Category Archives: Editor’s comments

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Intelligence community puts Cheney in restraints

U.S. says Iran ended atomic arms work
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 3, 2007

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be major factor in the tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program. Concerns about Iran were raised sharply after President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III,” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

The findings also come in the middle of a presidential campaign during which a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear program has been discussed.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran’s ultimate intentions about gaining a nuclear weapon remain unclear, but that Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This is a major defeat for Dick Cheney – perhaps even great enough to describe as a politically fatal blow. As Gareth Porter reported last month:

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to make the document more supportive of Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts provided by participants in the NIE process to two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers.

But Cheney lost — big time. The White House’s response — peppered with phrases like “positive news,” “we have made progress,” the “estimate offers grounds for hope,” a solution can be found “without the use of force” — amounts to what Cheney and his neocon supporters should regard as a strategic defeat. The intelligence community (no doubt with strong support from defense secretary Gates and his allies) has effectively kneecapped the vice president.

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Time to get out, not dig in

Iraqi insurgents regrouping, says Sunni resistance leader
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, December 3, 2007

Iraq’s main Sunni-led resistance groups have scaled back their attacks on US forces in Baghdad and parts of Anbar province in a deliberate strategy aimed at regrouping, retraining, and waiting out George Bush’s “surge”, a key insurgent leader has told the Guardian.

US officials recently reported a 55% drop in attacks across Iraq. One explanation they give is the presence of 30,000 extra US troops deployed this summer. The other is the decision by dozens of Sunni tribal leaders to accept money and weapons from the Americans in return for confronting al-Qaida militants who attack civilians. They call their movement al-Sahwa (the Awakening).

The resistance groups are another factor in the complex equation in Iraq’s Sunni areas. “We oppose al-Qaida as well as al-Sahwa,” the director of the political department of the 1920 Revolution Brigades told the Guardian in Damascus in a rare interview with a western reporter. [complete article]

U.S. No. 2 general in Iraq cites 25-30 percent reduction in foreign fighters entering Iraq
AP, December 2, 2007

The U.S. second-in-command in Iraq said Sunday there has been a 25 percent to 30 percent reduction in foreign fighters entering Iraq, and he credited Syria with taking steps to limit the flow.

The Americans and Iraqi officials have demanded that Syria do more to stop foreign fighters from crossing its borders to fight in Iraq, where they threaten U.S. forces as well as Iraqi civilians.

Damascus says it has taken all necessary measures but that it is impossible to fully control the sprawling desert along the porous 570-kilometer (354-mile) border. Syrian authorities say they have increased the number of outposts to one every 400 meters (yards) in some zones along the frontier. [complete article]

Iraq as a Pentagon construction site
By Tom Englelhardt, TomDispatch, December 2, 2007

The title of the agreement, signed by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in a “video conference” last week, and carefully labeled as a “non-binding” set of principles for further negotiations, was a mouthful: a “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship Between the Republic of Iraq and the United States of America.” Whew!

Words matter, of course. They seldom turn up by accident in official documents or statements. Last week, in the first reports on this “declaration,” one of those words that matter caught my attention. Actually, it wasn’t in the declaration itself, where the key phrase was “long-term relationship” (something in the lives of private individuals that falls just short of a marriage), but in a “fact-sheet” issued by the White House. Here’s the relevant line: “Iraq’s leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America, and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq.” Of course, “enduring” there bears the same relationship to permanency as “long-term relationship” does to marriage.

In a number of the early news reports, that word “enduring,” part of the “enduring relationship” that the Iraqi leadership supposedly “asked for,” was put into (or near) the mouths of “Iraqi leaders” or of the Iraqi prime minister himself. It also achieved a certain prominence in the post-declaration “press gaggle” conducted by the man coordinating this process out of the Oval Office, the President’s so-called War Tsar, Gen. Douglas Lute. He said of the document: “It signals a commitment of both their government and the United States to an enduring relationship based on mutual interests.” [complete article]

See also, Big Media blackout on Iraq (Jeffrey Feldman).

Editor’s Comment — The fact that the U.S. military is now offering some qualified credit to both Syria and Iran for the reduction of violence in Iraq is a tacit acknowledgment that even while it claims “success” in the surge, the current respite is as much a gift — it can easily be taken away. This is the time to get out — not dig in.

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Islamophobia goes unchallenged

Foes use Obama’s Muslim ties to fuel rumors about him
By Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post, November 29, 2007

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama’s biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama’s stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year. [complete article]

WaPo reporter responds to all the criticism of front-page Obama Muslim piece
TPM, November 29, 2007

Okay, the Washington Post reporter who wrote today’s front page article on the rumors that Obama is a Muslim has now responded to all the criticism of the piece he’s been getting from readers and elsewhere today.

A number of you have written in to us to say that you had emailed the reporter, Perry Bacon, Jr., and that you had received responses from him. So I went to Bacon, and he sent over a shortened version of the statement he’s been sending back to readers:

I thought the facts that 1. these falsehoods persist and 2. Obama make mentions of his time living in a Muslim country on the campaign trail as part of his foreign policy were both worth remarking. I think the story makes clear, including in the candidate’s own words, he is a Christian.

Anyway, that’s Bacon’s response. Enter it into the record forthwith.

Update: In a chat with readers today, WaPo reporter Lois Romano addressed the controversy over the story. She observed that Obama has denied being a Muslim, adding that “airing some of this and giving him a chance to deny its accuracy could be viewed as setting the record straight.”

Right, but the problem here is that WaPo, and not just Obama, should have “denied the accuracy” of the Obama-is-a-Muslim nonsense. The Obama Muslim smear is based on lies, not “rumors.” Bacon in his statement above calls the Obama Muslim smears “falsehoods.” But they aren’t identified as such in the piece. That’s what everyone is yelling about. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Let’s suppose that the word flying around the rightwing blogosphere was that Obama was Jewish. Would anyone be referring to that as a smear? Obama and others would point out that he’s a Christian, not a Jew, but we would not be hearing about the Obama “Jewish smears.”

In the outrage being expressed about the Obama “Muslim smear”, where is the outrage at the fact that in pluralistic, democratic America the label Muslim can be used as a smear? Apparently it goes without saying that Islamophobia is a socially acceptable current in presidential politics.

