Category Archives: Bush Administration

NEWS: Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army

Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army
AP, October 19, 2007

Hezbollah on Friday denounced a senior Pentagon official’s call for a U.S. strategic partnership with Lebanon’s army, saying American attempts to boost military ties were a ploy for domination and could turn the country into another Iraq.

Washington has dramatically increased military aid to Lebanon’s pro-Western government over the past year. On Thursday, Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, said the U.S. wants to make military ties even closer, with a strategic partnership to strengthen the country’s forces.

Edelman said in an interview with Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. television that the building up of the military would mean the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah would have no excuse to bear arm. His comments came on the same day that a Lebanese newspaper reported that Washington is proposing a treaty with Lebanon that would make it a strategic partner and lead to the creation of American bases. [complete article]

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NEWS: The tortured “peace process”

Rice leaves Palestinians frustrated
By Ashraf Khalil, Los Angeles Times, October 19, 2007

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrapped up her Middle East shuttle diplomacy tour Thursday, leaving Israeli officials seemingly reassured and Palestinians searching for a silver lining.

Rice, who flew from Jerusalem to London to meet with Jordanian King Abdullah II, essentially shot down the primary Palestinian demands after several days of back-and-forth meetings with Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders in advance of a proposed peace conference this fall.

“Condoleezza Rice made it clear that she in fact agrees with most of Jerusalem’s demands,” said an editorial Thursday in the Israeli daily Maariv.

Rice’s visit was so noncontroversial from the Israeli perspective that much of the Israeli media gave it only token coverage. [complete article]

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NEWS: Nuclear-armed Iran risks world war, Bush says

Nuclear-armed Iran risks world war, Bush says
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times, October 18, 2007

President Bush issued a stark warning on Iran on Wednesday, suggesting that if the country obtained nuclear arms, it could lead to “World War III.”

“We got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel,” Mr. Bush said at a White House news conference, referring to a remark by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Israel “will disappear soon.” Mr. Bush said he had “told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.”

Mr. Bush has said in the past that he would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed Iran. But the comment on Wednesday was another sign that he did not accept a view stated last month by Gen. John P. Abizaid, who retired this year as the top American commander in the Middle East. The general said that “there are ways to live with a nuclear Iran.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Iraqi contracts with Iran and China concern U.S.; Putin pledges to complete Iranian nuclear reactor

Iraqi contracts with Iran and China concern U.S.
By James Glanz, New York Times, October 18, 2007

Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He added that Iran had also agreed to provide cheap electricity from its own grid to southern Iraq, and to build a large power plant essentially free of charge in an area between the two southern Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The expansion of ties between Iraq and Iran comes as the United States and Iran clash on nuclear issues and about what American officials have repeatedly said is Iranian support for armed groups in Iraq. American officials have charged that Iranians, through the international military wing known as the Quds Force, are particularly active in support of elite elements of the Mahdi Army, a militia largely controlled by Mr. Sadr. [complete article]

Vladimir Putin pledges to complete Iranian nuclear reactor
By Tony Halpin, The Times, October 18, 2007

President Putin forged an alliance with Iran yesterday against any military action by the West and pledged to complete the controversial Iranian nuclear power plant at Bushehr.

A summit of Caspian Sea nations in Tehran agreed to bar foreign states from using their territory for military strikes against a member country. Mr Putin, the first Kremlin leader to visit Iran since the Second World War, insisted that the use of force was unacceptable.

“It is important… that we not only not use any kind of force but also do not even think about the possibility of using force,” he told the leaders of Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. [complete article]

Putin calls war in Iraq ‘pointless’
AP, October 18, 2007

President Vladimir Putin, in his latest jab at Washington, suggested Thursday that the U.S. military campaign in Iraq was a ”pointless” battle against the Iraqi people, aimed in part at seizing the country’s oil reserves.

Putin has increasingly confronted U.S. foreign policy in recent months, deepening the chill between Washington and Moscow. Among other things, he has questioned U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe and the U.S. push for sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programs. [complete article]

Olmert urges Putin to back new Iran sanctions
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, October 18, 2007

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin, pressing Moscow to support new sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear activities and urging Russia not to sell arms to Iran or Syria.

