European Allies Getting Edgy About U.S. Intentions Towards Iran

Today's anti-Iran program update:

The Bush administration will shortly publish a dossier of charges of alleged Iranian subversion in Iraq. "Iran has steadily ramped up its activity in Iraq in the last three to four months. This applies to the scope and pace of their operations. You could call these brazen activities," a senior US official said in London yesterday. ...

The Americans and Europeans have sought to maintain a common front on the nuclear issue for the past 30 months, with the European troika of Britain, France and Germany running failed negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans tacitly supporting them.

But diplomats in Brussels and those dealing with the dispute in Vienna say a fissure has opened up between the US and western Europe on three crucial aspects - the military option; how and how quickly to hit Iran with economic sanctions already decreed by the UN security council; and how to deal with Russian opposition to action against Iran through the security council.

"There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "The Europeans are very concerned the shit could hit the fan."

We also have comments on the Iran issue from the man who may find himself Secretary of State should (as rumors have it) Ms. Rice get promoted to replace a suddenly indisposed Dick Cheney as vice president.

John D. Negroponte, nominated as deputy secretary of state, defended the Bush administration's more confrontational policy with Iran in a Senate confirmation hearing that was peppered with demands from both sides of the aisle that the United States show restraint in dealing with Tehran.

In a sign that the debate over Iraq is increasingly becoming a debate over Iran, Mr. Negroponte, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, found himself answering the same questions, over and over again.

"Do you think we are drifting toward a military confrontation with Iran?" demanded Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska.

"I don't think that has to be, Senator," Mr. Negroponte replied. "I think we would strongly prefer that the issues between us and Iran be resolved peacefully."

Mr. Negroponte maintained that an emboldened Iran could harm American interests in the region.

"We don't believe that their behavior, such as supporting Shia extremists in Iraq, should go unchallenged," said Mr. Negroponte, who is now the director of national intelligence.

Shortage Of Materiel For "Surge"

More news about the ad hoc fuck-up:

Boosting U.S. troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 would create major logistical hurdles for the Army and Marine Corps, which are short thousands of vehicles, armor kits and other equipment needed to supply the extra forces, U.S. officials said.

The increase would also further degrade the readiness of U.S.-based ground forces, hampering their ability to respond quickly, fully trained and well equipped in the case of other military contingencies around the world and increasing the risk of U.S. casualties, according to Army and Marine Corps leaders. ...

President Bush's plan to send five additional U.S. combat brigades into Iraq has left the Army and Marines scrambling to ensure that the troops could be supported with the necessary armored vehicles, jamming devices, radios and other gear, as well as lodging and other logistics.

Trucks are in particularly short supply. For example, the Army would need 1,500 specially outfitted -- known as "up-armored" -- 2 1/2 -ton and five-ton trucks in Iraq for the incoming units, said Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army's deputy chief of staff for force development.

"We don't have the [armor] kits, and we don't have the trucks," Speakes said in an interview. He said it will take the Army months, probably until summer, to supply and outfit the additional trucks. As a result, he said, combat units flowing into Iraq would have to share the trucks assigned to units now there, leading to increased use and maintenance.

Speakes said that although another type of vehicle -- the up-armored Humvee -- continues to be in short supply Army-wide, there would be "adequate" numbers for incoming forces, and each brigade would receive 400 fully outfitted Humvees. But he said that to meet the need, the Army would have to draw down pre-positioned stocks that would then not be available for other contingencies.

Still, U.S. commanders privately expressed doubts that Iraq-bound units would receive a full complement of Humvees. "It's inevitable that that has to happen, unless five brigades of up-armored Humvees fall out of the sky," one senior Army official said of the feared shortfall. He expects that some units would have to rely more heavily on Bradley Fighting Vehicles and tanks that, although highly protective, are intimidating and therefore less effective for many counterinsurgency missions.

Dual Command Structure For "Surge" Criticized

Lots of criticism circulated in Washington throughout the early occupation over the separate chains of command between Bremer's CPA and the traditional military hierarchy.

Nobody listened then, and the ad hoc fuck-up (the "surge") takes that mistake -- and goes one better:

As the Senate nears an unprecedented debate on President Bush's escalation of the Iraq war, almost all the public criticism has been aimed at the inadequate size of the new forces being sent to Baghdad (21,500 troops) and the extreme difficulty of reversing the course of the civil war. But last week, little noticed by the press and public, the Bush plan began to be attacked on a surprising new front -- by Iraq hawks, like Sen. John McCain, concerned that the split command structure for the operation violates basic military doctrine.

The Baghdad surge plan, announced by the president on Jan. 10, calls for the new U.S. soldiers to be embedded with Iraqi forces, who will take the lead. But while the U.S. troops would report to American officers, their Iraqi counterparts, in an apparent sop to national sovereignty, would report to Iraqi officers. The potentially disastrous result: two separate and independent command structures within the same military operation. ...

For military experts, who have long questioned the Bush strategy in Iraq, the dual command structure is just the latest in a long chain of avoidable errors. "It just shows you how flawed the whole scheme is," said retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, who was once the Army's senior intelligence officer, in an interview. Odom lamented that Iraq has been "just a bad nightmare" from the start. He said this White House continues to make mistakes that are "so painfully clear that sometimes I think I might be crazy."

Soldiers fighting side by side yet reporting to different commands is ill-advised in all military situations. But it is particularly risky in counterinsurgency operations, which require a sensitivity to political considerations. "Any kind of military operation -- but especially counterinsurgency -- only succeeds when there is a high degree of unity of command," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, who advised the Iraq Study Group. "You want to have very clear, smooth and defined lines of control. If you have dual forms of command, you have, at the start, introduced an undesirable complication. You can only have one chef stirring the pot."

Time-Tested Program

Nice find by Mark Woods of Wood's Lot:

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

- Hannah Arendt, The Origins Of Totalitarianism

This Does Not Inspire Much Confidence

Here is some evidence that Petraeus' appointment and the "surge" is not much more than an ad hoc fuck-up in the works.

Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new top U.S. commander in Iraq, told Congress that he might supplement efforts to secure Baghdad using the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service, a 150,000-man force that guards Iraqi government agencies. But that service is widely considered unreliable, and elements were described in July by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as "more dangerous than the militias," according to Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

"The prime minister said he wanted to get rid of the FPS as fast as possible," Reed said this week, recalling his meeting with Maliki in Baghdad last summer. There are "bad elements" in FPS units that "are carrying out murders and kidnappings . . . [and] attacking the infrastructure that they are supposedly protecting," Reed said in his trip report about what Maliki had told him. "Because of the FPS," Reed wrote, Maliki said that "some governmental ministries' guards are more dangerous than the militias." ...

The Iraq Study Group described FPS members as having "questionable loyalties and capabilities." It quoted an unnamed senior U.S. official as saying that they are "incompetent, dysfunctional and subversive," with some serving the manpower needs of sectarian party militias and death squads.