If the editor’s of the Washington Post want to salvage their newspaper’s reputation, how about reporting on the parallels between American images of Communists during the McCarthy era and the bipartisan vilification of Islam and Muslims that exists as an unchallenged bigotry in much of America today?

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: U.S. Special Forces inside Iran?

U.S. wages covert war on Iraq-Iran border
By Nelson Rand, Asia Times, November 28, 2007

While the PKK has been in the international spotlight in recent weeks, with Turkey mounting cross-border raids and threatening to launch an invasion of Iraq, not so much attention has been given to the Iranian offshoot, the PJAK. The group has been waging an insurgency against Tehran since 2004, which recently has escalated. A guerrilla leader told the New York Times last month that PJAK fighters had killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in Iran since August.

Iran accuses Washington of backing the group, and while the US denies this, local and foreign intelligence sources say the accusation is most likely true. According to a former US Special Forces (SF) commando currently based in Iraq who spoke on condition of anonymity, Special Forces troops are currently operating inside Iran, working with insurgent forces like the PJAK. “That’s what the SF does,” he said. “They train and build up indigenous anti-government forces.”

“The primary function of the Special Forces is to stand up guerrilla forces or counter-guerrilla forces,” said another former SF soldier, retired Major Mark Smith. While he was not specifically aware of SF teams training the PJAK, he said it would not be surprising if they were. And “they would be training in an obscure border area or in a location denied to anyone not directly involved”, he said.

He added that SF teams in Iran would be conducting strategic reconnaissance of possible nuclear and biological weapons sites, army headquarters, and significant individuals. “If they’re not doing these things in Iran, then they are remiss in their duties at the upper echelons of their command,” he said. [complete article]

Petraeus sought to prevent release of Iranians
By Gareth Porter, Antiwar, November 27, 2007

Recent statements by the U.S. military that Iran had pledged to stop supplying weapons to Shi’ite militias in Iraq and that this alleged flow of arms may have stopped in August were part of a behind-the-scenes struggle over whether the George W. Bush administration should make a gesture to Iran by releasing five Iranian prisoners held since January.

When U.S. military experts found evidence that recently discovered weapons caches probably dated back to early 2007, it strengthened the hand of those in the administration arguing for the release and weakened the position of Vice President Dick Cheney and Gen. David Petraeus, who sought to scuttle any release by insisting that there was no evidence that Iran had changed its alleged policy of destabilizing Iraq. [complete article]

Annapolis and Iran
By Gary Sick, Rootless Cosmopolitan, November 26, 2007

Is there room in these last months of a lame duck presidency to craft a modest opening to Iran, while maintaining a stout anti-Iranian coalition? Well, if we are to heed the cries of alarm emanating from the neo-conservatives as they watch their grandiose plans to add a third front to the War on Terror crumple into the dustbin of history, perhaps there really is something going on here.

Nevertheless, since this is a policy that dare not speak its name, even if these titillating signals are true, no turning point will be announced in blaring trumpets, and the message about Iran will be cloaked in vitriol and bile to prevent creating undue alarm among American conservatives and among the Arabs who are only now signing on to a long-term strategy to counter the “Iranian threat” but who also deeply fear the possibility of a sudden deal between the United States and Iran. (They can’t forget the shah and Iran-contra.)

The two individuals most likely to view these developments with quiet satisfaction are James Baker and Lee Hamilton, whose original policy prescriptions in the Iraq Study Group all seem to be coming true as George W. Bush approaches the precipice of his presidency. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The fundamental problem in trying to decipher the intention behind the administration’s mixed messages on Iran is that this presumes that the administration has an intention. Just as likely, these mixed messages are the expression of multiple intentions as conflicting factions inside the administration jostle for the upper hand, each acutely aware that a president who does not know his own mind, can be swayed.

Iranians say sanctions hurt them, not government
By Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, November 27, 2007

Banks HSBC, Credit Suisse and UBS cut business ties with Iran last year followed by Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and BNP Paribas in 2007.

“Almost every month we get notes from European banks about ceasing their cooperation with Iran,” said an employee of an Iranian bank, who asked not to be identified.

A doctor, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “We cannot open Letters of Credit in banks. Importing necessary material for medicines to treat patients who suffer cancer is becoming more difficult every day.”

Personal stories are common of how the financial sanctions are affecting those mostly well-off people who have foreign bank accounts or earn income from abroad.

Some say they will leave Iran if the United Nations imposes tougher sanctions; others are forced to use unofficial channels to get their cash.

Maryam Sharifa is one of many Iranians whose dollar account with a Western bank was closed in the past few months. Like many Iranians who lived abroad, she had kept her account open since returning to Iran.

“I had this account for 13 years in France. Do I look like a terrorist? Should I be punished just for being an Iranian?” said the 39-year-old mother of two. “I had to bring all that money with me here and buy a small apartment in Tehran.” [complete article]

Iran’s secret weapon: The Pope
By Jeff Israely, Time, November 26, 2007

The diplomatic chess game around Iran’s nuclear program includes an unlikely bishop. According to several well-placed Rome sources, Iranian officials are quietly laying the groundwork necessary to turn to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican diplomats for mediation if the showdown with the United States should escalate toward a military intervention. The 80-year-old Pope has thus far steered clear of any strong public comments about either Iran’s failure to fully comply with U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors or the drumbeat of war coming from some corners in Washington. But Iran, which has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See for 53 years, may be trying to line up Benedict as an ace in the hole for staving off a potential attack in the coming months. “The Vatican seems to be part of their strategy,” a senior Western diplomat in Rome said of the Iranian leadership. “They’ll have an idea of when the 11th hour is coming. And they know an intervention of the Vatican is the most open and amenable route to Western public opinion. It could buy them time.” [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iraq – the shifting narrative

Bomb at a market shatters lull for Baghdad
By Stephen Farrell, New York Times, November 24, 2007

Last Friday, the Ghazil animal market was a crowded bazaar in a city willing itself into recovery. Cautious but hopeful parents led fun-starved children by the hand to show them parakeets, tropical fish and twittering chicks painted in bright, improbable hues.

As Baghdad’s relative lull in violence had extended from weeks into months, Sunnis and Shiites alike made the calculation — one shared by this reporter — that the Ghazil market was safe enough to risk walking around on a sunny Friday.

It was. But one week later, the market in the shadow of the Mosque of the Caliphs was a scene of carnage, a cruel reminder that the decline in violence in this city is relative and may not last. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — While American officials have been keen to attribute the recent drop in violence in Baghdad to the success of the surge, there seems to be evidence that this drop can also be attributed to another significant event: an isolated but effective disruption in the supply chain of suicide bombers.

