Sunday, December 31, 2006

Fisk On Covert U.S. Support For Saddam

Robert Fisk in the Independent:

We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Gone is the man who personally received the CIA's help in destroying the Iraqi communist party. After Saddam seized power, US intelligence gave his minions the home addresses of communists in Baghdad and other cities in an effort to destroy the Soviet Union's influence in Iraq. Saddam's mukhabarat visited every home, arrested the occupants and their families, and butchered the lot. Public hanging was for plotters; the communists, their wives and children, were given special treatment - extreme torture before execution at Abu Ghraib.

There is growing evidence across the Arab world that Saddam held a series of meetings with senior American officials prior to his invasion of Iran in 1980 - both he and the US administration believed that the Islamic Republic would collapse if Saddam sent his legions across the border - and the Pentagon was instructed to assist Iraq's military machine by providing intelligence on the Iranian order of battle. ...

Iran's official history of the eight-year war with Iraq states that Saddam first used chemical weapons against it on 13 January 1981. AP's correspondent in Baghdad, Mohamed Salaam, was taken to see the scene of an Iraqi military victory east of Basra. "We started counting - we walked miles and miles in this fucking desert, just counting," he said. "We got to 700 and got muddled and had to start counting again ... The Iraqis had used, for the first time, a combination - the nerve gas would paralyse their bodies ... the mustard gas would drown them in their own lungs. That's why they spat blood."

At the time, the Iranians claimed that this terrible cocktail had been given to Saddam by the US. Washington denied this. But the Iranians were right. The lengthy negotiations which led to America's complicity in this atrocity remain secret - Donald Rumsfeld was one of President Ronald Reagan's point-men at this period - although Saddam undoubtedly knew every detail. But a largely unreported document, "United States Chemical and Biological Warfare-related Dual-use exports to Iraq and their possible impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War", stated that prior to 1985 and afterwards, US companies had sent government-approved shipments of biological agents to Iraq. These included Bacillus anthracis, which produces anthrax, and Escherichia coli (E. coli). That Senate report concluded that: "The United States provided the Government of Iraq with 'dual use' licensed materials which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological and missile-systems programs, including ... chemical warfare agent production facility plant and technical drawings, chemical warfare filling equipment." ...

The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been silenced for ever.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

A Judge By Any Other Name

Q: When is a judge not considered to be a judge?

A: When one (or more) opposes the administration's "War on Terror."

An appeals court considering whether Guantanamo Bay detainees have constitutional rights said Friday that it will not accept arguments by seven retired federal judges who oppose a new U.S. anti-terrorism law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is examining whether so-called enemy combatants should be allowed to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. President Bush signed a law this fall forbidding such challenges and the Justice Department says detainees are not protected by the Constitution.

Seven federal judges from both political parties filed friend-of-the-court briefs in November urging the appeals court to declare key parts of the new law unconstitutional. They said the law, which sets up military commissions to hear terror cases, "challenges the integrity of our judicial system" and effectively sanctions the use of torture.

In a 2-1 decision Friday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it would not accept that brief on a legal technicality, saying the title "judge" should not be used to describe former judges in legal proceedings.

The panel's more conservative judges, David B. Sentelle and A. Raymond Randolph, issued the opinion with Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Clinton, dissenting.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said it's unusual for such briefs to be rejected. He said the ruling could indicate a decision in the detainee case is near.

Friday, December 29, 2006

Playing Hot Potato With Anti-Cuban Activist

Havana will not accept a Cuban dissident set to be deported from Bolivia for criticizing President Evo Morales' close ties to the island nation, the government said Thursday.

Interior Vice Minister Ruben Gamarra called on the United States to help find another destination for Amauris Sanmartino because the U.S. helped settle him in Bolivia. ...

"We've spoken with Cuba and Cuba doesn't want him," Gamarra said.

Sanmartino and 11 fellow dissidents fled Cuba in 2000 on a boat bound for Florida. Picked up by U.S. immigration authorities, the group was taken to Guantanamo Bay before U.S. officials helped find them a home in Bolivia.

U.S. officials confirmed that they were discussing Sanmartino's future with the Bolivian government but declined to comment further.

The Bolivian government has accused Sanmartino of having ties to a radical separatist movement in the city of Santa Cruz, a center of conservative opposition to Morales about 340 miles east of La Paz. They also claim Sanmartino helped organize a Dec. 15 protest.

Sanmartino has denied both accusations.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

State Issues Ethiopia/Somali Talking Points

The United States wants to make sure that Americans understand Ethiopia's military incursion into Somalia was a necessary move.

On Tuesday, a day after an Ethiopian jet strafed the airport in Mogadishu, the capital, the State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements.

"Should the press focus on the role of Ethiopia inside Somalia," read a copy of the guidelines that was given to The New York Times by an American official here, "emphasize that this is a distraction from the issue of dialogue between the T.F.I.'s and Islamic courts and shift the focus back to the need for dialogue." T.F.I. is an abbreviation for the weak transitional government in Somalia.

"The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia," the guidance said.


The Washington Post understood the instructions perfectly, as evidenced by today's lead editorial:

Troops from neighboring Ethiopia who were defending a U.N.-backed transitional government were attacked by forces of the Islamic Courts movement, which for the past six months has controlled much of the southern part of the country. ...

The Islamic Courts movement poses a potentially serious security threat to the United States: Its leadership includes a U.S.-designated terrorist, and it is known to be harboring al-Qaeda militants, including several who helped carry out the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In recent months it has been inviting radical Muslims to Somalia, and thousands have reportedly arrived from such countries as Syria, Yemen and Libya. In short, the Courts-controlled portion of Somalia has begun to look a lot like Afghanistan under the Taliban before Sept. 11, 2001.


Notice how the Post left (supposedly friendly) Pakistan off the list of nations that have seen their citizens travel to Somalia for jihad? Nope, only evil-doers made the list.

U.S. intelligence is playing down the foreign jihadis' contribution in any case. "Thousands" is a stretch. The Post doubtlessly knows this.

Presumably the Ethiopians are not conversant in Fourth Generation Warfare, and will be as surprised as the Americans were in Iraq and the Israelis were in Lebanon when the Somali Islamists initiate a guerrilla campaign to tie down the militarily superior force in a foreign land.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Weekly "Progress Reports" on Iraq

Readers who want the horse-hockey results can visit the State Department website once a week to see the latest "progress" being made in the Iraq war.

A year ago, President Bush announced a new plan for Iraq, framed around "eight pillars" of U.S. policy for victory. In the past month, the president and his national security team have been busily working on a new recipe for success in Iraq, having declared the previous plan a failure. ...

The State Department continues every Wednesday to issue a 30-page public report that details exactly how the U.S. government is meeting the goals set forth in the president's now-abandoned plan. The report frames the data around Bush's storied eight pillars, which include such goals as "Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgents" (Pillar 1) and "Increase International Support for Iraq" (Pillar 7).

In many ways, the report is a microcosm of the administration's lost year in Iraq. The reams of details aimed at touting success belie the fact that few of the goals are being met.