The willingness of Gen. Petraeus last week to agree with Sen. Lieberman's outrageous allegation that skepticism by lawmakers of the "surge" emboldens the enemy portrays a commander who is willing to say anything to further what is looking like a hastily concieved mission.

And Sen. Hagel is claiming that there is no written plan for Bush's "surge."

This FPS business only confirms such suspicions that the "change in strategy" [sic] is little more than a hodge-podge of ideas that sound good to various officials, but will not fit together worth a shit.

Cheney Pressured Republicans To Stall Pre-War Iraq Intelligence Inquiry, Says Rockefeller

Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

"It was just constant," Rockefeller said of Cheney's alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican senators.

Republicans "just had to go along with the administration," he said. ...

Rockefeller's comments were among the most forceful he's made about why the committee failed to complete the inquiry under Roberts. Roberts chaired the intelligence committee from January 2003 until the Democrats took over Congress this month.

The panel released a report in July 2004 that lambasted the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for erroneously concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was concealing biological, chemical and nuclear warfare programs. It then began examining how senior Bush administration officials used faulty intelligence to justify the March 2003 invasion.

Robert promised to quickly complete what became known as the Phase II investigation. After more than two years, however, the panel published only two of five Phase II reports amid serious rifts between Republican and Democratic members and their staffs. ...

The most potentially controversial of the three Phase II reports being worked on will compare what Bush and his top lieutenants said publicly about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorists with what was contained in top-secret intelligence reports.

In the two reports released in September, the panel said that the administration's claims of ties between Saddam and al-Qaida were false and found that administration officials distributed exaggerated and bogus claims provided by an Iraqi exile group with close ties to some senior administration officials.

Rockefeller said it was important to complete the Phase II inquiry.

Rockefeller said that he and the senior Republican member of the committee, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., have put the frictions behind them and agree that the committee should press the administration for documents it's withholding on its domestic eavesdropping program and detainee programs. ...

Rockefeller charged that Bush had violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain permission to eavesdrop on Americans from a secret national security court.

"For five years he's (Bush) has been operating an illegal program," he said, adding that the committee wants the administration to provide the classified documents that set out its legal argument that Bush has the power to wiretap Americans without warrants.

It sounds like Rockefeller is referencing inter alia the classified United States Signals Intelligence Directive that was first reported here (and nowhere else in the media) last March and May.

Anti-Iran Program Accelerates

The Bush administration has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian operatives inside Iraq as part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran's influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear program, according to government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the effort. ...

The new "kill or capture" program was authorized by President Bush in a meeting of his most senior advisers last fall, along with other measures meant to curtail Iranian influence from Kabul to Beirut and, ultimately, to shake Iran's commitment to its nuclear efforts. ...

The administration's plans contain five "theaters of interest," as one senior official put it, with military, intelligence, political and diplomatic strategies designed to target Iranian interests across the Middle East.

The White House has authorized a widening of what is known inside the intelligence community as the "Blue Game Matrix" -- a list of approved operations that can be carried out against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. And U.S. officials are preparing international sanctions against Tehran for holding several dozen al-Qaeda fighters who fled across the Afghan border in late 2001. They plan more aggressive moves to disrupt Tehran's funding of the radical Palestinian group Hamas and to undermine Iranian interests among Shiites in western Afghanistan. ...

The wide-ranging plan has several influential skeptics in the intelligence community, at the State Department and at the Defense Department who said that they worry it could push the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington into the center of a chaotic Iraq war. ...

Officials said Hayden counseled the president and his advisers to consider a list of potential consequences, including the possibility that the Iranians might seek to retaliate by kidnapping or killing U.S. personnel in Iraq. ...

With aspects of the plan also targeting Iran's influence in Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, the policy goes beyond the threats Bush issued earlier this month to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria" into Iraq. It also marks a departure from years past when diplomacy appeared to be the sole method of pressuring Iran to reverse course on its nuclear program. ...

A senior intelligence officer was more wary of the ambitions of the strategy.

"This has little to do with Iraq. It's all about pushing Iran's buttons. It is purely political," the official said. The official expressed similar views about other new efforts aimed at Iran, suggesting that the United States is escalating toward an unnecessary conflict to shift attention away from Iraq and to blame Iran for the United States' increasing inability to stanch the violence there. ...

In interviews, two senior administration officials separately compared the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Guard to the "SS." They also referred to Guard members as "terrorists." Such a formal designation could turn Iran's military into a target of what Bush calls a "war on terror," with its members potentially held as enemy combatants or in secret CIA detention.

Chertoff Addresses World Economic Forum

Report from Davos:

(Homeland Security Secretary Michael) Chertoff told a high-level panel on terrorism at the World Economic Forum that the century will only get more dangerous as technology improves, and that global leaders must make some hard decisions now if they want to avert catastrophe.

"What we face in the 21st century is the ability of even a single individual, and certainly a group, to leverage technology in a way to cause a type of destruction and a magnitude of destruction that would have been unthinkable a century ago," he said. "And that is only going to get worse."

At least one other speaker was conscious that the pot may be calling the kettle black.

Another panelist, British Conservative party leader David Cameron, said it was critical for Western democracies to face the new threat posed by al-Qaida with tough new laws, but also with steady thinking in order to avoid trampling on core beliefs.

"There are some big changes that we have to make ... but when we make those changes, its vital we get this balance right and don't lurch into an ineffective authoritarianism," Cameron said. "We've got to be very strong in combatting terrorism but equally strong in defending liberty, democracy and the things we are actually fighting for."

Chertoff bristled at criticism that some of the steps the United States has taken to combat terrorism -- particularly the use of secret CIA prisons, the establishment of military tribunals to try terror suspects, and what critics see as a relaxing of the rules against torture -- have degraded fundamental human and civil rights. He said governments must be realistic in an age of increasing dangers.

"We should not sacrifice fundamental human rights, but I think it is important also not to treat every departure from the ordinary set of rules that we use in criminal cases and treat that as a catastrophic departure from fundamental human rights," he said. "We have to be precise about what truly is fundamental and what isn't fundamental."

Later in the session, Chertoff was mistaken by Swiss authorities for a missing medical school cadaver, but U.S. officials vouched that the Homeland Security chief was actually still alive, and -- while closely matching the description -- should be permitted to return to his delegation.

The Crowd Really Ate It Up

A highlight from last night's State of the Union address:

The awkwardness increased when the subject finally came to Iraq.

Bush urged lawmakers to "turn events toward victory." Cheney stood and applauded. Pelosi held to her chair, but, as the applaud spread, finally stood without clapping.

Bush called for the United States "to succeed in Iraq." Cheney again stood and clapped. Pelosi wiped her lips and remained seated, as did most Democrats, except for relative hawks such as Clinton and the newly minted independent, Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) When Bush spoke of Marines going to Anbar province to "find the terrorists," a few Republican leaders -- Sens. Ted Stevens (Alaska), John Cornyn (Tex.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Reps. John Boehner (Ohio) and Roy Blunt (Mo.) -- tried to start a standing ovation, but got little support from either side.

