Leaving Iraq Without Leaving Behind Holocaust Johann Hari The Independent August 27, 2007 As it bleeds into its 5th year, the Iraq War is excelling only in savagery and surrealism. We now have an American president publicly citing the similarities to Vietnam as a reason why the US must not withdraw – and he is merrily quoting Graham Greene's anti-war masterpiece "The Quiet American" in his defense. Far from thinking anything has gone wrong, he declares: "The Iraqi people owe the American people a great debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq."

Meanwhile, the Iraqi psyche is so wrecked by the seven-days-in-a-week blasting on to their streets 24 hours a day that my Iraqi friends report mass hysteria gnawing into the survivors. After a small string of attacks by badgers – you know, the little furry creatures – in Basra, so many people were convinced this was a new weapon of war that UK military spokesman Maj. Mike Shearer had to announce publicly: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."



The last excuse the remaining defenders of the war can scrape together is – yes, but it'll be even worse if we leave. As David Petraeus, the commander of US forces, says: "If you don't like Darfur, you're going to hate Baghdad [after a US withdrawal]."



But buried in all the self-serving propaganda about staying the course, there is a dilemma for those of us genuinely worried about the Iraqi people. What if a genocide begins to unfold in a broken Iraq after the withdrawal of international troops? There are harbingers of it already. The jihadi suicide-massacres of the Yezidis in northern Iraq last week is only one signal. I have been startled by how viciously even my democratic, liberal Iraqi friends now talk about the other side in sweeping, annihilatory language. Almost every institution of the Iraqi state – the police, army, even the hospitals – are now divided into Shiite and Sunni wings which detest each other. There is a real and hefty risk that this will metastasize into an attempt to physically eliminate each other. Just as dark is the risk of the neighboring countries invading Iraq after a simple US withdrawal. This would create a Congo-on-the-Tigris.



But is this a case for keeping the US forces there? A recent, much-discussed-in-DC article in The New York Times by Brookings Institution scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack said so. They argued that "the surge" of 21,000 troops into Iraq is finally working, and creating momentum away from sectarian violence.



If this were true, it would be important – but their own institution's figures show it is the opposite of the truth. It makes no sense to compare statistics on violence in Iraq month-to-month, because the violence fluctuates seasonally (as it does in most cities in the world). For reliable figures, you have to compare this July to last July.



And what do you find in the Brookings statistics? The number of Iraqi military personnel and police killed are up 23 percent. People dying in multiple-fatality bombings is up 19 percent. US troop fatalities are up 80 percent. The size of the insurgency is up 250 percent. Attacks on oil and gas pipelines are up 75 percent. Hours of electricity available per day are down 14 percent. Far from creating the space for political compromise among Iraqis, this has led to Sunnis and secularists marching angrily out of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki's government. This is success? This is momentum?



The US troops cannot be an agent of anything positive in Iraq, after using chemical weapons in cities, after using torture routinely, after overseeing the deaths of 650,000 Iraqis. Today, 78 percent of Iraqis say the US presence "is doing more harm than good" and that they should leave. This is hardly surprising: Jeff Englehart, formerly a US soldier in Iraq, said recently: "The general attitude was: a dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi."



But how do they get out without leaving behind something even more hellish? To grope for a solution, we must first be honest and clear about the Bush administration's motives.



It is currently trying to force the Iraqi Parliament, as its top priority, to pass an oil law that would hand two-thirds of Iraq's oil fields to their friends and paymasters in Big Oil. Ordinary Iraqis see this new plan as crude looting of their wealth, with 63 percent appalled in a recent poll. Yet the US is suppressing resistance: They leaned on the Ministry of the Interior to use Saddam-era laws to ban the oil worker's trade unions, which have been democratically, peacefully fighting the law.



Only massive public pressure will change this course. So what should we demand they do? Former presidential candidate George McGovern, who fought heroically against the Vietnam War, has worked on a detailed way to leave Iraq that doesn't also leave behind a holocaust. It is mapped out in his book Out of Iraq.



McGovern's plan begins with a simple, stark apology from the US, Britain and other invaders for the catastrophe we have wrought – the opposite of Bush's deranged demands for thanks. There must then be a commitment to dismantle all permanent US bases on Iraqi soil, and to allow Iraqis to own their country's oil – with royalties paid equally to every citizen, in a regular check, like they do in Alaska.



The US then needs to convene a regional conference, at which it pledges to pay full-whack for an international stabilization force to police Iraq, manned exclusively by Muslim countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan. These countries will need all sorts of financial inducements to send troops. Tough. Pay them. McGovern calculates that even at top-rate, this would cost $5.5 billion – just 3 percent of keeping the US forces there for the next two years. Once the police are fellow-Muslims, the often-murderous insurgents will be much more isolated. Al-Qaeda's tiny presence (estimated by US generals to be fewer than 500 fighters, rendering Bush's claims they will take over the country absurd) will be even more despised. Only troops like this could have the legitimacy needed to stop a genocide.



It's not a perfect plan. People will still die in the fallout. But it is less lethal than any other option I can see. The present course is too horrific to maintain. In Baghdad today, people have stopped eating fish from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The reason? So many dead bodies are being dumped there every day – and being munched by the fish – that Iraqis began to fear they would contract diseases associated with cannibalism.



That's the scoreboard so far: to reduce Iraqis from the horror of Saddamism to physically consuming themselves. Now what was the president saying about gratitude?

