Category Archives: Bush Administration

NEWS: Lebanon

Beirut bomb hits U.S. embassy car
By Tom Perry, Reuters, January 15, 2008

A car bomb damaged a U.S. diplomatic car in Beirut on Tuesday, killing at least three people and wounding 16, and the U.S. State Department said no Americans died in the blast.

The bomb sent a column of smoke into the sky, tore masonry from buildings and destroyed at least six cars in a Christian suburb north of Beirut, as well as damaging the armored four-wheel-drive embassy car. [complete article]

Prez pick postponed again in Lebanon
By Raed Rafei and Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2008

To the surprise of no one, Lebanon’s political mess continues on and on. Parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri on Friday afternoon delayed Saturday’s session for choosing of a president until Jan. 21. It’s the 12th time the session has been postponed.

A jumble of foreign diplomats have tried and utterly failed to resolve a crisis that has left the country without a president for nearly two months. The latest would-be hero: the head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. He’s held tens of meetings with feuding political parties, in Beirut and around.

His three-point plan: elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as a compromise president; form a national unity government with no one wielding veto power; start writing up some new election laws so there’s no repeat of the current stalemate. [complete article]

NEWS ROUNDUP: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Syria

Bush prods Saudi Arabia on high oil prices
By Stephen Lee Myers, New York Times, January 16, 2008

President Bush urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Tuesday to take into account the toll that high oil prices are having on the American economy, gingerly touching on an issue that has begun to color the last year of his presidency and dominate the presidential election campaign. [complete article]

U.S. offers Saudis ‘smart’ arms technology
By James Gerstenzang, Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2008

The most controversial element of the sales is the offer to the Saudis of Joint Direct Attack Munitions, technology that allows standard weapons to be converted into precision-guided bombs. The deal envisions the transfer to Saudi forces of 900 upgrade kits worth about $120 million. [complete article]

Minister sees need for U.S. help in Iraq until 2018
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, January 15, 2008

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018. [complete article]

U.S. shifts Sunni strategy in Iraq
By Peter Spiegel, Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2008

More than 70,000 members of mostly Sunni Arab groups now work for American forces in neighborhood security programs. Transferring them to the control of the Shiite Muslim-dominated government, as policemen and members of public works crews, has taken on a new urgency as American troops begin to withdraw, officials indicated in recent interviews, meetings and briefings. [complete article]

Ex-Baathists get a break. Or do they?
By Solomon Moore, New York Times, January 14, 2008

A day after the Iraqi Parliament passed legislation billed as the first significant political step forward in Iraq after months of deadlock, there were troubling questions — and troubling silences — about the measure’s actual effects. [complete article]

Bush trip revives Israeli push for pardon of spy
By Jonathan Finer, Washington Post, January 15, 2008

A balding, bearded visage loomed over President Bush’s visit here last week, peering down from banners and from posters on buses barreling along quiet streets. The face was that of Jonathan Pollard, an American who pleaded guilty in 1986 to passing top-secret information to Israel. [complete article]

Israeli pianist Daniel Barenboim takes Palestinian citizenship
Haaretz, January 14, 2008

Daniel Barenboim, the world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor, has taken Palestinian citizenship and said he believed his rare new status could serve a model for peace between the two peoples. [complete article]

Olmert faces right-wing rebellion
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, January 15, 2008

With Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the most right-wing party in Mr Olmert’s government already threatening to walk out, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud, urged both him and the religious party Shas to do so “to stop this process”. [complete article]

Haaretz probe: Shin Bet count of Gaza civilian deaths is too low
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, January 14, 2008

Israeli security forces killed 810 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 2006 and 2007, Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin reported Sunday at the weekly cabinet briefing in Jerusalem. He estimated that some 200 of those killed were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations. [complete article]

Syria rebuilds on site destroyed by Israeli bombs
By William J. Broad, New York Times, January 12, 2008

The puzzling site in Syria that Israeli jets bombed in September grew more curious on Friday with the release of a satellite photograph showing new construction there that [vaguely] resembles the site’s former main building. [complete article]

EDITORIAL: It’s not the end of times – just the end of Bush

It’s too late, baby
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 14, 2008

Yesterday, in an address to government and business leaders in Abu Dhabi, President Bush said, “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our longstanding security commitments with our friends in the Gulf — and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.”

Bush may take comfort in the knowledge that, according to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s spokesman Mark Regev and as the Jerusalem Post reports, “Israel and the US are ‘on the same page‘ regarding the gravity of the Iranian nuclear threat and their commitment to thwart it.” Even so, when Bush says “before its too late” to his Arab friends, most of them are probably taking comfort in completing that line with, “before its too late… for Bush to do anything about it.” He frets about only twelve months left on the clock — the rest of the world can’t wait for his term to end.

