The Daily Kos is one of the more succesful blogs,but there are signs its founder Markos Moulitsas is growing weary of the nasty tone of the political discourse the blog fosters. Moulitsas says things are getting "damn ugly" .

"With us or against us"

by kos
Mon Jul 23, 2007 at 10:30:19 AM PDT

There has lately been an alarming rise in diaries and comments that seek to impugn (without evidence) the motives of those they disagree with on various issues.

Yes, there's the impeachment stuff, but this nasty rhetoric is also rampant in the primary war diaries.

This points to a serious breakdown not just on civility, but in the ability of people to properly debate various issues. As such, it presents a serious threat to the integrity of this site.

I much prefer it when the community moderates itself, and for the most part it does a good job of this. The libertarian in me prefers it that way. But sometimes, self-moderation isn't enough. I'll act swiftly and mercilessly when I'm pushed into defending the effectiveness of this site. And at this moment, my patience is wearing thin.

Reasonable people, including progressives, can disagree on many of the big issues we face today -- from which candidate to support in the primary, to whether impeachment is the best way to hold this administration accountable, to the merit of gun control or free trade agreements, to how to handle immigration, to whatever else faces our nation. As a site, we strive to provide a safe haven for debate on these matters without it getting -- as has happened of late -- so damn ugly.

This is my one and only warning on the matter. I'll try to be an optimist and hope that this is the last time I'll have to address it. I won't let this site become as nasty as your typical usenet forum, and those who encourage that sort of environment should consider themselves duly warned.

Update: And no, Bush won't cancel the next round of elections to remain in power. That's about the most ridiculous conspiracy theory I've seen in a long time. Some people on our side can be just as "out there" as the "black helicopter" crowd.

Nuclear News:

•"Shimon Peres: Veteran," Judith Miller, Wall Street Journal - Commentary
•"Iran, IAEA Holding Nuclear Talks in Vienna," Voice of America
•"How the U.S. Talks to Iran." James Dobbins, Korea Herald - Opinion
•"Iran Denies Arms Deal With Syria," Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times
•"‘Breakthrough’ in Nuclear Deal," Hindu
•"Pakistan Ready to Accept IAEA Safeguards for Civilian Nuke Plants," New Kerala
•"Satellite View of North Korea Nuclear Site," BBC News
•"U.S. Owes A-Bomb Apology," Kiroku Hanai, Japan Times - Opinion

Theocrats Deny 'End Times' Theology Is Cause of Their Push for War With Iran

By Sarah Posner, AlterNet. Posted July 23, 2007.

At the Christians United for Israel Summit, Joe Lieberman embraces the Christian nation, Jewish journalists get expelled, and attendees fret about the Iranian president's "12th Imam."

Here's a news flash from the recent Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Summit in Washington: It really isn't about Armageddon.

Or at least that's what John Hagee, who runs CUFI, and CUFI's executive board tried to convince a group of reporters at a press conference this week. Journalists (including this one) had questions about Hagee's writings and sermons. Does his discussion of God's punishment of Jews suggest his own anti-Semitism? What about the Second Coming, when everyone will either accept Christ as their savior or perish? What, exactly, does Hagee think is going to happen at the end of days?

The reaction of Hagee and his board -- former Reagan administration official and Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, former Promise Keepers chair George Morrison, self-described "Christocrat" Rod Parsley, former Republican Senate candidate Bishop Keith Butler and Mac Hammond, a close friend of Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Fool for Christ) -- ranged from mock outrage to patronizing amusement. Hagee insisted that "our support of Israel has absolutely nothing to do with end times prophecy. It has absolutely nothing to do with eschatology." Hammond maintained that we were getting "distracted" by the discussion. Followup questions were cut off. They sighed in exasperation at questions about the end times, which they insist are near. When a reporter from the Associated Baptist Press asked the group if they considered themselves premillenial dispensationalists -- people who believe that we are fast approaching a final showdown between Christ and the Antichrist at Armageddon -- they smirked and looked at each other as if to say, "What was that big word?"

Their where-in-the-world-did-you-get-that-idea method of deflecting questions was straight from White House press flack Tony Snow's playbook.

They insisted that they came to Washington to talk politics, not eschatology. But when someone asked about CUFI's position on the proposal Bush had laid out the day before to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, they were stumped -- it turned out that they had not yet reviewed a major presidential announcement on their raison d'etre. A few hours later, Hagee told his minions that CUFI was "deeply disappointed" by Bush's speech, particularly by his use of the term "occupation." (Specifically, Bush said -- heretically to their cause -- that "Palestinians should not have to live in poverty and occupation.") Almost simultaneously with Hagee's announcement, Tony Snow played down Bush's statement, telling reporters, "even though I know I used the term 'conference' this morning, this is a meeting ... I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference. It's not."

Just as it had been during Hagee's appearance at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last spring, every effort was made to whitewash his apocalyptic religious beliefs (which include enforced Christianity for his Jewish allies at the end) and present him as a good friend of Israel and Jews. But Hagee's most recent book, Jerusalem Countdown, reissued with new material earlier this year, is all about the end of days and how nuclear war with Iran will ignite it. Hagee frequently talks about how Jesus Christ will rule the world from a throne on the Temple Mount after the battle at Armageddon. Hagee admits he has "written extensively about why I believe that the generation that is alive today will see the mass ingathering of believers commonly called the Rapture." He has claimed that "when you see what's happening in America and the world it doesn't take long to realize that God is proclaiming through the voice of nature that we are approaching the coming of Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven." In September Hagee preached that "World War III has begun" and released a sermon series that purported to "show the historical and Biblical foundations that explain the war we are in now and point us to Armageddon." In January he wrote about the Book of Revelation and its prediction that "Jesus Christ rules the world with a rod of iron from the city of Jerusalem." And in March, he sermonized about "the edge of time ... the final countdown has begun."


At the CUFI conference, there was a lot of fretting about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "12th Imam" -- the Messiah of dispensationalist Islam -- but questions about the Christian version were brushed off as silly and inconsequential.

After the press conference ended, reporters were talking outside the room. A representative of CUFI's public relations firm engaged a group of us in conversation. She insisted that Hagee wears two hats -- one as a pastor and one as a political activist -- and that the CUFI summit was about politics, not eschatology. We discussed whether it was possible for Hagee to separate his end times views from his political stance on Israel, based solely on the Bible, which Hagee describes as the "word of the living God ... the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Hagee's security personnel, along with hotel security guards, then escorted me, Max Blumenthal, and his accompanying camera man out of the building and off the premises. We were not, apparently, the right kind of Jews. (At the AIPAC conference, I had a similar discussion with one of its representatives, which attracted no attention. If Hagee is unfamiliar with the great Jewish tradition of debate, he can come to Shabbat dinner at my house.)

Following a phone call, CUFI's public relations firm realized that this wasn't ... well, kosher, and came outside to assure us that we were indeed welcome at the conference even though we had declined to be stenographers for demagoguery. Hagee, I was told, was "not pleased" with my coverage of him.

No doubt it was difficult for Hagee to be questioned, given that speaker after speaker at the conference, including members of Congress, all extolled his divine mandate. House Minority Leader Roy Blunt pointed to AIPAC board members and quipped that Hagee could be that organization's president, too. CUFI, Blunt added, is "part of God's plan." Joe Lieberman echoed that sentiment, calling CUFI "miraculous" and claiming to "see God's hand" working in it. Lieberman compared Hagee to Moses -- a "man of God" -- who has become a "leader of a mighty multitude." John McCain thanked Hagee for spiritual guidance, because "it's hard to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan." David Brog, CUFI's executive director (who is Jewish) maintained that just like God placed Harry Truman in his mother's womb at a juncture in history when his support of Israel was needed, God placed Hagee in his mother's womb as well.

Portrayed as a prophet, Hagee is leading thousands of CUFI delegates to Capitol Hill as I write this, undoubtedly emboldened by the successful Republican filibuster of the Democrats' plan for ending the Iraq war. They seem to think that their input as "Bible-believing Christians" on issues relating to Israel, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, should be given greater weight than that of other citizens. "God deals with nations, churches and people as they deal with Israel and the Jewish people," Hagee warned ominously at the "Night to Honor Israel." Hagee laid out a list of enemies: at the top were Jimmy Carter, the "blame Israel crowd," the U.N. (a "brothel"), advocates for ending the Iraq war and promoters of "appeasement" toward Iran and the Palestinians. He put the nearly 5,000 people in the audience on notice: "There are two ways to live. The Torah way or the wrong way."