Le Monde diplomatique, August 2007.
Palestine: a policy of deliberate blindness
How The World Backed Itself Into A Corner

by Régis Debray



August 08, 2007

Le Monde diplomatique

Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding a long policy drift whose results are now obvious.

Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the diplomatic process had not taken enough account of developments on the ground, especially the settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With an international conference again being discussed, it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many times over. No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded.

The OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), a United Nations agency, keeps up-to-date, detailed maps of the disputed territories, with photographs, population counts and graphs. It takes an hour to look at them, but doing so might forestall some of the never-ending statements of good intentions.

The maps show that the physical, economic and human basis for a viable Palestinian state is disappearing. The two-state solution and Israeli writer Amos Oz's "fair divorce" (a territory shared between two national homes, one smaller than the other and demilitarised but sovereign, viable and continuous) are now empty phrases belonging to the realm of might-have-been. Some might argue that we have not yet reached the point of no return and that the Israelis may have won the territorial battle (with only 22% of British mandate Palestine now outside their control) but the Palestinians are sure to win the demographic battle. They invoke the resilience of the local population in the face of the steam roller that is slowly but surely implementing the 1968 Allon Plan and the 1984 "Road Plan 50".

It is clear from developments on the ground that:

o the purpose of the security wall is not, as is believed, to trace a border that, however illegal (since it encloses over 10% of the West Bank), will at least serve as the dotted line for a future international frontier;

o it is true (as Ehud Omert said on Israeli army radio on 20 March 2006) that Israel's strategic border lies on the Jordan: the whole valley has been declared a forbidden area and the intervening area has been nibbled away (cross-river transit is only possible at certain points);

o the new east-west bypass roads built at the expense of the old north-south axis clearly chart a territory in the process of annexation, with space for three or four Arab bantustans (Jenin, Ramallah and Jericho). The exhaustion of natural resources in these overcrowded enclaves will eventually lead to massive emigration (much of the elite, especially Christian, has already left); and

o with the construction of the separation wall, the ongoing judaisation of East Jerusalem and reconfiguration of the Jerusalem municipality, the UN's repeated but purely formal condemnations have no effect on Israel's grip on the whole city (1).

There is a huge gap between what is said because we want to hear it (local withdrawals, easing of travel restrictions, removal of one checkpoint out of 20, a change of tone) and what is being done on the ground, which we don't want to see (interlinking of settlements, construction of bridges and tunnels, encirclement of Palestinian towns, expropriation of land, destruction of houses). Some would describe that gap as duplicity, others as ambiguity. The gradual encroachment happens out of sight of the cameras, without causing a stir and without an explicit colonial diktat. Nobody makes a formal complaint, even supposing they can find out what's going on - difficult if you haven't grown up locally. Israeli maps and school textbooks refer to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria and, following the Knesset's recent rejection of a proposal from a Labour education minister, obliteration of the 1967 green line is now a legal fait accompli.

This is not just a gap between the de facto and de jure situations. It reflects a method and tradition going back to the earliest days of the Yishuv (2): the strategy of fait accompli. That strategy has always paid off: the Jewish state was there before it was declared and recognised in 1948, as was the army. What we have is a theatre with two stages: on the international stage we hear repeated vague and encouraging speeches concerning withdrawal, coexistence and a Palestinian state, but the things that count (settlements, roads, tunnels, water tables) happen on the operational stage next door, where the outcome is decided out of public view.

Understanding how public opinion works in a democracy, successive Israeli governments of the left and right take care to administer regular painkillers, plans for unilateral withdrawal or the partial dismantlement of settlements and encouraging announcements that are always conditional and come to nothing. The media live from day to day, with no attempt to remember. Who now recalls that the road map (3) was supposed to be "a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005"?

The Oslo process did not just remain a dead letter: with the military reoccupation of Zones A and B (4) in April 2002, it went into reverse.

Territorial fragmentation cuts off local authorities from any possible central Palestinian administration and from each other, while the systematic physical destruction of national institutions, Palestinian infrastructure and political leaders by the Israeli army ensures internal anarchy and the spread of clans and gang violence: bottomless chaos. Clearly the path that has been taken is not that of nation building but the deconstruction of all possible governance beyond the separation wall. It is the logical counterpart of a 30-year annexation process that will be endorsed, when the time comes, "in view of the new reality on the ground".

In these circumstances, constant invocation of the road map by all parties has more to do with autosuggestion than a sober look at the consistent transformation of reality. That reality may not be visible from Geneva, Paris or New York, but it is immediately apparent to anyone travelling throughout the country after a few years' absence. It is a land carved up by military force, where the Israeli settlements are no longer shapes on a Palestinian background - instead the Palestinian areas appear as shapes on a solidly-infrastructured Israeli background: a land where water reserves are confiscated and a temporary travel restriction is very close to a permanent ban.

Some may take comfort in these ideas:

o since it was possible to withdraw settlements from Gaza, it should be possible in the near future in the West Bank. That is to ignore the fact that the withdrawal of 8,000 settlers from one place in Gaza was soon followed by the unpublicised installation of 20,000 settlers in another (the West Bank/Jerusalem). Gaza is not part of the promised land, whereas Judea and Samaria are its backbone. Sharon did not make any secret of the fact that withdrawal on the margins would be compensated by strengthening the Israeli presence elsewhere (438,000 settlers to date, including 192,910 in East Jerusalem);

o the dismantling of four small settlements in the north (1,000 settlers) and the proposed concentration of 60,000 settlers in the most populous blocs, Maale Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion, will create a free space. But with the settlements linked in a continuous string under cover of the security wall, the West Bank has been effectively cut in two. The wall separates Palestinians from each other even more than it separates them from the Israelis.