Hosting Olmert for a brief, abruptly announced visit, Putin promised to brief the Israeli leader on his talks with Iranian leaders this week and acknowledged his guest’s dismay over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Israel and the United States say is aimed at developing atomic weapons. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: Telecoms, buy victory in lawsuits

Senate and Bush agree on terms of spying bill
By Jonathan Weisman and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, October 18, 2007

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government’s domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats’ bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure’s passage. [complete article]

AT&T, other telecoms, buy victory in lawsuits
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, October 18, 2007

Let’s just describe very factually and dispassionately what has happened here. Congress — led by Senators, such as Jay Rockefeller, who have received huge payments from the telecom industry, and by privatized intelligence pioneer Mike McConnell, former Chairman of the secretive intelligence industry association that has been demanding telecom amnesty — is going to intervene directly in the pending lawsuits against AT&T and other telecoms and declare them the winners on the ground that they did nothing wrong. Because of their vast ties to the telecoms, neither Rockefeller nor McConnell could ever appropriately serve as an actual judge in those lawsuits.

Yet here they are, meeting and reviewing secret documents and deciding amongst themselves to end all pending lawsuits in favor of their benefactors — AT&T, Verizon and others. [complete article]

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NEWS: How the Bush administration is soft on crime

Justice Dept.’s focus has shifted
By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, Washington Post, October 17, 2007

From 2000 to 2006… there were large drops in the number of defendants related to environmental offenses (down 12 percent), organized crime (38 percent), white-collar crime (10 percent), bank robbery (18 percent) and bankruptcy fraud (46 percent), according to Justice Department statistics provided this week to The Washington Post. Money-laundering prosecutions related to drugs were also down nearly 25 percent, while the number of drug cases overall was stagnant.

There were simultaneous jumps in prosecutions related to immigration (up 36 percent), weapons cases (87 percent), official corruption (15 percent), and, most dramatically, terrorism and national security cases (876 percent). Indeed, Justice Department funds devoted to counterterrorism programs in Washington have tripled since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Department officials say the surge in resources for national security and terrorism probes, in particular, reflects the intense administration efforts to prevent another attack. But the number of terrorism-related defendants has been relatively small: Prosecutions peaked at 818 in 2003 and fell to 635 by 2006, and most of these were not for terrorist acts or plans. [complete article]

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OPINION: The death of the peace process

Rice-Olmert-Abbas: end of the affair
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, October 16, 2007

The expectation that President Bush’s planned November Middle East peace conference will fail is so widespread on all sides of the divide that it might be deemed conventional wisdom. Neither the Israelis, nor the Palestinians and other Arabs, nor most longtime Middle East hands in Washington and other capitals are expecting the Anapolis event, as conceived by the Bush Administration, to produce much of value; instead, their shared concern is largely to head off the very real possibility that its failure actually makes the situation in the Middle East a lot worse, by cutting the already slender ground out from under Palestinian and Arab moderates. Right now, the likes of Abbas represent a minority view even in Fatah when they continue to assume that a U.S.-led diplomatic process can bring a fair and credible solution to this most toxic of conflicts.

The reasons why failure is expected is not hard to see: Seven years after the collapse of Camp David, the Palestinian leadership, now considerably weakened, to whom the U.S. is talking has not substantially altered its negotiating position; its bottom-lines remain broadly similar. But the Israeli political consensus has moved way to the right. Olmert is weak and dependent on allies to the right of him, some of whom openly advocate ethnic cleansing of the remaining Arab population of Israel. (Avigdor Lieberman warned that no peace will be possible without the “transfer” of 1 million Arabs out of Israel. And such casually racist extremism is not from some fringe element; Lieberman is Olmert’s minister of Strategic Affairs). Even Olmert’s dovish credentials are questionable; he was the sidekick of Ariel Sharon in the latter’s ferocious resistance to the Oslo peace process; like Sharon he comes from the party of the settlements, and he has continued Israel’s systematic expansion of its colonization of the West Bank. [complete article]

See also, Peres: Government has no intention of dividing Jerusalem (Haaretz), Jerusalem is ours, warns Likud (The Independent), and Hamas softening throws twist in talks (CSM).

