HOW SYRIA DODGED A NEO-CON BULLET - JIM LOBE (ASIA TIMES, DECEMBER 20): While hardliners such as Cheney's office still have the upper hand on Syria policy, the administration is also finding itself under growing pressure to rethink its strategy there, as in Iraq.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HL20Ak06.html

A REAGAN STRATEGY FOR IRAN AND SYRIA - ABRAHAM D. SOFAER (WALL STREET JOURNAL, DECEMBER 20): The Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the Bush administration drop its preconditions and negotiate with Syria and Iran has been praised as a "no-brainer" -- and condemned as an improper effort to reward rogue regimes. Neither reaction is correct. Negotiating with enemies can be a useful aspect of effective diplomacy.
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB1166...8080955371.html
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THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST LEBANON: US OFFICIALS MUST MAKE CLEAR THAT THEY ARE NOT SELLING OUT LEBANON TO SYRIA - ADIB F. FARHA (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, DECEMBER 19)
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1219/p09s02-coop.html

WORSE THAN APARTHEID CHRIS HEDGES (TRUTHDIG, DECEMBER 19/COMMON DREAMS): Israel, with no restraints from Washington, despite the Iraq Study Group report recommendations that the peace process be resurrected from the dead, has been given the moral license by the Bush administration to carry out what is euphemistically in Israel called ?transfer? and what in other parts of the world is called ethnic cleansing.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1219-23.htm

END OF THE STRONGMEN: DO AMERICA AND ISRAEL WANT THE MIDDLE EAST ENGULFED BY CIVIL WAR - JONATHAN COOK (COUNTERPUNCH, DECEMBER 19): The era of the Middle East strongman, propped up by and enforcing Western policy, appears well and truly over. A chaotic and feuding Middle East, although it would be a disaster in the view of most informed observers, appears to be greatly desired by Israel and its neocon allies.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook12192006.html

REITERATING THE KEYS TO PEACE - JIMMY CARTER (BOSTON GLOBE, DECEMBER 20): ?As recommended by the Hamilton-Baker report, renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are a prime factor in promoting peace in the region. Although my book concentrates on the Palestinian territories, I noted that the report also recommended peace talks with Syria concerning the Golan Heights. Both recommendations have been rejected by Israel's prime minister.?
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...o_peace?mode=PF

THE OTHER ISRAEL LOBBY: A NEW ALLIANCE, INCLUDING FINANCIER GEORGE SOROS AND FORMER BILL CLINTON ADVISOR JEREMY BEN-AMI, AIMS TO TAKE ON THE POWERFUL LOBBYIST GROUP AIPAC -- AND RESHAPE U.S. POLICY - GREGORY LEVEY (SALON, DECEMBER 19): The fact is that most American Jews, and many other American supporters of Israel, do not see eye-to-eye on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the most hawkish, knee-jerk Israel supporters in the US government -- even if their presumed leadership, represented by AIPAC, often appears to do so.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/...obby/print.html

NATION BUILDING: PALESTINIAN-AMERICAN HISTORIAN RASHID KHALIDI EXPLAINS WHY PALESTINIANS HAVE FAILED TO CREATE A NATION AND DISCUSSES THE GRAVE SITUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST - JONATHAN SHAININ (SALON, DECEMBER 18): Khalidi: ?In terms of the Palestine issue, Bush ... has done an enormous disservice to the Palestinians and the Israelis by advocating a policy of force -- throughout the region and the world, but in particular in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.?
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/12/18/khalidi/print.html

ANOTHER MIDEAST CIVIL WAR EDITORIAL (BOSTON GLOBE, DECEMBER 19): The Bush administration, in cooperation with its European and Arab allies, should be working to prevent the outbreak of a full-blown Palestinian civil war.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...vil_war?mode=PF

A 'VICTORY' PLAN THAT EMPOWERS EXTREMISTS - TRUDY RUBIN (BALTIMORE SUN, DECEMBER 19): In the Mideast we have, moderates are losing ground to extremists, and American policy has strengthened the Islamists' hand.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...-oped-headlines

