Al-Qaeda Video Supports Hamas, Calls for Sharia in Gaza

By Jeffrey Imm


Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called for Muslims to support Hamas with money, weapons, and information, as well as urging united efforts of mujahedeen after its takeover of Gaza.

A copy of the video can be downloaded here at Laura Mansfield site.

In the 25:17 as-Sahab-produced video released over the Internet to Jihadist web sites today, titled "Forty Years Since the Fall of al-Quds [Jerusalem]", shows a still image of Zawahiri with an audio track. The video begins with a short clip from an October 2001 video of Bin Laden and Zawahiri together. SITE Institute has issued a press release on this video.

Among the Zawahiri statements in the video:

-- Al-Zawahiri urged Hamas to implement Islamic law in Gaza, telling it, "Taking over power is not a goal but a means to implement God's word on earth."
-- "Unite with mujahedeen (holy warriors) in Palestine ... and with all mujahedeen in the world in the face of the upcoming attack where Egyptians and Saudis are expected to play part of it"
-- "Provide them (Hamas) with money, do your best to get it there, break the siege imposed on them by crusaders and Arab leaders traitors"
-- "Facilitate weapons smuggling from neighboring countries."
-- "We can support them by targeting the crusader and Zionist interest wherever we can"

Per SITE Institute translation, "Zawahiri urges support for the Mujahideen in Palestine in the face of additional aggression" and that "Zawahiri anticipates a coming attack on Gaza to rid Hamas of its positions, an attack in which even Egyptians and Saudis will participate, and declares in regard of Hamas: 'a victory of Hamas is a victory of Palestine'. In this speech, Zawahiri sees the greater enemy in Fatah, supported by the West, moving against Hamas, and this act in tandem with Hamas’ movements against Fatah, perceived as a return to jihad, causes a degree of softening. However, he still reminds Hamas that it must hold steadfast to the Shari’a of Allah and not vacillate in this regard, and also unite with other Mujahideen in the face of the coming attack."

Per SITE Institute translation, "Toward the end of his speech he calls for the defeat of the United States, and states: 'Don't believe those who tell you that America is not defeated. To the contrary. America is being defeated now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, and it will be defeated in Palestine.' "

Resources:

SITE Institute: "Forty Years Since the Fall of al-Quds [Jerusalem]" -- A Speech by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri Produced by as-Sahab Media

Laura Mansfield: New message from Zawahiri: Forty Years Since the Fall of Jerusalem

Laura Mansfield: Zawahiri Video

AP: Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri Calls on Hamas to Implement Islamic Sharai Rule in Gaza


June 25, 2007 08:05 AM Link

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ro...lamestream_.htm June 25, 2007

Tell The Lamestream Media to Cover Cheney MORE, NOW

By Rob Kall

I've always thought Cheney was way out there - the most Voldemort-like official I've run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet - a separate entity from the White House.

Maureen Dowd

Now we have it-- clear evidence that Cheney is again hiding, evading, avoiding the transparency and checks and balances that keep America safe and fair.

Today, the lamestream media are covering the story. But, if they follow the same old M.O., they will be off the story by tomorrow and on to the next kidnapping, the next off the wagon celebrity, the next siamese twins surgery, or an update on Paris, Anna Nicole or Michael Jackson.

Let's try something different. Tell them you want them to cover the Cheney story. Tell them you want them to put investagive journalists on the story-- if they still have any. Tell them that you want to hear about this more than about any of the distrations they usually waste the airwaves on. Tell them failure to do so is failure to do their job to protect democracy.

Tell their advertisers that you don't want to see more Paris Hilton, that you are disappointed in Larry King for giving her airtime.

Make two phone calls. Send two emails. Send two snail mail messages. You ought to be able to do it in ten minutes. Send this on to ten friends.

There are eight members of congress on the Cheney impeachment bill. Call your member of congress. Ask what your representative is doing about all of Cheney's abuses of the constitution. Ask why he doesnt' think the constitution is important enough to protect. Ask him or her to sign on to Kucinich's bill to impeach Cheney. That should take you three to five minutes.



Cheney's arrogant abuse of the constitution, the secrecy in which he's operated has been going on since the first days he was in office. He's gone too far. It's time to call for hearings and investigations. Reps conyers and Waxman should be subpoenaing Cheney current and former staffers to start building pressure. There's no need for a full impeachment. It will never go that far. As soon as Cheney sees the writing on the wall, he'll get a note from his doctor and resign for health reasons. I repeat. Cheney will resign for health reasons as soon as the heat starts to build under him. That's okay. We can prosecute after the 2008 elections are over.

So make the calls, send the emails and letters today. Recruit your friends. This is doable. Keep the stories about Cheney coming. Demand that the lamestream news network break their pattern and do their job.





Authors Bio: Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here. Back

<h3 class="entry-header">Gaza: the interests of Egypt (and others) by Abu Aardvark
</h3> With Egypt about to host a summit in Sharm al-Shaykh with Israel, Jordan, and Mahmoud Abbas, Mohammed Salah, writing in al-Hayat, takes a closer look at Egypt's interests. While Egypt no doubt is worried about instability and violence across its border in Gaza - especially if it will find itself responsible for dealing with it - Salah points out that Mubarak's strategy is likely guided as much by domestic considerations. Since their strong electoral performance in 2005, the government has been waging an unprecedented campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood. According to a number of Egyptian analysts, Mubarak wants to exploit Gaza to gain support (at home and, more important to him, abroad) for this crackdown. Placing Hamas under seige in Gaza and placing the Muslim Brotherhood under seige in Gaza are two sides of the same coin, argues Salah. That's an important bit of context for making sense of Egyptian strategy in the Gaza crisis.

It isn't just Egypt, either. A number of Jordanian writers have argued that the government is trying to use Gaza to hurt the electoral prospects of the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamic Action Front in the Parliamentary elections now scheduled for November. Like in Egypt, the Jordanian regime hopes to discredit the domestic opposition by association with Hamas, while deflecting any international criticism of steps taken to limit their electoral success (no matter how repressive or anti-democratic). Jordan has been harrassing its Islamists too, if not to Egyptian levels, and clearly wants to find ways to limit their electoral success: keeping the old, much disputed electoral law which was designed to limit Islamist gains; media campaigns against Islamists and Hamas; leveraging Jordanian-Palestinian ethnic grievances; and more.

The importance of domestic considerations to both Jordan and Egypt matters quite a lot when looking ahead to the international response to the Palestinian crisis. Both Arab states have a clear domestic political interest in Hamas doing poorly in Gaza and in making Hamas look bad with Arab audiences. This domestic interest in mobilizing anti-Islamist sentiment may even outweigh strategic interests pointing in the other direction. Of course, this attempt to focus attention on Hamas and Gaza could backfire spectacularly if the Arab mood shifts in favor of Hamas - something which many Islamists and other Arab writers expect, and which those regimes no doubt fear. Something to think about as things develop.

Posted on June 24, 2007 at 07:07 AM | Permalink

Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power





By Barton Gellman and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 25, 2007

Shortly after the first accused terrorists reached the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002, a delegation from CIA headquarters arrived in the Situation Room. The agency presented a delicate problem to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, a man with next to no experience on the subject. Vice President Cheney's lawyer, who had a great deal of experience, sat nearby.

The meeting marked "the first time that the issue of interrogations comes up" among top-ranking White House officials, recalled John C. Yoo, who represented the Justice Department. "The CIA guys said, 'We're going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees'" if interrogators confined themselves to treatment allowed by the Geneva Conventions.

From that moment, well before previous accounts have suggested, Cheney turned his attention to the practical business of crushing a captive's will to resist. The vice president's office played a central role in shattering limits on coercion of prisoners in U.S. custody, commissioning and defending legal opinions that the Bush administration has since portrayed as the initiatives, months later, of lower-ranking officials.


Enlarge Photo The vice president's office pushed a policy of robust interrogation that made its way to the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, above, and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. More Cheney photos... Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.

A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress -- for Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and for his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."

But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view.


RELATED STORY
Presidential Power
Dick Cheney's views on executive supremacy -- like many of his core beliefs about foreign policy and defense -- have held remarkably steady over the years. More » The vice president's unseen victories attest to traits that are often ascribed to him but are hard to demonstrate from the public record: thoroughgoing secrecy, persistence of focus, tactical flexibility in service of fixed aims and close knowledge of the power map of government. On critical decisions for more than six years, Cheney has often controlled the pivot points -- tipping the outcome when he could, engineering stalemate when he could not and reopening debates that rivals thought were resolved.

"Once he's taken a position, I think that's it," said James A. Baker III, who has shared a hunting tent with Cheney more than once and worked with him under three presidents. "He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power, extraordinarily effective and adept at exercising power."


'At Any Time and in Any Place'
David S. Addington, Cheney's general counsel, set the new legal agenda in a blunt memorandum shortly after the CIA delegation returned to Langley. Geneva's "strict limits on questioning of enemy prisoners," he wrote on Jan. 25, 2002, hobbled efforts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."

No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney's lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives "difficult to predict," might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony [Read the act]. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington's formula -- with all its room for maneuver -- verbatim.

In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, "We don't torture." What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto J. Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to avoid a ban on cruelty. In international law, Mora said, cruelty is defined as "the imposition of severe physical or mental pain or suffering." He added: "Torture is an extreme version of cruelty."

How extreme? Yoo was summoned again to the White House in the early spring of 2002. This time the question was urgent. The CIA had captured Abu Zubaida, then believed to be a top al-Qaeda operative, on March 28, 2002. Case officers wanted to know "what the legal limits of interrogation are," Yoo said.

This previously unreported meeting sheds light on the origins of one of the Bush administration's most controversial claims. The Justice Department delivered a classified opinion on Aug. 1, 2002, stating that the U.S. law against torture "prohibits only the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and therefore permits many others. [Read the opinion] Distributed under the signature of Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, the opinion also narrowed the definition of "torture" to mean only suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure ..... or even death."

When news accounts unearthed that opinion nearly two years later, the White House repudiated its contents. Some officials described it as hypothetical, without disclosing that the opinion was written in response to specific questions from the CIA. Administration officials attributed authorship to Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who had come to serve in the Office of Legal Counsel.

But the "torture memo," as it became widely known, was not Yoo's work alone. In an interview, Yoo said that Addington, as well as Gonzales and deputy White House counsel Timothy E. Flanigan, contributed to the analysis.

The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA -- including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government has prosecuted as a war crime since at least 1901. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

Yoo said for the first time in an interview that he verbally warned lawyers for the president, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that it would be a risky policy to permit military interrogators to use the harshest techniques, because the armed services, vastly larger than the CIA, could overuse the tools or exceed the limits. "I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at DOD felt differently," Yoo said. The migration of those techniques from the CIA to the military, and from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, aroused worldwide condemnation when abuse by U.S. troops was exposed.

Through is spokeswoman, Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales declined a request for an interview about his time in the White House counsel's office and his interactions with Cheney. The vice president's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, declined to comment on Yoo's recollection.


Enlarge Photo Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice confer in February 2002, around the time that detainee interrogation limits were being discussed. Rice wouldn't learn about the 'torture memo' until June 2004. More Cheney photos... On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post [Read the article]. According to a former White House official with firsthand knowledge, they confronted Gonzales together in his office.

Rice "very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law," the official said, adding that she threatened to take the matter to the president if Gonzales kept them out of the loop again. Powell remarked admiringly, as they emerged, that Rice dressed down the president's lawyer "in full Nurse Ratched mode," a reference to the head nurse of the mental hospital in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Neither of them took their objections to Cheney, the official said, a much more dangerous course.


'His Client, the Vice President'
In the summer and fall of 2002, some of the Bush administration's leading lawyers began to warn that Cheney and his Pentagon allies had set the government on a path for defeat in court. As the judicial branch took up challenges to the president's assertion of wartime power, Justice Department lawyers increasingly found themselves defending what they believed to be losing positions -- directed by the vice president and his staff. One of the uneasy lawyers was Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson , a conservative stalwart whose wife, Barbara, had died on Sept. 11, 2001 when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Olson shared Cheney's robust view of executive authority, but his job was to win cases. Two that particularly worried him involved U.S. citizens -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi -- who had been declared enemy combatants and denied access to lawyers.

Federal courts, Olson argued, would not go along with that. But the CIA and military interrogators opposed any outside contact, fearing relief from the isolation and dependence that they relied upon to break the will of suspected terrorists.

Flanigan said that Addington's personal views leaned more toward Olson than against him, but that Addington beat back the proposal to grant detainees access to lawyers, "because that was the position of his client, the vice president."

Decision time came in a heated meeting in Gonzales's corner office on the West Wing's second floor, according to four officials with direct knowledge, none of whom agreed to be quoted by name about confidential legal deliberations. Olson was backed by associate White House counsel Bradford A. Berenson , a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

Berenson told colleagues that the court's swing voter would never accept absolute presidential discretion to declare a U.S. citizen an enemy and lock him up without giving him an opportunity to be represented and heard. Another former Kennedy clerk, White House lawyer Brett Kavanaugh, had made the same argument earlier.

Addington accused Berenson of surrendering executive power on a fool's prophecy about an inscrutable court. Berenson accused Addington of "know-nothingness."

Gonzales listened quietly as the Justice Department and his own staff lined up against Addington. Then he decided in favor of Cheney's lawyer.

John D. Ashcroft, who was attorney general at the time, declined to discuss details of the dispute but said the vice president's views "carried a great deal of weight. He was the E.F. Hutton in the room. When he talked, everybody would listen." Cheney, he said, "compelled people to think carefully about whatever he mentioned."

When a U.S. District Court ruled several months later that Padilla had a right to counsel, Cheney's office insisted on sending Olson's deputy, Paul Clement, on what Justice Department lawyers called "a suicide mission": to tell Judge Michael B. Mukasey that he had erred so grossly that he should retract his decision. Mukasey derided the government's "pinched legalism" and added acidly that his order was "not a suggestion or request."

Cheney's strategy fared worse in the Supreme Court, where two cases arrived for oral argument alongside Padilla's on April 28, 2004.

For months, Olson and his Justice Department colleagues had pleaded for modest shifts that would shore up the government's position. Hamdi, the American, had languished in a Navy brig for two and a half years with out a hearing or a lawyer. Shafiq Rasul, a British citizen at Guantanamo Bay, had been held even longer. Olson could make Cheney's argument that courts had no jurisdiction, but he wanted to "show them that you at least have some system of due process in place" to ensure against wrongful detention, according to a senior Justice Department official who closely followed the debates.

Addington, the vice president's counsel fought and won again. He argued that any declaration of binding rules would restrict the freedom of future presidents and open the door to further lawsuits. On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in the Hamdi case that detainees must have a lawyer and an opportunity to challenge their status as enemy combatants before a "neutral decision maker." The Rasul decision, the same day, held 6 to 3 that Guantanamo Bay is not beyond the reach of federal law.

Eleven days later, Olson stepped down as solicitor general. His deputy succeeded him. What came next was a reminder that it does not pay to cross swords with the vice president.

Ashcroft, with support from Gonzales, proposed a lawyer named Patrick Philbin for deputy solicitor general. Philbin was among the authors of the post-Sept. 11 legal revolution, devising arguments to defend Cheney's military commissions and the denial of habeas corpus rights at Guantanamo Bay. But he had tangled with the vice president's office now and then, objecting to the private legal channel between Addington and Yoo and raising questions about domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Cheney's lawyer passed word that Philbin was an unsatisfactory choice. The attorney general and White House counsel abandoned their candidate.

"OVP plays hardball," said a high-ranking former official who followed the episode, referring to the office of the vice president. "No one would defend Philbin."


'Administration Policy'
Rumsfeld, Cheney's longtime friend and mentor, gathered his senior subordinates at the Pentagon in the summer of 2005. He warned them to steer clear of Senate Republicans John McCain, John W. Warner and Lindsay O. Graham, who were drafting a bill to govern the handling of terrorism suspects.

"Rumsfeld made clear, emphatically, that the vice president had the lead on this issue," said a former Pentagon official with direct knowledge.


Enlarge Photo Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a longtime Cheney mentor, tours Abu Ghraib in May 2004. In 2005, he made it clear that Cheney 'has the lead on this issue,' said a Pentagon official, referring to the treatment of detainees More Cheney photos... Though his fingerprints were not apparent, Cheney had already staked out a categorical position for the president. It came in a last-minute insert to a "statement of administration policy" by the Office of Management and Budget, where Nancy Dorn, Cheney's former chief of legislative affairs, was deputy director. Without normal staff clearance, according to two Bush administration officials, the vice president's lawyer added a paragraph -- just before publication on July 21, 2005 -- to the OMB's authoritative guidance on the 2006 defense spending bill [Read the document].

"The Administration strongly opposes" any amendment to "regulate the detention, treatment or trial of terrorists captured in the war on terror," the statement said. Before most Bush administration officials even became aware that the subject was under White House review, Addington wrote that "the President's senior advisers would recommend that he veto" any such bill.

Among those taken unawares was Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England. More than a year had passed since Bush expressed "deep disgust" over the abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib, and England told aides it was past time to issue clear rules for U.S. troops.

In late August 2005, England called a meeting of nearly three dozen Pentagon officials, including the vice chief and top uniformed lawyer for each military branch. Matthew Waxman, the deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs, set the agenda.

Waxman said that the president's broadly stated order of Feb. 7, 2002 -- which called for humane treatment, "subject to military necessity" -- had left U.S. forces unsure about how to behave. The Defense Department, he said, should clarify its bedrock legal requirements with a directive incorporating the language of Geneva's Common Article 3 [Read Common Article 3]. That was exactly the language -- prohibiting cruel, violent, humiliating and degrading treatment -- that Cheney had spent three years expunging from U.S. policy.

"Every vice chief came out strongly in favor, as did every JAG," or judge advocate general, recalled Mora, who was Navy general counsel at the time.

William J. Haynes II, a close friend of Addington's who served as Rumsfeld's general counsel, was one of two holdouts in the room. The other was Stephen A. Cambone, Rumsfeld's undersecretary for intelligence.

Waxman, believing his opponents isolated, circulated a draft of DOD Directive 2310. Within a few days, Addington and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, invited Waxman for a visit.

According to Mora, Waxman returned from the meeting with the message that his draft was "unacceptable to the vice president's office." Another defense official, who made notes of Waxman's report, said Cheney's lawyer ridiculed the vagueness of the Geneva ban on "outrages upon personal dignity," saying it would leave U.S. troops timid in the face of unpredictable legal risk. When Waxman replied that the official White House policy was far more opaque, according to the report, Addington accused him of trying to replace the president's decision with his own.

"The impact of that meeting is that Directive 2310 died," Mora said.


'Total Indifference to Public Opinion'
Over the next 12 months, Congress and the Supreme Court imposed many of the restrictions that Cheney had squelched.

"The irony with the Cheney crowd pushing the envelope on presidential power is that the president has now ended up with lesser powers than he would have had if they had made less extravagant, monarchical claims," said Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.

Flanigan, a founding member of that crowd, said he still believes that Addington and Yoo were right in their "application of generally accepted constitutional principles." But he acknowledged that many battles ended badly. "The Supreme Court," Flanigan said, "decided to change the rules."

Even so, Cheney's losses were not always as they appeared.

On Oct. 5, 2005, the Senate voted 90 to 9 in favor of McCain's Detainee Treatment Act, which included the Geneva language [Read the bill]. It was, by any measure, a rebuke to Cheney. Bush signed the bill into law. "Well, I don't win all the arguments," Cheney told the Wall Street Journal.

Yet he and Addington found a roundabout path to the exceptions they sought for the CIA, as allies in Congress made little-noticed adjustments to the bill.

The final measure confined only the Defense Department to the list of interrogation techniques specified in a new Army field manual. No techniques were specified for CIA officers, who were forbidden only in general terms to employ "cruel" or "inhuman" methods. Crucially, the new law said those words would be interpreted in light of U.S. constitutional law. That made a big difference to Cheney.

The Supreme Court has defined cruelty as an act that "shocks the conscience" under the circumstances. Addington suggested, according to another government lawyer, that harsh methods would be far less shocking under circumstances involving a mass-casualty terrorist threat. Cheney may have alluded to that advice in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" on Dec. 18, 2005, saying that "what shocks the conscience" is to some extent "in the eye of the beholder."

Eager to put detainee scandals behind them, Bush's advisers spent days composing a statement in which the president would declare support for the veto-proof bill on detainee treatment. Hours before Bush signed it into law on Dec. 30, 2005, Cheney's lawyer intercepted the accompanying statement "and just literally takes his red pen all the way through it," according to an official with firsthand knowledge.

Addington substituted a single sentence. Bush, he wrote, would interpret the law "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief."

Cheney's office had used that technique often. Like his boss, Addington disdained what he called "interagency treaties," one official said. He had no qualms about discarding language "agreed between Cabinet secretaries," the official said.

Top officials from the CIA, and the Justice, State and Defense departments unanimously opposed the substitution, according to two officials. John B. Bellinger III, the ranking national security lawyer at the White House, warned that Congress would view Addington's statement as a "stick in the eye" after weeks of consensus-building by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

None of that mattered. With Cheney's weight behind it, White House counsel Harriet E. Miers sent Addington's version to Bush for his signature.

"The only person in Washington who cares less about his public image than David Addington is Dick Cheney," said a former White House ally. "What both of them miss is that ..... in times of war, a prerequisite for success is people having confidence in their leadership. This is the great failure of the administration -- a complete and total indifference to public opinion."


'Almost Everything' Cheney Wanted
On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court struck its sharpest blow to the house that Cheney built, ruling 5 to 3 that the president had no lawful power to try alleged terrorists in military commissions [Read the opinion]. The tribunal order that Cheney brought to Bush's private dining room, and the game plan Cheney's lawyer wrote to defend it, fetched condemnation on disparate legal grounds. The majority relied, as Addington's critics foresaw, on Justice Kennedy's vote.

Not only did the court leave the president beholden to Congress for the authority to charge and punish terrorists, but it rejected a claim of implicit legislative consent that Bush was using elsewhere to justify electronic surveillance without a warrant. And not only did it find that Geneva's Common Article 3 protects "unlawful enemy combatants," but it also said that those protections -- including humane treatment and the right to a trial by "a regularly constituted court" -- were enforceable by federal judges in the United States.

The court's decision, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, was widely seen as a calamity for Cheney's war plan against al-Qaeda. As the Bush administration formed its response, the vice president's position appeared to decline further still.

