilize Pakistan (WP), and Sharif carrying the torch of opposition in Pakistan (LAT).

Editor’s Comment — Remember who said, “it is the practice of democracy that makes a nation ready for democracy, and every nation can start on this path”? Of course President Bush was talking about Iraq and the Middle East and it was four years ago. Pakistan isn’t in the Middle East, neoconservatism is festering in the garbage can of history, and the word on everyone’s lips is not “democracy”; it’s “stability.”

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Sibel Edmonds claims nuclear secrets have been sold

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

A whistleblower has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

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

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — According to Australia’s Luke Ryland (via The Brad Blog), the “well-known senior official” is Marc Grossman. For detailed background on Sibel Edmond’s efforts to make her story known, see David Rose’s Vanity Fair article from 2005, An inconvenient patriot.

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: What can’t be forgotten

Did Bush watch the torture tapes?
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 27, 2007

… the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is a formulation frequently used to avoid perjury charges, a sort of way of saying “no” without really saying “no.” In between these statements, two more things unfolded that have a bearing on the question.

The New York Times squarely placed four White House lawyers in the middle of the decision about whether to destroy the tapes—Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Bellinger and Harriet Miers. It also reported that at least one of them was strongly advocating destruction. Suspicion immediately fell on the principle mover in support of torture, David Addington.

Second, John Kiriakou clarified his statements about the purpose for which the tapes were made. It was to brief higher ups about the process of the interrogation. Reports persist that one “higher-up” in particular had a special strong interest in knowing the details of the Abu Zubaydah case. His name is George W. Bush.

Are Bush’s denials that he has seen the torture tapes really credible? I don’t think so. [complete article]

See also, Operation stop talking (Laura Rozen).

Editor’s Comment — “I have no recollection” — a non-denial denial — is most likely a lie that could be pried open with just a few questions.

President of the United States is a unique job that includes all sorts of unusual tasks that nevertheless are quite forgettable. “In your daily intelligence briefings, do you remember being warned about imminent attacks by al Qaeda?” How could a president be expected to remember every little detail from every single briefing?

But interrogation videos — images of a man struggling against the sensation of drowning? How much time could George Bush spend watching videos of what amount to mock executions before the routine became something less than memorable? The question isn’t whether Bush remembers seeing videos of suspects being waterboarded; it is whether he believes this is something he could forget.

If the president is less than certain that such a sight is something he would never forget, then he’s apparently a sociopath. If on the other hand he can attest to the fact that, like most normal people, he would find such images unforgettable, then this is one instance where there is no reason for the president to be telling us about the power or frailty of his memory. If the president really has no recollection of seeing videos of waterboarding, he should be able to go one step further and say emphatically that he did not watch the videos. If he can’t deny watching the videos, it’s not because there are limits to his powers of recollection but because he refuses to shine any light on an indelible memory.

“I have no recollection” is not really a non-denial denial. It’s a simple lie.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bhutto assassination

Bhutto: “She has been martyred”
By Aryn Baker, Time, December 27, 2007

benazir_bhutto.jpgJust days before parliamentary polls in Pakistan, leading Prime Ministerial contender and anti terrorism crusader Benazir Bhutto was shot dead during an election rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. “She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik. The Associated Press, citing Malik, reported that Bhutto was shot in the neck and the chest before the gunman blew himself up. At least 20 bystanders were killed in the blast. Bhutto was rushed to a hospital But, at 6:16 p.m. Pakistan time, she was declared dead.

“How can somebody who can shoot her get so close to her with all the so-called security?” said a distraught Husain Haqqani, a former top aide to Bhutto, shortly after news of her death flashed around the world. Haqqani, who served as a spokesman and top aide to Bhutto for more than a decade, blamed Pakistani security, either through neglect or complicity, in her assassination. “This is the security establishment, which has always wanted her out,” he said through tears. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The evidence here certainly places the security establishment — and thus Musharraf — under suspicion. The use of explosives looks like an effort to obscure who might be responsible — both by means of killing witnesses and by providing the media and government officials with a label they have no hesitation in using: suicide bombing. To call it a suicide bombing is to instantly place this event within the narrative of Islamic extremism.

Back in November, after her return to Pakistan, Bhutto wrote:

It has now been more than two weeks since the horrific assassination attempt against me and the police have still not filed my complaint. They filed their own report without taking statements from eyewitnesses on the truck targeted for the terrorist attack which resulted in the death of more than 158 of my supporters and security guards.