71. MIDEAST RULES TO LIVE BY - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NEW YORK TIMES, DECEMBER 20): Among updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, are Rule 12: The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary; and Rule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs? first priority is ?justice.?
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/opini...agewanted=print
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Israel praises U.N. Security Council decision to impose sanctions on Iran:

Israel on Saturday praised the U.N. Security Council's decision to impose
sanction on Iran, saying it's an important step toward preventing Iran from
obtaining nuclear weapons.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/23/...Israel_Iran.php

===
Abbas rejects temporary truce with Israel:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected the idea of a Palestinian state
with temporary borders in return for long-term truce with Israel.
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Lan...amp;DSNO=936942

===
Hamas views Abbas-Olmert meeting as insignificant:

The Palestinian Islamic group Hamas on Saturday played down significance of a
meeting that grouped Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem today.
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Lan...amp;DSNO=937001

===
'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?' :

Johann Hari on the plight of pregnant women in the West Bank, where babies are
dying needlessly
http://news.independent.co.uk/appeals/indy...icle2097790.ece

===
Islamic Courts seek to "expand war" :

A Somali Islamic Courts defence chief has for the first time called on foreign
Muslim fighters to join his movement's war against Ethiopia.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AE1...AEF40B5BAF7.htm

This compelling analysis is by Gary Sick, one of our most able and best known experts on Iran. He is a retired US Navy Captain, who served on the NSC staff under Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and now teaches at Columbia University.

It is commonly said that the United States has no Middle East
strategy. That may not be true much longer. The United States has
begun to establish the framework of a new coalition strategy in the
Middle East that could rebuild tattered alliances, shift attention
away from the Iraqi catastrophe, and provide a touchstone for
policymaking that could appeal across party lines.

The organizing principle of the new strategy is confrontation with
and containment of Shia influence – and specifically Iranian
influence – wherever it appears in the region. US allies in this
endeavor are Israel and the traditional (and authoritarian)
governments of predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
One unique feature of this otherwise unremarkable set of
long-standing friendly governments is the possibility that the Arab
states may subordinate their hostility to Israel at least
temporarily out of their even greater fear of Iranian/Shia
dominance of the region.

One of the products of the U.S. armed intervention in the Middle
East since 9/11 has been a shift in the fundamental balance of
power. In the name of fighting terrorism, the United States
empowered Iran. By removing the Taliban, Iran's greatest threat to
the east, and then removing the government of Saddam Hussein, its
deadly enemy to the west, and finally installing an Iran-friendly
Shia government in Baghdad for the first time in history, the U.S.
virtually assured that Iran – essentially without raising a finger
-- would emerge as a power center rivaled only by Israel. It is one
of the great ironies that U.S. policy would inadvertently make it
possible for these two non-Arab states on the eastern and western
flank of the Arab Middle East to dominate the traditional Arab
heartland. The process was further accelerated by U.S.
democratization policies that put its traditional Arab allies on
the defensive.

Although these were unintended consequences of U.S. policy, the
effects dismayed friends and foes alike. From Iran's perspective,
it was a strategic gift of unparalleled proportions, tarnished only
by the fact that its two major enemies had been replaced by a
pugnacious U.S. military giant looking for new worlds to conquer.
That tarnish was gradually removed as the United States found
itself increasingly bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire, with a
public fast growing disillusioned with the ugly realities of empire
building in a hostile and unforgiving environment. Erstwhile U.S.
allies in the Persian Gulf, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere privately
viewed U.S. actions as a failure at best and a betrayal at worst.
They were ripe for a change.

The origins of the new cooperative undertaking are murky, but they
appear to have been galvanized by the Israel-Hezbollah war in
Lebanon the summer of 2006. This event was perceived by Israel, the
United States and the Sunni Arab governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt
and Jordan as an Iranian attempt to extend its power into the
Levant by challenging both Israel and the Sunni Arab leadership.
Whether Iran in fact had any direct control over the decision by
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, to kidnap Israeli
soldiers is far from clear; however, the perception of growing
Iranian strength and reach – a fundamental shift in the Middle East
balance of power – was unquestioned and hugely menacing to the
traditional power brokers of the region. Initially they had to
swallow their words of discontent as Hezbollah acquitted itself
very creditably and entranced the Arab "street." But once the war
was over and Hezbollah began challenging the predominantly Sunni
and Christian Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora, initial
misgivings reemerged.