And when Bush spoke about deploying "more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq," there was silence all around.

Bush and the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions

From Bush and the Psychology of Incompetent Decisions
By John P. Briggs, MD, and J.P. Briggs II, PhD

Many accounts of the president suggest that his decision-making process is a failed one; in an important sense, it is no process at all.

Ambivalent feelings are normal at certain stages of decision-making, and the ability to tolerate ambivalence has been shown to be the hallmark of creative thinkers. The inability to tolerate uncertainty because you think that may imply incapacity brings decision-making to an end.

Thus, instead of focusing on the process needed to arrive at a decision, Bush marshals his defenses in order not to feel incompetent. That doesn't leave much room for exploring the alternatives required of competent decision-making. Not interested in discussion or detail (where the devil often lies), he seeks something minimal, just enough so he can let the decision come to him; it's his "gut" (read "God") that will provide the answer. But these gut feelings are the very feelings associated with his deep sense of inadequacy and his defenses against those feelings. So while he brags that he makes the "tough decisions," psychologically, he's defending himself against the very feelings of uncertainty that are the necessary concomitant to making tough decisions. His tough decision-making is a sham.

In the recent maneuvering toward the "new strategy" in Iraq, we have witnessed a great pretense of normal decision-making. But the president clearly made up his mind almost as soon as the "surge" alternative appeared, and apparently moved to cow others, including his new secretary of defense Robert Gates (his father's man) in the process. "Success" is the only alternative for him. "Failure" and disintegration of Iraq is unthinkable because it would be synonymous with his own internal disintegration.

As his decisions go awry, he exudes a troubling, uncanny aura of certitude (though some find it reassuring). He seems to expect to feel despised and alone (and probably has always felt that), as he has always secretly expected to fail. That expectation of failure leads to sloppy, risky, incompetent decisions, which in turn compel him to swerve from his fears of incompetence.

At this point, the president seems to have entered a place in his psyche where he is discounting all external criticism and unpopularity, and fixing stubbornly on his illusion of vindication, because he's still "The Decider," who can just keep deciding until he gets to success. It's hard not to feel something heroic in this position - but it's a recipe for bad, if not catastrophic, decisions.

Chavez On U.S./Venezuelan Relations

At least he didn't call President Bush a "puto."

President Hugo Chavez told U.S. officials to "Go to hell, gringos!" and called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "missy" on his weekly radio and TV show Sunday, lashing out at Washington for what he called unacceptable meddling in Venezuelan affairs.

The tirade came after Washington raised concerns about a measure to grant the fiery leftist leader broad lawmaking powers. The National Assembly, which is controlled by the president's political allies, is expected to give final approval this week to what it calls the "enabling law," which would give Chavez the authority to pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period.

On Friday, U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Chavez's plans under the law "have caused us some concern."

Chavez rejected Casey's statement in his broadcast, saying: "Go to hell, gringos! Go home!"

He also attacked U.S. actions in the Middle East.

"What does the empire want? Condoleezza said it. How are you? You've forgotten me, missy ... Condoleezza said it clearly, it's about creating a new geopolitical" map in the Middle East, Chavez said.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Here is a sample of what passes for "serious" strategic thinking in Washington about Iran these days:

U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said.

"I'm much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear infrastructure," which would prompt vigorous Iranian retaliation, he said, than civil war in Iraq, which could be confined to that country. ...

Middle East expert Kenneth Katzman argued "Iran's ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible" if one understands the Islamic republic's many vulnerabilities.

Tehran's leaders have convinced many experts Iran is a great nation verging on "superpower" status, but the country is "very weak ... (and) meets almost no known criteria to be considered a great nation," said Katzman of the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service.

The economy is mismanaged and "quite primitive," exporting almost nothing except oil, he said.

Also, Iran's oil production capacity is fast declining and in terms of conventional military power, "Iran is a virtual non-entity," Katzman added.

The administration, therefore, should not go out of its way to accommodate Iran because the country is in no position to hurt the United States, and at some point "it might be useful to call that bluff," he said.

But Katzman cautioned against early confrontation with Iran and said if there is a "grand bargain" that meets both countries' interests, that should be pursued.

King Abdullah Wants "Peaceful" Nuclear Program For Jordan

A good, trustworthy Muslim leader like King Abdullah of Jordan will doubtlessly have an easier go of it politically than evil freedom-hatin' Muslims like Ahmadinejad.

King Abdullah II said yesterday that Jordan wants to develop a peaceful nuclear program, joining Egypt and Arab Gulf countries in considering a nuclear option.

Arab nations are fearful over the West's failure to stop Shi'ite Iran's nuclear ambitions, which they worry will lead to Tehran having an atomic weapon.

The Arab countries have complained for years about Israel's nuclear program and reported arsenal, but it never prompted them to seek programs of their own. Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia -- nations where Sunni Muslims predominate -- have expressed concern over Iranian influence in Iraq and Lebanon .

But Iran's progress in building nuclear facilities has sparked a rush among Arab nations to look at nuclear programs, raising the possibility of a proliferation of nuclear technology -- or even weapons -- in the volatile Middle East. ...

"Jordan is trying to toss another log on the fire and . . . obliquely point out to the Iranians that the acquisition of such a weapon would create such pressure on the Arab neighbors [to respond] that acquiring the bomb would not be useful" for Iran, said Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst at the Washington-based Cato Institute.

Abdullah announced his interest in a nuclear program in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He said his kingdom wanted nuclear power "for peaceful purposes" and has been "discussing it with the West."

Trouble On The High Frontier

It has been the position of the U.S. that there is no arms race in space, and thus, there is no need for new treaties limiting our right to proceed as we see fit.

This may change the thinking a bit.

China successfully carried out its first test of an antisatellite weapon last week, signaling its resolve to play a major role in military space activities and bringing expressions of concern from Washington and other capitals, the Bush administration said yesterday.

Only two nations — the Soviet Union and the United States — have previously destroyed spacecraft in antisatellite tests, most recently the United States in the mid-1980s.

Arms control experts called the test, in which the weapon destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite, a troubling development that could foreshadow an antisatellite arms race. Alternatively, however, some experts speculated that it could precede a diplomatic effort by China to prod the Bush administration into negotiations on a weapons ban.

"This is the first real escalation in the weaponization of space that we’ve seen in 20 years." said Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer who tracks rocket launchings and space activity. "It ends a long period of restraint."

In addition to introducing a renewed military dimension to space, the destruction of the Chinese satellite created a large "debris cloud" that can seriously damage other satellites in nearby orbit, and possibly even spacecraft on their way to the moon or beyond. Analysts said that based on computer models, as many as 300,000 pieces of debris may have been created. While many would be very small, they said, hundreds would be large enough to create potentially serious problems.