The report is often upbeat as it presents some of the most minuscule factoids of the situation in Iraq. The Dec. 13 report noted that on Dec. 7, 40 sheikhs from across Diyala province met "to discuss ways to maintain peace and stability" and that on Dec. 9, U.S. soldiers discovered a factory for making improvised explosive devices in a house in Baqubah.

But the bottom-line graphs tell a story of failure. Under Pillar 5 ("Help Iraq Strengthen Its Economy") the reports show that week after week, the Iraqis cannot meet their goals for crude oil production. Another chart shows that efforts to build a 15-day supply of all refined products, such as diesel and gasoline, are woefully behind schedule, reaching a peak of a four-day supply. ...

The report is prepared not by State Department officials but by a team of about 10 people hired by a management consulting firm. The firm, BearingPoint, has a $2 million contract to produce the report and to manage the process of running Iraq policy in the administration, the State Department official said.

Below the level of the top policymakers, working groups from across the government implement Iraq policy day by day. The BearingPoint employees, who work out of offices in the State Department, arrange the meetings, set the agendas, take notes and provide summaries of the discussions, the official said. They also maintain the Web site of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. ...

The report seemed uncertain how to treat the release of a report by the Iraq Study Group, the independent bipartisan panel that criticized the administration's policy and spurred the White House to come up with a new plan. The earliest mention of the study group's report, in the Dec. 13 edition, came under Pillar 3, "Help Iraqis to Forge a National Compact for Democratic Government."

The headline said it all: "Iraqi Leaders Blast Iraq Study Group's Report." The State Department, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate the unity of Iraqi leaders, then devoted a whole page to negative quotes about the panel's recommendations.


To see this year's reports go to http://www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/rpt/iraqstatus/2006/c18335.htm

Monday, December 25, 2006

Ethiopia Attacks Islamists in Somalia

The Ethiopia/Somalia unpleasantness has ratcheted up a notch.

Ethiopia officially plunged into war with Somalia's Islamist forces on Sunday, bombing targets inside Somalia and pushing ground troops deep into Somali territory in a major escalation that could turn Somalia's internal crisis into a violent religious conflict that engulfs the entire Horn of Africa. ...

On Saturday, after several days of heavy internal fighting, Islamist leaders announced that Somalia was now open to Muslim fighters around the world who wanted to wage a holy war against Ethiopia, a country with a long Christian history, even though it is about half Muslim. ...

Even before Ethiopia's escalation on Sunday, there were alarming signs that the conflict in Somalia could quickly spiral out of control. According to United Nations officials, at least 2,000 soldiers from Eritrea, which recently waged war with Ethiopia, are fighting for the Islamists. They have been joined by a growing number of Muslim mercenaries from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya who want to turn Somalia into the third front of holy war, after Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

For the first time since the Islamists came to power in Somalia in June and rapidly began expanding their reach, they seemed to be losing ground. In at least three places on Sunday — Idaale, Jawil and Bandiiradley — transitional government troops were pushing the Islamists back. ...

American officials acknowledged that they tacitly supported Ethiopia's approach because they felt it was the best way to check the growing power of the Islamists, whom American officials have accused of sheltering terrorists tied with Al Qaeda. A State Department spokesperson in Washington said Sunday that the United States was assessing reports of the surge in fighting in Somalia but provided no further comment.

A major question going forward seems to be whether Ethiopian forces will advance into Mogadishu and try to finish off the Islamist military, a possibility that many fear could spur a long and ugly insurgency, or simply deal the Islamists enough of a blow to force them back to negotiations with the transitional government. ...

In a hint of a possible direction to come, Ethiopia's prime minister recently told American officials that he could wipe out the Islamists "in one to two weeks."

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Latin American Leaders Less Willing To Play Along With U.S. Anti-Drug Agenda

Bolstered by the election of a cadre of coca-friendly leaders, opposition is growing across the Andes ridge to a U.S.-led anti-narcotics strategy long seen by people in the region as overbearing and hypocritical.

The abrupt announcement by Ecuador's president-elect, Rafael Correa, that he was canceling a Friday visit to Bogota is the most dramatic manifestation yet of the sentiment.

Correa said he couldn't visit unless Colombia at least temporarily halted aerial spraying of illegal coca crops, the basis of cocaine, along his country's border.

The brash move, announced as Correa ended two days of talks in Venezuela with its U.S.-bashing President Hugo Chavez, signals disdain for a major linchpin of U.S. policy in Colombia that has cost American taxpayers $4 billion since 2000.

"I couldn't be visiting our sister nation of Colombia while they are bombarding us with glyphosate on the border," Correa said, referring to the herbicide used in aerial fumigation.

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe, the staunchest U.S. ally in the region, steadfastly refuses to change course despite being increasingly painted by analysts in the region as Washington's lackey.

Instead, he has capitalized on the Washington-Bogota alliance to intensify his war against the country's drug-financed leftist rebels.

Under the protection of U.S.-supplied Black Hawk helicopters, Colombia's anti-narcotic police sprayed a record 450,000 acres of coca this year. But Colombia remains engulfed in a sea of coca -- the latest U.S. government survey found 26 percent more land dedicated to the plant used to make cocaine in 2005 than in the prior year. ...

Chavez on Wednesday lashed out at the U.S.-led war on drugs, calling it "the imperialists' excuse to penetrate our countries, run roughshod over our people and justify their military presence in Latin America."

This week, President Evo Morales of Bolivia said he wanted to expand the legal production of coca, a traditional elixir among Andean natives. And President Alan Garcia of Peru, a political moderate by comparison, is now extolling the virtues of coca, telling foreign journalists recently that the bitter-tasting leaf tastes great in salads. ...

So far, the United States has shown no willingness to reconsider its approach.

But a tour next week to Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru by a bipartisan delegation of six U.S. senators led by incoming Majority Leader Harry Reid may signal a shift in policy by a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Said (Michael Shifter, analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington): "That a failed U.S. policy is stuck in automatic pilot, and is generating so much discontent and bad will in the region, is costly and tragic."

Friday, December 22, 2006

U.S. Security Package For Lebanon

A new International Crisis Group paper, Lebanon at a Tripwire, deals with the conflict between the U.S. and Iran/Syria which is playing out today in Lebanon.

There is domestic responsibility for the crisis. Profound confessional rifts were never fully healed after the civil war; society is hopelessly fragmented along clan, family, regional, social and ideological lines; there are no genuinely sovereign, credible and strong state institutions; and above all, a corrupt patronage system has created vested interests in perpetuating both sectarianism and a weak central state.

But the principal contributors to today’s conflict are foreign. Lebanon is vital to the Bush administration's regional strategy, Israel’s security, Tehran's ambitions and the Syrian regime's core interests. As the July war reminded everyone, it is also a surrogate for regional and international conflicts: Syria against Israel; the U.S. administration against the Syrian regime; pro-Western Sunni Arab regimes led by Saudi Arabia against ascendant Iran and Shiite militancy; and, hovering above it all, Washington against Tehran.