White House strategists agreed that they had to submit legislation to undo the damage of the Hamdan case. Cheney and Addington, according to a former official with firsthand knowledge, favored a one-page bill. Their proposal would simply have stated that the Geneva Conventions confer no right of access to U.S. courts, stripped U.S. courts of jurisdiction over foreign nationals declared to be enemy combatants and affirmed the president's authority to create military commissions exactly as he had already done. Bush chose to spend the fall of 2006 negotiating a much more complex bill that became the Military Commissions Act.

The White House proposal, said Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, "did not come out exactly as the vice president would have wanted."

In another reversal for Cheney, Bush acknowledged publicly on Sept. 6 that the CIA maintained secret prisons overseas for senior al-Qaeda detainees, a subject on which he had held his silence since The Post disclosed them late in 2005. The president announced that he had emptied the "black sites" and transferred their prisoners to Guantanamo Bay to be tried.

The same week, almost exactly a year after the vice president's office shelved Waxman's Pentagon plan, Waxman's successor dusted it off. DOD Directive 2310.01E, the Department of Defense Detainee Program, included the verbatim text of Geneva's Common Article 3 and described it, as Waxman had, as "a minimum standard for the care and treatment of all detainees." [Read the directive] The new Army field manual, published with the directive, said that interrogators were forbidden to employ a long list of techniques that had been used against suspected terrorists since Sept. 11, 2001 -- including stripping, hooding, inflicting pain and forcing the performance of sex acts.

For all the apparent setbacks, close observers said, Cheney has preserved his top-priority tools in the "war on terror." After a private meeting with Cheney, one of them said, Bush decided not to promise that there would be no more black sites -- and seven months later, the White House acknowledged that secret detention had resumed.

The Military Commissions Act, passed by strong majorities of the Senate and House on Sept. 28 and 29, 2006, gave "the office of the vice president almost everything it wanted," said Yoo, who maintained his contact with Addington after returning to a tenured position at Berkeley.

The new law withstood its first Supreme Court challenge on April 2. It exempts CIA case officers and other government employees from prosecution for past war crimes or torture. Once again, an apparently technical provision held great importance to Cheney and his allies.

Without repealing the War Crimes Act, which imposes criminal penalties for grave breaches of Geneva's humane-treatment standards, Congress said the president, not the Supreme Court, has final authority to decide what the standards mean -- and whether they even apply.


'I'd Like to Close Guantanamo'
Air Force Two touched down in Sydney this past Feb. 24. Cheney had come to discuss Iraq. Prime Minister John Howard brought the conversation around to an Australian citizen who had unexpectedly become a political threat.

Under pressure at home, Howard said he told Cheney that there must be a trial "with no further delay" for David Hicks, 31, who was beginning his sixth year at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay. Five days later, Hicks was indicted as a war criminal. On March 26, he pleaded guilty to providing "material support" for terrorism.

At every stage since his capture, as he changed taxis at the Afghan-Pakistan border, Hicks had crossed a legal landscape that Cheney did more than anyone to reshape. He was Detainee 002 at Guantanamo Bay, arriving on opening day at an asserted no man's land beyond the reach of sovereign law. Interrogators questioned him under guidelines that gave legal cover to the infliction of pain and fear -- and, according to an affidavit filed by British lawyer Steven Grosz, Hicks was subjected to beatings, sodomy with a foreign object, sensory deprivation, disorienting drugs and prolonged shackling in painful positions.


Enlarge Photo Ankle cuffs are seen locked to the floor of an interrogation room at Guantanamo Bay. The new legal framework for interrogations was designed to leave room for cruelty. More Cheney photos... The U.S. government denied those claims, and before accepting Hicks's guilty plea it required him to affirm that he had "never been illegally treated." But the tribunal's rules, written under principles Cheney advanced, would have allowed the Australian's conviction with evidence obtained entirely by "cruel, inhuman or degrading" techniques.

Shortly after Cheney returned from Australia, the Hicks case died with a whimper. The U.S. government abruptly shifted its stance in plea negotiations, dropping the sentence it offered from 20 years in prison to nine months if Hicks would say that he was guilty.

Only the dramatic shift to lenience, said Joshua Dratel, one of three defense lawyers, resolved the case in time to return Hicks to Australia before Howard faces reelection late this year. The deal, negotiated without the knowledge of the chief prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, was supervised by Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority over military commissions. Crawford received her three previous government jobs from then-Defense Secretary Cheney -- she was appointed as his special adviser, Pentagon inspector general and then judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.

Yet the tactical retreat on Hicks, according to Bush administration officials, diverted attention from the continuity of U.S. policy on detainees.

A year after Bush announced at a news conference that "I'd like to close Guantanamo," the camp remains open and has been expanded. Senior officials said Cheney, with few allies left, has turned back strong efforts -- by Rice, England, new Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and former Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson, among others -- to give the president what he said he wants.

Cheney and his aides "didn't circumvent the process," one participant said. "They were just very effective in using it."


'This is a Dangerous World'
More than a year after Congress passed McCain-sponsored restrictions on the questioning of suspected terrorists, the Bush administration is still debating how far the CIA's interrogators may go in their effort to break down resistant detainees. Two officials said the vice president has deadlocked the debate.

Bush said last September that he would "work with" Congress to review "an alternative set of procedures" for "tough" -- but, he said, lawful -- interrogation. He did not promise to submit legislation or to report particulars to any oversight committee, and he has not done so.

Two questions remain, officials said. One involves techniques to be authorized now. The other is whether any technique should be explicitly forbidden.

According to participants in the debate, the vice president stands by the view that Bush need not honor any of the new judicial and legislative restrictions. His lawyer, they said, has recently restated Cheney's argument that when courts and Congress "purport to" limit the commander in chief's warmaking authority, he has the constitutional prerogative to disregard them.

If Cheney advocates a return to waterboarding, they said, they have not heard him say so. But his office has fought fiercely against an executive order or CIA directive that would make the technique illegal.

"That's just the vice president," said Gerson, the former speechwriter, referring to Cheney's October remark that "a dunk in the water" for terrorists -- a radio interviewer's term -- is "a no-brainer for me."

Gerson added: "It's principled. He's deeply conscious that this is a dangerous world, and he wants this president and future presidents to be able to deal with that. He feels very strongly about these things, and it's his great virtue and his weakness."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_br...war_and_arm.htm

June 25, 2007

NEW COLD WAR AND ARMS RACE UNDERWAY

By Bruce K. Gagnon

The news in recent days has been full of the controversy about U.S. plans to deploy "missile defense" interceptors and radar facilities in Eastern Europe. Russia has responded by expressing fears that the U.S. military and NATO are attempting to surround and control her. Russia has made counter suggestions saying that if the U.S. really wanted to protect itself and Europe from future Iranian missiles, then placing such facilities would be more practical in Azerbaijan. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quickly ruled that out as an option saying, "One does not choose sites for missile defense out of the blue."

Russian President Vladimir Putin makes the case that since 9-11 the U.S. has established military bases in Central Asia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and has been expanding NATO into Eastern Europe with bases in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and is now attempting to create more bases in the Ukraine and Georgia. Russia is starting to feel surrounded. This is something that could never have happened during the Cold War - in fact if the U.S. had tried it would have likely caused a nuclear exchange. When the former Soviet Union attempted to put nuclear missiles into Cuba in 1962 - the U.S.'s sphere of influence - nuclear war was barely averted.

Participants at the May 5 International Conference against the Militarization of Europe in Prague issued a declaration opposing U.S. missile defense deployments saying, "We voice our protest against the plans of the Bush administration to install a 'national missile defense system' for the U.S. on the territory of the Czech Republic and Poland. Most people in the Czech Republic and Poland, as well as in the rest of Europe, reject plans to host this system. We reject the official reasons given for the NMD project as mere pretexts. The realisation of the U.S. plan will not lead to enhanced security. On the contrary - it will lead to new dangers and insecurities.
Although it is described as 'defensive', in reality it will allow the United States to attack other countries without fear of retaliation. It will also put 'host' countries on the front line in future U.S. wars."

One of the first things the Bush administration did upon taking office was withdraw the U.S. from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia. This treaty banned the testing and deployment of so-called "missile defense" systems. Since that U.S. withdrawal, Bush has aggressively moved to fund and deploy the technologies that will give the U.S. first-strike capability of any other nuclear power. As we witnessed with the 2003 U.S. preemptive attack on Iraq, first-strike is now the official military doctrine of the U.S.

Putin recognizes this new twist when he recently said, "Once the missile defense system is put in place it will work automatically with the entire nuclear capability of the U.S. It will be an integral part of the U.S. nuclear capability....An arms race is unfolding. Was it we who withdrew from the ABM Treaty? We already told [Bush] two years ago, don't do this, you don't need to do this. What are you doing? You are destroying the system of international security....Of course, we have to respond to it."

Putin is obviously referring to current Bush plans to deploy "missile defense" interceptors in Poland and a high-tech Star Wars radar facility in the Czech Republic. The Bush team says these facilities are intended to protect against Iranian missiles but all one has to do is look at a map of the region and see that the real target is Russia.

Following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the economy of Russia fell apart and the standard of living dropped substantially. But in recent years, due in large part to oil exploration inside Russia which now surpasses the daily oil output of Saudi Arabia, Russia's economy is growing again and the standard of living improving. Russia has become the world's largest producer of natural gas.

Russia has announced that four of its largest oil fields will not be open to foreign development and its national treasury has begun to convert Russia's dollar reserves into gold and rubles. None of these steps has been well received in the banking centers of Washington or London.

As fossil fuels become scarce worldwide, the U.S. and British banking and oil corporation elites have developed an international strategy to take control of remaining supplies. This is manifest in the present U.S. and UK occupation of Iraq and U.S. permanent bases in Central Asia - a key region for pipelines to move Caspian Sea resources south for shipment in the Asian-Pacific region.

But Russia and China do not accept the notion of the U.S. becoming the "master" of the planet. Already the U.S. Space Command has declared that it will be the master of space and will develop the offensive space weapons technologies to "deny" other countries access to space. Pentagon operatives have said that international treaties will restrict the U.S. ability to take unilateral and preemptive military action globally.

The U.S. secret military budget, the "black budget", is now estimated to be about $60 billion per year and is mostly funding high-tech space weapons. Even Congress is not provided information on how the Pentagon is spending these funds. A reporter at the weapons industry publication, Jane's Defense Weekly, did a research project on the secret budget architecture and suggests it came to the U.S. by Nazi scientists brought to the U.S. after World War II under the classified "Operation Paperclip."

On May 31 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the U.S. favors a protracted troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea. Gates told reporters that he is thinking of "a mutual agreement" with Iraq in which "some force of Americans . . . is present for a protracted period of time, but in ways that are protective of the sovereignty of the host government." Gates said such a long-term U.S. presence would assure allies in the Middle East that the U.S. will not withdraw from Iraq as it did from Vietnam, "lock, stock and barrel."

Highly respected former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was quoted in April as saying that deployment of U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic is an attempt by the U.S. to control Europe. "It is all about influence and domination in Europe," Gorbachev said. Asked how Russia could respond to these plans, he only said: "Time will show."


One Russian political analyst puts it more directly. ''Hitler was striving for global domination, and the United States is striving for global domination now,'' Sergei Markov, head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research recently told The Associated Press.

''Hitler thought he was above the League of Nations, and the United States thinks it is above the United Nations. Their action is similar... only the United States now is claiming global exclusiveness,'' Markov said.





Authors Website: http://www.space4peace.org

Authors Bio: Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
http://space4peace.blogspot.com Back

New Mexico's Nuclear Governor

The Grooming of Bill Richardson
By BOB ANDERSON

New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson has a long way to go before he can call himself a peace candidate as he has been doing in his presidential campaign in the press and out east. He can't do that back in his home state, not on peace nor on a range of other issues.

Ben Luce, the former head of New Mexico Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy said this week in a series of interviews that the governor is more in the pocket of the energy corporations than his image machine presents. Luce, a ten year activist on environmental issues and a former insider in the Richardson camp spoke out to warn voters that Richardson had crafted policies in favor of energy corporations while claiming they were much different. He said Richardson's laws make him look good as a presidential candidate but don't do much else (Albuquerque Journal, 6-20-07).

On war and peace many of us in the grassroots anti-war movement know the governor is in the pocket of the military industrial complex, just as he sides with the energy industry on many pieces of legislation. He would have unknowing voters believe he was a big voice in the movement for social and economic justice when he is not. Richardson claims to be for human rights too but yielded his veto pen to prevent elimination of the death penalty in our last legislative session.

Richardson may criticize other Democratic Party presidential contenders for their past actions and votes on the war in Iraq but his record is much the same, not different enough to warrant notice. This is important because when a voter evaluates a public official for truth it is the experience and past record of the candidate that tells us a lot about future possible actions. Richardson's man selling point is his experience in public service. If Richardson applied his yardstick to himself he would come up short and working more for the private sector than the public.

More and more New Mexicans are coming back dead from Bush's wars in the middle east, especially Iraq where a lot of New Mexico citizens serve as guard and reserve troops. So, what has the governor done in his role as chief executive to stop this killing? Nothing really. The governor actually made it more likely our state citizens would be willing to go war by getting a hefty state death-in-combat supplement passed for those who get killed. This is his idea of bring the troops home.

The governor, a creative man could have come up with some new use of his executive power to stop the guard deployment right here and saved their lives. He could have even stood with the concerned public in front of the buses full of soldiers departing to the war as we have done several times over the years he has been in office.

He has not stood with ANY of the large anti-war demonstrations in the state over the past four years. He has not even sent a wave to the anti-war folks at key times of large gatherings, of which there have been many in Albuquerque, the main city of our state. He has been seen at many meetings of the war profiteers here though. Our state is full of war profiteers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Boeing, Honeywell, etc. The governor is always being seen in the newspapers as having been at some ribbon cutting or function put on by the people who profit from war.

In 2003, fifteen million people demonstrated around the world against the start of the war against Iraq, saying it was a hoax. Five thousand stood in Santa Fe at the governor's office and was he there? No, and he could not then hear the massive voice of the people. Now he claims to be a leader in our movement.

The governor did not even send a solidarity message or anything to the crowd then or anytime later because he was supporting the war hawks but was afraid to speak out. How could we expect him to provide visionary leadership in the future on war and peace issues when he has no track record of that in the past in his home state?

We in the anti-war movement have marched and protested since before the war started in 2003 and the governor (like our city councilman Martin Heinrich who has jumped on the bandwagon to run for Congress as an anti-war leader) has been missing in action on this crucial front of struggle every single time.

We did see the governor break all kinds of land speed records to get over to Clovis, NM last year to stand with the Republicans who were complaining of the BRAC plan to close the obsolete Cold War Cannon AFB war base. As a result of bi-partisan high level lobbying it was kept open and turned into something even worse. The base is now to become a cover war training base for future wars in the fake war on terrorism.

This week a House committee has made major funding cuts for the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos National Lab, our premier nuclear holocaust factory, and the governor is again calling to keep it open and growing (Albuquerque Journal, 6-16-07). In his speeches outside the state he has said he is for diversifying and not producing any new nuclear weapons, which sounds good, but here he says and works for the opposite. When he was head of the Department of Energy under the Clinton administration, at a time when he had some role of importance he never made any great changes. His tenure is marked by the racist scapegoating of Wen Ho Lee for a set of research labs drifting into a loss of mission.

The labs are a large government public works project for many high paid scientists and technicians who could not otherwise make a living. The governor always has their job interests in mind when he makes statements here in his state.

Here in Albuquerque, home to the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons the governor has never replied to repeated requests to make a statement about the great danger these weapons pose to our community of over 600,000 people. If he had any real message to give he could have pointed out in 2003 before President Bush launched the big war that Albuquerque had 2,000 WMDs here and Iraq had none. It would have been a welcome gesture to have said let's talk of dismantling our WMDs and you do the same.

You would think as head of the Dept. of Energy and all that research he had privy to on nuclear issues he would have known that of the obvious nuclear weapons dump in Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is the third largest nuclear power in the world. He missed that little fact because he was busy cheerleading for the war for control of the middle east. His real problem with the war is that it has become messy and has gone on too long, longer than WW II for us.

Our governor has said nothing about the Department of Defense's establishment of a major nuclear war planning center here at Kirtland AFB, in the center of Albuquerque, which is likely to make us another target in any global conflict era.

Nor has he questioned the most intensive industrial project in human history, much of it going on here in our state: the arms race in space. A real time Star Wars is being developed at a local military base, Kirtland AFB with help from our state universities. University faculty get big lucrative contracts to create the new weapons technologies for space war which is in violation of many treaties on space.

The university keeps some of the war profiteering money for overhead and all keep quiet. Richardson hand picked the CEO of the key university who in turn drove out critics of this large new Manhattan Project. In turn he was fired for his own malfeasance, costing the state taxpayers over a million in contract buy-outs.

Last fall (Sep. 29, 2007) Lockheed Martin held a symposium at the University of New Mexico to promote the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which would be a violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and very costly to the nation. The one sided discussion was attended by many grassroots activists whom the university threw out of the meeting for speaking out against the RRW program and the privatization of the public university for war profits. The governor could have used an event like this to announce his position on the RRW and war profiteering if he had really any serious intention here in the weapons Mecca of the world. Did he speak out as the newspapers carried articles and discussions on the arrest at the meeting and debate that followed? No.

Also, at the same military base in Albuquerque he has not spoken out about the intentions of the new covert program such as the radical technology tilt-rotor Osprey. The CV-22 is an aircraft designed for covert insertion of assassins into other countries. This is a program that will only cause us more grief as a nation. We don't need hidden and secret war machines anyway.

In his home city of Santa Fe local citizens have organized and called for his support to stop the military from placing a squadron of Blackhawk helicopters in the placid, peaceful town. Where has Richardson been on this issue? Like all the other times of grassroots struggle with the military industrial complex he has been silent and working behind the scenes to assist the other side.

Near Ft. Carson, Colorado where residents are opposed to closing an Army base he said he would take care of the Base Realignment and Closing process (Albuquerque Journal, 6-18-07). With Richardson as president we would have more of a war based economy than what we have now. Richardson has a message of hope and hype for all audiences. A sane person would have to wonder who he really is. Richardson is in the mold of his mentor, Bill Clinton, a New Democrat, one who talks values associated with the New Deal era of FDR but one who practices the neo-conservative economic and military polices of New Gingrich. Richardson is a neo-liberalist, a supporter of global interventions and expansion.

Richardson claims to be an enlightened leader with skills in international affairs and events. But it must be remembered he was dumb enough to go along with the Bush administration hoax of an Iraqi WMD threat. Why? He really agreed with the goal to support regime change in other countries, and has cheered on the Trojan Horse war on terrorism without missing a beat. Homeland Security has a large presence in our state thanks to his administration and the large war industry here.

As an experienced U.N. diplomat for our country, as he repeatedly reminds listeners, one would have expected enlightened dissent then, and a vision not so centered around war profiteers. And this is his same approach to health care. While our state is at the bottom of health care access lists for poor people his name was just painted on a huge ugly $300 million elite cancer treatment center here at the university hospital complex. His name will be up there in large font after he has long gone and the poor died from lack of treatment.

As this new center was being built over the last thee years, across the street hospital rank and file workers have been falling further and further behind in wages. Just last week they had to hold a picket as negotiators for the university tried to drive down again their demands for a living wage. Some workers have been there for 20 years and barley make a substandard wage. This is going on all the while Billy Sparks one of his spin doctors had a special job created at the same hospital to the tune of nearly $150,000. Richardson claims he has done a lot for labor and the poor here but don't believe it. Richardson is in the pockets of the insurance corporations not working for the workers. He has opposed universal access to health care for our state's poor time and again as just not feasible but he can year after year find tax cuts and roll backs for the corporate elite and global rich who reside in our state.

It is more likely the governor would still be for the war in Iraq if he saw it was a winner. His position on Iraq is basically the same as that of the Cato Institute's Ethical Realism policy (same as the Baker Commission plan, talk and divide the country as we fight at the same time).

Richardson, like Henry Kissinger his former consulting business partner (see Albuquerque Journal, Nov. 7, 05), and Rep. Heather Wilson all would like to see Iraq broken up into three sub regions for better management by an outside superpower. This ethnic cleansing would be managed by a puppet government and backed up by an outside coalition of "peace" troops from other countries, or NATO or the U.N.

This is old fashion colonialism in the post-colonial era dressed up for the unwise as progressive politics. Richardson has been heard to now say he would get U.S. troops out of Iraq but his real intentions is like that of the neo-cons. He is not about to give up on the oil resources in the region. He would just do it in a more sophisticated manner. Richardson we must not forget was quietly paid nearly half-million dollars for being a trophy on the board of directors for Diamond Shamrock Oil Company (in Texas, now renamed Valero) until it became an embarrassment to his presidential image. In this mold he is more like Bush and Cheney than most people know.

Richardson is still in support of the larger goal of U.S. manifest destiny, of extending hegemony over Iran and other countries. A political cartoon appeared in the local paper shows him, holding a flag (as other presidential candidates held various types of flags to get noticed, Albuquerque Journal, 6-20-07) saying "my flag is whiter." He is ok with interventions for regime change, just as are Bush and Cheney, as his comment on Iran makes clear.

On Iran Richardson has said he would use diplomacy first which means he would keep open the use of war machines if he felt it necessary. Noticeably absent from his message, especially as a former U.N ambassador is language to support the basic right of self determination and sovereignty for Iran, even if their people want a different leader or policy. Richardson is about how to make Iran bow to the empire not empowering national independence or a global community of equals.

On immigration as a border state governor he has appeared concerned but has not hesitated to help Bush militarize the border to appease the right wingers. Poor people now see more guns and armies on his soil as they try to find jobs. Thanks Bill.

One of the largest immigration detention centers, overcrowded to the max exists in downtown Albuquerque and he has said nothing. Protests have been held to get humane treatment for these people being held with out any legal rights. With his expertise at photo ops and getting hostages released it would be a great mission for him to undertake right here in his home state to do the same.

On his watch we could probably expect a much more brutal war of shock and awe against Iran than what Bush and company have unleashed against Iraq.

The governor still promotes the genocidal lie that Palestine was a desert vacant of people when Israel brought democracy to the region. He has said Israel, not the struggle for justice by Palestinians is our key ally in the middle east. As late as April of this year he was saying our relationship with this racist settler state is a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the region (Albuquerque Journal, April 26, 2007).

This is a policy for more disaster, a position that will just exacerbate attacks on our country. He has offered no strategic critique of the failed U.S. policy of intervention, attacks on the many movements for Arab moderations and liberalization over the past 60 years in the region. While high school students learn of important events like the Sykes-Picot Treaty and the Kermit Roosevelt CIA coup in Iran Richardson offers just more of the same with a new twist. Richardson tries to play his diplomacy photo op image style of politics as a solution when the situation requires realistic proposals. Some of our high school students could offer a better foreign policy analysis and program than he does.

