http://wpherald.com/articles/1417/1/Analys...l-analysts.html

Analysis: U.S. experts alarmed over Mideast crisis
By Jacob Russell | Published Sep/22/2006 | Peace and Conflict , Middle East | Rating:

Unease among both conservative and liberal analysts



By Jacob Russell
UPI Correspondent

WASHINGTON -- Several prominent policy analysts warned this week that America's foreign policy had to be urgently re-evaluated to prevent wider disaster.

The Bush administration should even consider evacuating its military forces from the Middle East, according to experts speaking a meeting of he Green Institute think tank Wednesday.

The meeting reflected the growing unease among both traditionally conservative and liberal foreign policy analysts in the U.S. capital about the consequences of the deteriorating situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the growing anti-American sentiments expressed throughout the region.

"This is really an effort to assess where we are right now in the wake of the catastrophe with Iraq and Afghanistan," panelist Roger Morris, senior fellow with the Green Institute, said. "We want, above all, to point the way out. We want to ask: what are the alternatives here?"

The think tank, hosted by the Green Institute as part of its Global Policy 360 project, and led by Steven Schmidt, co-director for GP360, explored current U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East as well as current national security concerning Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and Israel. Leading the discussion were four panelists, each with differing political backgrounds.

"It's an example of people coming together who agree on one thing and are willing to engage in healthy discussion even though they may not agree on other issues," panelist Charles Pena said. Peña is a senior fellow of the Independent Institute and an adviser to the Status Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. "We are fueling hatred in the Muslim world against us," he said.

The only reason America should stay in Iraq is to prove itself as a fair but powerful mediator, particularly in Lebanon, said Sascha Mueller-Kraenner, director for Europe and North America at the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

"The rule is you break it, you buy it," he said. "The mess in Iraq was produced by American politics and American allies and there is no way you can leave Iraq a wreck. You have to repair what you do."


No Iraq "fix" possible
Experts at the meeting agreed that the situation in Iraq was now so chaotic and the prospects there so grim that no "fix" was possible. Peña said the United States had to choose the least bad of a series of bad options, because otherwise the war would continue in the Middle East for decades and it would drain the U.S. budget while paving the way for more serious terrorist acts.

"Maybe the current situation is elevated to the point that it's headed straight for disaster," said panelist Winslow Wheeler, director of the CDI's Straus Military Reform Project. America must leave, but it must be sensitive to its allies' concerns in a practical way, he concluded. "We can't leave in a manner like we came in."

Wheeler, said he thought the Bush administration may have learned from its mistakes in the Middle East but that it was now using the prospect of chaos there as a means of frightening the American public for leverage.

The majority of the U.S. media, as well as American politicians, had failed to adequately discuss alternatives to the Middle East crisis and offer practical solutions, the analysts said.

"We can't underestimate the importance of this," Morris said. "A lot of Washington ideas begin in think tanks. Sometimes it takes 20 to 30 years for change to take place... The progressive community needs to build new forums like this one that will discuss with candor and honesty the real problems with national security."

Most of the speakers at the meeting had already been identified as critics of the Iraq conflict and administration policies in conducting it. However, the broad range of political backgrounds they and their institutions represented reflected the growing unease and possible indications of future realignments across the political spectrum in Washington.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060924/pl_af...HE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Leaked intelligence report rocks Bush election stance by David Millikin


US spy agencies have dropped a political bombshell six weeks before national elections, with the leak of a classified report concluding that the war in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism.

The intelligence document on Sunday rocked a central pillar of the Republican Party's campaign platform ahead of November elections: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein made America safer, not weaker.

With opinion polls showing President George W. Bush's party possibly losing control of both houses of Congress in the the mid-term polls, in large part due to unhappiness over the war in Iraq, the report stating categorically the opposite will make for painful reading at the White House.

Bush has argued repeatedly in pre-election speeches that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism and that demands for a US troop withdrawal from the country by the opposition Democrats underscores why the center-left party should not be trusted with the nation's security.

"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Bush said in one speech on August 31.

Such assertions were looking decidedly shaky Sunday after The New York Times and The Washington Post released details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, the most comprehensive assessment yet of the war, based on analyses of all 16 of America's intelligence agencies.

The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, says "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," an official familiar with the document told The Times.

The Washington Post said the report described the Iraq conflict as the primary recruiting vehicle for violent Islamic extremists.

"While the US has seriously damaged Al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to carry out major operations since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, it noted, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized.

Democratic leaders were quick to jump on the report's conclusions as clear evidence of the failure of Bush's policies.

"This intelligence document should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war," Senator Edward Kennedy said in a statement Sunday.

"The fact that we need a new direction in Iraq to really win the war on terror and make Americans safer could not be clearer or more urgent -- yet this administration stubbornly clings to a failed 'stay-the-course' strategy," he said.

The White House, while reiterating its traditional stance of not commenting on classified reports, said The New York Times story "isn't representative of the complete document."