Will members of Congress want to demonstrate to this vocal constituency that they, too, are motivated by God when shaping American foreign policy? Lieberman gave a big clue to his position at a gathering of CUFI major donors Monday night. "America is a faith-based initiative," said the former Democrat. "We are not endowed by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment but endowed by our Creator ... Anyone who tries to separate American government from faith," he added, "is doing something profoundly unnatural."


Sarah Posner has covered the religious right for the American Prospect, The Gadflyer and AlterNet. Her book God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters will be published by PoliPoint Press next year.

Europe’s Fascist Future?
Posted by A. Millar on July 24, 2007 A united Europe has long been an aspiration spanning the political spectrum. The leader of the pre-Second World War Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, called for “Europe a Nation,” while, only slightly later, the British Independent Labor Party worked toward a “United Socialist States of Europe.” Again, in 1945 Prime Minister Winston Churchill called for a “United States of Europe,” though he believed that Britain should not be part of it, apparently because of its “insular” quality.
Britain, it is probably true to say, has long had a difficult relationship with the European nations, and with the idea of being a part of Europe, having thought of itself as an island protected by sea, with a “special relationship” with the U.S. When a rail tunnel was built, joining Britain and France a decade or so ago, many British people protested that the country’s natural defenses had been breached.

Now, it would seem, even the many of the once-ardent supporters of a united Europe have turned Euro-skeptic. In 2005 France – which had once been one of its main promoters – defeated the European constitution, as did the Netherlands. Perhaps most surprising of all, nationalist political parties have recently made significant inroads in Euro-politics (especially since the introduction of several Eastern European countries), with several having banded together to for the European National Front. Ironically, with few exceptions these parties do not appear to be calling for “Europe a Nation,” or promoting the sort of all-encompassing political and cultural hegemony that is typically associated with at least earlier far-Right parties, but rather are promoting the idea that individual nations to retain their own historical characteristics, while forming some sort of working relationship.

Notably, Nick Griffin of the British National Party (not a member of the E.N.F.) has commented in this regard, that, “Unless the nationalists of Europe cooperate, the internationalists of Europe - the Eurocrats - will destroy all our national freedoms and identities separately.” Though the B.N.P. remains a party on the margins of British politics, Britain’s fourth largest political party is The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which, ironically, has ten members in the European Parliament. According to its mission statement their aim is to, “expose the true nature of the EU and… campaign for British withdrawal [from it].” Although they are usually denounced as “fascists” by their opponents the B.N.P. and other far-Right political parties in Europe do not echo, then, the historically fascist aspirations for national expansion and homogenization of occupied territories. The undoubted irony of Europe’s political dynamics is that the far-Right now consciously stand for the opposite, while secular Eurocrats seem intent on homogenizing the nations of Europe, even though this against the historical and cultural reality on the ground.

Europe is increasingly “a Nation” rather than a “United States,” such as Churchill called for. Despite any diversity that may appear within it, a nation is one, standardized, uniform in manner, customs, monarch or prime minister, weights and measures, etc. Churchill was American on his mother’s side (though his mother’s family was of English descent), and he made much of his American background when he promoted himself and the cause of liberty to the people of the U.S., prior to the latter’s involvement in the Second World War. Churchill understood what it was to be American, and her knew what a “United States” meant.

The U.S.A. contrasts sharply with the European Union precisely because it is so self consciously a union of states, each of which has not only a very distinct culture, but, often, distinct laws regarding the drinking of alcohol, sex, assisted suicide, etc. Some counties are “dry” because the sale of alcohol is illegal, due to long held religious sensibilities, while cities in other states, such as Las Vegas, thrive on gambling, drinking, and other sorts of nightlife. You would think that as the U.S.A. is so diverse, the European Union would embrace the historical and cultural diversity of its member nations, yet individual cultural identity has long been undermined by the legislators of Brussels, and continues to be, much to the chagrin of Europe’s people.

The first opposition to the E.U.’s encroachment upon British independence came in the form of tabloid headlines proclaiming that the Eurocrats were intent on denying the status of our “prawn cocktail flavour” crisps (or what Americans call “chips”). Later, ironically, the French wanted us to refer to our chocolate as “chocolate flavour.” Regulations banning the use of the term, “prawn cocktail flavour” or some such thing, seems a trivial matter to me, and a sacrifice worth making for a real United States of Europe. Yet, E.U. regulations have continued to damp down British traditions, as well as the traditions of some of its other member nations. Recently, for example, regulations pertaining to the measurements of pints of beer have threatened the use of the British crown within Britain, which has appeared on pint glasses as a marker of correct measure since the late 17th century. In response nine different breweries complained to the then prime minister, Tony Blair. There is no good reason why a real, and long-standing tradition such as this should be eradicated by the European Union. Indeed, its function should be to protect the cultures of different European countries, or at least to allow them, by law, to keep their traditions, such as we find in the U.S.

Unfortunately Europe is uniting at a point in time when tradition, religion, and national sovereignty are concepts that are anathema to its prevailing intellectual culture and the bourgeois of several of its nations – perhaps especially Britain – and this can only affect any E.U. treaty. In 2006 Liberal Democratic Euro-M.P., Baroness Sarah Ludford condemned Poland’s stance on rights for homosexuals, which are exceedingly limited in comparison to other E.U. member countries, in part because of the country’s Roman Catholic heritage. Regardless of the merits of her position, Baroness Ludford commented that it was not a matter of Poland’s culture, clarifying a moment later, suggesting that it would not affect the nation’s language, food, music, etc. That these are held up as a nation’s culture, while its religion and moral foundation are designated, by implication, as ‘not culture’ is problematic to say the least in countries where tradition is still so alive. Would we apply this absurd notion to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Unsurprisingly, Poland seems to consider the E.U. a threat to its traditional, Christian way of life, and as attempting to impose liberal secularism upon its people. Against the trend, in 2003 Poland led a campaign to have the Judaeo-Christian roots noted in the E.U. Constitution.

If traditional, national culture has been undermined, complaints have also arisen, regarding more practical matter. Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron has noted that Britain was influential in the wording of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which guarantee among other things, “freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of expression.” Yet, these rights, Cameron has also pointed out, have been increasingly undermined under Labour. Sometimes, the erosion of basic rights has come from the government and at other times by the modern brand of Liberal-intolerance that the government’s followers have created (and which certainly does not deserve the name “liberal”).

In regard to freedom of thought, in 2005 the Labour government proposed the Religious Hatred Law, making it illegal to condemn, criticize, or ridicule any religion – thus effectively making free speech, or “freedom of expression” illegal. The law was voted down in its original form, though it was instituted in an amended form making it illegal to use threatening language in regard to any religion. Personally, I do not want to see religion attacked, though I do not want to find myself in a country where I risk imprisonment if I dare to condemn terrorist acts, for example, carried out in the name of a religion. Liberal intolerance has, of course, a trickle-down effect, and we are constantly affronted by an extreme though vocal minority, who promote turning freedom of speech into their own brand of politically approved form of speech under the banner of liberalism. Recently, then, we have seen people revealed as members of the B.N.P. by the press with – if it had any foresight whatsoever – the clear knowledge that they would be (and later were) attacked, with unions, demonstrators, etc., calling for them to be fired from their job, prosecuted, etc., even though they had not even promoted the party or spoken of their membership or political views – whatever they may be. (It is a cliché, I know, but the exposure of political opponents by newspapers became a part of the zeitgeist and semi-official policy of the early years of Germany’s Nazi Party.)

The harassment campaign against ballerina Simone Clarke for her membership of the B.N.P. is well known. A similar situation had occurred even before this, however, when architect Peter Phillips ran for presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006, and won 60 votes, Sumita Sinha, founder of the equal opportunities campaign Architects for Change, called for him to be expelled from the organization and for those who had voted for him to be named. Calls for people to be fired because they support a legal political party, or for overturning secret ballots, are entirely undemocratic, and un-British. Place them in an earlier time, and we would call them fascist. Such tactics will also ultimately backfire. Note for example Rod Liddle’s confession in the Times that he laughed at a “mildly racist joke.” “I used to find racist jokes dismally unfunny,” he notes, “ but these days, because I’m not allowed to find them funny and might even be visited by the police for committing a hate crime if I did, they’ve taken on a samizdat quality.” Such an editorial would not have been published if it did not speak to its readers, and it probably would not have ten years ago.