What is taking shape is not the Palestinian state announced and desired by all: it is an as yet unperceived Israeli territory enclosing three self-governing Palestinian enclaves.

All parties have a vested interest in preserving the international pretence (5). For the Israelis, history is being created under the cover of the pretence. The Palestinians cannot be told the truth - they are under occupation yet hoping for a better life and not self-destruction; wishful thinking provides notables, elected representatives and officials with a living, status, dignity and a raison d'être. The Europeans chose to salve their consciences by providing financial and humanitarian aid to apologise for their political passivity and voluntary blindness. The thinking of the Americans owes more to the Old Testament than the New; their link with Israel is a parent-child relationship beyond criticism. This shared illusion of self-protection results from the coincidence of opposing interests.

Is this situation tenable to the end of the century? It seems doubtful, given Israel's obsession with security, which makes it less secure, and its disregard for the demographic and religious trends in the region (6). Could not at least one European government convey to our Israeli friends that we are not all taken in by the deception, and that those who deceive may not be be its first victims - but will certainly be its last? ________________________________________________________



Régis Debray is a writer and philosopher, and honorary chairman of the IESR (European Institute of Religious Studies), Paris

(1) See Dominique Vidal and Philippe Rekacewicz, "Jerusalem: whose very own and golden city?", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2007.

(2) A Hebrew term used by the Zionist movement before the creation of the State of Israel to designate Palestine's Jewish inhabitants and new immigrants.

(3) The road map, a proposal for ending the Israel-Palestine conflict, was adopted by the Quartet (UN, US, EU and Russia) on 30 April 2003.

(4) The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (45 km long and 10 km wide). The Oslo accords divided them into three zones:
- Zone A comprising, since 1994, Gaza and the towns of Jericho, Jenin, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarem, Nablus, Bethlehem (Hebron was the subject of a separate agreement in January 1997), in which the Palestinian Authority has civil jurisdiction and police powers; - Zone B comprising the remaining areas of the West Bank, in which the Palestinian Authority has civil jurisdiction but shares responsibility for internal security with the Israeli army;
- Zone C comprising the Israeli settlements establishing in the West Bank, Gaza (since dismantled) and East Jerusalem, which remain under the control of the Jewish state.

(5) See Alain Gresh, "Palestine wrecked", Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2007.

(6) See the report (PDF) submitted to the UN secretary general on 5 May by Alvaro de Soto, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

David Remnick in the current issue of the New Yorker on Mearsheimer/Walt. Just to remind, they speak at Politics and Prose on Sept 6th. <h1 id="articlehed">The Lobby</h1> <h4 id="articleauthor">by David Remnick September 3, 2007 </h4> Last year, two distinguished political scientists, John J. Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard, published a thirty-four-thousand-word article online entitled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” a shorter version of which appeared in The London Review of Books. Israel, they wrote, has become a “strategic liability” for the United States but retains its strong support because of a wealthy, well-organized, and bewitching lobby that has a “stranglehold” on Congress and American élites. Moreover, Israel and its lobby bear outsized responsibility for persuading the Bush Administration to invade Iraq and, perhaps one day soon, to attack the nuclear facilities of Iran. Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish a book-length version of Mearsheimer and Walt’s arguments on September 4th.

Mearsheimer and Walt are “realists.” In their view, diplomatic decisions should be made on the basis of national interest. They argue that in the post-Cold War era, in the absence of a superpower struggle in the Middle East, the United States no longer has any need for an indulgent patronage of the state of Israel. Three billion dollars in annual foreign aid, the easy sale of advanced weaponry, thirty-four vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel since 1982—such support, Mearsheimer and Walt maintain, is not in the national interest. “There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence,” they write, but they deny that Israel is of critical strategic value to the United States. The disappearance of Israel, in their view, would jeopardize neither America’s geopolitical interests nor its core values. Such is their “realism.”

The authors observe that discussion about Israel in the United States is often circumscribed, and that the ultimate price for criticizing Israel is to be branded an anti-Semite. They set out to write “The Israel Lobby,” they have said, to break taboos and stimulate discussion. They anticipated some ugly attacks, and were not disappointed. The Washington Post published a piece by the Johns Hopkins professor Eliot Cohen under the headline “Yes, It’s Anti-Semitic.” The Times reported earlier this month that several organizations, including a Jewish community center, have decided to withdraw speaking invitations to Mearsheimer and Walt, in violation of good sense and the spirit of open discussion.

Mearsheimer and Walt are not anti-Semites or racists. They are serious scholars, and there is no reason to doubt their sincerity. They are right to describe the moral violation in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. (In this, most Israelis and most American Jews agree with them.) They were also right about Iraq. The strategic questions they raise now, particularly about Israel’s privileged relationship with the United States, are worth debating––just as it is worth debating whether it is a good idea to be selling arms to Saudi Arabia. But their announced objectives have been badly undermined by the contours of their argument—a prosecutor’s brief that depicts Israel as a singularly pernicious force in world affairs. Mearsheimer and Walt have not entirely forgotten their professional duties, and they periodically signal their awareness of certain complexities. But their conclusions are unmistakable: Israel and its lobbyists bear a great deal of blame for the loss of American direction, treasure, and even blood.

