Category Archives: Congress

Guantánamo deadline may be missed

Guantánamo deadline may be missed
By Peter Baker and David Johnston, New York Times, September 29, 2009

The White House suggested Monday that it might not be able to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by next January as President Obama promised, an acknowledgment underscoring the difficulties in figuring out what to do with the men being held there.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said the administration had made “significant progress” in fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to shut the prison, which has been widely condemned around the world. But he played down the importance of meeting Mr. Obama’s self-imposed deadline of Jan. 22.

“We’re not focused on whether or not the deadline will or won’t be met on a particular day,” Mr. Gibbs said at his daily briefing for reporters. “We’re focused on ensuring that the facility is closed and doing all that has to be done between now and the 22nd of January to make the most progress that we can that’s possible.” [continued…]

Obama’s Dick Cheney moment
By Benjamin Wittes, Washington Post, September 29, 2009

President Obama’s decision not to go to Congress for help in establishing reasonable standards for the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is a failure of leadership in the project of putting American law on a sound basis for a long-term confrontation with terrorism. It is bad for the country, for national security and for civil liberties. It represents a virtually wholesale adoption of the failed policies of his predecessor — who, with equal obtuseness, refused to root American detention practices in clear law approved by the legislature and similarly failed to learn from repeated Supreme Court rebukes to this unilateral approach. It violates Obama’s much-noted statement this spring that he would “work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.” And it delegates a profound and difficult policymaking exercise to the judiciary and, ultimately, to a single man on the Supreme Court.

The only point in Obama’s defense is that few political actors have given him reason to think he would have responsible partners if he did the right thing. Human rights and civil liberties activists are so keen to avoid legitimizing detention in legislation that they have treated as a victory the president’s decision to adopt the very policy they have spent the past eight years denouncing.

Congress is not looking statesmanlike either. Republicans have been too busy making political hay out of Obama’s sputtering closure of Guantanamo to act as constructive participants in this important legislative project. Democrats, always afraid of their shadows on national security issues, have hidden behind civil liberties platitudes that most do not really believe. Members across the spectrum have acted boldly only when it comes to making sure that no Guantanamo detainees end up in their districts. [continued…]

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The best Congress AIPAC can buy

The best Congress AIPAC can buy
By Philip Giraldi, Antiwar.com, September 3, 2009

Many Americans who thought that the health care debate was important must have wondered where their congressmen were in early August during the first two weeks of the House of Representatives recess. It turns out they were not hosting town hall meetings or listening to constituents because many of them were in Israel together with their spouses on a trip paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Fully 13% of the entire US House of Representatives, 56 members, traveled to Israel in the largest AIPAC-sponsored fact-finding visit by American politicians ever conducted. And the leaders of the two congressional groups, 25 Republicans for a week starting on August 2nd followed by 31 Democrats beginning on August 13th, were drawn from the top ranks of their respective parties. House Minority whip Eric Cantor headed the Republican group and House Majority leader Steny Hoyer led the Democrats.

Cantor and Hoyer are longtime enthusiasts for Israel and all its works. In January, when Israel was pounding Gaza to rubble and killing over a thousand civilians, Hoyer and Cantor wrote an op-ed entitled “A Defensive War,” which began with “During this difficult war in the Gaza Strip, we stand with Israel.” Why? Because “Instead of building roads, bridges, schools and industry, Hamas and other terrorists wasted millions turning Gaza into an armory.” Hoyer and Cantor, clearly noticing a militarization of the Gaza Strip that no else quite picked up on, also affirmed that Israel occupied the moral high ground in the conflict, “While Israel targets military combatants, Hamas aims to kill as many civilians as possible.” That Hoyer and Cantor were completely wrong on this vital point as well as others, in fact reversing the truth, has never resulted in an apology or a correction of the record from either lawmaker. [continued…]

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How the US Congress plans on supporting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Buying American in Tehran
By Jerry Guo, New York Times, September 2, 2009

American sanctions against this country are not only obviously ineffective, … they often have unintended consequences that hurt American interests.