Right on schedule, the U.S. is coming through for the team.

The United States is preparing a package of almost $500 million in aid for Lebanon's military and police to help strengthen the security forces, part of almost $1 billion in total U.S. assistance to help the beleaguered Lebanese government, according to U.S. officials. ...

Although U.S. officials say the final details have to be worked out, the aid package is likely to be divided about evenly among training, spare parts and ammunition. The leadership training will probably be done by contract workers rather than by the U.S. military. U.S. Army trainers attempted to retrain and reform the Lebanese army in the early 1980s, but they achieved limited results because of sectarian divisions and other problems in the military. ...

The aid increase is one of the largest outside Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. Until this year, U.S. aid for Lebanese security forces hovered around $2 million to $3 million a year, and training has been limited to 60 to 100 military officers, U.S. officials say. This year, it has increased to roughly $44 million.

The train-and-equip package includes about 300 Humvees that the United States has pledged to deliver by the spring, with up to another 700 Humvees coming during the year, the sources said.

Nice One, Condi

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press on Thursday that Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars.

The top U.S. diplomat said the United States can win in Iraq, although the war so far has been longer and more difficult than she had expected. She made the remarks at a time when President Bush is under pressure from the public and members of Congress to find a fresh course in the long-running and costly war, which has shown no signs of nearing an end and cost the lives of 2953 American troops.

Asked whether an additional $100 billion the Pentagon wants for the Iraq and Afghan wars might amount to throwing good money after bad in Iraq. The U.S. has already spent more than $350 billion on the conflict.

"I don't think it's a matter of money," Rice said. "Along the way there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment, because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor you will have a very different kind of Middle East."

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Shiite Rivalry Working Against Maliki

With the restraining influence of Ayatollah Ali Sistani upon Iraqi Shiites fading, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is becoming overshadowed by the two most prominent black turbaned clerics.

Who are at serious odds with each other.

The rivalry between (Moqtada al-Sadr) and (Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) has unfolded mostly on the political stage. The two leaders joined the alliance that produced the current government, but soon their visions diverged. This year, Sadr threw his support behind Maliki largely to stop Hakim's candidate, current vice president Adel Abdul Mahdi, from becoming prime minister.

Hakim and Sadr are also sharply divided over whether Iraq should split into autonomous regions. Hakim is pushing for a separate Shiite region in the south, but Sadr, who views himself as an Iraqi nationalist, wants to keep the country unified. ...

Hakim, meanwhile, has shown his pragmatism, understanding that he needs U.S. troops and support to balance the growing power of Sadr. Last month, he met with Bush, an action that many observers saw as the U.S. hedging its gamble on the weak Maliki government. Bush also met with Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Hashemi is perceived by Washington as a moderate, although many Iraqis would disagree.

"Maliki is very worried about this turnabout," said Wamid Nadhmi, a political analyst in Baghdad. "This is because of his affiliation with Moqtada Sadr and the promotion that Mr. Bush is giving to Mr. Hakim. Maliki is seeing his political end, that they are trying to form a new government with the approval of the Americans."

U.S. pressure on Maliki to isolate Sadr is growing. American officials have declared Shiite militias -- particularly the Mahdi Army -- the most significant threat to Iraq's stability. Maliki has not cracked down on the militia of his political benefactor. He and his Shiite Islamic Dawa Party are also resisting U.S. attempts to build a moderate coalition.

In many circles, Iraqis question whether Hakim and other so-called moderates can curb the growing power of Sadr.

"I have serious doubts about Mr. Hakim's influence among the Shiites, and I have serious doubts of Hashemi becoming the leader of Sunnis," Nadhmi said.

FBI Releasing Last Classified Files On John Lennon

I suspected for decades that in this case the U.S. was simply trying to protect the "special relationship" with British intelligence.

Now we know for sure.

The FBI agreed Tuesday to make public the final 10 documents about the surveillance of John Lennon that it had withheld for 25 years from a UC Irvine historian on the grounds that releasing them could cause "military retaliation against the United States."

Despite the fierce battle the government waged to keep the documents secret, the files contain information that is hardly shocking, just new details about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and antiwar groups in London in the early 1970s, said the historian, Jon Wiener.

For example, in one memo, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon's chief of staff, that "Lennon had taken an interest in 'extreme left-wing activities in Britain' and is known to be a sympathizer of Trotskyist communists in England."

Another document had been blacked out on the grounds of national security when Wiener obtained it more than 20 years ago through litigation brought under the Freedom of Information Act. It is now known that it said two prominent British leftists, Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, had courted Lennon in hopes that he would "finance a left-wing bookshop and reading room in London." ...

Another surveillance report states explicitly that there was "no certain proof" that Lennon had provided money "for subversive purposes." And yet another says there was no evidence that Lennon had any formal tie to any leftist group. ...

"I doubt that Tony Blair's government will launch a military strike on the U.S. in retaliation for the release of these documents. Today, we can see that the national security claims that the FBI has been making for 25 years were absurd from the beginning," said Wiener, who requested the documents in 1981.

Wiener initially obtained some files showing that the FBI closely monitored Lennon's activities in 1971 and 1972. The documents indicated Nixon administration concern that Lennon would support then-Sen. George S. McGovern (D-S.D.) for president against incumbent Richard M. Nixon in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote. ...

Wiener sued in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles seeking all the documents. The FBI countered that some contained "national security information provided by a foreign government under an explicit promise of confidentiality" and that release of the documents "can reasonably be expected to ... lead to foreign diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the United States," according to a government brief filed in 1983.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

A New Plan From Maliki

Yet another plan for the conduct of the war.

Not that it is any more realistic than any of the other proposals.

But this time the author is an Iraqi. And one of the nominal leaders, at that.

Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has created a two-pronged security plan for Baghdad in which U.S. forces would aggressively target Sunni Arab insurgents instead of Shiite militias. At the same time, Maliki would intensify his efforts to weaken Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and contain his Mahdi Army militia, Iraqi officials said Tuesday.

Under these conditions, Maliki would accept a surge in U.S. troops in Baghdad, according to two Maliki advisers with knowledge of the plan. Maliki plans to discuss his proposal with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and senior U.S. commanders during a meeting in Baghdad on Thursday, the officials said. The Bush administration is contemplating a temporary increase in troops to help stem the highest levels of violence since 2003.

The plan calls for U.S. troops to combat Sunni Arab insurgents for four to eight weeks in outer Baghdad neighborhoods, which Maliki believes are the source of the sectarian violence afflicting the capital, his aides said. Iraqi forces would take over primary responsibility for patrolling inner Baghdad from U.S. forces.

During this period, Maliki would persuade Sadr to stop the Mahdi Army from fomenting violence, using a combination of carrots and sticks, including the threat of force, said the advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. If the Mahdi Army does not stop its assaults, Maliki, with the help of U.S. troops, would crack down on Sadr. ...