When trade minister Margaret Hodge dared to say that British families had a “legitimate sense of entitlement” over immigrants to government-provided housing she was denounced as “using the language of the BNP,” which is usually code for “racist.” The Left-wing Guardian newspaper may write of fears of the rise of the far-Right, but when centrist politicians (or even those on the Left, such as Hodge) and parties cannot raise the concerns of their constituents (as Hodge claims she was doing) it is quite obvious that ordinary people will eventually vote for whatever party is addressing their concerns. Indeed, it is fairly frequently remarked that Britain’s main political parties, though ostensibly Left and Right, have effectively the same policies on nearly everything, and disagree usually only on minor details, so sanitized has the country’s politics become.

With increasing intolerance toward political dissent, and the harassment of the dissenter, it is becoming increasingly clear that Britain needs a Constitution, like that of the U.S. Constitution, to guarantee its citizens such human rights as we once took for granted, e.g., free speech. Notably, while the government has been criticized for giving away to much power by signing the new E.U. treaty (designed to replace the defunct Constitution), it has attempted to moderate this opposition by amending the treaty before signing, and obtaining “an opt-out on a charter of human and social rights.” In Britain the Magna Carta is not a historical document enshrining Habeas Corpus, it is merely history – forgotten history, at that. Law, it would seem, is something that depend very much on the whims of the day, and that is a very dangerous situation for the British.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, calls for a formal British Constitution have begun to surface. The minor political party, the English Democrats, has called for “a modern and wide-ranging Bill of Rights founded on traditional English civil liberties,” for England, and Cameron has taken the initiative to charge the Conservative Party with producing a Modern British Bill of Rights, which, he has said, “needs to define the core values which give us our identity as a free nation.” He goes on to say:

It should spell out the fundamental duties and responsibilities of people living in this country both as citizens and foreign nationals.

And it should guide the judiciary and the Government in applying human rights law when the lack of responsibility of some individuals threatens the rights of others.

It should enshrine and protect fundamental liberties such as jury trial, equality under the law and civil rights.

And it should protect the fundamental rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights in clearer and more precise terms.

Greater clarity and precision would allow those rights to be enforced more easily and effectively in circumstances where they ought to be protected but it would become harder to extend them inappropriately as under the present law.

Greater clarity and precision in the law, as opposed to vague general principles, which can be interpreted in many different ways, is more in accordance with this country’s legal tradition.

Of course, a Constitution is only as strong as the political will of the governing class to respect it. The Iraqi government has recently written its Constitution, as has a military-backed commission in Thailand – after the elected government was ousted in a coup nearly a year ago. It seems that every emerging nation writes one. I am always struck by the thought that this represents an ersatz political tradition, that there is in effect a “beginning again,” a year zero. There is something socialist about it. Frequently they fail, either by vote or in practice, because their contents are often artificial, creating an ideal nation on paper rather than presenting a conscious of the nation’s historical culture while establishing equal human rights. (Thailand has had no fewer than 17 Constitutions in the last 75 years.)

At the very root of the various nations we find the idea of its sacredness (expressed, for example, in such myths as that of Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, in (traditional) monarchy, etc.), and the Constitution must be an affirmation of the sacred nature of both the nation or states and citizenship within it. Such a document could only be produced by those who are conscious of history, cultured (in a traditional sense) and learned – wise, even. It remains to be seen whether an authentic British Constitution can be written in the modern age by professional politicians with one eye on their career and the other on the clubs wielded by various pressure groups.

Article URL: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/europes_fascist_future/

July 30, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative



How to Win in Iraq

A stable Iraqi state would constitute a strategic victory—and the only one still possible.

by William S. Lind

Among the bits of lore of the United States Senate is a story that dates back to before I arrived there in 1973 as a staffer to Sen. Robert Taft Jr. of Ohio. A senator—from New York, perhaps—known for depending wholly on his staff while treating it with contempt, told his assistant for foreign policy, “I want to give a major speech on the Vietnam War tomorrow morning. Stay here all night and write it.” With that, the senator headed out for a Capitol Hill reception rich with giant shrimp and large checks.

The staffer did as he was bidden, despite the fact that it was his anniversary, and his wife had made grand plans. The next morning, the senator found the text of the speech in his inbox. Snatching it eagerly, he proceeded directly to the floor of the Senate. His voice booming, he laid out a brilliant and incisive analysis of the war. At the bottom of the seventh page, he proclaimed, “I will now lay out my plan for winning the Vietnam War.” Page eight began with the words, “Now you’re on your own, you S.O.B. I quit.”

At the risk of finding myself in the same situation, I offer my plan for winning in Iraq.

The starting point, despite the disastrous course of the war to date, is to realize that the only possibilities for victory lie at the strategic level, not the tactical level. In part this is because we have botched the tactical level beyond redemption. While the efforts of General Petraeus and the Marines in Anbar province to apply classic counter-insurgency doctrine and protect the population instead of brutalizing it are laudatory, they come too late.

In larger part, we cannot win at the tactical level because this kind of war is not additive. You cannot win at the strategic level simply by accumulating tactical successes, as our Second-Generation, firepower/attrition-oriented military automatically assumes. The strategic level follows its own logic, and strategic victory requires a sound strategy. When, as is currently the case, we have no strategy, this fact works against us. If, however, we adopt a prudent strategy, it can work for us. Because a higher level of war trumps a lower, we can yet redeem our many tactical failures at the strategic level. In other words, we can still win.

To devise a successful strategy, we must begin by defining what we mean by winning. The Bush administration, consistent with its record of military incompetence, continues to pursue the folly of maximalist objectives. It still defines victory as it did at the war’s outset: an Iraq that is an American satellite, friendly to Israel, happy to provide the U.S. with a limitless supply of oil and vast military bases from which American forces can dominate the region. None of these objectives are now attainable. None were ever attainable, no matter what our troops did. And as long as those objectives define victory, we are doomed to defeat.

Fortunately, another objective, the one that actually matters most, may, with luck and skill, still be achieved. That objective—restoring a state in what is now the stateless region of Mesopotamia—must become our new definition of victory.

This definition is not arbitrary. On the contrary, it reflects a correct, Fourth-Generation understanding of the threat. The serious threat to America, in the Middle East and elsewhere, is not any state. Rather, it is posed by a growing congeries of non-state organizations, which we label “terrorists.”

Non-state forces win when states are destroyed and are replaced by stateless regions. Even the long-term objective of al-Qaeda is not a state but a restored caliphate, a type of social organization that precedes the state by centuries. In the meantime, stateless chaos will serve very well, thank you.

And thank us they do because our initial invasion of Iraq and subsequent blunders, such as sending home the Iraqi army and civil service, destroyed the Iraqi state. It has not been rebuilt. We created the illusion of an Iraqi government in Baghdad’s Green Zone, but it is a government without a state, which is to say a Potemkin parliament. As long as Iraq remains stateless, our non-state enemies win.

The other side of the same coin, however, offers us a chance for victory. If a real state can be restored in Iraq, al-Qaeda and the other Islamic non-state forces lose. That is true regardless of the nature of a restored Iraqi state. States dislike competition, and the definition of a state says that it must have a monopoly of violence within its borders. If that suggests something about the state of the state—in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere—well, it should.

Winning the war in Iraq therefore means seeing the re-creation of an Iraqi state. I say “seeing,” not “re-creating,” because our strategy, if it is to have a chance of success, must proceed from a realistic understanding of the situation in Iraq. We do not now have the power to re-create a state in Iraq, if we ever did. That is due in part to military failure, but it has more to do with a problem of legitimacy. As a foreign, Christian invader and occupier, we cannot create any legitimate institutions in Iraq. Quite the contrary: we have the reverse Midas touch. Any institution we create, or merely approve of and support, loses its legitimacy.

That means our new strategy must employ what the British military theorist Basil Liddell-Hart called an “indirect approach.” This is chancy. So is war itself. You cannot guarantee events; you try instead to influence them. Again, this reflects a realistic appreciation of the situation in Iraq. Our vaunted “boots on the ground” have been fought to a stalemate by flip flops in the alleys. In this kind of war, a stalemate means we have lost tactically. A combination of good strategy and some luck may yet enable us to pull our chestnuts out of the fire, but we are in no position to dictate events. We must try, instead, to shape and ride them.

An indirect approach to winning the war in Iraq on the strategic level has three central elements. The first is the lesson of Nixon’s trip to China.

That brilliant diplomatic move of establishing a rapprochement with China in effect won the Vietnam War for the United States. The threat that drew us into a major war was not North Vietnam, a power of purely local significance. Rather, it was Mao’s doctrine of exporting wars of national liberation. (The phrase at the time was “Two, three, many Vietnams.”) The new relationship Nixon established with China ended that threat, rendering our defeat on the ground in Vietnam irrelevant.

