Extremist Reeducation and Rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia


Aug. 16, 2007 - By Christopher Boucek (from Terrorism Monitor, August 16) - For the past three years, the Saudi government has been quietly engaged in an ambitious strategy to combat violent Islamist extremist sympathies through an innovative prisoner reeducation and rehabilitation program. Following the May 2003 Riyadh compound bombings, the regime adopted a series of security measures to fight Islamist terrorism. In addition to the aggressive counter-terrorism steps taken by the government, Saudi officials have also sought to combat the support of extremist ideology in the kingdom through a series of lesser-known "soft" counter-terrorism measures aimed at combating the appeal of extremist takfiri beliefs. These measures have included a sophisticated hearts and minds campaign consisting of a combination of state-sponsored education programs, coordinated public relations and media efforts and the deployment of the government's considerable religious resources. It is from this background that the reeducation program has emerged. While only three years old, the program was initially kept a secret in order to encourage its success away from media attention (al-Hayat, June 20, 2005). Thus far, it has generated some noteworthy results, and it is now discussed openly and frequently in the Saudi media. The program's structure, process and relative successes, however, are all but unknown in the United States.

All-time Highs in Iraq: Escalation by the Numbers

Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com

War on Iraq: The number of taxpayer-paid private contractors in Iraq, the number of bullets fired for each insurgent killed, the percentage of amputations performed on U.S. war-wounded: a compilation of numbers puts Iraq into perspective.

Nearly All the War Crimes Were Israel's

The Second Lebanon War, A Year Later
By JONATHAN COOK

This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon war by Israelis. A month of fighting -- mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response -- ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians.

When Israel and the United States realised that Hizbullah could not be bombed into submission, they pushed a resolution, 1701, through the United Nations. It placed an expanded international peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in south Lebanon to keep Hizbullah in check and try to disarm its few thousand fighters.

But many significant developments since the war have gone unnoticed, including several that seriously put in question Israel's account of what happened last summer. This is old ground worth revisiting for that reason alone.

The war began on 12 July, when Israel launched waves of air strikes on Lebanon after Hizbullah killed three soldiers and captured two more on the northern border. (A further five troops were killed by a land mine when their tank crossed into Lebanon in hot pursuit.) Hizbullah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese prisoners since it withdrew from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.

The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who has been widely blamed for the army's failure to subdue Hizbullah, appointed the Winograd Committee to investigate what went wrong. So far Winograd has been long on pointing out the country's military and political failures and short on explaining how the mistakes were made or who made them. Olmert is still in power, even if hugely unpopular.

In the meantime, there is every indication that Israel is planning another round of fighting against Hizbullah after it has "learnt the lessons" from the last war. The new defence minister, Ehud Barak, who was responsible for the 2000 withdrawal, has made it a priority to develop anti-missile systems such as "Iron Dome" to neutralise the rocket threat from Hizbullah, using some of the recently announced $30 billion of American military aid.

It has been left to the Israeli media to begin rewriting the history of last summer. Last weekend, an editorial in the liberal Haaretz newspaper went so far as to admit that this was "a war initiated by Israel against a relatively small guerrilla group". Israel's supporters, including high-profile defenders like Alan Dershowitz in the US who claimed that Israel had no choice but to bomb Lebanon, must have been squirming in their seats.

There are several reasons why Ha'aretz may have reached this new assessment.

Recent reports have revealed that one of the main justifications for Hizbullah's continuing resistance -- that Israel failed to withdraw fully from Lebanese territory in 2000 -- is now supported by the UN. Last month its cartographers quietly admitted that Lebanon is right in claiming sovereignty over a small fertile area known as the Shebaa Farms, still occupied by Israel. Israel argues that the territory is Syrian and will be returned in future peace talks with Damascus, even though Syria backs Lebanon's position. The UN's admission has been mostly ignored by the international media.

One of Israel's main claims during the war was that it made every effort to protect Lebanese civilians from its aerial bombardments. The casualty figures suggested otherwise, but increasingly so too does other evidence.

A shocking aspect of the war was Israel's firing of at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50 per cent, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to 3 million.

At the time, it looked suspiciously as if Israel had taken the brief opportunity before the war's end to make south Lebanon -- the heartland of both the country's Shia population and its militia, Hizbullah -- uninhabitable, and to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of Shia who had fled Israel's earlier bombing campaigns.

Israel's use of cluster bombs has been described as a war crime by human rights organisations. According to the rules set by Israel's then chief of staff, Dan Halutz, the bombs should have been used only in open and unpopulated areas -- although with such a high failure rate, this would have done little to prevent later civilian casualties.