Richardson is just more of the same old thing dressed up for the grassroots revolt taking place across the country this election season to be misled by. The world is seeking vision and leaders that supports a world different than what we have had in the past. Richardson is late to the game and not a serious alternative.

What we need now is for some honest voices in the labor movement, health care and education movements to speak out like Ben Luce and tell the truth behind Richardson's statements on how he has done so little for the working people of the state.

It is more accurate when he hear Forbes magazine, a capitalist tool, and the local chamber of commerce's statements that they love him because he has made our state so favorable for the business community.

The corporate elite from large energy companies, to private aviation jet manufacturers, to expensive mattress firms, to space tourists promoters and entertainment moguls have had a run at New Mexico, much like the global elite do elsewhere when exploiting a colony with a weak political structure. Richardson has gone so far as to hand them hefty capital investments of public money for risky business ventures. Hundreds of millions from the state's permanent and retirement funds have been diverted to assist the global rich by him. I am sure they will help him in his run for another office. This scheme must be something he learned while manager of Henry Kissinger's consulting firm for large corporations which offers policies on how to plunder poor counties in the global economy.

Under Richardson's watch Intel, the wealthiest and largest computer chip manufacture with a large non-union shop here was awarded a staggering $16 billion tax refund. This went down in a town where the plant is strategically located that can't raise enough money to build all the high schools needed for the local children of its workers.

Richardson was again silent while this mega rip off of the state took place and corporations offered more charity to help the high schools.

Two other high schools in Albuquerque just had to turn to a private charity to find funds to operate in-school health clinics, which sever mainly poor families. The unmet infrastructure needs for New Mexico's poverty population has grown by leaps and bounds under Richardson's tenure but at the same time a high tech infrastructure for space militarization, high tech weapons research and global war has grown with the assistance of the governor.

At the rate at which Richardson is racing to get out in front of the growing, global peace movement we might expect him to soon say he was helping Bob Dylan write anti-war lyrics, when in reality he was in prep school being groomed for leadership of a poor state that he could use to launch a large political career.

Bob Anderson can be reached at: citizen@comcast.net

Brothers-in-Arms

The Triumph of US/Israeli Policy in Palestine
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

Contrary to the many claims that the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip represents the failure of US and Israeli policies in Palestine, the violent civil infighting that has dominated the Gaza Strip over much of the last year and a half and that led directly to the Hamas coup of June 2007, marks yet another major foreign policy victory for the occupiers. Hamas will never be allowed to remain in power in Gaza so we must fear for the future of that tiny, desperately overcrowded strip of land and its 1.4 million inhabitants; additionally, Abbas ­in order to maintain his role as "Good Guy"- will have to accede to the dictates of Israel and the United States or suffer the same fate as his predecessor, Yassir Arafat.

Western nations are standing by in silence as the deadly siege of Gaza and the dismemberment of the West Bank continue unabated. What we are witnessing in full view each day are unprecedented steps taken by the world's only superpower and its favorite client state, Israel, to ensure the death of a nation. While friction between the two key political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories has long undermined the smooth functioning of internal affairs, it was the direct, cynical involvement of US and Israeli policy-makers in these affairs that guaranteed the breakdown of internal stability and paved the way for the Hamas "coup" in Gaza.

Media reports have been careful to leave out important facts leading up to the coup such as that Hamas was the legitimate, democratically elected ruling party in the Palestinian territories following the January 2006 Palestine Legislative Council elections; that it was the US-Israeli dismissal of those election results that fueled the civil infighting between Hamas and Fatah; that obvious US backing of Fatah against Hamas helped create popular mistrust of Fatah increasing Hamas' popularity in Gaza and leading directly to Hamas' takeover of the Fatah military apparatus in the Gaza Strip. In other words, there were real and understandable reasons for the coup. But in the end, Hamas' seizure of the power it should have had in the first place ends up serving the interests not only of Mahmoud Abbas and the warlord Muhammad Dahlan. It also provides the perfect opportunity for US-Israeli policy in the region to move forward with even fewer objections, if that is possible to imagine, than have heretofore been made. Who will stand up for a "terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel"? The line has been beaten into our heads with every mention of the word "Hamas" for years. We should not expect a change in the behavior of the American public or of other western audiences until, when Israel is mentioned, we immediately say to ourselves, "a terrorist state that seeks the destruction of Palestine." Seeks and is succeeding in it.


II.

Watching the barbarous killing between brothers in Gaza, a power struggle between rival factions seething in frenzy like the great prison in which they thrive, Israeli and American political analysts can rest their cases with confidence. Across the spectrum of debate, these experts can expect vindication by the media juries who, in sanctimonious indignation at the brutality meted out by partisans of Fatah or Hamas, have assembled all the "evidence" they need to justify our righteous war against Muslim-Arab terrorists and their internecine blood feuds.

That the US has temporarily chosen a weak, compliant leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the power thirsty warlord, Muhammad Dahlan, to back during the bitter strife between key Palestinian factions testifies not to a belief that one side is trustworthy and deserves our support, but rather to the ease with which the Americans and their clients pick and choose their pawns in their bitter regional cockfights. Today's statesmen were yesterday terrorists, their titles dependent on the needs of the superpower and its clients: yesterday Fatah was on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and its leader, Yassir Arafat, was a declared "terrorist," "irrelevant," and exiled in his presidential compound in Ramallah until his mysterious death. Fatah's military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is still listed as a foreign terrorist organization. Neither of these factors apparently bothers the current leadership which understands that power and prestige are most easily acquired and unchallenged when bequeathed from above.

Truth be told, the Abbas/Dahlan alliance elicits far greater contempt in the eyes of the masters than the more independent and genuine resistance faction headed by Hamas. The numerous meetings and photo-ops between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas, and US President George Bush and Abbas, are little more than tactical stunts to make it look as though genuine negotiations are taking place. In fact, Abbas has been repeatedly by-passed and shunned when Israeli and US negotiators make the real policy decisions; decisions that remain one-sided and dismissive of any demands-other than those that are entirely self-serving-that Abbas and his entourage have made. The arms and funding channeled through Abbas' Fatah (for his clique represents only one of the many spin-off Fatahs that emerged during the second Intifada) signify little more than the conduit through which US-Israeli policies can be secured. For all the claims about US backing of Fatah, neither Abbas nor Dahlan have yet to benefit on the ground from this "support". Indeed, the ease with which Hamas was able to wrest control of Gaza indicates just how little US support for Fatah was worth there. Nevertheless, the same pipeline of support for "Fatah" has done a great deal to bolster perceived US and Israeli national security interests in the same region.



III.

Once again the pictures on our television screens in our newspapers are intended to suffice for missing substance; the context of empire is invisible or deliberately obscured ­in Palestine as in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere. If the takeover of Gaza by Hamas was unanticipated, its success was a gift of immeasurable value to the overlords; a welcome but unforeseen consequence of fueling divisions among a weakened and oppressed people, undermining any steps toward positive change. Abbas and his underlings have foolishly offered up Palestine cut in two to the occupation regime that worked so hard to end the charade of a single Palestine to begin with. This was a coup for Israel in its on-going quest for regional hegemony, and a triumph for America's "War on Terror." For all the talk about a one-, two- or bi-national state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict, the reality is that no state solution for Palestine is on the near or distant horizon. Palestine is a series of disconnected pieces whose division into still smaller parts continues month after month.

Those fretting about a "Hamastan" in the Gaza Strip ought to be worried not about its viability or longevity or about whether or not Islamic law and social mores will be imposed. Hamas' presence in Gaza will be but a short-lived, transitory phenomenon entirely at the mercy of the US-backed Israeli military which has not left Gaza alone for a single day since Hamas' coming to power despite a yearlong ceasefire called by its leaders and scrupulously observed. Those concerned about a Hamas-controlled Gaza ought instead to be wondering how they are going to justify Hamas' destruction within the Strip and all the suffering, chaos and death that will ensue over the shameful silence of the international community.



IV.

Claims that Hamas' "victory" in the Gaza Strip is a sign that the Bush Doctrine in Palestine has failed are misguided. While no one can foresee all of the events that might take place in a region as volatile as the Middle East, Hamas' takeover in Gaza will ultimately benefit Israel and the United States. It will benefit Israel by giving it a free hand to destroy Hamas, permanently sever the West Bank from the Gaza Strip, and re-"negotiate" with its newly appointed "partners" the remaining islands of economically unviable territory that will soon be entirely encircled by a concrete and barbed-wire wall, cut off from their supplies of water and fertile land, and separated internally by "Arab-free" roads. It will benefit Israel and the United States by assuring another compliant puppet regime adjacent to Jordan, friendly to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and hostile to Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, even as the fault lines harden. It has already benefited both Israel and the United States by reassuring them that their tactics for undermining indigenous experiments in democracy have once again proven effective; that the people who have dared to defy those tactics learn quickly how painful it is to advocate or practice popular sovereignty and the rule of law.

Mahmoud Abbas has already learned how well complicity and collaboration are rewarded. Having dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, dissolved the national unity government, declared a new, 'legitimate' government under his rule and appointed his friends to work beside him, he recently stepped into the limelight with an address on Palestine TV, broadcast in the US on C-SPAN, by announcing how he would further "enhance democracy." This would begin by no longer speaking to "murderers," by which he meant Hamas.

Clearly, his membership application into the club of the Good Guys has been, for the time being, approved.

Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at: amadea311@earthlink.net

42 House Democrats Back U.S. Terror Academy

Democrats and the School of the Americas
By DAN BACHER

Two San Joaquin Valley Representatives, Dennis Cardoza of Merced and Jim Costa of Fresno, were among 42 Democrats that voted to keep the world's foremost torture school, the School of the Americas, open during a House vote on June 21. The vote was 203 yes, 214 no, 1 voting "present" and 19 not voting.

Cardova, Costa and 40 other Democrats voted no on the McGovern/Lewis Amendment that would have finally cut off funding to the School of Americas (SOA), now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Only 6 more votes were needed to pass it--but these Democrats shamefully chose to join Republican Representatives in voting for the school, whose graduates have been responsible for genocide, assassinations, torture and other human rights violations throughout Latin America for decades.

California representatives Loretta Sanchez and Grace Napolitano, along with Charles Rangel of New York, are listed among the Democrats who chose not to vote. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not found on any list, not even present.)

SOA Watch, a human rights advocacy group founded in 1990 by Maryknoll Priest Father Roy Bourgeois to close the "School of Death," was disappointed by the vote. However, SOA Watch vowed to continue its efforts in Congress until the school, located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is shut down.

"The grassroots mobilizing effort was tremendous: Tens of thousands of emails, faxes and calls flooded the halls of Congress over the past three days," said Joao Da Silva, SOA Watch spokesman, after the vote at 11:52 p.m. on Thursday. "Students, clergy, union members and veterans traveled to DC and visited with hundreds of Congressional offices to communicate clearly that there is no room for institutions like the SOA/WHINSEC in our future. Despite this, 214 Members of Congress missed the chance to stand up for human rights, justice and democracy, and voted to keep the funding for the SOA/WHINSEC flowing."

The WHINSEC "PR machine" and high-ranking Pentagon officials used taxpayer money to put a lot of pressure on Members of Congress. However, Da Silva said this is no excuse for Representatives to not be accountable to their constituents.

"There were Representatives this week that committed to vote to cut funding for the SOA/WHINSEC, and then shifted their vote," said Da Silva. "Those people need hear from all of us, loudly and in public."

Da Silva emphasized, "While we did not get enough Members of Congress to vote with us, it was clear to us and our supporters in the House that we have tremendous power when we mobilize together. We gained the support of new Republicans and new members of Congress. The margin of SOA/ WHINSEC survival is rapidly dwindling, and this week due to grassroots pressure, we added several new cosponsors to HR 1707 bringing our total to 111. We have gained a lot of ground in Congress and our goal of closing this School of the Death is coming closer and closer."

The vote, although it failed by 6 votes, still came closer to ending the school's funding than last June's vote, when the amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill by Jim McGovern (D-MA) calling for school's closure failed by a 15 vote margin.

The recent vote came after a series of successes by SOA Watch over the past two years in convincing Latin America leaders to remove their military and police officers from the school. Venezuela, the first country to withdraw its troops from the SOA in 2005, was followed by Argentina and Uruguay last year. After a visit to Bolivia by Roy Bourgeois, President Evo Morales said Bolivia's military will be pulling out of SOA/WHINSEC on a gradual basis

More recently, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias announced on May 16 that Costa Rica will stop sending its police to train at the school. Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, made the decision after talks with a delegation of SOA Watch, including Bourgeois and Lisa Sullivan Rodriguez.

Costa Rica does not have an army--choosing to spend its tax money on education, health and social welfare--but has sent some 2,600 police officers over the years to be trained at the school.

"We agreed that when the courses end for the three policemen we are not going to send any more," Arias said.

The SOA/WHINSEC has graduated at least 11 military dictators and over 60,000 soldiers, many of which have been linked to some of the worst human rights abuses committed in the Americas.

"The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution," said Da Silva. "Despite this admission and hundreds of documented human rights abuses committed by soldiers trained at the school, no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place."

SOA Graduates include Hugo Banzer Suarez, the former dictator of Bolivia, and Guatemalan Dictator Efren Rios Montt, who was responsible for a war of genocide against the Mayan people that resulted in the elimination of 626 Mayan villages from the face of the earth. Notorious human rights abusers such General Hector Gramajo of Guatemala, Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina, and Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador were also graduates.

Lower-level SOA graduates have been involved in many atrocities including the massacre of 900 people at the village of El Mozote in El Salvador in the early 1980s and the massacre of four Jesuit priests and the housekeeper at in San Salvador in 1989.

Bourgeois in his talks around the country always emphasizes the role that the school plays in providing the shock troops and enforcers for corporate globalization throughout Latin America.

"The SOA continues to provide the muscle for U.S. foreign policy. It keeps the rich rich and the poor poor," said Bourgeois at a talk in Sacramento this February.

Protests calling for the closure of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have taken place every year around the November 16 anniversary of the assassination of six Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran women at the hands of SOA graduates.

Every year, brave activists "trespass" onto army property during the protest at Fort Benning, facing arrest and time in federal prison. Since 1990, 211 SOA Watch human rights defenders have collectively spent over 92 years in prison, while over 50 people have served probation sentences.

SOA/WHINSEC Vote in Congress ­ Visit to check the roll call to see how your Representative voted. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 to thank your Representative or to express your displeasure.

For more information, visit the SOA Watch website and the Legislative Action Index.

List of Democrats Voting No for Closure of the SOA:

Abercrombie, Neil, Hawaii

Barrow, John, Georgia

Bishop, Sanford D. Georgia

Boren, Dan, Oklahoma

Cardoza, Dennis, California

Carney, Christopher, Pennsylvania

Castor, Kathy, Florida

Clyburn, James, South Carolina

Cooper, James, Tennessee

Costa, James, California

Cuellar, Henry, Texas

Dingell, John, Michigan

Edwards, Chet, Texas

Gonzalez, Charles, Texas

Gordon, Bart, Tennessee

Herseth Sandlin, Stephanie, South Dakota

Jefferson, William, Louisiana

Johnson, E.B., Texas

Klein, Ron, Florida

Lampson, Nick, Texas

Mahoney, Tim, Florida

Marshall, James, Georgia

Matheson, James, Utah

McIntyre, Michael, North Carolina

Meek, Kendrick, Florida

Miller., Brad, North Carolina

Murphy, Patrick, Pennsylvania

Murtha, John, Pennsylvania

Perlmutter, Ed, Colorado

Peterson, Colin, Minnesota

Reyes, Silvestre, Teaxs

Rodriguez, Ciro, Texas

Ross, Michael, Arkansas

Ruppersberger, Dutch, Maryland

Sestak, Joseph, Pennsylvania

Skelton, Ike, Missouri

Space, Zachary, Ohio

Spratt, John, South Carolina

Tanner, John, Tennessee

Taylor, Gene, Mississippi

Present:

Christensen, Donna, US Virgin Islands

Not Voting:

Bordallo, Madeline, Guam

Costello, Jerry, Illinois

Cramer, Robert, Alabama

Johnson, Henry, Georgia

Meehan, Marty, Massachusetts

Melancon, Charles, Louisiana

Napolitano, Grace, California

Ortiz, Solomon, Texas

Rangel, Charles, New York

Sanchez, Loretta, California

Scott, David, Georgia

Weiner, Anthony, New York

Dan Bacher can be reached at: danielbacher@hotmail.com

ILL WINDS

Winds of War
Iran is making a mistake that may lead the Middle East into a broader conflict.

BY JOSHUA MURAVCHIK
Monday, June 25, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Several conflicts of various intensities are raging in the Middle East. But a bigger war, involving more states--Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, the Palestinian Authority and perhaps the United States and others--is growing more likely every day, beckoned by the sense that America and Israel are in retreat and that radical Islam is ascending.

Consider the pell-mell events of recent weeks. Iran imprisons four Americans on absurd charges only weeks after seizing 15 British sailors on the high seas. Iran's Revolutionary Guard is caught delivering weapons to the Taliban and explosives to Iraqi terrorists. A car bomb in Lebanon is used to assassinate parliament member Walid Eido, killing nine others and wounding 11 more.

At the same time, Fatah al-Islam, a shady group linked to Syria, launches an attack on the Lebanese army from within a Palestinian refugee area, beheading several soldiers. Tehran trumpets further progress on nuclear enrichment as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats his call for annihilating Israel, crowing that "the countdown to the destruction of this regime has begun." Hamas seizes control militarily in Gaza. Katyusha rockets are launched from Lebanon into northern Israel for the first time since the end of last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war.

Two important inferences can be distilled from this list. One is that the Tehran regime takes its slogan, "death to America," quite seriously, even if we do not. It is arming the Taliban, with which it was at sword's point when the Taliban were in power. It seems to be supplying explosives not only to Shiite, but also Sunni terrorists in Iraq. It reportedly is sheltering high-level al Qaeda figures despite the Sunni-Shiite divide. All of these surprising actions are for the sake of bleeding the U.S. However hateful this behavior may be to us, it has a certain strategic logic: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."






What is even more worrisome about the events enumerated above is that most of them are devoid of any such strategic logic. For example, the Hamas "putsch" in Gaza--as Marwan Barghouti, the hero of the Palestinian intifada, labeled it from his prison cell--was an enormous blunder. Hamas already mostly controlled Gaza. It is hard to imagine what gains it can reap from its "victory." But it is easy to see the losses. Fatah, and the government of its leader Mahmoud Abbas, will be able to restore their strength in the West Bank with the eager assistance of virtually the whole outside world, while Gaza will be shut off and denied outside aid far more strictly than during the past year. Israel will retaliate against shelling with a freer hand. Egypt will tighten its border. And Hamas has in one swoop negated its own supreme achievement, namely winning a majority in Palestine's 2006 parliamentary elections. Until now, Hamas had a powerful argument: how can the West demand democracy and then boycott the winners? But now it is Hamas itself that has destroyed Palestinian democracy by staging an armed coup. Its democratic credentials have gone up in the smoke of its own arson.

Syria's actions in Lebanon scarcely make more sense. The murder of parliamentarian Eido will solidify and energize the majority that opposes Syria. Some suppose that, having now bumped off two Lebanese MPs (Pierre Gemayel was the other one), Syria plans to shave away the anti-Syrian majority in Lebanon's parliament by committing another five murders. But if so, this is a crazy gambit. Such a campaign would invite international intervention. It might well fracture the pro-Syrian forces: More Shiites will abandon Hezbollah and more Maronites will turn against Hezbollah's cat's-paw, Michel Aoun. And the murders might be for naught anyway: By-elections are already being planned that are likely to replace the martyred legislators with others of the same mind. As for the attack on the Lebanese army, Fatah al-Islam is on the brink of being crushed, leaving behind only more hatred of Syria and a better-armed, more confident Lebanese army.

As for Iran's actions, while arming the Taliban and Iraqi terrorists may make sense, what is the point of seizing British sailors or locking up the four Iranian-Americans, including the beloved 67-year-old scholar, Haleh Esfandieri, none of whom are involved even in political activity, much less in the exercise of hard power?

The apparent meaning of all of this pointless provocation and bullying is that the axis of radicals--Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah--is feeling its oats. In part its aim is to intimidate the rest of us, in part it is merely enjoying flexing its muscles. It believes that its side has defeated America in Iraq, and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Mr. Ahmadinejad recently claimed that the West has already begun to "surrender," and he gloated that " final victory . . . is near." It is this bravado that bodes war.

A large portion of modern wars erupted because aggressive tyrannies believed that their democratic opponents were soft and weak. Often democracies have fed such beliefs by their own flaccid behavior. Hitler's contempt for America, stoked by the policy of appeasement, is a familiar story. But there are many others. North Korea invaded South Korea after Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared that Korea lay beyond our "defense perimeter." Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait after our ambassador assured him that America does not intervene in quarrels among Arabs. Imperial Germany launched World War I, encouraged by Great Britain's open reluctance to get involved. Nasser brought on the 1967 Six Day War, thinking that he could extort some concessions from Israel by rattling his sword.

Democracies, it is now well established, do not go to war with each other. But they often get into wars with non-democracies. Overwhelmingly the non-democracy starts the war; nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, it is the democratic side that wins. In other words, dictators consistently underestimate the strength of democracies, and democracies provoke war through their love of peace, which the dictators mistake for weakness.






Today, this same dynamic is creating a moment of great danger. The radicals are becoming reckless, asserting themselves for little reason beyond the conviction that they can. They are very likely to overreach. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which a single match--say a terrible terror attack from Gaza--could ignite a chain reaction. Israel could handle Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria, albeit with painful losses all around, but if Iran intervened rather than see its regional assets eliminated, could the U.S. stay out? With the Bush administration's policies having failed to pacify Iraq, it is natural that the public has lost patience and that the opposition party is hurling brickbats. But the demands of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to constrain the president's freedom to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, the proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help extricate us from Iraq--all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of our imminent collapse. In the name of peace, they are hastening the advent of the next war.