They said Maliki has discussed the plan with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Khalilzad, Casey, and Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman, could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The Bush administration's acceptance of Maliki's plan would require a shift in U.S. strategy for taming Baghdad's sectarian violence. U.S. forces are currently concentrated in Baghdad's core in an effort to contain Shiite-Sunni tensions.


It is doubtful that Maliki will be able to neuter Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Or even really be willing to take on that task.

But Maliki is capable of saying the right things to the Americans if it will result in the U.S. military diverting more assets to confronting the Sunnis.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The "War President" Vs. The Generals

President Bush has been saying all along that he is conducting the Iraq war per the recommendations of his Generals on the ground.

There is one big caveat. The Generals had better not advocate strategies that conflict with the big picture at the White House.

The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

Sending 15,000 to 30,000 more troops for a mission of possibly six to eight months is one of the central proposals on the table of the White House policy review to reverse the steady deterioration in Iraq. The option is being discussed as an element in a range of bigger packages, the officials said.

But the Joint Chiefs think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives, despite warnings about the potential disadvantages for the military, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House review is not public.


As recently as Nov. 15, Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. commanders are opposed to sending more troops because a surge would only have a limited effect and would result in further strains on an already overstretched military.

Obviously President Bush understands the situation better.

Monday, December 18, 2006

A Little Truth Would Be Helpful

These ongoing attacks are not being portrayed as U.S. officials strongly suspect them to be.

Not "gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms", but real members of the Shiite-militia infiltrated Iraqi Interior Ministry.

In other instances, members of the Iraqi army have been working for the insurgents. On December 21, 2004, one of the infiltrators blew up a U.S. Army mess tent in Mosul -- killing 15 Americans.

But always it is bad guys "dressed in Iraqi military uniforms", and idle speculation of how available these Iraqi BDUs must be on the black market.

Reporting the unvarnished truth would advertise the impossibility of the U.S. ever standing up Iraqi security forces that will eventually represent (or at least not be actively hostile towards) our interests in that beleaguered country.

The occasion this time was yesterday's abduction of 25 Red Crescent employees in Baghdad.

Outside the compound, a cluster of police vehicles and four U.S. military Humvees were parked. They had arrived too late to stop the gunmen, who had worn police uniforms and carried police-issued guns, witnesses said. ...

It has become a familiar story in Baghdad. Gangs of gunmen, dressed in camouflage uniforms and driving official police vehicles, abduct dozens of employees in broad daylight, motivated by sectarian tensions, a bid for ransom or merely a desire to undermine a weak government unable to provide security for its citizens. They leave the women but take the men, then calmly drive off without firing a shot.

Almost the only difference Sunday was the target: a humanitarian organization, linked to the International Committee of the Red Cross, that has helped Iraqis cope in a nation that offers little comfort. The kidnappers took about 25 employees and a few visitors, employees said. The assault began at 11:30 a.m. and ended 15 minutes later.

The office is located in a part of the capital that is surrounded by checkpoints and concrete barriers largely because the Dutch Embassy is nearby. The gunmen also seized three embassy guards as they left. ...

The mass abduction Sunday was the third in Baghdad in just over a month. On Thursday, gunmen rounded up about 25 shopkeepers in a busy commercial district. And on Nov. 15, 150 employees were seized from a Ministry of Higher Education agency in Karrada. In both cases, the gunmen wore police or military uniforms, witnesses said.


The willful misrepresentation of the Iraqi element that is behind many of the kidnappings and massacres is as unacceptable as would be the media reporting American dead and wounded as "gunmen wearing U.S. military uniforms."

Saturday, December 16, 2006

New Army Counterinsurgency Manual

The U.S. Army yesterday issued the new counterinsurgency (COIN) manual (282 page PDF).

From the foreword:

This manual is designed to fill a doctrinal gap. It has been 20 years since the Army published a field manual devoted exclusively to counterinsurgency operations. For the Marine Corps it has been 25 years. With our Soldiers and Marines fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is essential that we give them a manual that provides principles and guidelines for counterinsurgency operations. Such guidance must be grounded in historical studies. However, it also must be informed by contemporary experiences.

This manual takes a general approach to counterinsurgency operations. The Army and Marine Corps recognize that every insurgency is contextual and presents its own set of challenges. You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably. Nonetheless, all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people. They use variations of standard themes and adhere to elements of a recognizable revolutionary campaign plan. This manual therefore addresses the common characteristics of insurgencies. It strives to provide those conducting counterinsurgency campaigns with a solid foundation for understanding and addressing specific insurgencies.

From the "Intelligence in Counterinsurgency" chapter:

3-7. Intelligence preparation of the battlefield is the systematic, continuous process of analyzing the threat and environment in a specific geographic area. Intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) is designed to support the staff estimate and military decision-making process. Most intelligence requirements are generated as a result of the IPB process and its interrelation with the decision-making process (FM 34-130). Planning for deployment begins with a thorough mission analysis, including IPB. IPB is accomplished in four steps:
  • Define the operational environment.
  • Describe the effects of the operational environment.
  • Evaluate the threat.
  • Determine threat courses of action.

3-8. The purpose of planning and IPB before deployment is to develop an understanding of the operational environment. This understanding drives planning and predeployment training. Predeployment intelligence must be as detailed as possible. It should focus on the host nation, its people, and insurgents in the area of operations (AO). Commanders and staffs use predeployment intelligence to establish a plan for addressing the underlying causes of the insurgency and to prepare their units to interact with the populace appropriately. The goal of planning and preparation is for commanders and their subordinates not to be surprised by what they encounter in theater.

3-9. IPB in COIN operations follows the methodology described in FM 34-130/FMFRP 3-23-2. However, it places greater emphasis on civil considerations, especially people and leaders in the AO, than does IPB for conventional operations. IPB is continuous and its products are revised throughout the mission.
Nonetheless, predeployment products are of particular importance for the reasons explained above. Whenever possible, planning and preparation for deployment includes a thorough and detailed IPB. IPB in COIN requires personnel to work in areas like economics, anthropology, and governance that may be outside their expertise. Therefore, integrating staffs and drawing on the knowledge of nonintelligence personnel and external experts with local and regional knowledge are critical to effective preparation.

3-10. Deployed units are the best sources of intelligence. Deploying units should make an effort to reach forward to deployed units. The Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) allows deploying units to immerse themselves virtually in the situation in theater. Government agencies, such as the Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, and intelligence agencies, can often provide country studies and other background information as well.

3-11. Open-source intelligence is information of potential intelligence value that is available to the general public (JP 1-02). It is important to predeployment IPB. In many cases, background information on the populations, cultures, languages, history, and governments of states in an AO is in open sources. Open sources include books, magazines, encyclopedias, Web sites, tourist maps, and atlases. Academic sources, such as journal articles and university professors, can also be of great benefit.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Uproar Over Belgian TV Hoax

An applied experiment showing the power that the mainstream media holds over the minds of the masses:

Belgians reacted with widespread alarm to news that their country had been split in two - before finding out they had been spoofed.

The Belgian public television station RTBF ran a bogus report saying the Dutch-speaking half of the nation had declared independence.

