Effwit

Anti-Iran Info Op Reported by MSM

2007-09-24T08:46:00.000-05:00

This is the first MSM mention of the anti-Iran Info Op that has been long discussed on "the best IO-related blog ever."

Or this Newsweek piece part of the Info Op?

One U.S. official who preferred not to be identified discussing sensitive policy matters said he took part in a meeting several months ago where intelligence officials discussed a "public diplomacy" strategy to accompany sanctions. The idea was to periodically float the possibility of war in public comments in order to keep Iran off balance. In truth, the official said, no war preparations are underway.

There are still voices pushing for firmer action against Tehran, most notably within Vice President Dick Cheney's office. But the steady departure of administration neocons over the past two years has also helped tilt the balance away from war. One official who pushed a particularly hawkish line on Iran was David Wurmser, who had served since 2003 as Cheney's Middle East adviser. A spokeswoman at Cheney's office confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Wurmser left his position last month to "spend more time with his family." A few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources, Wurmser told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz—and perhaps other sites—in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran.

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

2007-09-22T08:21:00.000-05:00

Dan Rather -- the longtime face of corporate/government influence over the U.S. mass media -- is still angry at how he was treated by the network, and is looking to get even.

The subtext of his lawsuit is that he may decide to let the country in on certain arrangements that have been in effect since the Eisenhower administration.

Prediction: CBS will settle.

Dan Rather said Thursday that the undue influence of the government and large corporations over newsrooms spurred his decision to file a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its former parent company.

"Somebody, sometime has got to take a stand and say democracy cannot survive, much less thrive with the level of big corporate and big government interference and intimidation in news," he said on CNN's "Larry King Live."

In the suit, filed a day earlier in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Rather claimed CBS and Viacom Inc. used him as a "scapegoat" and intentionally botched the aftermath of a discredited story about President Bush's military service to curry favor with the White House. He was removed from his "CBS Evening News" post in March 2005.

"They sacrificed support for independent journalism for corporate financial gain, and in so doing, I think they undermined a lot at CBS News," he told King.

Rather didn't mention other instances in which he believed news organizations bowed to corporate and government pressure.

CBS spokesman Dana McClintock did not return an after-hours call seeking comment Thursday. He has called Rather's complaints "old news" and said the lawsuit was "without merit." A spokesman for Viacom declined to comment.

Journalism ethics scholar Bob Steele said Rather would have a difficult time proving that the White House or other political operatives exerted undue influence on CBS.

"It would be naive for us to believe that there was no influence from powerful institutions and individuals on journalism," said Steele, a scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism foundation in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Still, he said: "For the most part, the journalists who run news organizations and who report the news fight hard to protect the independence of the journalism, and most of the time succeed."

Rather narrated the September 2004 report that said Bush disobeyed orders and shirked some of his duties during his National Guard service. It also said a commander felt pressured to sugarcoat Bush's record.

The story relied on four documents, supposedly written by Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard, the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. Critics questioned the documents' authenticity and suggested they were forged.

A panel selected by the network to investigate the story determined that it was neither fair nor accurate. CBS fired the story's producer and asked for the resignations of three executives because it could not authenticate documents used in the story. Rather was forced out of the anchor chair he had occupied for 24 years.

On CNN, Rather dismissed the panel's review, claiming it was not impartial.

"This was in many ways a fraud. It was a setup," he told King.

A Triple Threat

2007-09-21T13:19:00.000-05:00

A better combination of wishful thinking, risible cluelessness, and getting off-message would be hard to come by:

Gates Warns Shiite militias against alienating Iraqi civilians.

In an interview, Pentagon chief observes the Mahdi Army may be making same mistakes that caused Sunnis to turn against al Qaeda. "The excesses of force and violence...may have caused people to start to think," he says.

Though it's too early to tell whether that will happen in majority-Shiite country, he adds, "This is one of those things...just bubbling under the surface." Gates concedes an irony of terror war is the U.S. has "eliminated Iran's two worst enemies in the Taliban and Saddam Hussein."

But Iraqi leader al-Maliki hasn't gotten "enough credit...(for) pushing back on the Iranians," he concludes.

Another Fake Bin Laden Video

2007-09-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

New releases from the Osama Bin Laden propaganda machine are often timed to coincide with important political developments in the U.S. and elsewhere. The 2004 U.S. presidential election-eve video comes to mind.

References to current events in the al-Qaeda video that came out during the Petraeus/Crocker appearences in Washington was said to prove that the elusive terrorist mastermind was still alive. That is, until some analysts pointed out that the picture on the video just happened to freeze each time that Bin Laden said anything topical. An easier method for inserting dubious statements has never been invented.

Bin Laden's latest release -- yesterday -- targeted Pakistani President Musharraf in the weeks before crucial elections there. There were no live action shots of Bin Laden at all on this video. Just a still picture with narration. Pakistan is taking it with the due grain of salt:

Pakistan on Friday dismissed Osama bin Laden as a terrorist whose "ridiculous" call for holy war against its U.S.-allied leader will find little echo, despite growing concern that al-Qaida is regrouping near the Afghan border.

In a recording released Thursday, bin Laden urged Pakistanis to wage jihad against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf because of his alliance with the U.S. against Islamic militants.

The al-Qaida chief's message received wide but short-lived media coverage in Pakistan. Attention quickly returned to Musharraf's disputed re-election bid and fast-rising food prices.

But it could feed into a growing debate here about whether Pakistan is sacrificing its own stability by playing such a prominent and prolonged role in a U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.

Officials on Friday played down the possible impact of the al-Qaida leader's call.

"If Osama bin Laden has spoken to the people and urged them to rise, and the people were really following him, they would have done so much earlier," said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad. "He doesn't have much following here."

Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi said the government wanted to avoid giving bin Laden any more publicity.

"I think a response to such ridiculous rhetoric is just dignifying it. We don't want to do that," Qureshi said.

Bin Laden's message was the third this month after a long lull and came in a flurry of al-Qaida propaganda marking the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistan army general turned security analyst, said bin Laden may have singled out Pakistan in order to associate himself with rising anti-Musharraf and anti-American sentiment here.

Bin Laden, whose voice was heard on a video tape showing previously released footage of the al-Qaida leader, branded Musharraf an infidel for attacking Islamabad's Red Mosque, a militant stronghold in the Pakistani capital overrun by commandos in July.

The battle killed more than 100 people, including Abdul Rashid Ghazi, one of the militants' leaders.

The siege "demonstrated Musharraf's insistence on continuing his loyalty, submissiveness and aid to America against the Muslims," bin Laden said. "It is obligatory on the Muslims in Pakistan to carry out jihad and fighting to remove Pervez, his government, his army and those who help him."

State Dept. IG Skullduggery

2007-09-19T09:07:00.000-05:00

Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, has repeatedly thwarted investigations into contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, including construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, and censored reports that might prove politically embarrassing to the Bush administration, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform charged yesterday in a 13-page letter.

The letter, addressed to Krongard and signed by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who released it yesterday, said the allegations were based on the testimony of seven current and former officials on Krongard's staff, including two former senior officials who allowed their names to be used, and private e-mail exchanges obtained by the committee. The letter said the allegations concerned all three major divisions of Krongard's office -- investigations, audits and inspections.

Waxman demanded documents and testimony for a hearing next month into Krongard's conduct. A copy of the letter was sent to the committee's top Republican, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.). ...

The letter alleges that Krongard "interfered with ongoing investigations to protect the State Department and the White House from political embarrassment." It said that "your strong affinity with State Department leadership and your partisan political ties have led you to halt investigations, censor reports and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement agencies." ...

Krongard's brother, A.D. "Buzzy" Krongard, served as the No. 3 CIA official under then-Director George J. Tenet.

Waxman accused Howard Krongard of:

Refusing to send investigators to Iraq and Afghanistan to investigate $3 billion worth of State Department contracts.

Preventing his investigators from cooperating with a Justice Department probe into waste and fraud in the construction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Using "highly irregular" procedures to personally exonerate the embassy's prime contractor of labor abuses.

Interfering in the investigation of a close friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove.

Censoring reports on embassies to prevent full disclosure to Congress.

Refusing to publish critical audits of State's financial statements.

Among the e-mails obtained by the committee are exchanges in which staff members discussed Krongard's decision not to cooperate with the Justice Department on the embassy investigation. ...

The embassy, whose cost of more than $600 million has made it the most expensive U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, has been the subject of repeated congressional questioning and allegations of wrongdoing in both construction and hiring practices.

International Security 101

2007-09-18T08:52:00.000-05:00

This is exactly what one lone analyst has been saying ever since the Bush administration began getting its panties all bunched up about the threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon.

Right down to the "rational actor" argument.

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

Blackwater License Yanked By Iraq (For Now)

2007-09-17T07:15:00.000-05:00

A good test of Iraqi sovereignty will be to see how long it takes the U.S. to persuade Iraq's government to rescind this order.

Hint: It won't take long.

The Interior Ministry said Monday that it was pulling the license of an American security firm allegedly involved in the fatal shooting of civilians during an attack on a U.S. State Department motorcade in Baghdad.

The ministry said it would prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said eight people were killed and 13 were wounded when security contractors working for Blackwater USA opened fire in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood of western Baghdad.

"We have canceled the license of Blackwater and prevented them from working all over Iraqi territory. We will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial authorities," Khalaf said.

Blackwater, based in North Carolina, provides security for many U.S. civilian operations in the country. Phone messages left early Monday at Blackwater's office in North Carolina and with a company spokeswoman were not immediately returned.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said witness reports pointed to Blackwater involvement but said the incident was still under investigation. It was not immediately clear if the measure against Blackwater was intended to be temporary or permanent.

U.S. troops are immune from prosecution in Iraq under the U.N. resolution that authorizes their presence, but Khalaf said the exemption does not apply to private security companies.

The U.S. Embassy said a State Department motorcade came under small-arms fire that disabled one of the vehicles, which had to be towed from the scene near Nisoor Square in the Mansour district.

An embassy official provided no information about Iraqi casualties but said no State Department personnel were wounded or killed. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

He said the shooting was being investigated by the State Department's diplomatic security service, and law enforcement officials working with the Iraqi government and the U.S. military.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki late Sunday condemned the shooting by a "foreign security company" and called it a "crime."

Tens of thousands of private security contractors operate in Iraq -- some with automatic weapons, body armor, helicopters and bulletproof vehicles.

The contractors, including many Americans and Britons, provide protection for Westerners and dignitaries in Iraq as the country has plummeted toward anarchy and civil war.

Many have been accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys, but none has faced charges or prosecution.

Iraqi police said the contractors were in a convoy of six sport utility vehicles and left the scene after the shooting. A witness said the gunfire broke out following an explosion.

"We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby. One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately," said Hussein Abdul-Abbas, who owns a mobile phone store in the area.

The wartime numbers of private guards are unprecedented -- as are their duties, many of which have traditionally been done by soldiers. They protect U.S. military operations and have guarded high-ranking officials including Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Baghdad.

They also protect journalists, visiting foreign officials and thousands of construction projects.

Greenspan on the Reason for Iraq War

2007-09-15T08:53:00.000-05:00

Buried in a Bob Woodward article about Alan Greenspan's new book on his years as Fed Chairman:

Without elaborating, he writes, "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Civilian Death Toll Numbers in Iraq Grim

2007-09-14T11:07:00.000-05:00

A new survey says that the civilian death toll from the Iraq war could be more than 1 million.

The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.

The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but it does not provide specific numbers.

According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.

ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"

Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.

There was no way to verify the number, because the government does not provide a full count of civilian deaths. Neither does the U.S. military.

Both, however, say that independent organizations greatly exaggerate estimates of civilian casualties.

ORB said its poll had a margin of error of 2.4%. According to its findings, nearly one in two households in Baghdad had lost at least one member to war-related violence, and 22% of households nationwide had suffered at least one death. It said 48% of the victims were shot to death and 20% died as a result of car bombs, with other explosions and military bombardments blamed for most of the other fatalities.

The survey was conducted last month.

It was the highest estimate given so far of civilian deaths in Iraq. Last year, a study in the medical journal Lancet put the number at 654,965, which Iraq's government has dismissed as "ridiculous."

Telling It How He Sees It

2007-09-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday U.S. President George W. Bush's Middle East policies had failed and he and others would one day be put on trial for "the tragedies they have created in Iraq."

"America has failed in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. America's policies have failed in the Middle East region," Khamenei told worshippers at Tehran University in a speech broadcast live on state television.

Washington accuses Shi'ite Muslim Iran of providing funds, arms and training to Iraqi Shi'ite militants and of supporting terrorism across the Middle East.

Iran denies the charge and blames the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 for the bloodshed between Iraq's majority Shi'ite and minority Sunni Arabs.

"I am certain that one day Bush and senior American officials will be tried in an international court for the tragedies they have created in Iraq," Khamenei said.

Thousands of people gathered in central Tehran to hear the supreme leader, who has the last say in all state matters, mark the first Friday prayer of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.

"America's power in the region is waning ... they (U.S.) are looking forward to pulling out of Iraq," Khamenei said.

The mass audience, including senior state officials, clerics and wheelchair-bound veterans of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, responded with chants of "Death to America. Islam is victorious."

Iran and the United States cut diplomatic ties shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. They have held rounds of talks in Baghdad to find ways to restore security in Iraq but relations remain very strained.

Khamenei condemned the Middle East peace process, Israel and some European countries as well as the United States as he described a "psychological war" he said had been waged against the Islamic republic of Iran.

President's Propaganda Performance Panned

2007-09-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

An old rule in creating effective propaganda is that you stick to the truth as much as possible -- it makes the necessary exaggerations and manipulations of fact more believable. Absolutely critical in effective perception management.

Last night, in his address to the nation, President Bush clearly didn't have much positive material to work with, so he (and his speechwriters) made the amateur mistake of excessively padding the presentation with bullshit.

It didn't fly. If even the pro-war Washington Post is calling him on it, this has to be really embarrassing for the White House.

In his speech last night, President Bush made a case for progress in Iraq by citing facts and statistics that at times contradicted recent government reports or his own words.

For instance, Bush asserted that "Iraq's national leaders are getting some things done," such as "sharing oil revenues with the provinces" and allowing "former Baathists to rejoin Iraq's military or receive government pensions."

Yet his statement ignored the fact that U.S. officials have been frustrated that none of those actions have been enshrined into law -- and that reports from Baghdad this week indicated that a potential deal on sharing oil revenue is collapsing.

In a radio address to the nation less than a month ago, the president himself complained that the Iraqi government was failing to address these issues. "Unfortunately, political progress at the national level has not matched the pace of progress at the local level," Bush said on Aug. 18. "The Iraqi government in Baghdad has many important measures left to address, such as reforming the de-Baathification laws, organizing provincial elections and passing a law to formalize the sharing of oil revenues."

Bush also asserted that Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, was once an al-Qaeda stronghold but that "today, Baqubah is cleared." But in a meeting with reporters on Aug. 27, the head of the State Department team in Diyala said the security situation was not stable, hampering access to food and energy, though he acknowledged that commerce was returning to Baqubah.

"Everything is based around security; if we have security, then we can bring in agencies like USAID," John Melvin Jones said, referring to the U.S. Agency for International Development. "It's going to take a while before the security situation gets stable enough so that you can have a lot of these other agencies involved."

Bush also thanked "the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq." But the State Department's most recent weekly report on Iraq said there are 25 countries supplying 11,685 troops -- about 7 percent of the size of the U.S. forces.

At one point, the president cited a recent report by a commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones, saying that "the Iraqi army is becoming more capable, although there is still a great deal of work to be done to improve the national police."

But the report said Iraq's army will be unable to take over internal security from U.S. forces in the next 12 to 18 months and "cannot yet meaningfully contribute to denying terrorists safe haven." It also described the 25,000-member national police force as riddled with sectarianism and corruption, and it recommended that it be disbanded.

The commission also recommended that U.S. troops in Iraq be "retasked" in early 2008 to protect critical infrastructure and guard against border threats from Iran and Syria, while gradually turning responsibility for security over to Iraqi forces despite their deficiencies -- advice the president did not follow in last night's speech.

The president also painted a relatively favorable picture of Baghdad, saying that a year ago much of it "was under siege" but that today "ordinary life is beginning to return." He did not mention that much of the once-heterogeneous city has been divided into Shiite and Sunni enclaves.

A New NeoCon-Driven Information Campaign

2007-09-13T08:38:00.000-05:00

It looks like the NeoCons -- with an indispensable assist from Israel -- are again trying to exploit President Bush's flawed good vs. evil worldview to their insidious ends.

A reliable play.

It will probably work.

North Korea may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria, according to new intelligence the United States has gathered over the past six months, sources said. The evidence, said to come primarily from Israel, includes dramatic satellite imagery that led some U.S. officials to believe that the facility could be used to produce material for nuclear weapons.

The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it or uncertain of its significance, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Some cautioned that initial reports of suspicious activity are frequently reevaluated over time and were skeptical that North Korea and Syria, which have cooperated on missile technology, would have a joint venture in the nuclear arena. ...

Israel conducted a mysterious raid last week against targets in Syria. The Israeli government has refused to divulge any details, but a former Israeli official said he had been told that it was an attack against a facility capable of making unconventional weapons.

Others have speculated that Israel was testing Syria's air defenses in preparation for a raid on Iran...

Syria has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but has not agreed to an additional protocol that would allow for enhanced inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. GlobalSecurity.org, which offers information on weapons of mass destruction, said that "although Syria has long been cited as posing a nuclear proliferation risk, the country seems to have been too strapped for cash to get far."

To corroborate today's thesis that it is a NeoCon-driven information campaign behind the NK/Syria "alliance", one of the usual suspects makes an appearance:

John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a critic of the administration's dealings with North Korea, said that given North Korea's trade in missiles with Syria, it is "legitimate to ask questions about whether that cooperation extends on the nuclear side as well."

U.S. Dealing With Mookie

2007-09-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

U.S. diplomats and military officers have been in talks with members of the armed movement loyal to Muqtada Sadr, a sharp reversal of policy and a grudging recognition that the radical Shiite cleric holds a dominant position in much of Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

The secret dialogue has been going on since at least early 2006, but appeared to yield a tangible result only in the last week -- with relative calm in an area of west Baghdad that has been among the capital's most dangerous sections.

The discussions have been complicated by divisions within Sadr's movement as well as the cleric's public vow never to meet with Iraq's occupiers. Underlying the issue's sensitivity, Sadrists publicly deny any contact with the Americans or British -- fully aware the price of acknowledging such meetings would be banishment from the movement or worse.

The dialogue represents a drastic turnaround in the U.S. approach to Sadr and his militia, the Mahdi Army. The military hopes to negotiate the same kind of marriage of convenience it has reached in other parts of Iraq with former insurgent groups, many Saddam Hussein loyalists, and the Sunni tribes that supported them. Both efforts are examples of how U.S. officials have sought to end violence by cooperating with groups they once considered intractable enemies.

In 2004, U.S. officials branded Sadr an outlaw and demanded his arrest, sparking two major Shiite revolts in Baghdad and in the southern shrine city of Najaf that left more than a thousand dead. Last year, as the Bush administration developed its "surge" strategy, military planners said the campaign would also target Shiite militias involved in sectarian killings. U.S. commanders later accused Iranian-backed elements of the Mahdi Army of carrying out deadly bomb attacks against U.S. forces and spearheading sectarian violence.

The September Petraeus Charade

2007-09-11T09:08:00.000-05:00

If the Iraq war was winnable, we would have won by now.

The whole premise that we would be able to set up a client-state from scratch in that part of the world, and especially in a Shiite-majority nation, was wrong from the get-go.

The longstanding sectarian conflicts there were also not conducive to such an endeavor, and should have been an early danger sign.

And the harsh view from the Middle-East "street" of U.S. support for Israel's treatment of the Palestinians didn't (and doesn't) strengthen our odds of success in the Iraqi political sphere either.

The administration's game at this point is to drag things out and hope that our luck changes for the better. This is not a viable strategy.

The whole September Petraeus charade is to manipulate the public to accept White House claims of progress in Iraq. An objective appraisal of the situation belies these assertions.

The Bush administration's top two officials in Iraq answered questions from Congress for more than six hours on Monday, but their testimony may have been as important for what they didn't say as for what they did.

A chart displayed by Army Gen. David Petraeus that purported to show the decline in sectarian violence in Baghdad between December and August made no effort to show that the ethnic character of many of the neighborhoods had changed in that same period from majority Sunni Muslim or mixed to majority Shiite Muslim.

Neither Petraeus nor U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker talked about the fact that since the troop surge began the pace by which Iraqis were abandoning their homes in search of safety had increased. They didn't mention that 86 percent of Iraqis who've fled their homes said they'd been targeted because of their sect, according to the International Organization for Migration.

While Petraeus stressed that civilian casualties were down over the last five weeks, he drew no connection between that statement and a chart he displayed that showed that the number of attacks rose during at least one of those weeks.

Petraeus also didn't highlight the fact that his charts showed that "ethno-sectarian" deaths in August, down from July, were still higher than in June, and he didn't explain why the greatest drop in such deaths, which peaked in December, occurred between January and February, before the surge began.

And while both officials said that the Iraqi security forces were improving, neither talked about how those forces had been infiltrated by militias, though Petraeus acknowledged that during 2006 some Iraqi security forces had participated in the ethnic violence.

Both officials said they believed that Iraq was on the path to potential success. Petraeus said that "the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met." Crocker was similarly optimistic: "In my judgment, the cumulative trajectory of political, economic and diplomatic developments in Iraq is upwards, although the slope of that line is not steep."

They both pleaded for more time, even as Petraeus said that the U.S. should begin pulling troops out, with the goal of being back to the pre-surge level of 130,000 troops by next July. Further reductions would be considered next spring, as conditions allow, he said.

Both men celebrated their plan's success in encouraging residents in once-restive Anbar province to work with U.S. troops against al Qaida in Iraq.

Petraeus conceded that that success didn't extend to Ninevah province, where progress "has been much more up and down." But he didn't say that many believe that al Qaida numbers increased there only after the surge began. Ninevah is where some of the largest bombings of the year occurred, including the attack on the Yazidis, which killed more than 300.

He also offered a tepid endorsement of the Iraqi security forces, at times saying that they were increasingly capable of defending Iraq, while conceding that they needed to show more progress.

Sharif Gets Off Easy

2007-09-10T08:20:00.000-05:00

It could have been worse.

He could have been Aquino-ed.

Nawaz Sharif's attempt to return to his homeland to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf ended in ignominy this morning, when the former Pakistan Prime Minister was arrested, bundled onto a plane and deported to Saudi Arabia.

After seven years in exile and weeks of anticipation of his return, Mr Sharif spent just four hours on his native soil.

On arrival at Islamabad aboard a Pakistan International Airlines flight from London, he was surrounded by black-uniformed commandos then shifted to the airport’s VIP lounge, where a senior investigator from Pakistan's anti-corruption body served an arrest warrant.

The investigator, Azhar Mahmoud Qazi, said that Mr Sharif was being held on money-laundering and corruption charges stemming from a sugar mill business several years ago. He is accused of laundering 1.2 billion rupees (£9.8 million).

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the president of Pakistan’s ruling party, said that Mr Sharif had been given a choice this morning of going into exile again or being arrested. He said that Mr Sharif had chosen detention – but it emerged soon after that he was being deported anyway.

As his followers in Pakistan clashed with police, who had set up roadblocks to prevent crowds from reaching the capital to acclaim him, Mr Sharif was quickly spirited to another plane and flown out of the country towards the Red Sea port of Jeddah, a close aide to General Musharraf confirmed.

He had intended to spend the afternoon travelling in a grand motorcade to his home and political base in Lahore, about 290 km (180 miles) to the south of Islamabad, to kick-start his campaign against General Musharraf.

Mr Sharif's brother, Shahbaz Sharif, who stayed behind in London, said that their political party would challenge the deportation through the courts. ...

This morning's deportation appears to sideline General Musharraf's most powerful political enemy. It is likely however to deepen the President's growing unpopularity, and to reinforce public perceptions that he is an authoritarian ruler, ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections.

Political Sloganeering in Lieu of a Sane Iraq Policy

2007-09-07T09:23:00.000-05:00

From Scott Ritter:

It should come as no surprise that the Bush administration's newest military-man-of-substance-turned- political lapdog, General Petraeus, maintains that the situation in Iraq is not only salvageable, but actually improving, due to the "surge" of U.S. combat troops into Iraq over the past year. All the president and his collection of GI Joe hand-puppets ask for is more time, more money and more troops.

There is no reason to believe that the compliant war facilitators who comprise the "anti-war" Democratic majority in Congress will do anything other than give the president what he is asking for. No one seems to want to debate, in any meaningful fashion, what is really going on in Iraq.

Why would they? The Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, have invested too much political capital into fictionalizing the problem with slogans like "support the troops," "we're fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight them here," and my all-time favorite, "leaving Iraq would hand victory to al-Qaida."

There simply is no incentive to put fact on the table and formulate policy that actually seeks a solution to a properly defined problem. Like the Republicans before them, the Democrats today seek not to govern with the best interests of the people in mind, but rather to game the system in order to consolidate political power. Political sloganeering has so trumped reality that any political backlash that is generated from the so-called "Petraeus Report" will be limited to how the Democrats could better sustain a conflict that kills American troops, since no main-stream Democratic leader has expressed a true "get out of Iraq now" policy. ...

The compliant mainstream media, of course, is no help. The war in Iraq has become a major generator of advertising revenue for these corporations, so there is no incentive to actually report the truth, but rather manipulate the fiction. Iraq has become a prestige destination for every aspiring journalist or struggling anchor, determined to get "the big story." The most recent manifestation of this syndrome is CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who earlier this week travelled to Iraq because she was (in her own words), "Curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing." That the situation in Iraq has been boiled down to these three big, burning issues (living conditions, fear in the streets, and how the troops are really doing), and that CBS is sending their multi-million-dollar investment to investigate, speaks volumes about the truly degenerate state of American journalism today.

The real big three she should be addressing are "Why do Americans keep dying?" "Who is killing them?" and "Why?" Of course, answering these questions would undermine the very fantasy world Couric is being sent to cover, one where Americans are doing good deeds in the name of peace and justice for downtrodden Iraqis. Couric's jaunt is fraud on a massive scale. Ironically, she herself acknowledged this when she admitted that her up-beat reports from Iraq were reflective of what the US military wanted her to see, and not honest 'reporting' on her part.

Read more Reporting from Baghdad by Scott Ritter.

How To Lie With Statistics

2007-09-06T07:16:00.000-05:00

It would be a challenge even beyond the Stalinist-like deniers of reality in the administration to portray the political situation in Iraq as improving, given the public nature of the evidence.

So they are doing the next best thing, dicking with the (mostly classified) official measurements of violence to claim military progress.

The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

Reductions in violence form the centerpiece of the Bush administration's claim that its war strategy is working. In congressional testimony Monday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to cite a 75 percent decrease in sectarian attacks. According to senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad, overall attacks in Iraq were down to 960 a week in August, compared with 1,700 a week in June, and civilian casualties had fallen 17 percent between December 2006 and last month. Unofficial Iraqi figures show a similar decrease.

Others who have looked at the full range of U.S. government statistics on violence, however, accuse the military of cherry-picking positive indicators and caution that the numbers -- most of which are classified -- are often confusing and contradictory. "Let's just say that there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree," Comptroller General David Walker told Congress on Tuesday in releasing a new Government Accountability Office report on Iraq.

Senior U.S. officers in Baghdad disputed the accuracy and conclusions of the largely negative GAO report, which they said had adopted a flawed counting methodology used by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of those conclusions were also reflected in last month's pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

The intelligence community has its own problems with military calculations. Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in Washington. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," the official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal." ...

Challenges to how military and intelligence statistics are tallied and used have been a staple of the Iraq war. In its December 2006 report, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group identified "significant underreporting of violence," noting that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the sources of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the data base." The report concluded that "good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." ...

When a member of the National Intelligence Council visited Baghdad this summer to review a draft of the intelligence estimate on Iraq, Petraeus argued that its negative judgments did not reflect recent improvements. At least one new sentence was added to the final version, noting that "overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks."