The United States and the Soviet Union tested anti-satellite technology in the 1980s, and the United States shot down one of its orbiting satellites in 1985. Partially as a result of the debris problem, both sides stopped the programs.

The Chinese test, first reported online by the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, comes at a time of heightened tensions between the United States and China over space. China is leading an effort in the United Nations to set up an international conference to address what many consider to be an imminent space arms race. The United States has opposed the idea, arguing that it is not needed because there is no arms race in space. The Bush administration nevertheless released an updated national space policy last fall that strongly asserted an American right to defend itself in space against any actions it considers hostile. ...

Michael Krepon, president emeritus of the Henry L. Stimson Center, another nonprofit involved with security issues in Washington, called the Chinese test a predictable -- and unfortunate -- response to U.S. space policies.

"The Chinese are telling the Pentagon that they don't own space," he said. "We can play this game, too, and we can play it dirtier than you."

Krepon said the Chinese test "blows a whole through the Bush administration reasoning behind not talking to anybody about space arms control -- that there is no space arms race. It looks like there is one at this point."

Iran Offered Deal To U.S. In 2003

A good bit of this story has been circulating for a while now, but it appears -- Wilkerson does happen to be a credible witness -- that the Iranian nuclear weapons bugaboo could have been avoided.

The difficulty of deducing an innocent motivation for why the U.S. would scotch the proffered deal is not inconsiderable.

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC's Newsnight programme.

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members. ...

One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.

"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.

"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."

The OVP recognized the need for Iran to remain a threat to the U.S., especially in light of the "cakewalk" that the Iraq war was assumed to be.

The plan in the halcyon days of 2003 was to "set 'em up, and knock 'em down." Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Easy as that.

Legal Shenanigans Over CATCH ALL

Despite the hoopla about the administration allegedly backing down from their extra-legal warrantless eavesdropping program, it is clear that Gonzales's action is an attempt at sophistry to evade the consequences of having acted illegally for five years.

It isn't going to work.

It all boils down to the Fourth Amendment's requirement that "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

There isn't any way that the CATCH ALL program can be configured to meet that standard.

Period.

The Bush administration said yesterday that it has agreed to disband a controversial warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, replacing it with a new effort that will be overseen by the secret court that governs clandestine spying in the United States. ...

One official familiar with the discussions characterized the change as "programmatic," rather than based on warrants targeting specific cases. This official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the judge who issued the Jan. 10 order was not U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the FISA panel's chief judge, but rather one of that court's rotating members who was assigned to hear cases that week.

It is hard to figure out what the "change" they have worked out with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can be. Sounds like they are talking about using blanket warrants. Blanket warrants are not constitutional, the person has to be described by name -- or at least has had to be under American jurisprudence to this point.

In case anyone imagines that the NSA program has been re-engineered to provide for individual identification of suspects -- thus making appropriate warrants feasible -- forget it. That is impossible given the massive scale of the collection under CATCH ALL (especially the first sift).

Another official, not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said both the director of national intelligence and the head of the NSA "have assured the president that the program and that the capabilities to protect this country remain intact under this new order."

There you have it.

Egypt Enabling Sunni Info Ops In Iraq

This is the kind of thing that drives Washington nuts.

Al Zawraa television station, the face of Iraq's Sunni insurgency, shows roadside bombs blowing up American tanks, dead and bloody Iraqi children, and insurgent snipers taking aim and firing.

And all this blatant anti-Americanism is broadcasting 24/7 on an Egyptian government-controlled satellite provider from one of Washington's closest allies. Even though Iraq and the US have asked Egypt to pull the plug, the station remains on the air.

The question is, why? While Nilesat, which broadcasts Al Zawraa, argues that it's airing the channel for purely commercial reasons, analysts point to the political benefits for Egypt.

Some say the country's reluctance to shut down the channel shows that Egypt, predominantly Sunni, may be taking a stand against what it sees as the unjust aggressiveness of Iraq's Shiite-led government and the dangers of Iran's influence there. ...

American officials have reportedly called the station "utterly offensive," saying that closing it down is a priority. ...

"I want to show people everywhere what the Americans are doing to my country," says (Station owner Mishan al-Jabouri), a former member of Iraq's parliament, now based in Damascus, "what American democracy has done to Iraq, how it has killed children, what has happened in the prisons, how the Americans gave Iraq to Iran."

While many see Nilesat as Al Zawraa's staunch supporter, Jabouri complains that the satellite provider is already reacting to US pressure by raising technical obstacles that prevent him from sending new footage from the field, forcing him to loop already-broadcast material. ...

The business deal between Al Zawraa and Nilesat is all the more curious, commentators say, since Islamic extremism remains a threat in Egypt and Al Zawraa appears the perfect militant recruiting tool. But, it seems Egypt is more concerned about reasserting its leadership in the Sunni Arab world than it is in gagging a possible militant mouthpiece, analysts say.

This is also a sign that Egypt may be further distancing itself from Washington. Recently, it defiantly announced a nuclear energy program of its own and criticized Mr. Hussein's execution last month.

French Diplomatic Mission To Iran Scuttled

Interesting that the Saudis (who are rumored to be involved in a broader covert action against Hezbollah in Lebanon) are portrayed as having a vote in this matter.

At a time when most world powers have forged a united front against Iran because of its nuclear program, President Jacques Chirac arranged to send his foreign minister to Tehran to talk about a side issue, then abruptly canceled the visit earlier this month in embarrassing failure.

Mr. Chirac's troubles stemmed from his deep desire to help resolve the crisis in Lebanon before his term runs out in May. To that end, he decided to seek the support of Iran, which, along with Syria, backs the radical Shiite organization Hezbollah, three senior French officials said in describing the effort.

So he planned to send Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to Tehran, only to call off the trip two days before it was to have taken place, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on diplomatic issues.

Both Mr. Douste-Blazy and senior Foreign Ministry officials concluded that such a trip was doomed to fail and that it would send the wrong signal just weeks after the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved sanctions intended to curb Iran’s nuclear program, they added.

That put Mr. Douste-Blazy in the uncomfortable position of having to tell Mr. Chirac that he did not want to go, one senior official said. ...

When Mr. Douste-Blazy visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt this month, the foreign ministers of both countries also informed him that they strongly opposed any such initiative.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, was so determined to stop the visit that he spoke to Mr. Douste-Blazy in uncharacteristically blunt terms -- "I am going to tell you, do not go" -- according to a senior official familiar with the conversation. ...

Iran, meanwhile, has officially expressed its displeasure that the trip was canceled.

For the moment, Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of France's foreign intelligence service and former ambassador to Egypt, is planning to make the trip to Tehran, leaving open the face-saving possibility that the foreign minister could follow at a later, unspecified, date, a senior French official said.

But the initiative is so ad hoc and divisive that one senior official said even Mr. Cousseran’s trip might not take place.