A New York Times report last Thursday on a raid on an insurgent camp at Sinjar, close to the Syrian border, focused on intelligence findings that reveals where foreign fighters entering Iraq are coming from. The political significance of this data is obvious: At a time when Iran is frequently blamed for fomenting violence in Iraq, the U.S. military is making it clear that the most significant foreign element has actually been coming from Saudi Arabia. What this report and surrounding coverage has not focused on are the practical consequences that seem to have followed from this raid: a substantial drop in the number of suicide bombings. Friday’s bombing in the Ghazil animal market while apparently intended to look like the re-emergence of the trend of suicide attacks aimed at causing mass civilian casualties is noteworthy because it wasn’t a suicide bombing.

There’s no place like … Iraq?
By Larry Kaplow, Rod Nordland and Silvia Spring, Newsweek, November 24, 2007

Dawood is happy to be back in Baghdad. Not that he had much choice. Late last year the cautious, soft-spoken Shiite fled to Syria and on to Lebanon, leaving his wife and their three children in relatives’ care while he looked for a safer home. He had begun getting death threats after helping create an Internet hookup for the U.S. Army base at Taji. Dawood (he won’t risk the use of his full name) is a 33-year-old IT engineer, but he couldn’t find work outside Iraq. His Lebanese visa ran out, and Canada refused his asylum application. So a few weeks ago, practically broke, he returned to Baghdad. His old district is torn by an ongoing Shia-Sunni turf war, but Dawood says he feels safe in the family’s new, mainly Shia area. His youngest child, now 3, called him “Uncle” at first, and he’s still looking for work, but it’s good just to be with his family. “I’ll tell you something about missing Baghdad,” he says. “When I’m in Baghdad, I don’t want to hear any Iraqi music. But when I’m somewhere else, all I want to hear is Iraqi music.”

Thousands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war. Although they’re scarcely a fraction of the roughly 2.2 million who have fled into exile since 2003, they represent a big shift: for the first time since the war began, more Iraqis seem to be re-entering the country than leaving. At the desert outpost of Al Waleed, the main crossing on the Syrian frontier, border police reported 43,799 Iraqis coming home in October—more than five times the number heading out, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Other statistics remain patchy at best, but the signs point toward home. “I can tell you this,” says Abdul Samid Rahman Sultan, Iraq’s minister of Displacement and Migration (the job title alone tells how bad the problem has been). “Flights from Syria are always full. Flights out are not.” [complete article]

Railroading a journalist in Iraq
By Tom Curley, Washington Post, November 24, 2007

At long last, prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein may get his day in court. The trouble is, justice won’t be blind in this case — his lawyer will be.

Bilal has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since he was picked up April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, a violent town in a turbulent province where few Western journalists dared go. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents. This week, Editor&Publisher magazine reported the military has amended that to say he is, in fact, a “terrorist” who had “infiltrated the AP.”

We believe Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man.

In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, although the military has sent out a flurry of ever-changing claims. Every claim we’ve checked out has proved to be false, overblown or microscopic in significance. Now, suddenly, the military plans to seek a criminal case against Bilal in the Iraqi court system in just days. But the military won’t tell us what the charges are, what evidence it will be submitting or even when the hearing will be held. [complete article]

Iraq nullifies Kurdish oil deals
By Ammar Karim, AFP, November 24, 2007

Iraq’s oil ministry has declared all crude contracts signed by the Kurdish regional authorities with foreign companies null and void, a government official said on Saturday.

“The ministry has nullified all contracts signed by the Kurdistan Regional Government,” the official told AFP, asking not to be named. “They will not be recognised.”

The government in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region has signed 15 exploration and exportation contracts with 20 international companies since it passed its own oil law in August, infuriating the Baghdad government. [complete article]

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The Annapolis peace ambiance

U.S. push on Palestinians has Iran motive
By Sue Pleming, Reuters, November 23, 2007

The United States hopes one byproduct of its Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking will be a moderate Arab alliance to counter Iran’s influence in the region, but analysts are skeptical the strategy will work.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has argued that a strong Palestinian state could act as a bulwark against a rise in extremism, mainly from Iran, which Washington accuses of backing groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Reuters reports that:

Rice was asked this week if ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had more to do with Iran than anything else.

“It’s a strange argument,” she told reporters but she reiterated her view that growing extremism in the Middle East was a key factor driving the main players in the region to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even if Rice says this is a strange argument, it should also be a familiar argument since it was essentially the argument being made by her then-counselor, Philip Zelikow in a keynote address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy just over a year ago. Zelikow envisioned a coalition of the “United States, key European allies, the state of Israel and the Arab moderates” that would be needed to confront Iran. He said that what would “bind that coalition and help keep them together is a sense that the Arab-Israeli issues are being addressed.” The Annapolis meeting is taking place to foster that “sense”; to create an ambiance in which it feels like there is movement in the direction of a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Likudnik hawks work to undermine Annapolis
By Jim Lobe, Antiwar.com, November 22, 2007

Despite near-universal skepticism about the prospects for launching a serious, new Middle East peace process at next week’s Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, a familiar clutch of neoconservative hawks close to the Likud Party leader, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, isn’t taking any chances.

Hard-liners associated with the American Enterprise Institute and Freedom’s Watch, a bountifully funded campaign led by prominent backers of the Republican Jewish Coalition, among other like-minded groups, are mounting a concerted attack against next week’s meeting which they fear could result in pressure on Israel to make territorial concessions.

The attack, which comes amid steadily growing neoconservative fears that the administration of President George W. Bush is becoming increasingly “realist” in its last year in office, is being directed primarily against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, rather than the president himself. [complete article]

Syria reportedly to skip summit, as Haniyeh calls meet ‘stillborn’
Haaretz, November 22, 2007

Hamas’ Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday that next week’s U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference is stillborn and will achieve nothing for the Palestinians, as the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported that Syria has already decided not to attend the Annapolis, Maryland summit.

“We realize that this conference was stillborn and is not going to achieve for the Palestinian people any of its goals or any of the political and legal rights due to them,” Haniyeh said outside the Palestinian parliament building in Gaza City.