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NEWS & OPINION: A unified Iraqi resistance

It’s the resistance, stupid
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, October 17, 2007

The ultimate nightmare for White House/Pentagon designs on Middle East energy resources is not Iran after all: it’s a unified Iraqi resistance, comprising not only Sunnis but also Shi’ites.

“It’s the resistance, stupid” – along with “it’s the oil, stupid”. The intimate connection means there’s no way for Washington to control Iraq’s oil without protecting it with a string of sprawling military “super-bases”.

The ultimate, unspoken taboo of the Iraq tragedy is that the US will never leave Iraq, unless, of course, it is kicked out. And that’s exactly what the makings of a unified Sunni-Shi’ite resistance is set to accomplish.

At this critical juncture, it’s as if the overwhelming majority of Sunnis and Shi’ites are uttering a collective cry of “we’re mad as hell, and we won’t take it anymore”. The US Senate “suggests” that the solution is to break up the country. Blackwater and assorted mercenaries kill Iraqi civilians with impunity. Iraqi oil is being privatized via shady deals – like Hunt Oil with the Kurdistan regional government; Ray Hunt is a close pal of George W Bush.

Political deals in the Green Zone are just a detail in the big picture. On the surface the new configuration spells that the US-supported Shi’ite/Kurdish coalition in power is now challenged by an Iraqi nationalist bloc. This new bloc groups the Sadrists, the (Shi’ite) Fadhila party, all Sunni parties, the partisans of former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, and the partisans of former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. This bloc might even summon enough votes to dethrone the current, wobbly Maliki government.

But what’s more important is that a true Iraqi national pact is in the making – coordinated by VicePresident Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, and blessed by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani himself. The key points of this pact are, no more sectarianism (thus undermining US strategy of divide and rule); no foreign interference (thus no following of US, Iran, or Saudi agendas); no support for al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers; and the right to armed resistance against the occupation. [complete article]

Shiite leader visits Iraq Sunni province
By Hamza Hendawi, AP, October 15, 2007

In a major reconciliatory gesture, a leader from Iraq’s largest Shiite party paid a rare visit Sunday to the Sunni Anbar province, delivering a message of unity to tribal sheiks who have staged a U.S.-backed revolt against al-Qaida militants.

Ammar al-Hakim’s visit was the latest sign that key Iraqi politicians may be working toward reconciliation independently of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, which has faced criticism for doing little to iron out differences between the country’s Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis.

Sunni Arab Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi visited Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, last month at the holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad. The visit amounted to an unprecedented Sunni Arab endorsement of al-Sistani’s role as the nation’s guardian. [complete article]

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NEWS: American mercenaries evade justice

Iraqis shot by contractors stymied in search for justice
By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2007

In the days after Usama Abbass was shot dead in a Baghdad traffic circle by security guards working for Blackwater USA, his brother visited the U.S.-run National Iraqi Assistance Center seeking compensation.

Like other Iraqis who have done the same, he learned a harsh truth: The center in Baghdad’s Green Zone handles cases of Iraqis claiming death or damages due to military action, but not due to actions of private contractors such as Blackwater, who work in Iraq for the U.S. government, private agencies and other governments.

“There will be no compensation because the American Army did not kill your brother,” an apologetic U.S. soldier told Abbass’ brother, who did not want his name published. [complete article]

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OPINION: Oil and Iraq

It’s the oil
By Jim Holt, London Review of Books, October 18, 2007

Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion. [complete article]

Abizaid: ‘We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations’
Think Progress, October 15, 2007

“Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk.