A senior military intelligence official in Baghdad deemed it "odd" that "marginal" security improvements were reflected in an estimate assessing the previous seven months and projecting the next six to 12 months. He attributed the change to a desire to provide Petraeus with ammunition for his congressional testimony.

The intelligence official in Washington, however, described the Baghdad consultation as standard in the NIE drafting process and said that the "new information" did not change the estimate's conclusions. The overall assessment was that the security situation in Iraq since January "was still getting worse," he said, "but not as fast."

Since a counterinsurgency must be ultimately won in the political arena of the host country, hanging your hat on claims of ephemeral military gains is a pretty disingenuous tactic intended for domestic U.S. consumption.

Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq: Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks

2007-09-04T14:15:00.000-05:00

The GAO report on the progress made by the Iraqi government with the breathing room given them by the surge has just been released.

As the earlier draft report indicated, the Iraqi government failed to meet most of the benchmarks.

Securing, Stabilizing, and Rebuilding Iraq: Iraqi Government Has Not Met Most Legislative, Security, and Economic Benchmarks (100-page pdf).

The January 2007 U.S. strategy seeks to provide the Iraqi government with the time and space needed to help Iraqi society reconcile. Our analysis of the 18 legislative, security and economic benchmarks shows that as of August 30, 2007, the Iraqi government met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks. ...Overall, key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds. These results do not diminish the courageous efforts of coalition forces.

The Iraqi government has met one of eight legislative benchmarks: the rights of minority political parties in Iraq’s legislature are protected. The government also partially met one other benchmark to enact and implement legislation on the formation of regions; this law was enacted in October 2006 but will not be implemented until April 2008. Six other legislative benchmarks have not been met. Specifically, a review committee has not completed work on important revisions to Iraq’s constitution. Further, the government has not enacted legislation on de-Ba’athification, oil revenue sharing, provincial elections, amnesty, or militia disarmament. The Administration’s July 2007 report cited progress in achieving some of these benchmarks but provided little information on what step in the legislative process each benchmark had reached.

Two of nine security benchmarks have been met. Specifically, Iraq’s government has established various committees in support of the Baghdad security plan and established almost all of the planned Joint Security Stations in Baghdad. The government has partially met the benchmarks of providing three trained and ready brigades for Baghdad operations and eliminating safe havens for outlawed groups. Five other benchmarks have not been met. The government has not eliminated militia control of local security, eliminated political intervention in military operations, ensured even-handed enforcement of the law, increased army units capable of independent operations, or ensured that political authorities made no false accusations against security forces. It is unclear whether sectarian violence in Iraq has decreased—a key security benchmark--since it is difficult to measure the perpetrator’s intent and other measures of population security show differing trends.

Finally, the Iraqi government has partially met the economic benchmark of allocating and spending $10 billion on reconstruction. Preliminary data indicates that about $1.5 billion of central ministry funds had been spent, as of July 15, 2007. As the Congress considers the way forward in Iraq, it must balance the achievement of the 18 Iraqi benchmarks with the military progress, homeland security, foreign policy, and other goals of the United States. Future administration reporting to assist the Congress would be enhanced with adoption of the recommendations we make in this report.

Bremer Calls BS on Bush's Pass-The-Buckism

2007-09-04T07:31:00.000-05:00

As a direct rebuttal to the statement by President Bush (mentioned here yesterday, see Say What?) that his policy was to keep Saddam's vanquished Iraqi Army on duty to help provide security for the occupation, the senior American official at the time sets the record straight.

A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to "dissolve Saddam's military and intelligence structures," a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.

Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been "to keep the army intact" but that it "didn't happen."

The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush's comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House.

"We must make it clear to everyone that we mean business: that Saddam and the Baathists are finished," Mr. Bremer wrote in a letter that was drafted on May 20, 2003, and sent to the president on May 22 through Donald H. Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense.

After recounting American efforts to remove members of the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein from civilian agencies, Mr. Bremer told Mr. Bush that he would "parallel this step with an even more robust measure" to dismantle the Iraq military.

One day later, Mr. Bush wrote back a short thank you letter. "Your leadership is apparent," the president wrote. "You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence."

On the same day, Mr. Bremer, in Baghdad, had issued the order disbanding the Iraqi military. Mr. Bush did not mention the order to abolish the military, and the letters do not show that he approved the order or even knew much about it. Mr. Bremer referred only fleetingly to his plan midway through his three-page letter and offered no details.

In an interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book, "Dead Certain," Mr. Bush sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision, or at least by the need to abandon the original plan to keep the army together.

"The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Mr. Bush told the interviewer. When Mr. Draper asked the president how he had reacted when he learned that the policy was being reversed, Mr. Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember, I'm sure I said, "This is the policy, what happened?'"

Mr. Bremer indicated that he had been smoldering for months as other administration officials had distanced themselves from his order. "This didn't just pop out of my head," he said in a telephone interview on Monday, adding that he had sent a draft of the order to top Pentagon officials and discussed it "several times" with Mr. Rumsfeld.

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is not commenting on Mr. Draper's book, said Mr. Bush indeed understood the order and was acknowledging in the interview with Mr. Draper that the original plan had proved unworkable.

Say What?

2007-09-03T09:29:00.000-05:00

Drug and alcohol-induced memory impairment?

Or deliberate obfuscation?

One of the most heavily criticized actions in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was the decision, barely two months later, to disband the Iraqi army, alienating former soldiers and driving many straight into the ranks of anti-American militant groups.

But excerpts of a new biography of President Bush show him saying that he initially wanted to maintain the Iraqi army and, more surprising, that he cannot recall why his administration decided to disband it.

"The policy was to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told biographer Robert Draper in excerpts published in Sunday's New York Times.

Draper pressed Bush to explain why, if he wanted to maintain the army, his chief administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, issued an order in May 2003 disbanding the 400,000-strong army without pay.

"Yeah, I can't remember; I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'" Bush said, adding: "Again, Hadley's got notes on all this stuff" -- a reference to national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley.

Spokesmen for the White House and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld declined to comment about the excerpts Sunday. Bremer could not be reached for comment.

The Forgotten War

2007-09-03T08:24:00.001-05:00

More evidence that putting Afghanistan on the back burner to conduct the misadventure in Iraq was a strategically unsound decision:

Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that U.S. and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and U.S. forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the largest city in the south.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than last summer.

The Panjwai and Zhare districts, in particular, highlight the changing nature of the fight in the south. The military operation there in September 2006 was the largest conventional battle in the country since 2002. But this year, the Taliban are avoiding set battles with NATO and instead are attacking the police and stepping up their use of roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or IEDs.

"It's very seldom that we have direct engagement with the Taliban," said Brigadier General Guy Laroche, the commander of Canadian forces leading the NATO effort in Kandahar. "What they're going to use is IEDs."

The Taliban also wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.

"The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are," said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. "They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there."

NATO and U.S. military officials have declined to release exact Taliban attack statistics, and collecting accurate information is difficult, particularly in rural Afghanistan. According to an internal UN tally, insurgents have set off 516 improvised explosive devices in 2007. Another 402 improvised explosive devices have been discovered before detonation.

Reported security incidents, a broad category that includes bombings, firefights and intimidation, are up from roughly 500 a month last year to 600 a month this year, a 20 percent increase, according to the United Nations.

The rising number of attacks are taking a heavy toll. At least 2,500 to 3,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, a quarter of them civilians, according to the UN tally, a 20 percent increase over 2006.

NATO and U.S. fatalities are up by about 20 percent this year, to 161, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan police continue to be devastated by Taliban bombings and guerrilla strikes, with 379 killed so far this year, compared with 257 for all of last year.

Peace Enforcement Mission May Become New Iraq Strategy

2007-09-01T07:40:00.000-05:00

In an internal assessment given to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, a senior intelligence analyst and a military planner for the U.S. command in Baghdad call for shifting U.S. strategy in Iraq away from counterinsurgency and toward peace enforcement, and they suggest that the Shiite-led ruling coalition is involved in the country's "low-grade civil war."

The Aug. 15 briefing, titled "Resolving the Conflict in Iraq: An Alternative Peacemaking Strategy," offers an unusual glimpse into the intellectual debate within the U.S. military over the way forward in Iraq, and it comes just days before Petraeus, the top U.S. commander there, is scheduled to testify before Congress on the progress of President Bush's war strategy.

It also reveals how military officers in Iraq are wrestling with how to define the conflict -- whether as a counterinsurgency, civil war or some combination of several contests -- all with major implications for troop deployments and strategy. ...

This briefing, provided to The Washington Post by a third party, represents the authors' personal views and is not official policy.

The 19-page briefing casts doubt on a cornerstone of the U.S. approach in Iraq: the assumption that the Iraqi government seeks to build a multi-sectarian society. The report says that the U.S. troop increase this year has reduced violence and led many insurgent groups to seek reconciliation, but that in response the government has shown "little enthusiasm." Instead, it describes elements of the Shiite-dominated ruling coalition as at least tacitly supporting sectarian violence as a way to solidify its power.

"Rather than conducting a counterinsurgency that supports a sectarian driven Iraqi government, the coalition should focus all elements of power on activities that facilitate a long-term peace or we risk becoming/remaining a part of the civil war," the briefing says. ...

The authors argue that a shift in strategy on the ground could help forge a new consensus on Iraq in Washington: "The peacemaking process should be well underway by January 2008 or we may find that we have tactically created the space and time necessary but there has been insufficient progress towards reconciliation and reintegration -- resulting in a total collapse of political support in both the domestic public and the US Congress."

The briefing calls for a shift to a strategy of peace enforcement, starting as early as this month, that would emphasize "balanced targeting" of fighters from all sects and protecting the population from "any and all threats," including, if necessary, Iraqi security forces. It describes the Iraqi local and national police as sectarian and untrustworthy forces that need overhauling or disbanding. ...

The briefing's authors -- one military and one civilian -- emphasized that their unclassified report was intended for internal discussion only. They requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of their positions with the military division that oversees Baghdad, and they said their perspective is drawn from conditions in Baghdad rather than from Iraq as a whole.

A copy of the briefing was given to the U.S. commander for Baghdad, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., and to Petraeus.

The Washington Post article also mentions the new classified Joint Campaign Plan:

A campaign plan adopted this summer by Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker departed from the idea that the Iraq conflict is simply a counterinsurgency that requires wholesale support for the government.

"What we did with the campaign plan is recognize that you can't do unconditional support of the government," said a senior military official involved with planning in Iraq. "There are certain elements that are interested in a sectarian agenda."

U.N. Says Jury Still Out on Iran Nuclear Program

2007-08-31T08:57:00.000-05:00

The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency gave an upbeat assessment of Iranian cooperation with international inspectors in a new report Thursday that could make it more difficult for the United States to win tougher U.N. sanctions against Iran.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna also concluded that while Iran continues to enrich uranium in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, its fuel enrichment plant has produced "well below the expected quantity for a facility of this design." The quality of the uranium also was lower than expected, the IAEA said.

The report praised Iran for taking "a significant step forward" by agreeing to a new work plan and timelines for resolving numerous questions about the history of its nuclear program. Separately, U.N. officials said that Iran had slowed construction of a new plutonium-fuel reactor in Arak. ...

The report suggests that if Iran adheres to the program and timelines, the agency could resolve its remaining questions about the nature of the country's nuclear program by the end of the year and close the file.

"For the first time in a couple of years, we have been able to agree with the Iranians on a working arrangement, on how to resolve the outstanding issues," the U.N. agency's deputy director, Olli Heinonen, told reporters in Vienna. "What Iran is now facing is actually a litmus test" on whether it will deliver what it has promised, because its failure to do so in the past triggered Security Council action, Heinonen said.

If the IAEA concludes that Iran has not engaged in a covert program to develop nuclear weapons, it could raise new questions about the quality of U.S. intelligence in the Middle East. ...

Longtime observers of Iran's program were struck by the report's revelations of slow progress of uranium enrichment. Iran appears to be running well behind its own self-imposed schedule for building new centrifuge machines, and its existing machines are operating well below capacity.

Based on IAEA figures, Iran is producing low-enriched uranium at a rate of about 31 pounds a month, compared with an expected rate of nearly 200 pounds a month, according to an analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based research group.

The low output suggests that Iran is either experiencing technical difficulties or has perhaps decided to slow production to "forestall negative reactions that would lend support for further sanctions," the institute said in a report released Thursday. Low-enriched uranium is used for making nuclear power and cannot be converted for weapons use unless it undergoes further processing. ...

The report "indicates that Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, which is a violation of U.S. Security Council resolutions." Such a step is necessary "for the international community to gain confidence that Iran's nuclear activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes."

France said that it would continue pursuing sanctions as long as Iran continued enriching uranium, and a statement by the British Foreign Office said that it also lacked confidence in Iran's nuclear intentions. ...

The report cites several contentious issues that have been resolved recently through a renewed dialogue with Iran and the work program that Iranian and U.N. officials agreed to in a series of meetings in July and August.

"This is the first time Iran is ready to discuss all the outstanding issues which triggered the crisis in confidence," Mohamed ElBaradei, the I.A.E.A. director general, said in an interview. "It's a significant step."

But the Bush administration and its allies, which have won sanctions in the United Nations Security Council in an effort to stop Iran's uranium enrichment, saw the latest report as more evidence of defiance, not cooperation.

"There is no partial credit here," a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said Thursday. "Iran has refused to comply with its international obligations, and as a result of that the international community is going to continue to ratchet up the pressure." ...

Dr. ElBaradei suggested that he would welcome a delay in the American-led strategy to impose new sanctions, saying, "I'm clear at this stage you need to give Iran a chance to prove its stated goodwill. Sanctions alone, I know for sure, are not going to lead to a durable solution."

The agreement, announced Monday, laid out a timetable of cooperation with the goal of wrapping up by December nuclear issues that have been under investigation for four years. By then, Dr. ElBaradei said, the agency will know whether Iran was "serious" or "was trying to take us for a ride."

Draft GAO Report Says Iraq Government Not Meeting Expectations

2007-08-30T07:47:00.000-05:00

The reason that the U.S. endeavor in Iraq was doomed to fail from the very beginning was that the goal -- to establish another U.S.-client state in the Middle East, and in a Shiite majority country at that -- was unrealistic in the extreme. We have been lowering our expectations and objectives as we go along.

An unvarnished appraisal of the current Iraqi government is being prepared by the GAO, and a pre-redaction version has been leaked to the Washington Post.

The report doesn't provide evidence for those who are insisting that things are improving to the point that something resembling success might transpire someday. The "pro-victory" crowd (who are actively harming U.S. national security by trying to keep U.S. forces tied down in Iraq) are deluding themselves and others.

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration. ...

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. ...

A GAO spokesman declined to comment on the report before it is released. The 69-page draft, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is still undergoing review at the Defense Department, which may ask that parts of it be classified or request changes in its conclusions. ...

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Congress requested the GAO report, along with an assessment of the Iraqi security forces by an independent commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, to provide a basis for comparison with the administration's scorecard. The Jones report is also scheduled for delivery next week. ...

One of eight political benchmarks -- the protection of the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature -- has been achieved, according to the draft. On the others, including legislation on constitutional reform, new oil laws and de-Baathification, it assesses failure.

"Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet," it says. An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that "this boycott ends any claim by the Shi'ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity." An administration official involved in Iraq policy said that he did not know what specific interagency document the GAO was citing but noted that it is an accurate reflection of the views of many officials.

Overall, the draft report, titled "Securing, Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq," says that the Iraqi government has met only two security benchmarks. It contradicts the Bush administration's conclusion in July that sectarian violence was decreasing as a result of the U.S. military's stepped-up operations in Baghdad this year. "The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July," the GAO draft states. ...

The GAO draft also says that the number of Iraqi army units capable of operating independently declined from 10 in March to six last month. The July White House report mentioned a "slight" decline in capable Iraqi units, without providing any numbers. The GAO also says, as did the White House in July, that the Iraqi government has intervened in military activities for political reasons, "resulting in some operations being based on sectarian interests." But its discussion of Iraqi security forces is often veiled, as when it states that the determination that the security forces benchmark was not met "was based largely on classified information."

The description of the Iraqi military's shortcomings contrasts with comments from many senior U.S. commanders who say that they are pleased with its progress. "Although we still have a ways to go, Iraqi security forces are making significant, tangible improvements," Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said earlier this month.

Two Key Reports on Tap for Next Week

2007-08-28T09:20:00.000-05:00

The House will hold hearings next week on two key reports assessing political and military conditions in Iraq, jump-starting the debate over President Bush's strategy even before long-awaited testimony by Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, due the following week.

A completed 70-page report by the Government Accountability Office, to be delivered to Congress next Tuesday, paints a bleak picture of prospects for Iraqi political reconciliation, according to administration officials who have seen it. The second report, by an independent commission of military experts, is being drafted. But a scorecard on the Iraqi security forces released yesterday by an adviser to the group concluded that the Iraqis are years away from taking over significant responsibility from U.S. combat forces. ...

Administration officials said yesterday that the Petraeus-Crocker testimony will closely follow the National Intelligence Estimate judgments released last week, which predicted continued political deterioration in Iraq but cited "measurable but uneven improvements" in the security situation.

The NIE, requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said. ...

In its benchmark legislation last spring, Congress arranged for its own security report, appointing a commission headed by retired Marine Gen. James Jones to assess the Iraqi forces. Strategic and military expert Anthony Cordesman, a commission adviser, previewed that assessment in a report yesterday saying it will be years before the Iraqi army and police forces will be capable of taking over.

The American Idiot

2007-08-27T09:03:00.000-05:00

How bizarre:

President Bush's Iraq strategy faces a crisis of faith these days — from the American public. And he is confronting it the way he has previous crises: with a relentless campaign to persuade people to see things his way.

Mr. Bush interrupted his annual August retreat here last week for a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars replete with historical references to Vietnam, including a surprising citation from Graham Greene's "The Quiet American."

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," he quoted from the book, criticizing Mr. Greene for portraying an American character as naïve and dangerous.

LMAO.

I would have sooner expected to hear that Bush had quoted William S. Burroughs than Graham Greene.

Who will he decide to quote next? Regis Debray?

A Going Away Present to the White House From Gen. Peter Pace

2007-08-24T07:35:00.000-05:00

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year.

Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it.

According to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force in Iraq in order to bolster the military's ability to respond to other threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Pace is expected to offer his advice privately instead of issuing a formal report. Still, the position of Pace and the Joint Chiefs could add weight to that of Bush administration critics, including Democratic presidential candidates, that the U.S. force should be reduced.

Those critics include Republican Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, who on Thursday called on Bush to begin withdrawing troops in September to pressure the Iraqi government to move toward political compromise.

Any discord among the top U.S. generals could be awkward for Bush, who professes to rely heavily on advice from military leaders. But there also is tremendous pressure for military officers to speak with one voice and defer to Petraeus and other field commanders. It remains possible that the Joint Chiefs may opt to weaken their stance before approaching Bush.

According to a senior administration official, the Joint Chiefs in recent weeks have pressed concerns that the Iraq war has degraded the U.S. military's ability to respond, if needed, to other threats, such as Iran.

The chiefs are pushing for a significant decrease in troop levels once the current buildup comes to an end -- perhaps to about half of the 20 combat brigades now in Iraq. Along with support units, that would lower the U.S. presence to fewer than 100,000 troops from the current 162,000.

But military leaders in Iraq, as well as senior officials in the White House, are pushing for troop levels to return to the prior level of about 15 brigades, or about 134,000 troops, once the current buildup is over. ...

Pace was not nominated by Bush for a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs and will leave the post at the end of September. He is being succeeded by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the current Navy chief, who has been even more vocal in his concerns about the stresses on the Army.

Although the role of Defense Department civilian leaders has been highly controversial since the start of the Iraq war, strains between ground commanders and the Pentagon's military brass have been comparatively rare. Previous U.S. commanders in Iraq, such as Petraeus' predecessor, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., emphasized low force levels, in part to ensure the overall health of the Army.

Pace has gained a reputation as a consensus builder who is loath to confront civilian leaders on war strategy. With his term nearly up, he is facing his last opportunity to affect the war effort and is stepping up the involvement of the Joint Chiefs in planning for Iraq.

Pace has assigned a handpicked group of high-ranking Iraq combat veterans, known as his "council of colonels," to help formulate the Pentagon military leadership's assessment of current strategy, according to military officials.

Pace created the council last year. Although the chiefs' specific recommendations to Bush were pushed aside then in favor of the troop buildup ordered in January, Pace has asked the council to look at various military problems since then. The process has been credited with reinvigorating the relevance of the Joint Chiefs.

Membership on the council has shifted since last year, and Pentagon officials say Pace now has a fresh group, convened this summer, examining potential changes to Iraq strategy. Past council members have included Army Col. Peter R. Mansoor, who is now Petraeus' executive officer in Baghdad. Officials would not identify the officers now on Pace's panel.

New NIE On Iraq -- Key Judgments

2007-08-23T13:33:00.000-05:00

The Key Judgments section (sans portion markings) of an updated NIE on Iraq has been released this afternoon, Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive (10-page PDF).

Key Judgments (all emphases in original):

There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks. Coalition forces, working with Iraqi forces, tribal elements, and some Sunni insurgents, have reduced al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s (AQI) capabilities, restricted its freedom of movement, and denied it grassroots support in some areas. However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution, and government finances but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions.

We assess, to the extent that Coalition forces continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq’s security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months but that levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi Government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance. Broadly accepted political compromises required for sustained security, long-term political progress, and economic development are unlikely to emerge unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments.

Political and security trajectories in Iraq continue to be driven primarily by Shia insecurity about retaining political dominance, widespread Sunni unwillingness to accept a diminished political status, factional rivalries within the sectarian communities resulting in armed conflict, and the actions of extremists such as AQI and elements of the Sadrist Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) militia that try to fuel sectarian violence. Two new drivers have emerged since the January Estimate: expanded Sunni opposition to AQI and Iraqi expectation of a Coalition drawdown. Perceptions that the Coalition is withdrawing probably will encourage factions anticipating a power vacuum to seek local security solutions that could intensify sectarian violence and intra-sectarian competition. At the same time, fearing a Coalition withdrawal, some tribal elements and Sunni groups probably will continue to seek accommodation with the Coalition to strengthen themselves for a post- Coalition security environment.

• Sunni Arab resistance to AQI has expanded in the last six to nine months but has not yet translated into broad Sunni Arab support for the Iraqi Government or widespread willingness to work with the Shia. The Iraqi Government’s Shia leaders fear these groups will ultimately side with armed opponents of the government, but the Iraqi Government has supported some initiatives to incorporate those rejecting AQI into Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry elements.

• Intra-Shia conflict involving factions competing for power and resources probably will intensify as Iraqis assume control of provincial security. In Basrah, violence has escalated with the drawdown of Coalition forces there. Local militias show few signs of reducing their competition for control of valuable oil resources and territory.

• The Sunni Arab community remains politically fragmented, and we see no prospective leaders that might engage in meaningful dialogue and deliver on national agreements.

• Kurdish leaders remain focused on protecting the autonomy of the Kurdish region and reluctant to compromise on key issues.

The IC assesses that the emergence of "bottom-up" security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for improved security over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these initiatives will only translate into widespread political accommodation and enduring stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them. A multi-stage process involving the Iraqi Government providing support and legitimacy for such initiatives could foster over the longer term political reconciliation between the participating Sunni Arabs and the national government. We also assess that under some conditions "bottom-up initiatives" could pose risks to the Iraqi Government.

• We judge such initiatives are most likely to succeed in predominantly Sunni Arab areas, where the presence of AQI elements has been significant, tribal networks and identities are strong, the local government is weak, sectarian conflict is low, and the ISF tolerate Sunni initiatives, as illustrated by Al Anbar Province.

• Sunni Arab resistance to AQI has expanded, and neighborhood security groups, occasionally consisting of mixed Shia-Sunni units, have proliferated in the past several months. These trends, combined with increased Coalition operations, have eroded AQI’s operational presence and capabilities in some areas.

• Such initiatives, if not fully exploited by the Iraqi Government, could over time also shift greater power to the regions, undermine efforts to impose central authority, and reinvigorate armed opposition to the Baghdad government.

• Coalition military operations focused on improving population security, both in and outside of Baghdad, will remain critical to the success of local and regional efforts until sectarian fears are diminished enough to enable the Shia-led Iraqi Government to fully support the efforts of local Sunni groups.

Iraqi Security Forces involved in combined operations with Coalition forces have performed adequately, and some units have demonstrated increasing professional competence. However, we judge that the ISF have not improved enough to conduct major operations independent of the Coalition on a sustained basis in multiple locations and that the ISF remain reliant on the Coalition for important aspects of logistics and combat support.

• The deployment of ISF units from throughout Iraq to Baghdad in support of security operations known as Operation Fardh al-Qanun marks significant progress since last year when large groups of soldiers deserted rather than depart their home areas, but Coalition and Iraqi Government support remains critical.

• Recently, the Iraqi military planned and conducted two joint Army and police large-scale security operations in Baghdad, demonstrating an improving capacity for operational command and control.

• Militia and insurgent influences continue to undermine the reliability of some ISF units, and political interference in security operations continues to undermine Coalition and ISF efforts.

• The Maliki government is implementing plans to expand the Iraqi Army and to increase its overall personnel strength to address critical gaps, but we judge that significant security gains from those programs will take at least six to 12 months, and probably longer, to materialize.

The IC assesses that the Iraqi Government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months because of criticism by other members of the major Shia coalition (the Unified Iraqi Alliance, UIA), Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and other Sunni and Kurdish parties. Divisions between Maliki and the Sadrists have increased, and Shia factions have explored alternative coalitions aimed at constraining Maliki.

• The strains of the security situation and absence of key leaders have stalled internal political debates, slowed national decisionmaking, and increased Maliki’s vulnerability to alternative coalitions.

• We judge that Maliki will continue to benefit from recognition among Shia leaders that searching for a replacement could paralyze the government.

Population displacement resulting from sectarian violence continues, imposing burdens on provincial governments and some neighboring states and increasing the danger of destabilizing influences spreading across Iraq’s borders over the next six to 12 months. The polarization of communities is most evident in Baghdad, where the Shia are a clear majority in more than half of all neighborhoods and Sunni areas have become surrounded by predominately Shia districts. Where population displacements have led to significant sectarian separation, conflict levels have diminished to some extent because warring communities find it more difficult to penetrate communal enclaves.

The IC assesses that Iraq’s neighbors will continue to focus on improving their leverage in Iraq in anticipation of a Coalition drawdown. Assistance to armed groups, especially from Iran, exacerbates the violence inside Iraq, and the reluctance of the Sunni states that are generally supportive of US regional goals to offer support to the Iraqi Government probably bolsters Iraqi Sunni Arabs’ rejection of the government’s legitimacy.

• Over the next year Tehran, concerned about a Sunni reemergence in Iraq and US efforts to limit Iranian influence, will continue to provide funding, weaponry, and training to Iraqi Shia militants. Iran has been intensifying aspects of its lethal support for select groups of Iraqi Shia militants, particularly the JAM, since at least the beginning of 2006. Explosively formed penetrator (EFP) attacks have risen dramatically.

• Syria has cracked down on some Sunni extremist groups attempting to infiltrate fighters into Iraq through Syria because of threats they pose to Syrian stability, but the IC now assesses that Damascus is providing support to non-AQI groups inside Iraq in a bid to increase Syrian influence.

• Turkey probably would use a range of measures to protect what it perceives as its interests in Iraq. The risk of cross-border operations against the People’s Congress of Kurdistan (KG) terrorist group based in northern Iraq remains.

We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains achieved thus far. The impact of a change in mission on Iraq’s political and security environment and throughout the region probably would vary in intensity and suddenness of onset in relation to the rate and scale of a Coalition redeployment. Developments within the Iraqi communities themselves will be decisive in determining political and security trajectories.

• Recent security improvements in Iraq, including success against AQI, have depended significantly on the close synchronization of conventional counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations. A change of mission that interrupts that synchronization would place security improvements at risk.