Mr. Muravchik is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Goodbye to the city upon a hill and to its fabled economy By Paul Craig Roberts The U.S is being destroyed. Many U.S citizens are unaware, others are indifferent, and some intend it. The destruction is across the board: the political and constitutional system, the economy, social institutions including the family itself.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17919.htm

NEOCONS HOPE TO SPIN HEARTS AND MINDS WITH MIDEAST MEDIA - KHODY AKHAVI

(ANTIWAR.COM, JUNE 25): As their influence has waned at the Pentagon and State

Department, neoconservative hawks have taken charge on the battlefield of public

diplomacy. Intent on fixing what American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow

Joshua Muravchik termed Bush's "public diplomacy mess," right-wing hawks have

gained control of the weapons in the "war of ideas" -- U.S. government-funded

and supported media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA), al-Hurra, and Radio

Farda, which broadcast to the Middle East and aim to offer an alternative view

of the news.

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/akhavi.php?articleid=11190

SEE ALSO

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=36



HEY! ISN'T THAT ILLEGAL? - ROBERT THATCH (OPEDNEWS.COM, JUNE 22): 'The Bush

administration created a new State Department office called the

"Counterterrorism Communication Center, which is to be run by Karen Hughes. The

office is intended to counter the ideology and propaganda of terrorists groups.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ro..._t_that_ill.htm



IRAN'S CRACKDOWN - AMICUS (BOOTSTRAPPING ANDREW SULLIVAN: AN ESSENTIAL

COMPANION READER; I LOVE READING ANDREW'S BLOG, BUT I FIND IT HARD TO BE A

PASSIVE LISTENER, JUNE 23): 'The question then becomes, who is keeping the

dossier on Iran, so to speak? Who is doing the detail work of public diplomacy?

There are Senators and strategists who are ready to pull the levers of CIA

black-ops and even ?strategic bombing? campaigns. Iran continues to distinguish

itself as a 'bad actor', if you believe reports of how they support lawlessness

(perhaps even terrorism). All this suggests that Iranian-style 'fundamentalism'

is job one. Now, if you go to VOA you find that 'Iraq' is a 'topic', but you

won't find Iran broken out.'

http://bootstrappingas.blogspot.com/2007/0...-crackdown.html



FULL TEXT: HEARINGS OF NOMINEES OF US AMBASSADORS TO NEPAL, PAKISTAN AND

COUNTRIES IN ASIA BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ? (HIMALAYAN

UNIVERSE : TAPESTRY OF LIFE AND LANDSCAPE IN THE HIMALAYAS AND BEYOND, JUNE 25):

The Honorable Anne Woods Patterson: 'If confirmed, I will work closely with the

Department of Defense, the U.S. Congress, and our Pakistani and nongovernmental

partners on these and other key issues such as furthering legal protection for

women and ethnic and religious minorities, and combating child labor and human

trafficking. Similarly, I intend to actively pursue our public diplomacy efforts

inside Pakistan to ensure that we reach out to Pakistani citizens.'

http://thehimalayanuniverse.blogspot.com/2...nees-of-us.html



AL-HURRA TRANSPARENCY BEGINS WITH... - MARC LYNCH (ABU AARDVARK, JUNE 23): 'I

did notice, thanks to Kim Elliott, that a House Report has recommended an

appropriation of $2.2 million to fund streaming video for al-Hurra and a 60 day

archive of all their programs, as well as another $2 million for the random

translation of 20 hours a week of its content to be posted on the al-Hurra

website. This sort of initiative was exactly the one good thing which I could

see coming out of the al-Hurra trainwreck, and I hope it goes forward.'

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...rra-transp.html



EXCHANGE PROGRAMS BURNISH US IMAGE RUSS FEINGOLD, DEMOCRATIC SENATOR FROM

WISCONSIN (LETTER TO THE EDITOR, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, JUNE 15): 'Exchange

programs that send Americans overseas are central not only to our public

diplomacy, but to our broader national security strategy. To strengthen our

exchange programs, I have introduced the Global Service Fellowship Program Act.

This bipartisan bill provides more Americans with the opportunity to volunteer

overseas. By awarding fellowships that can be applied toward programmatic costs,

the fellowship program opens the door for every American to be a participant.

Citizen diplomacy is one of the most important ways we can combat anti-American

sentiment. Congress should encourage more Americans to take part in exchange

programs, and the Global Service Fellowship Program Act does just that.'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0614/p25s01-cole.html?page=2



CHINA'S CHARM OFFENSIVE - JOSHUA KURLANTZICK (LOS ANGELES TIMES, JUNE 23):

China is heavily promoting its language and culture. Beijing is funding language

programs at leading universities in countries from Kenya to Australia. And

Beijing reportedly is increasing the number of overseas students coming to

Chinese universities, from about 8,000 two decades ago to about 120,000 today.

Beijing's increasingly sophisticated diplomatic corps also effectively pushes

its language, culture -- and interests.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...-opinion-center

SEE ALSO

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/bookclub/2007/...charm_offensive



WHY MAHMOUD ABBAS HAS FAILED - JAMAL BITTAR (ARAB AMERICAN NEWS, JUNE 23):

Scholarly spokespersons of the caliber of Professors Rashid Khalidi and the late

Edward Said can help rethink the Palestinian performance with regard to media

tactics and public diplomacy and do away with the often jumbled and confused

public discourse.

http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticl...?articleid=8991



GEN. PACE SNUBBED TO SCOTCH SCRUTINY - ANDREW GARFIELD, WASHINGTON (LETTER

TO THE EDITOR, BALTIMORE SUN, JUNE 23): The Bush administration did not

renominate General Pace because it wanted to avoid having its war strategy come

under further legitimate and probably hostile congressional scrutiny. The

country and General Pace deserved better. (The writer is a senior fellow at the

Foreign Policy Research Institute and a vice president of a firm that does

public diplomacy work for the Department of Defense in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/l...1,2391744.story

(scroll down link for item)



JIMMY CARTER IS A JEW HATER ....AND A LOVER OF TERRORISTS, DICTATORS AND

COMMUNISTS - MARTIN DZURIS (WAKE UP AND SMELL THE LIBERAL, JUNE 23): In 1976,

Carter sent Averell Harriman to Moscow. Harriman sought to assure the Soviets

that Carter would be "easier to deal with" than Ford, clearly inviting Moscow to

do what it could through public diplomacy to help his campaign. Even when he was

out of office, Carter still tried bitterly to encourage Moscow to do damage to

his enemies during an election.

http://smelltheliberal.blogspot.com/2007/0...-jew-hater.html



THE ARAB MEDIA AND AMERICA - MVDG (MICHAEL P.F. VAN DER GALIËN: POLITICS

FROM A MODERATE CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE, JUNE 23): In essence the

problem now is that America has become the boogyman. When something happens,

Arabs blame the US, even when the US had nothing directly to do with it.

http://mvdg.wordpress.com/2007/06/23/the-a...ia-and-america/

SEE ALSO

http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark...agenda-fra.html



EVERYONE WE FIGHT IN IRAQ IS NOW "AL-QAIDA" - GLENN GREENWALD (SALON, JUNE

23): That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders,

decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we

fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/200...aeda/index.html



REALITY CHECK FOR THE ANTIWAR CROWD - PETE HEGSETH (WASHINGTON POST, JUNE

Veterans know firsthand that numerous mistakes have been made in the war in

Iraq. But that does not change the unfortunate reality: Iraq today is the front

line of a global jihad being waged against America and its allies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2401379_pf.html



FLEEING OUR RESPONSIBILITY: THE U.S. OWES SUCCOR TO IRAQI REFUGEES - JULIA

TAFT (WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 24)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2201716_pf.html



DEMOCRAT-LED HOUSE LAYS LEGAL GROUNDWORK FOR KOREA-STYLE BASES IN IRAQ JIM

LONE (ANTIWAR.COM, JUNE 22)

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=34



A CURIOUS OFFENSIVE ALAN BOCK (AN TIWAR.COM, JUNE 24): The major offensive

begun earlier this week in Iraq is curious in a number of ways -- so curious

that it?s tempting to view it as a desperate move calculated to gain some

semblance of progress or apparent progress in the face of the disappointing

performance (or perhaps downright failure) of the "surge" strategy that was

supposed to win the hearts and minds of Baghdad residents while neutralizing

insurgencies from various sects, including al-Qaeda.

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=11184



EYE ON IRAQ: WHY THE SURGE FAILED - MARTIN SIEFF (UPI, JUNE 20)

http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Anal...ge_failed/7864/



THEY'LL BREAK THE BAD NEWS ON 9/11 - FRANK RICH (NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 14):

Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and

escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a

high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill). By the latest

of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/opini...agewanted=print

PAID SUBSCRIPTION



SOME SAY IRAQ WAR "IS LOST." NOW, HOW TO GET OUT? EDWARD M. GOMEZ (WORLD

VIEWS, SFGATE, JUNE 22): At home and abroad, critics of Bush's Iraq-war policy

and conduct appear to be emphasizing this need for the U.S. government to get

real and be honest with itself, its allies and the world.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/det...;entry_id=17886



ABU GHRAIB: THE REST OF THE STORY - JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY (MIAMI HERALD, JUNE

24/COMMON DREAMS): It's long past time for Congress to reopen the matter of

who?s really responsible for Abu Ghraib and let the chips fall where they may

even if that means they pile up around the retirement home of a former secretary

of defense or the gates of the White House itself.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/24/2062/



ACT OF MADNESS GAINS ALLIES IN COMPLACENT MEDIA GENE LYONS (NWANEWS.COM,

JUNE 20): Leery of U. S. interference ever since the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup

that installed the dictatorial shah, Iran's hardliners see dissenters taking U.

S. cash as potential traitors.

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/193516/print/

SEE ALSO

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...1,3868150.story



TWO AGENDAS: WHY IRAN, U.S. STAND FAR APART: TEHRAN SEEKS END TO BID TO

DESTABILIZE REGIME; WASHINGTON WANTS INSURGENT BACKING IN IRAQ TO STOP - JAY

SOLOMON AND NEIL KING JR. (WALL STREET JOURNAL, JUNE 25)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1182732492...ON=wsjie/6month



GUNS OF AUGUST - ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE (WASHINGTON TIMES, JUNE 25): The word

among the neocon family is Mr. Cheney believes Mr. Bush will stick to his pledge

not to leave office 16 months hence with Iran's nuclear facilities unscathed.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart



IRAN: THE NEXT WAR? - GLENN GREENWALD (HUFFINGTON POST, JUNE 24): If the

president were really intent on war with Iran, it is very difficult to envision

Congressional Democrats, or really anything else, stopping him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-greenw...ar_b_53508.html



WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...- AKIVA ELDER (HAARETZ, JUNE 25): It is difficult

to think of an American president who has caused more damage to Israeli

interests than Bush, the president who is considered one of the friendliest to

Israel of all time.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/874557.html



US MUDDLES ALONG IN THE MIDDLE EAST HELEN THOMAS (SEATTLE

POST-INTELLIGENCER, JUNE 24/COMMON DREAMS): There is no question that the U.S.

approach to the region has radicalized the Arabs.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/24/2064/



ALL ROADS LEADING TO PAKISTAN - M. K. BHADRAKUMAR (ASIA TIMES, JUNE 22):

Pakistan is uniquely placed -- geographically and politically -- to affect the

outcome of Anglo-American strategy toward Iran and Central Asia.

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF23Df03.html



STILL WAITING ON NORTH KOREA: THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS EAGER TO BELIEVE

THAT KIM JONG IL WILL -- FOR THE FIRST TIME -- FULFILL HIS PROMISES ? EDITORIAL

(WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 24): Given the threat posed by a loathsome dictatorship

apparently armed with nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is right to

explore whether Mr. Kim's promises of disarmament are serious this time. But it

should stop making one-sided concessions to a regime that has, as yet, not shown

it will do more than pocket them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7062300950.html



CHINA'S MIXED ROLE IN AFRICA - ROBERT I. ROTBERG (BOSTON GLOBE, JUNE 23):

Africans welcome Chinese aid -- a promised $20 billion -- because it comes

without immediately obvious strings (the Taiwanese question aside). For that

reason, and because the Chinese espouse fundamentally different approaches to

governance questions than the West does, the West (and Africa) should now

encourage China to embrace positive principles for Africa's growth. China is a

possible force for good in Africa; the West should help harness that potential.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial..._africa?mode=PF



VIETNAM AND AMERICA - NGUYEN MINH TRIET (WASHINGTON TIMES, JUNE 25):

Following efforts from both sides, bilateral relations were normalized in 1995.

Since then, Vietnam-U.S. relations have shown their strong vitality. The most

impressive thing to many is the growth of economic relations. (H.E. Nguyen Minh

Triet is president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart



PUTIN MASTERSTROKE PUTS U.S. IN CHECK - ALEXANDROS PETERSEN (BALTIMORE SUN,

JUNE 24): What is Mr. Putin's motivation to outwit the United States and Europe?

Part of the answer lies in the prevailing view of international affairs among

Russian decision-makers: a struggle for power that is zero-sum and consists of

spheres of influence. But the reasons that Mr. Putin has stepped up his efforts

of late mostly have to do with domestic politics.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...-oped-headlines



BUSH WALLOWED IN THE ADORATION OF THE ALBANIAN MOB - CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

(COMMON DREAMS, JUNE 23)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/23/2057/



AT WHITE HOUSE, RENEWED DEBATE ON GUANTÁNAMO - HELENE COOPER AND WILLIAM

GLABERSON (NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 23): The Bush administration acknowledged Friday

that its top officials were once again actively debating recommendations about

how and when to close the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but

officials said they thought it could be weeks or months before a decision was

made.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/23/washingt...agewanted=print

SEE ALSO

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...641,print.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2102341_pf.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002192.php



OF SARAJEVO AND BAGHDAD - ROGER COHEN (NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 25): The global

jihadists were not created by the Iraq invasion. They were thriving on American

policy prior to it.

http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2007/06/24/o...25cohen.html?hp

PAID SUBSCRIPTION



FRANCHISING AL QAEDA - RITA KATZ AND JOSH DEVEN (BOSTON GLOBE, JUNE 22):

Though distinguishing between groups that are officially part of Al Qaeda and

those that are not may seem like splitting hairs, recognizing that not all

jihadist groups or individuals are members of Al Qaeda helps us to understand

that the "war on terror" is not just a war on Al Qaeda or groups affiliated with

it.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...l_qaeda?mode=PF



WINDS OF WAR - JOSHUA MURAVCHIK (WALL STREET JOURNAL, JUNE 25): The demands

of congressional Democrats that we throw in the towel in Iraq, their attempts to

constrain the president's freedom to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program, the

proposal of the Baker-Hamilton commission that we appeal to Iran to help

extricate us from Iraq -- all of these may be read by the radicals as signs of

our imminent collapse.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1182728324...in_commentaries

PAID SUBSCRIPTION

ALSO AT

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/fe...ml?id=110010256



WISE ADVICE: LISTEN, AND ENGAGE - DAVID IGNATIUS (WASHINGTON POST, JUNE 24):

America's future security will be more about adapting than imposing our will.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2201708_pf.html



U.S. BEGS FOR PASSPORT WORKERS - NICHOLAS KRALEV (WASHINGTON TIMES, JULY

25): The State Department has issued an urgent call to its diplomats worldwide

to volunteer for monthlong assignments in U.S. passport offices, offering to pay

their expenses if they return home and help clear a backlog of 3 million

passport applications that has forced thousands of Americans to cancel trips

abroad this summer.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart



And we think we can process 12 million plus illegal aliens?

Neo-Cons Make Gains on the Public-Diplomacy Front
As my colleague, Khodi Akhavi, points out today in an article entitled “Neo-Cons Spinning Hearts and Minds,” neo-conservatives are gaining greater control over the U.S. public diplomacy even as they have lost influence in other parts of the national-security bureaucracy. Jeffrey Gedmin, previously with head of the Aspen Institute’s Berlin office and before that a colleague of Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has taken over Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which now includes responsibility for Radio Farda, the U.S. government station that broadcasts to Iran, while the Wall Street Journal editorial page has succeeded in forcing out Larry Register, a 20-year veteran producer at CNN, as head of al-Hurra, the U.S. satellite television station that broadcasts to the Arab world.

Just today, Marc Lynch, who is quoted in the article and a very helpful observer of the Arab media scene, noted the following in his weblog, http://abuaardvark.typepad.com, regarding Al-Hurra.

“Yesterday I got a press release from al-Hurra announcing the guest of the upcoming episode of Robert Satloff’s “Inside Washington”, complete with a transcript of the program. That’s good - as long as I’ve been writing about the absence of transparency at the station, as best as I can recall this is the first transcript of any kind I’ve ever been offered by al-Hurra. On the other hand, the featured guest was… John Bolton. Bolton, of course, is particularly disliked in the Arab world, and his complaints about anti-American bias at the UN will repel more Arab viewers than it could hope to impress. But the Wall Street Journal loves him… and of course that’s the only audience which really matters for al-Hurra anymore.”

Readers will be interested in the following speech by Chas Freeman,
President of the Committee for the Republic, on the subject of US relations with
the Arab world.

American Foreign Policy and the Arab World

Remarks to the Summer Institute of the Washington World Affairs Council
June 25, 2007, Washington, DC
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)


I am very pleased to be able to meet with you on this, the first day of a
week–long examination of relations between our country and the Arab world. I
have been asked to speak about American foreign policy as it bears on this
topic.

The US relationship with the Arabs and Islam has grown from a minor concern
sixty years ago to become, by stages leading to 9/11, a national obsession. For
most of this period, most Americans didn't pay much attention to the Arabs
except when the price of gas went up or the Israelis bombed them or some Arab
bombed Israel back. Now our involvement in the Arab world is direct, continuous,
expensive, overwhelmingly military, traumatic, politically divisive, highly
problematic, and sometimes fatal. We are stuck in what the Bush Administration
briefly named "the long war." This is a war with an enemy we are having trouble
identifying and whom we clearly don't understand. It promises to be long indeed,
both because we don't know how to win it and because we will never admit that we
may be losing it.

On the final day of the program, you will hear from a senior official of the
Department of State, a dedicated public servant who will tell you what the
United States government thinks it's doing — or at least what it wants you to
think it's doing — to advance our interests vis–à –vis the Arabs. I spent
thirty years as an advocate for our country's foreign policy as it was conducted
under seven presidents. I admire the dedicated professionalism of those to whom
this baton has now passed — but can hardly tell you how delighted I am to have
handed it off. I will let the senior official speak for the government. I will,
as usual, speak only for myself.

US–Arab relations have become a tough subject to speak about in polite
company. Since 9/11, the Arabs and we have worked hard to vilify each other.
Each side has succeeded in blackening the reputation of the other. And, as if
the resulting negative political overtones were not enough, the US–Arab
relationship is also an exceptionally complex one — to which it is difficult
to do justice in a brief discussion.

This is not just because, while the United States is a single nation–state
that acts with a single will, the Arabs are a nation of twenty–three
politically diverse states that often compete with each other and only rarely
unite. Americans and Arabs are also each part of complex larger groupings of
people with similar values — in our case, the 850 million–strong community
we call "the West;" in theirs, the 1.4 billion Muslims who define the realm of
Islam.

We need the oil and gas that the Arabs sell; they need the goods and services
that we produce. We are in the main a devout and hospitable people. The Arabs
are, if anything, even more so. We are roughly equal in numbers. Like us, Arabs
come in all shapes, sizes, and skin and hair colors. We are each united not by
our ethnicity but by the common languages and cultures that mark us as members
of great nations that occupy wide swaths of the globe. Americans, like Arabs,
have a predominant religion — ours, various forms of Christianity, theirs,
various tendencies of Islam — but both of us harbor substantial minorities who
profess other Abrahamic faiths. Just as most Americans are Christians but some
are Jews or Muslims, most Arabs are Muslims but many are Christians and some are
Jews.

With so much in common, we should be friends. For much of the brief history of
our relationship, we have been. No more. Anyone who cares about and follows
US–Arab relations knows that they are now the worst they have ever been.

Well, so what? Does it really matter?

In foreign policy, national interest is the measure of all things. The United
States has important interests in West Asia and North Africa that ensure that
our relations with the Arabs can have very large consequences for us. These
interests don't go away in response to events or shifting perceptions or changes
of Administration in Washington. Let me enumerate six things that are, and will
remain, at stake in our relations with the Arabs.

First — let's face it. We are energy junkies.

Once the world's biggest oil exporter, we are now its biggest oil and gas
importer. We complain a lot about the price of oil. But in practice we seem
willing to pay whatever price is on the pump to be able to drive to our homes
and shopping malls in the suburbs rather than walk or take public transport
around our cities. We depend on the global oil market for imports that meet
two–thirds of our demand for petroleum products. In turn, the global oil
market depends, to a great and growing extent, on Arab oil. The Arabs now supply
one–fourth of the world's oil; in a decade they will supply one–third.
Switching from oil to gas is not a work–around. Arab countries already produce
35 percent of the world's traded gas. This percentage is set to double in the
coming years. Arab countries hold 60 percent of the world's oil reserves. The
world — including the United States — is destined to become steadily more
dependent on them for its energy supplies, not less.

This gives the world an interest (as energy gluttons, we in this country have a
particular interest) in expanded Arab oil production and exports to meet our
energy needs, as well as those of large new consumers like China and India.
That, in turn, gives us an interest in peace and stability in the Arab world.
Consider, for example, the effects of the anarchy we have created in Iraq.
Before our invasion, Iraq was a reliable supplier to the United States and other
markets, with good prospects for expanding exports over time. The fact that
occupied Iraq is now an erratic supplier with very uncertain prospects is one of
the reasons that the price of oil has risen to current levels.

In addition to an interest in access to expanded Arab production of oil and gas,
we have an obvious stake in avoiding disruption of their sales of these vital
commodities abroad. While other interests may, on occasion, outweigh concerns
about the general welfare of our country, it is clearly prudent to try to reduce
the dangers of war in West Asia, and thereby to preclude a repeat of the sort of
confrontation and resulting energy crisis that occurred during the
Egyptian–Israeli war of 1973. Then, the sudden requirement to shore up
Israel's war–making capacity provoked a retaliatory Arab oil embargo. That hit
us hard even though our economy was then only about half as dependent on imports
as it is now.

Second, we have acquired a clear national interest in achieving the peaceful
integration of Israel into its region.

Israel cannot hope to enjoy peaceful coexistence with its Arab and Muslim
neighbors through endless military intimidation of them or their Palestinian
kin. Nor will the Arabs accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in their midst
if Israel rules its captive Arab population under the cruelties of martial law
while highhandedly expanding its borders at Arab expense. Until it negotiates
peace with the Palestinians, Israel will remain under siege and insecure.