In the case of the war in Iraq, Iran is China, and the first component of a strategy to win in Iraq is to establish a rapprochement with Iran. That is, a general settlement of differences. The Iranians have offered us such a settlement—including a compromise on the nuclear issue—on generous terms. But the Bush administration, true to its hubris, refused to consider it, going so far as to upbraid the Swiss for daring to forward the overture to us. It seems, however, to remain on the table.

The reason a strategy to win in Iraq must begin with a rapprochement with Iran is that any real Iraqi state is likely to be allied to Iran. Even the quisling al-Maliki government cowering in the Green Zone is close to Iran. A legitimate Iraqi government, which is virtually certain to be dominated by Iraq’s Shi’ites, will probably be much closer.

A restored Iraqi state that is allied with Iran will quickly roll up al-Qaeda and other non-state forces in Iraq, which is the victory we most require. But the world’s perception will still be that the United States was defeated because its main regional rival, Iran, will emerge much strengthened. If Iran and America are no longer enemies, that issue becomes moot.

A rapprochement with Iran may encourage Tehran to use its influence in Iraq to promote the revival of a state, but that is in Iran’s interest in any case once it is clear American troops are withdrawing. Conversely, until it is clear that America has given up its ambitions for large, permanent military bases in Iraq, Iran must continue to promote instability in its neighbor.

Once it becomes possible for both the U.S. and Iran to win in Iraq, we must move to the second element of our new strategy: allowing any elements that may hold the potential of restoring an Iraqi state to rise within Iraq. Consistent with an indirect approach, this means letting go.

At present, the United States works to suppress any elements that challenge the al-Maliki government. We teeter on the verge of open war with the most prominent of those elements, Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. On the ground, al-Sadr is the leader most likely to restore an Iraqi state, and thanks to his steadfast opposition to the American occupation, he has legitimacy. While he may not have the support of a majority of Iraq’s Shi’ites, majorities do not make history. He is the leader of the Shi’ites who count, which is to say the young men willing to fight. Nor is al-Sadr merely a Shi’ite leader; he has kept open channels of communication to at least some of the Sunni insurgent groups—and perhaps channels not of communication only. Some of the Sunni insurgents clearly have benefited from Iranian support, which may have come through al-Sadr. Of late, al-Sadr has taken care to restrain his followers from revenge attacks against Sunnis, stressing Shi’ite-Sunni unity against the foreign occupier. He has had his eye on the brass ring, the supreme leadership position in a restored Iraqi state, from the beginning. Now he may see it as within reach.

Our new strategy would let him grab it. Under his leadership, or that of anyone else in Iraq with a shred of legitimacy, a restored Iraqi state will not be a friend of America. Given what we have done to that country, we can hardly expect it to be. But our new strategy has no such unattainable objective. Its objective is solely the restoration of a real state, and that al-Sadr may be able to accomplish. If he can, we will have little to complain about in terms of his toleration of al-Qaeda or other Fourth Generation elements. Nor will his close relationship with Iran be a problem, given that we will no longer regard Iran as an enemy.

There is, of course, no guarantee that al-Sadr or anyone else in Iraq can restore a state. The only sure thing is that we cannot do so, as four years of failure have amply demonstrated. The one chance of victory we have left is to get out of the way of al-Sadr and anyone else in Iraq who might be able to re-create an Iraqi state, praying fervently that they succeed. Having failed in our own efforts, it is time to give the Iraqis and Dame Fortune our place at the gaming table.

Some may object that a rapprochement with Iran coupled with allowing al-Sadr or someone like him to become the leader of a restored Iraqi state will upset the Sunni regimes in the Middle East. Indeed it may, but that is not our problem. There is little the Sunni states can do about it, given the regions’s geography. Syria is in a position to support a continued insurgency by Iraqi Sunnis, but Syria is ruled by an Alawite clique, and the Alawites are offshoots of Shi’ism. The Saudis will be both angry and terrified, but beyond supplying Iraq’s Sunni insurgents with money and volunteers, which they are already doing, they cannot intervene. Saudi Arabia’s armed forces are a joke, and overt Saudi military intervention in Iraq would quickly fail. All the other Sunni states are too far away to do anything effective.

Moreover, by accentuating the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry within Islam, we may help fold Islamic expansionism back on itself, an essential quality of any indirect approach. As James Kurth wrote in a September 2005 article in this magazine entitled “Splitting Islam”:

If the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict became not only intense and widespread but also prolonged, perhaps as much so as the Sino-Soviet conflict during the last three decades of the Cold War, the global Islamist movement might have almost no meaning or attraction at all. In the Muslim world there might be Sunni Islamists and Shi’ite Islamists, but each might consider their greatest enemy to be not the United States, but each other.

The third and final element of a strategy for winning in Iraq is to withdraw all American forces as rapidly as possible, which means within 12-18 months. That is the only way we can create the space necessary for al-Sadr or someone else to re-create an Iraqi state. If we remain and work against him, a dicey task becomes that much harder, undermining both him and our strategic goal. And if we work for him, he loses legitimacy, the sine qua non for re-creating a state in Iraq.

In this strategy, our withdrawal is not that of a defeated army. It is a strategic withdrawal—a necessary part of our strategy. That distinction is a critical for our prestige in the world, for the future health of America’s Armed Forces, and for our domestic politics, which could be roiled beyond what any conservative would desire by a vast military defeat.

If our new strategy works and our withdrawal is followed by the restoration of a real Iraqi state, we will have learned our lesson about wars of choice, but avoided a catastrophe. If it fails and Mesopotamia remains a stateless region, Iraq is no worse off than it is now, and our troops will be safely out of the mess.

There is no chance the Bush administration, locked in a Totentanz with its dreams of world empire, will adopt this strategy. But the presidential debate season has already begun, and a bevy of candidates in both parties are looking around for something, anything that might get us out of the Iraqi morass without accepting defeat. If just one of them picks up on it, those yawningly dull debates might get a lot more interesting.
____________________________________________

William S. Lind is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C.

July 30, 2007 Issue

Democratic Debate Recap When I first tuned into the Democratic debate tonight, I started taking copious notes on who was saying what. Then I stopped. Most Americans will be going more on general impressions than word-by-word analysis, so I should too.

On policy, the most important takeaway, for me, anyway, is Gov. Richardson's support for a permanent UN peacekeeping force. That bodes extremely well for a better thought out and more politically viable proposal to establish the UN Emergency Peace Service, that I've been working hard to build momentum for over the past few months. This is an idea that's going from zero to 60 and is all of a sudden squarely in the policy mainstream.

Tonight's debate is the first Democratic debate that I've recapped. I was disappointed that few if any of the questions touched on America's declining influence in the world or the importance of cooperating with others in an interconnected world.

On the flip side, I'm very happy with the Democratic slate of candidates. Nearly all of them would make fine Presidents and most of them are solid candidates, too.

Without further ado, my impressions:

Hillary Clinton: Clearly the most polished and effective debater, Clinton came off extremely well tonight. Her message is tight, her knowledge of policy is deep, and she played to her strengths at every turn. Still, primary voters wondering how committed she is to ending the conflict in Iraq will come away unsatisfied. And more importantly, half a year into the campaign, I'm still not sure what her campaign is fundamentally about. Clinton's rhetoric is very safe and generic, highlighting the "need for change," for example. She still hasn't communicated clearly what's fueling her desire to be President. Until she does, she'll remain vulnerable to allegations that she's driven by raw ambition and puts politics ahead of principle. All that notwithstanding, Clinton's effort tonight substantially helped her cause.

Barack Obama: A mixed performance. Obama's cerebral disposition, careful use of language to highlight nuance, and ability to connect hot-button issues with more fundamental questions has made him a talk-show darling, but it's not winning him points in a debate. Interesting to note: Obama has started lashing out at those ubiquitous special interests. I haven't heard him do it before. My guess is that someone advised him that if you're not going to bash Republicans, you've got to find another villain. Generally, Obama is going to need to answer questions more directly; I think his reluctance to say Americans in Iraq have not died in vain could leave potential voters with a bad taste in their mouths. That said, Obama started hitting the mark in the second half of the debate and by the end of the night, his responses were extremely compelling.

John Edwards: I think Edwards gained ground tonight. He clearly came off as an action-oriented candidate on poverty, health care, Iraq, and stuck to his populist, anti-special interests message. He was put on defense more than most other candidates and did reasonably well. The one question that put a chink in John's armor, I think, was whether or not he stands by Elizabeth's contention that he'd be a better President for women than Clinton. Then again, that's not an easy one to parry. Edwards's supporters will be happy with his performance on the whole.