"We've always said that the terrorists are determined. Keeping the pressure on and staying on the offense is the best way to win the war on terror," a White House spokesman added.

But the leaked intelligence report is hardly good news for Bush and the Republicans, coming on top of a messy revolt by top Republican senators against a Bush plan for legitimizing how the US interrogates and prosecutes terrorist suspects.

The Senate rebels, who included possible candidates to succeed Bush in 2008, reached a compromise agreement with the White House late this week.

But the unseemly row already diverted attention away from Republican efforts to present a unified front on the issue of national security during the final stretch of the election campaign.

Republican leaders tried to brush aside the intelligence document, which they said they had not yet seen.

"If it wasn't Iraq it would be Afghanistan; if it wasn't Afghanistan it would be other (issues) that they would use as a method of continuing their recruitment," Senator John McCain, a leading potential presidential contender, said on CBS's Face The Nation.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed confidence US voters would not be swayed by the intelligence report.

"I think the American people, when they read an article like that ... say, 'Listen, just keep me safe -- I just want to be safe in Nashville, Tennessee, I want to be safe in Memphis, New York City, Washington, DC,' that's what they want."

http://www.slate.com/id/2150325
A summary of what's in the major U.S. newspapers.
Occupational Hazard
By Jesse Stanchak
Posted Sunday, Sept. 24, 2006, at 5:59 AM ET
The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all lead with a government report finding that the war in Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism. The classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued last April, finds that the occupation of Iraq has been a crucible for new, more decentralized extremist cells, while global outrage over the war has proved to be a boon for terrorist recruiters.

The NIE represents the opinions of all 16 intelligence agencies and was approved by Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. It's worth noting, as all the papers do, that a 2002 NIE was used to build the case for invading Iraq. That history makes the report's stark assessment of the war all the more sobering. Since the report is still classified, the papers rely on sources familiar with the document for tidbits, and as a result the stories all sound very similar. TP won't pretend it's surprised that all three papers do their cover pieces on the same day, five months after the report was issued. It sounds, however, as if the slim 30-page report is a little short on specifics as well: There's no attempt to discern the chances of the U.S. being attacked again, nor does the report make any policy suggestions. The report simply states, one sources tells NYT, "that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse."

The LAT fronts the beginning of what could be a huge story for them: an investigative report on a Green Beret unit whose members allegedly killed two detainees in Afghanistan during interrogation sessions gone wrong—and then covered it all up.


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The WP says that strategists from both parties think the GOP is in better shape now than it was a month ago, as the election season heads into its final six weeks. The insider quotes amount to Republicans in damage-control mode and Democrats not wanting to sound over-confident. The paper then goes on to suggest that somewhat lower gas prices and slightly better Bush approval numbers add up to an improved climate for Republican candidates. TP acknowledges how tough handicapping elections can be and even concedes that the WP's thesis might be valid—but the paper really doesn't offer much in the way of compelling evidence.

On the other hand, the LAT looks at how Republican strategists are targeting snowmobilers as part of their offensive against Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. It's part of their new "micro-targeting" strategy to use credit card receipts and other personal information to find niche groups and then speak to voters on specific issues that matter to them most. The program is equal measures clever and creepy once it sinks in that political operatives have this much information at their disposal.

Inside, everyone mentions that the rumors of Osama Bin Laden's death may have been greatly exaggerated.

The NYT reports that the Islamists who seized power in Somalia over the summer have turned out to be both more moderate and more effective than many would've predicted.

Both the NYT and the LAT take heartbreaking looks at the toll of tainted spinach. The LAT looks at the potential long-term health consequences for those infected. The NYT focuses on sick children and the parents who have to live with knowing their boy is sick because he listened to his parents and ate his vegetables.

But on the up side, new transplant regulations are giving patients needing lungs a much better chance of making it off the waiting list, says the NYT.

The WP splashes a big feature on an Iraq war veteran convicted of killing an Iraqi civilian and his father's quest to discover why some soldiers who kill in the heat of the moment are prosecuted, while others are excused.

Under the fold, the NYT explains the NFL's peculiar relationship with fan noise.

The WP fronts a look at how a government regulation meant to cut down on superfluous company cars is contributing to pathological energy waste.

The WP sheds light on the government of Argentina quest to reclaim huge tracks of land held by foreigners who want to turn the property into nature preserves.

Meanwhile, the landlocked Bolivian Navy is trying to get someone to donate a coastline, says the NYT.

The NYT spends front-page real estate telling us that Donald Rumsfeld's squash game is a lot like his political philosophy: The man only plays hardball.

… They'd Be Quickly Annexed by a Belligerent Canada …

Inside, the LAT examines the Vermont secession movement. The idea is to make Vermont the Switzerland of North America by breaking away from the United States and becoming politically neutral. The article paints the cause as being idealistic and its advocates as being slightly unhinged, citing a study showing that only 8 percent of Vermonters think the state should be an independent republic. On the one hand, that's obviously a long way from a majority—but then again, how many other states could muster 8 percent for secession?