President George W. Bush’s 2005 sanctions on financial assets, meant to crack down on rogue banks facilitating Iran’s nuclear program, had two unforeseen side effects. Freezing the financial assets of these banks increased the price of credit, making it more costly for honest financial firms like ours to operate. It also increased the value of Western goods like TV satellite dishes, cigarettes and alcohol, which the Revolutionary Guards sell on the black market, netting an estimated $12 billion a year.

Today, five members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany are to meet to consider cutting off Iran’s supply of imported gasoline and diesel — which accounts for 40 percent of the country’s total consumption — if the regime does not agree to restart negotiations over its nuclear weapons program by the end of this month. Sadly, though, the only people such sanctions would hurt would be the poor, who would face higher prices for food and bus fare.

Sanctions against foreign investment firms hurt ordinary Iranians, too, because those businesses pour money into companies that make medicine and build roads and housing, providing jobs for the millions of young Iranians who graduate each year with limited job prospects.

Further isolating Iran economically may in fact play right into the hands of Revolutionary Guard hard-liners. Tougher sanctions would rally this fratricidal conservative bloc against an old common enemy and help the Guards’ many businesses, which include smuggling goods through secret landing spots on the coast. [continued…]

Iran says it’s ready to reopen nuclear talks
By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2009

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that the country was prepared to resume talks with world powers over its contentious nuclear technology program and that it had prepared a package of proposals for discussions.

Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and its point person on the nuclear issue, did not disclose details of the package but said that it would be an updated version of one submitted last year. That package was criticized by Western countries for failing to address key points of disagreement.

Still, Jalili’s comments were the most substantive official remarks on the nuclear issue since the contentious June 12 election and could give the Obama administration, which has offered to have direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program, an opportunity to try to engage Tehran before resorting to a fresh round of sanctions. [continued…]

Purge of Iranian universities is feared
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, September 2, 2009

As Iran’s universities prepare to start classes this month, there is growing concern within the academic community that the government will purge political and social science departments of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” according to academics and political analysts inside and outside Iran.

The fears have been stoked by speeches by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as by confessions of political prisoners, that suggest that the study of secular topics and ideas has made universities incubators for the political unrest unleashed after the disputed presidential election in June.

Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services. [continued…]

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The two-state solution doesn’t solve anything

The two-state solution doesn’t solve anything
By Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, New York Times, August 11, 2009

The two-state solution has welcomed two converts. In recent weeks, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, have indicated they now accept what they had long rejected. This nearly unanimous consensus is the surest sign to date that the two-state solution has become void of meaning, a catchphrase divorced from the contentious issues it is supposed to resolve. Everyone can say yes because saying yes no longer says much, and saying no has become too costly. Acceptance of the two-state solution signals continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle by other means.

Bowing to American pressure, Mr. Netanyahu conceded the principle of a Palestinian state, but then described it in a way that stripped it of meaningful sovereignty. In essence, and with minor modifications, his position recalled that of Israeli leaders who preceded him. A state, he pronounced, would have to be demilitarized, without control over borders or airspace. Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and no Palestinian refugees would be allowed back to Israel. His emphasis was on the caveats rather than the concession.

As Mr. Netanyahu was fond of saying, you can call that a state if you wish, but whom are you kidding? [continued…]

Hoyer: E. J’lem not same as W. Bank
By Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, August 11, 2009

US House Majority leader Steny Hoyer praised Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, called for the Palestinian Authority to drop any preconditions to negotiations, and said that Congress differentiated between building in east Jerusalem and in the West Bank, during an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Hoyer, currently in the country leading a delegation of 29 Democratic legislators, also said the rhetoric coming out of the Fatah General Assembly in Bethlehem was “unfortunate.”

The delegation, sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, a charitable organization affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, arrived on Sunday evening and met Monday with President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton.

Lieberman told the group that the continued control of Gaza by Hamas, along with the rhetoric coming out of the Fatah conference in Bethlehem, essentially buried chances of peace for the near future. [continued…]

Israel PM vows never to evict settlers
AFP, August 9, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Sunday that he will never evict Jewish settlers from occupied Palestinian land as Israel did in 2005 in the Gaza Strip.