Bill Richardson: Since he stated his support for something like UNEPS (but even more bold), I would love to say Richardson made gains. I really would. But Richardson seemed a bit scatterbrained tonight. He showcased his accomplishments and depth of knowledge effectively. But Richardson didn't get to answer questions in his strongest areas, energy and diplomacy. And his comments were chock full of wonk-speak. He's going to have to remember how to explain complex issues to voters on their terms. I should also note that Richardson's YouTube ad (all candidates were asked to submit one), a reprise of one of his Presidential job search spot, is the winner in my book:



Chris Dodd: Dodd didn't have many memorable moments tonight, good or bad. His understanding of complex issues, his boldness on energy policy, and his views - especially on diplomacy and foreign policy - are second to none. But Dodd comes off as a New England intellectual. He's not as boring as Gore in 2000 or as wooden as Kerry in '04, but so far, he's no more accessible than either. My guess is he gains ground in the Northeast and in university communities but loses ground elsewhere.

Joe Biden: Biden's trying to emerge as the straight-talk candidate for the Dems, and for the most part, it's working. He's avoided longwinded answers and stayed on message. His understanding of how a withdrawal from Iraq would work - coupled with his plan for federalism there - was impressive, whether or not one agrees with him on the merits of his argument (I'm sure that some who are itching for a quicker withdrawal would take issue with his position). But Biden lost big time points with me by suggesting that we need to send American troops to Darfur and, more importantly, that those who favor other options were being soft and tolerant of genocide. As Clinton, Gravel, and Richardson pointed out, there's no way American troops could perform a peace operation as well as a robust UN force could in Darfur. American forces aren't trained primarily for peace enforcement and nation-building and they're stretched thin as is, thanks to deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, people in the region are very wary of American intervention - even the good guys who are pushing hard to end the atrocities in Darfur, Chad, and the Central African Republic. They don't want American personnel on the ground; they want American diplomacy and logistical support to pave the way for African and Muslim personnel to successfully intervene through a UN mission. Biden knows better.

Dennis Kucinich: This was hands down the best debate performance I've seen from Kucinich. He was articulate, on point, and activist in the best possible way. He also showed a lot of discipline and foresight by articulating and repeating a message point that concisely explains his world view: "Strength Through Peace." It's a good one, and it will help Americans figure out what he's about. Kucinich explained well the need for international cooperation, and his indictment of Congress's failure to de-fund the war is clearly making the frontrunners uncomfortable. On the negative side, there were a few eyeball rollers, most notably his unconvincing effort to connect Iraq, Iran, and energy. The connection is there, but it can't be explained in 100 words or less and isn't as simple as Kucinich would have voters believe.

Mike Gravel: Gravel had trouble putting together coherent ideas. I often had a tough time understanding the basic gist of his arguments. His brand of righteous anger is getting old.

Anderson Cooper: Didn't talk much - so good job.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this shakes out tomorrow.

-- Scott Paul

01:08 AM | Permalink

http://www.secretsofsurvival.com/survival/...e_scenario.html

The Bible Scenario —
Is the United States in the Bible?
Cheney: Nuclear attack on U.S. cities 'very real' — is this Biblical?
– by Mark Lawrence - May, 2007 - SecretsofSurvival.com –


With nuclear attacks on U.S. cities by radical Islam (Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, etc.) now considered a 'daily threat' by Homeland Security, that's what a lot of people nowadays want to know.

Bin Laden's plan for "American Hiroshima" calls for the death of millions of people, including children, and involves multiple nukes in multiple cities.

That was in 2005. It's now 2007 and news reports point to Bin Laden being very close to actually pulling this off.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Cheney: Nuclear attack on U.S cities 'very real'

N.Y. TIMES: Time to make plans for 'day after' nuclear blast

L.A. TIMES: Bush orders contingency plans for nuclear attack on U.S.

By now it's pretty clear. One or more U.S. cities will most likely be attacked by terrorists with nuclear weapons.

If you find this hard to believe, consider that FBI Director Robert Mueller recently confirmed the claims made in FBI consultant Paul Williams' book, titled The Day of Islam, where he says Al Qaida is planning nuclear attacks on 7 U.S. cities.

Coincidentally, these attacks appears to be prophecied in multiple books of the Bible.


Cheney: Nuclear attack on U.S. cities 'very real'

With the last chapter in the Bible written almost two thousand years ago by the apostle John, it's surprising that anyone alive at that time could envision the political and economic world as it would exist two thousand years later and then write about it.

John of course had the assistance of an angel, who gave him a series of terrifying visions, which he was told to write down exactly as they were shown to him.

Fast forward to the present day; the United States should be worried about some of the visions John was told to write down.

The United States fits the description of Mystery Babylon the Great, a 'city' described in Revelation (last chapter of the Bible) that sits on many waters, and has many peoples and languages, and where sexual immorality and false religions are rampant.

Revelation goes on to describe what many Bible scholars and evangelists believe to be a direct analogy to the United States, or what may be New York City, or what may be multiple U.S. cities.

In 'one day and one hour' it is destroyed by its enemies; the apostle John writes that God lets this destruction happen to bring about his wrath.

Revelation 17:15 - "...the waters you saw, where the prostitute [Mystery Babylon the Great] was seated are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. The 10 horns you saw, and the beast, will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to carry out His plan by having one purpose, and to give their kingdom to the beast until God's words are accomplished. And the woman you saw is the great city that has an empire over the kings of the earth."

Go to link for rest of article

July 24, 2007
U.S. Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least '09
By MICHAEL R. GORDON BAGHDAD, July 23 — While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military officials here have been careful not to guarantee success, and recognized they may need to revise the plan if some assumptions were not met.

"The idea behind the surge was to bring stability and security to the Iraqi people, primarily in Baghdad because it is the political heart of the country, and by so doing give the Iraqis the time and space needed to come to grips with the tough issues they face and enable reconciliation to take place," said Col. Peter Mansoor, the executive officer to General Petraeus.

"If eventually the Iraqi government and the various sects and groups do not come to some sort of agreement on how to share power, on how to divide resources and on how to reconcile and stop the violence, then the assumption on which the surge strategy was based is invalid, and we would have to re-look the strategy," Colonel Mansoor added.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will provide an assessment in September on trends in Iraq and whether the strategy is viable or needs to be changed.

The previous plan, developed by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., who served as General Petraeus's predecessor before being appointed as chief of staff of the Army, was aimed at prompting the Iraqis to take more responsibility for security by reducing American forces.

That approach faltered when the Iraqi security forces showed themselves unprepared to carry out their expanded duties, and sectarian killings soared.

In contrast, the new approach reflects the counterinsurgency precept that protection of the population is best way to isolate insurgents, encourage political accommodations and gain intelligence on numerous threats. A core assumption of the plan is that American troops cannot impose a military solution, but that the United States can use force to create the conditions in which political reconciliation is possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, groups like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab extremist group that American intelligence officials say has foreign leadership, and cells backed by Iran are seen as implacable foes.

"You are not out there trying to defeat your enemies wholesale," said one military official who is knowledgeable about the plan. "You are out there trying to draw them into a negotiated power-sharing agreement where they decide to quit fighting you. They don't decide that their conflict is over. The reasons for conflict remain, but they quit trying to address it through violence. In the end, we hope that that alliance of convenience to fight with Al Qaeda becomes a connection to the central government as well."

The hope is that sufficient progress might be made at the local level to encourage accommodation at the national level, and vice versa. The plan also calls for efforts to encourage the rule of law, such as the establishment of secure zones in Baghdad and other cities to promote criminal trials and process detainee cases.

To help measure progress in tamping down civil strife, Col. William Rapp, a senior aide to General Petraeus, oversaw an effort to develop a standardized measure of sectarian violence. One result was a method that went beyond the attacks noted in American military reports and which incorporated Iraqi data.

"We are going to try a dozen different things," said one senior officer. "Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success."

uly 24, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
A War the Pentagon Can’t Win
By DANIEL BENJAMIN and STEVEN SIMON
NEW YORK TIMES

AS the National Intelligence Estimate issued last week confirms, a terrorist haven has emerged in Pakistan’s tribal belt. And as recent revelations about an aborted 2005 operation in the region demonstrate, our Defense Department is chronically unable to conduct the sort of missions that would disrupt terrorist activity there and in similarly ungoverned places.

These are perhaps the most important kind of counterterrorism missions. Because the Pentagon has shown that it cannot carry them out, the Central Intelligence Agency should be given the chance to perform them.