After the war, the army ordered an investigation, mainly to placate Washington, which was concerned at the widely reported fact that it had supplied the munitions. The findings, which should have been published months ago, have yet to be made public.

The delay is not surprising. An initial report by the army, leaked to the Israeli media, discovered that the cluster bombs had been fired into Lebanese population centres in gross violation of international law. The order was apparently given by the head of the Northern Command at the time, Udi Adam. A US State Department investigation reached a similar conclusion.

Another claim, one that Israel hoped might justify the large number of Lebanese civilians it killed during the war, was that Hizbullah fighters had been regularly hiding and firing rockets from among south Lebanon's civilian population. Human rights groups found scant evidence of this, but a senior UN official, Jan Egeland, offered succour by accusing Hizbullah of "cowardly blending".

There were always strong reasons for suspecting the Israeli claim to be untrue. Hizbullah had invested much effort in developing an elaborate system of tunnels and underground bunkers in the countryside, which Israel knew little about, in which it hid its rockets and from which fighters attacked Israeli soldiers as they tried to launch a ground invasion. Also, common sense suggests that Hizbullah fighters would have been unwilling to put their families, who live in south Lebanon's villages, in danger by launching rockets from among them.

Now Israeli front pages are carrying reports from Israeli military sources that put in serious doubt Israel's claims.

Since the war's end Hizbullah has apparently relocated most of its rockets to conceal them from the UN peacekeepers, who have been carrying out extensive searches of south Lebanon to disarm Hizbullah under the terms of Resolution 1701. According to the UNIFIL, some 33 of these underground bunkers ­ or more than 90 per cent -- have been located and Hizbullah weapons discovered there, including rockets and launchers, destroyed.

The Israeli media has noted that the Israeli army calls these sites "nature reserves"; similarly, the UN has made no mention of finding urban-based Hizbullah bunkers. Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: "Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the 'nature reserves'." In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizbullah was firing its rockets from among civilians.

According to the UN report, Hizbullah has moved the rockets out of the underground bunkers and abandoned its rural launch pads. Most rockets, it is believed, have gone north of the Litani River, beyond the range of the UN monitors. But some, according to the Israeli army, may have been moved into nearby Shia villages to hide them from the UN.

As a result, Haaretz noted that Israeli commanders had issued a warning to Lebanon that in future hostilities the army "will not hesitate to bomb -- and even totally destroy -- urban areas after it gives Lebanese civilians the chance to flee". How this would diverge from Israel's policy during the war, when Hizbullah was based in its "nature reserves" but Lebanese civilians were still bombed in their towns and villages, was not made clear.

If the Israeli army's new claims are true (unlike the old ones), Hizbullah's movement of some of its rockets into villages should be condemned. But not by Israel, whose army is breaking international law by concealing its weapons in civilian areas on a far grander scale.

As a first-hand observer of the fighting from Israel's side of the border last year, I noted on several occasions that Israel had built many of its permanent military installations, including weapons factories and army camps, and set up temporary artillery positions next to -- and in some cases inside -- civilian communities in the north of Israel.

Many of those communities are Arab: Arab citizens constitute about half of the Galilee's population. Locating military bases next to these communities was a particularly reckless act by the army as Arab towns and villages lack the public shelters and air raid warning systems available in Jewish communities. Eighteen of the 43 Israeli civilians killed were Arab -- a proportion that surprised many Israeli Jews, who assumed that Hizbullah would not want to target Arab communities.

In many cases it is still not possible to specify where Hizbullah rockets landed because Israel's military censor prevents any discussion that might identify the location of a military site. During the war Israel used this to advantageous effect: for example, it was widely reported that a Hizbullah rocket fell close to a hospital but reporters failed to mention that a large army camp was next to it. An actual strike against the camp could have been described in the very same terms.

It seems likely that Hizbullah, which had flown pilotless spy drones over Israel earlier in the year, similar to Israel's own aerial spying missions, knew where many of these military bases were. The question is, was Hizbullah trying to hit them or -- as most observers claimed, following Israel's lead -- was it actually more interested in killing civilians.

A full answer may never be possible, as we cannot know Hizbullah's intentions -- as opposed to the consequences of its actions -- any more than we can discern Israel's during the war.

Human Rights Watch, however, has argued that, because Hizbullah's basic rockets were not precise, every time they were fired into Israel they were effectively targeted at civilians. Hizbullah was therefore guilty of war crimes in using its rockets, whatever the intention of the launch teams. In other words, according to this reading of international law, only Israel had the right to fire missiles and drop bombs because its military hardware is more sophisticated -- and, of course, more deadly.