“The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought us neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for the pro-Iranian Hamas movement and we will never make the same mistake again,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

“We will not evict any more people from their homes,” he added in comments carried by public radio. [continued…]

Netanyahu’s sister-in-law detained by police; calls Sheikh Jarrah evictions an unjust folly
By Ira Glunts, CommonDreams, August 9, 2009

Even compared to the low ethical standards which most people, outside the United States, ascribe to the actions of the Israeli government of occupation, the recent decision of their Supreme Court to evict long-time residents of Arab neighborhoods and to replace them with Jewish Israelis signals a particularly low point in the Jewish state’s brutally harsh treatment of Palestinians.

In a sparsely reported incident which occurred on Sunday, August 1,Ofra Ben-Artzi, the sister-in-law of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, was detained by police in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The 58 year-old Ben-Artzi, an editor for the anti-occupation magazine, HaKibush, spent several hours in police custody before being released without any charges being filed. Her apparent crime was her sympathy with the Palestinians who had recently been evicted from their homes. [continued…]

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NEWS: The torture tapes cover-up

Ex-CIA aide won’t testify on tapes without immunity
By Scott Shane, New York Times, January 10, 2008

A lawyer for Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who in 2005 ordered the destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations of prisoners at a secret site overseas, has told Congress that Mr. Rodriguez will not testify about the tapes without a grant of immunity, a person familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.

The House Intelligence Committee has scheduled a closed hearing on the tapes’ destruction for next Wednesday, and John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s acting general counsel, has agreed to testify.

The committee issued a subpoena last month for Mr. Rodriguez’s testimony. Since then, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the tapes’ destruction. Mr. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, wrote to the committee last week, saying that in light of the investigation he would not allow Mr. Rodriguez to offer testimony that might subsequently be used against him, according to the person familiar with the discussions, who would not speak for attribution because of their confidential nature.

The immunity demand creates a quandary for the House committee, which rejected a request from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to postpone the Congressional inquiry. An offer of immunity for Mr. Rodriguez’s testimony could make prosecuting him difficult or impossible, legal experts say. [complete article]

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NEWS: Investigation into the destruction of the torture tapes

Justice Dept. sets criminal inquiry on CIA tapes
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, New York Times, January 3, 2008

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.

C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.

The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration. [complete article]

Lawmaker told CIA not to destroy tapes
By Eileen Sullivan, AP, January 3, 2008

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned in a 2003 letter that destroying videotapes of terrorist interrogations would put the CIA under a cloud of suspicion, according to a newly declassified copy of the letter.

“Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future,” Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. “The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency.”

Harman’s office released the declassified letter on Thursday, a day after the Justice Department announced it had opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of the tapes. The letter notes that a copy also went to then-CIA Director George Tenet. [complete article]

Probe leader called a tough prosecutor
By Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, January 3, 2008

John H. Durham, who was appointed yesterday to lead a criminal probe into the destruction of the CIA’s interrogation tapes, oversaw corruption charges against a Republican governor in Connecticut, put away FBI agents in Boston and prosecuted many of New England’s Mafia bosses.

Former colleagues said the deputy U.S. attorney is known for seeking maximum sentences, shunning plea bargains and avoiding the spotlight. Four friends said they could not recall him losing a case in more than 30 years as a prosecutor, almost all of it spent fighting organized crime and gang violence in Connecticut. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I surely won’t be the first to make this observation, but Durham’s experience in investigating the Mafia should serve him well when it comes to uncovering the workings of the Bush adminstration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NEWS: North Korea may have aided Hezbollah

North Korea may have aided Hezbollah: U.S. report
By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters, December 13, 2007

North Korea may have given arms to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, according to a report compiled for Congress that could complicate U.S. plans to drop Pyongyang from its terrorism blacklist.

The report obtained on Wednesday by Reuters was written by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which provides independent analysis to Congress, and cited “reputable sources” as saying Pyongyang had given arms and possibly training to the militant groups, which Washington regards as “terrorist” organizations.

As part of a deal to get Pyongyang to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Washington has dangled the possibility of removing North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism if it fully discloses its nuclear programs. [complete article]

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NEWS: Republicans want intelligence to their liking

Review of Iran intelligence to be sought
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, December 7, 2007

Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it, according to congressional sources.