The story of the scrubbed 2005 operation illustrates why the Pentagon is incapable of doing what needs to be done. The preparations for the mission to capture or kill Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, appear to have unfolded like others before it. Intelligence was received about a high-level Qaeda meeting. A small snatch or kill operation was to be carried out by Special Operations. But military brass added large numbers of troops to conduct additional intelligence, force protection, communications and extraction work.

At that point, as one senior intelligence official told this newspaper, “The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pulled the plug.

To those of us who worked in counterterrorism in the 1990s, this sequence of events feels like the movie “Groundhog Day.” Similar decision-making led to the failure to mount critical operations on at least three occasions during the Clinton administration. The most notable was the effort to get the Pentagon to conduct a ground operation against the Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan beginning in late 1998.

The Clinton White House repeatedly requested options involving ground forces that could hunt and destroy terrorists in Afghanistan. Repeatedly, senior military officials declared such a mission “would be Desert One,” referring to the disastrous 1980 effort to free American hostages in Iran. When the Pentagon finally delivered a plan, the deployment envisioned would have been sufficient to take and hold Kabul but not to surprise and pin down a handful of terrorists.

But the Zawahri stand-down is even more telling. It occurred four years into the global war on terrorism, when the basic questions about the nature of the Qaeda threat had been settled and the nation, in the oft-intoned phrase of the Bush administration, was said to be always “on the offensive.” Moreover, it happened on the watch of Donald Rumsfeld, the most dominating secretary of defense in memory, who overruled military planners routinely as he micromanaged the deployment to Iraq. Perhaps his attention was focused on the growing mess in that country, but even Mr. Rumsfeld, who viewed special forces as the keystone of a transformed 21st-century American military, could not keep on track a mission that would have stunned Al Qaeda.

Highly mobile, highly lethal counterterrorism operations are clearly possible. Israel scored victories with raids in Entebbe, Uganda; Tunis; and Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1970s and 1980s. Other countries, like Germany, have carried out similar operations, like the Mogadishu raid of 1977 that freed passengers on a Lufthansa plane hijacked to Somalia by the Baader-Meinhof gang. An operation in Pakistan’s tribal areas — setting aside the issue of whether this could politically upend President Pervez Musharraf — would be extremely difficult. But it is hard to believe it is impossible.

Since the Desert One debacle, the United States has poured vast resources into its special forces. The Special Operations Command budget has nearly doubled since 2001, and it is expected to grow 150 percent over five years. The command includes more than 50,000 troops, the equivalent of three or four infantry divisions. The best of them — Delta Force and the Navy Seals — have developed into highly skilled unconventional forces.

Yet fear of failure and casualties has meant they are seldom, if ever, deployed for such counterterrorism operations. In theory, the best place in the government for small-scale missions to be planned and executed is the Pentagon, because snatch or kill teams should be plugged into a larger military support team. The reality, unfortunately, is that they can’t be plugged in without being bogged down.

Senior officers, trained to understand the American way of war to mean overwhelming force and superior firepower, view special ops outside a war zone as something to be avoided at all cost. This has been true even in lower-risk efforts to capture war criminals in the Balkans. The record demonstrates that our military is simply incapable of adapting its culture to embrace such operations. The Pentagon should just stop planning for missions it won’t launch.

While the C.I.A. doesn’t have an unblemished record, its counterterrorism operations have shown more promise than the Pentagon’s. The agency has already had some successes operating in ungoverned spaces. In the first reported attack in such a region, a C.I.A.-operated Predator drone launched a missile that killed a Qaeda lieutenant in Yemen in 2002. Since then the Predator has been used to strike Al Qaeda at least eight times, although with limited success. At least initially, the trigger in these attacks was pulled by C.I.A. operatives, not soldiers.

The record of a small, vulnerable C.I.A. paramilitary force in Afghanistan in 2001 was more impressive. The group’s audacious reconnaissance work and direction of local warlords in action against the Taliban provided the most significant battlefield success of the post-9/11 period. Without this risky, cold-start intervention, the American troops that followed the agency into Afghanistan would have gone in blind and worried more about their flanks than about Al Qaeda.

The agency’s history of ill-conceived covert political operations from the 1950s through the 1970s may cause some to worry. That agency, however, no longer exists. Congressional hearings and legislation, as well as fear of casualties, have given the clandestine service its own case of risk aversion, though it seems less severe than the Pentagon’s.

We have failed in Pakistan, and are failing in Iraq, to achieve a primary aim of our counterterrorism policy: preventing Al Qaeda from acquiring safe havens. Our military has shown itself to be a poor instrument for fighting terrorism, and there are now thousands of jihadists who weren’t in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion. When the inevitable American drawdown occurs, we will need a way to keep the terrorists off balance in Iraq and to disrupt the conveyor belt that is already moving fighters to places like Lebanon, North Africa and Europe.

With new leadership at both the C.I.A. and the Defense Department, the Bush administration has a chance to fix this problem. The missing ingredient for success with the most important kind of counterterrorism missions is not courage or technical capacity — our uniformed personnel are unsurpassed — but organizational culture. With a small fraction of the resources that Pentagon has for special operations, the C.I.A. could develop the paramilitary capacity we profoundly need.

Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Steven Simon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, were members of the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999.

BUSH LAUNCHES A NEW MIDDLE EAST INITIATIVE.
MIDDLE EAST PEACE IS AT HAND. AGAIN.
By Phyllis Bennis

23 July 2007

Pretty much no one is taking it seriously. Even mainstream analysts usually willing to take Bush administration Middle East initiatives at face value are rolling their collective eyes. The New York Times' senior correspondent Steven Erlanger immediately acknowledged that Bush's latest "vision," a U.S.-Israeli-Fatah alliance creating a model Palestine in the West Bank designed to snub the isolated "Hamastan" in Gaza, is not a "vision shared by other American allies or other members of the so-called quartet - Russia, the European Union and the United Nations." (Yes even the Times said "so-called" quartet.) It is also "doubtful that the Saudis share Mr. Bush's analysis, since they have been urging Hamas and Fatah to get back together again?" A different Times article included a succinct headline identifying the real reason for the latest initiative: "Mired in Iraq, U.S. Seeks to Begin Building a Palestinian State."

The "plan," such as it is, is painfully familiar, only narrower and more constrained than ever before. The centerpiece is a call for a new regional peace conference in the fall, to be led not by Bush himself but by his secretary of state. Bush says it will include Israel, the Palestinians, and "their neighbors in the region." But the only Palestinians allowed to participate will be the Abbas-led Fatah-controlled sector of the Palestinian Authority operating in the West Bank; the democratically elected Hamas-led Palestinian parliament and its government in Gaza will be excluded. It may include some neighboring governments, but only those who recognize Israel's "right to exist." Regional powers like Syria and Iran would of course be excluded, but it is not clear that even Jordan and Egypt, which maintain official diplomatic ties with Israel, let alone Saudi Arabia which doesn't, would publicly accept Israel's "right" to have expelled Palestinians to create an exclusive Jewish state. Overall, it's not likely to be much of a conference.

Another part of Bush's plan involves renewed U.S. aid to the Palestinians. Following eighteen months of a crippling U.S.-orchestrated international economic boycott of the Palestinian territories, Bush announced that "immediately after President Abbas expelled Hamas from the Palestinian government, the United States lifted financial restrictions on the Palestinian Authority." Bush referred to the emergency government appointed by Abbas, led by his replacement Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. A key component of this aid is an $80 million grant in military aid to Abbas's Fatah-controlled security agencies now operating with the support of U.S. General Keith Dayton.

And Bush said he will push Israel to release Palestinian tax revenues - which Israel had illegally withheld since February 2006 - as if that was a major concession. Regarding settlements, he called only for ending settlement "expansion" and removing the 2,000 or so settlers of the "unauthorized" outposts ("unauthorized" by the Israeli government that is; all settlements are illegal under international law). Any future territorial agreement, Bush said, would have to take into account "current realities" - meaning the existing huge Israeli settlement-cities and most of the 480,000 West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers will remain. The latest U.S. embrace of Abbas and calls for a Palestinian state are emerging just as realistic hopes of a viable two-state solution are fading.
Islamism, Islamic Nationalism and George Bush
However inevitable the failure of Bush's latest plan, it is important to recognize how it fits into broader U.S. strategy in the Middle East. The most recent iteration of the ideological framework for Bush's "new" Middle East describes an existential conflict between "moderates" and "extremists" being fought out in the so-called "Global War on Terror." But of course those Manichean categories simply don't exist beyond the limited vision of Washington and Tel Aviv. The Palestinian struggle against U.S.-backed Israeli military occupation didn't start with Bush's GWOT - although the false claim of "global terrorism" in Palestine has become a key pretext in U.S. efforts to justify its uncritical support for Israeli occupation and apartheid. The black-and-white notion of "good Fatah, good Abbas" vs. "bad Hamas, bad Haniyeh" has no resonance among Palestinians themselves (nor anywhere else in the region).