Nonetheless, new evidence suggests strongly that, whether or not Hizbullah had the right to use its rockets, it may often have been trying to hit military targets, even if it rarely succeeded. The Arab Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth, has been compiling a report on the Hizbullah rocket strikes against Arab communities in the north since last summer. It is not sure whether it will ever be able to publish its findings because of the military censorship laws.

But the information currently available makes for interesting reading. The Association has looked at northern Arab communities hit by Hizbullah rockets, often repeatedly, and found that in every case there was at least one military base or artillery battery placed next to, or in a few cases inside, the community. In some communities there were several such sites.

This does not prove that Hizbullah wanted only to hit military bases, of course. But it does indicate that in some cases it was clearly trying to, even if it lacked the technical resources to be sure of doing so. It also suggests that, in terms of international law, Hizbullah behaved no worse, and probably far better, than Israel during the war.

The evidence so far indicates that Israel:

* established legitimate grounds for Hizbullah's attack on the border post by refusing to withdraw from the Lebanese territory of the Shebaa Farms in 2000;

* initiated a war of aggression be refusing to engage in talks about a prisoner swap offered by Hizbullah;

* committed a grave war crime by intentionally using cluster bombs against south Lebanon's civilians;

* repeatedly hit Lebanese communities, killing many civilians, even though the evidence is that no Hizbullah fighters were to be found there;

* and put its own civilians, especially Arab civilians, in great danger by making their communities targets for Hizbullah attacks and failing to protect them.

It is clear that during the Second Lebanon war Israel committed the most serious war crimes.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States from the University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

http://www.counterpunch.org/

<h3 class="entry-header">Iraq's emergency political summit fails</h3> Lost in the reporting of the unbelievable horrific terrorist attack in northern Iraq is a bit of a political bombshell. Al-Arabiya is reporting that the emergency political summit of Iraq's leaders has failed to produce even nominal political reconciliation. This is a devastating outcome for the Maliki government and for those Americans who hoped to have some political progress to show in the upcoming Crocker/Petraeus report. There's no other way to spin this: this summit was billed as the last chance, and it has failed.

The background is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had called an emergency political summit to deal with the political crisis sparked by the withdrawal of the Sunni al-Tawafuq Bloc and the suspension of participation by the members of Iyad Allawi's Iraq Bloc from Maliki's government. Much of the Iraqi and Arab press portrayed this as a last-chance effort to salvage the Maliki government, certainly before the Petraeus-Crocker report but probably for good. Talabani summoned Maliki (Dawa, in his capacity as Prime Minister), Massoud Barzani (in his capacity as head of the Kurdish region), Adel Abd a-Mahdi (SIIC, in his capacity as Vice President), and Tareq al-Hashemi (Iraqi Islamic Party/Tawafuq Bloc, in his capacity as Vice President). Hashemi, after much back and forth about the invitation, agreed to attend. Iyad Allawi's bloc was pointedly not invited, despite his public indications that he was quite available. Nor were the Sadrists.




don't bother trying to spot the Sunni. (picture courtesy of al-Arabiya)

I thought there was at least a chance that they would cobble something together out of desperation and find ways to lure the Sunni parties back in - if for no other reason than that, by the accounts I've seen, American officials on the sidelines were heavily pressuring them to come back with something. It probably wouldn't have resolved the underlying problems (government spokesman Ali Dabbagh made it clear in advance that no substantive issues would be discussed), but I thought they might well emerge with a face-saving compromise. They did not. Instead, Talabani announced the formation of a new four party coalition in support of the current government without any Sunni representation. What's left is a government stripped to its sectarian base - the two Kurdish parties and the two major Shia parties - and a world of political hurt.

Sunni impatience has become overwhelming. The Saudis are growing impatient. Adnan Dulaimi recently issued a somewhat frantic appeal for Sunni Arab states to come to the rescue of Baghdad. Hareth al-Dhari of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars has called on the Americans to sever their ties with the Maliki government. The Reform and Jihad Front (the Islamic Army of Iraq's recent political initiative) issued a statement calling on the Tawafuq Bloc to take its 'last chance' to conclusively renounce any dealings with the current government and to join with the RJF in a unified front to coordinate a coherent, united Sunni strategy. And the Iraqi Islamic Party, according to al-Malaf Press, warned of the formation of a "counter-alliance" to the four party agreement. The IIP and other Sunnis are not ruling out a return, and Maliki says that the door remains open, but it doesn't look promising.