Soon thereafter, I was asked by authorities not to travel in cars with tinted windows — which protected me from identification by terrorists — or travel with privately armed guards.

I began to feel the net was being tightened around me when police security outside my home in Karachi was reduced, even as I was told that other assassination plots were in the offing.

If Musharraf now postpones the upcoming election or bans political rallies, what will be the Bush administration’s response? Another lame statement about looking forward to Pakistan’s return to the democratic path? One thing we can reasonably assume is that neither from Washington nor any other Western capital are we now likely to hear any demands for an independent inquiry into Bhutto’s death. In November Islamabad adamantly rejected any assistance from forensic teams of the FBI and Scotland Yard. Will similar offers now even be made?

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Torture tapes — Watergate of our times?

CIA to cooperate with House on tapes
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 20, 2007

The Central Intelligence Agency has agreed to make documents related to the destruction of interrogation videotapes available to the House Intelligence Committee and to allow the agency’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, to testify about the matter, Congressional and intelligence officials said Wednesday.

But it remained unclear whether Jose A. Rodriguez, who as chief of the agency’s clandestine service ordered the tapes destroyed in 2005, would testify. Officials said Mr. Rodriguez’s appearance before the committee might involve complex negotiations over legal immunity at a time when the Justice Department and the intelligence agency were reviewing whether the destruction of the tapes broke any laws.

The agreement marked at least a partial resolution of a standoff between the Bush administration and Congress. [complete article]

See also, Bush faces questions about CIA tapes (AP) and White House: NYT wrong about CIA tapes (CNN).

Torture tapes are the Watergate of our times
By Brent Budowsky, The Hill, December 19, 2007

In an administration facing an ocean of scandal on multiple and multiplying fronts, this scandal above all will be the Watergate of our times because it involves extremely probable crimes of torture, extremely probable obstructions of justice, and a steady stream of revelations that will only escalate until the inevitable special prosecutor is named. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Starting with the most obvious difference between the torture tapes and the Watergate tapes, the latter were tampered with while the former were destroyed — call it a Watergate lesson-learned. But perhaps more important is the political context. America in the early ’70s had the capacity to be shocked and the willingness to challenge power. Back in those days, the New York Times had the guts to defy the White House by publishing the Pentagon Papers. Now the White House asks them to change a subheading and the paper of record meekly says, OK. As for Congress, is an anemic Democratic “opposition” ready to challenge the administration, no-holds-barred? That really would be shocking.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: In Iraq, division will undermine reconciliation

Editor’s Commentchanging-baghdad.gif — The good news coming out of Iraq is that most Iraqis see an end to the U.S. occupation as being the key to national reconciliation. The bad news is that the damage done to Iraq’s social frabric over the last five years is going to be extremely difficult to repair. The problem is starkly depicted in these two maps of Baghdad. In the space of eighteen months, the city has transformed from being predominently made up of mixed neighborhoods (depicted in yellow), to being sharply divided between Shia and Sunni sectors. Now, colliding with this division are returning refugees:

A small fraction of the millions of refugees who fled Iraq have come back. While the government trumpeted their return as proof of newfound security, migration experts said most of them were forced back by expired visas and depleted savings…

The American military has expressed deep concerns about the Iraqi government’s ability to feed and house its returnees, or manage people who wish to reclaim their homes. It is widely feared that property disputes or efforts to return to newly homogenized neighborhoods could set off fresh waves of sectarian attacks.

For most Iraqi refugees, the trip home is just the beginning of their troubles. Many return to find their homes destroyed or filled with squatters, most of them displaced people themselves. But the government committee that decides property disputes is charged with hearing only cases that predate the invasion of 2003.

Strategy that is making Iraq safer was snubbed for years
ByPeter Eisler, Blake Morrison and Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today, December 19, 2007

[A] USA TODAY investigation shows that the strategy now used to defeat the bombmaking networks and stabilize Iraq was ignored or rejected for years by key decision-makers. As early as 2004, when roadside bombs already were killing scores of troops, a top military consultant invited to address two dozen generals offered a “strategic alternative” for beating the insurgency and IEDs.