The move is the first official challenge, but it comes amid growing backlash from conservatives and neoconservatives unhappy about the assessment that Iran halted a clandestine nuclear weapons program four years ago. It reflects how quickly the NIE has become politicized, with critics even going after the analysts who wrote it, and shows a split among Republicans.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he plans to introduce legislation next week to establish a commission modeled on a congressionally mandated group that probed a disputed 1995 intelligence estimate on the emerging missile threat to the United States over the next 15 years. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: War funding

Pentagon is left scrambling to pay for war
By Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor, November 19, 2007

Congress’s failure last week to agree whether and how to fund the war puts the onus on the Pentagon, at least for now, to find a way to cover expenses in Iraq, potentially forcing the Defense Department to close dozens of domestic military bases and imperil the livelihoods of tens of thousands of defense workers.

The congressional inaction may trigger Secretary Robert Gates to carry out his threat last week to furlough as many as 200,000 civil servants and defense contractors this winter, raising the stakes for Democratic lawmakers determined to tie war funding to a drawdown of US troops from Iraq.

Before lawmakers left town Friday for their Thanksgiving recess, they did approve the Pentagon’s $470 billion base budget, but not a supplemental funding request to pay for war operations. Democrats don’t want to fund that $189 billion defense request from President Bush unless the money is tied to deadlines, or at least goals, to bring the bulk of troops home from Iraq by the end of 2008. [complete article]

Democrats say they won’t back down on war
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, November 19, 2007

Democrats in Congress failed once again Friday to shift President Bush’s war strategy in Iraq, but insisted that they would not let up. Their explanation for their latest foiled effort seemed to boil down to a simple question: “What else are we supposed to do?”

Frustrated by the lack of political progress in Iraq, under pressure by antiwar groups and mindful of polls showing that most Americans want the war to end, the Democrats last week put forward a $50 billion war spending bill with strings attached knowing it would fail.

Like so many of the war-related measures that Democrats have proposed this year, the spending bill sought to set a timeline for redeploying American troops, and to narrow the mission to focus on counterterrorism and on the training of Iraq’s security forces. [complete article]

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NEWS: The torture test

Bush administration blocked waterboarding critic
By Jan Crawford Greenburg and Ariane de Vogue, ABC News, November 2, 2007

A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration’s legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News.

Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn’t die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Does Cheney have as much guts as an acting assistant attorney general? Or does he think waterboarding guidelines should include a clause that exempts anyone with a pacemaker?

Mukasey all but a shoo-in for approval
By Richard B. Schmitt, Los Angeles Times, November 3, 2007

Michael B. Mukasey appeared on Friday to be all but assured of becoming the nation’s 81st attorney general when two Senate Democrats broke ranks and said they would support the retired federal judge to head the Justice Department.

While acknowledging serious concerns about his views on interrogation techniques, Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Charles E. Schumer of New York said they would vote to confirm Mukasey when the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up his nomination to succeed Alberto R. Gonzales on Tuesday. [complete article]

See also, John Dean on Mukasey (TPM) and The torture litmus test (Scott Horton).

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NEWS: Waxman’s on the job

White House feels Waxman’s oversight gaze
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

For months, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, has been threatening, subpoenaing and just plain badgering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come before his panel to answer questions about the run-up to the Iraq war, corruption and State Department contracting.

Today, Rice will finally appear. But Waxman (D-Calif.) has not spent the week on a victory lap. He has found time to produce evidence accusing State Department security contractor Blackwater Worldwide of tax evasion, to fire off a letter to Rice demanding information about alleged mismanagement of a $1 billion contract to train Iraqi police, and to hold a hearing on uranium poisoning on Navajo land.

Waxman has become the Bush administration’s worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran — with a staff renowned for its depth and experience — who has been waiting for this for 14 years. [complete article]

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NEWS: Mukasey faces tough questions on torture

Mukasey faces tough questions on torture
By Philip Shenon, New York Times, October 19, 2007

President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined today to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects.

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws passed by Congress, especially when it came to questions of national defense.

He suggested that both the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, may be acceptable under the Constitution even if they go beyond what the law technically allows. Mr. Mukasey said the president’s authority as commander in chief may allow him to supersede laws written by Congress. [complete article]

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NEWS: Turkish-U.S. ties threatened

Turkish general warns of irreversible damage to U.S. ties if genocide resolution passes
AP, October 14, 2007

Turkey’s top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.

Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue. [complete article]

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Beware the principles of Congress

Worried Iraqi officials urge calm as Turkish-Kurdish conflict escalates
By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

Turkish armed forces’ escalation of bombing and shelling in northern Iraq, along with threats of a broad ground incursion across the border, has alarmed and surprised Iraqi officials, who say the problems Turkey faces from rebel groups can be solved peacefully through diplomacy.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said officials in his government are preparing to get parliamentary approval for a cross-border military operation aimed at disrupting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a guerrilla group that operates on both sides of the border. [complete article]

Righteousness before realism
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, October 11, 2007

Imperial delusions die hard – and once again the US Congress is trying to legislate for the world. As most Turks see it, this week’s committee vote in the House of Representatives accusing Turkey of genocide against the Armenians in 1915-17 is an insulting, gratuitous interference in their sovereign affairs. As the 27 Democrats and Republicans who backed the bill see it, it is a matter of putting the world to rights, according to America’s lights.

Congress has a long history of extraterritorial meddling. It regularly slaps unilateral sanctions on “rogue” governments, and orders foreign businesses and individuals to obey its strictures, regardless of nationality. Its attempts to direct US foreign policy are resisted by the executive branch to varying degrees. On Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Israel, White House and legislature mostly agree. On Turkey, like Iraq, they are at noisy loggerheads.

“We oppose the bill. We think it is a bad idea that will do nothing to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. It will not do anything to advance American interests,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary for Eurasian affairs, told Turkish television this week. President Bush, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and defence secretary, Robert Gates, all chimed in. They even mobilised all former living US secretaries of state in joint opposition, but to no avail. It was a measure of the lame-duck president’s chronic weakness. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s often said that politics is all about timing. Some members of Congress might think this is a perfect time to win a few Armenian-American votes. But really, in 2007 the United States Congress decides it’s time to recognize the Armenian genocide from 1915-17?

Turkey has just recalled its ambassador in protest, a billion dollars worth of Boeing defense contracts now hang in the balance, and while the US asks Turkey not to invade Iraq who in Ankara is now likely to listen?

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OPINION: An Iraqi show of unity

A different strategy actual Iraqis support
By Reidar Visser, Delawareonline, October 7, 2007

Sept. 30 saw a rare display of Iraqi-American unity in Baghdad: The U.S. embassy as well as scores of Iraqi politicians joined forces in condemning a U.S. Senate resolution to impose a federal state structure on all parts of Iraq.

In general, there was agreement that the proposal which had been introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden constituted gross interference in Iraqi internal affairs. Iraq already has a specific and very elaborate procedure for deciding the federalism issue, but both the timeline (nothing will start until April 1, 2008) as well as the size and number of the future federal entities (to be decided by popular referendums on the basis of grass-roots initiatives) are clearly at variance with the Senate’s proposal of an “international conference” intended to accelerate and simplify matters.

For once, it seemed as if the Bush administration and the Iraqis were united in stressing the virtues of a unified Iraq capable of recovering from sectarian distrust.

There was one anomaly in this picture of Iraqi-American unity of purpose: The main forces that pulled together to condemn the Senate’s decision were mostly from parties that are being largely ignored by the Bush administration. They included Sadrists, the Fadila party, independents and Daawa members of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Tawafuq bloc, and secular groups like Iraqiyya and National Dialogue Front. All in all, they made up a strong Shiite-Sunni alliance accounting for more than a simple majority in Iraq’s parliament.

By way of contrast, all of Washington’s principal allies in Iraq were absent. The Kurds enthusiastically welcomed the Senate decision, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq wavered in its response, probably understanding some obvious parallels between the Senate proposal and their own scheme for a Shiite region, but also sensing a public opinion blowing in a different direction. [complete article]

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Iran – an enemy of convenience

Senate urges Bush to declare Iran Guard a terrorist group
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, September 27, 2007

The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Since last month, the White House has been weighing whether to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group or to take a narrower step focusing on only the Guard’s elite Quds Force. Either approach would signal a more confrontational posture by declaring a part of the Iranian military a terrorist operation. [complete article]

The secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
Trita Parsi interviewed on Democracy Now, September 25, 2007