Witness the spectacle of an international “incident” that after a few days has devolved into a debate about a Filipino Monkey. The only comfort the White House can take from this drama is that the press never even noticed when the stage upon which it was set, came into question.

Iranian speedboats threatened US warships in international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. So far only one analyst — Kaveh L Afrasiabi, writing in Asia Times — has pointed out the most basic factual error in this account: there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz.

Let’s repeat that: there are no international waters in the Straits of Hormuz. The U.S. ships were in Iranian territorial waters exercising the “right of transit passage” afforded to them in international law by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which the United States has signed but which Congress has yet to ratify. This is why in the video of the incident, a U.S. naval officer can be heard saying, “I am engaged in transit passage in accordance with international law.”

However provocatively the Iranian speedboats might have been behaving, if from the outset, this incident had been reported as occurring inside Iranian territorial waters, the Pentagon’s first task would have been to educate the press and the public about some of the technicalities of international law as it applies to the Straits of Hormuz. That lesson would have sucked the air out of the story and Bush would have landed in Tel Aviv deprived of what he was clearly eager to employ in his latest round of fear-mongering rhetoric. Absent this rallying cry, there might have been a tiny possibility that he pay a bit of attention to the real concerns that resonate across the region.

OPINION: It’s not about Iran

It’s not about Iran
By Shibley Telhami, Washington Post, January 14, 2008

As President Bush travels through the Middle East, the prevailing assumption is that Arab states are primarily focused on the rising Iranian threat and that their attendance at the Annapolis conference with Israel in November was motivated by this threat. This assumption, reflected in the president’s speech in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, could be a costly mistake.

Israel and the Bush administration place great emphasis on confronting Iran’s nuclear potential and are prepared to engage in a peace process partly to build an anti-Iran coalition. Arabs see it differently. They use the Iran issue to lure Israel and the United States into serious Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking, having concluded that the perceived Iranian threats sell better in Washington and Tel Aviv than the pursuit of peace itself.

Many Arab governments are of course concerned about Iran and its role in Iraq, but not for the same reasons as Israel and the United States. Israel sees Iran’s nuclear potential as a direct threat to its security, and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas as a military challenge.

Arab governments are less worried about the military power of Hamas and Hezbollah than they are about support for them among their publics. They are less worried about a military confrontation with Iran than about Iran’s growing influence in the Arab world. In other words, what Arab governments truly fear is militancy and the public support for it that undermines their own popularity and stability.

In all this, they see Iran as a detrimental force but not as the primary cause of militant sentiment. Most Arab governments believe instead that the militancy is driven primarily by the absence of Arab-Israeli peace.

This argument has been a loser in Washington, rejected by many and not taken seriously by others. The issue of Iran gets more traction inside the Beltway. [complete article]

NEWS: Bush promotes hypocrisy

“Nobody believes anymore what Mr. Bush is saying”
By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, January 14, 2008

Shortly before President Bush showed up in the region last week, human rights activist Abduljalil Alsingace tried to deliver a petition to the U.S. Embassy complaining about the lack of democracy in his native Bahrain. He thought he might have some hope, given the strong language coming from the White House on the need for political reform in the Middle East.

But as he tells it, the U.S. Embassy was cool to his plans to deliver a petition, accepting his document only grudgingly after several days of negotiations. Then he was astounded to hear Bush’s description of Bahrain as an example of positive democratic reform. “All the wealth and power are with the royal family,” Alsingace said in an interview.

Adam Ereli, the U.S. ambassador in Bahrain, disputed Alsingace’s account, saying the embassy was happy to accept the petition and sees its job as listening to “all sides of the political spectrum.”

Still, the episode underscores the sharp disappointment with Bush among democracy advocates and dissidents in the region, who were buoyed by Bush’s clarion call in 2005 for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. They say the White House has backtracked because of a need to cultivate an alliance against Iran with the region’s autocratic leaders and, perhaps, because elections in the Palestinian territories did not go the way it had wanted. [complete article]

Bush talks the talk on free speech. Now he must walk the walk
By Claire Soares, The Independent, January 14, 2008

President George Bush is under pressure from human rights groups to use his visit to Saudi Arabia today to seek the release of the pioneering blogger Fouad al-Farhan, who has been jailed without charge for more than a month.