“We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations,” the retired general said. “Our message to them is: Guys, keep your pumps open, prices low, be nice to the Israelis and you can do whatever you want out back. Osama and 9/11 is the distilled essence that represents everything going on out back.” [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: A former CIA officer’s speculations on the Israeli attack on Syria

On the mysterious Israeli air attack on Syria
By Ray Close, Syria Comment, October 15, 2007

Having dealt with Arabs for more than fifty years now, often in situations very similar to this one, I have no trouble understanding why the Syrian reaction to the Israeli bombing attack last month has been carefully muted. Asad cannot afford a military confrontation with Israel at this time. His air force and army could be effectively wiped out by the IDF in a few hours. And he has no desire to broadcast the fact that his air defense forces (some of which, I am told, consist of very expensive new ground-to-air rocketry purchased from Russia but not yet operational) were impotent to respond in the face of such a deep and brazen Israeli penetration of the Syrian motherland. It would be plainly foolhardy for the Syrians to attempt confrontation with the IDF when their military establishment is in such a parlous state as it is today. I therefore find it perfectly understandable that Asad has chosen not to fly off the handle over this incident, and why his Arab neighbors and supposed brothers in arms have likewise decided that the better part of valor is to pretend they haven’t noticed. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Prelude to the collapse of the November peace summit

A third Intifada
By Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly, October 11, 2007

When former Israeli Prime Minister Manachem Begin, one of the few MKs who voted against Camp David, was asked what impressed him most about Ehud Olmert he replied that it was Olmert’s cunning. It is a quality that has been amply displayed in recent days in Olmert’s handling of the Annapolis Summit.

On the one hand, Olmert proclaims his “absolute” commitment to the success of the summit while on the other is doing all in his power to undermine it. How else can one interpret his forcing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to agree, in their last meeting together, to a “loose” memorandum stating the general outlines for a solution without mentioning any principles regarding the four final status issues — Jerusalem, five million Palestinian refugees, permanent borders and Israeli settlements? And just to make himself perfectly clear, Olmert called this document “a non-binding declaration of intentions”. His foreign minister, Tzipi Levni, was even clearer. The memorandum, she said on 3 October, should contain no more than “a declaration by both sides of their commitment to resolve the conflict by peaceful means”. If there is any need for further evidence of Olmert’s complete disdain for Abu Mazen it is to be found in his pledge to the ultra-right religious Shas Party that the document would contain no reference to the future of Jerusalem. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: Democracy’s only good when it’s good for America

On human rights, U.S. seems to give Egypt a pass
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, October 16, 2007

Last month, Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian human rights advocate, met with President Bush in Washington when he was flown there for an award granted by the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. Kassem, the only winner from Egypt, said that Mr. Bush had spoken effusively about promoting democracy to the other recipients, but he did not address the topic when it came to Egypt.

“In comparison with my colleagues from other countries, this was the least of his interests,” Mr. Kassem said.

He and other democracy campaigners in Egypt say that when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Egyptian officials in Sharm el Sheik on Tuesday as part of her preparation for a Middle East peace summit meeting, they expect from her a similar approach to Egyptian human rights and democracy. Even if she does raise the issues, analysts here say, it will have little impact.

That is in sharp contrast to the administration’s aggressive campaign for democracy in 2005 and 2006, which did have an effect and shows shifting American priorities, advocates and analysts say. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The strategic importance of Myanmar

The geopolitical stakes of ‘Saffron Revolution’
By F William Engdahl, Asia Times, October 17, 2007

…the US State Department has recruited and trained key opposition leaders from numerous anti-government organizations in Myanmar. It has poured the relatively huge sum (for Myanmar) of more than $2.5 million annually into NED [National Endowment for Democracy] activities in promoting regime change in Myanmar since at least 2003. The US regime change effort, its Saffron Revolution, is being largely run, according to informed reports, out of the US Consulate General in bordering Chaing Mai, Thailand. There activists are recruited and trained, in some cases directly in the US, before being sent back to organize inside Myanmar. The US’s NED admits to funding key opposition media including the New Era Journal, Irrawaddy and the Democratic Voice of Burma radio.

The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Myanmar since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3,000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US military attache in Rangoon, Col Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Myanmar in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.