There are several ideas on the table right now to replace the Tawafuq Bloc. One of the most widely discussed is that Maliki would invite members of the Anbar Salvation Council and other Sunni tribal personalities to take the place of the Tawafuq Bloc in his cabinet. This would be an unmitigated political disaster: the Anbar Salvation Council and its peers are seen by most Iraqi Sunnis as an American proxy; they would not be seen as politically representative by most Sunnis; and it would be a full end-run around the democratic elections by which the current Iraqi government claims its mandate. The criticisms (and jokes) about American puppets would write themselves. I don't think that Petraeus or Crocker are stupid enough to endorse this, even if a superficial case could be made that it would break the strategy/tactics tension that I identified last week (and Jim Hoagland, um, popularized over the weekend, thanks) by bringing these local actors into the central state. But they could be trapped if Maliki puts the idea forward, since they would be hard-pressed to admit that their chosen interloctuors in the Sunni community are not legitimate representatives. At any rate, while the ASC has offered mixed signals on the idea, their most recent position has been negative.

There's still some minor chance that Maliki can pull this back from the brink, but it looks deeply unpromising. The Kurdish-Shia four party alliance has taken to calling itself "the majority" - perhaps learning from the smashing success of Siniora's government in Lebanon? - which does not bode well for their willingness to attend to the demands or concerns of "the minority." The failure of this emergency summit should be receiving serious attention because it pretty much guarantees that Iraq's political system will be mired in sectarian deadlock when September's showdown in Washington over Iraq policy commences.

Posted on August 16, 2007 at 10:22 AM | Permalink |

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/

The New York Times:
Amateur Hour on Iran

Rudy, the Anti-Statesman Giuliani's loopy foreign-policy essay. http://www.slate.com/id/2172285/

Analysis: India's integrated defense plan
New Delhi (UPI) Aug 16, 2007 - An Indian government-backed expert group has asked the government to prepare a 20-year defense plan that will make defense management more efficient. "India requires a holistic and integrated defense perspective plan for 20 years through a process of inter-state service prioritization," said a parliamentary standing committee report attached to the Defense Ministry. ... more

IRAQ WARS
+ Analysis: Kidnapped Iraqi had top oil role
Washington (UPI) Aug 15, 2007 - The Iraqi oil official kidnapped with four others Tuesday was in charge of Iraq's exploration and production, a key role especially for a Sunni, and a stark reminder that even the most needed aspect of Iraq's economy -- oil and the wealth it brings in -- is not immune from the horror of today's Iraq. Abdel-Jabar al-Wagaa, a deputy minister and top assistant to the oil minister, was take ... more

Russian bombers getting closer to US: American commander
Washington (AFP) Aug 14, 2007 - Long-range Russian bombers are flying more often and closer to US territory, a top US commander said Tuesday, as Moscow made its latest show of military might with exercises over the North Pole. General Gene Renuart, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command, the agencies charged with protecting US and Canadian airspace, said that US forces would c ... more

Outside View: Nuclear terror's false logic
Washington (UPI) Aug 16, 2007 - Even as the International Atomic Energy Agency is meeting with Iranian officials to discuss increasing the openness of Iran's nuclear program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains defiant about Tehran's right to pursue such a program -- including uranium enrichment, which would give Iran de facto nuclear weapon capability. This raises the specter of one of the greatest fears i ... more

July 30, 2007 Issue
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




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Nuclear Update:

• "The India Nuclear Deal: The Top Rule-maker Bends the Rules," Op-Ed by Sharon Squassoni, International Herald Tribune
• "U.S. May Soon Label Iran Guard 'Terrorist'," By Sue Pleming, Reuters
• "Why Europe Has Leverage With Iran," Op-Ed by Roger Stern, The Wall Street Journal
• "Iranian, Chinese Presidents Meet in Bishkek," Islamic Republic News Agency
• "India, U.S. Quell Domestic Critics of Nuclear Trade Deal," Global Security Newswire
• "Russia Vows Strong Support in NSG," By Vladimir Radyuhin, The Hindu
• "Australia Will Sell Uranium to India," By Indrani Bagchi, The Times of India

Do the Neo-Cons Need Karl Rove When They Can Count on the Democrats? By Harvey Wasserman Karl Rove scoots off the sunken White House ship with his plans for future neo-con dominance safe and secure-in the hands of Democrats unwilling or incapable of challenging his dirtiest deeds.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18199.htm

Hamas Is Ready To Talk By Mousa Abu Marzook While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is busily courting Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas as a "partner for peace", successive voices continue to speak out against efforts to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18196.htm