After nearly sixty years of existence, the State of Israel is an established
fact, but its future therefore remains precarious. Arab leaders now publicly
acknowledge Israel's existence and express willingness to accept it, providing
Israel ends its oppression of the Palestinians and halts its dispossession of
them from their homes. But resentment and loathing of Israel among Arab publics
has never been so intense. The result is constant low–intensity conflict,
punctuated by occasional outbursts of large–scale warfare in which the United
States is inevitably implicated. The danger that conflict in the Holy Land will
erupt into a global struggle between the supporters of Israel and its foes is
also ever present.

Meanwhile, without the personal security that only peace can provide, many of
Israel's most productive Jewish inhabitants have begun openly to contemplate
seeking peace and security by leaving the country to find new homes abroad. It
is entirely possible that, without peace, the Zionist experiment will wither
away, leaving behind it only the bitter hatreds that it and the Arab reaction to
it have engendered. In terms of US interests, there is nothing optional about
the pursuit of peaceful coexistence between Israel, the Palestinians, and
Israel's other Arab neighbors; it is an imperative. The alternative is not just
more violence in the short term; it is the permanent embitterment of the Arabs
and the end of Israel in the long term.

Third, as differences between Israel, the West, and the Arabs have come
increasingly to be defined in religious terms, we have acquired an interest in
the character of the religious order in which Arabs participate.

There are 325 million Arabs — most Muslim, but many Christian and some Jewish,
despite Israel's ingathering of the world's Jews. Arab Muslims make up only
one–fifth of the 1.4 billion member global Muslim community, but they are a
decisively influential fifth. The Islamic holy places are in Arabia and the
language of Islam is Arabic.

Religion creates a sense of shared identity that can transcend ethnicity,
especially in response to denigration of their faith or discrimination,
humiliation, or assaults by outsiders on those who share it. Attacks on Arabs,
whether Palestinian or Iraqi, are felt by other Muslims. The brutality that has
attended the Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands, the many deaths in Iraq
from a decade of American sanctions, followed by our invasion and occupation of
Iraq, and last summer's US–approved Israeli savaging of Lebanon are all cases
in point. Arab rage at perceived injustice easily translates into Muslim anger
toward its perceived perpetrators. Increasingly hostile relations with the Arabs
are estranging Muslims everywhere from Americans.

The effects of US policy toward West Asia and North Africa thus spill over to
affect our relations with the rest of Asia and Africa, including
non–Arab–but–Muslim Iran and Turkey, and Central, South, and Southeast
Asia as well as key countries like Nigeria. The United States has many interests
in cooperative relations with these countries, not least in preventing them from
becoming supporters of terrorist actions against Americans. Consider, too, the
energy dimension. These nations hold yet another 20 percent of the world's oil
and gas reserves.

A fourth interest arises from the fact that Arab countries and predominantly
Muslim lands like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Iran straddle or abut the world's
major transportation routes.

It's not just the security of oil and gas supplies that is the issue here,
though the Straits of Lombok, Macassar, Malacca, Hormuz, and the Bab al–Mandeb
are vital links in the energy trade. You can't travel between Asia (which is
becoming the world's economic center of gravity) and Europe without transiting
these countries' air or sea space. Our status as a global power depends on the
maintenance of a permissive environment for the transit of our armed forces. In
military affairs, logistics are key. Our country has a big stake in sustaining
cooperative military ties with the Arabs and other Muslim peoples and access to
their air and sea space. Hostile relationships with these countries have the
potential to cripple our capacity to project our power not just in the Middle
East, but beyond it. As an example, consider the difficulties the Pentagon is
now having finding a North African Arab country willing to welcome the
headquarters of its new Africa command.

Fifth, we have a major economic interest in encouraging the Arabs to reinvest
the money they earn from energy sales in ways that benefit us.

More than thirty years ago, as increased oil prices began to flood their
economies with "petrodollars," Arab oil producers made a commitment to plow this
money back into the American economy. Both we and they benefitted greatly from
this. But, today our posture toward Arab investment is decidedly unwelcoming.
Arabs doubt that money they put here can be secure from politically motivated
intervention by our monetary authorities or harassment by the army of tort
litigators who live off the legal blackmail our system now facilitates. The
result has been Arab disinvestment from the United States, followed by the
redirection of new investment elsewhere, for example to China. There is even
talk about Arab abandonment of the use of the dollar as the unit of account for
the oil trade and one major Arab oil producer recently decided to end the peg
that had tied its currency to the dollar. Oil exporting countries are now
accumulating annual surpluses of $600 billion or more. The consequences for our
economy of a change in the role of the dollar in international energy and
related commodity markets would be profound.

Sixth and lastly, but far from least, we have an interest in preventing and,
ultimately, reducing anti–Americanism, especially anti–Americanism that
takes the form of terrorist action against Americans.

It has generally been thought wise in foreign affair to try to divide one's
enemies, rather than to say or do things that unite them. Frankly, as we have
drifted into what is now seen among Muslims everywhere as an assault on Islam
and its believers, we have steadily broadened the political base of Arab and
Muslim anti–Americanism. Al Qaeda and other enemies of the United States now
think they have a chance to unite much of the Muslim world to their cause, form
a broad coalition against us, and multiply their numbers many fold.

The ignorance of most Americans, even educated Americans, about Islam and the
Arab world has made a large contribution to these strategic failures with both
Arabs and Muslims. Lacking understanding of those who oppose us, we have
reasoned from fallacious analogies with our former foes in Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russia. Instead of trying to understand and rebut al Qaeda=s case against
our direct and indirect interventions in the Arab and Islamic worlds, we have
ascribed to it an ideology that does not exist. "Islamofascism" is a word
invented in America, redolent with politically evocative overtones of the
European holocaust, and totally disconnected from both Islam and Arab history.
Rather than analyzing the objectives that al Qaeda and its allies profess —
which have to do with freeing the realm of Islam of our presence so that they
and other Islamic extremists can direct its course to the future — we assign
to them an objective of world conquest similar to that of our past Eurasian
enemies. Our ignorance, confusion, and self-indulgence have led us to impose
unfounded stereotypes on Muslims and to mistake Arab friends for Arab enemies
— and, no doubt, vice versa.

The great Chinese strategist, Sunzi, once sagely observed that: "know your enemy
and know yourself and you can win every war." Conversely, I would argue, if we
continue to contend with imaginary demons and to invade countries to vindicate
our hallucinations, we will lose every contest. The consequences of American
failure against Islamic militants could be very large. The fact that al Qaeda
and its ilk do not much resemble the picture of them painted by our pundits does
not make them any less dangerous B just dangerous in different ways. They must
be countered by more realistic, appropriate, and effective means than those we
are so counterproductively employing at present.

The only good news is that al Qaeda has been almost equally inept. Many of its
actions horrify Arabs and other Muslims as much as they do those they are
designed to shock in the West, and its doctrines are too obviously deviant to
have wide appeal in the Islamic world. Still, al Qaeda has shown that it can
learn from failure and adjust its tactics. In the long run, we must assume it
will correct its mistakes.

Over time, therefore, Islamic extremists are likely to become more, not less
formidable as enemies of both the United States and those Arab regimes that
remain aligned with us. In this regard, the deepening estrangement of Arab and
other Muslim populations from the United States has very adverse consequences
for us. It provides a political environment favorable to recruitment efforts,
operational support, and concealment among the people by our extremist enemies.
It inclines Arab leaders to shrink from public association or cooperation with
us, even against terrorists who are targeting us only to deter us from
continuing to support these leaders. It complicates our ability to counter the
Iranian inroads our policies in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Holy Land have
facilitated. It increases the incentives for the Arabs to accommodate Iran, and
it deprives us of the political cover they might otherwise provide for an
orderly and honorable end to our military intervention in Iraq.

The causes of Arab and Muslim alienation from the United States are not hard to
discern and describe. They are policies that have demonstrably served our
interests no better than theirs, or for that matter, Israel's:

- Our decision to back Israeli efforts to pacify the Palestinians rather than to
continue to try to mediate a Palestinian–Israeli peace. This succeeded only in
discrediting us as peacemakers without gaining security for Israel, and it
empowered Islamist unilateralists among the Palestinians to match the equally
unilateralist Israeli government.

- Our collusion with Israel in the effort to isolate and overthrow the
democratically elected Hamas government. This first left Hamas nowhere to go but
further into the Iranian embrace. It then catalyzed armed conflict among
Palestinians, partitioned the occupied territories, encouraged an Israeli effort
to crush or starve the Gaza ghetto into submission, and made the prospect of a
just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two–state
solution more remote than ever.

- Our witless transformation of our punitive expedition to capture al Qaeda
leaders and chastize their Taliban hosts into a long–term occupation of
Afghanistan directed at excluding radical Muslims from a role in governing it.
This has turned the Islamic world against our intervention there, conferred new
life and undeserved nationalist resistance credentials on the Taliban, and lent
unhelpful credibility to al Qaeda's charge that we are engaged in an
anti–Muslim crusade. (It has also had the perverse result of making
Afghanistan so safe for poppy cultivation that it is now the source of almost
all the world's heroine.)

- Our catastrophic march into the strategic ambush of Iraq, where we remain
pinned down. Iraq is now a country militarily occupied by us but politically
occupied by Iran. Our "transformational diplomacy" there has birthed a
catastrophic mixture of anarchy and gang warfare, mounting civilian casualties
and infrastructure collapse, and an eruption of embittered refugees to every
corner of the mostly Sunni Arab world.

- Our continual demonstrations of strategic ineptitude and politico–military
incompetence. We persist in an attempt to impose military solutions on political
problems in Iraq — thereby precluding political solutions to them — even as
we cooperate in Shiite suppression and ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs and
thrash about in search of a way out of the mess we've made.

- Our apparent plans to perpetuate our occupation of Iraq through the
establishment of permanent military bases there from which we can dominate the
Arab world. This is the one thing we've come up with that has succeeded in
uniting Sunni and Shiite Iraqi Arabs — in almost universal opposition to such
bases.

- Our open encouragement of Israel's sadistic mutilation of Lebanon last summer.
This cemented Hezbollah's ties to Iran while transforming it into the dominant
political force in Lebanon.

- And our recent efforts to block peace talks between Israel and Syria. This
ensures a continued state of war along Israel's Golan front, continued proxy
wars in Lebanon, continued Syrian reliance on Iran, and continued stalemate in
US–Syrian relations.

The policies that have produced these disasters for our interests and those of
our friends could clearly do with some revision. As I noted, al Qaeda has shown
that it has the capacity to learn from its mistakes and correct them. Do we? I
wish I could be here to ask the senior official that question on Friday.

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ro...80_99t_oust.htm

June 26, 2007

If Dems Won't Oust Cheney, GOP Has Plan

By Rob Kall

Sally Quinn has written an Op-ed in the washington post, A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney which suggests Cheney’s time as VP may be short. It’s gratifying to note that the scenario she describe is almost identical to the one I’ve been predicting for almost a year.

The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week's blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.

As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration's leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party -- including the presidential nominee -- in next year's elections.

Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents' living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country's plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn't been an acceptable alternative to Cheney -- nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

Quinn suggests that Bush and the Republicans have not had a good replacement for Cheney—Giuliani’s too New York social liberal, Romney’s a Mormon and McCain’s campaign put Bush off too much with the conflict/competition. But she says Fred Thompson could be the knight in shining armor who could remove one of the most toxic elements of the Republicans’ horrible public image.

She writes that installing him as vice president could help set him up as a stronger candidate for the 2008 presidency, and could act to put a damper on Bush’s “button” moments. Quinn concludes;

Cheney is scheduled this summer for surgery to replace his pacemaker, which needs new batteries. So if the president is willing, and Republicans are able, they have a convenient reason to replace him: doctor's orders. And I'm sure the the vice president would also like to spend more time with his ever-expanding family.



I don’t think the dems will allow Bush to appoint a potential presidential candidate as vice president. Why would they allow the Republicans to have a leg up in the presidential race.



A more likely scenario is for Bush to appoint a senior—very senior—leader of the conservative hierarchy as vice president—even his own father or perennial Republican rescue ranger James Baker. Matter of fact, James Baker might be perfect, except that he might find himself in a position where he would decide to take a run for the presidency. It will be tough to find a Republican who is both respected, who can actually HELP Bush and the nation, and for whom a run for the presidency is definitely off the table. But that could be the biggest impediment to helping Bush reach the point where he encourages Cheney to accept that note from the doctor saying he needs to retire.



It’s likely that before this scenario unfolds, Harry Reid will vet the replacement Bush has in mind. It’s unlikely Bush will proceed without some confidence that he can replace Cheney without a big fight in congress. He’s already been embarassed enough by his growing lame duck status.



Still, as more and more ugly, embarassing, Republican-party-damaging dirt comes out on Cheney, THE WALKs to Bush’s office, like the one Goldwater led to Nixon, will be happening with greater and greater frequency. There will be building pressure to dump Cheney, not only from the Republicans. I’d be surprised if the current count of eight members of congress who have signed on to Kucinich Cheney impeachment bill doesn’t climb to ten in the next week or two. With the Dem failure to stop the war, one way to placate unhappy Democratic voters is to throw them the Cheney bone.





Back

A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney
By Sally Quinn Tuesday, June 26, 2007; 12:00 AM



The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week's blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.

As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic, and as the administration's leading proponent of an attack on Iran, he is seen as dangerous. As long as he remains vice president, according to this thinking, he has the potential to drag down every member of the party -- including the presidential nominee -- in next year's el

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Removing a sitting vice president is not easy, but this may be the moment. I remember Barry Goldwater sitting in my parents' living room in 1973, in the last days of Watergate, debating whether to lead a group of senior Republicans to the White House to tell President Nixon he had to go. His hesitation was that he felt loyalty to the president and the party. But in the end he felt a greater loyalty to his country, and he went to the White House.

Today, another group of party elders, led by Sen. John Warner of Virginia, could well do the same. They could act out of concern for our country's plummeting reputation throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East.

For such a plan to work, however, they would need a ready replacement. Until recently, there hasn't been an acceptable alternative to Cheney -- nor has there been a persuasive argument to convince President Bush to make a change. Now there is.

The idea is to install a vice president who could beat the Democratic nominee in 2008. It's unlikely that any of the top three Republican candidates -- former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- would want the job, for fear that association with Bush's war would be the kiss of death.

Nor would any of them be that attractive to the president. Giuliani is too New York, too liberal. His reputation as a leader, forged on 9/11 and the days after, carries him only so far. McCain, who has always had a rocky relationship with the president, lost much of his support from moderate Democrats and independents (and from a fair amount of Republicans) when the Straight Talk Express started veering off course. And no matter what anyone says about how Romney's religion doesn't matter, being a Mormon is simply not acceptable to Bush's base. Several right-wing evangelicals have told me they don't see Mormons as "true Christians."

That leaves Fred Thompson. Everybody loves Fred. He has the healing qualities of Gerald Ford and the movie-star appeal of Ronald Reagan. He is relatively moderate on social issues. He has a reputation as a peacemaker and a compromiser. And he has a good sense of humor.

He could be just the partner to bring out Bush's better nature -- or at least be a sensible voice of reason. I could easily imagine him telling the president, "For God's sake, do not push that button!" -- a command I have a hard time hearing Cheney give.

Not only that, Thompson would give the Republicans a platform for running for the presidency -- and the president a way out of Iraq without looking like he's backing down. Bush would be left in better shape on the war and be able to concentrate on AIDS and the environment in hopes of salvaging his legacy.

Cheney is scheduled this summer for surgery to replace his pacemaker, which needs new batteries. So if the president is willing, and Republicans are able, they have a convenient reason to replace him: doctor's orders. And I'm sure the the vice president would also like to spend more time with his ever-expanding family.

The writer is co-host, with John Meacham, of On Faith, an online conversation about religion.

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_ma...atience_on_.htm

June 26, 2007

Lugar's patience on Iraq runs out

By Markos DailyKos Moulitsas

Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has had enough.

Republican support for President Bush's Iraq war policy suffered a significant crack Monday evening when Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana urged the president to change course in Iraq "very soon."

The well-respected GOP voice on foreign affairs took to the Senate floor to urge Bush to avoid further damage to America's military readiness and long-term national security.

"Our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world," he said [...]

He said he sees "no convincing evidence that Iraqis will make the compromises necessary to solidify a functioning government and society, even if we reduce violence to a point that allows for some political and economic normalcy."

The senator said continuing military operations in Iraq were putting a damaging level of stress on U.S. forces, "taking a toll on recruitment and readiness."

"The window during which we can continue to employ American troops in Iraqi neighborhoods without damaging our military strength, or our ability to respond to other national security priorities, is closing," he said. "The United States military remains the strongest fighting force in the world, but we have to be mindful that it is not indestructible."

He essentially has endorsed the Murtha plan -- redeploying some forces in Kuwait, while making a laughable call for Bush to change course:

"A course change should happen now, while there is still some possibility of constructing a sustainable bipartisan strategy in Iraq. If the president waits until the presidential election campaign is in full swing, the intensity of confrontation on Iraq is likely to limit [options]," he said.

According to Lugar's spokesperson, this speech was "months in the making, weeks in the writing". Yet Lugar stood with Bush against recent Democratic efforts to force the president to change course in Iraq.

It's good he's found reason, but Lugar made his move after Democratic efforts to force such change ended in defeat. His speech will make waves, but it could've made a more practical difference for our troops suffering in Iraq had he made it a few weeks ago.

Still, I shouldn't complain. This is a good thing.

originally posted on dailykos.com



Authors Website: www.dailykos.com

Authors Bio: blogger founder of DailyKos.com Back

VICE PRESIDENT MAKES SECRECY POLICY A JOKE (LITERALLY)

The arcane details of national security classification policy became
the stuff of late night comedy as White House officials struggled to
justify the peculiar refusal of Vice President Dick Cheney to comply
with the oversight requirements established by President Bush's
executive order on classification.

For two successive days, the White House press briefing was dominated
by incredulous reporters who wondered how the Vice President could
claim that he both was and was not part of the executive branch; why he
complied with oversight reporting requirements in 2001 and 2002, and why
he then ceased to comply; and how the Vice President's behavior can be
consistent with the executive order when the Administration's own
Information Security Oversight Office says that it is not.

"I'm not a legal scholar," said an exasperated Dana Perino, the White
House spokeswoman. "I'm not opining on his argument that his office is
making."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2007/06/wh062507.html

The story became certifiably big news last night when it was the
subject of a five minute satirical segment on The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart (where I had a microsecond cameo). See "Non-Executive
Decision," June 25, 2007, under "most recent videos":

http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_dai...how/index.jhtml

The Justice Department had said that the classification policy dispute
was "under review" since Information Security Oversight Office director
J. William Leonard asked the Attorney General in January 2007 to resolve
the matter. But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request,
the Justice Department revealed that no documents whatsoever had been
generated by the purported review.

See "A New Cheney-Gonzales Mystery" by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, July
2:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19391241/site/newsweek/

Congressional leaders are stirring the pot, warning that the Office of
Vice President could suffer budget penalties if it does not comply with
routine oversight procedures. See "Secrecy May Cost Cheney, Dems Warn"
by Elana Schor and Mike Soraghan, The Hill, June 26:

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/secrec...2007-06-26.html

To recap: The internal executive branch conflict over the Vice
President's non-compliance with the executive order was triggered by a
formal complaint filed with the Information Security Oversight Office
in May 2006 by the Federation of American Scientists (following a
report in the Chicago Tribune by Mike Silva).

The FAS complaint was accepted by ISOO Director William Leonard, and
was forwarded to the Attorney General in January with his request for
an official interpretation of the executive order. There the matter
lay for five months until Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the
House Oversight Committee, raised the issue to stratospheric heights
last week with a letter to the Vice President questioning his Office's
conduct.

The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio devoted an hour to the
topic yesterday with Congressman Waxman, Peter Baker of the Washington
Post, former Justice Department lawyer David Rivkin, and myself. See
"The Executive Branch and Classified Information," June 25:

http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/07/06/25.php

The controversy is playing out against the backdrop of a massive
four-part series in the Washington Post on Vice President Cheney's role
and conduct written by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker. The story had been
under development for many months and Ms. Becker has since left the Post
to go work for the New York Times. In a weird and probably
unprecedented coincidence, she had a byline in front page stories in
both the Washington Post and the New York Times on June 25.


SELECTED CRS REPORTS

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_da...ry_3a_comed.htm June 26, 2007

Nancy & Harry: Comedic Duo Bring Down the House (and Senate)

By Dave Lindorff

Vice President Cheney says he doesn’t have to obey the law relating to national security records held in the executive office because as vice president, he’s not part of the executive branch.


Chency is reported to be actively lobbying the president to pardon a convict, L. “Scooter” Libby, his former right-hand-man, his “Cheney’s Cheney,” whom everyone knows took the fall and lied to a federal prosecutor in order to protect his boss. That is, the vice president is seeking a pardon for a man who, if he got tired of sitting in jail, could send him to jail.


Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s top law enforcement official, has lied repeatedly to Congress.


President Bush has openly and audaciously on over 1200 occasions refused to enact all or parts of hundreds of laws passed by the Congress of the United States, claiming for himself a non-existent “unitary executive authority” that purportedly makes him an extraconstitutional tyrant whose office comprises all executive, legislative and judicial power in the government, thus rendering Congress and the Judiciary merely vestigial bodies much like the tiny hip and bones buried deep inside the body of a whale.


Bush continues to expand a war in Iraq, adding tens of thousands of overstretched and exhausted troops and producing hundreds of new dead American bodies despite a clear call in last November’s election for an end to a conflict that has now lasted longer than World War II. He also continues to claim that the war is legal despite overwhelming evidence that both he and the vice president lied brazenly and repeatedly about the reasons for it..


The president continues to insist that Americans and captives in various American wars can be held in violation of International Law and the Constitution, with no trial, no habeas corpus rights, no right to a lawyer, and no protection from torture.


The president refuses to talk about or explain the details of an extra-judicial spying program against Americans that he authorized, even after it had been declared a serious felony and violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. It is a program that was so offensive that even his one-time attorney general, John Ashcroft, a man who saw nothing wrong with organizing 20 million Americans to spy on the rest of us, to refuse to sign on, and indeed to threaten to resign.


And the president, in myriad ways, continues to obstruct global and domestic efforts to begin to seriously address the mounting disaster of global heating—a crisis that threatens the survival not just of the nation, but of the human race.


In the face of all these crimes and abuses of power, what have the Democrats done?


The easiest way to show the Democratic response to all this criminality is to leave what we writers call a double-space break:




That’s it.


Nothing. Nada. Zilch.