The human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, are urging the president to raise Mr Farhan’s case with King Abdullah today. They also want him to appeal for the release of an Egyptian blogger, Abdel Karim Suleiman, the first to be jailed in Egypt, when he meets President Hosni Mubarak at Sharm-el-She-ikh on Wednesday. The Egyptian blogger is serving a four-year sentence for insulting President Mubarak. [complete article]

ANALYSIS: Bush will hand his successor a fait accompli on Iraq

Bush shakes up ’08 Iraq debate
By Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, January 12, 2008

Camp Arifjan in the desert kingdom of Kuwait, America’s depot to the Iraq war, feels about as far away as you can get from South Carolina, Super Tuesday and the election-year squabbles back home. And George W. Bush, who is currently midway through his six-nation tour of the Mideast, is doing a good job of distancing himself from the politics of 2008. But as Bush rallied U.S. troops at the base here on Saturday with a “Hoo-ah” and conferred with his Iraq dream team, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, he indicated that he was setting in motion policies that could dramatically affect the presidential race–and any decisions the next president makes in 2009.

In remarks to the traveling press, delivered from the Third Army operation command center here, Bush said that negotiations were about to begin on a long-term strategic partnership with the Iraqi government modeled on the accords the United States has with Kuwait and many other countries. Crocker, who flew in from Baghdad with Petraeus to meet with the president, elaborated: “We’re putting our team together now, making preparations in Washington,” he told reporters. “The Iraqis are doing the same. And in the few weeks ahead, we would expect to get together to start this negotiating process.” The target date for concluding the agreement is July, says Gen. Doug Lute, Bush’s Iraq coordinator in the White House–in other words, just in time for the Democratic and Republican national conventions. [complete article]

Vanishing act
By Noah Feldman, New York Times, January 13, 2008

What if the United States were at war during a presidential election — and none of the candidates wanted to talk about it? Iraq has become the great disappearing issue of the early primary season, and if nothing fundamental changes on the ground there — a probable result of current policy — the war may disappear even more completely in the new year.

The reasons for Iraq’s political eclipse begin with the unfortunate fact that candidates strive to create feel-good associations, and the war is a certain downer. The film studios could barely get a Middle East movie to break even in the past 12 months (“In the Valley of Elah,” anyone?), and the political image makers have apparently taken note. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: The Iranian threat

Saudi cannot be launchpad for Iran attack: report
AFP, January 12, 2008

A leading Saudi newspaper on Saturday ruled out any attempt by the United States to use the oil-rich Gulf kingdom as a launchpad for a possible war on Iran over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.

Two days before a visit to Saudi Arabia by US President George W. Bush, the pro-government daily Al-Riyadh said: “We refuse to be used to launch wars or tensions with Iran. [complete article]

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in secret Iraq talks with US
By Marie Colvin, The Sunday Times, January 13, 2008

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps slipped into the green zone of Baghdad last month to press Tehran’s hardline position over the terms of the current talks with American officials, it was claimed last week.

Iraqi government sources say that Major-General Mohammed Ali Jafari, 50, travelled secretly from Tehran. Jafari appears to have passed through checkpoints on his way into the fortified enclave that contains the American embassy and Iraqi ministries, even though he is on Washington’s “most wanted” list. [complete article]

Iran encounter grimly echoes ’02 war game
By Thom Shanker, New York Times, January 12, 2008

There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats. [complete article]

Iran urges agency to settle atomic case
Reuters, January , 2008

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told the visiting chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Saturday that Iran’s nuclear case should be handled by the I.A.E.A. and not the United Nations Security Council, which has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Tehran. [complete article]

Israel stressed to Bush that Iran is a nuclear ‘threat’: general
AFP, January 12, 2008

Iran poses a real nuclear threat and Israel made that point clear to US President George W. Bush during his visit this week, an Israeli defence official said Saturday. [complete article]

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]

ANALYSIS: Pumping up the Iranian threat

Degrees of confidence on U.S.-Iran naval incident
By Mike Nizza, New York Times, January 10, 2008

The list of those who are less than fully confident in the Pentagon’s video/audio mashup of aggressive maneuvers by Iranian boats near American warships in the Strait of Hormuz now includes the Pentagon itself.

Unnamed Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that the threatening voice heard in the audio clip, which was released on Monday night with a disclaimer that it was recorded separately from the video images and merged with them later, is not directly traceable to the Iranian military.

That undercuts one of the most menacing elements from the Pentagon’s assertion that Iranian forces threatened the Navy ships: The voice on the radio saying, “I am coming to you. … You will explode after … minutes.” [complete article]

Captain Ahab and the Islamic whale
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, January 11, 2008

Filling a major void in the post-Cold War milieu, the “rogue” Iran plays a vital role for the US’s military-industrial complex that thrives on lucrative arms sales to the conservative oil sheikhs of the Persian Gulf, ostensibly threatened by the “hegemonic” and nuclear ambitious Iran.