Bush tried to equate the Islamic nationalism of Hamas with the anti-state obscurantist extremism of al-Qaeda, claiming (as Abbas did as well) that Hamas had welcomed al Qaeda to Gaza. The claim sparked particular outrage among Palestinians. But it is consistent with the White House's regional strategic approach of equating, isolating, and attempting to eliminate all Islamic-identified forces that resist U.S. hegemony in the region. Part of the U.S. strategy includes efforts to establish or prop up governments in the region whose main job is to stand against various kinds of Islamist resistance - think Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, to some degree even Lebanon.

Hamas has no known ties to al Qaeda, which actually condemned Hamas when the Palestinian organization decided to participate in elections. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas uses an Islamic framework rather than secular nationalism to fight a traditional struggle against occupation and for national political power (what would be state power if Palestine were a state). They provide social and economic support as well as popular resistance to gain influence and electoral support (in elections deemed free and fair by former President Jimmy Carter and a host of U.S. and European monitors).
Fatah's dwindling credibility also reflects global and regional shifts. This is a moment when Islamic nationalism is on the ascendancy throughout the region, when anti-imperialism in the Middle East is defined more and more by Islamist forces while secular Palestinian nationalism, Arab nationalism, Arab socialism have all lost ground. So it is crucial to understand the distinctions between the various strands of Islamist strategy. Groups such as al Qaeda, the Taliban, some in Pakistan, want U.S. troops out of the region and existing governments destroyed in order to impose a rigid theocracy enforcing the most extreme and reactionary interpretations of Islamic law in a broad region in which national borders and national identities are wiped out. Islamic nationalist forces, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, some Iraqi parties define their goal as the end of foreign military occupation and an Islamic-identified but largely inclusive (thought not secular) government within nation-states.

A key difference, of course, is the state-based focus of these organizations. Unlike al Qaeda and others trying to destroy state governments and create a new "caliphate" across the Muslim world, the Islamic nationalists operate and struggle for power within existing (and anticipated) nation-state structures. Since their election in January 2006, Hamas leaders have stated clearly that their operative goal is a long-term truce with Israel, the right of return, and creation of a Palestinian state in the 1967-occupied territories, which they would govern in coalition with the secular Fatah and other factions.


Fatah and Hamas
Many Palestinians still view Fatah, long the centerpiece of Palestinian national politics, as their political home. But the near-collapse of the PLO, and the rise of the Oslo-created and U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) led to more criticism of Fatah's strategic failures and corruption, and more recently new censure has arisen regarding the Fatah leadership's close ties to the U.S. As a result, many Palestinians have distanced themselves from the organization. Human rights, social welfare and other civil society organizations have been particularly concerned about Abbas's recent decree replacing the existing law mandating registration of NGOs and other associations, with a new order requiring organizations to apply for a license from the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior - and giving the ministry the right to deny any group a license to operate.

At the same time, many Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank view with unease the Islamic tilt of Hamas politics. So far the social agenda they have implemented, particularly regarding women has been, in the Palestinian context, conservative but not extremist. Whether Hamas is telling the truth or not about their longer-term intentions, political conditions on the ground, particularly the still powerful secular forces within Palestinian society, will make imposition of the most coercive forms of Islamic law unlikely. Many also strongly oppose Hamas' brutal military attacks against Fatah in Gaza. But its legitimacy remains; Hamas did win Palestinian elections with an clear majority. A recent July 4^th poll by the Fatah-oriented al-Quds newspaper reported 41% support for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, with Fatah's 25% divided between 13% for Abbas and 12% for Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned leader of Fatah's younger and less compromised generation. (In that same poll Abbas's U.S.-backed Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, received only 5% of the vote.)


The U.S. Role
The violence of the internal Palestinian struggle in recent months reflects a deep and longstanding crisis within the Palestinian national movement. Neither the U.S.-allied secular nationalism of Fatah's leadership, nor the still untested Islamist nationalism of Hamas, have so far been able to provide the Palestinians with the kind of new strategic vision required to strengthen the weakened PLO and rebuild the now fragile movement it once so powerfully represented.

But even beyond the human catastrophe of the fighting, the tragedy is that in this horrific struggle among the Palestinians, both sides are really fighting over the leftover crumbs of power. The full loaf of power - and the main responsibility for the violence - belongs to the Israeli occupation and its U.S. backers. In the 16 months from the Palestinian elections in January 2006 through April 2007, Israeli troops killed 712 Palestinians, almost half of them children. During that same period, much of which included Hamas' unilateral ceasefire, Palestinians killed 29 Israelis, including soldiers and civilians.

And there is no question that U.S.-Israeli hands lay behind the escalating tensions and eventual violence of the Fatah-Hamas split. In his leaked confidential report written by former UN representative to the so-called Quartet, Peruvian diplomat Alvaro de Soto acknowledged that "the U.S. clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas - so much so that, a week before Mecca [the Saudi-brokered unity agreement between the two factions], the U.S. envoy declared twice in an envoys meeting in Washington how much 'I like this violence,' referring to the near-civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because 'it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas'."
Blair to the Rescue?
To try and achieve some level of international legitimacy for a "diplomacy surge" in the Middle East that might divert attention away his catastrophic war in Iraq, Bush orchestrated the appointment of his once-and-future strongest ally, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as representative of the "Quartet." But even now, despite Blair having largely sacrificed his own political career and legacy at the altar of the U.S. war in Iraq, the Bush administration continues to insult and disrespect him. In his last appearance before the British Parliament, Blair said proudly that his "absolute priority" in his new role was to "prepare the ground for a negotiated settlement" between Israel and the Palestinians. Only two days later, State Department spokesman Tom Casey flatly contradicted him. "There's certainly no envisioning that this individual would be a negotiator between the Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
That was more consistent with Blair's earlier recognition of the limitations of his own role. Talking candidly with Bush last summer on microphones they thought were turned off, Blair offered to do whatever the U.S. wanted, apparently regardless of what that was, while recognizing that what he did had little significance. Speaking of the secretary of state traveling to the Middle East, Blair told Bush that "obviously, if she goes out she's got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can go out and just talk." Given the limitations of Bush's so-called new diplomatic effort, it appears that talking will be all that Blair -or Rice herself - will be allowed to do.


So What Do We Do?
The divide within the Palestinian movement - especially the violence of recent weeks - has confused and demoralized many supporters of Palestinian human rights and the movement to end Israeli occupation. But neither the splits nor the violence change the overall obligation of international supporters of a just, comprehensive, human rights-based peace.

When the Palestinian elections resulted in an outcome challenging the Bush administration's expectations, the U.S. responded with a complete economic boycott of the entire Palestinian population of the occupied territories. Somehow the legitimacy of such a collective punishment was never considered an appropriate question in the mainstream U.S. media - while even talking of boycotts against the Israeli occupation engenders immediate accusations of discrimination, support for terrorism, even anti-Semitism.

In fact the global call for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions -BDS - represents the most promising non-violent economic pressure campaign to force an end to Israel's violations of UN resolutions and international law. The BDS call was launched in 2005 by Palestinian civil society organizations and the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine. Applying the lessons and adopting some of the techniques of the powerful global movement against South African apartheid in the 1980s, the BDS campaign includes diverse supporters using a broad array of tactics. It includes the "socially responsible investment" of the Presbyterian and other Christian churches committed to investigating and reversing corporate support for occupation, and the stockholder campaigns against Caterpillar's sales of bulldozers used illegally as Israeli military weapons in the occupied territories. The U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation will soon decide on a corporate target for national boycott and divestment campaigns throughout the U.S.


Globally there are important successes already. While the humanitarian and political situation inside the occupied territories continues to deteriorate as Israel escalates its divide-and-conquer tactics of occupation and dispossession, BDS pressures are on the rise in direct defiance. Two of Britain's largest trade union federations recently passed boycott resolutions. The powerful Canadian Union of Public Employees voted to support BDS campaigns. And in South Africa, home of the first anti-apartheid campaign, influential government officials and key backers of the ruling ANC - the ANC women's federation, its youth league, the Communist Party, the COSATU trade union federation - all have come out for sanctions to force Israeli compliance with international law.