In Mearsheimer and Walt’s cartography, the Israel lobby is not limited to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is a loose yet well-oiled coalition of Jewish-American organizations, “watchdog” groups, think tanks, Christian evangelicals, sympathetic journalists, and neocon academics. This is not a cabal but a world in which Abraham Foxman gives the signal, Pat Robertson describes his apocalyptic rapture, Charles Krauthammer pumps out a column, Bernard Lewis delivers a lecture—and the President of the United States invades another country. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Exxon-Mobil barely exist.

Where many accounts identify Osama bin Laden’s primary grievances with American support of “infidel” authoritarian regimes in Islamic lands, Mearsheimer and Walt align his primary concerns with theirs: America’s unwillingness to push Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. (It doesn’t matter that Israel and the Palestinians were in peace negotiations in 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center, or that during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 bin Laden’s pilots were training in Florida.) Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business.

It’s a narrative that recounts every lurid report of Israeli cruelty as indisputable fact but leaves out the rise of Fatah and Palestinian terrorism before 1967; the Munich Olympics; Black September; myriad cases of suicide bombings; and other spectaculars. The narrative rightly points out the destructiveness of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and America’s reluctance to do much to curtail them, but there is scant mention of Palestinian violence or diplomatic bungling, only a recitation of the claim that, in 2000, Israel offered “a disarmed set of Bantustans under de-facto Israeli control.” (Strange that, at the time, the Saudi Prince Bandar told Yasir Arafat, “If we lose this opportunity, it is not going to be a tragedy. This is going to be a crime.”) Nor do they dwell for long on instances when the all-powerful Israel lobby failed to sway the White House, as when George H. W. Bush dragged Yitzhak Shamir to the Madrid peace conference.

Lobbying is inscribed in the American system of power and influence. Big Pharma, the A.A.R.P., the N.R.A., the N.A.A.C.P., farming interests, the American Petroleum Institute, and hundreds of others shuttle between K Street and Capitol Hill. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national-security adviser, recently praised Mearsheimer and Walt in the pages of Foreign Policy for the service of “initiating a much-needed public debate,” but he went on to provide a tone and a perspective that are largely missing from their arguments. “The participation of ethnic or foreign-supported lobbies in the American policy process is nothing new,” he observes. “In my public life, I have dealt with a number of them. I would rank the Israeli-American, Cuban-American, and Armenian-American lobbies as the most effective in their assertiveness. The Greek- and Taiwanese-American lobbies also rank highly in my book. The Polish-American lobby was at one time influential (Franklin Roosevelt complained about it to Joseph Stalin), and I daresay that before long we will be hearing a lot from the Mexican-, Hindu-, and Chinese-American lobbies as well.”

Taming the influence of lobbies, if that is what Mearsheimer and Walt desire, is a matter of reforming the lobbying and campaign-finance laws. But that is clearly not the source of the hysteria surrounding their arguments. “The Israel Lobby” is a phenomenon of its moment. The duplicitous and manipulative arguments for invading Iraq put forward by the Bush Administration, the general inability of the press to upend those duplicities, the triumphalist illusions, the miserable performance of the military strategists, the arrogance of the Pentagon, the stifling of dissent within the military and the government, the moral disaster of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the rise of an intractable civil war, and now an incapacity to deal with the singular winner of the war, Iran—all of this has left Americans furious and demanding explanations. Mearsheimer and Walt provide one: the Israel lobby. In this respect, their account is not so much a diagnosis of our polarized era as a symptom of it. ♦

US Senator Lugar Speaks For Extending START-I Treaty
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Aug 30, 2007 - Russia and the U.S. should extend the START-I Treaty, which expires in 2009, or else negative consequences will result, U.S. senator Richard Lugar said Tuesday. "The United States and Russia must extend the START Treaty's verification and transparency elements, which will expire in 2009," Lugar told an arms control round table in Moscow. Lugar said the two countries should also introduce ... more


+ Commentary: The next war?
Bern, Switzerland (UPI) Aug 29, 2007 - After a brief interruption of his New Hampshire vacation to meet President Bush in the family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, French President Nicolas Sarkozy came away convinced his U.S. counterpart is serious about bombing Iran's secret nuclear facilities. That's the reading as it filtered back to Europe's foreign ministries: Addressing the annual meeting of France's ambassadors to ... more

Analysis: Hitting Iran where it hurts
Washington (UPI) Aug 28, 2007 - Amid continuing speculation of a pending U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities or possible raids targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, a group of activists is asking Washington to consider "terror-free investment" -- a non-violent tool -- as a means of pressuring Iran. For years now the United States has barred U.S. companies from conducting business with Iran and imposed ... more

Robert Naiman

Slam Dunk: The Bush Administration is Trying to Provoke Iran

Posted August 30, 2007 | 12:44 PM (EST)

The Bush administration is once again escalating its confrontation with Iran. Clearly they have multiple motivations for doing so. They're trying to "change the channel" from the failure of the "surge," ahead of the September Congressional debate on Iraq. They would dearly love to split off from the Democratic opposition on Iraq Members of Congress who share the AIPAC goal of confronting Iran. And they want to undermine negotiations taking place between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency over Iran's nuclear program.

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But details have emerged from the recent escalation that strongly indicate what many have long suspected: the Bush administration's fundamental conflict with Iran is not about its nuclear program or alleged weapons smuggling -- so far unproven -- into Iraq.