But, whereas the capitalist logic of arms sales dictates heating up the furnace of Iran-bashing, on the other hand, certain geopolitical realities, eg, in Iraq and Afghanistan, spell out a diametrically different logic of action. This is reflected in the bilateral US-Iran dialogue on Iraq’s security; a fourth round of talks has been put on hold because of Bush’s trip and his stern anti-Iran agenda. This includes pressuring Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)states such as the UAE to curtail their financial transactions with Iran, in tandem with US-led sanctions on the regime over its nuclear program.

While it remains to be seen if the UAE and other GCC states will appease the lame-duck president, who may be wishing a final grand adventure before he leaves office, what is already clear, and disturbing, is the White House’s persistent failure to impose even a modicum of pressure on Israel. Talking peace and acting war against Palestinians, Israel’s contradictory approach has augmented the US’s image problem in the Middle East. And, short of any major concession to the Palestinians, that approach is likely to receive a major boost from Washington now that Bush has set foot in Israel. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bush — tough as Bambi in challenging Israel

Differing opinions fail to dent Israel’s love affair with Bush
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, January 10, 2008

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, declared last night that Israel reserved the right to expand existing Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and in parts of the West Bank that it hopes to retain in any final peace deal.

In terms which appeared to defy earlier sharp criticism by the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, Mr Olmert made it clear in front of President George Bush that he regarded such expansion as outside the “moratorium” he has promised on new settlement building. His declaration came as the US President, on his first visit in office to Israel, used some of his strongest language yet in demanding the dismantling of separate settlement outposts which are illegal even under Israeli law. Mr Bush said at a joint news conference last night: “We have been talking about it for four years – illegal outposts. They ought to go.”

Mr Olmert did not demur from that and repeatedly emphasised that Israel was very serious about advancing a negotiating process over the coming year. Mr Bush said the resumption of formal negotiations between Mr Olmert and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, presented a historic moment, a historic opportunity. [complete article]

Gaffe overshadows Bush visit
Al Jazeera, January 10, 2008

“You’ll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped,” Bush said after being asked about the 30-minute journey from Jerusalem and Ramallah.

“I’m not so exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person.”

Bush was forced to travel by car to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, in the West Bank after his helicopter was grounded by bad weather.

The journey took him through an Israeli security checkpoint and within sight of the separation barrier.

Bush said that he could understand why Palestinians were “frustrated” by the checkpoints, but they were necessary to “create a sense of security for Israel”. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If Americans had to live under the same kind of stranglehold as do Palestinians in the West Bank, there would be more than 800,000 roadblocks across this country. To speak of “frustration” wouldn’t even hint at the level of anger ordinary people would feel at this extraordinary curtailment of freedom.

For Bush to joke about not getting stopped at an Israeli checkpoint shows a staggering degree of insensitivity — though it will hardly surprise or shock the average Palestinian.

Ramallah demo brands Bush ‘war criminal’
AFP, January 10, 2008

Angry demonstrators in the West Bank town of Ramallah branded US President George W. Bush a “war criminal” on Thursday as locals said he would do nothing for the plight of the Palestinians.

Security forces, out in force to ensure the security of the American leader on his first trip to the occupied Palestinian territory, used batons and tear gas as they charged around 200 demonstrators who were chanting “Bush, war criminal!” and “Bush out!”.

While their leader Mahmud Abbas gave Bush a red carpet welcome on the second day of his Middle East tour, ordinary Palestinians were dismisssive. [complete article]

Bush predicts Mideast peace treaty before he leaves White House
AP, January 10, 2008

President Bush today predicted that a Mideast peace treaty would be completed by the time he leaves office, but undercut that optimism with harsh criticism of Hamas militants who control part of the land that could form an eventual independent Palestine.

Bush said he’s convinced that both Israeli and Palestinian leaders understand “the importance of democratic states living side by side” in peace, and noted that he has a one-year deadline for progress on his watch. He named Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to monitor steps that both sides are making on the peace process, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. [complete article]

See also, From Palestinians, harsh view of Bush (NYT).

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: If the GWOT were gone

The $100 barrel of oil vs. the Global War on Terror
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, January 8, 2008

Opinion polls indicate that, in this electoral season, terrorism is no longer at, or even near, the top of the American agenda of worries. Right now, it tends to fall far down lists of “the most important issue to face this country” (though significantly higher among Republicans than Democrats or independents). Nonetheless, don’t for a second think that the subject isn’t lodged deep in national consciousness. When asked recently by the pollsters of CNN/Opinion Research Corporation: “How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism,” a striking 39% of Americans were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried”; another 33% registered as “not too worried.” These figures might seem reasonable in New York City, but nationally? As the Democratic debate Saturday indicated, the politics of security and fear have been deeply implanted in our midst, as well as in media and political consciousness. Even candidates who proclaim themselves against “the politics of fear” (and many don’t) are repeatedly forced to take care of fear’s rhetorical business.