When Democrats won the 2006 off-year election, and when they assumed control of the 110th Congress, there was big talk about pressing ahead with investigations of administration wrongdoing and bungling, and of pushing forward a progressive Democratic agenda. There was talk of investigating the president’s assault on civil liberties, of ending the Iraq War, of dealing with a national health care crisis that now leaves 45 million Americans with no insurance and no access to decent medical care, of funding a gutted educational system, of passing legislation to begin cutting back on America’s prodigious and unconscionable production of global warming gasses, and of fixing an electoral system that is a national embarrassment and an invitation to theft and manipulation.


And what have they actually done? Unfortunately, the answer here is not “nothing,” which might have been better.


No. Instead, they funded the Iraq war for months to come, in full with no strings attached, and passed a minimum wage hike that is so minimal most workers won’t even know it happened, because their own states already have higher pay mandates.


Little wonder that support for Democrats in Congress has cratered, plunging from a euphoric 65 percent right after the last election to 23 percent today.


The Democratic Congress, incredibly, has managed in five short months of inaction and diddling around to become less popular than this most loathed and ridiculed of presidents!


Like Laurel and Hardy near the end of a disaster skit, in which their antics have caused nothing but mounting chaos and ruin, the only challenge left for the great leadership team of Speaker Nancy “Impeachment’s-off-the-table” Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is to see if they can succeed in driving Democratic support numbers down below even the 9 percent level enjoyed by Vice President Cheney.


I have no doubt that this sorry duo can manage this feat, given enough time. All they have to do is keep funding the war, keep ignoring the president’s crimes and the mounting popular calls for his impeachment, keep bottling up the Cheney impeachment bill submitted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich and co-sponsored, now, by seven other House members, and keep yacking about wanting to work “across the aisle” and “with the president.”


The president has his legacy. He is all set to go down in history as the most wretched, debased, ignorant, mean-spirited and treasonous chief executive in the nation’s history. He really need do nothing more to lock in his title.


Pelosi and Reid are well on the way, though, to being able to claim the companion title of lamest opposition leaders in the nation’s history.






Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio: Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net Back

June 26, 2007 The Senate Amnesty Bill: A Muddled Legal Morass by Kris W. Kobach, D.Phil., J.D. WebMemo #1522 The comprehensive immigration bill before the U.S. Senate (S. 1639) has been roundly and justly criticized for what it would do up front: grant immediate amnesty to virtually all illegal aliens now in the country and jeopardize U.S. national security. However, that is only half of the problem. S. 1639 would also create a legal morass that would entangle immigration courts, as well as newly created administrative courts, for years to come.

Background

S. 1639 would grant immediate amnesty (in the form of a "probationary" Z visa) to between 12 million and 20 million illegal aliens. According to Section 601 (f)(2) of the bill, the amnesty must begin within 180 days after the bill is signed--no border enforcement triggers need to be met. Under Section 601 (h)(1), the bill allows the government only one business day to conduct a background check to determine whether an applicant is a criminal or a terrorist. Unless the government can find a reason not to grant it by the end of the next business day after the alien applies, the alien receives a probationary Z visa.

The 24-hour requirement is particularly inexplicable, considering that the ombudsman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)--the agency that would implement the amnesty--recently released a report revealing that, even without the tripling of the workload that the amnesty will bring, FBI name checks on aliens seeking benefits routinely take 90 days or more to complete.

A Legal Mess

Legal snares are scattered throughout the 400-plus-page bill. The most pernicious of them include:

1. Reopening the Absconder Files. The amnesty under S. 1639 extends even to absconders--fugitives who had their day in court, were issued an order of removal by an immigration judge, and ignored the order. Approximately 636,000 absconders now roam the country, having defied the law twice--first when they broke immigration laws and again when they ignored the removal orders. That number has grown by an average of 68,184 a year from September 2003 to September 2006.

Since 2001, tracking down and removing these absconders has been a top priority of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The agency has made recent progress by increasing its Fugitive Operations Teams from 18 in 2005 to 61 at present. S. 1639 would bring this effort to an end, rewarding absconders who have successfully evaded federal law enforcement with another bite at the apple.

Section 601 (d)(1)(I) of the bill would allow USCIS to grant Z visas to absconders, provided that the recipient can demonstrate that his departure from the United States "would result in extreme hardship to the alien or the alien's spouse, parent or child."

The flexible term "extreme hardship" has long been the subject of interpretation in immigration law. For more than 30 years, courts have wrestled with its meaning. Extreme hardship can include consideration of the alien's age, health, length of residence in the United States, family ties in the United States and abroad, position in the community, financial status, occupation, and possibility of other means of adjustment of status, immigration history, as well as the political and economic conditions of the alien's home country. It is a fact-intensive inquiry into circumstances that vary from case to case.

The bill not only allows the absconder to obtain amnesty if he can show extreme hardship to himself, but it also allows him to receive amnesty if he demonstrates that his removal would cause extreme hardship to his spouse, parent, or child. This is a wide loophole. For example, immigration attorneys representing absconders could argue that, if any member of an absconder's family is a U.S. citizen, that family member must remain in the United States, and then the separation of family members would constitute extreme hardship.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that this offers a massive reward to aliens who have defied immigration courts. Successfully fleeing justice can win absconders the most generous visa ever created, as well as de facto permanent residence in the United States. Aliens who obeyed their removal orders and left the country, however, are not eligible. This perverse incentive system, rewarding those who disregard the rule of law, may already be having an effect, simply by virtue of the bill's introduction. Because leaving the country renders an illegal alien ineligible for the amnesty, few can be expected to obey their removal orders while this bill is pending in Congress.

2. Creating a New Court of Amnesty Appeals. As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2006, USCIS is already overburdened. It labors under a backbreaking annual workload of more than 6 million applications for immigration benefits (asylum, green cards, etc.) and faces a backlog of several million additional cases. Its operation is a bureaucratic sweatshop with an informal "six minute rule" in place--adjudicators are urged to spend no more than six minutes looking at any application. Adjudicators are offered cash rewards for processing applications quickly, and perhaps most tellingly, a supervisor's signature is required to deny an application but not to approve one. As a result, fraudulent applications sail through.

S. 1639 would triple the workload of an agency that is already at the breaking point. The vast majority of amnesty applications would be approved after receiving only a few minutes of scrutiny.

Moreover, virtually every denial would be appealed, for two reasons. First, the alien has nothing to lose by pursuing an appeal, and second, the alien cannot be deported while his amnesty application is pending. Even if only 1 percent of the 12 million-plus amnesty applications are denied, that is at least 120,000 appeals.

Under a more reasonable amnesty policy, the illegal alien would be immediately placed in removal proceedings following the denial of the amnesty application. He would then have to argue for his eligibility before an immigration judge. If he lost, he could appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals. If he lost in those courts, he would be deported.

However, S. 1639 would give the alien the opportunity to appeal the denial of amnesty in a separate, newly created court within the Department of Homeland Security. The court would have to be massive to deal with at least 120,000 amnesty denials in the first two years. Still, it would take years for a court to sift through so many appeals, but that imposes no burden on the alien, because he is protected from deportation while his case is pending. From the illegal alien's perspective, justice delayed is just fine.

The bill is vague on the details of the new tribunal. Section 603 (a) states simply that "an appellate authority" will be established. The appeal process would be a permissive one, allowing the alien to introduce "newly discovered" evidence and to file a motion to reconsider previous decisions in light of additional legal arguments.

If the alien loses before the newly created appeals court, he still gets a break. Inexplicably, the bill does not require that the government place illegal aliens who are twice denied the amnesty into removal proceedings. Rather, the government has the option of doing so, but only if the denial was for past criminal convictions. Illegal aliens who are denied the amnesty on appeal for any other reason can walk. If they want to seek further review, they can voluntarily place themselves into removal proceedings under Section 603 ((1). Otherwise, they are free to disappear back into the fabric of American society.

3. Fraud in the Agricultural Fields. Because S. 1639 is a slapdash effort created by stitching various amnesty bills together, the previously proposed "Ag Jobs" amnesty appears under the guise of a special "Z-A visa" for agricultural workers. Under Section 622 ( of the bill, agricultural workers would qualify for this special amnesty by showing that they have performed agricultural work in the United States for at least 863 hours or 150 workdays during the two-year period ending on December 31, 2006. The alien must prove "by a preponderance of the evidence that the alien has performed the requisite number of hours or days of agricultural employment."

Few employers of unauthorized aliens in the fruit and vegetable fields keep such detailed records. The bill gets around this problem by allowing the alien to offer an "inference" rather than actual documentation. To meet this burden of proof, the alien can offer evidence to show that he worked the required hours or days "as a matter of just and reasonable inference." In other words, the alien could present or even fabricate a pay stub for one day's work at the end of the season and simply assert that he was in the fields for the entire season.

In this way, the strict-sounding standard of the "preponderance of evidence" is transformed into a standard of virtually no evidence whatsoever. Furthermore, the adjudicators would spend only a few minutes on each application. Under the status quo, they rarely demand additional information from aliens seeking benefits. With their workload tripled, there would be no time for such inquiries. Growers need not worry about receiving inquiring phone calls from USCIS.

If the unauthorized alien worker who speaks little English found this legal charade challenging, the American taxpayer would actually be required to help him out. Section 622 ( allows Z-A amnesty applicants to receive free legal services at taxpayer expense. Under current law, illegal aliens are not eligible for federally funded legal services. That prohibition would end if S. 1639 becomes law. It is difficult to estimate the cost precisely, but it is likely to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

4. Permanent Jobs for Agricultural Workers. S. 1639 offers an especially sweet deal for illegal agricultural workers once they obtain their Z-A visas. In Section 622 (, the bill states, "No alien granted a Z-A visa may be terminated from employment by any employer during the period of a Z-A visa except for just cause."

Employers who dare to fire newly legalized aliens holding Z-A visas would do so at their own peril. The bill would create yet another administrative court system to review complaints by Z-A agricultural workers "who allege that they have been terminated without just cause." If the administrative hearing officer finds that the alien has established reasonable cause to believe that he was fired without just cause, the alien and the former employer must enter binding arbitration proceedings supervised by an arbitrator whose fees are paid by taxpayers. The burden is on the employer to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that he fired the alien for just cause. To give the alien yet another legal boost, this special administrative process is non-exclusive. In other words, the alien may sue the employer at the same time in state or federal court for damages if any relevant causes of action are available.

Conclusion

On top of an already complicated immigration court system, S. 1639 would layer a complex mix of parallel administrative courts with nebulous standards and vulnerabilities to fraud. This new system would be an immigration lawyer's playground. Absconders would see their cases reopened, and the addition of poorly drafted new statutory language to already voluminous immigration laws and regulations would make the Internal Revenue Code look simple.

Aside from the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens who would receive amnesty, the biggest beneficiaries of this legal morass are the immigration lawyers who would bill millions of dollars representing their clients as the cases drag on. That is not entirely surprising, because the American Immigration Lawyers Association reportedly played a central role in drafting the Senate bill. It is also a natural consequence when a bill is drafted behind closed doors and shielded from the normal process of committee scrutiny.

Kris W. Kobach, D.Phil, J.D., is Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He served as Counsel to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2001-2003 and was the Attorney General's chief adviser on immigration law

Basra problems bode ill for US Iraq strategy-report 26 Jun 2007 10:23:42 GMT Source: Reuters Alert Me | Printable view | Email this article | RSS [-] Text [+]

Background
Iraq in turmoil More By Alister Bull BAGHDAD, June 26 (Reuters) - Violence and infighting among Shi'ites in Basra are a warning that a last ditch U.S. plan to improve security in Iraq is badly flawed, a think-tank said in a report. "The answer to Iraq's horrific violence cannot be an illusory military surge that aims to bolster the existing political structure and treats the dominant political parties as partners," said the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. The report, issued late on Monday, said that Operation Sinbad, in which British forces tried to tackle armed militias and support Iraqi security forces in the southern oil-rich city of Basra, offered important lessons to learn from. The current U.S. strategy in Baghdad -- a four-month-old offensive aimed at ridding neighbourhoods of gunmen, deploying soldiers to hold the areas and then reviving economic activity -- appears similar to the British plan launched last September. Sinbad initially helped calm Basra, Iraq's second largest city and its economic hub, but violence has since mounted and British forces have come under increasing attack there. Britain recently reduced its troops to around 5,500 soldiers from about 7,000. The forces are also withdrawing to a single base outside the city at Basra airport. Armed militias in Basra have meanwhile joined local security forces, but remain loyal to the Shi'ite political factions that dominate southern Iraq, the report said. It said part of the Basra police was under the sway of the Mehdi Army of fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, while the intelligence service was influenced by the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, previously the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and the Oil Protection Force was controlled by Fadhila. "Far from being a model to replicate, Basra is an example of what to avoid. With renewed violence and instability, Basra illustrates the pitfalls of a transitional process that has led to the collapse of the state apparatus," the ICG report said. Much of the tension in Basra revolves around competition for control of southern Iraq's vast oil reserves as British forces draw down. U.S. President George W. Bush has sent 28,000 extra troops to Iraq in a major effort to reduce violence that has pushed the country to the brink of all-out sectarian civil war. U.S. public opinion has swung against U.S. involvement in Iraq and there is growing pressure to start bringing troops home. The lesson from Basra was that political parties did not respect the law and were part of the problem, the ICG said. "Basra teaches that as soon as the military surge ends and coalition forces diminish, competition between rival factions will surge," the ICG said. "Prolonging the same political process with the same political actors will ensure that what is left of the Iraqi state gradually is torn apart... The priority is to confront the power structure ... by insisting on genuine political compromises."

June 26, 2007, 1:30 a.m.

Seven Who Could Stop Amnesty

By The Editors

Stopping amnesty is entirely within the power of senators who oppose it. Later today, the Senate will vote on whether to proceed on the bill. To revive the once-stalled bill will require 60 votes, which means that if the senators who vote no and the senators who don’t vote add up to 41, the bill is dead. The best vote count now has 33 no votes plus the non-vote of the ill Sen. Tim Johnson. Assuming this count is accurate, only seven more are needed to stop amnesty.

Those votes are available from a bipartisan group of senators who say they oppose the amnesty bill. They are Sens. Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Richard Burr, Thad Cochran, Norm Coleman, John Ensign, and Jim Webb. If any of these senators votes to revive the bill, his professions of opposition to amnesty should no longer be taken seriously. He will have done his crucial bit, when the amnesty bill was most vulnerable, to help shepherd it to passage. We know how senators who claim to oppose amnesty will try to explain away a vote to revive the bill. They will rely on procedural obfuscation: They didn’t want to obstruct the process, they wanted to get a vote on an amendment, etc. But amnesty is staying in the bill — no amendment to strike the bill’s central features has any chance of passage — and it deserves to be obstructed.

Here’s a look at where these seven senators stand:

Kit Bond (R., Mo.): He has the very model of a contradictory stand on this bill. He is saying that he will vote for cloture — that is, for taking up the bill again — and then offer an amendment that would gut the Senate deal by stripping the “path to citizenship” from the bill. (Under his amendment, that is, illegal immigrants would be legalized but would be ineligible for green cards.) His amendment will go down to inevitable defeat, so the more reasonable way for him to express his opposition to the bill would be to vote against cloture. By the time his amendment fails, it may well be too late to stop the bill. The other senator from Missouri, the newly elected Democrat Claire McCaskill, has figured this out even if Bond has not. She is voting no on cloture. Missouri voters would do well to reflect on the fact that their junior Democratic senator has a more consistent and effective position against amnesty than their senior Republican one.

Sam Brownback (R., Kan.): He says he is against a pathway to citizenship and against amnesty. Brownback has shifted on the issue by taking a tougher position on amnesty than he did last year. Whatever political good he did for himself by that change would be wiped out by voting for cloture — and help pass exactly the provisions he now says he opposes.

Richard Burr (R., N.C.): He says he is opposed to amnesty but he wants the bill to come up for debate. Yet the debate is rigged: The supporters of the bill will knock down any meaningful changes to it and pass their core deal. Burr should take note of his senior colleague Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s position. Quite logically, she opposes amnesty and will therefore vote against cloture.

Thad Cochran (R., Miss.): He has said he’s listening to his constituents and wants to see how the debate plays out. But there is no chance that the bill will satisfy his stated goals of “secur[ing] the borders” and improving “enforcement of illegal entry.” From the outset he should — unlike his colleague Trent Lott — vote the will of his constituents, and against cloture.

Norm Coleman (R., Minn.): During the debate on the bill a few weeks ago, he offered an amendment to prevent the creation of so-called “sanctuary cities” that don’t enforce immigration laws. He is missing the point: Under this bill, the entire country will in effect become a sanctuary city. He can help stop it from happening by voting against cloture.

John Ensign (R., Nev.): He recently joined with staunch opponents of the bill, including Sens. Sessions, DeMint, and Vitter, in a letter to President Bush saying that border security is “the best way to restore trust with the American people and facilitate future improvements of our immigration policy.” That sentiment is inconsistent with doing anything to advance this amnesty-first bill. He has said calls and e-mails have been running “a hundred to one against” the bill. He must know as chairman of the senatorial campaign committee that his candidates will suffer from an ongoing debate and fight with their Republican base over this bill. The Nevada senator shouldn’t want to gamble that the legislation will be improved on the floor after he votes for cloture.

Jim Webb (D., Va.): He campaigned against amnesty last year, and he voted against cloture a few weeks ago. Other Democratic freshmen who ran against amnesty in 2006, such as McCaskill and Jon Tester of Montana, are expected to vote against cloture. Webb should too. It’s too soon for him to go native and engage in Washington games to pass legislation he says he opposes.

These are seven senators who can block amnesty. Will they do it? We’ll know soon enough.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjgzY...TBhN2FkOTU0NWE=

Undeniably Amnesty: The Cornerstone of the Senate's Immigration Proposal by Matthew Spalding, Ph.D. WebMemo #1521 Everyone—from President Bush to his critics to Ted Kennedy—is dead set against "amnesty," and yet the word overshadows all else in the immigration debate. Despite its proponents' claims to the contrary, amnesty is the cornerstone of the Senate's immigration bill. Indeed, this legislation, with its many provisions, guarantees one thing only: that a population of individuals defined solely on the basis of their illegal status will receive legal status and a privileged path to permanent residency and citizenship. Everything else in the bill—border security, worker verification, the temporary worker plan, a new merit-based immigration system—would be contingent on future political decisions. A few amendments around the edges will not change this overriding fact.

What Is Amnesty?
Amnesty, from the same Greek root as "amnesia," forgives past crimes and removes them from the record for future purposes. In the context of immigration, amnesty is commonly defined as granting legal status to a group of individuals unlawfully present in a country.

Amnesty provides a simple, powerful, and undeniable benefit to the recipient: It overlooks the alien's illegal entry and ongoing illegal presence and creates a new legal status that allows the recipient to live and work in the country.

The textbook example of such an amnesty is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The act's core provision gave amnesty to those who could establish that they had resided illegally in the United States continuously for five years by granting them temporary resident status, which in 18 months was adjustable to permanent residency, which led to citizenship five years later.

Look up "amnesty" in Black's Law Dictionary, and it says this: "The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act provided amnesty for undocumented aliens already in the country."

Note that the 1986 law's path to citizenship was not automatic. The legislation stipulated several requirements to receive amnesty, including payment of application fees, acquisition of English-language skills, understanding of American civics, a medical exam, and registration for military service. Individuals convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors were ineligible. Despite these requirements, all agree that the 1986 law amounted to an amnesty.

An Amnesty Checklist
The Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 resembles the 1986 amnesty in several ways. Like that law, it would grant amnesty to individuals unlawfully present in the United States. That its effect would be "amnesty," which its proponents deny, is proven by its provisions:

• Only illegal aliens are eligible. Title VI, euphemistically entitled "Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status," creates a new "Z" visa exclusively for illegal aliens, granting legal status to those who have willfully violated U.S. laws and denying that benefit to law-abiding aliens who have played by the rules. Only illegal aliens can qualify. (Section 601 ©(1))
• Legal status is immediate. Section 1 (a) allows probationary Z visas to be issued immediately after enactment, and Section 601 (f)(2) prohibits the federal government from waiting more than 180 days after enactment to begin issuing probationary Z visas. These probationary visas are nearly as good as non-probationary Z visas, giving the alien lawful status, protection from deportation, authorization to work, and the ability to exit and reenter the country with advance permission. (Section 601 (h)(1))
• Immigration laws are set aside. Before anyone even applies for a probationary Z visa, the legislation would set aside the immigration laws that currently criminalize the presence of illegal aliens. The bill waives compliance with several laws as a condition for eligibility for the amnesty, including those concerning illegal entry, failure to appear for a removal proceeding, fraud in obtaining a documentation to enter the United States, falsely claiming citizenship, violating terms of a student visa, failure to obtain valid immigration documents, unlawful presence for more than one year, and reentry after having been ordered removed. (Section 601 (d)(2)(A))
• Eligibility leads to permanent residence. Probationary Z visas could be valid for years, depending on when the government begins issuing non-probationary Z visas (Section 601 (h)(4)). The Z visa can be renewed every four years indefinitely (Section 601 (k)(2)). No later than 8 years after enactment, the Secretary of Homeland Security must determine the number of Z visa holders who are eligible for legal permanent residence (LPR) and grant LPR status to all such persons over the following five years at a rate of 20 percent per year. (Section 503 (f)(2) and Section 501 ()
• Amnesty is unlimited. The bill grants legal status to virtually all of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens who are in the country today, and there is no cap on the total number of illegal aliens who could receive Z visa status. Expect a mass influx once the 12-month period for accepting Z visa applications begins, because the legislation is an open invitation for those intent on U.S. residence to sneak in and present two fraudulent documents indicating that they were here before the beginning of the year.

There should be no doubt that the current legislative proposal is an amnesty. Like the amnesty bill of 1986, the current Senate proposal would grant legal status to those who have resided illegally in the United States and place them on a privileged path to citizenship. As in 1986, these individuals must pay fees and fines and meet certain conditions. And once again, the granting of legal status is still "amnesty" even if it is conditional and not automatic or does not necessarily end in citizenship.

In short, the bill's conditions and requirements do not turn amnesty into "earned" legalization or citizenship.

Requiring a "touchback" (meaning a visit to a consulate outside of the United States) after illegal aliens have received a legal status that gives them a guaranteed return to the United States does not alter this conclusion. Such a requirement does nothing of substance other than impose a minor additional burden on those receiving amnesty.