The U.S. and global peace mobilizations cannot rebuild the Palestinian national movement from outside, and it is rarely useful for us to take sides in the internal conflict, beyond supporting unity efforts and working to defend Palestinian civil society organizations. The best answer to U.S. support for Israeli occupation and apartheid, and to U.S. divide-and-conquer tactics against the Palestinians, will be the consolidation of a broad popular movement saying no, joining the rising global movement for BDS as a powerful non-violent tool that challenges that U.S. support and demands an entirely new foreign policy based not on power but on justice and equal rights for all.

_______________________

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. Her newest book is Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.


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<h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">SALON</h2> <h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">7/24/07</h2> <h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life</h2> The White House hints at military action as the terror organization regroups in northern Pakistan and the Musharraf government begins to wobble.

Juan Cole

In the past week, worrying signs of a resurgence of al-Qaida surfaced in cyberspace, in Pakistan and in Washington, D.C. The Pakistani military's invasion of a major mosque and seminary complex in the country's capital set off an unprecedented, violent wave of protests and car bombings in the north of the country. A new National Intelligence Estimate warned that al-Qaida was reconstituting itself in those very areas of northern Pakistan. A U.S. threat to send Special Forces into Pakistan in search of al-Qaida roiled relations with the weakened Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. And a new videotape of Osama bin Laden surfaced.

In a videotape that CNN characterized as having been "intercepted," excerpts of which appeared on an anti-terrorist Web site last week, a grayer bin Laden appears in fatigues against a mountainous backdrop, arguing that the Prophet Mohammed himself wished for martyrdom. In reality, though the Prophet had been prepared to sacrifice his life to defend the early Muslim community, he forbade suicide. Before the 1980s, there had never been a suicide bombing in the Muslim world; the technique was pioneered by the Marxist (and largely Hindu) Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Bin Laden's little sermon was intended to hijack the Prophet and Islam for the purposes of al-Qaida.

But the very fact that bin Laden could still deliver his poisonous message to the Muslim world six years after his attack on New York and Washington killed some 3,000 people is first and foremost a remarkable testament to the incompetence and fecklessness of the Bush administration. The tape, the new NIE and events in Pakistan and Afghanistan all suggest that, shockingly, al-Qaida is more deadly now than at any time during the past half-decade.

The new National Intelligence Estimate, released early last week, said that al-Qaida "has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" inasmuch as it had once again set up a safe haven in northern Pakistan and was reassembling its top leadership. The Iraq war and the success of Salafi jihadis in fighting the U.S. there have, moreover, allowed bin Laden's organization "to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks."

Meanwhile, events in Pakistan show a pro-American dictatorship shaken by demonstrations of fundamentalist Islamic power. President Musharraf has long been a linchpin of the Bush administration's "war on terror."

Musharraf had made a truce with the tribes of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan's northwestern region, where al-Qaida remnants are thought to be hiding out. These vast, rugged regions along the Afghan border have defied central government control throughout history. Even the British Empire at its height never subdued them.

The truce came after the Pakistani military had suffered significant casualties in fighting in the region. Emboldened by Musharraf's seeming retreat, militants of the neo-Deobandi school of radical theology came from the north and established themselves in the Red Mosque and seminary of the capital, Islamabad, seeking to impose themselves as a sort of local Taliban-style morals police. They eventually turned violent, capturing police on May 19, and then taking Chinese acupuncture workers captive on June 23, forcing Musharraf's hand. The subsequent invasion of the mosque and seminary on July 10, which left over 100 dead, outraged other Deobandis in the Pashtun areas of the north, provoking thousands to demonstrate in the North-West Frontier province.

Since the government's seizure of the mosque, dozens of people in the north have been killed by suicide bombers targeting Pakistani security forces. Angered by the government invasion of the mosque and military crackdown in the north, Waziristan tribal leaders canceled their truce with Islamabad on July 15. On Monday, the Pakistani military said it had killed 35 militants near the Afghanistan border in renewed clashes that also left two Pakistani soldiers dead.

And now the U.S. seems to be thinking about operating in the same area. Mike McConnell, U.S. director of national intelligence, said Sunday on NBC television of bin Laden, "My personal view is that he's alive, but we don't know because we can't confirm it for over a year ... I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan." Pakistani authorities angrily denied the assertion.

McConnell's comments came in the wake of earlier remarks by Frances Townsend, Bush's homeland security advisor, who, when asked if U.S. Special Forces might go into Waziristan in search of Bin Laden, replied, "There are no tools off the table, and we use all our instruments of national power to be effective."

In the best of times, hunting down an individual in Pakistan's tribal areas would be rather like trying to find a person moving among safe houses in Wyoming, Colorado and Nevada. The current unrest would only make the job of any U.S. Special Forces operating in the region that much harder. But the de facto American threat to invade Pakistan also brought an alarmed reaction from the Musharraf regime. On CNN, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri angrily pointed out that Pakistan had sacrificed 700 troops to the fight against extremists in the tribal areas. He warned that any U.S. incursion would enrage the Pakistani public and defeat any hope of Washington winning local hearts and minds.

The Musharraf military regime was rattled by public distaste for the invasion of the Red Mosque and seminary, and further weakened by a Supreme Court ruling on July 20 reinstating the chief justice, whom Musharraf had high-handedly attempted to dismiss. The Islamabad government fears that if the Americans abandon it now, or act precipitately, instability will ensue.

In addition, not only has al-Qaida reconstituted itself in the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, and not only did a sort of Pakistani Taliban make a play for control of some of the country's capital, but the Taliban allies of al-Qaida are resurgent in southern Afghanistan. In recent weeks they have pulled off destructive suicide bombings against NATO troops and Afghan civilians. On Monday, Taliban forces killed six NATO troops, four in a roadside bombing. On July 18 and July 19, they had kidnapped two Germans and 23 Koreans. One of the German hostages was found shot on Saturday. The presence of NATO forces and more than 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan has not stopped the Taliban from attempting to regain control of the Pashtun regions.

The resurgence of al-Qaida, and the usefulness of Bush's Iraq war as a recruiting tool, were further demonstrated by events in Europe. On July 21, Italian authorities announced the arrest of three Moroccans, whom they charged with running a terror-training program from a mosque and of being linked to al-Qaida. It is believed that their trainees were placed throughout the world, including in Iraq.

In an ideal world the United States could deal with such a threat by close cooperation with Italian counterterrorism officials. But the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect named Abu Omar in Italy by Central Intelligence Agency operatives without Italian permission has roiled relations between the two countries.

In February an Italian court indicted 25 CIA employees in connection with the "extraordinary rendition," and Italy has demanded their extradition, saying that Italian authorities had the suspect under surveillance and precipitate U.S. action derailed their efforts to trace his network. The CIA delivered Abu Omar to Egypt, where he was imprisoned and says he was tortured, and he has now been released. In view of this fiasco, how likely are Italian authorities to share all their information on the new Moroccan cell and its links to al-Qaida with Washington? The Bush administration, having failed to learn its lesson in Italy, is now talking about intervening unilaterally in Pakistan.

The Iraq war grabs the headlines, though increasingly it, too, is seen through the prism of the American political campaign for 2008, which is already in full swing. The U.S. public seemed little interested in the bin Laden videotape praising al-Qaida martyrs, the first to appear since October 2004. The Italian arrests barely registered on public consciousness. The connection of the Red Mosque events and the subsequent turmoil in Waziristan to the revitalized al-Qaida presence in Pakistan was seldom recognized by the U.S. press.

Astonishingly, al-Qaida may be back, and the signs of its resurgence are everywhere, but there is little reaction from an American public that has everything to fear from the group. War-weary, bogged down in a fruitless guerrilla war in Iraq, disillusioned with the Bush team (which has lied to it assiduously), the public appears to be taking its eye off al-Qaida. If so, it would be making the same mistake as Bush, who is obsessed with Iraq to the detriment of urgent counterterrorism measures. Those efforts, to be successful, will require international cooperation rather than unilateral grandstanding, not something in which this administration has proved adept.

On any of the rationales for why the US decided to go into Iraq and continues to stay in Iraq, we must remember that we continue to be spoonfed revisionist history by the media.
Lets Not Forget Bush Planned Iraq 'Regime Change' Before Becoming President By Neil Mackay A
SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush
and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure
'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1221.htm

In case you missed it The President's Real Goal In Iraq By Jay Bookman The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence. The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2319.htm

The Project for the New American Century By William Rivers Pitt The People versus the Powerful is the oldest story in human history. At no point in history have the Powerful wielded so much control. At no point in history has the active and informed involvement of the People, all of them, been more absolutely required.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1665.htm

Dick Cheney's Song of America By David Armstrong