It's simply a great-power struggle for influence. And while there's nothing too shocking about that, people in the United States should ask themselves -- and be asked by others -- what sacrifices we are really willing to bear so that the Bush administration can try to keep Iran from having the influence in Iraq that they would normally have -- and almost certainly will have -- if there is a democratic government in Iraq, given that 60 percent of the Iraqi population is Shiite and has strong cultural and religious ties to their co-religionists in Iran. How many U.S. soldiers' lives is that goal worth? How many billions of U.S. tax dollars?

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported:

Members of an Iranian Energy Ministry delegation were arrested and held overnight by American troops in Baghdad for having unauthorized weapons, before being released this morning, American and Iraqi officials said in Baghdad. Iranian officials protested the detentions today. The group had been invited to Baghdad to help resolve Iraq's electricity crisis, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

...

a media adviser to the Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq told Reuters news agency that the group was in Baghdad at the invitation of Iraq's Ministry of Electricity to help build a power station in the Shiite city of Najaf.

Why were these Iranians arrested by U.S. troops if, according to Iraqi officials, they were part of an Energy Ministry delegation invited to Baghdad to "help resolve Iraq's electricity crisis"? That Iraq has a serious electricity crisis is well known. Surely such assistance should be welcomed. There must have been some mistake.

Not so, apparently, The Times reports. A manager at the hotel where the Iranians were staying said:

"I told [the U.S. soldiers] that the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity had invited them, that they were guests of the ministry and that we had a letter from the ministry confirming this."

So, prior to the Iranians' arrest, U.S. soldiers were aware that the hotel where the Iranians were staying had proof that the Iranians were in Iraq at the invitation of Iraq's Energy Ministry.

What was the point of arresting these officials? Surely the U.S. forces could have anticipated that they would be compelled politically to quickly release them, since, as they knew, these officials were in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government. There is a strong whiff of harassment and provocation about this.

Here is something very simple Congress could do to indicate that they are serious about preventing the Bush Administration from provoking a war with Iran. They could mandate that U.S. forces in Iraq cannot arrest Iranian government officials who can prove that they are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, unless they have explicit authorization from the "sovereign" Iraqi government to do so.

Get involved.

International Herald Tribune


Occupational Hazard
by Jack Miles
Thursday, August 30, 2007

Is America's presence in Iraq legal?

As Republicans and Democrats debate the ethical and practical considerations for and gainst the withdrawal of the United States forces, this question scarcely comes up. But within a few months, it could, suddenly and with potentially decisive impact.

In May 2003, just weeks after the overthrow of Iraq's government, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 recognized "the Authority" - which was to say "the occupying powers under unified command" - as Iraq's effective legal government.

In October 2003, it took a further step and mandated that the United States-led multinational force establish security and stability in Iraq. While noting that this mandate would expire within a year, the council expressed its "readiness to consider on that occasion any future need for the continuation of the multinational force, taking into account the views of an internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq."

In June 2004, Security Council Resolution 1546 stipulated that "by 30 June 2004, the occupation will end and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist, and that Iraq will reassert its full sovereignty." Subsequently, as sovereign Iraq has moved by stages through elections and complex deliberations to the formation of its current government, the United Nations has renewed the mandate for the multinational force at the request of successive Iraqi prime ministers - Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2005 and Nuri Kamal al-Maliki last year.

The current mandate expires at the end of December. Will it be renewed? In June, the Iraqi Parliament passed a bill requiring that the next renewal should not be made without its advice and consent. Maliki has not signed the bill and could conceivably veto it. However, given the worsening of his relations with Washington, it seems increasingly likely he will give it his signature and, come December, do as it instructs.

The Iraqi Parliament, for its part, has already passed a nonbinding resolution calling for a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign forces. If it voted in December not to seek a renewal of the mandate, the American troops deployed in Iraq would be there illegally.

Would this legal difference make a material difference? The Bush administration is of course unlikely to give too much heed to any Security Council resolution. But the expiration of the mandate may matter greatly to the Iraqis, even to the point of becoming the signal for a general uprising of Shiites against foreign forces.

The 2004 siege of Najaf - the one collective uprising of Shiites that Iraq has seen since the war began - extended American troops to the limit. Najaf multiplied many times over might precipitate a very different kind of endgame than the United States command now seems to contemplate. Moreover, Moktada al-Sadr, who led the Najaf uprising, has become perhaps the most popular and powerful Arab in Iraq.

Another way in which the legal difference over the American presence would make a material difference would be if Maliki (or his successor) were to follow through with his recent threat to "find friends elsewhere." He issued that warning to the Bush administration, significantly enough, at a news conference in Syria.

Another possible "friend" is increasingly truculent Russia. Moscow would not grieve if after the Iraqi debacle the United States were demoted from the status of sole superpower to that of one great power among several.

But the most obvious and presumably most willing new partner for Maliki would be Shiite-dominated Iran.

If things head that way, while U.S. troops are still on the ground, should the United States attack Iran pre-emptively? Some in high places favor this, but a pre-emptive American attack on Iran could quickly lead to an Iranian counterattack closing the Straits of Hormuz at the lower end of the Persian Gulf. The American forces would then be trapped - both their main supply line and their main evacuation route cut off.

It may be time to change the slogan on the yellow ribbon from "support the troops" to "defend the nation." Rather than see the American army of liberation humiliatingly voted out of Iraq or have its avenue of exit cut off by opportunistic enemies, the Senate should join the Iraqi Parliament, through a "sense of the Senate" resolution, and call for the next Security Council mandate to be one that requires the progressive withdrawal of all foreign forces from Iraq, without haste but with all deliberate speed.