Mr. Chirac's initiative is surprising because he has consistently taken a hard line against Iran and its nuclear program, privately expressing the view that the Islamic republic cannot be trusted. While other global players, including Russia and China, regularly send senior officials to Tehran, France had joined with Britain, Germany and the United States in pressuring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities or face sanctions in the Security Council. In fact, France largely drafted the initial resolution in tough language that was watered down in the end.

An Interesting Development

Iran seems to be encouraging (Shiite/Sunni) Pan-Islamism against the regimes of the traditional allies of the U.S. in the Middle East.

With the obvious exception of Iraq.

The conservative Arab regimes are concerned that despite all the noise about the specter of the "Shi'ite crescent" haunting the region, the non-state actors in the Arab world (including Hamas) have continued to participate on the side of Arab-Iranian Islamism in the confrontation pitting it against the US-Israeli-Arab power elites.

Indeed, a major theme in Khamenei's message to the hajj pilgrims ... was also the "united identity of the Muslim ummah". In an extraordinary passage that harks back to a political idiom of liberation theology that Tehran hasn't used for a long while, Khamenei said: "The suppression of liberation movements in the Islamic countries over the past century [since the 1922 Middle East settlement imposed by imperial Britain], success of the colonial powers in establishing their dominance over these countries, creation and strengthening of authoritarian regimes [in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf], plundering of their natural wealth and destruction of their human resources, and thereby keeping Muslim nations behind the caravan of progress in science and technology -- all this has became possible only under the shadow of [Muslim] disunity that in some cases reached the level of internecine and fratricidal strife." ...

Iran is watching closely the growing coordination of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt with Israel at the operative level in Lebanon and Palestine. Israel, of course, has not hesitated to "leak" from time to time the details of its covert dealings with Riyadh and Cairo. Thus Iran has dismissed out of hand the Arab League special envoy's mission to Beirut last month and his four-point mediation formula for the consideration of Hezbollah.

Original Game Plan May Be Back In Play

I recently spoke with a Washington political-military type who speculated that the reason the U.S. refused to send as many troops as Gen. Shinseki recommended for the occupation of Iraq was that the invasion was to be the first act of a hit job in which Iran and Syria were to be toppled soon after.

The thinking was that we needed to keep additional troops fresh for the second and third acts.

As everyone knows, the opening gambit was not the success that the civilian planners envisioned.

Dreams die hard, however, and much evidence is pointing to the malefactors in the administration making every effort now to proceed with their game plan for Iran and Syria.

The confrontation of Iran over their nuclear program has not been as effective as we had hoped it to be, so allegations of Iranian assistance in insurgent attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq are being floated before the American public.

The fact that Shiite Iran is hardly likely to be assisting Sunni insurgents -- who are responsible for most of the attacks on American troops -- is lost on most people. (Remember, many U.S. security officials don't know the difference between the two sects.)

The U.S. seizure of officials and documents from the Iranian Consular office in Irbil was fairly inspired as far as provocations go, knowing that Iran would not have much world sympathy in light of the taking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979.

"The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq," Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. "There's a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive -- that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around."

That is precisely the point of the effort.

Chalabi Still Stinking Up The Place

Most Americans probably think that Ahmed Chalabi -- the friend of the neocons who pushed for war with Iraq -- has slithered back under the rock from which he came.

Not so.

The disastrous ramifications of U.S. occupation chief L. Paul Bremer's de-Baathification order became clear early on, flooding the country with unemployed Iraqi administrators who became the sea in which the insurgents swam.

After Bremer left the country, we decided that redress had to be made.

Finally, in 2005, the Shiites and Kurds agreed to reexamine the de-Baathification rules as part of a compromise to get Sunni political parties to support Iraq's new constitution. The agreement called for a revised de-Baathification law to be enacted by parliament.

But that still hasn't happened.

In an attempt to get the process moving, Bush used his televised address last week to call on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to embrace the reintegration of former Baathists. Maliki told Bush recently that he supports a revised de-Baathification law -- but the issue isn't in the prime minister's hands. It's still with Chalabi.

Chalabi is the chairman of the Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification, which continues to have ultimate authority to decide which ex-Baathists can return to work and which cannot. He has prepared draft legislation that calls for easing some elements of Bremer's policy, but he said parliament has been unable to act on it because a majority of the members of the legislature's de-Baathification committee belong to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political party, which walked out in November to protest a meeting between Maliki and Bush.

Speaking by telephone from Baghdad, Chalabi said he expects progress "pretty soon."

But he said the law will not contain a key demand of the U.S. government: a sunset clause that would abolish the commission, effectively depriving Chalabi of political influence. He called it unconstitutional.

Chalabi said he heard Bush's call for swift action on the de-Baathification law, but he emphasized that he and his fellow Iraqis, not U.S. officials, are in charge of the legislative timetable.

"We don't feel any pressure," he said.

U.S. Military Now Using National Security Letters

National Security Letters -- the use of which by the FBI we have examined here, here, and here -- have become a tool for the military now.

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans’ private lives.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own "noncompulsory" versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying. ...

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

"We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it," said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity. ...

"There's a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement," said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. "They're moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating."

Similarly, John Radsan, an assistant general counsel at the C.I.A. from 2002 to 2004 and now a law professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, said, "The C.I.A. is not supposed to have any law enforcement powers, or internal security functions, so if they’ve been issuing their own national security letters, they better be able to explain how they don’t cross the line."

(Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman) said that only four U.S. military entities are authorized to ask for them -- the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center, the Criminal Investigation Service of the Army and of the Navy, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

All of these entities are overseen by CIFA. ...

(CIFA) was criticized in December 2005 after it was revealed that a database managed by CIFA, called TALON, contained unverified, raw threat information about people who were peacefully protesting the Iraq war at defense facilities, including recruiting offices. In August, CIFA Director David A. Burtt II and his top deputy, Joseph Hefferon, resigned in the wake of a scandal involving CIFA contracts that went to MZM Inc., a company run by Mitchell J. Wade. Wade pleaded guilty last February to conspiring to bribe then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif).

Just A Friendly Visit?

There is the distinct possibility that this stopover is for the purpose of coordinating direct action in the event of a U.S. strike on Iran.

CARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 13 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived here on Saturday for talks with President Hugo Chávez, on the first leg of a Latin American visit to enhance Iran's stature with governments where distrust of the Bush administration already runs deep.

It is Mr. Ahmadinejad's second visit to Venezuela in the past five months, and the two leaders were scheduled to talk about strengthening their economic ties. From here, the Iranian president is to visit Ecuador and Nicaragua, where leftist presidents aligned with Mr. Chávez are being sworn in this month.

Venezuela's government promoted the visit as an example of Middle Eastern solidarity with Mr. Chávez's opposition to American foreign policy. Venezuela has been a vociferous defender of Iran as the United States steps up efforts to circumscribe Mr. Ahmadinejad's government, most recently through military raids this week on people suspected of being Iranian operatives in Iraq. ...
"There is a desire by Chávez to accelerate what he views as a strategic alliance with Iran," said Alberto Garrido, author of "Chávez's Wars," a book recently published here that explores Venezuela's ties to the Middle East. "The Venezuelan left has for decades considered allegiances with Muslim countries as one of the ways to create a new civilization through the toppling of American values."