Imagining how a new president and a new administration might begin to make their way out of this mindset, out of a preoccupation guaranteed to solve no problems and exacerbate many, is almost as hard as imagining a world without al-Qaeda. After all, this particular obsession has been built into our institutions, from Guantanamo to the Department of Homeland Security. It’s had the time to sink its roots into fertile soil; it now has its own industries, lobbying groups, profit centers. Unbuilding it will be a formidable task indeed. Here, then — a year early — is a Bush legacy that no new president is likely to reverse soon.

Ask yourself honestly: Can you imagine a future America without a Department of Homeland Security? Can you imagine a new administration ending the global lockdown that has become synonymous with Americanism?

The Bush administration will go, but the job it’s done on us won’t. That is the sad truth of our presidential campaign moment. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — That we acquire “the wisdom of insecurity” is one of our needs in these times. In the current populist rhetoric, fear is being contrasted with hope. But along with hope we also need courage. To be courageous is to take risks and see the limits of security. Whether the Bush legacy is so entrenched that it cannot be reversed by the next president will have a great deal to do with who puts the next president into office. This is what makes this election in so many ways, a generational watershed. The young see in risk, opportunity, while for the older generation, there, lurks danger. Yet like it or not, the older generation eventually has no choice but to resign itself to the fact that those it deems too inexperienced will necessarily be the ones who shape the future.

Why we both love and hate America
By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, January 9, 2008

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks against the United States, President George W. Bush and many other perplexed, angry and often ignorant Americans asked a question: “Why do they hate us?” Then they made a statement: “You’re either with us or against us.” This week, those Americans who are actually interested in answering the question and exploring the validity of the statement have a very good opportunity to grasp precisely why most people around the world admire the US but also detest many aspects of its foreign policy. This revelatory moment comprises two simultaneous events this week: the competitive American party primaries, and Bush’s journey to the Middle East. The contrast between the two events is substantial, and very revealing of the best and worst of American political culture. [complete article]

NEWS, ANALYSIS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Bush’s trip notes

Bush’s last throw against Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times, January 10, 2008

The leitmotif of Bush’s high-profile tour of the Middle East is unmistakably Iran. But Washington’s Iran policy lies in tatters and it has no choice but to ratchet up anti-Iran rhetoric, though it realizes there are no takers in the Middle East for such rhetoric of fire and brimstone. The danger now is that Tehran may choose to hunker down and prefer to deal with the next US administration.

Tehran once heeded back-channel pleas from Ronald Reagan’s campaign managers not to negotiate the hostage crisis with the Carter administration in its final months in the White House so that Reagan could claim the credit for the denouement. Bush is certainly better placed than Carter insofar as presidential hopefuls such as Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee would never do such a Reaganite thing on him.

Actually, the danger to the Bush legacy comes from faraway places. Continued delay in constructively engaging Iran will only open the gateway wider for the international community to encroach into a region that until four years ago used to be the exclusive strategic preserve of the US. China is already wading deep into the region, and Russia too. The S-300 missiles from Russia are a sign that US dominance of the Middle East is in serious jeopardy. [complete article]

Israeli leaders greet Bush with warning for Iran
By Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy, January 9, 2008

President Bush began an eight-day Middle East peace mission Wednesday as Israeli leaders warned him and the world not to forget about the regional threat that Iran poses.

Standing on the airport tarmac with Bush looking on shortly after his arrival, Israeli President Shimon Peres relegated peace talks with the Palestinians to secondary status and issued a warning to Iran.

“We take your advice not to underestimate the Iranian threat,” Peres said.

“Iran should not underestimate our resolve for self-defense.” [complete article]

Talking to Iran?
By Martin Walker, UPI, January 7, 2008

Shortly before Christmas, over dinner in his palace, one of the ruling sheiks of the United Arab Emirates told this reporter he had not been at all surprised by the release of the National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.

“We were warned by Rafsanjani to expect a very big, very surprising announcement out of Washington,” the sheik said. “He knew it was coming.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of Iran and chairman of the country’s Assembly of Experts, also chairs the special council that mediates between the ayatollahs and the Parliament whenever there is a dispute. Derisively nicknamed “Akbar Shah” by his enemies, he is also the head of what is widely reckoned to be Iran’s richest family. Born into a prosperous family of pistachio farmers, he is the link between the ayatollahs, politics and the business community.