TRITA PARSI: Israel has for a very long time been a critical factor in America’s formulation of a policy vis-à-vis Iran. But what’s really interesting is that the influence of Israel has gone in completely different directions, if we just go back fifteen years. During the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian Revolution, in spite of Ayatollah Khomeini’s many, many harsh remarks about Israel, far, far worse than what anything Ahmadinejad has said so far, Israel at the time was the country that was lobbying the United States to open up talks with Iran to try to rebuild the US-Iran relations, because of strategic imperatives that Israel had. Israel needed Iran, because it was fearing the Arab world and a potential war with the Arabs.

After 1991, ’92, that’s when you see the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations, because that’s when the entire geopolitical map of the Middle East is redrawn. The Soviet Union collapses. The last standing army of the Arabs, that of Saddam Hussein, is defeated in the Persian Gulf War. And you have an entirely new security environment in the Middle East, in which the two factors, the Soviets and the Arabs, that had pushed Iran and Israel closer together suddenly evaporate. But as their security environment improves, they also start to realize that they may be ending up in a situation in which they can become potential threats to each other. And that’s when you see how the Israelis shift 180 degrees. Now the Israeli argument was that the United States should not talk to Iran, because there is no such thing as Iranian moderates.

And ever since, the Israelis and the pro-Israel interest in the United States have lobbied to make sure that there is no dialogue or there’s no rapprochement between the United States and Iran. And the Iranians have done similar things. They have undermined every US foreign policy initiative in the Middle East that they feared would be beneficial to Israel. So the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations come after the Cold War, not with the revolution in 1979. [complete article]

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NEWS & OPINION: Breaking up Iraq – a neo-colonial fantasy

Senate backs separating Iraq into 3 regions
By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2007

Implicitly criticizing the Bush administration’s reliance on the Iraqi central government to unify the country, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed the decentralization of Iraq into semi-autonomous regions.

The nonbinding measure sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) — which supports a “federal system” that would divide Iraq into sectarian-dominated regions — won unusually broad bipartisan support, passing 75 to 23. [complete article]

The U.S. Senate votes to partition Iraq. Softly
By Reidar Visser, Historiae.org, September 27, 2007

All in all the Biden amendment serves as an alarming but useful numerical indication of the level of support for an “ethnic” approach to Iraqi politics in the US Senate. It does not bode well for the future that the challengers to President Bush seem to converge on a scheme that would be even more unpalatable to the Muslim world than Washington’s current policy. True, Bush invaded Iraq, and Paul Bremer weakened it severely. There are worrying signs that some in the State Department, like Ryan Crocker, are already indistinguishable from Biden by tirelessly “encouraging” Sunnis to think in terms of federalism. But if his partition plans were implemented, Joe Biden would be remembered by Muslims and Arabs around the world in an altogether different way. He would be considered alongside other historical personalities who routinely are being accused by Middle Easterners for having destroyed their region completely: Arthur Balfour, Mark Sykes and Francois Georges-Picot. [complete article]

Iraq’s partition fantasy
By Reidar Visser, Open Democracy, May 19, 2006

…if the pundits who urge partition had bothered to check what actually happened when centrifugal forces were pushed to the maximum in the south of Iraq in the 1920s, they would have seen that regionalism, not sectarianism, has historically been the main competitor to Iraqi nationalism south of Baghdad – and a feeble one at that.

The idea of tripartite break-up, on the other hand finds little resonance in Iraqi history. In testimony to their sublime artificiality, contemporary partitionist misnomers like “Shi’istan” and “Sunnistan” are altogether absent from the historical record; like much of the pro-partition advocacy they exist solely in the minds of outsiders who base their entire argument on far-fetched parallels to European political experiences. [complete article]

See also, Thousands of Iraqi Arabs paid to leave Kirkuk (AFP).

Editor’s Comment — In a recent interview, Iraq expert, Toby Dodge, was particularly blunt in dismissing the Biden plan. “The idea that we have three neat communities is sociologically and politically illiterate. It has deliberately ignored the sociological complexities of Iraq in order to get a neat policy prescription that allows America to get out of Iraq. That is dangerous and reckless, and it isn’t the solution.”

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