Haniyeh said Abbas did not have the mandate to make compromises in talks with Israel, especially over the demand of Palestinian refugees to return with their families to homes in Israel they lost during the 1948 War of Independence. [complete article]

Saudis to attend Middle East peace conference
By Peter Walker, The Guardian, November 23, 2007

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister is to attend next week’s Middle East peace conference, he announced today, in a significant boost to the US-sponsored talks.

“I’m not hiding any secret about the Saudi position. We were reluctant until today,” Saud al-Faisal told a press conference at the ongoing Arab League meeting in Cairo.

“If not for the Arab consensus we felt today, we would not have decided to go,” he said. “But the kingdom would never stand against an Arab consensus, as long as the Arab position has agreed on attending, the kingdom will walk along with its brothers in one line.” [complete article]

Israel to start gradually reducing Gaza power supply December 2
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz, November 23, 2007

Israel to begin gradually reducing the power supply to the Gaza Strip on December 2, in response to the ongoing Qassam rocket fire at Israeli communities along the Strip, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told the High Court of Justice on Thursday.

According to the State Prosecution, the defense establishment has finalized preparations meant to ensure that the power reduction does not cause humanitarian harm Gaza.

The Palestinians will be given a one-week advance notice of the intention to begin reducing the power supply. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Do you know the way to Annapolis?

U.S. says to issue Annapolis invitations soon
Reuters, November 20, 2007

The Annapolis conference is expected to be held at the U.S. Naval Academy on November 27, with other related meetings in Washington a day before and after.

The spokesman said Washington has had informal contacts in the last few days with the dozens of countries it hopes to include “just … letting them know that an invitation will be forthcoming in the not-too-distant future.”

“When it arrives, it will likely say here are the dates, here’s the place, and here are some of the logistical arrangements just so you can start some of your advance planning,” McCormack added, waving a copy of the invitation cable to be sent to U.S. embassies for distribution. [complete article]

EU Solana: Israel Palestine Annapolis conference successful for discussing issues
Israel News Agency, November 19, 2007

Israel Foreign Minister Livni – “I believe that the success of Annapolis is launching a process and the support of the international community and especially the support of the Arab world in these negotiations. And I would like to take this opportunity to call upon the Arab world and to say that the Palestinians need their support. It’s not for the sake of Israel, but for the sake of the peace process. Support does not mean to dictate the outcome of the negotiations or to put obstacles before Annapolis, but just to join and support the bilateral process, which is the only process.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The “peace process” has become the never-ending process that ensures there will be no peace.

How to get out?
By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, November 19, 2007

The Annapolis conference is a joke. Though not in the least funny.

Like quite a lot of political initiatives, this one too, according to all the indications, started more or less by accident. George Bush was due to make a speech. He was looking for a theme that would give it some substance. Something that would divert attention away from his fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan. Something simple, optimistic, easy to swallow.

Somehow, the idea of a “meeting” of leaders to promote the Israeli-Palestinian “process” came up. An international meeting is always nice – it looks good on television, it provides plenty of photo-opportunities, it radiates optimism. We meet, ergo we exist.

So Bush voiced the idea: a “meeting” for the promotion of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Without any preceding strategic planning, any careful preparations, anything much at all. [complete article]

Why Israel has no “right to exist” as a Jewish state
By Oren Ben-Dor, Counterpunch, November 20, 2007

Yet again, the Annapolis meeting between Olmert and Abbas is preconditioned upon the recognition by the Palestinian side of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed the “road map” should lead to, and legitimate, once and for all, the right of such a Jewish state to exist in definitive borders and in peace with its neighbours. The vision of justice, both past and future, simply has to be that of two states, one Palestinian, one Jewish, which would coexist side by side in peace and stability. Finding a formula for a reasonably just partition and separation is still the essence of what is considered to be moderate, pragmatic and fair ethos.

Thus, the really deep issues–the “core”–are conceived as the status of Jerusalem, the fate and future of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories and the viability of the future Palestinian state beside the Jewish one. The fate of the descendants of those 750000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from what is now, and would continue to be under a two-state solutions, the State of Israel, constitutes a “problem” but never an “issue” because, God forbid, to make it an issue on the table would be to threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. The existence of Israel as a Jewish state must never become a core issue. That premise unites political opinion in the Jewish state, left and right and also persists as a pragmatic view of many Palestinians who would prefer some improvement to no improvement at all.Only “extremists” such as Hamas, anti-Semites, and Self-Hating Jews–terribly disturbed, misguided and detached lot–can make Israel’s existence into a core problem and in turn into a necessary issue to be debated and addressed.

The Jewish state, a supposedly potential haven for all the Jews in the world in the case a second Holocaust comes about, should be recognised as a fact on the ground blackmailed into the “never again” rhetoric. All considerations of pragmatism and reasonableness in envisioning a “peace process” to settle the ‘Israeli/Palestinian’ conflict must never destabilise the sacred status of that premise that a Jewish state has a right to exist. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Not a counterintelligence case?

How big a role did disgraced CIA officer have?
By Andrea Mitchell and Robert Windrem, NBC News, November 14, 2007

There’s new information about the young Lebanese woman who pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges she lied about her background to get jobs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency.

Current and former intelligence officials tell NBC News that Nada Nadim Prouty had a much bigger role than officials at the FBI and CIA first acknowledged. In fact, Prouty was assigned to the CIA’s most sensitive post, Baghdad, and participated in the debriefings of high-ranking al-Qaida detainees.

A former colleague called Prouty “among the best and the brightest” CIA officers in Baghdad. She was so exceptional, agree officials of both agencies, the CIA recruited her from the FBI to work for the agency’s clandestine service at Langley, Va., in June 2003. She then went to Iraq for the agency to work with the U.S. military on the debriefings. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Sometimes the press can’t resist jumping on a narrative that seems irresistable even if it might not be true. If this is really a tale of intelligence intrigue on a par with the best ones from the Cold War, how come Nada Nadim Prouty is merely facing charges of violating immigration laws and making unauthorized computer searches? No doubt there are and should be strict regulations preventing government officials accessing classified records for personal reasons, but the Hezbollah angle on this story sounds utterly contrived. Somehow, I don’t imagine that Prouty truly stands out as a disgraced CIA officer if the main thing she is guilty of is using the privileges provided by her position just to look for information about her own relatives.

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Is war talk just talk?