Seen as something of a moderate by Iranian standards, Rafsanjani is believed in the Gulf states to have long maintained his own back channels to Washington — hence his supposed advance knowledge of the NIE. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As an indication of the importance of President Bush’s trip to the Middle East, his press secretary, Dana Perino, is blogging the trip — though being too diffident to use the actual term “blog”, the White House is modestly calling her record, Trip Notes. Since she’s only two days into this bold new communications venture, I should perhaps refrain from passing judgment, but I was hoping to be able to find at least one — just one — memorable line. The best I could find was this: “As we descended into Tel Aviv, many of us looked out the window to see a country that some of us have only seen in pictures.” Perino was one of the many, but was she also one of the some? I guess divulging whether she’s been to Israel before or how many of her trip mates are on a return trip would be way too personal.

In light of the focus of the current trip, Perino might want embellish her “notes” a bit and see if she can make them at least as interesting as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s blog. Here’s a recent entry of his:

To read or to write, that is the question!‎ 2007/11/18
In the Name of Almighty God-the All-Knowing, the Most Lovingly ‎Compassionate

Since my last post on the blog, a few months have passed. But this doesn’t ‎mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week ‎on it. As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog. The ‎magnitude of the reception and acclamation from the viewers was beyond ‎expectations. So I had to decide how to spend the limited time that I have allocated ‎for the blog; should I write new notes or respect those viewers who kindly and ‎generously have shared their thoughts and opinions with me and sent messages and read ‎their numerous received messages. ‎

‎***‎

As you know, the purpose of running this blog is to have a direct and mutual ‎contact and communication with the viewers and even though I have received many ‎messages from the viewers to update the blog and write new notes, I preferred to write ‎less and spend more time on reading the viewers’ messages – and not let this ‎communication tool become just a one-way medium.‎

‎***‎

I personally have read those messages that are considered to be short. I even ‎have read those messages that have started with a sentence like “I know that the ‎president is not going to read this message, but….” ‎

Also some of my trusted students have shortened the long messages for me ‎and have prepared a statistical report regarding all of the messages which I have read ‎and studied those too. God willing, a portion of the overall analysis of the messages ‎and its interesting results will be posted on the blog in the future.‎

‎***‎

I am apologetic to those who have been waiting for my new posts, but ‎fortunately overall, the analysis of the messages has got to a point that I can start ‎writing here again. ‎

I would like to use this opportunity and ask those of you who intend to send ‎me messages through blog, to make it as brief as you can. Thank you.
Written by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at 23:24

Now if the White House really wants to push the envelope and follow Ahmadinejad’s lead, the Trip Notes from the Middle East should include at least one entry from the president and also be open to comments. On Ahmadinejad’s blog, comments are not as strictly moderated as one might expect, such as the comment from one “John Jacobs” from the United States: “I hate you. you are retarted. that simple mentally retarted.” The remarks of an irate pastry chef?

NEWS: With fewer threats from U.S., Ahmadinejad gets weaker

Ahmadinejad’s defender keeps his distance
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, January 8, 2008

A rift is emerging between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suggesting that the president no longer enjoys the ayatollah’s full backing, as he did in the years after his election in 2005.

In the past, when Mr. Ahmadinejad was attacked by his political opponents, criticisms were usually silenced by Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the final word on state matters and regularly endorsed the president in public speeches. But that public support has been conspicuously absent in recent months.

There are numerous possible reasons for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s loss of support, but analysts here all point to one overriding factor: the United States National Intelligence Estimate last month, which said Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure. The intelligence estimate sharply reduced the threat of a military strike against Iran, allowing the Iranian authorities to focus on domestic issues, with important parliamentary elections looming in March.

“Now that Iran is not under the threat of a military attack, all contradictions within the establishment are surfacing,” said Saeed Leylaz, an economic and political analyst. “The biggest mistake that Americans have constantly made toward Iran was adopting radical approaches which provided the ground for radicals in the country to take control.” [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: The American-Iranian communication gap

Dire straits
By William M. Arkin, New York Times, January 8, 2008

Just what were the Iranians up to Sunday, when five small Iranian gunboats reportedly came within a couple hundred yards of three U.S. Navy vessels, dropping “box-like objects” (naval mines?) in their path, while threatening messages were transmitted over the radio?

Was it a rogue operation? Were the Iranians seeking to undermine President Bush’s upcoming trip to the region? Testing U.S. reactions? Preparing for a future attack? Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, couldn’t say when briefing reporters yesterday, because the Navy honestly doesn’t know.

The 30-minute incident was far from the most serious altercation between U.S. and Iran in recent history. But, as long as there’s no dialogue between the two countries, even innocuous interactions can quickly become dangerous. [complete article]

Iranian boats press US ships
By Bryan Bender and Farah Stockman, Boston Globe, January 8, 2008

In a conference call with Pentagon reporters, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US Fifth Fleet, said the transmissions were to the effect that the “US ships would explode” – sparking fears of a repeat of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 US sailors.