"An Attempt to Deceive Americans Into Yet Another War" By John Nichols Dennis Kucinich may not be a front runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But the congressman from Cleveland has succeeded in distinguishing himself from the other contenders when it speaking those truths that are self-evident.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18198.htm

Manufacturing Consent For War With Iran: White House may prevent general from testifying publicly on Iraq : If the White House gets its way, the Bush Administration's Sept. 15 progress report on Iraq may be delivered by the U.S. secretaries of state and defense -- and not by top US Iraq General David Petraeus and US Iraq Ambassador Ryan Crocker in a widely anticipated public congressional briefing.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/White_House_..._from_0816.html

US envoy says Iraq report will sound warning on Iran: Washington's envoy to Iraq warned Americans on Thursday that pulling U.S. troops out of the country could open the door to a "major Iranian advance" that would threaten U.S. interests in the region.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAR670980.htm

As U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Iran, Aftereffects Worry Allies: America's allies are increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's plans to unilaterally escalate pressure on Iran, fearing that an evolving strategy may also set in motion a process that could lead to military action
http://tinyurl.com/23ze3e

Iran's Ahmadinejad Says US Missile Defense Plan Threatens Asia : Russian President Vladimir Putin told the meeting that attempts to solve global problems unilaterally are hopeless. He encouraged strengthening what he called a "multi-polar" international system to ensure security and opportunity for all countries.
http://www.payvand.com/news/07/aug/1121.html

US envoy signs 30-billion-dollar Israel arms package: - The United States signed a deal on Thursday to boost its military aid to Israel to 30 billion dollars over the next decade aimed at countering a "resurgent" Iran and its allies.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070816/ts_afp/usmideastisrael

Which U.S. Political Party Is Better For Israel? : For the past several years, whenever anyone asked me which American political party was best for Israel, my answer was: both. Even AIPAC, in the weeks before the 2006 Congressional election, stated that both parties are equally good for Israel.
http://tinyurl.com/25r6fv

US anti-war group ordered to take down Iraq demo posters: A US anti-war group has been warned it will be fined 10,000 dollars if it does not remove posters in Washington announcing a march in the capital next month against US involvement in Iraq, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
http://tinyurl.com/28y4mh

America under surveillance: Granted new power to spy inside the U.S., the Bush administration may be doing more than eavesdropping on phone calls -- it could be watching suspects' every move.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/...c_surveillance/

Asian market sell-down continues: Asia Pacific shares posted some of their worst intra-day falls this year, with some markets faring as badly as in the days following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6ecc7ff4-4b9a-11dc...00779fd2ac.html Heavy losses sweep world markets : The falls came despite the Federal Reserve pumping an extra $17bn (£8.6bn) into the US banking system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6948916.stm
Liquidity woes hit more lenders : Australian lender RAMS closed down 37%, while US firm Countrywide has dropped 16%, warning it may face bankruptcy. Northern Rock was among the UK losers, falling 3.6% by afternoon trade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6949218.stm

Time for 'benign neglect' in Mideast?

By Leon Hadar
August 14, 2007

Muslims and non-Muslims have been fighting over this territory for years, resulting in thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees, as negotiations mediated by foreign governments have failed to resolve the conflict.

But nobody is calling on Washington to launch a new peace initiative. Why? Because we're not talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we're talking about the Armenians and Azeris clashing over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Most Americans know what is happening in the West Bank, thanks to the prominent news coverage the Arab-Israeli conflict receives. For years, pundits have been warning that unless Washington does something to end the bloodshed – revive the “peace process,” send a new special envoy to the Middle East, convene a peace conference – the entire region could unravel, triggering another oil embargo or even World War III.

But Nagorno-Karabakh receives little attention. Yet, this territory has been the source of a bitter dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the beginning of the 20th century. The two nations fought over the disputed territory in the final years of the Soviet Union. Since the war ended in 1994, most of Nagorno-Karabakh has remained under Armenia's control, while the parties continue to hold talks.

There is no doubt that the United States and the rest of the international community would welcome a resolution to the conflict. Indeed, many have been trying to help the Azeris and Armenians overcome their differences.

Washington also has been trying for some 30 years to resolve the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus – and to end the Turkish occupation of the northern part of the island.

In all likelihood, however, we are going to learn to live with such conflicts, ranging from the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the civil war in Sri Lanka to the bloody disputes that continue to ravage sub-Saharan Africa.