Grasping at Historical Straws

2007-08-23T08:51:00.000-05:00

President Bush's address to the VFW yesterday was a typical [for him] exercise in shamelessness. His comparison of the noble Iraq war to previous U.S. wars was historically and conceptually flawed, to put it mildly.

The American withdrawal from Vietnam is widely remembered as an ignominious end to a misguided war — but one with few negative repercussions for the United States and its allies.

Now, in urging Americans to stay the course in Iraq, President Bush is challenging that historical memory.

In reminding Americans that the pullout in 1975 was followed by years of bloody upheaval in Southeast Asia, Mr. Bush argued in a speech on Wednesday that Vietnam's lessons provide a reason for persevering in Iraq, rather than for leaving any time soon. Mr. Bush in essence accused his war critics of amnesia over the exodus of Vietnamese "boat people" refugees and the mass killings in Cambodia that upended the lives of millions of people. ...

President Bush is right on the factual record, according to historians. But many of them also quarreled with his drawing analogies from the causes of that turmoil to predict what might happen in Iraq should the United States withdraw.

"It is undoubtedly true that America’s failure in Vietnam led to catastrophic consequences in the region, especially in Cambodia," said David C. Hendrickson, a specialist on the history of American foreign policy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

"But there are a couple of further points that need weighing," he added. "One is that the Khmer Rouge would never have come to power in the absence of the war in Vietnam — this dark force arose out of the circumstances of the war, was in a deep sense created by the war. The same thing has happened in the Middle East today. Foreign occupation of Iraq has created far more terrorists than it has deterred." ...

[T]he American drawdown from Vietnam was hardly abrupt, and it lasted much longer than many people remember. The withdrawal actually began in 1968, after the Tet offensive, which was a military defeat for the Communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese sponsors. But it also illustrated the vulnerability of the United States and its South Vietnamese allies.

Although American commanders asked for several hundred thousand reinforcements after Tet, President Johnson turned them down. President Nixon began a process of "Vietnamization" in which responsibility for security was gradually handed to local military and police forces — similar to Mr. Bush's long-term strategy for Iraq today.

American air power was used to help sustain South Vietnam's struggling government, but by the time of the famous photograph of Americans being lifted off a roof in Saigon in 1975, few American combat forces were left in Vietnam. "It was not a precipitous withdrawal, it was a very deliberate disengagement," said Andrew J. Bacevich, a platoon leader in Vietnam who is now a professor of international relations at Boston University.

Vietnam today is a unified and stable nation whose Communist government poses little threat to its neighbors and is developing healthy ties with the United States. Mr. Bush visited Vietnam last November; a return visit to the White House this summer by Nguyen Minh Triet was the first visit by a Vietnamese head of state since the war.

There is one Vietnam analogy that unfortunately does apply. U.S. frustration over Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's failures surely rivals the disdain President Kennedy had for the first South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. We can only hope the Maliki-Diem analogy proves false, because Diem was ousted in a CIA-approved military coup, then executed. Perhaps Maliki is better compared with the last South Vietnamese leader, Nguyen Van Thieu? The hated Thieu never managed to make "Vietnamization" work -- and the U.S. refused to keep 500,000 troops in South Vietnam for another decade or three to help him.

The real lesson of Vietnam is that its civil war was a nationalist struggle that toppled no communist "dominoes" across Asia. Bush's rhetoric implying an Al Qaeda "domino effect" in the Middle East has the same false ring.

President Bush also tried to make a misleading analogy yesterday between the Iraq war and the Korean conflict. A rebuttal:

Eisenhower ran on a promise that he would go to Korea personally with the purpose of ending what had become an extremely unpopular war.

Eisenhower did just that, traveling to Korea before he was even sworn in as president. By the following summer, with his support and encouragement, a rough peace was achieved. Unfortunately, more than half a century later, the U.S. continues to spend billions of dollars annually to maintain a massive military presence in the region.

Bush did not criticize Eisenhower in his speech to the VFW, presumably because he is no more familiar with the 34th president than he is with I.F. Stone. But if he does actually develop an interest in the period of history he referenced today, the current president might be intrigued by two of his predecessor's statements from the era.

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. ... War settles nothing," explained the old military man.

Eisenhower rejected the argument that keeping up the fight in Korea was necessary to protecting America, and he counseled that a permanent commitment to fighting abroad would ... cost America dearly.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," Eisenhower declared in the spring of 1953, as he was dialing down the Korea conflict. "This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [...] This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

Counterproductive U.S. Actions Cause Failure in "War on Terror"

2007-08-22T07:45:00.000-05:00

The US is losing the war on terror. That's the assessment of the nation's top foreign-policy, intelligence, and national-security leaders from across the ideological spectrum. In this year's Terrorism Index, a survey released Monday by Foreign Policy magazine, 84 percent of these experts believe the nation is losing the war on terror, while more than 90 percent say the world is growing more dangerous for Americans.

That's prompted a variety of leaders to call for a complete rethinking of the nation's strategy. And some are looking back to the cold war's battle against communism to find models for the ideological struggle against terrorism.

A key component is deterrence, the policy that, at the height of the cold war, kept the superpowers' nuclear warheads safely in their bunkers – the only way to avoid mutually assured destruction (MAD). Another is a call for a Middle East Marshall Plan to help develop the region's economies and confront the alienation of the young.

"We need a grand strategy to address not only the question of al Qaeda, but also, how do you put out the fires in the region?" says Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East expert at New York's Sarah Lawrence College. "How do you diffuse the crisis and help the Muslims in order to counterbalance the militant ideologies that are simmering above the surface and below the surface?"

The Terrorism Index was developed by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress a year ago, as a way to gauge progress in the war on terror. The original idea was to determine whether the nation was deterring, capturing, or killing more terrorists each day than were being recruited, trained, and deployed. Such information proved nearly impossible to obtain. So the groups decided to survey top foreign-policy, intelligence, military, and academic experts on their sense of progress.

This is the third Terrorism Index they have issued. Among its findings are that foreign-policy experts "see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course," according to the magazine.

"The main reason for this pessimism appears to be events on the ground," says Mike Boyer, senior editor of Foreign Policy. "Eighty-three percent of the experts say the surge of troops into Baghdad is having a negative impact on the war effort, an increase of 22 percent from just six months ago." The sentiment crosses party lines, he says. So, too, does a desire to disengage from Iraq. Seven out of 10 experts surveyed believe it's time to draw down forces there, although a majority do not favor an immediate withdrawal.

Experts are also blaming the war in Iraq for a diminishing sense of security in America. Eighty percent of them say the war has had a negative effect "on protecting the American people from global terrorist networks and in advancing U.S. national security goals." Only 15 percent of the experts say that creating a stable, secure Iraq should be the top foreign-policy objective of the next five years. In contrast, 30 percent believe that winning the "hearts and minds" of the Muslim world should be the most important US policy objective in that time frame.

These and other conclusions, says Mr. Boyer, indicate that the Iraq experience is informing experts' broader views on the war on terrorism – and prompting calls for new strategies.

"This poll presents an enormously bleak and melancholy picture ... and it's difficult not to read it as a complete repudiation of the entire current conduct on the war on terrorism," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "Where we have been particularly remiss or ineffectual is in fighting the al Qaeda brand as hard as we've fought the al Qaeda terrorists."

Middle East experts like Dr. Gerges say that while the majority of Muslims reject al Qaeda's violence, they have come to believe that much of al Qaeda's rhetoric is correct. "The US is losing the ideological struggle against al Qaeda," says Gerges. "Some of the most intelligent people in that part of the world believe the US is waging a crusade against Islam and Muslims and is trying to subjugate the Arab world and remake it in its image, and that it's doing it brutally."

Many experts say it's critical that the US focus on countering such perceptions. The solution lies in changing US policy in the region and supporting Islamic scholars who can show how al Qaeda is distorting the Koran.

"Once you strip the adversary of their extremist message of religion, there's nothing left but criminality and thuggery," says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "There's growing recognition this needs to be done, but we haven't marshaled and mobilized those resources as much as we ought to." Some scholars believe a comprehensive strategy should include a massive economic and social investment similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II. They also think it's crucial to develop a strategy of deterrence.

"Deterrence is probably the hardest part of counterterrorism," says John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA. "Classical deterrence in the past worked against adversaries who played by certain rules and didn't want to die. Here, you're up against an adversary who plays by no particular rules and is willing to die."

It's equally important to combat the terrorist narrative, he says. Others agree and again point to the findings of the Terrorism Index.

"Part of the results ... is a warning that we must change our strategy, or otherwise we'll be ... fighting this struggle ad infinitum," says Hoffman.

The Terrorism Index (Foreign Policy magazine).

Nice Timing

2007-08-21T08:55:00.000-05:00

The White House said Monday that Gen. David Petraeus likely will testify before Congress on the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A spokesman for President Bush, Gordon Johndroe, reiterated that Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, would testify in open hearings. They will answer lawmakers’ questions about the situation in Iraq, the success of the troop surge and the next steps to be taken.

The highly anticipated report from Petraeus and Crocker is seen as a potential turning point in America’s involvement in Iraq. Several Republicans, who so far have refused to side with Democratic calls for withdrawal, have said they wanted to hear from Petraeus and Crocker before making any decisions regarding U.S. troop levels.

Democrats last week tried to make an issue of whether Petraeus and Crocker would testify in open session and attempted to paint the administration as trying to stifle such testimony. However, the White House was quick to respond that no such plans had been made.

According to Johndroe, the fact that the pair likely will appear before Congress on Sept. 11 has nothing to do with the anniversary of the attack, but was rather dictated by Congress’s tight schedule.

ACLU Obtains New Details of Possible Cover-Up of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse

2007-08-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union provide new evidence of a possible "cover-up" of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in 2003, and suggest that senior military officials failed to act promptly upon receiving reports of the abuse. The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, also reveal that an Army investigator found that the conditions of prisoners held in isolation at Abu Ghraib qualified as torture.

"These documents make clear that prisoners were abused in U.S. custody not only at Abu Ghraib, but also in other locations in Iraq," said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. "Rather than putting a stop to these abuses, senior officials appear to have turned a blind eye to them."

The documents detail Army Office of Inspector General investigations of alleged improprieties by Major General Barbara Fast, Major General Walter Wojdakowski and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. These investigations were initiated by the Department of Defense, after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, and absolved all three officers of blame.

The inquiry into Major General Barbara Fast, the top intelligence officer attached to U.S. command in Iraq at the time the Abu Ghraib abuses occurred, provides new details of her role in responding to reports of prisoner abuse in the vicinity of the Baghdad International Airport in the summer of 2003. The outcome of the investigation illustrates the Defense Department’s refusal to hold her, or any other senior military officials, responsible for failing to put a stop to the known abuses, said the ACLU.

The inquiry into Fast also includes the testimony of a colonel who compiled a report in November 2003 that documented potential abuse of Iraqi detainees by a joint Special Operations and CIA unit looking for weapons of mass destruction. Although the colonel's name was blacked out throughout the records, the ACLU believes this testimony is from retired Colonel Stuart Herrington.

The colonel maintains that someone called him in late November with details of prisoner abuse that occurred in June or July of 2003 in the vicinity of Baghdad International Airport. The colonel's source had previously complained about the abuse to Major General Dayton, Commander of the Iraq Survey Group in charge of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. The source had also reported the abuse to the Defense Intelligence Agency Chain of Command in Clarendon.

The colonel says that he met with Fast in late 2003 to brief her on his investigation and that he gave her a copy of his report. Subsequently, the Judge Advocate General's office attached to U.S. Command in Iraq informed the colonel that it had found "no evidence to support the allegations that detainees were mistreated." The colonel dismissed this conclusion as a "cover-up" and expressed "blunt dismay." He could not fathom how his own report could be taken so lightly given that he had provided names of the witnesses and "already had two people who admitted it."

The colonel testifies, moreover, that it was not until after the abuses of Abu Ghraib were made public, almost six months after he gave Fast the report, that she acknowledged finding his report in her e-mail account for the first time. Fast told him that she had not recognized his name and that she came across the e-mail while she was refreshing her memory on Abu Ghraib. The colonel testifies that he internally questioned the veracity of Fast's claim of not having seen the report and whether "in light of the Abu Ghraib thing is this something here that's convenient and comfortable?" However, based on his personal evaluation of her character, he decided that Fast must be telling the truth.

The Army Inspector General report clears Fast of all allegations of misconduct and concludes that Fast took prompt action to alert the proper authorities once she was informed of the alleged abuse.

Additional documents made public today by the ACLU reveal that Major General George Fay found that the conditions under which Abu Ghraib prisoners were isolated went far beyond the limits of abuse and were, in fact, torturous. Fay is quoted in the investigation as saying, "But what was actually being done at Abu Ghraib was they were placing people in their cells naked and they were - those cells they were placing them in, in many instances were unlit. No light whatsoever. And they were like a refrigerator in the wintertime and an oven in the summertime because they had no outside form of ventilation. And you actually had to go outside the building to get to this place they called the 'hole,' and were literally placing people into it. So, what they thought was just isolation was actually abuse because it's - actually in some instances, it was torturous. Because they were putting a naked person into an oven or a naked person into a refrigerator. That qualifies in my opinion as torture. Not just abuse."

Fay also says that a memo from then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorizing removal of clothing created a "mindset" in which that kind of humiliation was considered an "acceptable technique." He notes that even though Rumsfeld later rescinded the memo, not everyone received notice that the interrogation of naked prisoners was no longer permissible.

In addition to the documents made public today, the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has resulted in the release of thousands of pages of government documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees. The ACLU has created a search engine for the public to access the documents at www.aclu.org/torturefoia/search/search.html

The ACLU brought the FOIA lawsuit in October 2003 with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.

In addition to Singh, attorneys in the FOIA case are Lawrence Lustberg and Melanca Clark of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, P.C.; Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The documents are available online at: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/31303res20070815.html
(PDFs)

Washington's Political Plan for Pakistan

2007-08-18T07:35:00.000-05:00

A U.S.-brokered partnership between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to share (at least nominally) the leadership of Pakistan has been under construction for several months now. (See Report: Washington Arranged Musharraf-Bhutto Alliance)

As usual when the U.S. attempts grand international political initiatives, failure is pre-engineered into the blueprint.

Keeping Musharraf in power is the goal -- and the main weakness of the plan.

While Washington's main concern ... is keeping Pakistan on its side in the fight against terrorism, there is also a desire to help a key U.S. ally -- Musharraf -- in trouble.

The Bush administration believes an alliance with Bhutto could give Musharraf his best chance of defusing the domestic crisis and remaining president.

Diplomatic circles in Washington say the Musharraf-Bhutto deal is almost ready and can be announced soon. But the issue that can derail the arrangement -- Musharraf retaining his position as the army chief -- remains unresolved.

While addressing a gathering at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this week, Bhutto expressed her frustration at the general's reluctance to resolve this issue.

"Time is running out. Is it just talk, or is it going to turn into a walk?" she asked, adding it was important to conclude the negotiations this month because "we are risking our popularity even by having this dialogue."

A senior government minister in Islamabad called Bhutto's comments political posturing. He, however, conceded the president is thinking about the issue.

Musharraf and Bhutto met last month in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, to finalize a deal for power-sharing. Reports in the Pakistani media say not only did the United States arrange the deal, but a U.S. representative also attended the meeting as a moderator.

Officials in both Islamabad and Washington refused to comment on such reports but acknowledge Musharraf and Bhutto are talking to each other and the United States backs these talks.

Since early this month, Bhutto has been in New York apparently to spend some time with her husband who lives there. But she also has launched a major media offensive, sometimes giving half a dozen interviews a day, to explain why she, an opposition politician, is negotiating with a general.

"General Musharraf says and has committed himself to a Pakistan following a moderate path," she said. "To that extent, if we could get the moderate forces to work together for a transition to democracy I think, in the present circumstances, it would be helpful."

Sources in her Pakistan People's Party say Bhutto moved to New York also because this enables her to stay in touch with both Pakistani and U.S. officials while conducting indirect talks with Islamabad over the proposed deal.

The deal, if finalized, would allow her to return home, participate in the elections scheduled later this year, and then head a coalition government as prime minister.

But before she embarks upon this journey of political rehabilitation to a country she left in 1996 amid allegations of flagrant corruption and widespread kleptocracy, Musharraf has to change the constitution to accommodate her.

An amendment he made after toppling another elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in October 1999 bars a third term as prime minister. Both Bhutto and Sharif have had two terms each, though they never completed a full term of five years.

The government also has to drop corruption charges against her and assure her she will not be arrested if she returns.

In a recent interview, Bhutto listed some of the confidence-building measures she expects Musharraf to take to facilitate the deal, urging him to lift restrictions on political party leaders such as herself and grant "indemnity for all parliamentarians and for all holders of public office."

"For us and him to work together, there have to be these gestures," Bhutto said.

Even if such measures are taken, there will still be the issue of Musharraf retaining two positions simultaneously -- the president and the army chief.

For Bhutto to agree to work under a president who is also an army chief will be political suicide. She will have no power but will have to share the responsibility for all popular and unpopular measures the government takes, particularly in the fight against terrorism.

The U.S.-led war against terrorism is not popular in Pakistan. Actively pursuing this war will hurt her popularity. If she agrees to take this risk, the least she would expect is to have some real power, which current Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz does not have.

Aziz is a political nonentity. He is there because of Musharraf’s support, without which he cannot win even a local government seat from anywhere in Pakistan.

Bhutto, however, has a strong political base in all four provinces, which even years of anti-Bhutto campaigning by successive governments failed to erode.

Besides, Bhutto also knows Musharraf needs her more than she needs him to deal with the current political crisis, which started with the suspension of the chief justice two months ago and refuses to go away.

So she is unlikely to accept Musharraf both as president and the army chief. If Washington wants a deal between her and Musharraf, it will have to convince the general to quit the army and work under a prime minister as a civilian president.

The question is: Will Musharraf agree to do so? After all, in a British parliamentary system that Pakistan follows, the president has no power.

All indications are the United States is trying to help evolve a formula that distributes power between Musharraf and Bhutto.

This new arrangement, if finalized, will be different from the traditional British parliamentary system because it will have a distribution of power between the president and the prime minister.

Even if this arrangement is made, there is no guarantee it will succeed. Both Musharraf and Bhutto are strong-willed people not accustomed to taking orders. It will be particularly difficult for Musharraf, who has ruled Pakistan since 1999 as an autocrat, to share power with a civilian politician he has never respected.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is already exerting pressure upon Musharraf to step down at the end of his term, in accordance with that nation's constitution.

People in Washington and Islamabad who know a lot more about Pakistan than U.S. policymakers say that a complete return to civilian political rule wouldn't be the disaster that many here see. The religious parties do not have the influence to take control of the country.

The Pakistani public desires civilian secular control -- viz the protests over Musharraf's dismissal of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court recently.

The U.S. can't bring itself to avoid deciding who should lead the people of Pakistan. That doesn't mean we have the foresight to make the best picks.

U.S. Unilateralism Criticized

2007-08-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

Iran used the meeting of a regional security organization here on Thursday to lash out at American plans for a missile defense shield, while President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia took an indirect swipe at what he calls Washington's unilateral foreign policy.

Speaking at the one-day annual summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said the planned defense system, to be based in Eastern Europe, was "a threat to more than one country," asserting that it would affect "a large part of Asia and S.C.O. members."

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established six years ago, brings together Russia and China, as well as the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, under the banner of combating terrorism and fostering regional collaboration. Iran has observer status in the group.

This week the group is conducting joint military exercises in Chelyabinsk, Russia, involving more than 6,000 troops.

Beyond its security aspect, the organization has provided a forum for criticism of United States policies. At its 2005 meeting in Kazakhstan, members demanded that Washington provide a timetable for ending its military presence in Central Asia.

Without mentioning the United States directly, Mr. Putin called for a "multipolar" world order, in line with his frequent criticisms of what he considers the Bush administration's unilateral foreign policies. "Any attempts to solve global and regional problems unilaterally are hopeless," he said.

A joint statement at the conference's end said that "modern challenges and security threats can only be effectively countered through united efforts of the international community."

Analysts say the group hopes to become a counterweight to Western influence in the energy-rich and increasingly strategic Central Asian countries.

What unites the group's countries "are genuine common concerns about security, about border issues and about trade and energy," said Michael Hall, a Central Asia expert formerly with the International Crisis Group in Bishkek. "There is a certain sense of wanting to let the U.S. know that they're a force to be reckoned with."

Russia and China are eager to secure Central Asia's considerable energy reserves for their own use, and Russia wants to maintain pre-eminence in a region it has long considered within its traditional sphere of influence.

This week, officials at the China National Petroleum Corporation announced that China and Turkmenistan, the second-largest gas producer in the former Soviet Union, would form working groups to help supply China with 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually over 30 years.

Moscow has locked up long-term gas supply contracts with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in an effort to replenish its dwindling supplies, and it recently reached an agreement to pipe Turkmen gas through Russia.

The pipeline deal in particular was considered a commercial coup and a setback to the United States, which hopes to ship Turkmenistan's gas across the Caspian Sea to European markets.

White House Doesn't Want Petraeus To Testify in Public

2007-08-16T08:21:00.000-05:00

The administration is getting jittery about the prospect of the country hearing the unvarnished (congressionally mandated) testimony of Gen. Petraeus in September.

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.

White House officials did not deny making the proposal in informal talks with Congress, but they said yesterday that they will not shield the commanding general in Iraq and the senior U.S. diplomat there from public congressional testimony required by the war-funding legislation President Bush signed in May. ...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) told the White House that Bush's presentation plan was unacceptable. An aide to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said that "we are in talks with the administration and . . . Senator Levin wants an open hearing" with Petraeus.

Those positions only hardened yesterday with reports that the document would not be written by the Army general but instead would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials. ...

Petraeus and Crocker have said repeatedly that they plan to testify after delivering private assessments to Bush. U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad appeared puzzled yesterday when told that the White House had indicated that the two may not be appearing in public. They said they will continue to prepare for the testimony in the absence of instructions from Washington. "If anything, we just don't know the dates/times/or the committees that the assessment will be presented to," a senior military official in Baghdad said in an e-mail yesterday. ...

Speaking to reporters traveling with him in Iraq yesterday, Petraeus said he is preparing recommendations on troop levels while getting ready to go to Washington next month. He declined to give specifics.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end," Petraeus said, according to the Associated Press. "I think everyone understands that, by about a year or so from now, we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now. The question is how do you do that . . . so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going."

U.S. To Designate Iranian Revolutionary Guards "Terrorist" Group

2007-08-15T07:10:00.000-05:00

Robin Wright -- the chief Washington-based journalistic heavy lifter in the anti-Iran Information Operation -- has been tossed a bone by her "sources" and gets to break the news of an important development in the U.S./Iran confrontation.

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances. ...

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

The order allows the United States to block the assets of terrorists and to disrupt operations by foreign businesses that "provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists." ...

The main goal of the new designation is to clamp down on the Revolutionary Guard's vast business network, as well as on foreign companies conducting business linked to the military unit and its personnel. The administration plans to list many of the Revolutionary Guard's financial operations. ...

For weeks, the Bush administration has been debating whether to target the Revolutionary Guard Corps in full, or only its Quds Force wing, which U.S. officials have linked to the growing flow of explosives, roadside bombs, rockets and other arms to Shiite militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Quds Force also lends support to Shiite allies such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and to Sunni movements such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Although administration discussions continue, the initial decision is to target the entire Guard Corps, U.S. officials said. The administration has not yet decided when to announce the new measure, but officials said they would prefer to do so before the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly next month, when the United States intends to increase international pressure against Iran. ...

"They are heavily involved in everything from pharmaceuticals to telecommunications and pipelines -- even the new Imam Khomeini Airport and a great deal of smuggling," said Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Many of the front companies engaged in procuring nuclear technology are owned and run by the Revolutionary Guards. They're developing along the lines of the Chinese military, which is involved in many business enterprises. It's a huge business conglomeration." ...

Dozens of international banks and financial institutions reduced or eliminated their business with Iran after a quiet campaign by the Treasury Department and State Department aimed at limiting Tehran's access to the international financial system. ...

The administration's move comes amid growing support in Congress for the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, which was introduced in the Senate by Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) and in the House by Tom Lantos (D-Calif.). The bill already has the support of 323 House members.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

U.K. Parliament Report Says 'Surge' Will Fail

2007-08-14T07:33:00.000-05:00

This might be good to throw in the faces of some U.S. lawmakers in September when they inevitably swear that the "surge" is working.

The U.S. military "surge" in Iraq, which added 30,000 troops to quell an insurgency, probably will fail, a panel of lawmakers in the U.K. Parliament said.

"It is too early to provide a definitive assessment of the U.S. 'surge' but it does not look likely to succeed," the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee wrote in a report. Success "will ultimately ride on whether Iraq's politicians are able to reach agreement on a number of key issues."

The cross-party panel of lawmakers called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to set out a policy to promote reconciliation between rival political factions in Iraq.

The U.S. force in Iraq reached 162,000 soldiers last week, the most since the war begin in 2003. President George W. Bush faces a deadline to show progress made from his surge strategy by September, when General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, will give Congress an assessment.

The U.K. has been lowering its troop levels in the south of Iraq, from 46,000 at the peak of combat operations four years ago to 5,500 at the end of May.

The committee also attacked the international boycott of the Palestinian unity government between Fatah and the militant Hamas movement when it was formed in March. President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the unity government after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, effectively splitting Palestinian territories.

"All the boycott of the National Unity government did was to strengthen the extremists and undermine the moderates," committee chairman Mike Gapes said in an interview.

Russia is the only member of the Middle East Quartet of international mediators that maintains ties with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union.

The panel also criticized the government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair for refusing to call for an immediate cease-fire when Israel launched retaliatory attacks on Lebanon last year.

Paging Dr. West

2007-08-13T07:48:00.000-05:00

I bet the government is lamenting the loss of Dr. "Jolly" West right about now. He seemed to always be able to smooth over this type of flap.

Jose Padilla had no history of mental illness when President Bush ordered him detained in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda operative. But he does now.

The Muslim convert was subjected to prison conditions and interrogation techniques that took him past the breaking point, mental health experts say. ...

Padilla's treatment in the brig is classified as a state secret.

Ironically, no one knows this better than Padilla himself. When Hegarty, the psychiatrist, asked him about his interrogation in the brig, Padilla responded: "I can't talk about what happened to me because it is classified."

Although Padilla has been meeting with his Miami lawyers for more than a year and a half, he refuses to discuss his treatment in the brig in any detail.

The torture allegations made last year in the Miami court case were raised as a result of repeated sessions asking Padilla "yes or no" whether he'd endured the kinds of harsh interrogation tactics reported in the press. He reluctantly answered yes to some, and no to others. But his lawyers could pry no details or narrative from him.

They asked [forensic psychiatrist, Angela] Hegarty for help.

She spent days attempting to establish a rapport, days trying to get him to open up. "The first two hours were utterly useless each day. I got no data at all," Hegarty says. Eventually he would relax and talk about relatively minor subjects. When Hegarty tried to steer him toward the brig or the evidence in his criminal case "he would just stop, change the subject, and twitch," she said.

During her week-long effort, Hegarty would arrive each morning to discover Padilla once again unwilling to talk. She says the experience was like the movie "Groundhog Day," in which the same events repeat over and over. "The 22 hours I spent with him, it was like it never happened," Hegarty says. "It was chilling."

Grassian relates in his report that Padilla's mother found it emotionally difficult to visit her son in Miami because it involved observing his diminished mental condition. Padilla tried to reassure her that he was fine, that the government was treating him very well. At one point, Grassian says, Padilla suggested that his mother write directly to Bush to help her speed through red tape to arrange her next visit. The president was sure to help her out, Padilla assured his mother.

"It was utterly irrational," Grassian writes in his report. "After all, it was President Bush who had ordered him detained as an enemy combatant."

Padilla's mother became increasingly anxious. Finally she confronted her son: "Did they torture you?" she asked.

"He turned towards her, his face grimacing, his eyes blinking, and in panic and rage he demanded: 'Don't you ever, ever, ask that question again,' " the Grassian report says.