That plan and others mirroring the counterinsurgency blueprint that the Pentagon now hails as a success were pitched repeatedly in memos and presentations during the following two years, at meetings that included then-Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

The core of the strategy: Clear insurgents from key areas and provide security to win over Iraqis, who would respond by helping U.S. forces break IED networks and defeat the insurgency.

Bush administration officials, however, remained wedded to the idea that training the Iraqi army and leaving the country would suffice. Officials, including Cheney, insisted the insurgency was dying. Those pronouncements delayed the Pentagon from embracing new plans to stop IEDs and investing in better armored vehicles that allow troops to patrol more freely, documents and interviews show.

Even after the Pentagon began committing substantial resources to combat IEDs, USA TODAY found, its spending focused mostly on high-tech devices with limited utility. Some silver-bullet solutions, such as microwave beams designed to destroy IEDs before they blew up, never worked.

By the time the Pentagon moved to a counterinsurgency strategy at the end of last year, the bombs had been the top killer of U.S. troops for three years, claiming more than 1,160 lives. To date, they are responsible for more than 60% of combat deaths. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Torture complex uncovered

Torture house, mass graves discovered in Iraq
CNN, December 20, 2007

Coalition forces found 26 bodies buried in mass graves and a bloodstained “torture complex,” with chains hanging from walls and ceilings and a bed connected to an electrical system, the military said Wednesday.
[…]
The complex was in an area thought to be an al Qaeda in Iraq haven and operating base, the military said. Iraqis had told the military about the site during an earlier operation.

“Evidence of murder, torture and intimidation against local villagers was found throughout the area,” the military statement said. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The unfortunate but predictable effect of a report such as this is that it will empower those who want to argue that “their torture is worse than ours.” But the more important question is this: Have their torturers been empowered by ours? To imagine that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, renditions and secret CIA prisons have had little impact on the outlook of America’s enemies (and friends) is both ignorant and naive.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Promoting democracy in Israel; war on Hamas

Adalah center says it may seek supranational regime in ‘all historic Palestine’
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz, December 20, 2007

The Arab minority rights center, Adalah, is considering a proposal calling for a “democratic constitution for a supranational regime in all of historic Palestine,” including the territory of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This constitutes a shift from the proposed Democratic Constitution that Adalah offered as a constitution for Israel.

While it is not clear when this change occurred, Adalah sources said Wednesday that the effort does not aim to do away with Israel or delegitimize its existence.

Adalah announced in its monthly newsletter Wednesday that it seeks to establish a group of international experts, including Palestinians and Israelis, to help “finalize the text of the Democratic Constitution.”

In its proposal for a constitution for all historic Palestine, Adalah points to the European Convention on Human Rights as a model. [complete article]

For Israel’s Arab citizens, isolation and exclusion
By Scott Wilson, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

Fatina and Ahmad Zubeidat, young Arab citizens of Israel, met on the first day of class at the prestigious Bezalel arts and architecture academy in Jerusalem. Married last year, the couple rents an airy house here in the Galilee filled with stylish furniture and other modern grace notes.

But this is not where they wanted to live. They had hoped to be in Rakefet, a nearby town where 150 Jewish families live on state land close to the mall project Ahmad is building. After months of interviews and testing, the town’s admission committee rejected the Arab couple on the grounds of “social incompatibility.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The difference between Israel and South Africa is that the South African whites took pride in their racism and thus gave it a name and a rationale. Most Israeli Jews on the other hand are too attached to their pluralistic Western image and thus an approach described as ensuring “social compatibility” refuses to accept its real name: apartheid.

Israelis cool to an offer from Hamas on a truce
By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, December 20, 2007

Officials in the Israeli prime minister’s office reacted coolly on Wednesday to an indirect approach by the Hamas leader in Gaza offering talks on a truce.

The offer was relayed through an Israeli reporter, Sleman al-Shafhe, of Channel 2 television. On a news broadcast on Tuesday night, Mr. Shafhe said Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, had called him earlier in the day to convey a message to the Israelis.

According to Mr. Shafhe, Mr. Haniya said he had the ability to stop the rocket fire directed at Israel from Gaza, on condition that Israel stopped the killing of Palestinians there and lifted the blockade of Gaza.