In the following months we have seen a number of indicators of a new
coordinated policy approach. Senior Saudi officials met privately
with equally senior Israeli officials, which was itself a
remarkable new development. The content of the discussions has not
been revealed, but one of the participants was rumored to be Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi Ambassador to Washington and
presently Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council,
one of the architects of the U.S.-Saudi collaboration against the
Soviets in Afghanistan, and a wheeler-dealer of legendary
reputation. During the same time period, Bandar began a series of
private visits to Washington, meeting with U.S. officials at the
highest level. Apparently these meetings occurred without the
knowledge of the present Saudi ambassador who abruptly resigned
after the information became public.

The United States successfully shepherded a resolution through the
United Nations Security Council denouncing Iran's nuclear program
and imposing limited sanctions. It was adopted unanimously, and it
gives Iran 60 days to change its policies or the issue will be
revisited. In the speech by President Bush announcing a troop
increase in Iraq, he focused a surprising amount of attention on
Iran. The announced increase of U.S. naval presence in the Gulf
region together with the supply of Patriot anti-missile batteries
to the Gulf were widely interpreted as warning signals to Iran. The
United States is taking an expansive view of the UNSC sanctions by
prohibiting a major Iranian bank from operating in the U.S. and
leading a campaign to persuade others to do the same. In the
meantime, Israel has maintained a drumfire of criticism of Iran's
nuclear program, including suggestions that if no one else is
willing to act, Israel may be called upon to launch a strike
against Iran on is own.

Some of these developments were spelled by Deborah Amos of NPR in a
special report on January 17
< http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...yId=6888930>

There have not been (and probably will not be) any formal
announcements, but the accumulating evidence suggests that a major
new strategy is being pursued. What are its moving parts? It is
still early days, but here is my own interpretation of the division
of labor that seems to be emerging:

United States:

-- Drop any further talk about democratization in the Middle East;
-- Use its influence in the United Nations Security Council to keep
the pressure on Iran (and to a lesser extent Syria) with sanctions
and coordinated international disapproval;
--Provide military cover for the Arab Gulf states as they take a
more confrontational position vis a vis Iran (Patriot missiles,
additional naval aircraft, etc.);
-- Undertake a more vigorous diplomatic effort to find a settlement
of the Arab-Israeli dispute, recognizing that even limited visible
progress will provide diplomatic cover for the Arab states if they
are to cooperate more closely with Israel;
-- In Lebanon, provide covert support for efforts to support the
Siniora government and to thwart Hezbollah, probably in close
cooperation with Israeli intelligence;
-- Organize dissident movements in Iran, primarily among ethnic
groups along the periphery or other targets of opportunity, to
distract and potentially even destabilize the Tehran government;
-- In Iraq:
(1) keep attention focused on Iran, including raids and general
harassment of its representatives;
(2) keep U.S. forces in country to prevent the situation from
descending into full scale civil war or a breakup of the country
(or, as Henry Kissinger presents it in a recent article, combining
both points: "They [U.S. troops] are there as an expression of the
American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of
imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on
which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend");
and
(3) consider engineering a more Sunni-friendly government,
especially if Prime Minister Maliki is unwilling or unable to
control the Shia militias;

Arab States (the six Gulf Cooperation Council states plus Jordan and
Egypt – 6+2):

-- Provide major funding and political support to the Siniora
government in Lebanon and work to undercut Hezbollah's influence
and image;
-- Attempt to woo (or threaten) Syria away from its alliance with
Iran with promises of money and support of Syrian efforts to regain
the Golan Heights;
-- Provide facilities and funding to assist the various U.S.
initiatives above;
-- Attempt to bring down the price of oil, which will remove some
political pressures on Washington and make life more difficult for
Iran.