The fact that Washington focuses so much of its energy and attention on the Arab-Israeli conflict, while turning a blind eye elsewhere, indicates that U.S. foreign policy has lost its focus.

In the past the test was simple: Are vital U.S. national security interests at stake? During the Cold War, any nation that served as a buffer or counterweight to the Soviet Union could legitimately be considered a vital ally. With the Soviet threat long gone, it's time to reevaluate.

The U.S.-led “peace process,” as even a casual observer realizes, has accomplished little. Yet, like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going, and going, and going. Indeed, President Bush recently announced plans to convene an international conference to help restart Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Has anybody considered the possibility that America's preoccupation with the Arab-Israeli conflict – motivated by the commitment to Israel and the need to appease the Arab oil-producing states – may be doing more harm than good? By pursuing the illusion that the United States has the power and moral authority to broker a “peace” in the Middle East, Washington has created unrealistic expectations that cannot be fulfilled. Meanwhile, America's repeated failures as an “honest broker” ends up producing an anti-American backlash, which creates even more pressure on Washington to “do something” or else.

It may be time for Washington to consider a new policy of “benign neglect” toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, not different from the policy it employs in dealing with Nagorno-Karabakh and other conflicts.

The United States should be more than ready, if necessary, to work with other international players to facilitate a resolution to the conflict but only if and when both sides are ready to make peace, and deal seriously with core existential issues, such as Israel's right to exist securely and in peace, the fate of the remaining Jewish settlements, and the status of Arab refugees and the city of Jerusalem.

Even in that (unlikely) case, Washington should refrain from making long-term security and economic commitments. If the two sides want even a fragile peace to work, they will make it work – with or without U.S. involvement.

Such “constructive disengagement” from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could actually create incentives for the two sides to achieve real peace. If they fail, they will – not unlike the Azeris and the Armenians – have no one to blame but themselves.

Hadar is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Oakland-based Independent Institute (www.independent.org).

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20...z1e14hadar.html

The National Interest
A Conversation Continued: Democracy and Demagoguery in the Middle East
by Ted Galen Carpenter

08.13.2007

Editor’s note: In the forthcoming September/October issue of The National Interest, Nathan Brown and Amr Hamzawy write in "Arab Spring Fever":

The problem with the manic debate in Washington—irrational exuberance followed by despair—is that it misses gradual but real changes occurring in the region. There are many deep political problems in the Arab world. But that should not mask a variety of political openings in the region—many of which are only visible when one takes a longer-range view. Despite rising disenchantment outside the Arab world regarding Arab democratization, regional political dynamics have been driven to a great extent by an indigenous freedom agenda. In the level of intellectual debate, the battle for democracy has been fought—and won. . . .
The rise of democracy is not confined to rhetoric; limited but real changes are taking place. Some of these changes have occurred so slowly and unevenly that they are often missed. But over the past two decades in much of the Arab world, ruling establishments have substantially eased the restrictions imposed on freedom of expression. Media outlets, intellectual forums and academic institutions have become venues of pluralist argumentation. The era of state monopolies over information and ideas has ended. Ordinary Arab citizens have gained access to multiple sources of information and become systematically exposed to competing perspectives of domestic and international events.

One of the more puzzling aspects of the Iraq misadventure has been President Bush’s serene confidence of ultimate success amid the mounting evidence that the mission is crumbling. We now have some important insights into Bush’s thinking from a recent interview with National Review editor Rich Lowry and other conservative journalists. Lowry quotes the president extensively regarding prospects for democracy in the Middle East.

What emerges from Bush’s remarks is the picture of a man who largely rejects the role of culture in determining political values and systems. Embracing the "universality of freedom", he states bluntly that "Muslims desire to be free just like Methodists desire to be free." He adds that "nothing will change my belief." Later, he states that governments can transform societies (citing the example of Japan after World War II) and that the emergence of governments based on liberty is "inevitable."

Bush’s view is not merely simplistic, it is profoundly dangerous. The president assumes that when people in the Middle East and people in the West speak of freedom, they have the same concept in mind. There is virtually no evidence to support that belief. For all too many people in the Middle East, freedom means the ability to live the way the local mullah tells them that they ought to.

The foundation of an effective democracy is not some subjective desire of a person to live in freedom (however defined)—it is the willingness to allow fellow citizens, who may have different values and lifestyles, to live in freedom. That crucial spirit of tolerance is tragically underdeveloped in Middle Eastern societies. So is a pervasive attitude that political, economic and religious disputes must be settled solely by peaceful means.