Later it said Wednesday night's programme was meant to stir up debate.

It appears to have succeeded. Thousands of people made panicked calls to the station and politicians complained. ...

The French-language TV channel interrupted regular programming with an apparent news report, announcing that Dutch-speaking Flanders had unilaterally declared independence and that Belgium as a nation had ceased to exist.

It showed "live" pictures of cheering crowds holding the Flemish flag, huge traffic jams leading to Brussels airport, and trams stuck at the new "border".

The broadcast came amid an apparent growth of separatist sentiment in Flanders.

Recent regional elections have shown strong support for the far-right, nationalist Vlaams Belang party, which advocates Flemish independence. ...

The AFP news agency reported that even some foreign ambassadors in Brussels were taken in, and sent urgent messages back to their respective capitals.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

U.S. Backing Ethiopia Against Somali Islamists

The incipient war between Ethiopia and the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia is receiving the (not exactly neutral) attention of the U.S. military and "Other Government Agencies."

The question now is whether our "terror-fighters" will make matters worse in the Horn of Africa.

Gen. John P. Abizaid of the United States Central Command — or Centcom — which has responsibility for American military interests in the region, recently flew to Ethiopia to meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who had told American officials that he could cripple the Islamist forces "in one to two weeks."

Walking a careful line, General Abizaid made it clear that a broad military invasion of Somalia could create a humanitarian crisis across the Horn of Africa, Centcom officials said, but did not tell Ethiopian officials to pull their troops out.

Indeed, some American officials say the United States supports Ethiopia's military buildup because it is the only way to protect the weak Baidoa government from being overrun, force the Islamists to the negotiating table and contain what they call a growing regional threat.

American officials have accused the Islamists of sheltering terrorists connected to Al Qaeda, but the Ethiopian troops' presence seems to have only increased the potential for terrorist activity. Suicide bombers, unknown in Somalia until a few months ago, have attacked Baidoa twice recently, and last month the first Iraqstyle roadside bombs were detonated against Ethiopian convoys.

A U.S.-led attempt to stabilize the country led to the deaths of 18 American troops in an October 1993 battle depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down." After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government was accused of bungling Somalia policy again by supporting warlords marketing themselves as an "anti-terrorism coalition," who generally terrorized Somalis who came to hate them.


(See The Law Of Unintended Consequences in Somalia for details on how the covert CIA backing of the secular warlords prompted the ICC into launching pre-emptive strikes on -- and the unexpected capture of -- Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.)

Support for the Islamic movement by Eritrea, Ethiopia's neighbor and rival, appears to be a big part of Ethiopia's motivation. The Ethiopia-Eritrea proxy conflict in Somalia could ignite a regional conflagration and threaten U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in the Horn of Africa, according to a report due out this week from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. It describes "a general unraveling of U.S. foreign policy" in the region and calls for the United States to exert stronger pressure on the two countries to implement a U.S.-brokered border agreement. ...

Some observers, including Ethiopians opposed to war, are convinced that the United States is tacitly giving a green light to Ethiopia to attack. That, they say, would amount to the worst U.S. policy blunder yet in Somalia. Beyene Petros, an opposition leader in Ethiopia's parliament, questioned the wisdom of a visit that Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, paid Meles in Ethiopia last week.

"If there is disapproval, you don't pay visits, right?" he said. "We used to see this call for restraint, but I have not seen that lately."

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

U.S./Pinochet Documents Requested

The blast rocked Washington's Embassy Row on Sept. 21, 1976, ripping through the car of one of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's most outspoken critics.

The assassination of Orlando Letelier and his American assistant two miles from the White House prompted demands for explanations and helped expose what President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a series of CIA officials tried for years to conceal: U.S support for a military dictatorship that was killing thousands of its own citizens.

In the wake of the former leader's Sunday death, officials at the think tank where Letelier and Ronni Moffitt worked said they are sending U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a letter asking for the release of the remaining information.

In 1998, the Clinton administration declassified more than 16,000 documents related to Chile, but withheld documents on the Letelier bombing, citing an ongoing investigation.

"With the prime suspect no longer here, there is no reason to keep those documents secret," said Sarah Anderson of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

Former Chilean secret police chief Manuel Contreras, who served seven years in a Chilean prison for the assassination, claimed his orders came directly from Pinochet.

"The documents related to the Letelier case definitely could include embarrassing information about the relationship between the U.S. government and the Pinochet dictatorship," Anderson said. "But that shouldn't outweigh the public's right to know about that history, especially if it gives consolation to the victims' families."

Congressional investigations, CIA reports and the declassified documents have already revealed much about the relationship between Pinochet and the U.S.

Declassified transcripts portray Kissinger downplaying concern over Chile's human rights record, even as the dictatorship was torturing and killing thousands of opponents. The death toll would eventually reach at least 3,197.

Meeting with Chile's ambassador in September 1975, Kissinger joked that U.S. officials focusing on human rights violations had "a vocation for the ministry." And in a June 1976 meeting with Pinochet himself, Kissinger gently encouraged the dictator to release more prisoners while stressing that "we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here."

Peter Kornbluh, who helped win declassification of many files on Chile as a senior analyst at George Washington University's National Security Archive, said the transcripts of Kissinger's meetings "paint a pretty stunning picture of gross insensitivity to human rights atrocities."

Kornbluh believes some of the most important U.S. documents on Chile remain classified -- he's still seeking CIA cable traffic between Santiago and Washington, reports on Contreras' visits to the United States and more information about a young American, Charles Horman, who was killed shortly after the coup.

Full disclosure, Kornbluh said, would likely show how the U.S. government helped Pinochet's regime consolidate its power with overt and covert support, despite knowing of its abuses.

Documents already released indicate that U.S. officials did not directly participate in the military coup on Sept. 11, 1973 that toppled Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende. But the CIA said it had advance warning of the coup and had tried to foment earlier coup attempts on direct orders from Nixon and Kissinger.

A report released by the CIA in 2000 said the agency had been "aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence-collection relationships with some plotters and -- because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970 -- probably appeared to condone it."

A secret cable from the CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, conveyed Kissinger's orders to CIA Santiago station chief Henry Hecksher ([sic] Heckscher) in 1970: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup," and that the "American hand" be hidden.

Nixon's CIA director, Richard Helms, in handwritten notes said the president, intent on saving Chile from communism, ordered covert operations to "make the economy scream" under Allende.

Even U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, when asked about covert U.S. activities in Chile, acknowledged in 2004 that, "It is not a part of American history that we're proud of."

The CIA kept in regular contact with Contreras -- blamed for much of the torture and death under the dictatorship -- until 1977, though it said the relationship "was not cordial and smooth."

Indeed, public outrage over Chile's human rights record prompted the U.S. Congress to ban weapons sales in 1976, not long after Kissinger's meeting with Pinochet.