For the time being, Venezuela's relations with Iran have revolved around Mr. Chávez's defense of Iran's uranium enrichment plans, while the two countries deepen their cooperation in oil-related areas. For instance, Venezuela said last month that it would buy four oil tankers from Iran, part of Venezuela's plan to increase its 21-ship tanker fleet through the acquisition of 42 additional vessels.

Iran and Venezuela, the world's fourth- and fifth-largest oil exporters, are also exploring for oil together in Venezuela's Orinoco region. And they have plans for a joint oil trading company, part of an ambition by Caracas and Tehran to price oil in euros instead of dollars in order to weaken the influence of the United States in the international oil market.

Hard Sell Even In Kuwait

Meshary Alruwaih, a young Kuwaiti ally in the American-led effort to remake her region in our liberal-democratic image, finds her mission "increasingly tough." Kuwait is one of the most pro-American states in the region, but her communist and Islamist friends think she's a lackey:

To be honest with you I'm not winning any arguments.... [The] US has made it very hard for those who admire it to defend anything American.

So, she's developed a promising new strategy:

If I want to sell the idea of human rights, I have to disassociate them from any connection with the American way of life, if I want to sell the concept of democracy I have to take out the American flavour, and if I want to sell the notion of private property rights I have to declare that it has nothing to do with American capitalism.

U.S. Envisions Trials For Terror Detainees

Despite what this article says, the smart money is on the major captured terrorists never coming to trial.

The Bush administration has set up a secret war room in a Virginia suburb where it is assembling evidence to prosecute high-ranking detainees from Al Qaeda including the man accused of being the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, government officials said this week.

The effort to sift the classified files of the Pentagon, F.B.I., C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies amounts to the first concrete steps that the government has taken to press ahead with war crimes trials of high-level terror suspects under a plan announced by President Bush in a speech last September. ...

The preparation of cases against the high-value operatives appears to rebut many who doubted that Qaeda suspects like Mr. Mohammed would ever be brought to trial. Critics in Congress and human rights groups had asserted that such trials would not be feasible because they would expose harsh interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The officials who discussed the preparations have been briefed on the effort in detail and represented several agencies. They declined to speak on the record about deliberations in advance of criminal prosecutions involving national security.

The prosecution team for the Qaeda defendants will be a mix of military and civilian prosecutors. Some officials said no decision had been made about who would lead each prosecution, but others said the trial of Mr. Mohammed would probably be undertaken principally by Justice Department lawyers, who would run the prosecution in a military courtroom in Guantanamo.

People thought that the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui turned into a circus. These cases -- with the allegations of torture -- would make his legal proceedings look like a paragon of rectitude.

That's why the cases discussed here will never pass muster before a judge and jury.

Pentagon Increases Intelligence Activities Against Iran

President Bush -- in his address to the nation on Wednesday -- gave a major hint that Iran is in the crosshairs. The administration has been blaming the Shiite Islamic Republic for interfering with the U.S. security operations in Iraq for some time now. Some are wondering if payback time may be near.

Even as President Bush seeks larger numbers of troops to stabilize Iraq, the Pentagon is intensifying operations there on another front: challenging Iran over its alleged role in destabilizing its Arab neighbor.

Yesterday, multinational forces including U.S. troops detained six Iranian officials in Iraqi Kurdistan suspected of aiding Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq. It was the second detainment by U.S.-led forces of Iranian officials in Iraq in less than a month. ...

(T)he Pentagon has significantly increased its intelligence activities targeting suspected Iranian agents and Shiite Muslim militants, U.S. intelligence officials said. Besides working with Iraqi security forces, the U.S. has intensified information-sharing with dissident Iranian groups such as Mujahedin-e Khalq, according to officials associated with the group.

U.S. officials say the intensifying actions targeting Iran are central to the new White House push to underpin the shaky government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They come against a backdrop of growing, broader tensions between Washington and Tehran, over Iran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons, U.S. efforts to curb Iran's financial transactions and Tehran's moves to increase its influence throughout the Middle East.

Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said the administration is seeking to counter Iranian provocations across the region as part of a broader strategy. "Iran needs to learn to respect us," he said. "And Iran certainly needs to respect American power in the Middle East." ...

Of particular concern to Pentagon planners is the alleged role of Qods Force, the international arm of Tehran's Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, in trafficking IEDs into Iraq, intelligence officials said. The guard corps is believed to have developed close ties to both the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia headed by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Badr Brigade, the militant arm of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The Pentagon moves in Iraq to arrest Iranian diplomats in both Irbil and Baghdad over the past month were directly aimed at trying to stanch the flow of IEDs and other armaments into Iraq, U.S. officials involved in the program said. The U.S. has alleged that the Revolutionary Guard corps has used front companies and religious foundations to move some of these armaments over the Iran-Iraq border. And U.S. officials said they have extensive intelligence showing many of the diplomats detained were senior members of the corps. ...

Of more concern to U.S. lawmakers is the potential that these U.S. actions against Iran could escalate. Under one possible scenario, U.S. forces could cross into Iran or Syria in pursuit of suspected insurgents or their allies, or use alleged Iranian activities inside Iraq as a pretext for a wider assault on Iran. The fear is that any such military activities could ignite a wider conflict.

"The potential for sparking a wider conflict is great," said Trita Parsi, an Iran analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington. "I think that if we're going for a confrontation with Iran, the pretext will be Iraq."

Is The Public Gonna Buy It?

If the U.S. had embedded thousands of advisors with the Iraqi army and security forces at the beginning of the occupation perhaps the unraveling of that beleaguered country would have been prevented. Or at least mitigated.

That is assuming that Bremer had not dissolved the Iraqi army at a crucial time when we needed them to keep the country under control.

Or even tried that approach in a big way early on with the U.S.-created Iraqi army.

But the plan announced by President Bush is -- of course -- too little, too late.

And specifies more combat involvement than training or Special Forces advisor missions.

This is not a change in "strategy" as so many clods are parroting. A limited modification of tactics is a more accurate description.

That doesn't stop the spinning.

The White House recognized that a speech will not convert critics. "Nobody is under illusions that the public is going to be turned around on this," said the Bush aide, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "What you hope to accomplish with a speech like this is to show the public that there is a genuine, deep and fundamental change and there's a good chance of success."

Hardly. He must have meant "snow" the public.

"Surge" Plan Appears Directed At Democrats

Unless I miss my guess, the 11,000 troops now, and 11,000 troops in a few months plan that President Bush is rumored to be announcing tonight is designed in part to goad congressional Democrats into placing restrictions on the White House's ability to conduct the war as it sees fit.