‘And then what?’ A strike on Iran may be one problem too many for Bush
By Daniel Dombey, Demetri Sevastopulo and Andrew Ward, Financial Times, November 11, 2007

Mr Bush himself has often been depicted as willing to use force to avoid going down in history as the president on whose watch Tehran made the decisive steps towards the bomb. But administration staff paint a very different picture of the president’s priorities during his last 14 months in office.

“For those problems we can solve, let’s solve them,” a senior administration official tells the Financial Times, setting out a framework the president has given his top staff. “For those that we cannot solve, let’s leave our successors a set of policies and instruments that provide them with, in our view, the best prospect for success after we leave office.”

Such comments almost sound like an advance excuse for not resolving the Iran dispute. But then the state of the US as a whole and the Bush administration in particular is very different from the days of 2002-03.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 remain a powerful memory but the overwhelming support for Mr Bush that followed them is long gone. Instead of the enthusiasm America once exhibited for the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the country is now war-weary and its forces are already fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oil is almost $100 a barrel and could go far higher in the event of an attack on Iran.

Of particular importance are the US military’s deep reservations about a pre-emptive attack on Iran, largely because of the uncertain consequences that would result. In addition, pragmatists have replaced hawks among Mr Bush’s closest colleagues. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Nothing seems more emblematic of the state of American presidential power than the fact that General Musharraf appears quite indifferent to its influence. And if there is a word that captures this moment it is “path.” If Pakistan can at least present the appearance of being oriented in the direction of democracy; if it can take one or two baby steps along that path, then that’s good enough for President Bush and his Secretary of State. It seems strange then that even when the president is clearly so weak that those competing to take his place are finding it so difficult to muster their own strength. Bush may have little power to shape the world, yet his administration seems as powerful as ever when it comes to shaping American political debate.

How to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been described as the defining foreign policy of the presidential race. Although that might currently be the case, the fact that it is, is not a reflection of a reality to which everyone is bound; it is a reflection of the weakness of the Democratic candidates in setting their own agendas.

Two questions on which the candidates should be pressed are these:

Firstly, as you strive to become the next president, will you allow the current presidency to define your own agenda?

And secondly, in as much as it can be assumed that dealing with Iran will be a major concern of the next president, do you anticipate that there will be other issues that command more of your attention — issues such as global warming?

Anyone with the courage to deconstruct the Iranian issue should start by posing a simple question: Is this about Iran or is it about nuclear weapons?

Nuclear proliferation is not unthinkable. In the space of a few years, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all barged into the nuclear club. Are we to understand then that whereas the new entries were undesirable, Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would place it in a unique category? The suicidal state?

On the other hand, if we are to assume that Iran is not a country governed by people possessed by a death wish, then the issue must focus squarely on nuclear proliferation. Yet the underlying logic here is one that any eight-year old can understand. In the playground of global affairs we have two options: We either let the playground bullies make up rules that they can impose on others yet ignore themselves, or alternatively we accept that the strong and the weak must abide by an impartial set of rules that apply to everyone. In this case we would have to conclude that the issue is not Iran; it is a pressing need to halt proliferation which is itself an objective that can only exert the force of principle if bound to a practical effort to accomplish global nuclear disarmament. That’s an objective that several of the Democratic candidates tried on for size recently but one that thus far they have been much too timid to deploy for the purpose of setting the political agenda. It seems ironic that so many could aspire to become president, yet so few have much appetite for showing how they intend to be presidential.

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The options table

Will wou attack Iran?
By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect, November 8, 2007

In the last few weeks, the Democratic field has settled on an attack against the frontrunner: Doublespeak. “I believe Senator Clinton should be held to the same standard that every one of us should be held to,” says John Edwards. “Tell the truth, no more double-talk.” Indeed, the Edwards camp even asked the Clinton campaign five simple question on Iraq, questions, “that every candidate should have to answer.”

The questions the Edwards camp asks are good ones. I too would like the various Democrats to go on the record as to whether they’ll leave permanent bases in Iraq. But here’s another question every campaign should have to answer, and that none of them have: Will you attack Iran in order to prevent their construction of a nuclear weapon?

That is, after all, the defining foreign policy question of the race. Iraq is a more acute concern, but so much of the damage there has already been done, and we are so hostage to the facts on the ground, that the differences and distinctions between the candidates are, in some ways, of relatively uncertain importance. Once in office, their actions on Iraq will be governed by the realities of the war and the domestic polls.

Not so with a nuclear Iran, where the executive really will be allowed to make the decision as to whether we launch air strikes, or whether we seek a policy of deterrence, negotiation, and engagement. Yet till now, the candidates have largely been allowed to divert such questions, and all have done so in the same way. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, John Edwards said that, “to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table.” Asked by 60 Minutes where he would use military force to disrupt the Iranian weapon program, Barack Obama said, “I think we should keep all options on the table.” And Hillary Clinton, speaking to AIPAC, said, “We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s strange how a piece of gibberish — “no options can be taken off the table” — can so easily be elevated to the status of unassailable truth. Implicit in the assertion that options can’t be taken off the table is the idea that all possible options are cluttered there, in their abundance, all within easy reach. If this were not implied then we would perforce have to engage in as many debates about what can be put on the table as there are about what cannot be removed.

Consider then one option — on the table in as much as it is possible — that the Iranian conundrum be dealt with, with a finality that no one could dispute: a strategic nuclear strike. In as literal a sense as the expression can be used, Iran could be wiped off the map. The United States (and Israel) have the physical means to do this, but we all know it’s not going to happen because, fortunately, this is an option that is well and truly off the table. Neither Dick Cheney, nor Norman Podhoretz, nor Rudy Guiliani are going to say that incinerating 70 million Iranians is an option that must stay on the table.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Iran not scared by Israel (after strike on Syria)

Iranian FM: Israel is no military match for Tehran
AP, November 11, 2007

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that Israel poses no military threat to Iran, adding that any aggression on Israel’s part would spark retaliation and accusing Israel of trying to sabotage relations between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“The Zionist regime [Israel] is less than nothing to pose any kind of threat to Iran,” ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters Sunday when questioned about recent comments on Tehran’s nuclear program made by Israeli officials.

It was not clear what Israeli threat Hosseini was referring to, but his statement came as Iran continues to defy international demands that it suspends uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or fissile material for a bomb. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I’ll hazard a guess about what Hosseini was referring to: the Israeli strike on Syria on September 6. Maybe this is the last Syria strike story — the one in which not even the word “Syria” appeared.