A relevant question is why the US government has such a keen interest in fostering regime change in Myanmar at this juncture. We can dismiss rather quickly the idea that it has genuine concern for democracy, justice, human rights for the oppressed population there. Iraq and Afghanistan are sufficient testimony to the fact Washington’s paean to democacy is propaganda cover for another agenda.

The question is, what would lead to such engagement in such a remote place as Myanmar?

Geopolitical control seems to be the answer – control ultimately of the strategic sea lanes from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. The coastline of Myanmar provides naval access in the proximity of one of the world’s most strategic water passages, the Strait of Malacca, the narrow ship passage between Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Pentagon has been trying to militarize the region since September 11, 2001 on the argument of defending against possible terrorist attack. The US has managed to gain an airbase on Banda Aceh, the Sultan Iskandar Muda Air Force Base, on the northernmost tip of Indonesia. The governments of the region, including Myanmar, however, have adamantly refused US efforts to militarize the region. [complete article]

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ANALYSIS: The sparks of a conflagration

Ticking clocks and ‘accidental’ war
By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum, October 14, 2007

Whilst Washington looks at the Iranian prospects through the prism of a binary, to bomb or to acquiesce decision, facing President Bush over the remainder of his presidency, the actors in the region see the conflict as imminent and arriving in a roundabout way, through the backdoor – either via escalation of Western and Israeli tension with Syria; or from events in Lebanon, or a combination of both interacting with each other. All these key actors are convinced that conflict, should it occur, will convulse the entire region. They see the Wursmer ‘engineered’ war that ultimately will extend to Iran, as almost upon them; and they wonder at the silence from Europe and from informed observers in the US. Is it, they speculate, that everyone is so focused on Iraq, and so convinced that Iraq will be the arena in which the decision on Iran will be shaped, that they have forgotten to attend to the backdoor that David Wurmser (until last month Dick Cheney’s Middle East adviser) already has a foot around? [complete article]

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ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Cheney takes a sabbatical

Pre-emptive caution: the case of Syria
By David E. Sanger, New York Times, October 15, 2007

It was President Bush who, a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, rewrote America’s national security strategy to warn any nation that might be thinking of trying to develop atomic weapons that it could find itself the target of a pre-emptive military strike.

But that was the fall of 2002, when the world looked very different from how it does in the fall of 2007. Now, the case of Syria, which Israeli and American analysts suspect was trying to build a nuclear reactor, has become a prime example of what can happen when Mr. Bush’s first-term instincts run headlong into second-term realities.

Five years later, dealing with nations that may have nuclear weapons ambitions — but are also staying within the letter of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — looks a lot more complicated than it once did. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — If it depends on journalists like David Sanger, he’s probably right in predicting that, “It may be months or years before all the mysteries surrounding the attack on Syria become clear.” Meanwhile, Sanger seems happy to keep on drinking the White House Kool-Aid. Should we be concerned about the chances for a U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities? Far from it, Sanger reports, since those ubiquitous senior officials he’s been hanging out with assure him that the administration is far too prudent. “Iran, they say, has too many ways to strike back at American interests — in Iraq, in the oil markets and throughout the Middle East.” Does the vice president know that? In Sanger’s analysis, Cheney in conspicuously absent. The administration is now being controlled by pragmatic realists, while the president is focused on his diplomatic achievements.

Getting a deal with North Korea to disgorge its own nuclear fuel and weapons may require looking past whatever North Korea might have sold to another country. And it may mean engaging the Syrians, even before they answer the question of what, exactly, they were building in the desert.

Who could have predicted such a sunny turn of events? The only question now is, how can the Israelis be persuaded to sign up with the diplomatic program. What Sanger implies is that a White House, sobered by experience, may offer Israel wise council but that there’s not much chance they’ll listen.

And as for those readers who still have nagging questions about what happened on September 6, the latest word from Israel is that it is “plausible” and “logical” that a nuclear reactor under construction was hit. The IAEA has put in a request for information.