Analysts are nearly universally skeptical about the military efficacy of the administration's "surge" concept. The White House knows this. They are using the questionable plan for a "surge" to draw out the enemy -- the Democrats -- so that they can be blamed for the loss of the war in Iraq.

Domestic politics is often the driver of international affairs, and seems to be so in this case.

President Bush gravely warned House Democrats yesterday that America's credibility would be shattered if the United States pulled its troops from Iraq, forcing close ally Saudi Arabia to look elsewhere for protection and potentially destabilizing Egypt, the region's most populous country, according to participants in the meeting. ...

Bush did not say during the half-hour meeting with Democrats where else he thought Saudi Arabia would seek "protection," but he made it clear that he was simply informing Democrats of his decisions on Iraq, not consulting with them. He said that he understands the challenges and thinks his plan has the best chance of success. ...

The House Democrats included Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (Mo.), intelligence committee Chairman Sylvestre Reyes (Tex.), Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (Calif.), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (Mich.), Rep. Norm Dicks (Wash.), Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.) and Rep. Robert E. Andrews (N.J.).

Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten attended the meeting. Tauscher said that Cheney emphasized his concerns about Saudi Arabia.

U.S. Strikes Escaping Somali Islamists

The U.S. media is portraying the AC-130 strike against several hundred Somali Islamists as strictly an attack against an Al Qaeda terrorist (see WaPo account).

The more likely scenario is the U.S. desire not to allow the recently routed Islamic Courts Union (ICU) the opportunity to slip away into Kenya to fight another day.

The British media is running a version that is much closer to the truth.

By attacking Islamist fighters in Somalia the United States is trying to achieve two objectives.

It wants to intervene decisively on the side of the transitional government now back in Mogadishu and to get at three al-Qaeda suspects linked to bombings of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and airliner in Kenya in 2002.

The air strikes were carried out by a huge AC-130 gunship in the south of the country where supporters of the Union of Islamic Courts have retreated under attack from the Ethiopian army and soldiers of the transitional government.

US aircraft have carried out reconnaissance flights over Somalia and it is believed that the US provided Ethiopian forces with intelligence support during the recent offensive.

At the same time, US warships have been patrolling the Somali coast to prevent any escape by sea.

The strategy is to ensure that the Islamist fighters do not regroup and pose a threat to the government.

Only last week a statement believed to be from al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri urged Muslims to "rise up to aid their Muslim brethren in Somalia".

The Americans and their Somali and Ethiopian allies therefore feared a guerrilla war that might threaten efforts to establish the new government. They are determined to stop the Islamic Courts from resuming power.

Fresh Propaganda For The American Public

You can tell who is considered to be the important audience for the output of the info-op shop at the U.S. embassy in Iraq.

From Newsweek:

A draft report recently produced by the Baghdad embassy's director of strategic communications Ginger Cruz and obtained by NEWSWEEK makes the stakes clear: "Without popular support from US population, there is the risk that troops will be pulled back ... Thus there is a vital need to save popular support via message." Under the heading DOMESTIC MESSAGES, Cruz goes on to recommend 16 themes to reinforce with the American public, several of which Bush is likely to hit: "vitally important we succeed"; "actively working on new approaches"; "there are no quick or easy answers."

What's even more telling is that the IRAQI MESSAGES—the very next section—are still "TBD," to be determined.

Economic Action To Be Part Of Iraq Package

Counterinsurgency can only be successful when an appropriate formula of political, economic and military action is put into operation as part of a coherent strategy.

The package that is going to be presented with the administration's troop surge idea -- despite a new focus on economic action -- completely fails in the area of political action, i.e. putting forward a program which will defuse violence by rallying the population towards a peaceful future.

During its two-month interagency review, the Bush administration has struggled the most to come up with proposals to jump-start the stalled political process in Iraq, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats. The fate of the revised strategy will be determined as much by new movement on Iraq's combustible political front as by success on the battlefield, administration officials said. ...

The centerpiece of the political plan is the creation of a national reconciliation government that would bring together the two main Shiite parties with the two largest Kurdish parties and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. The goal is to marginalize Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the largest and most powerful Shiite militia and head of a group that has 30 seats in parliament and five cabinet posts.

To ensure participation of Sunni moderates, the Bush administration is pressing the Maliki government to take three other major steps: Amend the constitution to address Sunni concerns, pass a law on the distribution of Iraq's oil revenue and change the ruling that forbids the participation of former Baath Party officials.

The three major economic options on the table would revive dormant state-owned industries, launch a micro-finance program to give small loans to generate new businesses and expand a U.S. Agency for International Development stabilization program.

A fourth option would add major funds to a short-term work program to hire Iraqis to clean up trash or do repairs after U.S. and Iraqi troops secure neighborhoods. This Pentagon-run program is a way to lure unemployed men who had joined militias back into the mainstream economy, at least briefly, with the U.S. intention that Iraq would eventually spend its own money to create permanent jobs.

U.S. Puts The Heat On Maliki Government For Saddam's Indecorous End

The unseemly circumstances of the execution of Saddam Hussein has left the United States looking bad in the eyes of the international community.

Washington is trying to put the onus of blame squarely upon the Maliki government, via a long piece in today's New York Times.

The U.S. military clearly puts their institutional viewpoint forward in the Times article.

Some excerpts:

The hanging spread wide dismay among the Americans. Aides said American commanders were deeply upset by the way they were forced to hand Mr. Hussein over, a sequence commanders saw as motivated less by a concern for justice than for revenge. In the days following the hanging, recriminations flowed between the military command and the United States Embassy, accused by some officers of abandoning American interests at midnight Friday in favor of placating Mr. Maliki and hard-line Shiites. ...

On the Thursday before the hanging, American military officials were summoned. Both Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey were on vacation, so the American team handling negotiations with Mr. Maliki and his officials was headed by Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, head of Task Force 134, the detainee unit, and Margaret Scobey, head of the embassy's political section.

Iraqi officials said neither carried much weight with Mr. Maliki, who had learned through bruising confrontations to be wary of alienating Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey, both of whom have direct access to President Bush. At the Thursday afternoon meeting, tempers frayed. According to an Iraqi legal expert at the meeting, Iraqi officials demanded that the Americans hand over Mr. Hussein that night, for an execution before dawn on Friday.

General Gardner responded with demands of his own, for letters affirming the legality of the execution from Mr. Maliki, President Jalal Talabani and the chief judge of the high tribunal that convicted Mr. Hussein, the Iraqi legal expert said. The focus was on two issues: a constitutional requirement that Iraq's three-man presidency council approve all executions, and a Hussein-era law forbidding executions during religious holidays. ...

An Iraqi participant who opposed the hanging said that Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki's national security adviser, said angrily, "This is an Iraqi issue," and added, "Who is going to execute him anyway, you or us?" When the Americans insisted they would not hand over Mr. Hussein without the letters, another Iraqi official exploded: "Just give him to us!" ...