But Roughead said it was unclear whether the radio warning came from Iranian vessels or from shore along the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow, 34-mile opening into the Persian Gulf, through which an estimated 40 percent of the world’s oil supply is shipped. Sunday’s incident occurred at 8 a.m. local time when the three American vessels were entering the Persian Gulf through the straits.

“In that part of the Gulf, who was saying what [is] sometimes very difficult to determine,” Roughead said. [complete article]

NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: Bush heads to Middle East

Remember him? Bush begins Middle East tour
By Leonard Doyle and Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, January 7, 2008

Voters in the United States may have switched their attention to the contest to find his successor, but George Bush will embark on an ambitious nine-day tour of the Middle East tomorrow in a last desperate effort to salvage a legacy from two terms in office overshadowed by a catastrophic foreign policy that has earned him the distinction of being one of the worst presidents in the country’s history.

The Bush legacy will not be peace in the Middle East nor an end to conflict in Iraq, but it could be a political earthquake among voters so dismayed by the mess he has made of America’s foreign policy and fearful of economic recession that they are deserting his party in droves.

As he prepares to board a plane for Israel and wrap himself in the tattered flag of victory in Iraq, Mr Bush’s real legacy to the American people is evident in the disillusionment on display in New Hampshire. [complete article]

See also, Army of 8,000 to protect George Bush visit (Telegraph).

Israel’s false friends
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its “special relationship” with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary material and diplomatic support — continuing the more than $3 billion in foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None of them criticizes Israel’s conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support Israel no matter what it does. [complete article]

A hostile president
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, January 6, 2008

George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel. [complete article]

Israel warns of Iranian missile peril for Europe
By Carolynne Wheeler, The Telegraph, January 7, 2008

Iran is developing nuclear missiles capable of reaching beyond its enemies in the Middle East to Europe, President George Bush will be warned when he visits Israel and the Palestinian territories for the first time since entering the White House. [complete article]

Israel to brief George Bush on options for Iran strike
By Uzi Mahnaimi, The Sunday Times, January 6, 2008

Israeli intelligence is understood to agree that the [nuclear weapon] project was halted around the time of America’s invasion of Iraq, but has “rock solid” information that it has since started up again.

While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium – which could be used for civil or military purposes – and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. [complete article]

Israel not honoring pledge, Olmert says
By Richard Boudreaux, Los Angeles Times, January 5, 2008

Israel has failed to keep its pledge to stop enlarging Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged in an interview published Friday, addressing a criticism he expects to hear next week from President Bush.

“Every year all the settlements in all the territories [of the West Bank] continue to grow,” Olmert told the Jerusalem Post. “There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised. . . . We have obligations related to settlements and we will honor them.” [complete article]

Nudged by Bush, Israel talks of removing illegal outposts
By Steven Erlanger, New York Times, January 5, 2008

Pressed by President Bush to keep promises to destroy illegal settler outposts, Israeli leaders said Friday that they hoped to take action after his visit to the region next week.

The awkward exchange through the news media exemplified the importance of Israel’s relationship to the United States and the way in which Washington can sometimes push it to take controversial steps that benefit the Palestinians, who have little diplomatic weight of their own. [complete article]

Hamas confirms: Swiss probed possibility of talks with Israel
By Ali Waked, Ynet, January 1, 2008

The “Swiss Document”, as it was dubbed Tuesday by Former Palestinian Foreign Minister and top Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar, in fact exists. This refers to a deceleration of intent, drafted by Swiss officials, paving the way for negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) confirmed the existence of the “Swiss Document” Monday, and stated that the Swiss had mediated direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas. In his comments Tuesday, however, al-Zahar noted that there were no direct talks between Israel and Hamas. [complete article]

Just going to work, Palestinians and Israelis travel different roads
By Dion Nissenbaum | McClatchy, January 6, 2008

Before they set out for work each morning, neighbors Naim Darwish, a Palestinian Muslim, and Jacob Steinmetz, an Israeli Jew, begin their days in quiet meditation.

In the pre-dawn chill, Darwish sets his Muslim prayer rug on the floor facing Mecca. In the soft morning light, Steinmetz throws on his prayer shawl and turns toward Jerusalem. Then the lives of these West Bank neighbors diverge.

It takes Steinmetz about half an hour to drive and hitchhike the 20 miles to the West Bank office where he works as an Israeli government attorney. If he’s lucky, it takes Darwish two-and-a-half hours to travel the 30 miles to his computer engineering job at a Palestinian high-tech company in Ramallah. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Pakistan says no (again) to foreign troops; Pakistan’s ethnic faultlines

Pakistan says won’t let in foreign troops
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, January 7, 2008

Pakistan will not allow any country to conduct military operations on its territory, officials said on Monday, rejecting a report that said the United States was considering authorising its forces to act in Pakistan.