Without those two pillars—the essence of a vibrant civil society—prospects for even quasi-liberal democracies in the foreseeable future are extremely dim. Even in Turkey, where these conditions are markedly stronger than in Arab countries, the political system is, at best, a shaky, rather illiberal democracy. Putting in place the mechanisms of electoral democracy before the necessary cultural conditions are strong (as the United States has done in Iraq) is likely to make bad situations even worse. Pushing for democracy without those crucial preconditions is akin to trying to build a house from the roof down.

Elections in such an environment will merely empower political demagogues and religious extremists. It is no accident that voters in Iraq spurned the more tolerant, secular parties who sought to reach across the Sunni-Shi‘a-Kurdish divides and instead supported blatantly sectarian parties. The fallacy of assuming that democracy is a panacea for the Middle East was even more graphically confirmed by the elections in the Palestinian
territories, when Hamas routed the more moderate (though hardly tolerant) Fatah.

That is not to say that Middle Eastern societies will never be ready to implement Western-style liberal democracy. There is no anti-democracy gene in human DNA. Societies change over time, and the emergence of stable, liberal democratic systems in the Middle East might well occur at some point in the future. But it’s not likely to happen in the next generation or two, and for the president to base U.S. policy in the region on the expectation that it will is irresponsible.

It was unfortunate, but perhaps understandable, that President Bush held naive beliefs about the inevitability and imminence of a regional democratic tsunami in 2003 when he launched the Iraq War. Given the bruising experiences of the past four years, however, clinging to such assumptions is simply inexcusable. We need a far more prudent and realistic Middle East policy. Let us hope that the next president will embrace one.


Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is author of the recent study "Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq."
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Citizens of States That Rejected RealID: Passports May be Required for Domestic Flights, Visiting National Parks
August 17th, 2007 Via: CNN:

Americans may need passports to board domestic flights or to picnic in a national park next year if they live in one of the states defying the federal Real ID Act.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver’s licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver’s licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The Department of Homeland Security insists Real ID is an essential weapon in the war on terror, but privacy and civil liberties watchdogs are calling the initiative an overly intrusive measure that smacks of Big Brother.

More than half the nation’s state legislatures have passed symbolic legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

Several states have begun making arrangements for the new requirements — four have passed legislation applauding the measure — but even they may have trouble meeting the act’s deadline.

The cards would be mandatory for all “federal purposes,” which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don’t comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

http://cryptogon.com/

Infrastructure Gridlock
by Randal O'Toole

Randal O'Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of the paper "Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work."



In the wake of the Minneapolis bridge disaster, transportation journalists are searching for local bridges in danger of collapse. This is already stimulating proposals for huge tax increases for new infrastructure.

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. has a $1.5 trillion backlog of infrastructure projects. But this number should be taken with a grain of salt, as it merely sums the wish lists of more than a dozen different interest groups. Efforts to fulfill these wishes would become pork fests providing absolutely no assurance that money will be spent where it is really needed.

The problem is not inadequate funding. The real problem with deteriorating bridges and highways is a ponderous transportation planning process under which it takes decades to do anything.

Case in point: a 2004 inspection of the Sellwood bridge in my old hometown of Portland found it so riddled with cracks that engineers closed it to trucks and buses. In a sane world, they would have started building a replacement right away.

In fact, a private company offered to replace it by 2010, but local planners rejected the proposal. They expect to take until at least 2017 to plan and build a replacement.

Moreover, the planning process allowed parochial local interests to prevail over the best interests of the region as a whole. A recent Portland news article quotes a Sellwood neighborhood resident saying that, when they finally do replace the Sellwood Bridge, the new one cannot have any more capacity than the old because "we're not interested in becoming a freeway" for people who live outside the neighborhood.

This is an all-too familiar refrain. In 2001, the Oregon legislature approved the replacement of hundreds of Oregon bridges. But, even though Oregon's population has more than doubled since most of those bridges were built, transportation planners decided no new bridge should have any more capacity than the bridge it replaced.

Automobiles provide more than 80 percent of American passenger travel and have greatly contributed to our wealth, health, and social well-being. Yet transportation planning in too many cities has been taken over by anti-auto groups aiming to divert billions of dollars of highway user fees to rail transit projects that will never carry more than 1 or 2 percent of urban travel.

In 1996, for example, Minneapolis-St. Paul planners decided that future "expansions of roadways will be very limited" in that region. "As traffic congestion builds," planners hoped, "alternative travel modes will become more attractive."

Since I35-W is one of the most congested routes in the Twin Cities, proposals to replace and expand the bridge there would have been opposed by anti-auto interests. Instead, they built a costly light-rail line that actually increased congestion on parallel highways.