Negotiations resumed Friday morning. In Phoenix, 10 time zones away, General Casey was monitoring the exchanges in signals traffic from Baghdad. American military officials remained opposed to an immediate hanging, telling Mr. Maliki that beyond the legal issues, there was a question of his government's need to gain international support by carrying out the hanging in a way that could withstand any criticism. ...

The arguments continued deep into the Iraqi night. General Gardner and Ms. Scobey returned at one point to the former Republican Palace, the American headquarters in the Green Zone, seeking Washington’s advice. Workarounds for the legal problems were discussed.

At 10:30 p.m., Ambassador Khalilzad made a last-ditch call to Mr. Maliki asking him not to proceed with the hanging. When the Iraqi leader remained adamant, an American official said, the ambassador made a second call to Washington conveying "the determination of the Iraqi prime minister to go forward," and his conclusion that there was nothing more, consistent with respect for Iraqi sovereignty, that the United States could do.

Senior Bush administration officials in Washington said that Mr. Khalilzad's principal contact in Washington was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and that she gave the green light for Mr. Hussein to be turned over, despite the reservations of the military commanders in Baghdad. One official said that Ms. Rice was supported in that view by Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser.

A Tactic, Not A Strategy

The congresswoman from California has clearly been listening to somebody who understands the difference between "strategy" and "tactics".

"A surge is not a new strategy. A surge is a new tactic that does nothing to change the underlying strategy that has so clearly failed," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

A seemingly small semantic detail that actually makes a world of difference.

Contractors In Iraq Now Subject To UCMJ

From P.W. Singer:

Amidst all the add-ins, pork spending, and excitement of the budget process, it has now come out that a tiny clause was slipped into the Pentagon's fiscal year 2007 budget legislation. The one sentence section (number 552 of a total 3510 sections) states that "Paragraph (10) of section 802(a) of title 10, United States Code (article 2(a) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), is amended by striking 'war' and inserting 'declared war or a contingency operation'." The measure passed without much notice or any debate. ...

The addition of five little words to a massive US legal code that fills entire shelves at law libraries wouldn't normally matter for much. But with this change, contractors' 'get out of jail free' card may have been torn to shreds. Previously, contractors would only fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, better known as the court martial system, if Congress declared war. This is something that has not happened in over 65 years and out of sorts with the most likely operations in the 21st century. The result is that whenever our military officers came across episodes of suspected contractor crimes in missions like Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, or Afghanistan, they had no tools to resolve them. As long as Congress had not formally declared war, civilians -- even those working for the US armed forces, carrying out military missions in a conflict zone -- fell outside their jurisdiction. The military's relationship with the contractor was, well, merely contractual. At most, the local officer in charge could request to the employing firm that the individual be demoted or fired. If he thought a felony occurred, the officer might be able to report them on to civilian authorities. ...

Even in situations when US civilian law could potentially have been applied to contractor crimes (through the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act), it wasn't. Underlying the previous laws like MEJA was the assumption that civilian prosecutors back in the US would be able to make determinations of what is proper and improper behavior in conflicts, go gather evidence, carry out depositions in the middle of warzones, and then be willing and able to prosecute them to juries back home. The reality is that no US Attorney likes to waste limited budgets on such messy, complex cases 9,000 miles outside their district, even if they were fortunate enough to have the evidence at hand. The only time MEJA has been successfully applied was against the wife of a soldier, who stabbed him during a domestic dispute at a US base in Turkey. Not one contractor of the entire military industry in Iraq has been charged with any crime over the last 3 and a half years, let alone prosecuted or punished.

'Disinformation' Campaign On Global Warming

I routinely speak with well-educated Republicans who insist that there is no such thing as global warming.

More moderate goopers -- the ones who read The Economist -- admit that global warming is real, but say that there is no proof that mankind is responsible for climate change.

A propaganda campaign by one of the major fossil fuel companies may have something to do with the widespread mistaken public opinion on the subject.

ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change." ...

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for "public information and policy research" distributed to more than 140 think-tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

But in September, the company said in response to the Royal Society that it funded groups which research "significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company." It said the groups do not speak for the company.

Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or cherry-picking facts.

Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

Ellison To Use Jefferson's Koran In Ceremony

Much hay has been made by Republican activists over Minnesota's newly elected congressman Keith Ellison choosing to use a Koran in a symbolic swearing-in ceremony following the actual oath in which members simply raise their hand and vow to obey the Constitution.

Ellison has found a symbolic way to deride those who object to freedom of religion.

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.

Jefferson's copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson's collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn't the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies -- the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.

The Search For A Policy In Iraq

Today's New York Times features a long article on the administration's search for a policy in Iraq.

General Casey is shown to be a strong advocate for the "we'll stand down, as the Iraqis stand up" gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops, while the White House remained eager to "win" -- whatever that means anymore.

There are a few noteworthy items in the piece:

The Defense Intelligence Agency had briefed the White House in early 2006 that the insurgency was winning in Iraq, according to a former military officer. The briefing, which chronicled the steady rise in the number of attacks, prompted a counter-briefing from General Casey’s intelligence chief, who prepared an analysis tracing the positive trends in Iraq.

Data gathered by General Casey's own command, which showed a steady increase in weekly attacks and civilian casualties, lent support to the Defense Intelligence Agency assessment. ...

Later in June, General Casey flew to Washington to give briefings on the latest version of his troop reduction plan at the Pentagon and White House. The number of American combat brigades, which then totaled 14, would be reduced by two in September and might shrink to 10 by December, if conditions allowed. If the Iraqis continued to assume more responsibility for their security, there would be only five or six combat brigades in Iraq by December 2007.

Yet already President Bush was signaling to top aides that he wanted to re-evaluate how to keep stability before proceeding with troop withdrawals. His caution matched a growing unease among American field commanders in Iraq, and officers on the streets of Baghdad, who said they were surprised by General Casey's continued advocacy of withdrawals and consolidating bases. They said that American forces should be focusing on a greater counterinsurgency effort, which would require that a substantial number of troops be dispersed to protect that population against insurgent and militia attacks.

There is serious debate in Washington and at CENTCOM about how to conduct the counterinsurgency. A pertinent question involves how we can expect to prevail against a sectarian insurgency when we can present no compelling political action program to rally the civilian population behind. The Shiite-led "unity" government doesn't count. The Maliki government only makes matters worse.

Since there is really nothing the "coalition" can offer the Iraqis to motivate them into representing our interests in their beleaguered country, there is no possibility of the U.S. achieving anything any reasonable person would consider success.

A year ago, simply leaving Iraqis to live in peace would have been a victory.

Now we will have to set the bar even lower.

A Graveside Signal

Saddam Hussein's body was released yesterday for burial to tribal chief Ali al-Nida, and other leaders of the former Iraqi dictator's Albu Nasir tribe.

An interesting tableau was witnessed at the ceremony:

Many tribal leaders wore traditional red-checkered head scarves, but without turbans, a sign that they would exact revenge for Hussein, according to Arab tribal traditions.