The Road To Damascus

2007-08-10T09:13:00.000-05:00

The RCMP yesterday admitted for the first time that it worked with the CIA during the Maher Arar affair. Suggestions of CIA involvement have been public since the Ottawa engineer provided convincing evidence he was flown to the Middle East on a CIA Gulfstream jet after his arrest in a U.S. airport, but yesterday was the first occasion there has been official confirmation to support his accusations.

Ottawa officials had insisted on keeping a lid on the fact that Canada was working with the Central Intelligence Agency on the case, arguing such confirmation would work against national security. There was no such compunction over citing assistance with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the government decided the CIA, a clandestine spy organization, deserved greater protection because of its different rules of engagement.

Canadian security officials suggest the reason the CIA was granted blanket protection was because of a cardinal rule in intelligence gathering - namely the third-party rule, whereby the work of foreign spies must not be compromised through public mention of their work. The FBI has routinely shared its work under established rules with Canadian police forces, but this was the first time RCMP officers involved in the Arar debacle had worked with the CIA and as a result, they argued it essential that a blanket ban be put in place.

The Syrian-Canadian was among five Canadian Arabs who were jailed and interrogated in Syria at various points between 2001 and 2003. Most had flown there voluntarily. But Mr. Arar arrived only after being sent to the Middle East in shackles, on a CIA Gulfstream jet, after his arrest in a U.S. airport. These detentions occurred during an almost perfect storm of fear and the rethinking of standard protocols.

Agents were picking up information about a "second wave" of al-Qaeda attacks. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney stated the CIA had to contemplate working on "the dark side." Certain Canadian agents came to believe walls that had separated their investigations from U.S. ones had come down.

And Syria, a pariah nation known for flouting human rights, saw an opportunity. During a brief thaw in relations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks in the United States, Damascus claimed to have provided valuable intelligence about an al-Qaeda bomb plot against a target in Ottawa - an apparent reference to statements procured from a Canadian suspect, Ahmad Abou El Maati, who now says he was tortured into false admissions.

Some U.S. officials, such as Syrian expert Flynt Leverett, have gone on record praising the information Damascus provided Washington in this period. Other U.S. security officials disagree. "That relationship never produced significant useful information," said Bruce Riedel, a Mideast expert who retired from the CIA last year.

Whatever the case, the thaw didn't last. During the 2003 Iraq war, Syria became the main entry point for fighters wanting to take on U.S. forces.

The Arar commission found that at one juncture, Canadian police directly sent questions to Syria to be put to one of the Canadian suspects.

"Sending someone to Syria is a pretty extreme solution to the problem of interrogation," Mr. Riedel said. The regime, he said, is well known to be "much less interested in information than they are in confession."

"They are not truth seekers, they are guilt seekers," added Mr. Riedel, now a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

"That should set off big red flags. You are asking for trouble and you are asking for Syrians to manipulate you. They [the Syrians] are not stupid. They know how to play a sucker when they see one."

The Hologram

2007-08-09T11:16:00.000-05:00

From a new piece by Joe Bageant:

But having been in the media business one way or another for almost 40 years, and having watched it increasingly take on a life of its own, I know that nothing of significance in the news is what it appears to be. This is not the result of some media conspiracy, mind you, but rather that the people working in the media have internalized the process so thoroughly they do not even know they are conditioned creatures in a larger corporate/state machine. Put simply, Katie Couric and the dumbshits grinding out your local paper actually believe they are in the news business. In today's system, everybody is a patsy for the new corporate global order of things -- the well-coiffed talking head, the brain dead audience, even the terrorists themselves. All play out their parts in our holographic image and information process. ...

Through advertising and marketing, the hologram combs the fields of instinct and human desire, arranging our wants and fears in the direction of commodities or institutions. No longer are advertising and marketing merely propaganda, which is all but dead. Digitally mediated brain experience now works far below the crude propaganda zone of influence, deep in the swamps of the limbic brain, re-engineering and reshaping the realms of subjective human experience.

Yet we are the hologram, because we created it. In a relentlessly cycling feedback loop, we create and project the hologram out of our collective national psyche. The hologram in turn manages our collective psyche by regulating our terrors, cravings and neurological passions through the production of wars, whores, politics, profits and manna. Like legions of locusts, we pray before its productive engines of commerce and under the shifting aurora borealis of the hologram's drama and spectacle. It is us. We are it. The psychology of the individual becomes irrelevant as the swarm relentlessly devours the earth.

Today's Anti-Iran Info Op Update

2007-08-08T09:07:00.000-05:00

The U.S. command in Baghdad is having a little trouble keeping it's message on target.

What can you expect when you have to simultaneously claim -- for two competing reasons -- that things are now getting better and that things are now getting worse.

As part of their "things are getting better" public affairs strategy, they have pointed to July's U.S. combat death toll as being the lowest in a year. You see, things have to be getting better by September so that Gen. Petraeus can come to Washington and paint an optimistic picture to secure the necessary funding to continue the war.

But at the same time, the administration has dictated that the military and OGA conduct an information operation against Iran, in preparation for an attack that may or may not be coming. Herein lies today's "enhanced" allegation against Iran.

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials.

"July was an all-time high," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in an interview, referring to strikes with such devices. ...

American intelligence says that its report of Iranian involvement is based on a technical analysis of exploded and captured devices, interrogations of Shiite militants, the interdiction of trucks near Iran's border with Iraq and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iran and in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah.

Some critics of Bush administration policy, saying there is no proof that the top echelons of Iran’s government are involved, accuse the White House of exaggerating the role of Iran and Syria to divert attention from its own mistakes.

According to American military data, penetrator attacks accounted for 18 percent of combat deaths of Americans and allied troops in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006. The number of such attacks declined in January, and some American officials thought at that time that this might be a response to their efforts to publicly highlight the allegations of an Iranian role.

But in recent months such attacks have risen steadily.

The July figure is roughly double the number for January. The total for July is also 50 percent higher than in April, when there were 65 penetrator attacks, according to American military officials.

The White House Carefully Chooses Their Words

2007-08-07T07:43:00.000-05:00

As per recent habit -- administration critics of the NSA extra-legal warrantless spying program (CATCH-ALL) are missing the forest for the trees.

The truth of the matter is that the NSA warrantless spying program is so much bigger and all-encompassing than is generally known that the media and the public cannot get their minds around the idea.

This past weekend's legislation -- although it legalizes many overly intrusive measures and was passed due to the cowardice of the majority Democrats -- doesn't address the scope of the spying, which will continue to be conducted outside the legal constraints of FISA.

The White House maintained Monday that the surveillance measure signed into law by President Bush over the weekend did not give the government any sweeping new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.

The chief concern of the White House centered on an assertion by Democrats, civil rights advocates and news organizations that the legislation in effect gave legal authorization to the National Security Agency's once-secret wiretapping program. [Apples and oranges - ed.] That program, approved by Mr. Bush soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, permitted the agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on Americans' international e-mail messages and telephone calls, an operation that provoked intense debate about its legality.

The new measure, signed into law by the president on Sunday, allows intelligence officials to eavesdrop without a warrant on international phone calls or e-mail messages to or from an American inside the United States, but only if they conclude that the "target" is outside this country. The legislation gives broad discretion to the attorney general and the director of national intelligence, rather than a judge, in deciding how those complicated surveillance decisions are made.

Critics of the measure, which expires in six months, maintain that whether or not an American on United States soil is considered the "target" of an eavesdropping operation, the effect is the same: an end run around constitutional rights. But administration officials heatedly disputed that interpretation. ...

They said the legislation did not authorize "a driftnet" aimed at eavesdropping on large volumes of phone calls and e-mail messages inside the United States. But they declined to discuss in detail the N.S.A.'s broader efforts tracing and analyzing the patterns of American communications — who is calling and e-mailing whom — without actually listening to or reading the content of the conversations. Those broader data-mining activities were part of a heated dispute within the administration that led senior Justice Department officials in 2004 to refuse at first to certify the legality of the N.S.A. operations and to threaten to resign in protest over their continuation.

LMAO.

The "driftnet" most certainly is there. It is just not addressed in last weekend's legislation.

The first sift of the still secret part of the NSA program captures, inter alia all U.S. telephone and email traffic.

All of it.

That's why it is known as CATCH-ALL.

Suspected Leakers of CATCH-ALL Program Targeted

2007-08-06T07:29:00.000-05:00

There are other -- much more outrageous than detailed in this article -- activities being conducted in the attempt to prevent some national security officials from disclosing what they know about this administration's illegalities in the conduct of the "war on terror."

Including Black Bag jobs.

The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.")

A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest.

Sleight-of-Hand Trick

2007-08-03T08:26:00.001-05:00

Now we know why the White House has recently gotten its panties all in a bunch to get FISA changed.

A judge has ruled that an important part of the U.S. COMINT program is illegal.

But there is a deception story being floated by the administration involving this "revelation."

A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president's spying powers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision. ...

The practical effect has been to block the NSA's efforts to collect information from a large volume of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New York and California. Both Democrats and Republicans have signaled they are eager to fix that problem through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). ...

Gaining access to the foreign communications at issue would allow the NSA to tap into the huge volume of calls, faxes and e-mails that pass from one foreign country to another by way of fiber-optic connections in the United States.

"If you're calling from Germany to Japan or China, it's very possible that the call gets routed through the United States, despite the fact that there are geographically much more direct routes to Asia," said Stephan Beckert of Telegeography Inc. ...

Since March, the administration has quickly tried to build a case for the legislation, while concealing from the public and many in Congress a key event that appears to have driven the effort.

Do not be fooled by the administration about this. The spying being discussed here is not one of the important aspects of the extra-legal NSA domestic warrantless program that has brought the heat down upon the White House.

Intercepting "foreigner to foreigner while both outside the USA" communications has never required a FISA warrant and is not illegal.

The routing of so much of this traffic through the United States is not just an accident of technology. It is a marriage of convenience. The intelligence community assumed that it would be able to take advantage of their traditional legal ability to spy on foreigners and that building the modern telecom backbone in the USA and using it for international transit traffic would make their lives easier.

A judge obviously thought otherwise.

The politics of this "revelation" is important. The White House is already conflating this matter with the illegal NSA CATCH-ALL program that was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005. Sleight-of-hand always requires something in the decoy hand. Todays news is the decoy.

DOD Cannot Ensure That U.S.-Funded Equipment Has Reached Iraqi Security Forces

2007-08-02T08:09:00.000-05:00

If we can't keep track of the weapons provided so far to the Iraqi army, I wonder how we are going to manage now that we are arming and equipping a new hodge-podge of Sunni tribesmen to fight against "Al Qaeda in Iraq."

From a new GAO report (25 page PDF):

Since 2003, the United States has provided about $19.2 billion to develop Iraqi security forces. DOD recently requested an additional $2 billion to continue this effort. Components of the Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), including the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), are responsible for implementing the U.S. program to train and equip Iraqi forces. ...

As of July 2007, DOD and MNF-I had not specified which DOD accountability procedures, if any, apply to the train-and-equip program for Iraq. Congress funded the train-and-equip program for Iraq outside traditional security assistance programs, which, according to DOD officials, allowed DOD a large degree of flexibility in managing the program. These officials stated that, since the funding did not go through traditional security assistance programs, the DOD accountability requirements normally applicable to these programs—including registering small arms transferred to foreign governments—did not apply. Further, MNF-I does not currently have an order or orders comprehensively specifying accountability procedures for equipment distributed to the Iraqi security forces.

DOD and MNF-I cannot fully account for Iraqi security forces’ receipt of U.S.-provided equipment. Two factors led to this lapse in accountability. First, MNSTC-I did not maintain a centralized record of all equipment distributed to the Iraqi security forces from June 2004 until December 2005. At that time, MNSTC-I established a consolidated property book system to track the issuance of equipment to the Iraqi security forces and attempted to recover past records. Our analysis found a discrepancy of at least 190,000 weapons between data reported by the former MNSTC-I commander and the property books. Former MNSTC-I officials stated that this lapse was due to an insufficient number of staff and the lack of a fully operational network to distribute equipment, among other reasons. Second, since the beginning of the program, MNSTC-I has not consistently collected supporting documents that confirm when the equipment was received, the quantities of equipment delivered, or the Iraqi units receiving the equipment. Since June 2006, the command has placed greater emphasis on collecting this documentation. However, our review of the 2007 property books found continuing problems with missing and incomplete records. Further, the property books consist of extensive electronic spreadsheets, which are an inefficient data management tool given the large amount of data and limited personnel available to maintain the system. MNSTC-I plans to move the property book records from a spreadsheet system to a database management system by summer 2007. ...

Although the former MNSTC-I commander reported that about 185,000 AK-47 rifles, 170,000 pistols, 215,000 items of body armor, and 140,000 helmets were issued to Iraqi security forces as of September 2005,18 the MNSTC-I property books contain records for only about 75,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80,000 items of body armor, and 25,000 helmets.19 Thus, DOD and MNF-I cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces as of September 22, 2005. Our analysis of the MNSTC-I property book records found that DOD and MNF-I cannot fully account for at least 190,000 weapons reported as issued to Iraqi forces as of September 22, 2005.

CATCH-ALL Program Much Broader Than Known, FISA in Crosshairs

2007-08-01T07:44:00.000-05:00

The media and the American people have no idea as to the shockingly inclusive nature of the data being captured by the NSA in the warrantless surveillance program.

For now, dribs and drabs about the spying are trickling out.

As T.S. Eliot wrote: "Mankind cannot bear too much reality."

The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of . . . intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more."

The administration is now trying to gut FISA, the law that they have been breaking since 9/11. They are claiming that modern technology requires a change in the law.

The administration says that digital technology and the globalization of the telecommunications industry have created a legal quandary for the intelligence community. Some purely international telephone calls are now routed through telephone switches inside the United States, which means such "transit traffic" can be subject to federal surveillance laws requiring search warrants for any government eavesdropping.

Under the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, the N.S.A. eavesdropped on the transit traffic without seeking court approval. But in January, the administration placed the program back under the FISA law, which meant warrants were required for surveillance of the transit traffic.

This is pretty extreme:

The Bush administration is pressing Congress this week for the authority to intercept, without a court order, any international phone call or e-mail between a surveillance target outside the United States and any person in the United States.

The proposal, submitted by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to congressional leaders on Friday, would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for the first time since 2006 so that a court order would no longer be needed before wiretapping anyone "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." ...

"They're hiding the ball here," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office. "What the administration is really going after is the Americans. Even if the primary target is overseas, they want to be able to wiretap Americans without a warrant." ...

The proposal would also allow the NSA to "sit on the wire" and have access to the entire stream of communications without the phone company sorting, said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.

"It's a 'trust us' system," she said. "Give us access and trust us."

The administration's apologists who justify the serial violation of FISA by claiming that modern technology renders the written law obsolete are lying.

The FISA law is cut and dried. It says domestic spying requires a warrant. President Bush has admitted authorizing the NSA to spy on Americans in the United States without a warrant.

It is exactly the same as trying to argue your way out of a ticket for running a stop sign by claiming that the advanced technology that makes up your spiffy new car means that you no longer have to stop at that prominently placed red octagon that reads STOP.

Report: Washington Arranged Musharraf-Bhutto Alliance

2007-07-31T09:28:00.000-05:00

A civilian president with the power to handle national security and foreign affairs and a prime minister as chief executive is the new Washington and London formula for regime change in Pakistan.

This has been agreed to in principle by President General Pervez Musharraf and former premier Benazir Bhutto, Asia Times Online has confirmed. The arrangement for the United States' key ally in the "war on terror" is intended to lead to a jacking up of the fight against terror with zero tolerance.

Musharraf and Bhutto met last week in the United Arab Emirates - where Bhutto lives in exile - and agreed on the most important issues for a new political setup. This includes lifting a ban on a person serving a third term as premier (Bhutto has served twice - 1988-90 and 1993-96) and allowing her to return to Pakistan without threat of legal action - she faces corruption charges.

After eight years in power since his bloodless military coup in 1999, Musharraf finally appears to have been convinced that the time has come for him to shed his uniform and return the country to a semblance of democratic normalcy. ...

The talks between Musharraf and Bhutto were the result of a prolonged process in which Washington played a pivotal role. Nevertheless, the direct involvement of a British Foreign Office official, who had served in Pakistan, played an important role in resolving some of the terms of the agreement.

The deal has been finalized at a critical juncture of the "war on terror" as Pakistan is under immense pressure to carry out a powerful military assault against al-Qaeda and Taliban bases in Pakistani territory.

New US legislation aims to tie aid for Pakistan to its performance in fighting terrorism. Pakistan has received more than US$10 billion in US aid since 2001. The administration of President George W Bush has also made it clear that it will take matters into its own hands if necessary and conduct its own raids inside Pakistan to tackle militants. ...

Pakistani analysts speculate that Musharraf might appoint the present director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant-General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kiyani, to replace him as chief of army staff. Musharraf would then become a civilian president. There might be a legal issue here, though. Currently, government servants need a two-year break before they can participate in politics.

Another problem is the army itself. A significant section of the military resents Musharraf for siding with the US in the "war on terror", as this meant initially the severing of ties with the Taliban, whom Pakistan nurtured into power in Afghanistan in 1996. Subsequently, the military has been forced to launch highly unpopular offensives in the tribal areas, and has alienated the jihadist groups it had previously courted. ...

Some doubt ... that the Musharraf-Bhutto tango will work.

"This idea of a civilian president coordinating with a chief of army staff is not possible. Once Musharraf steps down as military chief, no chief of army staff would listen to him," retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, former Multan corps commander and director general of the ISI, told Asia Times Online.

Pakistan might get its regime change - but not exactly as planned in the corridors of power in Washington.

Prepping the Domestic Battlespace For September

2007-07-30T06:48:00.000-05:00

Today brings a couple of examples of the ramped-up pro-Iraq war Perception Management campaign going into the critical September Petraeus report time frame.

First the inspiring story of a wounded soldier's re-enlistment:

Marine Cpl. Gareth Hawkins extended his enlistment to go on a third deployment to Iraq so his battalion would not be left in the hands of rookies.

Twenty days after he arrived in Iraq for the third time, a roadside bomb exploded beneath his 7-ton truck, leaving Hawkins dazed and his heel shattered.

Minutes later, his pain held at bay by morphine, the 23-year-old asked to complete one piece of unfinished business before being rushed via ambulance to undergo surgery at the hospital at the Marine air base in Taqaddum.

He wanted to reenlist for another four-year hitch.

A photographer was nearby and took a picture of the ad hoc ceremony: Hawkins on a stretcher with his right hand in the air as officers administered the reenlistment oath.

The photograph has made the rounds of military and political opinion websites and publications, including the conservative National Review.

With both the Army and Marine Corps laboring to persuade combat veterans to stay in the service, the picture may be assuming iconic status.

The photograph is in the office of Sgt. Maj. Carlton W. Kent, the Marine Corps' top enlisted leader, who may use it as he tries to persuade other young Marines to stay on.

Today's other -- and more prominent -- Domestic Influence offering is an op-ed in the New York Times attesting to the remarkable eleventh hour military turnaround of U.S. fortunes in Iraq:

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done. ...

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq). ...

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

The "Winner Complex"

2007-07-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

Here's one guy who is clearly not a believer in "American exceptionalism."

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, accused the United States of having a "winner complex" after the end of the cold war, which, he said, led to recklessness in international relations, the Interfax news agency reported. "The U.S. is always anxious to win," Mr. Gorbachev told a news conference in Moscow. "The fact that they suffer this disorder, the winner complex, is the main reason why things are so complicated in the world." He criticized the "current U.S. administration" for trying to build a new empire in the world and said other countries would not accept that arrangement. He said that claims of victory after the cold war led the United States to feel its hands were untied in world affairs. "We all lost the cold war," he said, "and we all benefited from its end."

Sending a Message to the Saudis

2007-07-27T06:37:00.000-05:00

The Saudis tried to PSYOP high-level U.S. officials regarding the Maliki government in Iraq.

Turnabout is fair play. This morning, U.S. national security officials are sending a message to the Saudis, via the pages of the New York Times.

During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq's prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr's militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America's most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, "That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not."

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.

Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.

The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.

In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia, the officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed signal to a top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course.

The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents shown to Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they had obtained them from sources in Iraq. "Maliki wouldn't be stupid enough to put that on a piece of paper," one senior Bush administration official said. He said Mr. Maliki later assured American officials that the documents were forgeries. ...

Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council -- which includes Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman -- to give financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last December, Mr. Gnehm said.

The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an Op-Ed page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr. Khalilzad, now the United States ambassador to the United Nations. "Several of Iraq's neighbors -- not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United States -- are pursuing destabilizing policies," Mr. Khalilzad wrote. Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was referring specifically to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Today's piece doesn't even have to count as "public criticism." The use of anonymous sources conveyed in a mainstream media outlet insulates the administration from responsibility for this riposte -- surely part of an Information Operations strategy aimed at our erstwhile Saudi allies.

GAO Iraq War Report Due in September

2007-07-26T08:15:00.000-05:00

We haven't heard the war supporters talk about this.

There will be a government report on the Iraq war issued shortly before the much anticipated Petraeus/Crocker report that will work as a checksum for the accuracy of administration claims of progress.

In a little-noticed addition to legislation requiring the July and September assessments on Iraq from the White House, Congress mandated a third report from the agency that has quietly done the most work to track the missteps, miscalculations, misspent funds and shortfalls of both the United States and Iraq since the 2003 invasion: the Government Accountability Office. ...

The 15-person team includes an array of specialists, lawyers, economists, foreign policy experts and statisticians. Most have been working on Iraq since June 2003, when the first GAO reports were mandated. They work on a day-to-day basis with the departments of State and Defense, but the GAO makes independent assessments.

The GAO report is due Sept. 1 -- two weeks before the administration's document. So it may set a standard that makes it harder for the administration to attach caveats to its answers, as outside analysts say it did in the July report.

The administration's assessments are more nuanced, with grading based on whether Iraq is making "satisfactory progress" or "unsatisfactory progress" on the 18 political, military and economic benchmarks. The GAO is mandated to give a more straightforward "yes" or "no" on whether the benchmarks have been achieved, said Joseph A. Christoff, director of the GAO's International Affairs and Trade Team, which will write the report.

Christoff anticipates blunt critiques in the GAO report, based on benchmarks his team has long been monitoring as part of its oversight of Iraq.

On Iraq's military, for example, the administration's July report said Iraq is making "satisfactory progress" on providing three brigades for the new U.S.-led Baghdad security plan.

But Christoff said the GAO is probing deeper. "For us, it's not just an issue of showing up, but showing up with equipment and logistical support so they can move on their own, and then being effective," he said. ...

On Iraq's economy, the July [White House] report said Baghdad is progressing satisfactorily in allocating $10 billion for development to its ministries and provinces, much of it for electricity and oil industry infrastructure. But Christoff is again skeptical. "If the past is any indication, it will also be very difficult to meet this benchmark," he said.

The need for development in the two sectors is critical. The oil-rich country last year spent $2.6 billion to import gasoline, diesel fuel for electricity and kerosene for cooking, because it cannot refine enough oil, Christoff said. Also, U.S. officials acknowledge, Iraq managed to allocate only about a quarter of the $10 billion in development funds during the first six months of 2007 -- much of which has not been spent.

"When you look at what is needed and what the goals are, there's a huge gap," Christoff said. And the gap between the administration's and the GAO's assessments on these central issues is likely to be reflected in other benchmarks, he said.

Lounging Around The Pool in Damascus

2007-07-25T07:07:00.000-05:00

Methinks that these Sunni insurgents have somewhat unrealistic expectations of their prospects in a post-occupation Iraq.

The convention of Iraqi insurgents was scheduled to take place Monday at the resort-like Sahara Hotel outside Damascus but, within hours of the plenary session actually starting, the Syrian government suddenly canceled the summit. However, high-level representatives of much of the Iraqi nationalist insurgency, remained at the venue informally negotiating and laying out a framework for what a post-U.S. Iraq would look like.

Late Monday evening, dozens of conference attendees — a group drawn primarily from the ranks of former military officers, Ba'athist officials, and the Sunni insurgency — gathered for a catered dinner beside the hotel's outdoor pool. Several, including a high-ranking former military officer now overseeing Ba'athist resistance activities in his region, talked openly, if carefully, about strategy, although some asked that their names be withheld. ("We are not afraid," said the former Iraqi army colonel, as waiters delivered the main course of steak and carrots, "but we do not want to give the [Shi'a] militias justification to kill us.") They said victory was in the air; one delegate celebrated the looming U.S. withdrawal over Diet Pepsi and watermelon slices. "This gathering here is unprecedented. When this conference occurs, it will be historic," said Sarmed Abdel Karim, founder of the popular iraq4all website and a non-insurgent who calls the gathering one of "the Iraqi opposition." "It will be the cornerstone of a new Iraq."

"The American project in Iraq is now precarious," said Nizar al-Samarai, a conference spokesman and former official in the Saddam Hussein regime. "We are sure of our victory now, so we decided to meet." Samarai and others described a new kind of resistance activity — a more deliberate and organized coordination between the political and military elements of the insurgency, as they look past guns to governance. "One arm now knows what the other is doing," he said.

The broad strokes of some their demands were familiar, but many were now relayed in greater detail. Attendees said they remained committed to ending the U.S. military presence "by all means" and eliminating all vestiges of American influence, including the current political process.

Once the majority of American troops have left, the alliance plans to throw out the constitution, dissolve the parliament, cancel all resolutions issued from the Bremer era on, and disband the existing security forces and U.S.-trained Iraqi army divisions. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad, they said, would have to close — "as in Saigon. With helicopters on the roof" said Samarai — until Washington recognized a new, resistance-led Iraqi governing council, and offered compensation to all individuals and organizations affected by the war. Under the new leadership, all Iraqi citizens who worked for or cooperated with the current, coalition-backed government would be arrested. A "reconciliation council", drawn in large part from the ranks of the armed insurgency, would then draw up plans for a permanent "technocratic" government -- which would immediately seek criminal charges and file civil suits against the U.S. government and major American war supporters in international court.

The summit had been described by organizers as the most ambitious gathering of the movement to date. It came within weeks of a decision by several Sunni groups — including the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Iraqi Hamas and Ansar al-Sunna — to unite in advance of an expected American military withdrawal, and meet in Damascus to unveil their new alliance. Conference organizers said that this week's event fell victim to logistical hurdles. Less than 200 of the 600 people invited showed up, a result of coalition roadblocks and security measures as well as the fear of reprisal from government forces after their return. But more than one delegate said that these obstacles had been less problematic for most no-shows than remaining philosophical differences on a range of issues, from foreign relations to power-sharing.

Indeed, thorny organizational issues were evident. Despite the conference's claims of national unity, attendees were overwhelmingly Sunni and mostly secular. A few smaller groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq — representing, said several delegates, a hated "foreign presence" — were not included. (Delegates present insisted outside organizations and governments had not sponsored the event or individual delegates). Although Shi'a and even some Kurdish leadership were allegedly invited, even organizers admitted the response had been underwhelming. (In fact, a conference spokesman said one of the non-negotiable items on the agenda was the rejection of autonomous regions within Iraq, a popular Kurdish demand that is viewed as the first step to eventual independence.)

"Less than 200" invitees showed up.

It is almost certain that there were more intelligence assets (from various countries) hanging around than insurgents.

The bill for the hotel wasn't paid in Iraqi Dinars.

Joint Campaign Plan For U.S. Operations in Iraq Through End of 2009

2007-07-24T08:22:00.000-05:00

The U.S. military does not have even a rudimentary logistical plan for an orderly phased withdrawal from Iraq, but they do have a written plan for operations extending through the end of 2009.

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. "Sustainable security" is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.

That new approach put a premium on protecting the Iraqi population in Baghdad, on the theory that improved security would provide Iraqi political leaders with the breathing space they needed to try political reconciliation.

The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the "surge" in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008. But it nonetheless assumes continued American involvement to train soldiers, act as partners with Iraqi forces and fight terrorist groups in Iraq, American officials said.