Rail transit offers an illusion of being environmentally sound. But today's cars are as safe, clean, and energy efficient as any transit system in the country. If we need to reduce greenhouse gases, we will do it through new auto technologies, not by reducing our automobility.

As a matter of principle, infrastructure spending should be based on markets and user fees, not political whims and caprices. If users are not willing to pay the cost, we don't need the infrastructure. But when users will pay, government shouldn't prevent them from getting the facilities they need.

Local, state and national legislators who want to meet America's transportation needs should replace transportation planning laws that delay needed improvements with systems of user fees that ensure funding for the things we really need — like bridges that don't fall down.

This article appeared in the American Spectator on August 10, 2007.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8637

Casual Talk of War
by Sheldon Richman, August 13, 2007 The opponents of the Bush wars and the accompanying expansion of government power have been disappointed countless times before. Just the other day the Democrats in Congress acquiesced in the Bush administration’s heavy-handed bid for the power to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens and residents in the name of fighting terrorism.

We’ve come to expect Democratic cave-ins by now, but I confess I was disheartened to hear the presidential aspirant Sen. Barack Obama say he would invade Pakistan if he knew Osama bin Laden was there and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan did nothing. Although Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, he evidently missed a key argument against that folly, for it would apply to the invasion of Pakistan too, namely: the U.S. government cannot throw its military might around the Muslim world without making things far worse than they are. Obama might respond that he simply wants to get justice for the 9/11 attacks, but all that means is that he has no clue why the attacks occurred. As his Republican counterpart Ron Paul has pointed out, the attacks, unjustified as they were, climaxed 50 years of U.S. interference in the affairs of Muslim nations. More interference would hardly improve matters. Rather, it would simply set the stage for more terrorism against Americans. Not only that, it would kill many innocents. Adding Pakistanis to the death roll would hardly be a way to stop terrorists. On the contrary, it would be a new recruitment program for al-Qaeda.

My disappointment in Obama was hardly getting started when Sen. Hillary Clinton deflected attention to herself by knocking Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in the hunt for bin Laden. If I was disappointed in Obama, I was disgusted by Clinton. I suppose it’s considered a sign of political maturity to take nothing “off the table,” but the threat to use nuclear weapons is not merely a threat to commit mass murder. It is a signal that nothing is beyond the pale. The kind of people who fly airplanes into buildings won’t miss that signal.

We so blithely talk about war in this country. The possible invasion of Pakistan — and let’s not forget Iran — is discussed as though it were a Boy Scout project. We never were very good at remembering that in war innocents die. “These things happen in war” is not a defense. Murder is murder. Let’s bear in mind that American society is not in danger of destruction. No one is going invade us. What could possibly justify threatening masses of innocent lives?

Most critics of the Bush wars fault the occupation of Iraq for diverting the “war on terror” from bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But those critics are more like George W. Bush than they think — because if the point is to prevent another 9/11, there’s something more important than finding bin Laden. What’s more important is a complete reassessment of U.S. foreign policy and a rediscovery of the wisdom of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who warned us against an activist foreign policy. They and their philosophical descendents such as William Graham Sumner understood that America cannot keep government limited at home while expanding it abroad. And bombing people and supporting dictators are not effective ways to win admirers. This is not rocket science. Anyone should be able to see the truth of Randolph Bourne’s adage, “War is the health of the state.”

Sixty-two years ago last week another president, Harry Truman, dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. Americans may not see the significance of this, but you can bet that the rest of the world does. Let’s stop the bullying and get our own house in order.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine, and blogger at “Free Association” (www.sheldonrichman.com). Send him email.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0708c.asp

EDWARD LAZARUS Karl Rove's Departure from the White House: How Rove's and Others' Bad Behavior Suggests a Set of Golden Rules for Government, Applicable Regardless of Which Party Is In Charge FindLaw columnist, attorney, and author Edward Lazarus employs John Rawls's concept of the "veil of ignorance" -- in this case, postulating a veil obscuring one's party loyalty -- to consider which structural rules for government would be chosen if party affiliation were not an issue. On a number of issues, including a series relating to the Department of Justice and to confirmation proceedings for federal judicial nominees, Lazarus suggests that consensus would be very possible if the relevant players put party loyalty aside.

Financial Meltdown: A "Slow Motion Train Wreck"- by Stephen Lendman - 2007-08-15

The "Naqba" Offensive
By: Steven Plaut
The Islamo-Leftist Axis invents a new sin to pin on the Jews.