Another View Of Hugo Chavez

The lies being told about Hugo Chavez:

Lie Number One: Chavez is a dictator. In reality, he has been chosen by the Venezuelan people in elections praised by the Carter Centre - the gold standard for election monitoring across the world - as "impressively open". This is hardly, as some critics who have never visited Venezuela jeer, because the people are pickled in Chavista propaganda. Pick up any of Venezuela's seven national newspapers any day and six of them will blast you with ferocious anti-Chavez invective. I have been to dictatorships - from Saddam Hussein's to Bashar al-Asad's - and they are nothing like this.

Lie Number Two: You can tell what Chavez is really like by looking at his allies. It is true Chavez has allied himself with some repellent dictatorships, praising Fidel Castro and - when I met up with him earlier this year - Robert Mugabe. Similarly, Tony Blair has allied himself with the torturers and murderers Vladimir Putin, the Chinese Communist Party and the House of Saud, and found praise for them all. Does this mean Britain is not a democracy? All democratic governments make unsavoury alliances but it does not reveal the true nature of the government in Caracas any more than in Westminster.

Lie Number Three: Chavez is suppressing human rights. This accusation is screamed loudly but with little evidence. Sometimes, the critics claim there are 200 political prisoners in Venezuela. Here's the reality. In 2002, an anti-democratic junta consisting of oil barons, media bosses and a few disgruntled generals kidnapped Hugo Chavez and announced they were taking over the country. They dissolved parliament and the courts, and announced a military lock-down on the streets, threatening to shoot anybody who came out. The Bush administration jumped in praising the coup with suspicious speed. With incredible courage, more than a million democrats descended from the barrios on to the streets around the Miraflores palace in Caracas, refusing to allow their elected President to be toppled. The soldiers holding Chavez joined the rebellion, and he was returned to power.

The only "political prisoners" in Venezuela - the so-called 200 - are the people who directly planned and participated in this attempt to destroy the country's democracy. If a foreign-funded group had kidnapped Tony Blair, trashed Parliament and the Old Bailey, and placed Britain under military curfew, would we imprison so few of the guilty?

Lie Number Four: Chavez is a communist who is determined to nationalise the whole of the country's economy. This is a Rumsfeldian lie that, ironically, is also reinforced by some of Chavez's old left supporters in Britain, such as that smirking Stalinist carbuncle George Galloway. In reality, Chavez is a European-style social democrat who believes in an active government that lifts up the poor alongside a vigorous market economy. He calls this "21st-century socialism". The tragedy is that in Latin America, under the heel of the IMF and US power, it takes a revolutionary to be a social democrat.

The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming. During Chavez's presidency, the proportion of Venezuela's GDP that is in the private sector has actually increased, and the Caracas stock exchange is at an all-time high. Chavez has not nationalised land; instead, he has redistributed it, breaking the vast unused landed estates of the rich into smaller packages for landless peasants. For all his rhetorical praise for Fidel Castro, Chavez's policies are much more like Abraham Lincoln's Homestead Act of 1862, which doled out the land in the West to poor people who wanted to settle there.

While market fundamentalism and communism deflate an economy - look at the history of Latin America for proof - mixed social democratic states work: Venezuela grew by 12 per cent last year. The anti-Chavez critics carp that this is due to soaring global petrol prices. How do they explain that in the 1970s when the oil price was - adjusted for inflation - just as high, the Venezuelan economy hardly grew at all?

No, it's not just the size of your oil money that counts, it's what you do with it. Chavez is using his petro-dollars to carry out the will of the people - to lift them out of their slums.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

What Can This Mean?

Saudi Ambassador Abruptly Resigns, Leaves Washington.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, flew out of Washington yesterday after informing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his staff that he would be leaving the post after only 15 months on the job, according to U.S. officials and foreign envoys. There has been no formal announcement from the kingdom.

The abrupt departure is particularly striking because his predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, spent 22 years on the job. The Saudi ambassador is one of the most influential diplomatic positions in Washington and is arguably the most important overseas post for the oil-rich desert kingdom.

Turki, a long-serving former intelligence chief, told his staff yesterday afternoon that he wanted to spend more time with his family, according to Arab diplomats. Colleagues said they were shocked at the decision. ...

Turki has been the subject of both high praise and controversy. In the 1980s, while he was intelligence chief, he reportedly met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden several times during the U.S.- and Saudi-backed support of mujaheddin fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He subsequently denounced bin Laden. ...

Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam's holiest sites and a predominantly Sunni country, has been deeply concerned about the change in the balance of power in Iraq, with which it shares a 500-mile border. Riyadh has been alarmed by the rise of the Shiite majority in Iraq and the marginalization of the traditional Sunni elite. Young Saudi men have joined the Sunni insurgency as foreign fighters, while there have been persistent reports that Saudi citizens have provided financial aid to the Sunni insurgency.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Details of High-Level U.S. Talks With Iraqi Insurgent Groups Revealed

This story reports details of one of the worst kept secrets in Washington. Especially after Gen. Casey stepped on his dick (see comments) back on March 19 on Meet The Press.

Secret talks in which senior American officials came face-to-face with some of their most bitter enemies in the Iraqi insurgency broke down after two months of meetings, rebel commanders have disclosed.

The meetings, hosted by Iyad Allawi, Iraq's former prime minister, brought insurgent commanders and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, together for the first time.

After months of delicate negotiations Allawi, a former Ba'athist and a secular Shi'ite, persuaded three rebel leaders to travel to his villa in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to see Khalilzad in January. ...

Feelers had been put out to Iraqi insurgents before but not at such a high level. "The Americans had been flirting with such meetings for a while, but they needed to sit down with people who carried more weight in the insurgency," said one leader of the National Islamic Resistance, an umbrella organisation representing some of the main insurgent groups.

The trio of Iraqi negotiators claimed to represent three-quarters of the "resistance". It included Ansar al- Sunnah, the group responsible for a suicide bombing that killed 22 in a US army canteen in Mosul in December 2004, and also the 1920 Revolution Brigade, which has carried out many kidnappings and claimed to have shot down a British Hercules aircraft near Tikrit in January 2005, in which 10 people died. ...

The talks continued in Baghdad for about eight weeks, sometimes on consecutive days at Allawi's home. ...

The atmosphere eventually soured at a meeting said to have been attended by Khalilzad and six US generals as well as tribal leaders from Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala and other hotspots. Each side apparently accused the other of stepping up attacks during the supposed period of grace and the insurgents refused to have lunch with the generals on the grounds that they were military occupiers. ...

The final blow to the negotiations came in mid-March when Khalilzad said that he would be willing to talk to Iran about resolving the conflict in Iraq. The news came as a bombshell to the Sunni insurgents, who complained to the ambassador at their final meeting.

Shortly afterwards the government of Nouri al-Maliki was formed with the support of pro-Iranian elements. The Sunni insurgents responded by sending a memo to Khalilzad — now tipped to become US ambassador to the United Nations — suspending all meetings and accusing the Americans of "dishonesty".

Kinda Makes Us Sorry We Asked

From yesterday's big Shiite-led demonstration in Beirut:

Sheik Naim Kassem, Hezbollah's deputy leader, said the opposition was willing to stay on the streets for months to achieve its goal.