The New York Times said on Sunday the U.S. government was considering expanding the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in Pakistan.

The U.S. officials considering the move were concerned over intelligence reports that al Qaeda and the Taliban were more intent on destabilising Pakistan, the newspaper said.

Pakistani government and military officials dismissed the report and said Pakistan would not permit any such action.

“Pakistan’s position in the war on terror has been very clear — that any action on Pakistani soil will be taken only by Pakistani forces and Pakistani security agencies,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.

“No other country will be allowed to carry out operations in Pakistan. This has been conveyed at the highest level,” he said. [complete article]

Waziristan: the hub of al-Qaida operations
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, January 7, 2008

The killing of eight tribal elders involved in peace negotiations in the Waziristan region of Pakistan is the first flash of violence in the area for about six months.

The bloodshed unfolded in a series of attacks between Sunday night and Monday morning around Wana, the lawless capital which is a hotbed of al-Qaida linked violence.

The Pakistani military reported attacks on two “peace committee” offices in Wana and the nearby Shikai Valley, a rugged mountain retreat where soldiers discovered a network of al-Qaida safehouses in 2005.

The bloodletting underscores the collapse of government authority in Waziristan, where 100,000 troops are deployed, and the perils run by those engaged in controversial efforts to broker peace between the government and well-armed militants. [complete article]

Strains intensify in Pakistan’s ethnic patchwork
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, January 7, 2008

To Khaled Chema, an unemployed 32-year-old living in a sprawling slum of this mega-city by the sea, Benazir Bhutto wasn’t assassinated because she opposed extremism and advocated democracy. She was killed because, like him, she was a Sindhi.

And just as her father did before her, Bhutto died a long way from home — in the back yard of the Punjabi establishment. Her assassination has inflamed long-simmering resentments among ethnic minorities toward the dominant Punjabis.

In Pakistan — a federation of four provinces, each associated with a different ethnic group — the issue of ethnic identity has long been troublesome, imperiling the unity of the state.

In Baluchistan, many people are in open revolt. Pashtuns in North-West Frontier Province have joined their clansmen on the Afghan side of the border in a bloody insurgency against both governments.

Now, Bhutto’s assassination in Rawalpindi, a key city in Punjab province and the home of the military, has endangered the uneasy balance in which Sindhis suppressed their ethnic-nationalist desires because they knew that one of their own was among the most popular politicians in the country. [complete article]

NEWS & REVIEW: Taxi to the Dark Side

The power of authority: a dark tale
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 1, 2008

Frank Gibney was old and sick and a little more than a month away from dying. But he was filled with righteous anger, and he had some things to say. He told his son, the documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, to unplug a noisy oxygen machine and to grab a video camera.

The older Mr. Gibney, a journalist and scholar who died in April, had served as a naval interrogator in World War II. In a moving statement that serves as a sort of coda to “Taxi to the Dark Side,” a new documentary about the Bush administration’s interrogation policies in the post-9/11 world, he said it had never occurred to him to use brutal techniques on the Japanese prisoners in his custody.

“We had the sense that we were on the side of the good guys,” Frank Gibney said, seething. “People would get decent treatment. And there was the rule of law.”

There would seem to be an enormous distance between the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where the central events in “Taxi to the Dark Side” take place, and Enron’s headquarters in Houston, where the machinations of white-collar criminals brought down the giant energy company and became the backdrop for Mr. Gibney’s entertaining 2005 documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” But Mr. Gibney said the two projects have common themes.

“The subject of corruption unites my films,” he said. “‘Enron’ was about economic corruption, and ‘Taxi’ is about the corruption of the rule of law.” [complete article]

Padilla sues John Yoo over detention
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, January , 2008

Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was held in military detention for more than three years as an enemy combatant, filed a lawsuit Friday against a former Justice Department lawyer who helped provide the legal justifications for what the suit says was Mr. Padilla’s unconstitutional confinement and “gross physical and psychological abuse.”

The lawyer, John C. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote or helped prepare a series of legal memorandums on interrogations and the treatment of detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks. [complete article]

Foiling U.S. plan, prison expands in Afghanistan
By Tim Golden, New York Times, January 7, 2008

As the Bush administration struggles for a way to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a similar effort to scale down a larger and more secretive American detention center in Afghanistan has been beset by political, legal and security problems, officials say.

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners — more than twice the 275 being held at Guantanamo. [complete article]

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?