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OPINION: The courage to chart new ground and take bold steps

‘Failure risks devastating consequences’
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lee Hamilton, Carla Hills, Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, Thomas R. Pickering, Brent Scowcroft et al., NYRB, October 10, 2007

The Israeli-Palestinian peace conference announced by President Bush and scheduled for November presents a genuine opportunity for progress toward a two-state solution. The Middle East remains mired in its worst crisis in years, and a positive outcome of the conference could play a critical role in stemming the rising tide of instability and violence. Because failure risks devastating consequences in the region and beyond, it is critically important that the conference succeed.

Bearing in mind the lessons of the last attempt at Camp David seven years ago at dealing with the fundamental political issues that divide the two sides, we believe that in order to be successful, the outcome of the conference must be substantive, inclusive, and relevant to the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians. [complete article]

See also, Only Bush can (Akiva Eldar), Egypt suggests delaying Mideast peace meet (AFP), and Rice says time for a Palestinian state (AFP).

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The phoenix of preventive war arises from Syrian ashes

Preemption, Israeli style
By Joshua Muravchik, Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2007

Last month, one of the more mysterious episodes in the history of the Arab-Israel conflict began to leak slowly into the news. Although the facts are still unconfirmed, what seems to have happened has major implications not only for the region but even more for the laws of war and preemption that President Bush has been trying to redefine ever since his 2002 national security strategy paper.

First, Syrian spokesmen complained that Israeli planes had violated their country’s airspace on Sept. 6 — and had been driven off, or so they said. Within a few days came stories — mostly from anonymous sources — that the planes had fired into Syria; these were followed by still other stories that a target had in fact been hit. But what was it?

After further journalistic digging, the most plausible accounts said that the Syrian targets were related to nuclear weapons activity and may even have been manned by North Koreans. Later reports suggest some dispute within the U.S. government about how far Syria had progressed in achieving its nuclear ambitions, but these same reports confirm that this is what Israel was targeting.

The obscurity of this episode results in part from uncharacteristically tight lips in Jerusalem and Damascus. But that is not the whole of the reason. There has also been a deafening silence from the international community and especially from the other states of the region. This highly unusual reaction is one of the oddest parts of the whole episode and, in some ways, the most meaningful. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The neoconservatives and their Iraqi allies famously predicted that American soldiers would be greeted in Baghdad with sweets and flowers. As if to outdo themselves in making wild predictions, with Iran now the target, the suggestion being floated by Joshua Muravchik and other neocons is that alarming predictions about the consequences of a US/Israeli attack on Iran are being vastly overstated. The lesson from Syria, so we are supposed to believe, is that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will be greeted by deafening silence.

Eager to boost her stock in the Israel lobby and implying to neocons that there is such a thing as life-after-Cheney, Hillary Clinton was unequivocal in expressing her support for the Israeli attack:

“We don’t have as much information as we wish we did. But what we think we know is that with North Korean help, both financial and technical and material, the Syrians apparently were putting together, and perhaps over some period of years, a nuclear facility, and the Israelis took it out. I strongly support that.”

Clinton’s Iran vote: the fallout
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, October 14, 2007

Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd voted against it. Senator Barack Obama said he would have voted against it if he had voted. Former Senator John Edwards implied he would have voted against it if he could vote.

And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? She voted in favor of the measure in question, which asked the Bush administration to declare Iran’s 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Such a move — more hawkish than even most of the Bush administration has been willing to venture so far — would intensify America’s continuing confrontation with Iran, many foreign policy experts say.
[…]
Think of it as Iran declaring that the United States military is a terrorist organization because it carries out President Bush’s orders. Such a move, say some Iran experts — including some advisers to the Clinton campaign who declined to publicly criticize their possible boss — runs the risk of further alienating the Iranian population, because many Iranians are tied to the Revolutionary Guard or its many offshoots and enterprises in some way.

“What Senator Clinton and the other legislators who voted for this bill don’t seem to realize is that the Revolutionary Guards are not Al Qaeda,” said Karim Sadjapour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They’re not a group of voluntary jihadists signing up to fight the United States. Many are conscripts taken from the regular army.” [complete article]

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