"Does Bush want popular expression in Lebanon? Do the West and the Arabs want to hear the voice of the people in Lebanon? Tell them 'Death to America!' Tell them 'Death to Israel!' " the crowd repeated behind him.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

The Kook's Reading Habits

From Think Progress:

At a Pentagon townhall meeting today, outgoing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he began reading books about the U.S. Civil War, but "turned away from that" because he "there were so many people killed and wounded, and they were all Americans." Rumsfeld said he began reading books about World War II instead.

Rumsfeld appears to be in denial about civil wars, refusing to read books on the U.S.'s history and failing to recognize there is one going on currently in Iraq.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, I’m wondering what books you read while you were secretary that you found most useful and edifying.

RUMSFELD: Well, I’ve read a great many books. They’re all history books; a number about the Revolutionary War and about George Washington and John Adams and others, Jefferson.

I started reading a number of books about the Civil War. And one particularly good one was a book on Ulysses S. Grant. But I stopped. I found the struggle going on — gosh, those years, there were so many people killed and wounded, and they were all Americans, except for the foreign fighters who came over from Germany and Poland and elsewhere.

So I turned away from that and read a great deal about World War II. And that has been basically what I’ve been reading.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Bush Spurns ISG Lifeline

President Bush's public response to the proposals in the Iraq Study Group's report is typical.

When he said yesterday "I don't think that Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton expect us to accept every recommendation", he showed that he hadn't read the ISG report. Or even the report's executive summary, where it plainly said that the ideas were intended to be a comprehensive approach to the failing U.S. endeavor in Iraq.

Baker and Hamilton re-iterated yesterday that the report was not designed to be "cherry-picked." For good reason:

"Cherry-picking ideas and sending them into the bowels of the stovepiped bureaucracy to execute will result in more of the same uncoordinated, differing priorities, mess," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former Middle East mediator for the Bush administration.


Bush keeps perverse counsel as a matter of course, and will likely disregard the findings of the Baker-Hamilton commission in any case.

At the risk of whatever legacy he can salvage for himself at this point.

Bush is sabotaging the establishment plan to rescue him as painlessly as possible from his disastrous Iraq blunder. Self-destruction is clearly still his guiding principle.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

The Looming Irrelevancy Looms No More

The way I see it, any actions taken in the aftermath of the "bi-partisan" Iraq Study Group report will result in the Democrats being forced to share at least some of the ownership of Mr. Bush's war.

The conventional wisdom -- at this point -- is saying otherwise:

The bipartisan nature of the report -- and the fact that Baker was secretary of state for Bush's father -- will make it difficult for the White House to ignore. By endorsing the critics' view of the war, the report will also help incoming Democratic congressional leaders frame the debate over Iraq as a disaster largely of the administration's making.

In a lengthy preamble to the recommendations titled "Assessment," the report gives a dispassionate account of the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq, echoing books and news reports that the administration had previously criticized as one-sided or overly negative. The report's description of the violence in Iraq, which amounts to an attack on the administration's understanding of the facts on the ground, will likely set the new baseline for how the Iraq conflict is portrayed. ...

The report is replete with damning details about the administration's inept handling of Iraq. It notes, for instance, that only six people in the 1,000-person embassy in Baghdad can speak Arabic fluently. It recounts how the military counted 93 acts of violence in one day in July, when the group's own reexamination of the data found 1,100 acts of violence. "Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes discrepancy with policy goals," the report says.
...

And then there is this:

Administration officials yesterday gamely insisted that the report is not a criticism of the administration's approach. White House spokesman Tony Snow said many issues raised in the report are being discussed and addressed by the administration. "You're asking if that is a repudiation of policy," he told reporters. "No, it's an acknowledgment of reality."

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Blair Coming To Washington Today For Iraq Discussions

Prime Minister Tony Blair is due to fly to Washington for talks with US President George Bush, as a high-level panel delivers its verdict on the situation in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group headed by former US Secretary of State and Bush family ally James Baker is widely expected to recommend a change of course in Iraq, paving the way for an eventual pull-out of American troops.

Its publication at 4pm UK time comes a day after Mr Bush's nominee for Defence Secretary - Robert Gates - said that the US was not winning the war in Iraq. ...

Mr Bush is due to receive an advance copy of the ISG report, but Mr Blair will be in the air over the Atlantic when it is published and is not expected to see it until he lands in Washington in the evening.

He will use the 24-hour visit to drive home his message that a solution in Iraq must be part of a "whole Middle East strategy", also including a resolution of the Israel/Palestine problem and stability for Lebanon.

Maliki Getting A Jump On ISG Report

Something tells me that Maliki has an idea of what James Baker is likely to suggest in today's release of the Iraq Study Group report.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said his government will send envoys to neighboring countries to pave the way for a regional conference on ending Iraq's rampant violence, which yesterday killed more than 40 people.

The Shi'ite leader appeared to back down from previous opposition to handing neighboring nations a say in Iraqi affairs but stressed that he wants the conference to be held in Iraq and while his government would welcome help, it would not tolerate interference. ...

Other top Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talabani and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who leads parliament's largest bloc, have in recent days rejected a suggestion for an international conference by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The outgoing UN chief said that such a gathering could be useful if the political parties involved met outside Iraq.

"These delegations I mentioned will go to these [neighboring] governments because we want a regional or international conference on Iraq to be convened, but not on the premise that it finds solutions on its own, but in light of what the national unity government wants," Maliki said.

Maliki also said a frequently delayed national reconciliation conference designed to rally the country's various ethnic, religious, and political groups around a common strategy for handling Iraq's problems would be held later this month.

He added that he planned to announce shortly a reshuffle of his six-month-old government "to boost the effectiveness and strength of the national unity government," but he gave no details.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Classification of Uighur Terrorist Group Came From US/China Deal

Attorneys for a group of Chinese Muslims held for nearly five years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, filed suit yesterday, asking that the men be released immediately and alleging that they have been held as part of a political deal between the United States and China.

Citing new laws that allow detainees to challenge their status as "enemy combatants," the lawyers argue that their seven clients -- ethnic Uighurs (pronounced wee-gurs) -- have never taken up arms against the United States or its allies. They contend that the men have been labeled wrongfully as terrorist suspects because they oppose the Communist Chinese government.

In a 58-page filing at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the lawyers argue that the Uighurs have been held since early 2002 as a way to win Chinese acquiescence for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The lawyers -- Sabin Willett and Susan Baker Manning -- allege in the court documents that their clients' detention was one of several demands the Chinese government solicited in mid-2002 as the United States was seeking global support for toppling Saddam Hussein.

U.S. officials labeled the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) -- a group that includes Uighur separatists who want their own nation in western China -- a terrorist organization in August 2002 after diplomatic discussions with China about Iraq, the lawyers allege. ...

Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage met with Chinese officials in Beijing in late August 2002 and discussed the Iraq situation with them. ...