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The long and winding path to democracy

Washington envisions a Pakistan beyond Musharraf
By Howard LaFranchi, Christian Science Monitor, November 13, 2007

President Bush continues to praise Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf as a valued ally in the war on terror. At the same time, US officials are pressuring the military leader over his declaration of emergency law – though some Pakistanis call it pressure with kid gloves – as if he were the only acceptable game in Islamabad.

Yet even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argues for patience toward General Musharraf, some US officials and South Asia experts are doing what they say the US has failed to do: envision and prepare for a post-Musharraf Pakistan.

“Washington’s approach to Pakistan has always been that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know. But there is every reason to believe that with Musharraf and Pakistan, that is not the case,” says Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington. “Musharraf has blinded Washington over and over again with a mastery of blackmail, but in the two areas we worry most about – nuclear proliferation and Islamist extremism – there are alternatives that are just as good, if not better.” [complete article]

Musharraf’s survival may hinge on elections
By Robin Wright, Washington Post, November 12, 2007

The Bush administration is betting that President Pervez Musharraf can survive the crisis in Pakistan if he moves decisively to lift emergency rule and hold elections over the next two months, despite new U.S. intelligence concerns about the dangers of long-term instability or, worse, a political vacuum, U.S. officials say. Timing is the key, they add.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday called on Musharraf to restore constitutional rule “as soon as possible.” The administration is considering sending a senior official to Islamabad this week to tell the Pakistani leader that he must urgently rescind restrictions on the media, civil society and opposition politicians, which could discredit any January elections — and endanger both Pakistan’s stability and his political future, the sources said. [complete article]

See also, Some doubt Musharraf can be ousted (LAT) and Pakistan to detain Bhutto in bid to stop protest march (NYT).

Editor’s Comment — Funny how an administration that is “dedicated to helping the Pakistani people come to a more democratic path” places all its attention on the theater of (riggable) elections yet says nothing about reinstituting the judiciary. The path to democracy is clearly much more appealing than the destination.

And how representative of Washington thinking is this? One former State official envisages one post-Musharraf scenario this way:

A less favorable alternative for the US, Markey, says, would be the rise of the Pakistan Muslim League (N), led by exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

“That wouldn’t mean an extremist Pakistan, but they just aren’t as keen on working that closely with the US, and they don’t see the world through Washington’s lenses,” says Markey.

Neocolonialism is alive and well. Can you imagine anyone in Pakistan saying, “We fear the next US president might be one who doesn’t see the world through Islamabad’s lenses”?

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: PLO rejects recognition of Israel as religious state; Hamas and Fatah fight

Erekat: Palestinians will not accept Israel as ‘Jewish state’
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, November 12, 2007

Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, rejected on Monday the government’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

In an interview with Israel Radio, Erekat said that “no state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity.”

Also Monday, dozens of prominent Palestinian residents of Jerusalem published an appeal to the Abbas, asking him not to make concessions to Israel over the holy city in the upcoming talks. [complete article]

At least half a dozen killed at Gaza rally
By Taghreed El-Khodary and Isabel Kershner, New York Times, November 13, 2007

At least six Palestinians were killed and more than 100 wounded here on Monday when a rally by the relatively pro-Western Fatah movement to mark the third anniversary of the death of its founder, Yasir Arafat, ended in armed clashes with its rival, Hamas.

Doctors at two Gaza hospitals said all of the dead and most of the wounded were Fatah supporters who had taken part in the rally.

Tens of thousands of residents of the Gaza Strip had turned out for what became the largest show of support for Fatah since the Islamist group Hamas seized control of the territory in June. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — No amount of analysis of the power struggle going on inside Palestinian politics can undo this simple fact: the sight of Palestinians killing Palestinians does more to corrode international sympathy than anything else.

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The nuclear threat to democracy

So, what about those nukes?
By David E. Sanger, New York Times, November 11, 2007

The administration says it hopes to put Pakistan on a path to democracy. But Washington’s actions show it does not want to go so fast that nuclear control becomes a casualty. So President Bush was on the phone to General Musharraf on Wednesday to press for the patina of a return to democracy: He said General Musharraf must shed his title as army chief, hold parliamentary elections early next year, and find a way to work with Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader with whom the United States has urged him to share power. The general promised to hold elections by February, but the crisis was far from over.

“The nightmare scenario, of course, is what happens if an extremist Islamic government emerges — with an instant nuclear arsenal,” said Robert Joseph, a counterproliferation expert who left the administration this year. John R. Bolton, the former United Nations representative who has accused Mr. Bush of going soft on proliferation, said more bluntly that General Musharraf’s survival was critical. “While Pervez Musharraf might not be a Jeffersonian democrat,” Mr. Bolton said, “he is the best bet to secure the nuclear arsenal.”

Americans might feel better about the arsenal if they knew how big it was — or even where the weapons were stored. Pakistan has done its best to keep that information secret.

There are also more than a dozen nuclear facilities, from fuel fabrication plants to laboratories that enrich uranium and produce next-generation weapons designs, that Al Qaeda and other terror groups have eyed for years. How safe are they? [complete article]

See also, Pakistan nuclear security questioned (WP) and Suitcase nukes said unlikely to exist (AP).

Editor’s Comment — How safe are they? This is currently Washington’s most vexing question. Indeed, as the New York Times presents it, the issue of nuclear peril is now being spun in such a way that we are meant to fear that Pakistan is such a dangerous place that it’s not safe enough for democracy.

So, when we pose the question, how safe are they?, we don’t pause to consider what should already be obvious: Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are already in the wrong hands. General Musharraf isn’t “indispensable” because, as John Bolton claims, “he is the best bet to secure the nuclear arsenal.” He’s immovable because he has no intention of letting go of the keys to his power. As Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark note, the Bhutto deal that Musharraf backed out of amounted to little more than the appearance of a transfer of power. In the secret negotiations prior to her return, Bhutto:

…agreed to an unprecedented compromise, ceding, should she win [upcoming elections], the foreign, military, internal and external security as well as Pakistan’s WMD portfolios to Musharraf. That left her with only a handful of power-light cards to play, while still giving the military a veneer of legitimacy.

But in Pakistan, nothing is agreed until it actually happens. And Musharraf backtracked as soon as Bhutto returned to the country Oct. 18.