Jack Miles is a senior fellow for religious affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy and a professor of English and religious studies at the University of California, Irvine.

IAEA says Iran nuclear accord 'significant step'
Vienna (AFP) Aug 30, 2007 - Iran's decision to answer key questions about its nuclear programme is "a significant step forward," the UN nuclear agency said Thursday, in a development expected to help Tehran avoid new sanctions. The IAEA also said Iran's nuclear work was far below the industrial level vaunted by Tehran in April, according to a confidential IAEA report obtained by AFP. Iran is continuing to defy ... more

Liberals, Bush Unite in Ethnic Cleansing of Iraq By Chris Floyd It is now obvious that one impetus behind the "surge" was to accelerate the "ethnic cleansing" of Iraq. Given the manifest failure to establish a strong central government to serve as a client state, the conquerors now find it easier to deal with separate ethnic enclaves, which can police themselves, shake out their own internal conflicts (however bloodily) and thus establish some kind of solid leadership that can cut deals and guarantee investments.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18278.htm

US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way By Arianna Huffington As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18277.htm

US-Allawi Coup May Be On Its Way By Arianna Huffington As we all await the Petraeus Report on the state of the surge, we may also need to be anticipating the Allawi Coup.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18277.htm

Empire or Freedom? By Jacob G. Hornberger
The 9/11 attacks brought to the surface a dilemma that everyone, especially libertarians, must now confront: whether to choose a pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy or a free society.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18276.htm

My Story By Army National Guard Spc. Eleonai "Eli" Israel Two months ago, I took a stand that changed my life forever. As a Soldier, a JVB Protective Service Agent, and a Sniper with the Army who had been in Iraq for a year (running over 250 combat missions), I refused to continue to be a part of the occupation. I regret nothing. This is my story.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18279.htm [/color]


[color="#000000"]History Will Not Absolve Us By Nat HentoffLeaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18280.htm

U.S. report finds Iraq failing on goals: The White House on Thursday played down a congressional report showing Iraq had achieved few of the political and security goals set by Washington, saying the standards were too high to meet.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30248200.htm

Active-duty US troops become outspoken critics of Iraq war : A recent op-ed about the war in Iraq charged that upbeat official reports amount to "misleading rhetoric." It said the "most important front in the counterinsurgency [had] failed most miserably." And it warned against pursuing "incompatible policies to absurd ends."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070829/ts_csm/aspeakout

Nuclear agency calls Iranian cooperation of its investigation significant : The assessment is expected to make it more difficult for the United States to rally support for a new round of sanctions against Tehran.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/2...clear-iran.html

US Downplays IAEA Report On Iran Nuclear Cooperation : The U.S. downplayed the importance of an International Atomic Energy Agency report Thursday that detailed significant progress from Iran with its nuclear probe.
http://snipurl.com/1q5bi

Iran warns against new UN sanctions : A senior Iranian envoy has warned the US and its allies against pushing for new UN Security Council sanctions against hiscountry, suggesting Tehran could retaliate by ending its co-operation with UN inspectors probing its nuclear programme.
http://snipurl.com/1q5bk A hidden menace in Bush's words on Iran : The George W Bush administration has seemingly taken advantage of the Congressional recess to escalate tensions with Iran. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IH31Ak01.html

Sadr Declares Unilateral
6-Month Cease-Fire in Iraq

The Rip-off in Iraq: You Will Not Believe How Low the War Profiteers Have Gone

Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

War on Iraq: In Iraq, private contractors are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

Two Years Post-Katrina: Racism and Criminal Justice in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty / August 30th, 2007

Two years after the devastation of New Orleans highlighted racism and inequality in the US, the disaster continues. New Orleans’ health care and education systems are still in crisis. Thousands of units of public housing sit empty. Nearly half the city’s population remains displaced. A report released this week by the Institute for Southern Studies reveals that, out of $116 billion in federal Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding — and half of that 30% remains unspent. (Full article …)


Lying About Vietnam to Justify Iraq
by Lee Sustar / August 30th, 2007

George W. Bush served up a heaping platter of self-serving distortions and discredited right-wing myths in his much-hyped speech comparing the war that the U.S. lost in Vietnam to the one it’s losing in Iraq. (Full article …)


Lebanon ’s Presidential Election
Another Causus Belli?

by Franklin Lamb / August 30th, 2007

In beautiful 5000 year old Baalbec, named by the Phoenicians after their Sun God, Baal, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, one can enjoy, amidst the detailed ruins of the Temples of Bacchus and Jupiter perhaps the finest examples of Imperial Roman architecture at its apogee. In this cradle of resistance to tyranny, with its Shia majority and some argue the birthplace of Hezbollah, one is reminded that in Lebanon history has always repeated itself. (Full article …)


Sen. Larry Craig in the Toilet
by Gary Leupp / August 30th, 2007

The Jeff Gannon Affair drew our attention to the fact that a male prostitute can sleep over at the White House on multiple occasions. The Mark Foley Affair alerted us to the phenomenon of conservative Republican lawmakers’ passion for teenage pageboys. The Ted Haggard Scandal showed us that conservative Republican preachers who sermonize against gay rights can smolder with lust for man-to-man action. The arrest of Republican Florida State Rep. Bob Allen at a park in Central Florida, showed us that the coauthor of a recent public lewdness bill can lewdly solicit sex from an undercover male cop. And now, the Larry Craig Scandal draws our attention to the phenomenon of conservative Republican lawmakers firmly opposed to gay rights getting off on impersonal anonymous homo-sex in men’s room toilet stalls. (Full article …)