Israel:

-- Provide intelligence support to U.S. (and potentially Arab)
anti-Hezbollah efforts in Lebanon;
-- Keep international attention focused on the Iranian threat as a
uniquely dangerous situation that may even demand Israeli military
intervention;
-- Use long-standing Israeli contacts, especially with the Kurds in
Iraq and Iran, to foment opposition to the Tehran government;
-- Be prepared to make sufficient concessions on the Palestinian
issue and the Golan to provide at least the perception of
significant forward motion toward a comprehensive settlement.

A tripartite strategy of this sort has a number of appealing
qualities. By keeping attention focused as fully as possible on
Iran as the true threat in the region, it tends to change the
subject and distract public attention from the Iraqi disaster. It
provides something of real value to each of the participants, but
most of the distasteful parts of the plan are plausibly deniable so
they will not have to be explained or justified in great detail to
skeptical observers in any of the countries involved. In the
United States, the antipathy to Iran as a result of the hostage
crisis in 1979-81, inter alia, is so strong that such a strategy is
likely to have widespread appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike,
with enthusiastic endorsement from pro-Israel lobbying groups.

Perhaps most important of all, it provides a single, agreed enemy
that can serve as the organizing point of reference for policies
throughout the region. Like the cold war, this can be used to
explain and rationalize a wide range of policies that otherwise
might be quite unpopular. The Holy Grail of U.S. Middle East policy
has always been the hope of persuading both Arab and Israeli allies
to agree on a common enemy and thereby relegate their mutual
hostilities to a subordinate role. Trying to get the Arabs to
conclude that the Soviet Union was a more immediate threat than
Israel was always a losing proposition, though it did not prevent
several U.S. administrations from trying. But Iran, as a large,
neighboring, non-Arab, radical Shia state, may fulfill that role
more convincingly.

The advent of Mr Ahmadinejad in Iran, with his extravagant rhetoric
and populist posturing, makes that a much easier sell than it was
under President Khatami. More than anyone else, Ahmadinejad is
responsible for the appeal of this strategy. He has done immense –
and perhaps irreparable – damage to Iran's image in the world and
its genuine foreign policy objectives. The fact that Iranian
parliamentarians are banding together in opposition to him and his
policies is evidence that this has not gone unobserved in Tehran,
but it may be too late.

Will the strategy work? Well, it does NOT necessarily mean an
immediate recourse to military conflict, as some are predicting.
The underlying fundamentals have not changed: none of the
tripartite protagonists stand to gain by an actual war. Especially
after the Iraqi experience, it is widely understood in Washington
that a war with a country as large and as nationalistic as Iran
would be immensely costly and almost certainly futile. Moreover,
there is no halfway house. You can't do a quick air strike and
realistically expect it to end there. The situation would
inevitably escalate and ultimately require boots on the ground.
That is a bridge too far for the United States at this juncture.
However, the strategy is deliberately provocative and risks
prompting a belligerent Iranian response (or perhaps it is
deliberately looking for a belligerent response} that could quickly
escalate into an armed exchange. So the threat of military action is
not insignificant.

Will the new policy persuade Iran to change its policies? Probably
not, although knowledgeable Iranian political observers say Iran is
actually ripe for a deal that would deal with both the nuclear and
the Iraqi issues. Iran will have a celebration in a few weeks about
its initial success in running a linked series of centrifuge
cascades. That would be the moment when they could accept at least
a temporary suspension of enrichment activities without renouncing
their national "right to enrich." If the Europeans (and Americans)
are interested in moving to a settlement of the nuclear issue, that
would be the moment to revisit and/or creatively reformulate the
array of proposals – Iranian and European – that are already on the
table.

The new tripartite strategy, however, is not really about Iran but
about the three protagonists. It brings them together, gives them a
common purpose, offers an alternative to the current misery of
reporting about Iraq, and provides a focus for future planning that
might gain a wide measure of support. Unfortunately, that suggests
that actually finding a negotiated solution with Iran is very much
a secondary priority.

The word "new" keeps popping up. This is the same old set of delusions.

There was a popular song several years ago titled " It seems to me I've heard that song before. "

It seems very appropiate when one hears the words of our leaders in Washington.

Although this post is written before the State of the Union Speech is delivered, there has has been enough dialogue about
this for all of us to have a pretty good idea of his ' new plan' for Iraq.