Mr. Haniya’s call followed Israeli military strikes that killed at least 10 Palestinians in Gaza between Monday night and Tuesday morning, in a concerted effort to suppress the rocket fire. Eight of those killed were from Islamic Jihad, which has been responsible for most of the recent rocket fire, and included a top commander of the group’s military wing, Israeli officials said. [complete article]

Israeli operations in Gaza meet little resistance in Washington
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward, December 19, 2007

As Israel stepped up air attacks on Gaza this week, the Bush administration refrained from blocking any measures or criticizing Israel’s activity.

The Israeli Air Force last week renewed the practice known as “targeted killing” against members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza. Israeli officials have said in recent weeks that if rocket fire against Israeli towns is not stopped, further escalation might be imminent, including a full-scale ground incursion into the Hamas-controlled strip.

Administration officials have directed all the blame for the deteriorating situation in Gaza onto Hamas, which seized control of the area in June. Israel, according to diplomatic sources in Washington, was not asked to scale down its actions or to refrain from a ground operation. “I haven’t heard of any red light,” an Israeli official said. The administration’s policy since the recent Annapolis, Md., peace summit entails a two-pronged approach toward the Palestinian Authority. On one hand, Washington will allow Israel to take tough measures against Hamas-ruled Gaza. On the other hand, assistance will be increased to the government of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. At a December 17 donor conference in Paris, the administration pledged $550 million in aid to Abbas’s P.A., an amount that exceeds any previous American financial assistance to the Palestinians. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Turkish attack on PKK

Iraq angered by Turkish bombing
By Damien Cave, New York Times, December 18, 2007

Iraqi leaders criticized Turkey on Monday for bombing Kurdish militants in northern Iraq with airstrikes that they said left at least one woman dead.

The Turkish attacks in Dohuk Province on Sunday — involving dozens of warplanes and artillery — were the largest known cross-border attack since 2003. They occurred with at least tacit approval from American officials.

The Iraqi government, however, said it was not consulted or informed about the attacks.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, condemned the assaults as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty that undermined months of diplomacy. “These attacks hinder the political efforts exerted to find a peaceful solution based on mutual respect,” he said in a statement. [complete article]

‘U.S. backed’ Turkish raids on Iraq
BBC News, December 16, 2007

Turkey’s air strikes against Kurdish rebels in Iraq on Sunday were approved by the United States in advance, the Turkish military has said.

The country’s top general, Yasar Buyukanit, said the US opened northern Iraqi airspace for the operation.

Jets targeted the Kurdish rebel PKK in areas near the border. The Turkish media said up to 50 planes were used. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This will comes as news to most Americans, but according to the State Department, the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party) — generally known as the PKK — poses a threat to the United States. State Department spokesman Tom Casey this afternoon said, “we remain concerned by the threat posed by the PKK to Turkey, to Iraq and to the United States.” Curious then that the U.S. seems to content to sit back and let Turkey deal with that threat — the only qualification being that next time Turkey bombs Iraq the State Department would like the Turks to talk to the Iraqi government (presumably before the attack). As for whether the U.S. expects consultation with the Turks on its bombing operations in Iraq, the U.S. government is being quite explicit in saying that no prior consent is required. “I don’t think it’s for us to accept or reject,” said Casey when asked whether the U.S. accepts Turkey’s military action. And as the Turkish newspaper, Zaman reports: “Kathy Schalow, the spokesperson for the US Embassy in Ankara, was quoted as saying that the Turkish side had informed US authorities beforehand about Sunday’s operation but underlined that the decision to carry out the strike was up to the Turks and no US consent was needed.”

What, I wonder, does Iran make of this? For several months Iran has also been shelling Kurdish villages in Iraq where it claims guerrillas are based. If Iran was to now escalate its attacks and conduct air raids, would the U.S. be issuing another no-consent-required statement? I guess not:

Turkish officials privately attribute US reluctance to crack down on the PKK to its covert support for its so-called sister organisation, the Pejak, or Free Life party of Kurdistan, which is battling over Kurdish areas of north-western Iran. This is seen as part of a broader US effort to counter Iranian meddling in Iraq, and destabilise hardliners in Tehran.

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: All the news that’s fit to print — with Pentagon approval

Case lays bare the media’s reliance on Iraqi journalists
By Tim Arango, New York Times, December 17, 2007

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who had a hand in The Associated Press’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photography before being jailed without charges by the United States military, finally had a day in court last week. But his story, which highlights the unprecedented role that Iraqis are playing in news coverage of the war, is really just beginning.