The Puzzling Suspension of Incredulity to the “Official” 9-11 Theory
by Kim Petersen / August 29th, 2007

Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
By David Ray Griffin
(Olive Branch Press, 2007)
ISBN: 978-1-56656-686-5 (Full article …)


Hogwash! Or, How Animal Advocates Enable Corporate Spin
by Lee Hall / August 29th, 2007

It’s obvious now: Severe damage is caused by humanity’s penchant for treating the planet as our storehouse, and all living beings as our personal stock. As public awareness grows, companies sense a need to adjust. But they’ve managed, perversely, to use the need for change as a means to avoid it. Thus the rise of “greenwashing” — the appearance of cultivating ecological awareness in hopes of getting a higher profile for whatever they happen to be selling us. (Full article …)


Rangel Shuts the Door on Kenneth Foster
by Ben Davis / August 29th, 2007

Barring a miracle — and miracles are in short order on Texas’ death row — Kenneth Foster is likely to die Thursday. The battle around his case has been a heroic one. Kenneth’s horrifying story of being condemned to death on a misapplication of an already draconian legal monstrosity — Texas’ “Law of Parties,” which enshrines guilt by association — as well as his own clear-eyed and articulate work telling his story and speaking out for others, have won him a host of supporters. (Full article …)


The Little Tug That Could
OR The Tail that Wagged the Dog

by John Walsh / August 29th, 2007

Professors Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Walt of Harvard are about to release a full-length book following up on their paper implicating the Israeli Lobby in ginning up the war on Iraq. I went to a local bookstore, hoping to catch sight of it. I discovered, however, that the book will not appear until September. When the paper appeared in the London Review of Books, having been been censored by the US media, the “left” addressed the M&W thesis in the form of a question, “Can the tail wag the dog”? This of course is a question posed in a way to answer itself, and hence no question at all. (Full article …)


Fallujah Finds a False Peace
by Ali al-Fadhily / August 29th, 2007

Fallujah is quiet these days. After all the fighting and destruction of 2004, U.S. and Iraqi forces call this success. Many residents are not so sure. (Full article …)

South of Baghdad, US Troops Find Fatigue

The Vietnam Analogy by Immanuel Wallerstein
Using three slogans -- "boat people," re-education camps," and "killing fields" -- George Bush offers a desperate and malignant comparison of the US withdrawal from Vietnam and any such withdrawal from Iraq.
more...

Salafist Jihadists, More Threatening Than Mysterious by Rami G. Khouri
We are beginning to understand the history and the mindset of violent and terrorist Islamic groups that have arisen in recent decades, such as Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda -- groups most often called “Salafist Jihadists."
more...

After Fateh el-Islam by Rami G. Khouri
We must understand correctly the root causes that drive the continuing proliferation of groups like Fateh el-Islam, if we hope to nip such criminality in the bud. This particular group will soon be defeated or killed in Nahr el-Barid, but what happens after that?
more...

Another rabbit pops out of the Iraqi hat

Powerful and power-hungry Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has distinguished himself not only by fighting against the US in Iraq, but also by consistently changing his colors. His sudden announcement, therefore, to suspend his fight with US forces for six months cannot be taken entirely at face value. It's a deft political move, and if anything should put the US and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki more on guard than ever before. - Sami Moubayed (Aug 31, '07)

Benchmarks come and go
Iraq has met only three of 18 benchmarks set for it by the US Congress, according to leaks from a new report. The news will certainly increase congressional criticism of President George W Bush's "surge" strategy for Iraq, but the administration has its own definitions of "success". (Aug 31, '07)

Britain's last stand in the south
Iraq's second city, Basra, could use a little "peace gas" from H G Wells' 1930s screenplay Things to Come. That might be about the only thing that salvages Britain's perilous position. The remaining 5,000 British troops are retreating into the airport, their last redoubt, to wait out the inevitable end game in tandem with the US. - Ronan Thomas (Aug 31, '07)

A small break for Iran
The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report on Tehran's nuclear program dampens the momentum for another round of United Nations sanctions. This may well be unwelcome news to the hawks in Washington, but it does go some way to breaking down the "wall of mistrust" between the US and Iran. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Aug 31, '07)

Gridlock on Pakistan's road to change
The US-and-British-inspired plan of twinning President General Pervez Musharraf and former premier Benazir Bhutto in a power-sharing deal is aimed at putting Pakistan on the road to becoming a enlightened, moderate Muslim country. Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, presents a formidable roadblock. - M K Bhadrakumar (Aug 31, '07)

CHAN AKYA
India's Muslim 'problem'
With sickening regularity, India's middle classes suffer terrorist outrages that are blamed on the subcontinent's restive Muslims. But the factors that drive people to such unspeakable acts of terror against their fellow citizens are ignored by feckless politicians who lack both the vision and credibility to grasp an obvious solution, namely increased economic opportunities for the diverse minorities, with a particular emphasis on urban areas. (Aug 31, '07)

A summit within a summit in Korea
The presidents of South Korea and the US will hold an important "summit" in Sydney next week. The likely topic: the planned summit between Roh Moon-hyun and North Korea's Kim Jong-il in October. Washington will want assurances that Roh will do nothing to derail the six-party talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. - Donald Kirk (Aug 31, '07)

From Apocalypse to Disaster, America Is Obsessed with the Prospect of Bad News

Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet

MediaCulture: Author of the new book The Culture of Calamity, Kevin Rozario explains why we are so fond of a good crisis.