That the Senate bill would grant amnesty is underscored by the very breadth and generosity of that grant. To initially qualify for a Z visa, an illegal alien need only have a job (or be the parent, spouse, or child of someone with a job) and provide two documents suggesting that he or she was in the country before January 1, 2007, and has remained in the country since then. A bank statement, pay stub, or similarly forgeable record will do. Also acceptable under the legislation is a sworn affidavit from a non-relative (Section 601 (i)(2)). Further, if an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent apprehends aliens who appear to be eligible for the Z visa, the agent cannot detain them (Sections 601 (h)(1, 5)). Likewise, if an alien in the removal process is "prima facie eligible" for the Z visa, an immigration judge must close any proceedings against the alien and offer the alien an opportunity to apply for amnesty (Section 601(h)(6)).

A Better Path
Those who enter, remain, and work in the U.S. illegally are in ongoing and extensive violation of its immigration laws. Forgiving or condoning such violations by grant­ing amnesty increases the likelihood of further ille­gal conduct. The failure to enforce immigration laws is deeply unfair to the millions who obey the law and abide by the rules to enter the country legally. And disregarding the open and intentional vio­lation of the law—especially on such a massive scale—ultimately undermines the rule of law.

The sensible way to resolve the problem of a huge illegal population without granting amnesty is to insist that individuals who are unlawfully present in the U.S. return to their countries of origin and then apply, in line and on par with other applicants, for legal entry. This pathway would allow illegal aliens to apply for legal entry to the United States as lawful visitors, tem­porary workers, or legal residents without par­tiality or prejudice—or fees and penalties.

A practical program for repatriating those who are illegally present in the United States is the only viable option that offers a fair and reasonable alternative to the objectionable extremes of blanket amnesty and forced deportation. It is also the best way to avoid having to confront the problem of a huge, illegally present population yet again in the future.

Making repatriation attractive, along with serious enforcement of immigration laws and controlling the illegal inflow at the border, would significantly reduce the current population of unlawfully present persons. It is the only way to resolve this seemingly intractable situation in accord with the principles of governance and the rule of law.

Matthew Spalding, Ph.D., is Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

<h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">PROSPECTS FOR PEACE </h2> <h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">6/27/07</h2> <h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">The Shalit Tape and the Sharm Summit: Competing for Attention</h2> <h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt;">Daniel Levy</h2> Today's Sharm el-Sheikh Summit of the leaders of Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority has been somewhat overshadowed by the release of audio tape of the Israeli Corporal being held in Gaza. It is exactly one year to the day since the capture of Gilad Shalit -- and the tape put out by the Izz a-Din Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas was the first unequivocal sign of life. Understandably, this story has been competing with the four-way Summit for Israeli media attention.

The signal from Hamas was clear: we are here, and if you want results, you have to deal with us, not your friends in Sharm. Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamed spoke live to Israel Channel 2 News from Gaza and, in Hebrew, called for the resumption of negotiations for a prisoner exchange. This immediately set off the intended debate in Israel -- to deal or not to deal with Hamas, albeit over the limited agenda of Gilad Shalit.

Support came from unexpected quarters, such as Shas leader and Minister Eli Yishai. Meanwhile Labor Party Minister, and Bully-in-Chief, Fuad Ben-Eliezer ruled out talks unequivocally. Yitzhak Rabin's former Chief of Staff Eitan Haber reminded Israel Army Radio listeners of the famous prisoner exchange deal of May 1985 when 1,150 Palestinian prisoners were traded for three Israelis. He contrasted this to the tragic, failed military effort to free Nachshon Waxman, under Rabin, in 1994. Haber's message was clear: cut the deal.

The family of Gilad Shalit called on PM Olmert to "do what it takes or to stand down from his office." By the way, Shalit's family, through the entire ordeal, have come across as remarkably dignified, stoical, and smart.

Hamas was sending a message not only to the Israeli decision-makers and public, but also to their own public and the other leaders gathered at Sharm, Abbas included. And the Hamas-Gaza reality was, of course, the ever present absent at Sharm.

Sharm, of course, played out largely according to the script. All the leaders took the pledge of peace -- with precious little in concrete terms on how it might be achieved. Israeli PM Olmert provided a mini-surprise by announcing his intention to release 250 Fatah prisoners in addition to gradually releasing the Palestinian tax monies being held. This was the bare minimum necessary to lend any credence to his new mantra of helping strengthen President Abbas. But Olmert has rejected removing IDF checkpoints, real easing of the West Bank closures, or political negotiations on a permanent status peace. The agreement to establish an Israeli-Palestinian Committee to look at re-deploying the IDF to September 2000 positions does not sound promising at all.

Nathan Brown at Carnegie, in his highly recommended new report, has called this "less of the same." Four points on this:

(1) It is the continued and active IDF presence that is deciding things in favor of Fatah and against Hamas in the West Bank. That is why the IDF is in no hurry to redeploy and has vetoed any major easing of closures and movement restrictions.

(2) The latest set of "help the moderates" gestures continues the back-slide in this approach -- the less of the same. If one looks back over the last years -- the Mitchell Report recommendations, the Tenet plan, the Zinni plan, the Dayton benchmarks -- each time less is being offered. As the challenge becomes greater, the tools being deployed are even more emaciated.

(3) The Olmert-Fatah prisoner release to Abbas will go to the Cabinet for approval. Olmert will be criticized and he will expend political capital getting this through. The argument will be: "why release prisoners for nothing? If we're releasing at least get Shalit in return." Abbas, by the way, will be lambasted for taking a sectarian stand on the prisoner release issue (i.e. Fatah only), Hamas will loftily declare that their prisoner demands are for prisoners from all factions. Olmert will explain to America and the world what a big step he has taken and a political price he has paid -- adding for good measure that he cannot be expected to do more. It's the old formula. Sharon used it but he had a strategy: destroy the Palestinian national movement and viable two-state option (OK, a strategy I think was disastrous). Olmert seems to have no strategy -- and that's a real problem.

(4) Remember, it's too late to achieve progress with Abbas and Fatah alone.

Zvi Barel, writing in advance of the summit, accurately predicts these points in his "best to refrain from kissing this time" op-ed.

Can the "president of all the Palestinians" compose a list of prisoners that includes only Fatah members and thus become the president of the Villages Association, an entity appointed by Israel?

The attempt to lock Abbas into an embrace of "no-going back to power-sharing" with Hamas, and to push irreconcilability the Palestinian political divisions is extremely dangerous and not so much high risk as almost guaranteed to fail.

One slightly off-message leader at Sharm , and by extension, more realistic, was the host, President Mubarak. He gave the slightest of hints that a break with the division policy may be in the offing. Mubarak stated: "There is an urgent need to end internal Palestinian clashes and restore dialogue."

Egyptian Ambassador to Washington, Nabil Fahmy, made a similar point to Wolf Blitzer on CNN Late Edition Sunday:

We will push the Palestinians to talk together under the right circumstances... Palestinian-Palestinian dialogue has to emerge.

Wolf's other guests -- Israeli Ambassador Salai Meridor and Dennis Ross -- were in a very different place. It has also been reported that Ismail Haniyeh spoke on the phone with Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Suleiman -- in part, repeating the Hamas offer to restart unity talks. The Egyptians and like-minded Arab States, including Saudi Arabia, will move cautiously, but the division is likely to become increasingly untenable.

The official Israeli head is still deep in the sand on this one, though not nearly as deep as Washington's. The Hamas audio tape today was a message, if a deal can be reached and a ceasefire developed from Gaza, then Jerusalem's ears ought to start to emerge from the sand.

Here's what retired General Shlomo Gazit had to say on all this in today's Ma'ariv (translation):

It currently appears that Hamas leaders are adopting a more pragmatic approach. They do not want political, economic or military battle. But the immediate future is primarily up to Israel.

Just a few days have gone by since the establishment of Hamastan, but we have already seen how Israel responds on two levels. The moment it took control of Gaza, Hamas declared a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. For over a week, not a single Qassam rocket was fired at Sderot; but, after just one day in the job, the defense minister approved a new operation against wanted terror suspects in Khan Yunis. Five Palestinians were killed and four were injured and, unsurprisingly, the very next day the Qassam attacks on Sderot started again. On the diplomatic front, Israel continues to pin all of its hopes on Abu Mazin and his Fateh movement.

The current Israeli policy is a failure and is the opposite of the siege policy that we implemented until now. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will not support Fateh; a movement that has passed its prime. It will certainly not support a leadership that has the backing of Israel and the United States. This is surely the time for Olmert and Israel to reevaluate the situation.

06/27/07 "ICH" -- -- Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul continue to show themselves among the few in Congress with any integrity and backbone. They declined to go along with a resolution charging Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, given his alleged call for Israel to be 'wiped off the face of the map.'

As most of my readers know, Ahmadinejad did not use that phrase in Persian. He quoted an old saying of Ayatollah Khomeini calling for 'this occupation regime over Jerusalem" to "vanish from the page of time.' Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to be killed. Ahmadinejad has not to my knowledge called for anyone to be killed. (Wampum has more; as does the American Street).

If Ahmadinejad is a genocidal maniac who just wants to kill Jews, then why are there 20,000 Jews in Iran with a member of parliament in Tehran? Couldn't he start at home if that was what he is really about?

I was talking to two otherwise well-informed Israeli historians a couple of weeks ago, and they expressed the conviction that Ahmadinejad had threatened to nuke Israel. I was taken aback. First of all, Iran doesn't have a nuke. Second, there is no proof that Iran even has a nuclear weapons program. Third, Ahmadinejad has denied wanting a bomb. Fourth, Ahmadinejad has never threatened any sort of direct Iranian military action against Israel. In other words, that is a pretty dramatic fear for educated persons to feel, on the basis of . . . nothing.

I renew my call to readers to write protest letters to newspapers and other media every time they hear it alleged that Ahmadinejad (or "Iran"!) has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map." There is no such idiom in Persian and it is not what he said, and the mistranslation gives entirely the wrong impression. Wars can start over bad translations.

It was apparently some Western wire service that mistranslated the phrase as 'wipe Israel off the map', which sounds rather more violent than calling for regime change. Since then, Iranian media working in English have themselves depended on that translation. One of the tricks of Right-Zionist propagandists is to substitute these English texts for Ahmadinejad's own Persian text. (Ethan Bronner at the New York Times tried to pull this, and more recently Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute.) But good scholarship requires that you go to the original Persian text in search of the meaning of a phrase. Bronner and Rubin are guilty disregarding philological scholarship in favor of mere propagandizing.

These propaganda efforts against Iran and Ahmadinejad also depend on declining to enter into evidence anything else he has ever said-- like that it would be wrong to kill Jews! They also ignore that Ahmadinejad is not even the commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces.

Anyone who reads this column knows that I deeply disagree with Ahmadinejad's policies and am not interested in defending him on most things. I profoundly disagree with his characterization of Israel, which is a legitimate United Nations member state, and find his Holocaust denial monstrous. But this quite false charge that he is genocidal is being promoted by Right-Zionists in and out of Congress as a preparatory step to getting up a US war against Iran on false pretences. I don't want to see my country destroyed by being further embroiled in the Middle East for the wrong reasons. If the Israeli hardliners and their American amen corner want a war with Iran, let them fight it themselves and leave young 18 year old Americans alone.

So here are some things Ahmadinezhad has said that make clear his intentions, and which are translated by the United States government Open Source Center. He is hostile to Israel. He'd like to see regime change (apparently via a referendum on the shape of the government ruling over geographical Palestine, in which all "original" residents of any religion would get a vote). Calling for a referendum on the dissolution of a government is not calling for genocide. Ahmadinejad also says he has no objection to a Jewish state in and of itself, he just thinks it should be located in, say, German territory set apart for the purpose, rather than displacing Palestinians from their homes. He may be saying unrealistic things; he is not advocating killing Jews qua Jews, or genocide.

Note that Ahmadinejad below denies being an anti-Semite (why deny it if he supposedly glories in it?); points out that he supports Jewish representation in the Iranian parliament; and compares his call for an end to the Zionist regime ruling over Jerusalem to the Western call for the dissolution of the old Soviet Union. Was Ronald Reagan inciting to genocide when he called for an end of the Soviet regime?

Iran's President Ahmadinezhad Holds New York News Conference 21 Sep
News conference by Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad at UN headquarters in New York -- correspondents' questions in English simultaneously translated into Persian -- live
Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN)
Friday, September 22, 2006

Regarding the issue of the invasion of Lebanon, you saw that everyone - of all religions, of all faiths - condemned it. Because the nations have awakened. The nations hate aggression. . . Some people think that if they level accusations at Ahmadinezhad - saying: He is a terrorist, he is a murderer, he is anti-Semitic - the issue would be resolved. No. I am not anti-Semitic. Like all other human beings, Jews are respected. And, by the way, there are Muslims and Christians and Jews among the Palestinian people. We say the people of Palestine should choose. We do not say that it should be the Palestinian Muslims. For they lived in peace and harmony in the past. But then Britain came over and, with colonialist goals, took control and then handed it over to the Zionists. And the problem started. Let the people choose and see what will happen.

Iranian Television Broadcasts President Ahmadinezhad's Interview With French TV
"Exclusive interview" with Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad by David Pujadas of French TV's TF2 Channel on 22 March 2007 -- recorded
Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1
Sunday, March 25, 2007

(David Pujadas) The fact that Iran's position is disconcerting, one of the reasons is that Your Excellency's statements are to a large extent threatening. For instance, your assertion that Israel should be wiped from the map of the world, all these things have created some concern which has been reflected in the nuclear case too.

(Ahmadinezhad) . . . Let me ask you this question: where is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics now? Was it not wiped off (the map)? How was it wiped off? We have a totally humanitarian solution for Palestine. We have said that all the Palestinians should take part in a free referendum so as to end the 60 year old war. The outcome is clear from now. It is because of the same outcome that America and Britain are refusing to yield.

(David Pujadas) Let us clarify everything. Do you really wish to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? Do you have a plan for this job or are you in fact making such a prediction?

(Ahmadinezhad) Look, I told you the solution. I think the people of Palestine also have the right to determine their own fate. Let them choose for themselves, the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims. That is, all the Palestinians who belong to that land can participate in the referendum. I think the outcome of such a referendum is already clear. We saw what happened in last year's elections (when they voted for HAMAS).

(David Pujadas) If the Palestinians themselves accept that two governments should enjoy peaceful coexistence next to each other, will you be ready to accept their decision?

(Ahmadinezhad) Incidentally this is what we are saying. That is, we are saying let the nation of Palestine decide for itself without any imposition. They should be allowed to do so in a free atmosphere. This is the right of the Palestinian people. Let them decide for themselves. Let them decide the shape of their own government.

(David Pujadas) Do you mean with Israel as their neighbor?

(Ahmadinezhad) Look, let the nation of Palestine decide about its own state. This is the right of the Palestinian people. . .

(David Pujadas) A lot is being said about the 60m people who have been killed during World War II, but why should we just discuss the 6m people who have been killed in the Nazi camps for being Jews?

(Ahmadinezhad) You well know that we respect everyone. The Jews, Christians, Muslims. They are all free in our country and they have their own representatives in our Majles [Parliament]. You know that according to the Law in Iran, every 150,000 people have one representative in the Majles. But the number of the Jews is not even 20,000 people and they have a representative. We say that the life and belongings of all people should be respected. We condemn all crimes. . .


Iran: Presidential Website Reports Ahmadinezhad's Remarks at Holocaust Conference
Unattributed report: "The President: Truth-Seeking and Honest Groups Should Be Formed To Investigate the Holocaust"
Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran WWW-Text
Thursday, December 28, 2006

The president stated that due to God's wish and the vigilance of nations the days of the Zionist regime are numbered and added: We want prosperity for all humans and even like to guide our enemies, but some European and American politicians' one-sided and bigoted support for the Zionist regime no longer has a function in the world.

Dr Ahmadinezhad stated that, with each day that passes of the Zionist regime's life, the interests and reputation of its supporting powers become more endangered. He added: The sensible and fair solution is to remove this regime the same way it was set up and imposed on the region's countries through planning and imperialistic objectives. This will bring peace to the world, and the region's countries will also forgive the atrocities of the last 60 years.

The president also stated that God did not create human beings for war, hatred, and enmity. He said the key for establishment of peace and harmony is justice; justice is achievable through monotheism and believing in God. He emphasized: An international effort must be made to establish peace and to remove the roots of insecurity and injustice, as the international balance is changing rapidly and the future evolutions will certainly be for peace, brotherhood, justice, and worshiping God.

<h3 class="entry-header">Who'll be the first t'blow? by Abu Aardvark
</h3> I've been posing the same question to academic Middle East experts and government officials in a variety of forums lately (seminars, workshops, bars), and thought it might be interesting to throw it open here as well. Given the ever-growing strains and pressures on most Arab regimes, which - if any - will be the first to go? By "go", I mean a real change of regime - King Abdullah (Jordan division) replacing his Prime Minister doesn't count, the Hashemites being toppled does. Also, I mean actually functioning and currently seemingly stable states: so the Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi situations don't count. Finally, I'm talking about Arab countries, so Iran is off the table (unless you really want to talk about Iran). So far, the most popular answer has probably been "none" - Arab regimes are really only good at one thing, staying in power at all costs, and there's a lot of well-merited skepticism that now is any different. But if you had to put money down on one, despite your innate skepticism, who would it be?

Here are a few of the contenders, with a thumbnail sketch of the argument about each:

• Egypt.
  • Pro: a polarizing political environment, with the Muslim Brotherhood being pushed away from its long-standing policy of working within the system by the regime's crackdown; threats to its international support, with doubts on both the American left and right; internal elite divisions, particularly over whether Gamal Mubarak will succeed his dad; an imminent succession struggle, which is increasingly dominating (and paralyzing) the political system.
  • Con: Egypt never seems to be as unstable as you'd expect; the 'threat' of the Muslim Brotherhood may be enough to maintain elite solidarity; American criticism is overblown, US is happy enough with Mubarak; the military won't let anything too drastic happen.
• Jordan:
  • Pro: unpopular King increasingly alienated from domestic public opinion; horrible economy; Iraqi refugees and Palestinian crisis hammering the country from both sides; considerable radicalism tugging away at fringes; may get dragged into the West Bank
  • Con: Hashemites always about to fall and never seem to; no obvious alternative, so most Jordanians likely to stick with the King as a default; strong US support;
• Syria:
  • Pro: Bashar not up to the job of keeping it together; domestic dissatisfaction with economy and undemocratic politics; tightening US pressure will start to bite; wishful thinking
  • Con: not much preventing Bashar from cracking down as much as he wants; economy doesn't actually seem to be doing that badly; no credible alternative; US pressure strengthens regime by diverting attention to external enemy
• Saudi Arabia:
  • Pro: King Abdullah isn't getting any younger, so the succession battle avoided last time may hit this time; despite all the efforts against al-Qaeda, still a lot of radical opinion out there ready to be harnessed by some ambitious counter-elite;
  • Con: Flush with cash right now, should be able to buy off any challengers; campaign against al-Qaeda has severely degraded its operational abilities and leadership; elite critics may grumble but who would really want to risk killing the cash cow?

So what do you think? Nominate your own candidates or discuss these among yourselves!

UPDATE: Bahrain and Jordan seem to be getting the most discussion so far in the comments section. Let me throw in a few more that aren't getting discussed:

• Libya:
  • Pro: wacky dictator probably wants to pass power on to his son, which might not go well;
  • Con: kissed and made up with US and UK; lots of petro-cash
• Sudan:
  • Pro: Darfur generates some international attention and pressure, and also reveals some internal regime splits; already a lot of violence; history of coups
  • Con: petro-cash?

One other point to throw into the pot: these upheavals are by definition unpredictable, even if in retrospect they seem overdetermined. That makes these parlor games a bit pointless, if fun, unless playing them helps to direct attention to causal processes or underlying dynamics that otherwise might be missed. Does it?

Posted on June 27, 2007 at 11:28 AM | Permalink |

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ru..._boris_bush.htm June 27, 2007

Boris Bush

By Russ Wellen



"It's a complicated relationship," President Bush says of Russian President Vladimir Putin and himself (as well as the US and Russia). They seemed to get off on the good foot at their first meeting in 2001. "I looked the man in the eye," Bush said. "I was able to get a sense of his soul." He may have thought he was on the way to a relationship as chummy as Reagan and Gorbachev's. But anyone who thinks the former KGB official liked being called Pootie Poot has another thing coming.

After the recent Group of Eight summit in Rostock, Germany, William Douglas of the McClatchy News Service quoted think-tank dweller Uri Ra'Anan: "Bush has overemphasized personal chemistry in dealing with Putin. . . . He actually believes that foreign policy can be done on personality and charm. Putin views that as weakness."

All presidents personalize politics, but few to Bush's extent. In fact, after a sly maneuver Putin pulled off at the summit, "President George W Bush looked bewildered," according to MK Bhadrakumar writing on Asia Times Online, "[and] no leader likes to look bewildered at a glittering political show." Bhadrakumar's funereal pronouncement? "The chill in US-Russia relations is set to deepen."

What exactly did Putin do? It seems that, with his sixth degree black belt in judo, he executed what Bhadrakumar called a "smart diplomatic judo flip." Bush, of course, wants to install the missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. But if he and Putin were, as Bush might once have wished, as close as brothers, this counts as a serious intrusion on Vlad's side of the bedroom.

Putin had the temerity to suggest that an existing early-warning station of Russia's in Azerbaijan "could be a substitute to the United States' planned anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system in Central Europe." Moscow's "diplomatic judo flip," writes Bhadrakumar, may have put the administration in "an unforgiving mood."

Despite being shown up by Putin, Bush invited him to visit his family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine shortly before July 4th. But, according to The Washington Post, Toby Gati, a former State Department official, said, "All the warm words and backslapping aren't going to change the fact that there's no 'there' there.' There's no substantive relationship."

Not only is Bush in over his head with Putin, he's as ham-handed as Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Look at how "the Motherland's drunken, bloblike train wreck of a revolutionary leader," as Matt Taibbi called him on the occasion of his death, handled the Chechnyan civil war.

Actually, it was two wars. Few have synopsized the conflicts as neatly as Max Abrahms writing in the Fall 2006 issue of MIT's International Security magazine. The main thesis of his article, "Why Terrorism Does Not Work," is that terrorists' messages are obscured by their attacks, which are inevitably interpreted as attempts to destroy a country and its people.

9/11, of course, is the case in point –- a success for bin Laden on many levels, but nada when it came to al Qaida's raison d'etre: driving the infidels out of the Middle East and eliminating Israel. When Chechen rebels bombed three Russian apartment buildings in 1999, killing a total of 229 citizens, a Russian public once disposed to be sympathetic to Chechen demands for independence now turned a deaf ear.

Providing background, Abrahms explains, "With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s several North Caucasian republics declared sovereignty. In 1991 Chechnya's first president, Dzhokar Dudayev, took the additional step of declaring independence. Federal forces invaded Chechnya in December 1994 to reestablish control in the breakaway republic."