He was held for around 20 months by the military — in Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere, with no right to contest his detention — before being turned over to an Iraqi magistrate, who will act as a one-man grand jury and decide if there is enough evidence to link him to the insurgency. He has not been formally charged with a crime.

The Associated Press has staunchly defended Mr. Hussein, pointing out that his role as a journalist involved getting close to the insurgency. Over the last three years, the American military has held at least eight other Iraqi journalists for periods of weeks or month without charges and released them all, apparently unable to find ties to the insurgency, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent nonprofit organization.

As for Mr. Hussein and his lawyers, “they were not given a copy of the materials that were presented and which they need to prepare a defense,” The Associated Press said in a statement last week, noting that Mr. Hussein was still being detained without formal charges. “The Associated Press continues to believe that claims Bilal is involved with insurgent activities are false.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The one indisputable fact in this story is that Bilal Hussein is not guilty as charged — unless of course one wants to include “charges” made by the U.S. military, delivered by email to the New York Times. As for the Times’ own ability to report the facts and nothing but the facts, the paper gives the game away in this line: “The [Western] reporters and editors said that they often had to filter out obvious sectarian biases from news copy [provided by Iraqi journalists], and, as a matter of policy, would not run statistics like death counts from the field without official confirmation from the military.”

“All the News that’s Fit to Print” — so long as it gets official confirmation from the military.

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The imprint of torture

CIA agents sense shifting support for methods
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 13, 2007

For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil. [complete article]

See also, CIA chief cites agency lapse on tapes (NYT) and From a critic of tribunals to top judge (NYT).

Editor’s Comment — Suppose that soon after 9/11, at a time when many Americans were fixated on the question, why do they hate us?, we had been presented with part of an answer to that question:

because we let our allies torture them.

If 9/11 itself had widely been seen as, in part, an act of revenge for torture, would we now be having a debate about the wisdom, morality, or effectiveness of the use of torture?

*

On December 4, 1982, at the opening of the trial of three hundred Egyptian Islamists who had been implicated in the plot to assassinate President Anwar Sadat, the Islamists’ spokesman, Ayman Zawahiri (later to become Osama bin Laden’s deputy), said, “Now we want to speak to the world.”

Clips from his statement have often been televised. The image they portray is of a revolutionary Islamist, intent on toppling governments and imposing Sharia law. But the part of Zawahiri’s message to the world that received less attention than it should — especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 — related to torture.

In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright writes:

[As spokesman for the defendants] Zawahiri calls out the names of several prisoners who, he says, died as a result of torture. “So where is democracy?” he shouts. “Where is freedom? Where is human rights? Where is justice? Where is justice? We will never forget! We will never forget!”

Zawahiri’s allegations of torture were later substantiated by forensic medical reports, which noted six injuries in various places on his body resulting from assaults with “a solid instrument.” Zawahiri later testified in a case brought against Intelligence Unit 75, which had conducted the prison interrogations. He was supported by testimony of one the intelligence officers, who confessed that he witnessed Zawahiri in the prison, “his head shaved, his dignity completely humiliated, undergoing all sorts of torture.” The officer went on to say that he had been in the interrogation room when another prisoner was brought into the chamber, chained hand and foot. The interrogators were trying to get Zawahiri to confess his involvement in the Sadat assassination. When the other prisoner said, “How would you expect him to confess when he knows the penalty is death?” Zawahiri replied, “The death penalty is more merciful than torture.” (pp.64-65)

In the name of supporting Egypt’s “stability” and its peace treaty with Israel, the United States has for decades provided billions of dollars in military and economic aid while most of the time choosing to ignore the violent repression for which Egypt is infamous and that U.S. tax dollars continue to enable. The intimate relationship between the U.S. government and the Egyptian torturers has never been lost on the tortured.

Shouldn’t one of the many lessons of 9/11 have been that torture can produce profound hatred and that those who have been tortured do truly never forget? Only a nation intent on making itself impervious to the past could continue to create so many inerasable memories.

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ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iran’s new Arab friends

Iran’s new Gulf friends
By Martin Walker, UPI, December 5, 2007

A curious event took place in the Gulf as the new National Intelligence Estimate appeared in Washington, undermining the Bush administration’s threats and angry rhetoric by revealing that Iran had suspended in nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

king-abdullah-with-president-ahmadinejad.jpgThe arch-demon of President Bush’s rhetoric, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, was sitting politely in a conference room with the Arab leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council. He was all sweetness and light and neighborly good manners, offering a regional security pact and a 12-point cooperation plan, including free trade and joint investments in oil and gas.