"They had been after us to put ETIM on the list," Armitage said in a recent interview. He said the decision did not have anything to do with winning China's tacit approval on the Iraq invasion. "But at the time, we didn't know when we were going to invade Iraq. It was done in response to information gathered by the intelligence group."


Horsehockey, Mr. Armitage.

The invasion of Iraq was planned earlier than that. Anyone remember the Downing Street Memo?

Not to mention the fact that the administration was discussing plans to invade Iraq as early as Bush's first NSC meeting (January 2001).

As witnessed by then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Monday, December 04, 2006

The Real Problem With Iraq Policy

The ordinarily oleaginous Evan Thomas crafts a couple of anomalously decent paragraphs:

Persuading Bush to listen -- and to change course, even at the margins -- will be very difficult. One of the myths that the Bush camp has tried to perpetuate over the years is that the president follows the model, learned as a student at Harvard Business School, of a chief executive who delegates, listens to advice and only then decides. Bush is the "decider," as he calls himself, but there is little evidence that he listens to advice that he doesn't want to hear. It may be that the last really serious call for a midcourse correction heeded by George W. Bush was the hangover he experienced at Colorado's Broadmoor Hotel one morning in the summer of 1986, when he decided to quit drinking -- a decision that put him on the path to the presidency. That was indeed a momentous example of evaluating options and choosing to change, but it happened two decades ago. ...

Bush's reluctance to change course ... may come as a disappointment to voters who thought they were sending the president a message last Election Day. Bush seems determined to play the role of a 21st-century Winston Churchill, steadfast in the West's darkest hour, when many Americans see Bush as the captain on the bridge of the Titanic. But in fact the dire situation in Iraq -- and the reality that there are no magical fixes -- may push the president into listening to Baker and other advisers, if only for a moment, and then maybe with only half an ear. At least that is what Baker, according to those who know him, is hoping and maneuvering for -- a chance to get his foot in the door of the Oval Office, to make one last pass at getting Bush to make an attempt at true diplomacy in the Middle East.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Spying 2.0: The Open Source Paradigm

If analysts and agents were encouraged to post personal blogs and wikis on Intelink -- linking to their favorite analyst reports or the news bulletins they considered important -- then mob intelligence would take over. In the traditional cold-war spy bureaucracy, an analyst's report lived or died by the whims of the hierarchy. If he was in the right place on the totem pole, his report on Soviet missiles could be pushed up higher; if a supervisor chose to ignore it, the report essentially vanished. Blogs and wikis, in contrast, work democratically. Pieces of intel would receive attention merely because other analysts found them interesting. This grass-roots process, (Calvin Andrus, chief technology officer of the Center for Mission Innovation at the C.I.A.) argued, suited the modern intelligence challenge of sifting through thousands of disparate clues: if a fact or observation struck a chord with enough analysts, it would snowball into popularity, no matter what their supervisors thought. ...

(T)he best Internet search engines, including Google, all use "link analysis" to measure the authority of documents. When you type the search "Afghanistan" into Google, it finds every page that includes that word. Then it ranks the pages in part by how many links point to the page -- based on the idea that if many bloggers and sites have linked to a page, it must be more useful than others.

This, Burton (former D.I.A. analyst) pointed out, is precisely the problem with Intelink. It has no links, no social information to help sort out which intel is significant and which isn't. When an analyst's report is posted online, it does not include links to other reports, even ones it cites. There's no easy way for agents to link to a report or post a comment about it. Searching Intelink thus resembles searching the Internet before blogs and Google came along -- a lot of disconnected information, hard to sort through. If spies were encouraged to blog on Intelink, Burton reasoned, their profuse linking could mend that situation.

"Imagine having tools that could spot emerging patterns for you and guide you to documents that might be the missing pieces of evidence you're looking for," Burton wrote in his Galileo paper. ...

(T)op-secret information is becoming less useful than it used to be. "The intelligence business was initially, if not inherently, about secrets -- running risks and expending a lot of money to acquire secrets," (Thomas Fingar, the head of analysis for the D.N.I.) said, with the idea that "if you limit how many people see it, it will be more secure, and you will be able to get more of it. But that's now appropriate for a small and shrinking percentage of information." The time is past for analysts to act like "monastic scholars in a cave someplace," he added, laboring for weeks or months in isolation to produce a report.

Fingar says that more value can be generated by analysts sharing bits of "open source" information -- the nonclassified material in the broad world, like foreign newspapers, newsletters and blogs.

Friday, December 01, 2006

Saudis Threaten To Assist Iraqi Sunnis

It has become difficult to keep track of all the Iraq "studies" that have been commissioned by the U.S. in recent months.

There is, of course, the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton commission) which has received the most attention from the media.

There is the Pentagon's Iraq Options Study ("Go Big," "Go Long" or "Go Home").

The one initiated most recently, and the least publicized, is the White House's own internal policy review. This was originally thought to be a "second opinion" to be juxtaposed against the Baker-Hamilton findings to provide some leeway for the administration to ignore the expected inconvenient recommendations from that forum.

It turns out that the White House internal policy review is actually doing some heavy lifting of sorts. The State Department has proposed a controversial idea for the U.S. to abandon the (mostly covert) U.S. outreach to the Sunni insurgents and basically throw our support to the Shiites (and Kurds) when push comes to shove.

The proposal has met serious resistance from both U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and military commanders in Iraq, who believe that intensive diplomatic efforts to bring Sunni insurgents into the political process are pivotal to stabilizing the war-ravaged country, the sources said. ...

Opponents of the proposal cite three dangers. Without reconciliation, military commanders fear that U.S. troops would be fighting the symptoms of Sunni insurgency without any prospect of getting at the causes behind it -- notably the marginalization of the once-powerful minority. U.S. troops would be left fighting in a political vacuum, not a formula for either long-term stabilization or reducing attacks on American targets.

A second danger is that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife. The proposal would encourage Iraqis to continue reconciliation efforts. But without U.S. urging, outreach could easily stall or even atrophy, deepening sectarian tensions, U.S. sources say.

A decision to step back from reconciliation efforts would also be highly controversial among America's closest allies in the region, which are all Sunni governments. Sunni leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms have been pressuring the United States to ensure that their brethren are included in Iraq's power structure and economy.


This last bit -- about potentially pissing off Iraq's Sunni neighbors by writing off the Sunnis -- is the backstory to some very interesting skullduggery that is being discussed in security circles in Washington.

Rumor has it that Saudi Arabia has sent word to the administration that if we abandon the minority Iraqi Sunnis to their fate at the hands of the Shiites, they are willing to intervene (including militarily) in Iraq to prevent the wholesale slaughter of their religious brethren.

The real risk of a Saudi-Iranian conflict is not lost on anyone.

The Saudis say they are willing to help drastically cut oil prices by boosting production to economically impact the Iranian sponsors of Iraqi Shiite aggression upon the Sunnis.

The Saudi summons to Vice President Cheney to come meet with the custodian of the two holy mosques last weekend was presumably connected to this Saudi pledge of support to the Iraqi Sunnis.