Fueled by a potent mixture of patronage, tribalism, backstabbing, side dealing, blackmail and straightforward medieval feudalism, politics Pakistan-style makes Washington and London look like a pajama party. And Bhutto’s return to Pakistan was spectacular as well as murderous. It began with two ear-splitting bangs, the first when two explosions blew up her motorcade in Karachi, killing 145 and injuring hundreds more, and the second when Bhutto aides accused agents allied to the country’s pervasive intelligence establishment of arming the suicide bombers.

Bhutto swiftly picked herself up and dramatically began to galvanize support, with Pakistanis previously indifferent or critical of her embracing her high-profile return – a breath of fresh air after the vacuum of almost a decade of military repression.

Realizing this momentum could help her overwrite the power-ceding deal that had brought her home, Bhutto upped her campaign, bringing Pakistani politics to the boil. She condemned the country’s extremist groups and religious parties. She accused the government of manipulating them. An editorial in Pakistan’s Daily Times noted: “Ms. Bhutto arrived, not carrying flowers but a bunch of accusations.”

This was what Musharraf most feared.

Fears about the future of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are legitimate, but the presumption that they are currently in safe hands is fanciful.

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The species of oppression by which we are menaced

The coup at home
By Frank Rich, New York Times, November 11, 2007

…there’s another moral to draw from the Musharraf story, and it has to do with domestic policy, not foreign. The Pakistan mess, as The New York Times editorial page aptly named it, is not just another blot on our image abroad and another instance of our mismanagement of the war on Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It also casts a harsh light on the mess we have at home in America, a stain that will not be so easily eradicated.

In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite. That’s why a Mukasey can be elevated to power with bipartisan support and we barely shrug.

This is a signal difference from the Vietnam era, and not necessarily for the better. During that unpopular war, disaffected Americans took to the streets and sometimes broke laws in an angry assault on American governmental institutions. The Bush years have brought an even more effective assault on those institutions from within. While the public has not erupted in riots, the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like General Musharraf’s. [complete article]

See also, Abdicate and capitulate (NYT editorial).

Editor’s Comment — Whereas Frank Rich sees in America, “a people in clinical depression,” I’m inclined to think his diagnosis a little too forgiving. What he sees as a “permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years,” has, I believe, much more distant roots. Signs of their growth were anticipated over 150 years ago and described quite clearly in Democracy in America.

If an American rebellion is not around the corner, it appears to have much less to do with a form of political depression than with a pervasive indifference. Bush and Cheney have exploited that indifference but they didn’t create it.

This is how Tocqueville anticipated the trend through which we would end up too comfortable to care:

…the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
What sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear, Chapter VI, Section IV, Volume III, Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville.

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Looking for Iran in Iraq

Iraq: Call an air strike
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, November 10, 2007

“… the literature on counter-insurgency is so enormous that, had it been put aboard the Titanic, it would have sunk that ship without any help from the iceberg. However, the outstanding fact is that almost all of it has been written by the losers.”
– Martin van Creveld, in The Changing Face Of War, 2006

Amid the George W Bush administration’s relentless campaign to “change the subject” from Iraq to Iran, how to “win” the war against the Iraqi resistance, Sunni or Shi’ite, now means – according to counter-insurgency messiah General David Petraeus – calling an air strike.

On a parallel level, the Pentagon has practically finished a base in southern Iraq less than 10 kilometers from the border with Iran called Combat Outpost Shocker. The Pentagon maintains this is for the US to prevent Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. Rather, it’s to control a rash of US covert, sabotage operations across the border targeting Iran’s Khuzestan province.

With the looming Turkish threat of invading Iraqi Kurdistan and President General President Musharraf’s new “let’s jail all the lawyers” coup within a coup in Pakistan, the bloody war in the plains of Mesopotamia is lower down in the news cycle – not to mention the interminable 2008 US presidential soap opera. Rosy spinning, though, still rules unchecked.

The Pentagon – via Major General Joseph Fil, commander of US forces in Baghdad – is relentlessly spinning there’s now less violence in the capital, a “sustainable” trend. This is rubbish. [complete article]

Iraqi fighters ‘grilled for evidence on Iran’
By David Smith, The Observer, November 11, 2007

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is ‘gold’. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards’ alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there’s clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I’ve had, I’d say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran. [complete article]

Broken supply channel sent weapons for Iraq astray
By Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson, New York Times, November 11, 2007

As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

By all accounts, the businessman, Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias, South African security guards and even American contractors. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The path travelled by one of those Glocks is revealed in a report in The Guardian. The reporter describes interviewing a Sunni insurgent — one of America’s newly recruited fighters. “He pulled his pistol out and showed it to me. It was a Glock, supplied by the US to Iraqi security forces. ‘This belonged to the commander of al-Qaida here,’ he said. ‘They called him the White Lion. I killed him and got his gun.'”

Americans said to have proposed a six-month truce to the resistance groups
By Badger, Missing Links, November 9, 2007

Al-Hayat says this morning that it has learned from “sources in the government and sources close to the armed groups” about a plan including a followup reconciliation meeting, to be arranged by the Iraqi Reconciliation Agency, but to be held under American and international auspices, along with a proposal for a six-month truce between the armed resistance groups and the American/Iraqi forces. [complete article]

Forced Iraq postings ‘may be necessary’
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, November 11, 2007

Four days before a deadline for Foreign Service officers to volunteer to go to Iraq or face the prospect of being ordered there, the State Department notified employees yesterday that “about half” of 48 open assignments there for next year have been filled.

“This reduces but does not eliminate the possibility that directed assignments may be necessary,” Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte wrote in an e-mailed update. Filling the remaining jobs is still “the Department’s priority,” he said, adding that he is optimistic that more will volunteer. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The email had to come from Negroponte and not the Sectretary of State herself because madame secretary declines to use email. That’s right! “Rice does not use e-mail.”

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NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Pakistan and the failure of American interests

Pakistan’s Plan B deficiency
By Gary Sick, Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2007

What is happening today in Pakistan takes me back to the time when the Iranian revolution was brewing, when I was the desk officer for Iran on the National Security Council.

The ultimate reason for the U.S. policy failure then was the fact that the U.S. had placed enormous trust and responsibility in the shah of Iran.

He — and not the country or people of Iran — was seen as the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf. Everything relied on him. There was no Plan B.