Ahmedinejad was so courteous that the GCC leaders hailed his “gestures of goodwill.” Qatar’s Prime Minister Skeikh Hamad al Thani, whose emirate hosted the summit, said, “If Iran was serious in its positive intentions, we can develop our relations for the sake of regional stability.” [complete article]

The new chapter and taking poison
By Abdallah Iskandar, Al-Hayat, December 4, 2007

There are good foundations for cooperative and friendly relations between the Gulf state and Iran; there are also good reasons to justify the conflicts and caution between the two sides of the Arab Gulf. The region is passing through a gray phase in which interests and goals are too intertwined. The only way to put friendship and cooperation ahead of conflict and caution is by direct dialogue. [complete article]

GCC to launch common market in January
By Abu Zainab, Arab News, December 5, 2007

Leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) yesterday announced their plan to launch a common market in January 2008 and a currency union by 2010 in addition to maintaining their currencies’ peg to the US dollar. [complete article]

See also, As Dubai heats up, is Israel frozen out? (The Forward).

Editor’s Comment — While some headlines in the US press are still pushing the old narrative (such as the LA Times’ “Report on Iran fuels Arab fears“), the image across the Middle East is somewhat different. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might not be universally popular, but President Bush is deluding himself if he thinks that Iran can now be isolated. Neither should the significance of Ahmadinejad’s overtures to the GCC be underestimated. The GCC (an acronym that will be unfamiliar to most Americans) might be made up of mostly small and autocratic states but this bloc also happens to be a financial superpower possessing more than double the available investment funds of China.

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Missile defense against what?

Europe’s missile shield: NIE casualty?
By Mark Thompson, Time, December 6, 2007

TThat the new U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear program has put the kibosh on hawkish calls for a military response has been discussed to death, but there’s been very little focus on a second potential casualty: the U.S. plan to base ground-based missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. The plan to station interceptor missiles in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic is regarded warily by citizens of those countries, and with outright hostility by the Russians who see it as aimed at blunting their own missile capability in the event of a showdown with the U.S. The plan has helped freeze U.S.-Russia ties to Cold War levels of enmity, with President Vladimir Putin just last week suspending Russia’s participation in 1990s Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.

Against the barrage of criticism from the Russians, Pentagon officials have always insisted that the purpose of the missile-defense system is to protect Europe and the U.S. from an Iranian missile attack. “It’s not the Russians that we’re worried about,” Air Force Lieutenant General Henry “Trey” Obering, chief of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said over breakfast earlier this year. “It is the Iranian missiles that we’re worried about.” But if the best those missiles could carry is conventional explosives, the case for deploying the missile defense system in the face of the heavy diplomatic cost and financial burden ($4 billion through 2013) becomes increasingly dubious. For one thing, the Pentagon faces mounting bills of tens of billions of dollars to “reset” the U.S. military — replacing everything worn out in Afghanistan and Iraq — over the coming decade. [complete article]

Russia alleges U.S. ‘rollback’ on anti-missile plan
By Peter Finn, Washington Post, December 6, 2007

The United States has backed away from proposals it made orally in October to allay Russian fears about the deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, alleged Wednesday.

Lavrov said an oral proposal to permanently station Russian officers at sites in Poland and the Czech Republic to ensure that the system’s radar would not be used to peer into Russian airspace was withdrawn when the United States submitted its proposals to Moscow in writing last month.

“We received the document, and unfortunately a serious rollback from what we agreed upon was evident,” Lavrov said at a news conference Wednesday in his first detailed comments on the U.S. written proposals. “The issue no longer concerns the permanent presence of Russian officers at possible facilities . . . in the Czech Republic and Poland.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I’m not sure why I haven’t read anyone else make this observation, but there’s always seemed to me to be a glaring contradiction that the administration on the one hand asserts that Iran will never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, while on the other hand argues to its European allies that they need a missile defense shield for protection against Iranian ballistic missiles. Either the shield was always presumed to be unnecessary or it was always presumed that efforts to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would fail. The Pentagon’s claim that the “missile-defense program is not geared to any kind of specific defense against a specific weapon,” is baloney.

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