The goals in the document appear ambitious, given the immensity of the challenge of dealing with die-hard Sunni insurgents, renegade Shiite militias, Iraqi leaders who have made only fitful progress toward political reconciliation, as well as Iranian and Syrian neighbors who have not hesitated to interfere in Iraq's affairs. And the White House's interim assessment of progress, issued n July 12, is mixed.

But at a time when critics at home are defining patience in terms of weeks, the strategy may run into the expectations of many lawmakers for an early end to the American mission here.

The plan, developed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior American commander, and Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador, has been briefed to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. William J. Fallon, the head of the Central Command. It is expected to be formally issued to officials here this week.

The plan envisions two phases. The "near-term" goal is to achieve "localized security" in Baghdad and other areas no later than June 2008. It envisions encouraging political accommodations at the local level, including with former insurgents, while pressing Iraq's leaders to make headway on their program of national reconciliation.

The "intermediate" goal is to stitch together such local arrangements to establish a broader sense of security on a nationwide basis no later than June 2009.

"The coalition, in partnership with the government of Iraq, employs integrated political, security, economic and diplomatic means, to help the people of Iraq achieve sustainable security by the summer of 2009," a summary of the campaign plan states. ...

To develop the plan, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker assembled a Joint Strategic Assessment Team, which sought to define the conflict and outline the elements of a new strategy. It included officers like Col. H. R. McMaster, the field commander who carried out the successful "clear, hold and build" operation in Tal Afar and who wrote a critical account of the Joint Chiefs of Staff role during the Vietnam War; Col. John R. Martin, who teaches at the Army War College and was a West Point classmate of General Petraeus; and David Kilcullen, an Australian counterinsurgency expert who has a degree in anthropology.

State Department officials, including Robert Ford, an Arab expert and the American ambassador to Algeria, were also involved. So were a British officer and experts outside government like Stephen D. Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The team determined that Iraq was in a "communal struggle for power," in the words of one senior officer who participated in the effort. Adding to the problem, the new Iraqi government was struggling to unite its disparate factions and to develop the capability to deliver basic services and provide security.

Extremists were fueling the violence, as were nations like Iran, which they concluded was arming and equipping Shiite militant groups, and Syria, which was allowing suicide bombers to cross into Iraq.

Like the Baker-Hamilton commission, which issued its report last year, the team believed that political, military and economic efforts were needed, including diplomatic discussions with Iran, officials said. There were different views about how aggressive to be in pressing for the removal of overtly sectarian officials, and several officials said that theme was toned down somewhat in the final plan.

The plan itself was written by the Joint Campaign Redesign Team, an allusion to the fact that the plan inherited from General Casey was being reworked. Much of the redesign has already been put into effect, including the decision to move troops out of large bases and to act as partners more fully with the Iraqi security forces.

The overarching goal, an American official said, is to advance political accommodation and avoid undercutting the authority of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While the plan seeks to achieve stability, several officials said it anticipates that less will be accomplished in terms of national reconciliation by the end of 2009 than did the plan developed by General Casey.

The plan also emphasizes encouraging political accommodation at the local level. The command has established a team to oversee efforts to reach out to former insurgents and tribal leaders. It is dubbed the Force Strategic Engagement Cell, and is overseen by a British general. In the terminology of the plan, the aim is to identify potentially "reconcilable" groups and encourage them to move away from violence.

New CBO Report on Bringing Back The Draft

2007-07-23T08:04:00.000-05:00

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office tackles some of the questions that lawmakers will be faced with next Spring when the requirements of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally exhaust the manpower we have under the current all-volunteer military.

Titled The All-Volunteer Military: Issues and Performance (49 page pdf), the question of whether the United States should re-institute the draft is examined:

CBO explored the implications of using draftees to eliminate the end-strength shortfall that would result if voluntary accessions fell or were restricted to less than last year’s high level (either slightly or significantly) and if continuation rates declined to a mix of the rates from 2005 and 2006. ...

With a draft, more recruits would be needed to reach a given end strength than is the case in an all-volunteer force. Under current law, individuals would be inducted for two years of service, substantially less than the initial obligations that are typical in today’s AVF (although many service members leave the military before the end of their initial obligation because of medical problems, poor performance, or other reasons). Those shorter obligations mean that a draft system results in greater turnover, which necessitates a larger number of accessions. ...

Another implication of the draft is that the force would become more junior and less experienced than the current AVF. Because inductees serve for a shorter time than volunteers, having larger numbers of draftees relative to volunteers would necessarily result in a force with fewer average years of service. In scenario 4, more than half of the Army’s enlisted personnel (51 percent) would have fewer than three years of experience by 2012, compared with less than 45 percent of enlisted personnel in an allvolunteer force. Usually, greater accumulated knowledge and skills come with increased experience. As noted above, research has shown that military personnel with more than four years of service are 1.5 times more productive in certain jobs than personnel in their first term. Another aspect of seniority is that certain military positions require advanced pay grades, which generally can be filled only by more-experienced personnel. Because most draftees leave after completing a two-year obligation, a draft might affect the services’ ability to perform those functions efficiently. ...

Savings on Pay and Benefits.

Because a draft Army would experience higher turnover at the end of the first term of service, it would evolve into a force with lower average seniority than the current volunteer force. Total spending on basic pay—and on other types of pay or benefits that depend on members’ length of service or rank—would decline. In addition, a smaller proportion of entering soldiers would remain in the Army until retirement, so less money would have to be accrued for military retirement pay and retiree health care. ...

Savings on Recruiting

In 2006, the Army spent $353 million on enlistment bonuses, $583 million on recruiting and advertising, and another $700 million on pay and benefits for recruiters. Because it would probably still need some volunteers, the Army would be unlikely to eliminate enlistment bonuses or advertising under a draft. Nevertheless, those spending levels represent upper bounds on the possible savings on recruiting. ...

Effective Time for Draftees to Be Available for Deployment

Aside from the larger number of accessions and less senior force implied by a draft, there are concerns about how long draftees would be available for deployment. On entering the military, new recruits receive individual basic training (boot camp) and occupational training before being assigned to a unit. A unit nearing its deployment time also takes part in a series of collective training events, ranging from small-team training to battalion-size unit training. For occupations in combat-related fields, such as infantry and air defense, individual basic and occupational training lasts between 3.5 months and 7 months. Unit training requires another 6 months, CBO estimates. Thus, allowing one month for transit (and assuming that training for recruits and units could be scheduled efficiently to minimize time spent waiting for training), CBO estimates that it would take 10.5 months to 14 months after recruits entered the military before they would be fully trained and available for deployment.

Those times would be identical for draftees and volunteers. However, because draftees are assumed to serve for two years (as prescribed in current law), some inductees assigned to occupations that required the longer training times would not be available for a full one-year deployment. That limitation would exacerbate problems for the Army, which recently increased the typical deployment length from 12 months to 15 months. Personnel in the AVF, by comparison, serve longer terms and can be deployed for longer intervals—or multiple times during a single enlistment contract—for most occupational specialties.

Equity Considerations

In CBO’s draft scenarios, no more than 165,000 young people would be drafted annually. That number represents only a small portion of the recruit-age population in the United States—about 2 million young men turn 18 each year, and the total (male and female) population between the ages of 18 and 24 numbers roughly 30 million. Given that relatively few individuals would need to be drafted, who should be inducted to ensure that the system was equitable?

The random lottery required by current law would seem to yield a representative cross section of young men. However, the remaining system of exemptions or deferments would affect the representativeness of young people serving in the military. All of those aspects of current draft law would require legislation to change. Presumably, lawmakers would want to avoid the public dissatisfaction and mistrust that was evident during some of the nation’s previous experiences with conscription. However, if DoD had a ready supply of high-quality personnel available through the draft, it might wish to tighten AFQT (Armed Forces Qualification Test) standards. Alternatively, the nation might consider certain civilian occupations or activities of such importance for domestic health and security that people engaged in them could be exempt from military service. Such actions, however, would most likely affect the representativeness of draftees. Another equity-related consideration is the role of women in the military. A draft that was instituted under current law would cause the percentage of women in the services to decline (assuming that women did not volunteer at greater rates than in the recent past). Some observers might argue for legislation that would broaden the draft to include the registration and induction of women, despite existing restrictions that bar women from serving in units primarily engaged in ground combat.

Not to mention the most important benefit to the nation of re-instituting the draft.

Asinine military adventures would be constrained by the desire of many people of draft age (and their parents) not to sacrifice their lives (or their children) to further some politician's lunatic plan.

LMAO

2007-07-22T08:17:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Post's review of a new book, LEGACY OF ASHES: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner:

To compare some of the agency's antics revealed in this book to the Keystone Kops is to do violence to the memory of Mack Sennett, who created the slapstick comedies. My personal favorite is an episode in Guatemala in 1994, when the CIA chief of station confronted the American ambassador, Marilyn McAfee, with intelligence, as she recalled, that "I was having an affair with my secretary, whose name was Carol Murphy." The CIA's friends in the Guatemalan military had bugged McAfee's bedroom, Weiner reports, and "recorded her cooing endearments to Murphy. They spread the word that the ambassador was a lesbian." The CIA's "Murphy memo" was widely distributed in Washington. There was only one problem: the ambassador was married, not gay and not sleeping with her secretary. " 'Murphy' was the name of her two-year-old black standard poodle. The bug in her bedroom had recorded her petting her dog."

Propaganda and the Invisible Government

2007-07-21T08:12:00.000-05:00

Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented. It is a history few journalist talk about or know about, and it began with the arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called "professional journalism" was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment — objective, impartial, balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as Robert McChesney put it so well, "entirely bogus".

For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories — domestic and foreign — you'll find they're dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honorable exception. Think of the role Judith Miller played in the New York Times in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it played a powerful role in promoting an invasion based on lies. Yet, Miller's parroting of official sources and vested interests was not all that different from the work of many famous Times reporters, such as the celebrated W.H. Lawrence, who helped cover up the true effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August, 1945. "No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin," was the headline on his report, and it was false. ...

One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?" ...

Last year, in his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the playwright Harold Pinter made an epoch speech. He asked why, and I quote him, "The systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought in Stalinist Russia were well known in the West, while American state crimes were merely superficially recorded, left alone, documented." And yet across the world the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power. "But," said Pinter, "You wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest." Pinter's words were more than the surreal. The BBC ignored the speech of Britain's most famous dramatist. ...

Harold Pinter's subversive truth, I believe, was that he made the connection between imperialism and fascism, and described a battle for history that's almost never reported. This is the great silence of the media age. And this is the secret heart of propaganda today. A propaganda so vast in scope that I'm always astonished that so many Americans know and understand as much as they do. We are talking about a system, of course, not personalities. And yet, a great many people today think that the problem is George W. Bush and his gang. And yes, the Bush gang is extreme. But my experience is that they are no more than an extreme version of what has gone on before. In my lifetime, more wars have been started by liberal Democrats than by Republicans. Ignoring this truth is a guarantee that the propaganda system and the war-making system will continue.

Bush's Priorities in Iraq Help Jihadist Movement

2007-07-20T07:20:00.000-05:00

Completely apart from the issue of the U.S. military information operation that conflates Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda [see The "Al Qaeda in Iraq" Conflation as an Info Op], the war in Iraq does have a crucial effect upon the worldwide Islamist terror network.

From a new piece by Robert Parry on why George W. Bush is Osama Bin Laden's best recruiter and most valuable enabler.

Over the past six years, the wily and ruthless leaders of al-Qaeda came to understand that Bush was an invaluable poster boy. The more he was viewed as the "big crusader," the more they could present themselves as the "defenders of Islam." The al-Qaeda murderers moved from the fringes of Muslim society closer to the mainstream.

So, in fall 2004, with Bush fighting for his political life against Democrat John Kerry, bin Laden took the risk of breaking nearly a year of silence to release a videotape denouncing Bush on the Friday before the U.S. election.

Bush’s supporters immediately spun bin Laden's tirade as an "endorsement" of Kerry and pollsters recorded a jump of several percentage points for Bush, from nearly a dead heat to a five- or six-point lead. Four days later, Bush hung on to win a second term by an official margin of less than three percentage points.

Boomerang effect.

The last-minute intervention by bin Laden – essentially urging Americans to reject Bush – had the predictable effect of driving voters to the President. After the videotape appeared, senior CIA analysts concluded that ensuring a second term for Bush was precisely what bin Laden intended.

"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President," said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret "strategic analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day's news, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.

Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years "parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. ... Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."

Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush’s heavy-handed policies were serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.

"Certainly," Miscik said, "he would want Bush to keep doing what he's doing for a few more years."

As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. "An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched," Suskind wrote.

Even Bush recognized that his struggling campaign had been helped by bin Laden. "I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election interview about the videotape. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush."

Bin Laden, a well-educated Saudi and a keen observer of U.S. politics, appears to have recognized the same point in cleverly tipping the election to Bush.

Prolonging the War

Al-Qaeda's leaders understood that a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq might mean a renewed assault on them as well as the loss of their cause celebre for recruiting new jihadists. With Bush ensconced for a second term, that concern lessened but didn't entirely go away.

According to a captured July 9, 2005, letter, attributed to al-Qaeda's second-in-command Zawahiri, al-Qaeda leaders still fretted over the possibility that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could touch off the disintegration of their operations, as jihadists who had flocked to Iraq to battle the Americans might simply give up the fight and go home.

"The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," said the "Zawahiri letter," according to a text released by the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

In another captured letter, dated Dec. 11, 2005, a senior al-Qaeda operative known as "Atiyah" wrote that "prolonging the war [in Iraq] is in our interest."

Pakistan Peril

2007-07-19T06:23:00.000-05:00

It takes a pretty dim understanding of human nature -- not to mention other embarrassing deficiencies -- to suppose that we could get away with intervening militarily in yet another Muslim country (and the one that has nukes, at that).

Washington may be considering other options to achieve its objective in Pakistan - including direct action by US military units operating from across the border with Afghanistan. There are precedents for such a policy, which have been highly controversial in Pakistan, including the use of armed drones to attack selected targets.

Whether or not a tougher United States policy would have an effect, the readiness to adopt it reflects spreading awareness in Washington that the campaign against the al-Qaida movement is simply not working. The new national-intelligence assessment report shows that after nearly six years of the war on terror, a vigorous al-Qaida network may be in a position to plan assaults inside the United States. This is in the face of a massive military operation in Iraq; major commitments in Afghanistan; tens of thousands of detentions; operations in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere; a huge financial commitment; and nearly 30,000 US soldiers and marines killed or injured.

In these circumstances, a serious rethink of policies might be expected. Instead, a further escalation seems more likely (see U.S. Readies Overt Attacks Within Pakistan) - rather like the much-vaunted surge in Iraq, but applied to western Pakistan. There are two pointers in particular to the way the American side of the strategy there might proceed.

The first is the construction of a large US military base at the Ghaki pass, just inside the Afghan border with Pakistan. This is a substantial addition to the two major US facilities elsewhere in Afghanistan - at Kandahar and Bagram - and looks remarkably well situated to conduct operations in Pakistan.

The second is the decision to deploy an entirely new weapons system, an armed drone known as the MQ-9 Reaper. Smaller reconnaissance drones such as the MQ-1 Predator have become major features of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some of these have been equipped with two Hellfire missiles.

The Reaper is on a different scale altogether. For a start, it is four times heavier than a Predator and is the size of a fighter aircraft. Moreover, it is heavily armed and able to carry up to fourteen Hellfire missiles. It has twice the speed of the Predator yet can cruise at much lower speeds, loitering over potential target areas for up to fourteen hours at a time (see Charles J Hanley, "Robot Air Attack Squadron Bound for Iraq", AP, 16 July 2007).

This pilotless aircraft is launched under the control of local crew, but once in the air each drone is operated by two other "crew" based thousands of miles away at Creech air-force base in Nevada, connected by a real-time satellite link. At least nine of the robotic aircraft have already been built by General Atomics; sixty or more are likely to be deployed, initially in Afghanistan in the next few months and in Iraq from 2008.

From a US perspective such automated warfare would have the advantage that US aircrew would not have to overfly Pakistan: they could merely direct the Reapers to hit targets anywhere in western Pakistan from the safety of Nevada.

The exact political impact of such operations in Pakistan is difficult to gauge; but past experience indicates that they would provoke a very strong public reaction, possibly sufficient to destabilize a Pervez Musharraf regime already beset by many other problems. Yet it now looks possible that the Bush administration is prepared to take the risk of losing a leader it still regards as a major ally. The predicament of the war on terror is such that almost anything goes, even the possibility of violent regime change in Pakistan. A fundamental rethink remains out of sight.

Institutional Imperatives Trump Ephemeral Priorities

2007-07-18T08:17:00.000-05:00

Shortly after President Nixon tried to get the CIA to take the blame for the Watergate break-in in 1972, he began to suffer from a series of bewildering (to him) political misfortunes.

Some things never change.

Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details of secret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.

Swiss Senator Dick Marty, author of a Council of Europe report on the jails, said senior CIA officials disapproved of Rumsfeld's methods in hunting down terrorist suspects, and had agreed to talk to him on condition of anonymity.

"There were huge conflicts between the CIA and Rumsfeld. Many leading figures in the CIA did not accept these methods at all," Marty told European Parliament committees, defending his work against complaints it was based on unnamed sources.

The report issued last month said the Central Intelligence Agency ran secret jails in Poland and Romania, with the complicity of those governments, and transported terrorist suspects across Europe in secret flights.

Poland and Romania have repeatedly denied hosting CIA prisons on their soil.

"People in the CIA felt these things were not consonant with the sort of intelligence work they normally do," Marty said.

He said he had based his findings largely on conversations with "high officials of the CIA (and) highly placed European office-holders, who for different reasons, often honorable reasons, were ready to explain what had happened."

Since he had no power to summon witnesses, subpoena documents or search buildings, he was forced to rely on such evidence, Marty said.

New NIE On Terrorist Threat to U.S. Homeland

2007-07-17T06:49:00.000-05:00

This morning, the office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified version of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) titled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland (7 page pdf):

Key Judgments

We judge the US Homeland will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years. The main threat comes from Islamic terrorist groups and cells, especially al-Qa’ida, driven by their undiminished intent to attack the Homeland and a continued effort by these terrorist groups to adapt and improve their capabilities.

We assess that greatly increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts over the past five years have constrained the ability of al-Qa’ida to attack the US Homeland again and have led terrorist groups to perceive the Homeland as a harder target to strike than on 9/11. These measures have helped disrupt known plots against the United States since 9/11.

• We are concerned, however, that this level of international cooperation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the threat diverge.

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safehaven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

• As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.

We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to enhance its capabilities to attack the Homeland through greater cooperation with regional terrorist groups. Of note, we assess that al-Qa’ida will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland. In addition, we assess that its association with AQI helps al-Qa’ida to energize the broader Sunni extremist community, raise resources, and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks.

We assess that al-Qa’ida’s Homeland plotting is likely to continue to focus on prominent political, economic, and infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the US population. The group is proficient with conventional small arms and improvised explosive devices, and is innovative in creating new capabilities and overcoming security obstacles.

• We assess that al-Qa’ida will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability.

We assess Lebanese Hizballah, which has conducted anti-US attacks outside the United States in the past, may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or Iran.

We assess that the spread of radical—especially Salafi—Internet sites, increasingly aggressive anti-US rhetoric and actions, and the growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West’s Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States. The arrest and prosecution by US law enforcement of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the United States— who are becoming more connected ideologically, virtually, and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement—points to the possibility that others may become sufficiently radicalized that they will view the use of violence here as legitimate. We assess that this internal Muslim terrorist threat is not likely to be as severe as it is in Europe, however.

We assess that other, non-Muslim terrorist groups—often referred to as "single-issue" groups by the FBI—probably will conduct attacks over the next three years given their violent histories, but we assess this violence is likely to be on a small scale.

We assess that globalization trends and recent technological advances will continue to enable even small numbers of alienated people to find and connect with one another, justify and intensify their anger, and mobilize resources to attack—all without requiring a centralized terrorist organization, training camp, or leader.

• The ability to detect broader and more diverse terrorist plotting in this environment will challenge current US defensive efforts and the tools we use to detect and disrupt plots. It will also require greater understanding of how suspect activities at the local level relate to strategic threat information and how best to identify indicators of terrorist activity in the midst of legitimate interactions.

Intelligence Reports Say Abbas is in Trouble

2007-07-16T06:45:00.000-05:00

The precarious position of Abbas (and Fatah) is no secret.

But it is good to now have it on record that the White House is receiving accurate assessments of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza.

That still doesn't mean that when the "West Bank first" strategy blows up in our face, the administration will not trot out the old "nobody could have predicted ..."

Several intelligence assessments have warned that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the man U.S. policymakers hope can help salvage the Middle East peace process, may not be politically strong enough to achieve that goal, according to U.S. officials.

The assessments have also cautioned that his opponents in Hamas -- the Islamic movement that is being shunned by Abbas, Israel and the United States -- will not be easily marginalized.

The White House is now betting that Abbas, replenished by the return of aid from the West and tax revenue withheld by Israel, can create a stable enclave in the West Bank and resume peace negotiations with Israel. ...

The administration intends to continue politically isolating the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Abbas dismissed the Hamas government, which was democratically elected and has refused to recognize Israel, after it routed his security forces in Gaza.

The "West Bank first" strategy is the White House's biggest and potentially riskiest policy departure in its dealings with the Palestinian Authority since it was created in 1994. The administration is moving into uncharted territory in trying to aid Abbas even though he and his Fatah political party control just a portion of the Authority.

Intelligence reports over the past month, since Hamas's seizure of the Gaza Strip effectively split the Palestinian Authority into two parts, have assessed Abbas's position as vulnerable even in the West Bank. Hamas's popularity has dropped slightly since the split, but a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research taken a week after the fissure said that Hamas was still more popular than Fatah among more than one-quarter of West Bank Palestinians.

Hamas, which is supported by Iran, swept the three largest West Bank cities in elections 18 months ago.

With the de facto help of Israeli troops still in the West Bank, Fatah may be able to purge or at least reduce the Hamas military presence in the West Bank, but Abbas faces a difficult challenge in limiting its political presence, especially in Hebron and Nablus, according to officials who described the intelligence assessments on the condition that they not be named.

The Palestinian president does not control all armed groups, including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, that are linked to Fatah, and he may not be able to stem all terrorist plots, the intelligence reports have also warned. Hamas members and other extremists have significant incentive to target Israel from the West Bank to undermine new peace efforts -- and Abbas's ability to build a Hamas-less state, the assessments suggest.

"Fatah faces significant challenges in effectively governing the West Bank. Israeli military operations are the major factor restricting Hamas activity, and Abbas can at best influence, not control, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade forces that are the power on the street in several towns," said a senior intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the assessments are classified.

Intelligence officials have cautioned that Hamas, cut off in Gaza from the outside world under a strategy supported by Israel and the Bush administration, could even enhance its position among Palestinians. The assessments warn that many may blame Israel or outsiders for their plight. ...

"The challenges confronting Abbas are significant. He must stymie further support for Hamas, reverse his government's reputation for corruption and demonstrate that it can provide greater security and economic opportunity in the West Bank," said a U.S. official who has seen the array of intelligence reports.

"Hamas is working hard on a parallel track to show that it can effectively govern and represent the interests of the Palestinian people. Should Abbas fail and Hamas succeed, the implications are problematic for Abbas's internal constituencies and external supporters," the official said. ...

U.S. intelligence has warned that Abbas will have difficulty following through on what he has promised for the past 18 months and what most Palestinians want from him domestically: to clean house and rebuild Fatah with a younger generation of politicians. Broad reform -- by the Fatah-dominated emergency government or within Fatah itself -- is unlikely to happen anytime soon, analysts have warned.

In the nearly three years since he took over after Yasser Arafat's death, Abbas has not been able to exert enough authority to command or produce action. "He doesn't have the political legitimacy of either Arafat or [Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed] Yassin," said Bruce Riedel, a recently retired CIA Middle East analyst now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center.

Despite Hamas's money problems, the intelligence assessments note that the party intends to be taken seriously and is trying to institute smoother local rule in Gaza.

"On the one hand, a West Bank-first strategy is a commendable effort to make lemonade out of lemons. But it also seems to be an extension of the mistaken belief that sufficient efforts to isolate and pressure Hamas will make Hamas go away. Hamas will not go away," said Paul Pillar, a former chief Middle East analyst on the National Intelligence Council. "Hamastan in Gaza has tremendous potential to rebound to everyone's disadvantage -- not just to the Palestinians', but also the Israelis'."

Riedel and Pillar both said they believe that the Bush administration is not listening closely to the intelligence community on the Palestinian crisis.

Searching For Scapegoats

2007-07-15T06:59:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows that Bush loves to place the blame for fuckups anywhere except his Oval Office.

The thinking has been that the president is planning to spread the blame for the loss of the Iraq war between the unresponsive Iraqi government, and the obstructionist Democrats.

In the newest development in the blame game, it appears that the pie is large enough to be split as well with the U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

With opposition to Bush's Iraq strategy escalating on Capitol Hill, the president has sought, at least rhetorically, to transfer some of the burden of an unpopular war to his top general in Baghdad, wielding Petraeus as a shield against a growing number of congressional doubters. In speeches and meetings, the president has implored his critics to wait until September, when Petraeus is scheduled to deliver a much-anticipated assessment of the U.S. mission in Iraq. ...

Some of Petraeus's military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. "The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration," one retired four-star officer said.

Bush has mentioned Petraeus at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences, often setting him up in opposition to members of Congress.

"It seems to me almost an act of desperation, the administration turning to the one most prominent official who cannot act politically and whose credibility is so far unsullied, someone who is or should be purely driven by the facts of the situation," said Richard Kohn, a specialist in U.S. military history at the University of North Carolina. "What it tells me, given the hemorrhaging of support in Congress, is that we're entering some new phase of the end game."

In his public comments, Bush has not leaned nearly as heavily on the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, Petraeus's political counterpart in Baghdad. At his news conference Thursday, the president mentioned Petraeus 12 times but Crocker only twice, both times in his prepared statement.

Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, a skilled strategist, concluded that the president is sending the message that Iraq is "a purely military problem." The lesson, he said, may be that "the military action and the political objectives are parting company." That is, he explained, the United States may make some progress by fighting insurgents and training Iraqis, but that won't affect the Iraqi leaders' ability to achieve reconciliation.

But there was general agreement that the president's reliance on Petraeus puts the general in a vulnerable position, both with the administration and with Congress. ...

"This is an administration that wants to blame the generals," (Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official) said.

It is not unusual for presidents to duck behind generals when wars go bad, Kohn said. Previous examples, he said, include President Harry S. Truman relying on Gen. Omar Bradley and the other members of the Joint Chiefs to counter the impact of his split with Gen. Douglas MacArthur over the Korean War, and President Lyndon B. Johnson bringing Gen. William Westmoreland back to address Congress in 1967 to respond to the growing antiwar movement.

An Unnecessarily Embellished Narrative

2007-07-14T07:20:00.000-05:00

Investigating the drug trade in Mexico is doubtlessly a risky undertaking.

But there is no way in hell that Mexican traffickers are going to be assassinating American journalists inside the United States.

This bogus threat was made to disincline American reporters from looking too deeply into the Narco-Political Complex which has deep roots in the U.S. and Mexican governments.

The San Antonio Express-News, a 230,000-circulation daily, this week withdrew its U.S.-Mexico border reporter after learning of what appears to be an unprecedented plan to assassinate American journalists who frequently write about drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

Sources have told several Texas newspapers that hit men from Los Zetas, a group of former Mexican military officers who operate as the Gulf cartel's assassins, may have been hired to cross into the United States and execute American reporters. Word of the threat shattered the widely held perception here that foreign journalists are somehow shielded from violent retribution in a nation that is now second only to Iraq in deaths of journalists.

"We are not immune," wrote Eloy Aguilar and Dolly Mascareñas in a statement sent Friday to fellow members of the Foreign Correspondents Association in Mexico. "We have a very confused and violent situation in Mexico, with the government fighting drug cartels on one side and suspected guerrilla groups on the other. . . . An incident involving a U.S. or other foreign journalist could be used by all groups to create more confusion."