As a consequence, the endlessly mulled-over U.S. response to Iranian instability was that we had no choice except to support the shah. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Even though it’s only a few days ago that General Musharraf was described by the Bush administration as an “indispensable” ally in the war on terrorism, it is probably inaccurate to say that the administration has no Plan B. Plan B is Benazir Bhutto. That said, Gary Sick’s point still applies: the U.S. government’s strategy in Pakistan hinges on its reliance on a handful of personal relationships. This is hardly surprising during a presidency in which a handshake has so often served as a substitute for a genuine meeting of minds and the cultivation of mutual understanding.

At the same time, the development of foreign policy — whether in this administration or any other — is invariably hamstrung by an idea that is regarded as axiomatic: that the U.S. government in its conduct of foreign affairs must focus on one thing and one thing alone: the defense and advance of American interests.

This gives rise to a myopic and self-referential attention. The Bush administration has focused on General Musharraf in as much as he is perceived as being helpful to the advance of American interests. In the process his American backers have lost sight of the extent to which their friend operates to the detriment of Pakistan’s interests. Yet if an underlying assumption — understood but rarely expressed — is that America’s interests can only be pursued at the expense of others, perhaps it’s time to entertain an idea that no American politician would ever dare utter: America’s self interest is not worth defending.

It is time for a new foreign policy paradigm. As Barak Obama puts it, “the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people.” And as James Traub in a New York Times Magazine feature on Obama puts it even more succinctly, “What’s good for others is good for us.”

Pakistanis’ anger at Musharraf extends to U.S.
By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2007

It takes almost no effort to find people who are angry with Pervez Musharraf on the streets of this bustling city. The Pakistani leader’s name comes up quickly in casual conversation, yoked with unprintable adjectives and harsh denunciations of the emergency rule he has imposed.

But dig just a little deeper and another target of resentment surfaces: Musharraf’s richest, staunchest and most powerful patron, the United States.

“We blame the U.S. directly for keeping us under the rule of the military,” said Arfan Ghani, a 54-year-old professor of architecture. Musharraf, who heads Pakistan’s army, is just “another dictator,” Ghani told an American reporter, “serving the interests of your country.”

Musharraf’s already abysmal popularity has reached a new low after he declared a state of emergency Nov. 3. But sinking alongside it is the public image of the United States, which many Pakistanis see as the primary force propping up an autocratic ruler. [complete article]

Pakistan: inside the storm
By Salman Raja, Open Democracy, November 9, 2007

The United States and the European Union have made some noises about the restoration of the constitution and the holding of free elections at the earliest opportunity. This is not enough: it must be emphasised that any call to hold elections without the restoration of the judges who have been ousted plays directly into General Musharraf’s hands. Twelve out of sixteen supreme court judges, including the chief justice have been ousted pursuant to the provisional constitutional order (PCO) issued on 3 November by General Musharraf in his capacity as the chief of the army staff. This order has no constitutional validity and is simply an assertion of military power. Only judges with known affiliation to the military junta have lined up to take a fresh oath of office under the PCO, in violation of their original oath to defend the constitution. Independent-minded judges have not been offered the fresh oath and if offered would not have taken it.

As a consequence, apart from the decimation of the supreme court, nearly 50% of the judges of the provincial high courts have been stripped of their office. This is a virtual demolition of the judiciary in Pakistan. The US and the EU are not talking about it. Elections without the restoration of the sacked judges will amount to throwing a cloak of ratification over the general’s assault. A true demand from outside, one consistent with the democratic ideals these states profess, would be “no elections without the restoration of the judiciary”. It is very clear that there can be no free elections under General Musharraf’s watch with a handpicked docile judiciary looking the other way. [complete article]

Pakistan strife threatens anti-insurgent plan
By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post, November 9, 2007

The political turmoil in Pakistan is threatening to undermine a new long-term counterinsurgency plan by the U.S. military aimed at strengthening Pakistani forces fighting Islamic extremists in the country’s tribal areas, according to senior military officials. The officials said the initiative involves expanding the presence of U.S. Special Forces and other troops to train and advise the Pakistanis, who have been largely ineffective in battling the hard-line militants.

Even as the Bush administration reviews aid to Pakistan in light of Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule last weekend, U.S. military officials are moving forward with the plan — ordering equipment, surveying training facilities outside Islamabad, and preparing to send in dozens of additional military trainers, who are expected to begin arriving early next year.

“This train has already left the station,” said a senior military official familiar with the effort. “We on the ground are moving ahead under the ambassador’s guidance.” [complete article]

See also, Benazir Bhutto is permitted to leave home (NYT).

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Cheney meets resistance on Iran

Washington tells EU firms: quit Iran now
By David Gow and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, November 9, 2007

Multinational companies are coming under increasing pressure from the US to stop doing business with Iran because of its nuclear programme. European operators are facing threats from Washington that they could jeopardise their US interests by continuing to deal with Tehran, with increasing evidence that European governments, mainly France, Germany and Britain, are supporting the US campaign.

It emerged last night that Siemens, one of the world’s largest engineering groups and based in Germany, has pulled out of all new business dealings with Iran after pressure from the US and German governments. This follows the decision by Germany’s three biggest banks, Deutsche, Commerzbank, and Dresdner, to quit Iran after a warning from US vice-president Dick Cheney that if firms remain in Tehran, they are going to have problems doing business in the US. [complete article]

Iraqi sees thaw in U.S.-Iranian ties
By Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times, November 10, 2007

An Iraqi official said Friday that he expected another round of talks this month including his government and those of Washington and Tehran, after the U.S. military freed nine Iranians it had detained in Iraq.

Two of the Iranians released early Friday by the U.S. were among five men detained in January in an American raid in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The U.S. had said they were members of Iran’s elite Quds Force, which Washington suspects of aiding Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq and smuggling armor-piercing bombs into the country. Tehran has said the five men are diplomatic staff at its Irbil consulate. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s often said that the complexity of Iran’s power structure makes it difficult for foreign governments to decipher Iran’s intentions. Tehran may well view Washington in the same way. While President Bush warns about the risk of World War III and Cheney is pushing forward on the economic war path, Defense Department officials are interested in reducing US-Iranian tensions. Not only have Iranian hostages been released, but the Navy has quietly returned to a one-carrier presence in the Gulf. At the same time, the intelligence community has been unwilling to arm Cheney with a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran — already held up for more than a year because in its current form it is “unsatisfactory” as support for Cheney’s military objectives.

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