When 'new' plans are for Iraq are presented to us, one of my first thoughts is almost always what part in this has Cheney devised? Whether or not he still wields as much influence as ever with Bush and U.S. policy, is not known by me but it seems reasonable to assume that he does have a great deal.

The following article deals with some of that.

A.B.

Dick Cheney: stand-up guy or political black hole?
By David Ignatius
Daily Star staff
Saturday, January 20, 2007


Six years on, it remains one of Washington's enduring mysteries: How does Vice President Dick Cheney shape decisions in the tight inner circle of the Bush administration? There's a sense that Cheney's influence is on the rise again, at least with Iraq policy, but that's after many months in which his allies say his role has been diminished.

To outside observers, Cheney has been the political equivalent of a black hole - exerting a powerful but mostly invisible force on decisions. The office of the vice president has had a gravitational weight that sucked in other personalities and entire branches of the government, without emitting light or heat that would explain the decision-making process.

During Bush's first term, the "OVP," as it's known in Washington, functioned as a kind of parallel national security staff. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was a strong chief of staff for Cheney, and he hired talented foreign policy experts - Eric Edelman and then Victoria Nuland - to act, in effect, as Cheney's national security advisers. During Bush's second term, that role was taken on by John Hannah, a former policy researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But insiders say that after Libby's departure in 2005, the OVP has had less impact on foreign policy.

"What has defined the OVP since Scooter left is listlessness," says one Cheney ally. "For 18 months, it was defined by its torpidity. That was deeply distressing" to Cheney's conservative supporters, who feared that Bush had become captive of overly cautious advice from his senior military commanders, Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey.

This month's change in Iraq policy, in which Bush turned away from the patient strategy his military commanders had advocated, may have marked a return of Cheney's influence. But insiders caution that it's a mistake to see Cheney as some kind of puppet master on Iraq policy, and that the key decisions have been made by Bush himself.

The thrust of Cheney's views - in urging the president to ignore politics and maintain a tough course on Iraq - surfaced in an interview he gave last weekend to Chris Wallace of Fox News. Wallace noted that Iraq was a big issue in the November elections, and that exit polls showed only 17 percent of voters supported sending in more troops. What followed was this remarkable exchange:

Question: "By taking the policy you have, haven't you, Mr. Vice President, ignored the expressed will of the American people in the November election?"

The Vice President: "Well, Chris, this president, and I don't think any president worth his salt can afford to make decisions of this magnitude according to the polls. The polls change."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Question: "This was an election, sir."

The Vice President: "Polls change day by day, week by week."

Those remarks captured what Cheney's friends say is his crucial contribution to internal decisions - a conviction that much of the political debate in Washington is just noise, and should be ignored in favor of the country's long-term interests. "Over the years, he got tired of suffering fools," says one longtime Cheney friend. "He thinks it's all BS." This contempt for Washington developed when Cheney was a top White House aide in the Ford administration during the cacophony that followed Watergate, this friend says, and it ripened when he made enough money as chief executive officer of Halliburton that he didn't have to care what people in Washington thought.

The danger is that in encouraging Bush to ignore polls, and even elections, Cheney has helped set up a confrontation between Congress and the executive branch that could undermine any hope of gaining a bipartisan approach on Iraq.

While Cheney seems to have prevailed on Iraq, he appeared to suffer a defeat in this week's White House decision to submit the warrantless surveillance program to the oversight of the FISA court. Many administration lawyers had urged that course over the past several years, but it was strongly resisted by Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, who argued that the president had inherent authority to authorize the program under his war-making powers.

"Addington clearly lost this round," says one official who met with him about the NSA program.

The mystery of how Cheney operates may finally be clarified in the coming trial of Libby. The vice president will be called to testify on behalf of his former chief of staff, whom he described to Wallace last week as "one of the finest individuals I've ever known." That was pure Cheney - the stand-up guy from Wyoming.

Cheney's testimony, in person or by affidavit, about the use of classified information will go to the heart of the Cheney puzzle: How does the most important but elusive presidential adviser in modern history use his power behind the scenes?


Syndicated columnist David Ignatius is published regularly by THE DAILY STAR.