More than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the past six years, but only one -- freelancer and activist Brad Will, who was shot to death during teacher protests last year in Oaxaca -- was American. Most of the killings are believed to be related to coverage of an ongoing war between drug cartels. Last year, drug gangs were suspected of firing automatic weapons and throwing a grenade into the newsroom of Nuevo Laredo's El Mañana newspaper, seriously injuring one reporter.

Express-News Editor Robert Rivard, a former Central America bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, said in an interview Friday that steps have been taken to conceal the location of his former border correspondent, Mariano Castillo.

Castillo wrote nearly 100 stories about cartels, crisscrossing the border from the newspaper's bureau in Laredo, Tex., for the past 4 1/2 years as drug violence escalated. His first piece about cartels, in late 2003, was headlined "Mexico town erupts into a battle zone; Grenades, machine guns roar south of the border." In his last front-page article, which ran in May, Castillo exposed the existence of a "shadowy and violent group that calls itself the 'Gente Nueva,' or New People -- and authorities don't want to talk about it."

For now the paper's border bureau, which is a 2 1/2-hour drive from San Antonio, sits vacant. Rivard is grappling with a challenge faced every day by his counterparts south of border -- how to cover a region where his reporters are targets.

"It's a dilemma," Rivard said. "On the one side, no story is worth a reporter's life; on the other side, you don't want to back down from telling readers about an important story."

Somebody must fear that journalists are getting too close to the nexus of corruption that runs the Mexican drug trade.

If they had confined their warning to possible dangers to reporters in Mexico, they would have been fine.

But they overplayed their hand by unnecessarily embellishing the narrative.

The Right Shade Of Lipstick For This Pig

2007-07-12T07:43:00.000-05:00

A widely anticipated White House report on Iraq, set for release today, argues that the Baghdad government has made "satisfactory" progress toward nearly half of the political and military goals sought by Congress, while acknowledging that an equal number remain "not satisfactory," an administration official said yesterday.

The report, ordered by lawmakers as an interim assessment of President Bush's troop-increase strategy, identifies some positive movement in eight of the 18 congressional benchmarks, most of them related to military issues; finds insufficient improvement in eight others, mainly related to political reconciliation; and judges mixed results in the final two, the official said.

The administration's assessment comes the day after U.S. intelligence experts offered an overwhelmingly negative view of military and political conditions in Iraq, saying that Iraqi forces will remain incapable of taking charge of security for years to come and that deepening sectarian political divides remain the largest impediment to progress. ...

The upcoming report is the first of two -- the second will come in September -- that Congress ordered the White House to produce when it passed war funding legislation he requested this spring. The legislation said that if Bush could not certify progress on each of the 18 goals, he would have to offer changes in strategy or risk a reduction in funding. ...

Officials stressed that the report does not claim that any of the benchmarks have been fully met, only that in some cases there has been forward movement. "It divides about 50-50," said an administration official who was not authorized to speak about the assessment on the record before Bush releases it.

For instance, the report describes as "not satisfactory" the Iraqi government's progress toward enacting a law governing the distribution of oil revenue, an area of deep division among Iraqi factions. But it says the government, as promised, sent additional military brigades to Baghdad to help bolster security.

The findings will also cite what the White House considers positive indicators outside the original benchmarks, such as the cooperation between U.S. forces and tribal sheiks in Anbar province against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, a recent drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, and signs of normal life in the capital, such as amusement parks, markets and professional soccer leagues.

Aides expect Bush to speak publicly about the report, which runs about 25 pages, and to argue that the additional U.S. troops need to be given more time because the last of them arrived just a few weeks ago. ...

Meanwhile, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, senior intelligence officials said there has been no meaningful positive change in Iraq since January, when a starkly pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate warned that even if security improved, violent sectarian divisions threatened to destroy the government.

Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence and chief of the National Intelligence Council, which wrote the January estimate, said that assessment did not change. While the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made "halting efforts to bridge the divisions and restore commitment to a unified country . . . it has made limited progress on key legislation," such as the oil revenue law and a range of power-sharing measures.

"Communal violence and scant common ground between Shias, Sunnis and Kurds continues to polarize politics," Fingar said yesterday. Even the majority-Shiite bloc that Maliki heads, he said, "does not present a unified front" and has continued to deteriorate in recent months. Meanwhile, the provision of essential services seen as crucial in building support for the government, including electricity and oil production, remains below prewar levels, he said. Some have declined over the past six months.

"The analysis that the community made in January . . . appears to be borne out by events since then," he said. "That assessment focused on the imperative for reducing levels of violence in the country as a prerequisite for beginning to restore confidence among the competing, fractured body politic and the groups in the political system." While the increase in U.S. troops is "having an effect, it has not yet had a sufficient effect on the violence, in my judgment, to move the country to a place that the serious obstacles to reconciliation can be overcome," Fingar said.

"It will be difficult and time-consuming to bridge the political gulf when violence levels are reduced, and they have not yet been reduced significantly," he said, in what he called his "most optimistic projection."

Retired Maj. Gen. John R. Landry, also a member of the intelligence council, said there have been some improvements in the Iraqi army, although much less so with the Iraqi police, who are charged with holding urban areas. But Iraqi security forces remain "ridden with a certain degree of sectarian infiltration" and lack the logistics and support capabilities that would allow them to take over from U.S. forces in most of the country, he said. ...

Asked about the threat of an Iranian takeover of Iraq, which Bush has frequently cited as a possible outcome if U.S forces withdraw, Fingar said "it will be difficult for Iran to hold Iraq in its sway." While many Iraqi Shiites have close ties with Iran, he said, they have very different views about governance and religion.

Initial Benchmark Assessment Report July 12, 2007 (25 page PDF)

Red Mosque Backlash Beginning

2007-07-11T06:32:00.000-05:00

There is a bit of debate over whether Gen. Musharraf's order to storm the Red Mosque will help or hurt his position at home.

Some observers are claiming that the Pakistani strongman has shown needed resolve and the nation will gain stability from a more aggressive strategy against Muslim fundamentalists.

Analysts say Musharraf's degree of success in rehabilitating his political image with a forceful stand against Islamic militants will depend in part on the final toll in the mosque conflict; the extent to which the slain cleric, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, is embraced as a martyr; and whether there is a significant backlash from the country's many extremist Islamist groups, which in the past have proved capable of staging suicide attacks.

"These events could enfeeble or embolden him," Samir Puri, a defense analyst at Rand Europe, said of Musharraf, an army general who seized power eight years ago. "If he is seen to have been decisive and as having acted in the interests of maintaining law and order, this will emphasize his claim, and the army's, to being the custodians of the nation." ...

Pakistani authorities, who in recent months have restricted media coverage of protests triggered by Musharraf's suspension of the country's reform-minded chief justice, limited journalists' access to the scene of the fighting, keeping them several hundred yards away. Journalists also were denied access to hospitals where wounded were taken.

Over the last year, as Al Qaeda and the Taliban have regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas, Musharraf has come under pressure from the Bush administration to rein in Islamic militants, who are believed to retain close ties to Pakistan's military intelligence establishment.

Analysts said it was too soon to tell whether the mosque assault presaged a wider crackdown.

Rand is fielding a large roster of experts on the question:

Some believe the assault on the Red Mosque shows a turnabout, with the government acknowledging that extremism has gotten out of hand. "There is a realization that monsters develop ideas of their own," says Najmuddin Shaikh, a former foreign secretary of Pakistan.

Others suggest that there could be more pragmatic motivations, like self-preservation. "It is to [Musharraf's] advantage to be viewed as taking a stand against extremism," says Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at Rand Corp., a research group in Washington. "There may be a political intent in doing this."

Yet the need for continued action is pressing, say Dr. Jones and others. Since Muslim extremists were rousted from Afghanistan in 2001, Pakistan's border areas – once loosely governed by a patchwork of tribes – have become a breeding-ground for global terrorism.

"[Intelligence agencies] and the Army are not able to control militants in that area," says Jones. "It is no longer a tribal area; it is a religious extremist area." ...

Indeed, news of the mosque raid prompted violent protests in such remote regions. Militants and students from madrassahs burned and looted the offices of the French Red Cross and Care International in one district of Northwest Frontier Province on Tuesday. Army and paramilitary troops had to be called to stabilize the situation.

In Peshawar, there are those with their doubts about the government's intentions, too. "Musharraf is doing all this to please the Americans," says Muhammad Arshad, a graduate from a religious seminary. "He is killing fellow Muslims to earn dollars."

There is concern with what actions the Islamists will undertake in retribution for Musharraf's move against the well-connected [see yesterday's post] mosque.

(A) religious leader who had been part of previous negotiations said the government was to blame for the failure of the talks and had made a hasty decision to conduct the raid, a decision it would later regret. "First it was one Red Mosque in Islamabad," said Maulana Abdul Majeed Hazarvi. "Now you will find Red Mosques everywhere." ...

On Tuesday, there was evidence that a backlash had already begun. In the North-West Frontier Province, bands of armed young men shut down a major highway, and religious leaders called for demonstrations elsewhere.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad urged American citizens to limit their movements in the northwestern city of Peshawar, the main gateway to the tribal areas.

U.S. Reportedly Behind Musharraf Crackdown on Red Mosque

2007-07-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

Unsurprisingly, it is being reported that the U.S. embassy pressured Musharraf to give no quarter to the holdouts at the extremist mosque/madrassa complex in Islamabad.

A little appreciated factoid is that the Red Mosque happens to be the house of worship for many top Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officials.

Musharraf -- who overnights in military barracks for security purposes -- will now have to be even more wary of reprisals following the violent end to the mosque siege.

A last-minute intervention by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf ended nine hours of negotiations seeking a peaceful end to the siege of the radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad.

Apparently saying he was "heavily under duress from his allies", the president in the early hours of Tuesday instead ordered in the military to end the seven-day saga. Unconfirmed reports even say that Musharraf personally led the assault, along with Corps Commander Rawalpindi Lieutenant-General Tariq Majid. The media were barred from the mosque's immediate vicinity.

Asia Times Online contacts believe that Musharraf was referring to Washington, which has in the past few months stepped up pressure on its partner in the "war on terror" to take action against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and foreign militants inside Pakistan.

When the siege of Lal Masjid began a week ago, the administration of US President George W Bush was fulsome in its praise that something was being done, as the mosque is a known supporter of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and even a safe haven for militants.

According to the contacts, Musharraf said, "They want targets in Operation Silence," referring to the code name for Tuesday's final assault on the mosque. That is, the militants should be arrested or killed. ...

Although the offensive in Pakistan's federal capital - which has captured international headlines - is finally playing out, one question remains. Who is the real director of the drama? Observers and analysts believe there might be several - one running the show separately in Lal Masjid, and others pulling strings from the outside. If so, there can be no clean, simple end to the saga.

The next episode has already begun in Batkhaila, North West Frontier Province, where the pro-Taliban Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Moham has clashed with the military and seized all highways in the area, including on the Silk Road leading to China.

It is only a matter of time before the US-led "war on terror" formally crosses the Pakistani border. ...

Lengthy talks before the military assault led to an agreement - at about 2am - on a safe passage for Ghazi. This was couched in terms of an "honorable arrest" - brief protective custody.

The high-profile negotiating team included the Grand Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Rafi Usmani; Minister of Religious Affairs Ejaz ul-Haq; and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, a former premier and president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

At this point, Ghazi said he would consult with his colleagues, and Hussain went off to confer with Musharraf for final approval of the agreement. Musharraf had earlier approved safe passage as an option. ...

Asia Times Online contacts claim that the situation was complicated by the sudden appearance of a delegation of members of Parliament belonging to the government's coalition partners, the Muttahida Quami Movement. They are believed to have met with a US official at his official residence, after which the situation changed within an hour.

No Search Warrant or Wiretap Order Needed To Monitor Internet Use, Court Rules

2007-07-09T08:03:00.000-05:00

Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of pen registers in 1979, saying callers have no right to conceal from the government the numbers they communicate electronically to the phone companies that carry their calls.

Federal law requires court approval for a pen register. But because it is not considered a search, authorities do not need a search warrant, which would require them to show that the surveillance is likely to produce evidence of a crime.

They also do not need a wiretap order, which would require them to show that less intrusive methods of surveillance have failed or would be futile.

In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages.

Likewise, the court said, although the government learns what computer sites someone visited, "it does not find out the contents of the messages or the particular pages on the Web sites the person viewed."

The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling.

Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of operating a laboratory in Escondido that manufactured the drug ecstasy.

Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents' tracking of his computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence.

Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said.

The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The great political marketplace of ideas is the Internet, and the government has unbridled access to it."

Government Deftly Wielding Secrecy To Elude Scrutiny Of NSA Extra-Legal Warrantless Surveillance Program (CATCH ALL)

2007-07-07T06:27:00.000-05:00

The program is secret, so the plaintiffs were unable to prove they had been spied upon.

And in the next NSA extra-legal surveillance cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals, the government will be deploying the "State Secrets" privilege to bar discovery of relevant details of the program.

A divided federal appeals court yesterday dismissed a case challenging the National Security Agency's program to wiretap without warrants the international communications of some Americans, reversing a trial judge's order that the program be shut down.

The majority in a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled on a narrow ground, saying the plaintiffs, including lawyers and journalists, could not show injury direct and concrete enough to allow them to have standing to sue.

Because it may be impossible for any plaintiff to demonstrate injury from the highly classified wiretapping program, the effect of the ruling was to insulate it from judicial scrutiny. Thus, the program's secrecy is proving to be its best legal protection.

The majority did not rule on the merits of the case, though the appeals court judge who wrote the lead opinion, Judge Alice M. Batchelder, said the case had provoked "a cascade of serious questions." She listed five, including whether the program violated a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, along with the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution. ...

A number of other challenges to the program have been consolidated before a federal judge in San Francisco, and the federal appeals court there, the Ninth Circuit, will hear an appeal from one of the judge's preliminary rulings next month.

Some of the plaintiffs in that case contend that they have been personally injured by the program, which if proved could give them standing to sue, even under yesterday's ruling. Those plaintiffs, an Islamic charity and two of its lawyers, say they have seen a classified document confirming that their communications were actually intercepted. ...

The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We are deeply disappointed," the group's legal director, Steven R. Shapiro, said in a statement, "by today's decision that insulates the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails."

Mr. Shapiro said the A.C.L.U. was weighing its options, including the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court.

Yesterday's action in the 6th Circuit means that the principal remaining legal challenge to the NSA surveillance program is a group of cases pending before a U.S. District Court judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California. The primary issue before that appeals court, differing somewhat from that in the Michigan case, is whether the administration may claim that a privilege covering state secrets precludes the litigation.

Hearts and Minds

2007-07-06T07:04:00.000-05:00

After more than five years of increasingly intense warfare, the conflict in Afghanistan reached a grim milestone in the first half of this year: U.S. troops and their NATO allies killed more civilians than insurgents did, according to several independent tallies.

The upsurge in deaths at the hands of Western forces has been driven by Taliban tactics as well as by actions of the American military and its allies.

But the growing toll is causing widespread disillusionment among the Afghan people, eroding support for the government of President Hamid Karzai and exacerbating political rifts among NATO allies about the nature and goals of the mission in Afghanistan.

More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month.

In some instances, it was difficult to determine whether the dead were combatants or noncombatants. But in many other cases, there was no doubt that the person killed was a bystander to war. ...

By late June, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, working with local rights groups, had counted 314 civilian deaths at the hands of Western-led forces and 279 people killed by the Taliban and other militants. But that figure did not include at least 45 civilian deaths reported by local officials last weekend in Helmand province's Gereshk district.

Separate counts by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Associated Press differed slightly, but also indicated that more civilians were killed by Western troops than by militants during the first half of 2007.

On June 23, in response to the deaths of more than 100 noncombatants in a single week that were blamed on Western artillery or airstrikes in southern Afghanistan, President Karzai unleashed an angry call for caution by U.S. and NATO forces.

"Afghan life is not cheap, and it should not be treated as such," the Afghan president told reporters in Kabul.

Aides said Karzai believed that his language, the sharpest to date on the subject, was the only way to get the attention of Western policymakers after repeated appeals had gone unanswered.

Neither NATO nor U.S. forces keep a tally of civilian deaths, but Thomas said the military did not dispute the figures cited by Karzai. All sides, however, acknowledge that counting casualties is an inexact science.

Because Taliban fighters do not wear military uniforms, they can be as difficult to identify in death as in life. Much of the fighting takes place in remote, rugged areas that are difficult for independent investigators to reach.

Iraqi Insurgent Group Was Behind 9/11 Attacks, Bush Announces

2007-07-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Bush is getting really desperate now.

President Bush equated the war in Iraq on Wednesday with the U.S. war for independence. Like those revolutionaries who "dropped their pitchforks and picked up their muskets to fight for liberty," Bush said, American soldiers were also fighting "a new and unprecedented war" to protect U.S. freedom.

In a reprise of speeches he delivered throughout the 2006 congressional campaign, the president said the threat that emerged on Sept. 11, 2001, remained today and "a major enemy in Iraq is the same enemy that dared attack the United States on that fateful day."

Bush knows goddamn good and well that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is the adopted name of an Iraqi insurgent group (albeit with foreign fighters) and is not Osama Bin Laden's "Al Qaeda" (9/11), yet he is intentionally conflating the two for domestic propaganda purposes.

A security expert I know in Washington puts it this way: "If a group of Iraq insurgents had taken the name "The Boy Scouts of America" instead of "Al Qaeda in Iraq", I doubt that the president would be claiming that the Boy Scouts of America were behind attacks on our soldiers over there."

It wouldn't be as easy to blame them for 9/11, either.

Also, more fearmongering from the Crim-in Chief:

In an Independence Day address before members of the National Guard and their families, the president again painted a dire portrait of the consequences of pulling out of Iraq, asserting as he has before that "terrorists and extremists" would try to strike inside the United States.

"If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done, the terrorists we are fighting would not declare victory and lay down their arms. They would follow us here, home," Bush told a crowd of about 1,000 gathered at a West Virginia Air National Guard maintenance hangar.

Bush's presidency has always relied upon the ignorance of the American people. It has been a good bet so far.

But as when someone relies too much upon any type of artifice, Bush has lost the perspective necessary to avoid chronically pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The Coalition of the Billing

2007-07-04T06:55:00.000-05:00

There is talk in Washington that over 1000 contractors have been killed to date in Iraq. The number becomes understandable when you discover the extent of the use of contractors in that beleaguered nation.

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.

More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.

"These numbers are big," said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. "They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It's the coalition of the billing." ...

But there are also signs that even those mounting numbers may not capture the full picture. Private security contractors, who are hired to protect government officials and buildings, were not fully counted in the survey, according to industry and government officials.

Continuing uncertainty over the numbers of armed contractors drew special criticism from military experts.

"We don't have control of all the coalition guns in Iraq. That's dangerous for our country," said William Nash, a retired Army general and reconstruction expert. The Pentagon "is hiring guns. You can rationalize it all you want, but that's obscene." ...

Adding an element of potential confusion, no single agency keeps track of the number or location of contractors.

In response to demands from Congress, the U.S. Central Command began a census last year of the number of contractors working on U.S. and Iraqi bases to determine how much food, water and shelter was needed.

That census, provided to The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, shows about 130,000 contractors and subcontractors of different nationalities working at U.S. and Iraqi military bases.

However, U.S. military officials acknowledged that the census did not include other government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department

Simply Reprehensible

2007-07-03T07:07:00.000-05:00

What a shocker!

Sen. Joe Lieberman repeated his call Monday for the United States to consider a military strike against Iran, saying Tehran is waging a "proxy war" by stoking anti-coalition violence in Iraq.

Citing new reports from U.S. military officials about how Iran is fostering terrorism in Iraq, Lieberman, I-Conn., said America must confront the threat posed by Tehran.

Iranian forces helped plan one of the most sophisticated militant assaults of the Iraq war -- a January raid in which gunmen posed as an American security team and launched an attack that killed five U.S. soldiers, an American general said Monday [in what was correctly interpreted to be part of an information operation to influence the American political "battlespace"].

Lieberman said the news was a "wake-up call" to the United States.

Military strikes may be needed against Iranian camps suspected of being used to train and equip terrorists who are killing coalition troops in Iraq, Lieberman said. But he stopped short of outright calling for such an attack.

"The United States government has a responsibility to use all instruments at its disposal to stop these terrorist attacks against our soldiers and allies in Iraq, including keeping open the possibility of using military force against the terrorist infrastructure inside Iran," Lieberman said in a statement.

He added, "Although no one desires a conflict with Iran, the fact is that the Iranian government by its actions has declared war on us."

The senator's comments come as Democrats who control Congress prepare to push for U.S. troop withdrawals when lawmakers return after their Fourth of July break.

Lieberman has been a leading defender of the Iraq war in the Senate. His pro-war views have won him friends in the Bush administration, but have rankled many anti-war Democrats.

"At the very least, I hope that these latest revelations about Iran's terrorism in Iraq will prompt some of my colleagues in Congress to reconsider their demand that U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq," Lieberman said.

"For Congress to mandate a retreat from Iraq will give the Iranians exactly what they want most. A retreat would not only represent a catastrophic defeat for the United States, but an epic victory for Iran, Hezbollah and the forces of Islamist terrorism," he said.

Lieberman, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, has said intelligence shows that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is responsible for training and equipping terrorists operating in Iraq and that the head of the Revolutionary Guard reports to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

An important rule of thumb is that when politicians (and even Generals) trumpet "intelligence"-based revelations, a deception story (counterintelligence term) is in play.

The enemy is supposed to be the target.

Added value can be received by influencing the American public (and by extension, their elected politicians) towards a certain policy option.

U.S. Charges Iran With Attack On Americans in Iraq

2007-07-02T06:28:00.000-05:00

The propaganda war against Iran is really heating up today:

Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.

Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. There is also extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.

But today’s assertions, which were presented at a news briefing here, marked the first time that the United States has charged that Iranian officials have helped plan operations against American troops in Iraq and have had advance knowledge of specific attacks that have led to the death of American soldiers.

In effect, American officials are charging that Iran has been engaged in a proxy war against American forces for years, though officials today sought to confine their comments to the specific incidents covered in their briefing.

When the Karbala attack was carried out on January 20 this year, American and Iraqi officials said that it appeared to be meticulously planned. The attackers carried forged identity cards and wore American-style uniforms.

One American died at the start of the raid, but the rest of the American soldiers were abducted before they were killed.

Some officials speculated at the time that the aim of the raid might have been to capture a group of American soldiers who could have been exchanged for Iranian officials that American forces detained in Iraq on suspicion of supporting Shiite militants there.

But while Americans officials wondered about an indirect Iranian role in the Karbala raid, until today they stopped short of making a case that the Quds Force may have been directly involved in planning the attack.

General Bergner declined to speculate on the Iranian motivations. But he said that interrogations of Qais Khazali, a Shiite militant who oversaw Iranian-supported cells in Iraq and who was captured several months ago along with another militant, Laith Khazali, his brother, showed that Iran’s Quds force helped plan the operation.

Similar information was obtained following the capture of a senior Hezbollah operative, Ali Musa Daqduq, General Bergner said. The capture of Mr. Daqduq had remained secret until today.

“Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers,” General Bergner said.

Documents seized from Qais Khazali, General Bergner said, showed that Iran’s Quds Force provided detailed information on the activities of American soldiers in Karbala, including shift changes and the defenses at the site.

More generally, General Bergner added, Iran’s Quds Force has been using Lebanese Hezbollah as a “proxy” or “surrogate” in training and equipping Shiite militants in Iraq.

The aim of the Quds force was to prepare the militant groups so they would attack American and Iraqi government force while trying to conceal an obvious Iranian role, he said.

There have long been reports that Hezbollah operatives have been working with the Quds Force to train Iraqi operatives in Iran and even Lebanon. But few details had emerged about specific Hezbollah officials.

It is noteworthy that it is Michael Gordon of the New York Times -- who co-wrote some of the Judith Miller pre-war agitprop pieces -- that has the byline on this latest salvo in the information war against Iran.

You can expect there to be calls for the U.S. to do something to avenge the Iranian intervention in Iraq.

"This false unanimity was no accident ... It was the personal creation of Mr. Gates."

2007-06-30T07:18:00.000-05:00

From part three of Roger Morris' series on Robert Gates and his legacy.

When it came to the Soviet Union, [President Jimmy] Carter was typically inconsistent in his first months in office, veering between one tactic and another in arms control while a bureaucratic war over SALT II erupted around him. On Gates' recommendation, the new president met with perennial hawk Paul Nitze, now representing the Committee on the Present Danger, the latest right-wing, military-industrial front fielded to attack détente. Soon, Brzezinski and Gates had won a defining victory. They had persuaded Carter to bring in the national security advisor's old friend and onetime co-author, Samuel Huntington, as a special consultant on strategic policy. The Harvard reactionary would later become one of the gurus of the neoconservative movement (and author of the ubër-Orientalist book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order).

In the summer of 1977, his cohorts would leak to the Washington Post that Huntington's job was "to scare the Carter Administration into greater respect for the Soviet Union." Working in liaison, Huntington, Gates, and hard-liners in and out of government promptly did just that -- a process which culminated in Presidential Review Memorandum #10, (in which both Brzezinski and Gates were instrumental). A time-honored "study," using flawed or confected intelligence and meant to channel presidential policy, the infamously shallow PRM-10 nodded to détente, while legitimizing the fraudulent premise of the old Team B, that 1976 group of right-wing outsiders a Reagan-nervous Ford had commissioned to counter the CIA's non-existent underestimation of Soviet strength.

The conveniently have-it-both-ways Huntington-Brzezinski-Gates document combined "cooperation and competition" into a single U.S. policy toward Russia -- the first half to be honored with pledges of faithfulness by diplomatic day; the second indulged with a serial philanderer's abandon by covert-action night. Among other historic effects, PRM-10 would be the basis for what would develop into Carter's "rapid deployment force" in the Persian Gulf, meant to protect American "access" to Middle Eastern oil, and eventually into a full-fledged Gulf military command, CENTCOM.

It would signal the beginning of what historian Andrew Bacevich has labeled our "oil wars" in the region. More generally, the "report" sanctioned, for a new era, the use of trumped-up "special" panels or consultants to incite political alarm in the body politic whenever militarism -- and especially military spending -- was thought to be in danger of waning.

Against the continuing obstruction of Brzezinski and Gates, Vance would coax SALT II, which had seemed imminent at Carter's inauguration, to a cheerless Vienna signing at a summit meeting in July 1979. By then, however, the negotiations had been eviscerated by Congressional opposition that emerged ineluctably out of the growing mood of confrontation with the USSR; and the agreement would die just six months later without Senate ratification when Carter withdrew the treaty as part of his outraged reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, just as all the hawks prodded him to do from the first weeks of his presidency, Carter went on to approve major new weapons programs -- what the Soviets, in mounting alarm, saw as "an endless build-up of power" -- that made the shell game of "cooperation" a travesty.

(...)

Meanwhile, during 1978, they were attending, with similar heedlessness, to the long death rattle of the Shah's regime. That disaster, prelude to another crisis that now confronts the new Secretary of Defense, is captured in snapshots.

There is Jesse Leaf, the CIA's analyst for Iran who has never been to Iran or met an Iranian. Like Gates, as a Soviet specialist, he is an "expert" in the country he "analyzes" only "from afar." He nonetheless grasps the coming collapse, not from the "Shahdulation" of official reporting, but from incidental reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's work on the rotten ancien régime of eighteenth century France. When he tries to warn his superiors of what the future may hold, unlike Gates, he sees his career stunted.

There is Brzezinski's call to U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan in Tehran in February 1979, as fighting rages in the streets of the Iranian capital. The national security advisor tells the ambassador that the American Army attaché must have his friends in the Iranian military "overthrow" the weak post-Shah regime and "take control of the country ... to restore order." The attaché is hiding in the basement of the Iranian Army commander's headquarters, pinned down by gunfire, and can hardly save himself, much less Iran, for Washington. "I can't understand you," Sullivan replies sarcastically, "You must be speaking Polish." It might have been an epitaph for so much. ...