Is George Bush Restarting Latin America's 'Dirty Wars'?

Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet

ForeignPolicy: Signs are emerging of a new wave of U.S.-backed militarism in Latin America.


Why the GOP's Gay Wing Is Forced to Hide in the Bathroom

Nina Burleigh, HuffingtonPost.com

It's time for Republicans to embrace their own gay wing and stop fueling the sickness of suppression that drives men like Larry Craig into airport bathroom stalls.

US Marine: I Was Ordered to Execute Women and Children
Adam Howard: Shocking testimony from the Haditha massacre trial.


Why Is Tom DeLay Even Allowed On TV Anymore?
Melissa McEwan: The guy is a crook to his core, and far from being gifted with the sort of charisma that makes one an irresistible TV source.


Ex-Reagan Aide Calls Bush a "Mass Murderer"
Liliana Segura: Bush has more blood on his hands than anyone could possibly imagine.

Jeff Gibbs
Why I Am Not Going to the Protest

Paul Craig Roberts
The War Criminal in the Living Room

Ray McGovern
Do We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?

Robert Weissman
The Benchmarks Iraq is Missing

bitterlemons-international.org Middle East Roundtable

Edition 34 Volume 5 - August 30, 2007



Israel's Gaza withdrawal: two years later • A negative balance sheet - Yossi Alpher

Only one of Sharon's four justifications for unilateral withdrawal--demography--stands up fully to retrospective scrutiny. • Worst-case scenario for Egypt - Mohamed Abdel Salam

Egypt is adopting a strategy based on recognition of the dangers but without aggravating the problem. • Worse than ever - Safwat Kahlout

The Israeli "withdrawal" should more accurately be understood as no more than a redeployment of troops. • Unilateral disaster - Ghassan Khatib

The logic of Israeli unilateralism foresaw different futures for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.



A negative balance sheet
Yossi Alpher

Back in 2003-4, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon explained to his public why he was dismantling Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and withdrawing the Israel Defense Forces, he cited four rationales: security, economics, "politics"--meaning Israel's international relations--and demography. Today, two years later, only one of these four justifications for unilateral withdrawal-- demography--stands up fully to retrospective scrutiny. This is one reason why the unilateral approach has been so badly discredited among the Israeli public: it was marketed wrong. The other is the withdrawal's major contribution to the perception that Israel's deterrent capacity against low-level warfare had been weakened, thereby inviting last summer's war and wreaking serious security damage.

In assessing the withdrawal from Israel's standpoint, it is not always easy to distinguish the fallout generated by the IDF redeployment from the consequences of the subsequent Hamas electoral victory and violent takeover of the Strip. In this connection, the argument that Hamas won the elections of January 2006 because of the withdrawal is problematic; a heavier influence on the Palestinian electorate appears to have been Fateh's corruption and inefficiency. In any event, in assessing the withdrawal two years later we should keep in mind that not everything bad (from Israel's standpoint) that has happened in and around Gaza since then can be traced to that event.

One area where Israeli security has improved since the redeployment from Gaza is the vast reduction in IDF troops needed to secure the fenced-in Gaza Strip, coupled with reduced Israeli casualties now that there are no settlements there. By most indicators-- terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and Israelis killed and wounded--the Gaza withdrawal generated a safer day -to-day environment for Israelis. Indeed, Israel has lost only six soldiers and six civilians in Gaza-related incidents since the withdrawal. On the other hand, Qassam rocket fire into Israel from Gaza increased in 2006-- nearly fourfold. This relates to the deterrence factor: the Gaza withdrawal emboldened Hamas and Hizballah to abduct IDF soldiers from Israeli territory in June and July 2006, leading to last summer's war.

At the economic level, the withdrawal produced only losses. A destitute Gaza buys far less from Israel and the siege of Gaza denies Israel over two million dollars per day in revenues from facilitating imports, exports and joint production of textiles. However, here in particular the main negative economic fallout has to be attributed to the Hamas takeover, not the withdrawal per se.

Turning to Israel's international and regional relations, the withdrawal was popular with the West and boosted support for Israel. But only in the short run; international attitudes are today molded far more by Hamas' electoral victory and subsequent takeover of Gaza than by memories of the disengagement, which is generally seen as having been counterproductive to the cause of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the regional level, Israel successfully used the withdrawal and subsequent negative events in Gaza to enhance its bilateral border security cooperation with Egypt, beginning with Sharon's invitation to Cairo effectively to replace Israel at the Sinai-Gaza "philadelphi" border.

Finally, at the demographic level, even those critics who argue that Israel is still somehow responsible for the Palestinian population in Gaza, acknowledge that the removal of the settlements and the withdrawal of the IDF from a finite Palestinian territory have radically reduced the number of Palestinians under direct Israeli control and thereby improved Israel's Jewish-Arab demographic balance. Here it behooves us to recall that the concerted grassroots campaign in favor of unilateral withdrawal that began in earnest in Israel shortly after the outbreak of the second intifada derived its primary impetus from widespread popular alarm concerning the threat posed by occupation-linked "Palestinization" to Israel's character as a Jewish and democratic state.

At the time, moderate right-