[In 1983] Casey names Gates as chairman of the National Intelligence Council that oversees the preparation of all National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs).

Though the CIA put such documents together, intelligence analysts at the Pentagon and the State Department traditionally inserted footnotes of dissent. Now, they are suddenly prevented from doing so. "This false unanimity was no accident," comments a former ranking State Department official. "It was the personal creation of Mr. Gates." ...

[Spring 1985] Gates also convenes a special group to issue a memo arguing that the Soviets were behind the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Asked years later about the murder plot by historian Fred Halliday, he replies, "It will probably remain one of the great unanswered questions of the cold war." Reflecting White House pressure, in the same vein Gates also presses analysts to implicate the Russians in European terrorism, though most analysts know that reports prompting the White House request are false and based on the CIA's own "black propaganda" operations ordered by Casey at Gates' own urging.

In May 1985, Gates issues a Special National Intelligence Estimate on Iran reversing all previous analyses and stressing Soviet inroads into that country (even though the fundamentalist Shiite regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini loathes communism).

In August 1985, an NSC meeting discusses the illegal supplying of U.S. missiles to Iran, via Israel, whose own inventories would then be replenished by the administration.

On October 1, 1985, CIA National Intelligence Officer Charles Allen tells Gates of suspicions that funds are being illegally diverted from some unknown source to the Nicaraguan Contras, though Gates claims he will not remember being told any of this until almost a year later.

A November 22nd Gates memo reports that Iranian-sponsored terrorism has "dropped off substantially," another major reversal in analysis, though no specific evidence is cited. Later that same month, U.S. Hawk missiles are shipped illegally to Iran.

In 1985, the CIA first notices "significant" numbers of "Arab nationals" coming to Pakistan to fight with the U.S.-backed Afghan Mujahideen in the anti-Soviet war. "Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide," Gates would write in his memoirs. He would be blunter with historian Halliday: "Frankly, we weren't concerned about what post-Soviet Afghanistan was going to look like." ...

January [1987], [Secretary of State] Shultz tells Gates: "I feel you all have very strong policy views. I feel you try to manipulate me. So you have a very dissatisfied customer. If this were a business, I'd find myself another supplier." It is only the first of much Shultz testimony. "I had come to have grave doubts, "he would tell Congress later, "about the objectivity and reliability of some of the intelligence I was getting."

Why Can't Mookie Behave Like All Those Sunni Sheikhs?

2007-06-29T07:44:00.000-05:00

It looks like next week will be interesting.

A call by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for thousands of Iraqis to march to a twice-bombed shrine in the predominantly Sunni Muslim city of Samarra next week has set off alarms among U.S. and Iraqi officials, who fear the demonstration will worsen sectarian tensions and incite bloodshed.

Al-Sadr said the pilgrimage to the Askariya shrine, whose bombing in February 2006 has been blamed for accelerating sectarian violence, is intended as a display of unity between Sunnis and Shiites. He said the march next Thursday, which marks the July 1 birthday of Fatima, Islam's Prophet Muhammad's daughter, won't become a bloodbath.

Yet many fear that the event, which could see thousands traveling through some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, will turn bloody. A Shiite pilgrimage in March to Karbala, south of Baghdad, produced scores of deaths, including 90 from two suicide-bomb attacks in the town of Hillah.

"I really don't know what is the benefit of the visit to Samarra, and I don't know why Muqtada insists on sending the innocent to their deaths," said Baghdad resident Hussein al-Maliki, 34, a Shiite. "I'm sure the insurgents will do their best to kill as many Shiites as possible during the visit."

For al-Sadr, the leader of the anti-American Mahdi Army militia, the march poses a test of his popularity. A peaceful demonstration could arm him with broad political clout, which has eluded other Iraqi leaders so far, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. A low turnout could underscore the limits of al-Sadr's ability to marshal ordinary citizens.

In any case, the event promises a volatile mix of weapons and ill will, with members of al-Sadr's militia gearing up to provide security alongside Iraqi and U.S. forces that are still fighting his militiamen in the south.

Al-Sadr confirmed Thursday that he'll go ahead with the march despite calls to cancel it from both Sunnis and Shiites and reservations within his organization.

For Iraqis, the shrine at Samarra has a special place in the violence. In February 2006, presumed Sunni bombers destroyed its dome, accelerating the tit-for-tat pattern of sectarian violence. Hundreds died in the following days, as Shiites retaliated with killings that reached unprecedented levels by October before beginning to decline.

Two weeks ago, explosions toppled the shrine's remaining minarets. Several Sunni mosques were destroyed in the aftermath, though the retaliatory violence was far less than last year's.

No group has claimed responsibility for either bombing, and while U.S. officials have blamed them on the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, there's no hard evidence.

Since his return to public view after a three-month absence, al-Sadr, whose stronghold is the Baghdad slum of Sadr City and whose militia has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence, has tried to portray himself as a unifying rather than divisive figure.

Al-Maliki's government called on al-Sadr to delay the pilgrimage until more security forces are in place in Samarra and along the route from Baghdad.

Should the march occur, pilgrims would travel from Baghdad and Shiite cities in southern Iraq through Sunni Arab insurgent strongholds north of the capital to Samarra.

Update: During Friday prayers at Mookie's mosque, the officiating cleric announced that the march has been called off.

Or possibly just postponed.

Some Good Historical Questions

2007-06-28T06:19:00.000-05:00

Robert Parry suggests some possible avenues of inquiry for a (never to be pursued) second generation of "family jewels":

What is the relationship between U.S. intelligence and Sun Myung Moon's organization? Why has Moon's operation, with its relationships with crime kingpins in Asia and Latin America, escaped legal scrutiny even after it was exposed during the Korea-gate scandal in the late 1970s as a South Korean intelligence front?

(Though the Korea-gate findings contributed to Moon's prosecution and conviction on tax charges in 1982, he and his organization have since become untouchables, a pattern of protection that some critics trace to Moon's investment of billions of mysterious dollars in publishing the pro-Republican Washington Times, in financing a right-wing political infrastructure in the United States, and in putting money into the pockets of U.S. political leaders, including former President George H.W. Bush.)

--What was the CIA's hand in the so-called "perception management" operations of the 1980s aimed at influencing how the American people perceived foreign-policy events?

(CIA Director William Casey took a direct interest in establishing a "perception management" operation based in the National Security Council under the guidance of long-time CIA officer Walter Raymond Jr. Though Raymond was "externalized" from the CIA by shifting him to the NSC, this sleight of hand violated at least the spirit of the prohibition against the CIA influencing Americans through distribution of propaganda.)

--What did the CIA know about clandestine weapons shipments to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s?

(Former Reagan administration official Howard Teicher has written in a sworn affidavit that then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, CIA Director William Casey and then-deputy CIA director Robert Gates played secret roles in arranging military assistance to Saddam Hussein's government. But the full story has never been told.)

--Was the CIA aware of the 1985 activities of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and his assistant, Gen. Colin Powell, in arranging illegal shipments of weapons to Iran?

(Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane has testified that he described the operation to Weinberger and Powell in 1985 before there was a presidential intelligence finding and thus when the shipment of U.S. weapons through Israel was illegal. Weinberger denied knowledge and Powell claimed a faulty memory. Then, President George H.W. Bush blocked the truth when he pardoned Weinberger on Christmas Eve 1992, thus preventing Weinberger's Iran-Contra trial and sparing Powell some embarrassing questions.)

RFE/RL Report On Sunni Propaganda

2007-06-26T06:12:00.000-05:00

The U.S. government propaganda agency Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) today released a report on the information operations being conducted by the Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

"Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas" (76 page PDF) by RFE/RL regional analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo.

Key Findings

■ Sunni insurgents in Iraq and their supporters worldwide are exploiting the Internet to pursue a massive and far-reaching media campaign. Insurgent media are forming perceptions of the war in Iraq among the best-educated and most influential segment of the Arab population.

■ The Iraqi insurgent media network is a boon to global jihadist media, which can use materials produced by the insurgency to reinforce their message.

■ Mainstream Arab media amplify the insurgents' efforts, transmitting their message to an audience of millions.

■ The insurgent propaganda network does not have a headquarters, bureaucracy, or brick-and-mortar infrastructure. It is decentralized, fast-moving, and technologically adaptive.

■ The rising tide of Sunni-Shi'ite hate speech in Iraqi insurgent media points to the danger of even greater sectarian bloodshed. A wealth of evidence shows that hate speech paved the way for genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

■ The popularity of online Iraqi Sunni insurgent media reflects a genuine demand for their message in the Arab world. An alternative, no matter how lavishly funded and cleverly produced, will not eliminate this demand.

■ There is little to counter this torrent of daily press releases, weekly and monthly magazines, books, video clips, full-length films, and even television channels.

■ We should not concede the battle without a fight. The insurgent media network has key vulnerabilities that can be targeted. These include:
• A lack of central coordination and a resulting lack of message control.

• A widening rift between homegrown nationalist groups and Al-Qaeda affiliated
global jihadists.

The RFE/RL report is really well done, with lots of unusually detailed information about the various insurgent groups, with screen captures of examples of their PSYOP products.

New ICG Report on Iraq

2007-06-25T05:47:00.000-05:00

Iraq can only survive if a functional and legitimate state is rebuilt from the ruins of war and occupation, drawing on the lessons of the collapse of British-ruled Basra, an influential thinktank warns today.

Overall, says the International Crisis Group, it is not enough just to resolve the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shia and Kurds. And if the US and Britain continue backing the same Shia political actors, the likely outcome will be the country's break-up into myriad fiefdoms. "Far from building a new state," their Iraqi partners "are tirelessly working to tear it down".

In a powerful critique of current policy, the ICG insists it is vital to avoid repeating the experience of Basra, where UK forces implemented a security plan, Operation Sinbad, similar to the current US-led surge in Baghdad. "The answer to Iraq's horrific violence cannot be an illusory military surge that aims to bolster the existing political structure and treats the dominant parties as partners," it adds bluntly.

Operation Sinbad was a "superficial and fleeting" success, and ended with British troops being driven off the streets in what was seen as an ignominious defeat by the city's militias, now more powerful and unconstrained than before. Some British data about its achievements, particularly about improved police performance, "defies credibility", the group notes.

The key failure in Basra, argues the report, has been the inability to establish legitimate government to redistribute resources, impose respect for the rule of law and ensure peaceful transition at the local level - a lesson it says has to be learnt across Iraq as a whole.

"Basra's political arena remains in the hands of actors engaged in bloody competition for resources, undermining what is left of governorate institutions and coercively enforcing their rule. The local population has no choice but to seek protection from one of the dominant camps. Periods of stability do not reflect greater governing authority so much as they do a momentary - and fragile - balance of interests or of terror between rival militias."

Basra's "multiple and multiplying forms of violence" may have little to do with sectarianism or anti-occupation resistance but involve "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighbourhood vigilantism ... and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors."

"Should other causes of strife - sectarian violence and the fight against coalition forces - recede, the concern must still be that Basra's fate will be replicated throughout the country on a larger, more chaotic and more dangerous scale. The lessons are clear. Iraq's violence is multifaceted, and sectarianism is only one of its sources. It follows that the country's division along supposedly inherent and homogeneous confessional and ethnic lines is not an answer. It follows, too, that rebuilding the state, tackling militias and imposing the rule of law cannot be done without confronting the parties that currently dominate the political process and forging a new and far more inclusive political compact. "

For the ICG, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war but has also become a failed state. It describes "a country whose institutions and, with them, any semblance of national cohesion, have been obliterated. That is what has made the violence - all the violence: sectarian, anti-coalition, political, criminal and otherwise - both possible and, for many, necessary. Resolving the confrontation between Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds is one priority. But rebuilding a functioning and legitimate state is another - no less urgent, no less important and no less daunting."

Where Is Iraq Heading? Lessons From Basra.
International Crisis Group report

Gates and the Cold War, Part II

2007-06-24T06:48:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from the next installment of Roger Morris' lengthy series on Robert Gates and the Cold War.

The continuing priority given to analysts of the USSR proved no advantage when it came to intelligence. By the late 1960s, the Agency was already alternately missing or overestimating a genuine Soviet build-up of its missile forces, a step taken by the Russian leadership to redress the massive strategic imbalance (and humiliation) that had culminated in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. ("We will honor this agreement," a Russian envoy told his American counterpart in 1962. He was speaking of the deal President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had forged, as Moscow backed down on placing its missiles in Cuba to match U.S. bombers and warheads poised along the borders of the USSR, 30 minutes from Soviet cities and command centers. "But I want to tell you something. You'll never do this to us again.") Far worse, CIA analysts regularly underestimated by as much as half the mortal burden such staggering military spending placed on a corrupt, sclerotic Soviet economy.

Given the millions of dollars pouring into intelligence, some of the gaps were chilling. As the new, young analyst from Wichita reported to Washington in that leaden summer of 1968, NSC staff officers watched in dismay while the Agency simply "lost" whole Soviet tank divisions and other forces for several crucial days. These were finally located in Prague only as the Soviet ambassador was helpfully informing President Lyndon Johnson of the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The CIA Bob Gates joined was still largely what it had been over its first two decades -- a blunt instrument of covert intervention, now mostly in non-European politics -- and a stagnant fund of intelligence. The Baltic Syndrome had morphed into a global variation of the same half-blind and bigoted perspective. The Agency was trapped in the remarkably narrow confines that defined imperial, yet intellectually provincial, Washington. During Gates' opportunistic rise and sway over the next quarter century, it would remain, at horrendous cost, much the same.

From 1968 to 1974, Gates rose steadily through the ranks of Langley clerkdom, serving on the CIA support group for the Strategic Arms Limitation negotiations in Vienna, and eventually as an assistant national intelligence officer for the USSR. He helped to craft the periodic National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) for the Soviet Union, a report that was, and remains, an Agency hallmark for any given area or issue.

His work in these years also focused to some extent on Moscow's policy in the Middle East. He had no training or experience in the region itself, but given the Agency's relatively sparse expertise in the Arab world, he soon professed specialization and authority in that as well. "Gates prided himself in being a top Middle East expert within CIA," according to a former boss, Ray McGovern -- though it was not a claim any of his colleagues in either Soviet or Middle Eastern affairs seem to have taken seriously at the time. ...

Looking back on this crucial take-off moment in Gates' career, media pundits vacantly ascribed it to merit. "The brightest Soviet analyst in the shop," Washington Post columnist David Ignatius typically wrote. Insiders knew better. "He wasn't." That was what his CIA superior Ray McGovern said gently, echoing the feelings of his colleagues that "something other than expertise" made for Gates' "meteoric" climb.

It was, in fact, a triumph of office politics, not substance. "Gates' rise did not come from knowing more about the Soviets.... than anyone else," CIA chronicler Thomas Powers concluded. "He was young, well scrubbed, well spoken, bright, hard-working, reliable, loyal, discreet, and a bit of a hard-ass when it came to the Russians." But his limits, too, were evident. Wrote British historian Fred Halliday: "He would not have been out of place as a small town bank manager: unfazed by questions, reticent in judgment, sure of his ground, but without either incisiveness or (it seemed) the awareness that international experience brings." He had, Halliday concluded, "no trace [of]…. any first-hand experience of foreign cultures or countries." He was "a man of the office, the organization." It was the candid portrait of a consummate insider as insular as the policy and politics he served.

Gates, the Soviet "specialist" and, in many ways, penultimate Cold Warrior, would not even see Moscow until May 1989, more than two decades after entering the CIA as an expert on the USSR and after 15 years in which, to one degree or another, he joined in nearly all Washington's most consequential judgments about Russia. Nor, despite his asserted expertise in the Middle East, would Gates have personal experience with nations he dealt with fatefully from 1974 to 1993 -- most notably Afghanistan and Iraq. He would not tour either until 2006-7, and then only for a few, heavily guarded days and in the most limited of ways. ...

By the early 1970s ... Nixon and Kissinger were confronted with anything but ordinary, venal resistance within the bureaucracy. To their unprecedented policy of détente (and its implicit, if unconscious, challenge to the Baltic Syndrome mentality), there arose an unprecedented opposition not only in the Pentagon but also in the CIA, where some felt Cold War orthodoxy and all it denoted were being threatened as never before.

As Kissinger recounted the experience, he could hardly testify before (Senator Henry) Jackson's Senate Armed Services Committee or other panels without facing conveniently leaked CIA or Pentagon documents that, in one way or another, armed the opponents of détente. These were often highly classified, still closely-held papers Kissinger himself had only just received -- or had not yet seen at all. As Nixon sank into the Watergate miasma, leaks (and opposition) only multiplied -- much of it using materials Bob Gates had ready access to, or had even helped produce, as assistant national intelligence officer. ...

As usual, given Washington's ceaseless traffic in leaks, there is no hard evidence about whether Gates actually leaked into this furor, though his animus in regards to Nixon's Soviet policy was unmistakable and the provenance of many of the leaked documents is damning. Clearly, however, in his first year on the NSC staff he waged a careful rear-guard action against what was to become known as the Helsinki Accords. Kissinger's diplomacy nonetheless brought the Accords to fruition in July 1975. They offered official recognition of post-World War II Soviet Bloc boundaries in Europe, but within a new international context of respect for, and unprecedented monitoring of, human rights and political dissidence in the USSR and its satellites. It would be the last hurrah of détente. While Reagan and the Right attacked the "surrender" of Eastern Europe, the Accords actually opened the way for the rise of internal opposition movements like Poland's Solidarity, leading ultimately to the decay and fall of the USSR.

Gates typically opposed Helsinki as something Moscow sought (which made it anathema automatically). As would be even more true a decade later with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he and others frozen in the Baltic Syndrome (as always, most of Washington) were oblivious to the brittleness of communist rule, cynically dismissing the Accords as "window dressing" the Kremlin and its satellites could and would ignore.

Roger Morris on Robert Gates and the Cold War

2007-06-23T06:23:00.000-05:00

From the introduction to a long essay on the Cold War in the form of a profile on U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates by former NSC official Roger Morris.

For all his relative virtues in 2007, however, Gates remains a genuine Jekyll-and-Hyde character, a best-yet-worst of America as it flung its vast power over the world. To appreciate who and what he was - and so who and what he is likely to be now, at one of the most critical junctures ever to face a secretary of defense - is to retrace much of the shrouded side of American foreign policy and intelligence for the past half-century or more. Most Americans hardly know that record, though its reckonings are with us today - with a vengeance. At the unexpected climax of his long career, the 63-year-old Gates faces not only the toll of the disastrous regime he joins, but of his own legacy as well.

This is a vintage American chronicle with dramatic settings and dark secrets. The cast ranges from hearty boosters in Kansas to bitter exiles on the Baltic, from doomed agents dropped behind Russian lines across Eurasia to Islamic clerics car-bombed in the Middle East - all in a family saga of long-hidden paternity. As with Rumsfeld, such a sweeping history - the history, in this case, of that blind deity of havoc, the CIA - cannot come condensed or blog-sized. It is, necessarily, without apology, a long trail a-winding. Though in the end this will indeed be a profile of the US's new secretary of defense, much has to be understood before Gates even joins the story in a serious way as policy-accomplice and policymaker. But the trip is full of color, and quicker than it seems. And as usual, the essential lessons, along with the devil, are in the details.

The CIA 'Family Jewels' To Be Released

2007-06-22T06:40:00.000-05:00

The CIA will now release the legendary "family jewels" but they won't release their IG's report on the mistakes that led to 9/11.

Interesting timing, too.

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs. ...

Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.

The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter. ...

Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations. ...

Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations. ...

CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then The Washington Post's national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."

Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when The Post published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.

"I never knew about it at the time, although it was a full 24 hours a day with teams of people following me, looking for my sources," Getler said. He said he went to see Colby afterward, with Washington lawyer Joseph Califano. Getler recalled, "Colby said it happened under Helms and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again."

Personal surveillance was conducted on Anderson and three of his staff members, including Brit Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration's "tilt toward Pakistan." The 1972 surveillance of Marchetti was carried out "to determine contacts with CIA employees," the summary said.

CIA monitoring and infiltration of antiwar dissident groups took place between 1967 and 1971 at a time when the public was turning against the Vietnam War. Agency officials "covertly monitored" groups in the Washington area "who were considered to pose a threat to CIA installations." Some of the information "might have been distributed to the FBI," the summary said. Other "skeletons" listed in the summary included:

The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector [Nosenko], suspected by the CIA as a possible "fake," in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be "a violation of the kidnapping laws."

The "very productive" 1963 wiretapping of two columnists -- Robert Allen and Paul Scott -- whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen.

Break-ins by the CIA's office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents.

CIA-funded testing of American citizens, "including reactions to certain drugs." [LSD]

Former Senate Intelligence Committee member Gary Hart said privately that the "family jewels" report contained many additional revelations of a more newsworthy nature than were made public in the mid-1970's. I will bet that none of these see the light of day in the upcoming declassification.

Iran Calls BS On U.S. Taliban Claim, Won't Be Getting Their Diplomats Back Any Time Soon

2007-06-21T06:47:00.000-05:00

If the "Iran is arming the Taliban" charge doesn't stick, we will probably have to claim that Iran is arming Russia or China. We have basically reached the end of the road credibility-wise along those lines.

Iran on Thursday rejected U.S. accusations it is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, saying an attack on its consulate there showed the hostility of the Sunni militant group towards Shi'ite Iran.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns on June 9 accused Tehran of supporting the Taliban and fuelling insurrection around the Middle East.

"These accusations are baseless and illogical," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"Iran's role in reconstructing Afghanistan has always been confirmed by friends and enemies alike," he said.

Safari noted an attack earlier this month on an Iranian consulate in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and said this showed the Taliban's enmity towards the Islamic Republic, IRNA said.

Iran supported Afghan groups fighting the Taliban, including the Northern Alliance which played a crucial role in toppling the Sunni group after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan after a traditional winter lull, with foreign forces launching attacks against Taliban strongholds in the south and east and the guerrillas hitting back with roadside and suicide bombings.

Earlier in June, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he could not link Tehran to a flow of weapons into Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai hailed relations with neighboring Iran as especially good.

Washington is leading international efforts to isolate Iran over its disputed nuclear program and accuses it of fomenting instability in Iraq.

And Iran won't be happy to hear the following:

The United States will not release five Iranians detained in a U.S. military raid in northern Iraq until at least October, despite entreaties from the Iraqi government and pressure from Iran, U.S. officials said. The delay is as much due to a communication and procedural foul-up within the U.S. government as a policy decision, they added.

During his Washington visit this week, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari appealed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to free the Iranians, who were arrested in Irbil in January, U.S. and Arab officials said.

Zebari told U.S. officials that the release would help the new U.S.-Iran dialogue on Iraq, which brought diplomats from the two nations together last month in Baghdad at their first public meeting in almost three decades. Iran has become pivotal to U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq because Tehran exerts great influence in Iraq with a wide cross-section of parties and has armed and trained many militant groups. Zebari also warned that Tehran might not attend a second session unless the Iranians are released, the sources said.

The U.S. raid on Iran's northern liaison office Jan. 11 was designed to detain two senior Iranian officials who were visiting Iraq, U.S. officials said. The two escaped arrest, but U.S. commandos did detain five mid-level operatives working with Iran's elite Quds Force, which is the foreign operations wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and is tied to arming, training and funding militants in Iraq.

The detention of the Iranians followed President Bush's vow to break up Tehran's networks in Iraq. The fate of the five men has reached the highest levels of the White House, with Bush's top foreign policy advisers meeting to discuss the issue in the spring. They agreed to hold the men as they do other foreign fighters captured in Iraq, with their status reviewed every six months.

They were originally due for review six months after their detention -- or by mid-July. Instead, the Multinational Force headquarters reviewed their status in April, meaning they are not eligible for another review until October, U.S. officials said. Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker were unaware that a review had occurred until last week, the officials noted.

Zebari was not told of the new timeframe during his talks in Washington, U.S. and Arab officials said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned June 13 that the United States would face consequences for its January raid. "We will make the U.S. regret its repulsive, illegal action against Iran's consulate and its officials," Mottaki told reporters in Tehran.

The same day, Iran filed a complaint with the United Nations. "U.S. military forces, in violation of the most basic provisions governing diplomatic and consulate affairs and in a flagrant contempt for the most fundamental principles of international law, attacked the Iranian Consulate General in Irbil and abducted five Iranian consular officers after disarming the guards of the premises, breaking the doors into the building and beating and injuring the personnel of the Consulate General," the letter said.

Egypt and Jordan Quietly Backing 'West Bank First' Plan

2007-06-20T06:52:00.000-05:00

Egypt and Jordan could be expected to be amicable to the 'West Bank first' plan. Islamists are their worst enemies.

The creation of separate Palestinian micro-states last week left two of America's closest Arab allies – Jordan and Egypt, which share borders with the West Bank and Gaza respectively – groping for a new policy toward a conflict that has spilled over their borders and contributes to their own instability.

These two secular and authoritarian states have far more in common with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah, which now controls the West Bank, than with the Islamist Hamas that won last week's war for control of Gaza. When Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 that were deemed free and fair, it set alarm bells ringing in Cairo and Amman; they worried their local Islamists would be bolstered by Hamas's success.

But that doesn't mean Egypt or Jordan will quickly join the US and Israel in openly supporting Mr. Abbas.

The US and Israel are rewarding Abbas – far friendlier to Israel than Hamas – in the West Bank by lifting a crippling economic embargo, while maintaining the sanctions on the much poorer Gaza Strip. Their hope is that Hamas's public support will evaporate under the weight of need, and Abbas's stature will grow as his people experience relatively more prosperity.

"Our hope is that President Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – who's a good fellow – will be strengthened to the point where they can lead the Palestinians in a different direction," President George Bush said after an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

While that's an outcome that the Egyptian and Jordanian governments hope for, given their hostility toward Hamas, it's not one they feel they can back publicly, analysts say.

"Recent events have seen Arab publics turn on Hamas a bit, but that won't necessarily hold," says Nabil Gheishan, a columnist at Arab al-Yom, an independent Jordanian daily newspaper. "If this embargo of Gaza goes ahead, and people see massive suffering there while conditions improve in the West Bank, that will shift the public mood and take the pressure off Hamas."

He says publicly backing such an approach could easily see the governments of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah branded as participating with Israeli and US-inflicted suffering on the Palestinians in Gaza.

Neither country's leaders have suggested that freezing Hamas out of the equation will make an eventual peace settlement any easier, because they doubt that Hamas's support from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians is simply going to disappear.

"For Jordan and the Arab states, things have to return to where they were. We need a reunited Palestinian government, a unity government that includes Hamas. I personally am against what Hamas stands for – religious government – but you simply can't get far towards peace without them," says Mr. Gheishan

For the moment, the two states, as well as Saudi Arabia, which helped broker the unity government that Abbas dissolved after last week's fighting, have confined their public statements to calls for Palestinian unity and the flow of humanitarian aid to all needy Palestinians, whether they live in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip or in the West Bank of Fatah.

But privately they appear to be positioning themselves to weaken Hamas. The Arab-language newspaper Al Hayat cited unnamed sources as saying Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Sulaiman, who has coordinated Egyptian relations in the Gaza Strip, called Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to tell him Egypt was "furious" with the group.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the major political opposition group in both Jordan and Egypt.

"The [Jordanian] government is very anxious and worried, but they are in fact in a much stronger position than they were a few years ago," says Musa Shteiwi, the director of the Jordanian Center for Social Research in Amman.

In an April poll by his organization, 17 percent of Jordanians said they supported the country's Islamists, but that was down from 32 percent in 2005, he said. He says that while most of the shift was due to terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda-inspired militants here, he suspects that "Hamas conduct since coming to power has also played a role."

Perhaps bolstering his analysis has been the stance of Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood. In a statement Monday, the group, which typically offers four-square support to its Palestinian comrades, was directly critical.

"Abbas is the legitimate Palestinian president and Hamas's battle should be with the Zionist enemy, not other Palestinians, so we ask them to return to a policy of dialogue and to restore the institutions in Gaza," the statement says.

To be sure, Egypt and Jordan are not identically threatened by current circumstances. "It's easier for us, since Gaza isn't on our border," says Gheishan. "It's more of an Egyptian problem."

Signs of that problem were visible a few miles west of the Rafah Crossing, which connects Gaza to Egypt. Standing a few meters from a crumbling concrete wall, Abdel Razaq Abdel Hamid is trying to explain how bad conditions are across the border in Gaza, when a deafening blast cuts him off.

The explosion was apparently the latest attempt to breach the wall that seals off the teeming territory from Egypt. "The Palestinians bomb the border to come here – because there is no water, no food [in Gaza]," he says. "If the US and Europe want to punish [someone] they must punish Hamas, not these people," says Mr. Abdel Hamid.

It will be interesting to see how Saudi Arabia -- already having internal differences about their regional policy -- deals with the organized isolation of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' Will Feature in CIA Counsel Hearing

2007-06-19T09:06:00.000-05:00

In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, at a time when the Central Intelligence Agency had long been out of the interrogation business, senior C.I.A. officers scrambled to build a program to question terror suspects in secret jails abroad.

To check on the legality of the harsh interrogation techniques they proposed, they turned to John A. Rizzo, who was then acting as the agency's top lawyer.

On Tuesday, Mr. Rizzo will go before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing to become the C.I.A.'s general counsel, giving the new Democratic majority its first chance at a public airing of agency practices that drew condemnation abroad and set off a prolonged debate at home.

Mr. Rizzo has been acting general counsel off and on for most of the last six years, serving without Senate confirmation. He was first nominated to the position last year, but a confirmation hearing was delayed.

In a report last month, the committee questioned whether the C.I.A. program was "necessary, lawful and in the best interests of the United States," particularly in view of "the damage the program does to the image of the United States abroad."

Mr. Rizzo, an agency lawyer for three decades who is known for his dapper dress and his discretion, will probably be questioned in open and closed sessions about the most contentious policies: holding terror suspects in secret; subjecting them to tough physical treatment, including the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding; and delivering some to countries that routinely practice torture.

"He'll be the piñata," said A. B. Krongard, executive director of the C.I.A. from 2001 to 2004, who remains a strong defender of the detention and interrogation program.

Mr. Krongard said Mr. Rizzo worked hard to see that the program was lawful, insisting on written legal opinions from the Justice Department.

"He did everything possible to get it right," Mr. Krongard said. For any legal faults, he added, "Rizzo can be held accountable, I guess, but nowhere near as much as the Justice Department."

Committee Democrats said they planned tough questioning for Mr. Rizzo, who was a crucial link between the interrogators and the Justice Department lawyers who gave their approval.

"I have serious concerns about this nomination," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who said she wanted to gauge Mr. Rizzo's precise role in what she believed were deeply flawed legal justifications.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, C.I.A. director since May 2006, strongly defended the program and Mr. Rizzo's role in shaping it.

Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman, said, "Mr. Rizzo knows better than anyone the full range of complex legal issues that influence intelligence operations in a democracy."

Mr. Rizzo has earned a reputation for helping overseas operatives find a legal way to do what they feel is necessary. But officials said he did reject some proposed interrogation methods as excessive and illegal.

John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 but is critical of the detention program, said Mr. Rizzo "bears a share of responsibility" for the program and perhaps should have counseled against actions that were "technically legal but wrongheaded."

But Mr. Radsan said top Bush administration officials deserved greater blame "for asking to push things right to the point of illegality."

Mr. Rizzo, who is not granting interviews before his confirmation hearing, is no stranger to the agency’s legal controversies. A graduate of Brown University and the George Washington University Law School, he joined the agency in 1976, when the Church Committee of the Senate had just unearthed the agency’s involvement in assassination plots.

In the 1980s, he worked for the C.I.A.'s inspector general, investigating accusations of wrongdoing at agency stations abroad. He later became the agency's point man for outside investigations into the Iran-contra affair, in which three agency officers were charged with crimes.

Since 1995, as senior deputy general counsel, Mr. Rizzo has often filled in as acting general counsel for months at a time. That was the case from November 2001 to October 2002, when top C.I.A. officials were negotiating the placement of secret jails abroad.

Interrogation was uncharted territory for most serving C.I.A. officers. A 1963 agency interrogation manual described the infliction of pain, including the use of electrical shock, but such techniques were banned by the 1980s, and by 2001, few C.I.A. officers had any experience in questioning suspects.

Mr. Krongard said deciding the limits of interrogation for Al Qaeda's top operatives was not easy. "Can you slap someone in the face? Maybe," he said. "But can you hit them as hard as you can? Maybe not."

The approved options were first applied after the capture in March 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, a senior Qaeda figure. Mr. Rizzo was responsible for the legal advice to the officers holding him in Thailand as they escalated physical and mental pressure.

But colleagues said Mr. Rizzo insisted on Justice Department approval for actions they knew might be second-guessed.

Nice One, Ambassador

2007-06-18T06:41:00.000-05:00

Britain joined the United States' invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001 because it feared America would "nuke the shit" out of Afghanistan, the former British ambassador to Washington reportedly told a television documentary to be screened Saturday.

In comments printed in advance in the Daily Mirror tabloid on Monday, Christopher Meyer said that fear explained why Prime Minister Tony Blair chose to stand with US President George W. Bush in his decision to invade Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks -- to temper his aggressive battle plans.

"Blair's real concern was that there would be quote unquote 'a knee-jerk reaction' by the Americans ... they would go thundering off and nuke the shit out of the place without thinking straight," Meyer reported told the documentary, according to the Mirror.

In other excerpts of the documentary, printed in The Observer newspaper on Sunday, members of Blair's inner circle said the prime minister agreed to commit troops to the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq despite believing that the United States had failed to prepare adequately for post-war reconstruction.

Taguba Alleges DOD Approved Abu Ghraib Abuses and Arranged To Protect Higher Ups

2007-06-17T07:17:00.000-05:00

Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba -- who led the military's first major investigation into the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib -- is saying now that senior DOD officials approved of the "strategic interrogation" tactics used there, and that these officials arranged for most of the blame to go no higher than the low-level soldiers that were caught on the pictures that were seen by the public.

An article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine -- to be published tomorrow -- takes a look at the scandal with the help of now-retired General Taguba.

In subsequent testimony, General Myers, the J.C.S. chairman, acknowledged, without mentioning the e-mails, that in January information about the photographs had been given "to me and the Secretary up through the chain of command. . . . And the general nature of the photos, about nudity, some mock sexual acts and other abuse, was described."

Nevertheless, Rumsfeld, in his appearances before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees on May 7th, claimed to have had no idea of the extensive abuse. "It breaks our hearts that in fact someone didn't say, 'Wait, look, this is terrible. We need to do something,' " Rumsfeld told the congressmen. "I wish we had known more, sooner, and been able to tell you more sooner, but we didn't."

Rumsfeld told the legislators that, when stories about the Taguba report appeared, "it was not yet in the Pentagon, to my knowledge." As for the photographs, Rumsfeld told the senators, "I say no one in the Pentagon had seen them"; at the House hearing, he said, "I didn't see them until last night at 7:30." Asked specifically when he had been made aware of the photographs, Rumsfeld said:

"There were rumors of photographs in a criminal prosecution chain back sometime after January 13th . . . I don't remember precisely when, but sometime in that period of January, February, March. . . . The legal part of it was proceeding along fine. What wasn't proceeding along fine is the fact that the President didn't know, and you didn't know, and I didn't know."

"And, as a result, somebody just sent a secret report to the press, and there they are," Rumsfeld said.

Taguba, watching the hearings, was appalled. He believed that Rumsfeld's testimony was simply not true. "The photographs were available to him -- if he wanted to see them," Taguba said. Rumsfeld's lack of knowledge was hard to credit. Taguba later wondered if perhaps Cambone had the photographs and kept them from Rumsfeld because he was reluctant to give his notoriously difficult boss bad news. But Taguba also recalled thinking, "Rumsfeld is very perceptive and has a mind like a steel trap. There's no way he's suffering from C.R.S. -- Can't Remember Shit. He's trying to acquit himself, and a lot of people are lying to protect themselves." It distressed Taguba that Rumsfeld was accompanied in his Senate and House appearances by senior military officers who concurred with his denials.

"The whole idea that Rumsfeld projects -- 'We're here to protect the nation from terrorism' -- is an oxymoron," Taguba said. "He and his aides have abused their offices and have no idea of the values and high standards that are expected of them. And they’ve dragged a lot of officers with them." ...

During the next two years, Taguba assiduously avoided the press, telling his relatives not to talk about his work. Friends and family had been inundated with telephone calls and visitors, and, Taguba said, "I didn't want them to be involved." Taguba retired in January, 2007, after thirty-four years of active service, and finally agreed to talk to me about his investigation of Abu Ghraib and what he believed were the serious misrepresentations by officials that followed. "From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. "These M.P. troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box."...

Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003—when much of the abuse took place—Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, "Sanchez knew exactly what was going on." ...

A dozen government investigations have been conducted into Abu Ghraib and detainee abuse. A few of them picked up on matters raised by Taguba’s report, but none followed through on the question of ultimate responsibility. Military investigators were precluded from looking into the role of Rumsfeld and other civilian leaders in the Pentagon; the result was that none found any high-level intelligence involvement in the abuse. ...

Abu Ghraib had opened the door on the issue of the treatment of detainees, and from the beginning the Administration feared that the publicity would expose more secret operations and practices. Shortly after September 11th, Rumsfeld, with the support of President Bush, had set up military task forces whose main target was the senior leadership of Al Qaeda. Their essential tactic was seizing and interrogating terrorists and suspected terrorists; they also had authority from the President to kill certain high-value targets on sight. The most secret task-force operations were categorized as Special Access Programs, or S.A.P.s.

The military task forces were under the control of the Joint Special Operations Command, the branch of the Special Operations Command that is responsible for counterterrorism. One of Miller's unacknowledged missions had been to bring the J.S.O.C.'s "strategic interrogation" techniques to Abu Ghraib. In special cases, the task forces could bypass the chain of command and deal directly with Rumsfeld's office. A former senior intelligence official told me that the White House was also briefed on task-force operations.

The former senior intelligence official said that when the images of Abu Ghraib were published, there were some in the Pentagon and the White House who "didn't think the photographs were that bad" -- in that they put the focus on enlisted soldiers, rather than on secret task-force operations. Referring to the task-force members, he said, "Guys on the inside ask me, 'What's the difference between shooting a guy on the street, or in his bed, or in a prison?' " A Pentagon consultant on the war on terror also said that the "basic strategy was 'prosecute the kids in the photographs but protect the big picture.' "

A recently retired C.I.A. officer, who served more than fifteen years in the clandestine service, told me that the task-force teams "had full authority to whack—to go in and conduct 'executive action,' " the phrase for political assassination. "It was surrealistic what these guys were doing," the retired operative added. "They were running around the world without clearing their operations with the ambassador or the chief of station." ...

A former high-level Defense Department official said that, when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Senator John Warner, then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was warned "to back off" on the investigation, because "it would spill over to more important things." ...

An aggressive congressional inquiry into Abu Ghraib could have provoked unwanted questions about what the Pentagon was doing, in Iraq and elsewhere, and under what authority. By law, the President must make a formal finding authorizing a C.I.A. covert operation, and inform the senior leadership of the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees. However, the Bush Administration unilaterally determined after 9/11 that intelligence operations conducted by the military-including the Pentagon’s covert task forces—for the purposes of "preparing the battlefield" could be authorized by the President, as Commander-in-Chief, without telling Congress. ...

Whether the President was told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners before the scandal became public, or to re-evaluate the training of military police and interrogators, or the practices of the task forces that he had authorized. Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-level soldiers. The President's failure to act decisively resonated through the military chain of command: aggressive prosecution of crimes against detainees was not conducive to a successful career.

In January of 2006, Taguba received a telephone call from General Richard Cody, the Army's Vice-Chief of Staff. "This is your Vice," he told Taguba. "I need you to retire by January of 2007." No pleasantries were exchanged, although the two generals had known each other for years, and, Taguba said, "He offered no reason." ...

Taguba went on, "There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff" -- the explicit images -- "was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this." He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service," Taguba said. "And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

The text of Gen. Taguba's 2004 report (pdf).

"West Bank First" Plan Moves Ahead (We Have No Other Option)

2007-06-16T05:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's post about the U.S. "West Bank first" strategy is proving to be quite on the mark.

Not that it will be successful (it almost certainly will fail), but it embodies enough of the ol' Realpolitik to make it attractive to U.S. policymakers.

The violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas further dimmed the Bush administration's faint hope of moving Palestinians and Israelis toward peace. But it offered the White House a thin opportunity to pursue one long-held goal: drawing a stark contrast between the Palestinian militant group and the moderate leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

On Friday, U.S. officials made it clear that they intended to seize that opportunity as calm began returning to Gaza after days of fighting. Administration officials plan to build up Abbas' Fatah government in the West Bank territory it still controls, improving its services, while leaving primary responsibility for impoverished Gaza in the hands of Hamas.

Showing Palestinians the difference, they hope, will strengthen support for Abbas and the moderates.

Hamas leaders "are going to be responsible for feeding and providing for 1.3 million Palestinians," said Sean McCormack, the State Department's chief spokesman. "Through this attack on the legitimate institutions, they have assumed full and complete responsibility."

U.S. officials held out the possibility that with Hamas removed from Abbas' government, international donors would drop their ban on direct aid to that government. The European Union, with a strong statement of support for Abbas, appeared ready to join such a move.

Administration officials are considering ways to build up the institutions of Abbas' government, help ensure its security and bolster support from the Palestinian public. And the Americans hinted that Abbas' rump government could, before long, resume preliminary peace talks with the Israelis.

Yet major obstacles remain. It is not clear that Abbas, who is considered well-intentioned but weak, is emerging any stronger from the struggle with Hamas, experts say. His security forces fled when confronted by Hamas fighters. ...

If Abbas accepts support from the West while Gaza withers, he may appear even more a puppet of Washington and Jerusalem, as Hamas has long contended, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator who is now a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

"I don't think there's any Palestinian leader who could maintain traction with his public in those circumstances," Levy said.

U.S. and Israeli officials say that if Abbas' new government proves acceptable, the Israelis could make concessions that would help the Palestinian Authority president.

But experts say Abbas probably would need to win concessions that were more substantial than Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's weak government is in a position to make.

Nathan Brown, an expert in Palestinian politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said possible Israeli gestures such as halting new settlements in the West Bank would not be enough to dramatically bolster Abbas' standing.

A significant boost for Abbas would require that Israel actually dismantle settlements, or freeze construction of the barrier between the West Bank and Israel, Brown said. But with Olmert supported by only about 3% of Israeli voters in a recent poll, those are steps he probably could not take, Brown said.

Continued Hamas control of Gaza poses troubling new questions for the future of peace talks with Abbas.

"We may be at a juncture where we have to redefine what the peace process is," Porter said.

Excluding Palestinians in Gaza could ease negotiations, but it would cast doubt on any agreement, he said. "Is that the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis?"

Hamas' takeover in Gaza has left the United States facing a more serious threat not only to its ally Israel, but also to the administration's policy of confronting Islamic extremism.

U.S. officials are concerned that Hamas-controlled Gaza could become a haven for other Islamist groups, including members of Lebanon's Hezbollah. McCormack called on Egypt to block smuggling through Gaza's southern border.

"That's going to be very important to ensure that you don't see an inflow of more violent extremists, more cash, more arms, more ammunition into the Gaza via those smuggling tunnels," he said.

McCormack insisted that the Gaza upheaval would not derail the peacemaking efforts of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has visited the region five times this year but has struggled to get Olmert and Abbas to meet regularly.

Many outsiders see this week's fighting as a heavy blow to a personal diplomatic initiative Rice began early last year with an enthusiasm not fully shared by some in the White House.

Brown, of Carnegie, said that he believed the U.S. plan to support Abbas may be the "best available option," but that "this is a disaster, from the American point of view."

"I've been calling this a slow-motion train wreck," he said. "But it's no longer in slow motion."

And then there is this:

Hundreds of Fatah gunmen on Saturday stormed Hamas-controlled institutions in the West Bank, including parliament and government ministries, and told staffers that those with ties to Hamas will not be allowed to return.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem, his office said. The meeting between Abbas and Jacob Walles took place at Abbas' headquarters in Ramallah hours before Abbas was expected to swear in an emergency government.

The elected Hamas government has now been evicted in the West Bank.

The "two Palestines" feature of the "West Bank first" plan is in play.

The "West Bank First" Strategy

2007-06-15T07:16:00.000-05:00

So the U.S. has decided "to acquiesce" in the takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas? It's not like we have too many more levers at our disposal. Especially since the $43 million that we recently slipped to Fatah's security services didn't carry the day.

Or maybe that was the plan all along.

Bush administration officials said Thursday that they had been discussing the idea of largely acquiescing in the takeover of Gaza by the militant Islamic group Hamas and trying instead to help the Fatah party of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, retain its stronghold in the West Bank.

The United States had quietly encouraged Mr. Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian government and dismiss Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, steps that Mr. Abbas announced Thursday, administration officials said. Before the announcement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Mr. Abbas to reiterate American support for the move, they said. ...

The state of emergency that Mr. Abbas announced has underscored the widening rift separating Gaza, where Hamas has largely routed Fatah's forces, and the West Bank, where Mr. Abbas still has a strong base. But diplomats and Middle East experts said a "West Bank first" strategy might now be the last option for Ms. Rice to salvage something from her plans to push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. ...

Many diplomats and Middle East experts said they read Mr. Abbas's decision as an attempt to cut his losses in Gaza and consolidate power in the West Bank. Israeli officials are promoting a proposal that the West Bank and Gaza be viewed as separate entities, and that Israel act more forcefully in Gaza to crack down on Hamas militants.

Senior Bush administration officials said no decision had been made. Some State Department officials argue that the administration could only support such a separation if Israel agreed to make political concessions to Mr. Abbas in the West Bank, with the goal of undermining Hamas in the eyes of Palestinians by improving life in the West Bank.

The "West Bank first" strategy -- including a strong economic aspect -- features prominently in former Ambassador Martin Indyk's op-ed in today's Washington Post:

Does Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas know something that we don't? ...

Over the past year when Hamas would stage attacks in Gaza, Fatah forces would retaliate in the West Bank, where they were stronger. When fighting began this time, Fatah did little in the West Bank to counter Hamas's onslaught. Abbas's passivity further confirms that the fix was in. Abbas and Fatah have in effect conceded Gaza to Hamas while they hold on to the West Bank. Hamastan and Fatahstine: a "two-state solution" -- just not the one that George W. Bush had in mind. ...

The failed state of Gaza that Hamas controls is wedged between Egypt and Israel. Its water, electricity and basic goods are imported from the Jewish state, whose destruction Hamas has declared as its fundamental objective. One more Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli village and Israel could threaten to seal the border if Hamas did not stop its attacks. Hamas would then have to reach a meaningful cease-fire with Israel or seek Egypt's help meeting the basic needs of the 1.5 million Gazans. Hosni Mubarak's regime turned a blind eye to the importation of weapons and money that helped ensure Hamas's takeover. But would Egypt allow on its border a failed terrorist state run by an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Iran and Hezbollah? Or will it insist on the maintenance of certain standards of order in return for its cooperation?

Whatever transpires, Gaza has become Hamas's problem. It's a safe bet that the real attitude of Abbas and Fatah is: Let Hamas try to rule Gaza, and good luck.

This turn of events would free Abbas to focus on the much more manageable West Bank, where he can depend on the Israel Defense Forces to suppress challenges from Hamas, and on Jordan and the United States to help rebuild his security forces. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas is empowered to negotiate with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank. Once he controls the territory, he could make a peace deal with Israel that establishes a Palestinian state with provisional borders in the West Bank and the Arab suburbs of East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza could compare their fate under Hamas's rule with the fate of their West Bank cousins under Abbas -- which might then force Hamas to come to terms with Israel, making it eventually possible to reunite Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity living in peace with the Jewish state. It's hard to believe that such a benign outcome could emerge from the growing Palestinian civil war. But given current events, this course is likely to become Abbas's best option. ...

For the Bush administration, the outcome in Gaza is an embarrassment. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has committed her last 18 months in office to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A failed terrorist state in Gaza is hardly what she had in mind for a legacy. Some will argue that it's time she talked to Hamas. But its thuggish, extraconstitutional behavior in Gaza and its commitment to the destruction of Israel make it an unlikely partner, at least until governing Gaza forces it to act more responsibly. And that leaves a "West Bank first" policy as Rice's best option, too.

The remarkably convenient timing of various parties suggesting a "West Bank first" strategy would lead some folks to suspect that this eventuality had been foreseen and probably even planned for some time in advance of Hamas' recent military success in Gaza.

Getting Twitchy in Tehran

2007-06-14T09:21:00.000-05:00

There is a longstanding truism that "you are not paranoid if they are really out to get you."

But sometimes it can be advantageous to restrain the impulse towards a wholesale indulgence in shadow-chasing.

A party to mark the Queen's birthday by the British embassy in Iran is "psychological war" planned with the United States against the Islamic Republic, a hardline Iranian newspaper has said.

Kayhan, accusing the embassy of expanding its list of Iranian invitees, wrote: "The British embassy acts as America's psychological war wing. It seems the different kind of programming for the Queen's party is a joint American-British project."

The embassy is often a focus for anti-western protests in Iran, where the US has no mission after cutting ties in 1980.

The embassy's birthday party for the Queen is an annual event, but this year it will be held against the backdrop of tension with the West over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The gathering takes place today in the embassy's leafy Tehran compound - renovated a few years ago during a period of warming ties.

A British diplomat in Iran dismissed the charges.

"We are just doing what we normally do in embassies all over the world, inviting people from all sorts of walks of life," the diplomat said, adding those invited included officials, members of civil society and others.

Hardline student groups said they would hold a news conference outside the embassy to note the "betrayals and the historically cunning behaviour of the British government in Iran".

Kayhan put the party in context of the arrest of three American-Iranians, including academic Haleh Esfandiari, on security-related charges.

It quoted one Iranian invitee as saying: "Especially after the recent arrests of Iranians with American passports for espionage, the British embassy is trying to show there is nothing bad about having relations with foreigners."

Iran has linked the arrests to a so-called "soft revolution", a perceived plot by the US to undermine the government using intellectuals and others inside Iran.

What Will Post 9/11 Hysteria Bring Us?

2007-06-14T07:03:00.000-05:00

What created J. Edgar Hoover? He reigned with an iron fist as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, until the day he died in 1972. By then, Hoover had evolved into an untouchable autocrat, a man who kept secret files on millions of Americans over the years and used them to blackmail presidents, senators and movie stars. He ordered burglaries, secret wiretaps or sabotage against anyone he personally considered subversive. His target list included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, even Eleanor Roosevelt.

Yet when Hoover showed up for his first day of work at the Department of Justice in June 1917, he was a bright 22-year-old, just out of law school. He still had boyish good looks and was cocky and driven. The country had just entered World War I, and Hoover had avoided the wartime draft. Instead, he was ready to help win the war at home, to save the country from spies and subversives.

What changed this young eager beaver into the crass, cynical tyrant of later years?

The fact is, Hoover learned his attitudes and worldview from teachers at the Justice Department during his early years there, when the country was going through a period much like today's war on terror.

In March 1919, Hoover landed a dream assignment on the staff of new Atty. Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer just in time to participate in the first Red scare, in 1919-1920, and its signature outrage, the notorious Red Raids, also known as the Palmer Raids. For Hoover, it would shape his outlook for life.

On the night of June 2, 1919, bombs exploded in nine cities across the United States, leaving two people dead, including one of the bombers. One of these bombs destroyed Palmer's Washington home, almost killing him, his wife and his teenage daughter.

These bombs capped months of escalating upheaval during which the country convinced itself that we sat on the verge of a Russian-style socialist revolution. The first Red scare came on the heels of multiple traumas: World War I, the Russian Revolution and subsequent Bolshevik uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Argentina. In the United States, the economy had collapsed, prompting waves of strikes, riots and political violence.

Americans vowed vengeance after the June 2 bombings, and the targeted Palmer pledged to crush the reign of terror. He ordered a massive preemptive strike, a nationwide roundup of radicals. To manage the operation, Palmer chose his talented new staff counsel, young J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoover seized the opportunity. With Palmer's blessing, he laid plans for a series of brutal raids across the country. Backed by local police and volunteer vigilantes, federal agents hit in dozens of cities and arrested more than 10,000 suspected communists and fellow travelers. They burst into homes, classrooms and meeting halls, seizing everyone in sight, breaking doors and heads with abandon. The agents ignored legal niceties such as search warrants or arrest warrants. They questioned suspects in secret, imposed prohibitive bail and kept them locked up for months in foul, overcrowded, makeshift prisons.

It turned out that virtually none of these prisoners had anything to do with violent radicalism. Nearly all were released without being charged with a crime. Palmer's grand crackdown was one big exercise in guilt by association, based primarily on bogus fears of immigrants being connected to vilified radical groups such as the recently formed American Communist Party.

Still, Hoover relished his moment on the national stage. He appeared twice at Palmer's side during congressional hearings, and he faced off against future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter in a Boston courtroom in raid-related cases. Behind the scenes, Hoover demanded more arrests, higher bail and fewer rights for prisoners.

Ultimately, the public recoiled in disgust at the excesses and illegality of the raids, and Palmer saw his political career destroyed. But his young assistant fared much better.

Hoover never lost his anticommunist religion, nor his disdain for and distrust of "liberals" who defended "subversives" on grounds of free speech and civil liberties. He also never lost his sense of entitlement to bend the rules, either to protect the country or to protect himself.

Almost 90 years later, today's war on terror exists in an echo chamber of the 1919 Red scare. The federal government demands more powers at the expense of individual rights: secret CIA prisons, enhanced interrogation techniques, suspension of habeas corpus. Even the president openly claims powers that are beyond the reach of laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The same kinds of teachers who transformed the straight-laced, young Hoover in 1919 seem to be on the loose again in Washington. And that raises a troubling question: Are we today creating a whole new generation of young J. Edgar Hoovers, dedicated government agents learning the wrong lessons from the war on terror, who will stick around to haunt us for decades to come?

U.S. Losing What Little Control It Had Over Iraqi Political Development

2007-06-13T06:48:00.000-05:00

Events on the ground are superseding the U.S. attempts to make political headway in Iraq.

Suspected al-Qaida insurgents on Wednesday destroyed the two minarets of the Askariya Shiite shrine in Samarra, authorities reported, in a repeat of a 2006 bombing that shattered its famous Golden Dome and unleashed a wave of retaliatory sectarian violence that still bloodies Iraq.

Police said the attack at about 9 a.m. involved explosives and brought down the two minarets, which had flanked the dome's ruins. No casualties were reported.

The attack immediately stirred fears of a new explosion of Sunni-Shiite bloodshed. There are close ties between al-Qaida and some Iraqi Sunni militants. State television said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly imposed an indefinite curfew on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in Baghdad as of 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The 30-member bloc loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suspended its membership in parliament Wednesday, saying they will stay away from the 275-seat house until the government takes "realistic" steps to rebuild the Askariya shrine.

The suspension, announced in a statement by the bloc, is likely to weaken al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government and delay the adoption of a series of laws needed to build national reconciliation to reduce violence in Iraq.

The U.S. cajoling of the Maliki government towards sectarian unity will probably be falling on deaf ears today:

Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte visited Baghdad on Tuesday to press Iraq's Shiite-led government to complete a series of political reforms intended to reconcile the country's warring sects.

It was the second visit Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki received this week from a high-profile American official; on Sunday, the top military commander for the Middle East, Adm. William J. Fallon, warned that the Iraqi government needed to make tangible political progress by next month to counter opposition to the war in Congress.

Mr. Negroponte, the former ambassador to Iraq, met with Mr. Maliki at his office in the fortified Green Zone and emphasized the need for accommodation and compromise among Iraq's combative factions.

After today's bombing of the shrine, Maliki will hardly be in a position to hold back his Shiite brethren from taking revenge.

And the Bush administration will still refuse to admit that there is a civil war in Iraq.