Now check out the parallels with how Yeltsin handled that first war, which continued until 1996, with how Bush and crew wrecked Iraq. "When the war broke out, the Russian public and even the secret police perceived it as precipitate [hasty –- Ed.], believing diplomatic solutions had not been exhausted. Boris Yeltsin's position on the war did not gain popularity as it unfolded. Top military commanders openly resigned and condemned the president for not pursuing negotiations.

"From the onset of military operations until the cease-fire in August 1996, some 70 percent of Russians opposed the war. Disdain for the war manifested itself most clearly in public attitudes toward Defense Minister Pavel Grachev [read: Rumsfeld –- Ed.]. Opinion polls rated [Yeltsin's] approval at only 3 percent."

That's when Yeltsin's path deviated from Bush's and, electoral prospects imperiled, he "folded to domestic pressure, calling for an end to all troop operations in Chechnya and the immediate commencement of negotiations with [the rebels]." As clumsy as both were, Bush turned out to be way more bull-headed than Yeltsin.

In the second Chechen civil war, though, all hell broke loose. Thanks to not only the apartment bombings but the even more unimaginable atrocity of Beslan, Putin, once in power, enjoyed the almost complete support of the Russian public, unlike Yeltsin. He responded with the proverbial Iron Fist.

According to War Nerd, writing in Moscow's The eXile: "The Russian 'contractors' (meaning mercenaries) raid Chechen villages, kidnap men who might be guerrillas, torture and shoot them, and make play with their families if the mood is right." They not only killed rebel president Aslan Maskhadov, but his successor, Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev.

In other words, Putin, known in Russian judo circles for "his wicked sweeping leg throw (Haraigoshi)," is not an opponent to be trifled with.





Authors Bio: Russ Wellen is the nuclear deproliferation editor for OpEdNews. He's also a columnist and editor at Freezerbox.com.

"It's hard to tell people not to smoke when you have a cigarette dangling from your mouth."
-- Mohamed El Baradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency



Back

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ll..._last_stand.htm June 27, 2007

Cheney's Last Stand

By Lloyd Dangle

(Washington , DC) With the Office of the Vice President coming under increasing scrutiny, Dick Cheney has retreated to a secured chambers on the third floor of the Naval Observatory with a team of lawyers, numbering, in some reports, to be as high as sixty. Over the past twenty-four hours the OVP has released a flurry of statements and legal briefs, some lucid, some hastily drafted and bordering on incoherent, which have caused observers to speculate that the Vice President may nearing resignation, coup 'detat, or some other form of extra-constitutional action never before seen in the history of the republic. Excerpts follow:



June 26, 2:31pm: Vice Presidential records cannot be unsealed without "presidential finding."

June 26, 2:40pm: The Office of the Vice President my hide "presidential findings."

June 26, 3:55pm: Vice Presidential documents cannot be photocopied because they are legal tender.

June 26, 5:18pm: Because Cheney lives in the Naval Observatory, he is the Admiral of the Navy

June 26, 5:21pm: If it is determined that Vice Presidential records can be opened, they may be viewed only by the Attorney General, who must commit them to memory.

June 26, 6:01am: Dick Cheney is a sovereign nation.

June 26, 6:02pm: Neither Cheney or his records are subject to extradition to the United States

June 26, 6:55pm: Cheney is not subject to the Taft-Hartley act.

June 26, 7:10pm: The Vice President cannot be tried in any court of law except the Supreme Court, and then only by the justices he likes.

June 26, 7:25pm: The Vice President may not be interrogated by anyone except Sean Hannity.

June 26, 9:30pm: Cheney's records are not subject to congressional oversight because he is "half machine."

June 26, 9:31pm: Cheney's pacemaker and artificial heart valves entitle him to depreciate himself on his Federal tax returns.

June 26, 10:01pm: The Vice President is the Commander of the Department of Motor Vehicles and can commandeer private vehicles.

June 26, 11:00pm: While in office, Vice President Cheney is entitled to cheesecake and pastrami sandwiches whenever he deems appropriate, including, but not limited to, right now.

June 27, 12:05am: Cheney may not be taken into custody in the State of Virginia.

June 27, 12:55am: Vice President Cheney is a "breakaway republic."

June 27, 1:09am: The Vice President is legally entitled to torture for National Security purposes for personal pleasure.

June 27, 2:30am: When Cheney is in Washington DC, he is not subject to any state laws, because DC is not a state.

June 27, 2:50am: The terror threat level has been raised to triple-red.

June 2, 3:55am: Iraq hung one of Saddam's impersonators; the real one still has weapons of mass destruction.

June 27, 4:00am: Cheney is a "controlled substance."

June 27, 6:15am: Vice President Dick Cheney is legally an "offshore account."

June 27, 11:37 am: He is an astral projection

June 26, 12:01pm: Cheney's hemorrhoids enjoy diplomatic immunity.







Authors Website: www.troubletown.com

Authors Bio: Lloyd Dangle is the cartoonist of the comic strip, Troubletown. Back

BREAKING: CHENEY, WHITE HOUSE SUBPOENAED FOR WARRANTLESS DOMESTIC WIRE-TAP DOCUMENTS

Fight Over Access to Docs Could Lead to Constitutional Confrontation (and Impeachment?)...

UPDATE: Feingold Issues Statement, Says Subpeonas Have Bipartisan Support in Senate to Help End Stonewalling by White House Concerning 'Illegal Spying Program'...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 27th June 2007 @ 11:29 In NSA, Dick Cheney, Impeachment, Dept. of Justice, U.S. Senate | 10 Comments

if (window.document.getElementById('post-4738')) window.document.getElementById('post-4738').parentNode.className += ' adhesive_post';Blogged by Brad from Atlanta...

Just out from AP ^[1]...

WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush's warrant-free eavesdropping program. Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

As TPM Muckraker notes in their breaking coverage ^[2], "The trigger is pulled...Get ready for a huge court fight".

RAW STORY has a statement ^[3] from Sen. Leahy concerning the subpoenas.

And as Joseph Cannon guest blogged here yesterday ^[4], a subpoena was/is needed to begin the impeachment process. Any subpeona, of Cheney's office and/or the White House. Well, we now have one.

"If Cheney or any of his underlings refuse to comply with a single subpoena --- and that's a very good bet --- he becomes instantly impeachable, on the same grounds that brought down Nixon," wrote Cannon, who knows the topic well.

Stay tuned. It may be a busy summer...

UPDATE 12:06pm PT: In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG ^[5] (posted in full below) Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says "After a year and a half of stonewalling by the Administration...The bipartisan support for issuing these subpoenas demonstrates that both Democrats and Republicans are fed up with the misleading statements from the Attorney General and the Administration about this illegal program."

Feingold's complete brief statement follows below...



For Immediate Release – June 27, 2007 Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Senate Judiciary Committee Issuing Subpoenas Relating to the NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Program Washington DC – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold issued the following statement after the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas for legal analysis and other documents concerning the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that began shortly after 9/11 and was first revealed to the public in December 2005.

“It has been more than a year and a half since it was first disclosed that the President authorized an illegal warrantless wiretapping program. After a year and a half of stonewalling by the Administration, the Judiciary Committee is finally taking appropriate action by issuing subpoenas for information that will tell us how and why high-ranking officials authorized this illegal program. The bipartisan support for issuing these subpoenas demonstrates that both Democrats and Republicans are fed up with the misleading statements from the Attorney General and the Administration about this illegal program.

Though most members of the Committee have been kept in the dark about the program, the Administration has asked us to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It would be wrong for this committee to even consider legislation making wholesale changes to the FISA statute without access to information about how the executive branch and the judicial branch interpret that law. These subpoenas will help make sure that Congress finally starts getting the answers it deserves.”

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ra...ney_and_the.htm June 27, 2007

Bush, Cheney and the Nixon Principle

By randyholhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. — Dictatorships thrive on secrecy. The ability to operate free of public scrutiny, oversight and accountability is the cornerstone of a totalitarian state.


Such is the case with the Bush administration. Everything it has done over the past six years — from unauthorized wiretapping of Americans, to the suspension of habeas corpus, to the detention of prisoners is the legal limbo that is Guantanamo — has been cloaked in secrecy and shielded from public oversight in the name of national security.


So it was hardly shocking to hear President Bush and Vice President Cheney declare late last week that the offices of both men are exempt from independent oversight.


Cheney got all the attention last week when he said that the vice president is not actually part of the executive branch, and thus does not have to comply with any rules or orders applying to the executive branch. But his statement is not nearly as outrageous as what the president did when no one was watching.


In March 2003, Bush issued an executive order requiring all government agencies that are part of the executive branch submit to the Independent Security Oversight Office — which is part of the National Archives — to monitor the handling of classified materials.


Cheney's office filed the reports in 2001 and 2002. It stopped filing them in 2003. Not so coincidentally, that is about the time his office leaked the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in order to intimidate her husband, Joseph Wilson, who was critical of the intelligence used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.


According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush apparently hasn't had a problem with Cheney not filing the reports because, according to a White House spokesman, Bush's executive order wasn't meant to apply to either his office or Cheney's.


So, the two offices that have access to the most highly classified information in the federal government claim they are completely exempt from any independent monitoring on how that information is used.


Not only have both Bush and Cheney declined to cooperate with the Information Security Oversight Office, they have tried to eliminate it altogether. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., revealed that bit of information last week.


Even worse, who must the Information Security Oversight Office turn to in seeking resolution on the matter? The Justice Department, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Any guesses on how he will rule in this dispute?


This whole affair is in keeping with the Bush administration's pattern of avoiding accountability for their actions. And the Plame leak shows that the White House cannot be trusted with sensitive information, because they have more than demonstrated a pattern of putting political considerations ahead of national security.


Bigger than that, however, is what might be called the Nixon Principle. This comes from what Richard Nixon said to David Frost in 1977 during their now infamous interviews: "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."


Bush and Cheney have clearly operated under this principle. They don't see the need to follow rules, and thus set the example for everyone else. If the president and vice president can ignore executive orders and subpoenas from Congress, why should anyone else follow the rules?


Bush and Cheney are dead wrong in their interpretation of the law. They are subject to the same laws as any other member of the executive branch. But it's hard to get a band of lawless men to obey the Constitution, not when Congress and the courts will not effectively challenge them. And it's even hard to rein in a band of lawless men when the American people are still snoozing fitfully, unaware of the damage that has been done.


It's time to demand accountability and respect for the rule of law. Without it, this nation becomes nothing more than a land ruled by tin pot dictators.<





Authors Bio: Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 25 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com. Back

New from the NEFA "Target America" Series: "The PATH Tunnel Plot"

By Evan Kohlmann


On the heels of the foiled plots targeting Fort Dix and JFK Airport, the Nine Eleven Finding Answers (NEFA) Foundation announces the release of the fifth in a series of reports examining the multitude of terrorist plots directed at the United States since 9/11. This week's report details the plot to bomb the Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation (PATH) tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. Describing the plot, which allegedly was directed by "a self-initiating foreign cell that had access to al-Qaeda's connections," FBI New York Director Mark Mershon asserted that the planned attack involved "martyrdom" and "explosives."

This week (June 27, 2007): The PATH Tunnel Plot

See also:
Week of June 18, 2007: The East Coast Buildings Plot
Week of June 11, 2007: The Illinois Shopping Mall Plot
Week of June 4, 2007: The L.A. Plot to Attack U.S. Military and Jewish Targets
Week of June 4, 2007: The Miami Plot to Bomb Federal Buildings and the Sears Tower

June 27, 2007 02:03 AM Link

Senate Rejects Efforts to Make Immigration Bill Stricter
By Robert Pear and David Stout
The New York Times Wednesday 27 June 2007

Washington - The Senate voted down several attempts this afternoon to make the immigration bill stricter, including one that would have barred illegal immigrants from a chance for eventual citizenship.

That measure was an amendment offered to the overall bill by Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri. It was shelved by a vote of 56 to 41, with the lineup crossing party lines, as was true of other amendments throughout the afternoon.

Earlier, the Senate rejected another contentious amendment, one that would require that illegal immigrants return to their home countries before they could obtain even temporary legal status. That amendment, offered by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, was turned away by 53 to 45.

But other amendments, friendly to immigrants, were due to be offered, and their fates were uncertain. The fluid situation illustrated the complex and emotional nature of the immigration issue, and the resulting shakiness of support behind the bill.

The senators are considering more than a score of amendments to a bill that would bring about the biggest overhaul in immigration policy in more than 20 years. The Hutchison amendment would have required adult illegal immigrants to leave the United States within two years if they wanted to apply for legal status in the form of "Z visas."

The vote does not mean that the "touchback requirement" is eliminated altogether. The overall bill already embodies such a requirement, and another amendment would make the bill stricter in that regard - although not as strict as the Hutchison amendment would have.

Many Democrats and Hispanic groups had complained that the Hutchison proposal would have been unworkable. Eight Republicans voted to kill the amendment offered by their Texas colleague, while five Democrats voted against tabling it.

Shortly afterward, the Senate voted by 79 to 18 to kill a proposal by Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, that only those immigrants who have been in the country at least four years be eligible for eventual legal status. Mr. Webb had said his amendment would help uphold "the rule of law."

As expected, the debate was emotional. "Change is not easy," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and an architect of the bill. "There is much to criticize in this bill." But Congress must act rather than cede immigration policy to the cities and states, he said.

But Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and a leading critic of the bill, said he continued to be "flabbergasted and amazed" that people think the bill would work. Instead, he said, it would bring a new flood of illegal immigrants.

The action on the amendments came a day after the Senate voted, 64 to 35, to take up a revised version of a comprehensive immigration bill that was pulled from the Senate floor nearly three weeks ago.

The vote did not guarantee passage of the bill, which calls for the biggest changes in immigration law in more than 20 years. But it did clear the way, with four votes more than the 60 needed, for the Senate to debate numerous amendments. A final vote could occur late this week.

Senator Kennedy said "there is new life in this legislation," which embodies President Bush's top domestic priority.

Many conservatives said they were still determined to defeat the measure because it would offer legal status to most of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

One of the leading critics, Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, insisted Tuesday on a full reading of 27 amendments that had, for procedural reasons, been put together in one package.

A Senate clerk, Kathleen Alvarez, began reading page after page of legislative language. This went on for about 45 minutes. Finally, opponents of the bill withdrew their demand after being told they could study the package of amendments overnight.

The vote earlier Tuesday reflected lobbying by Mr. Bush and a new willingness by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, to let the Senate work its will on the legislation, which he pulled from the floor on June 7.

Since then, in an effort to pick up votes, supporters of the bill have added $4.4 billion to pay for border security measures and a crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

Mr. Bush kept up the pressure on Tuesday, saying, "Our spirit is invigorated when people come here and realize the blessings of America."

David Stout contributed reporting.

Tom Lantos, Warmonger
The pious old hypocrite wants to gin up a war with Iran by Justin Raimondo While the American people pine for peace, our leaders are intent on war: that's the anomaly of American "democracy," one that speaks ill of the effort to export our system at gunpoint. Adopt "democracy," and you, too, can be ruled by a warmongering oligarchy.

Americans oppose an attack on Iran 2-to-1. By almost every measure, they want negotiations, rather than confrontation, with Tehran. Yet the House Foreign Affairs Committee recently gave its approval to a bill that, in effect, would fire the first shot at the Iranians, imposing draconian sanctions similar to those enacted against Iraq in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of that country. Similarly, this new sanctions regime sets the stage for the coming war with Iran.

The Iran Counter-Proliferation Act [.pdf], so-called, doesn't bother targeting goods and services that Iran might put to military use. Instead, it takes a broad-brush approach and openly seeks to strangle Iran economically. The legislation, written by champion warmonger Tom Lantos, would prohibit the import of any and all items from Iran, ban dealings with Iranian banks, stop the export of items having to do with civil aviation, and ratchet up the pressure on other countries to impose similar restrictions. Furthermore, Lantos wants a report from the White House every six months on the "progress" being made to tighten the chokehold on Iran.

Looking at this from the Iranian side, it is clearly an act of war, especially in the context of the Iran Freedom and Support Act, which provided millions to fund "regime change" in the land of the mullahs The Lantos bill is a naked provocation that stops just short of an all-out attack – and paves the way for military action, in spite of a proviso that reads "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the use of force or the use of the United States Armed Forces against Iran." Having already declared our intention to bring down the regime by funding opposition groups, this latest vow by the U.S. Congress to destroy the Iranian economy is the equivalent of the Wicked Witch of the West skywriting "Surrender Dorothy" in the skies above Tehran.

With Lantos and the anti-Iran Democrats leading the charge on the political front, the Bush administration is moving on the military front. Recent developments are ominous: namely, the addition of another aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, to the two already looming off the Iranian coast. (Yes, I know that last link is to Debka.com, hardly a fountainhead of journalistic accuracy, but this Newsweek report prefigured it.) What amounts to a Republican-Democratic pincer movement is evidence that a real consensus has developed in our nation's capital that war with Iran is inevitable.

True, there are some minor disagreements along the way, with the Democrats, led by the sickening hypocrite Lantos, demanding these draconian sanctions, and the White House opposing them on the grounds that new sanctions undermine our multilateral diplomatic effort to isolate Tehran. Lantos, that pious old fraud, inserted language in his bill that pays minimal lip service to the idea of resolving this dispute through diplomacy – while the rest of his bill is clearly designed to sink diplomatic initiatives that are bound to run aground on the rocks of sanctions.

Lantos really is a piece of work. Here he is insulting Jacques Chirac and calling former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder a "political prostitute" for having the foresight to oppose our disastrous Iraqi adventure. Of Schroeder, Lantos barked:

"I referred to him as a political prostitute, now that he's taking big checks from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. But the sex workers in my district objected, so I will no longer use that phrase."

The respectful use of the term "sex workers" indicates Lantos really has no moral objections to prostitution, he merely objects to the nationality of Schroeder's customers. Yet Schroeder's employment in an oil-gas venture that is 51 percent owned by Gazprom no more makes Schroeder a Russian prostitute than big campaign contributions to Lantos from the Washington PAC make him a whore for Israel. Presumably, Schroeder believes trade with Russia is in Germany's (and Europe's) interests, just as Lantos thinks America's current policy of unconditional support for Israel is good for America.

As for Chirac, Lantos was at his most bombastic. The former French president, said Lantos,

"should go down to the Normandy beaches. He should see those endless rows of white marble crosses and stars of David representing young Americans who gave their lives for the freedom of France."

Lantos should go down to Walter Reed Army Hospital and see those endless rows of wounded soldiers maimed in an unwinnable, futile war that he voted to authorize and continues to support. He should go visit this guy and come back and tell us that he was right about Iraq, just as he is about Iran.

The coming war with Iran is brought to you by the Dick Cheney wing of the Democratic Party, in collaboration, of course, with the Dick Cheney wing of the GOP. With Lantos one of their chief spokesmen and Hillary Clinton their designated presidential candidate, the Demo-Cheneyites are determined to pull off what their Republican counterparts lack the political capital to accomplish. If the shooting starts under Bush's watch – as is very likely – then the Democrats can blame the Republicans even as they pave the way for war politically, diplomatically, and in every other way possible.

As the Democratic presidential candidates dither over Iraq, pretending to oppose the war while continuing the funding without conditions or meaningful oversight, they all agree that a U.S. attack on Iran is "on the table" as long as Tehran maintains its right to develop nuclear power for ostensibly peaceful purposes. Furthermore, the Iraq war and the looming possibility of a conflict with Iran are no longer separable. As I have said numerous times in this space, the Iraq war cannot be contained within Iraq's borders, and the "spillover effect" is bound to result in a border incident that could spark a wider conflict. As Rep. Ron Paul has warned, a Gulf-of-Tonkin-like incident in the Persian Gulf or on the Iran-Iraq border could easily be manufactured by an administration hell-bent on war – and perhaps we are seeing the first signs of it here.

The conflict, once initiated, will not be restricted to the Persian Gulf region and the long Iran-Iraq border but will break out all over the Middle East, erupting in Lebanon and rippling outward all the way to Pakistan in a seismic wave that could topple every regime in the region. In this way, the administration's goal of "regime change" throughout the Middle East will be accomplished and the neocons' "domino theory" confirmed – albeit not in a way they ever intended.

You'll note that the White House and its pet generals are nowadays referring to the Iraqi insurgency as "al-Qaeda," a neat rhetorical sleight-of-hand that prefigures what may happen once a regional war – the neocons' vaunted "World War IV" – gets started: the ultimate empowerment of America's deadliest enemies. With a pro-al-Qaeda regime ensconced in Islamabad, the prospect of nuclear-armed terrorists – the ultimate bogeyman conjured up by the War Party – will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the end, we are confronted with the utter craziness of the War Party and its agenda in the Middle East. This pathological condition was recently reconfirmed by Johann Hari's account of a National Review-sponsored cruise to Puerto Vallarta featuring Norman Podhoretz and Bill Buckley, along with a boatload of neocons and well-heeled red-state-fascist types on board. The Pod Man and Buckley nearly came to blows over the war question, when Buckley asked Poddy if it didn't bother him that the famed "weapons of mass destruction" were nowhere to be found in Iraq. "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria," snapped the Pod Man.

Syria? Is he serious? I'm afraid he is…

Continuing his rant, the Pod Man avers: "This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better."

Better – for whom? Well, for Israeli hardliners, to start with, who now have 150,000 American soldiers in the Middle East to set against another of their mortal enemies. Better for the neocons, who still control the commanding heights of U.S. policymaking centers in Washington and who are now within reach of their goal of "regime change" throughout the region. As for the rest of us, including poor Buckley, who's had his own magazine (and movement) hijacked by the Pod Man and the neocon pod-people – "I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too" – if you're sick of war, you're no friend of the Pod Man's. If you're sick of the Pod Man – who is engaged in a friendly competition with Joshua Muravchik for the title of warmonger-in-chief of the bomb-Iran crowd – then get in line, because even the most hard-core conservatives, who once supported the president's relentless policy of aggression in the Middle East, are now having second thoughts.

Buckley's face-off with Podhoretz dramatizes, in concentrated form, the slow burn of Republican members of Congress who fear for their seats and the future of the GOP as the neocons drag them down to political oblivion. How long will Republicans, and conservatives in general, consent to carry the millstone of neoconservatism around their necks?

Make no mistake about it: we are headed straight for another war in the Middle East, and it is going to be a doozy. The Democrats will protest that they never wanted it, even as they facilitate the war plans of this administration to the nth degree. Don't dare imagine that a change of administrations will avert the coming war with Iran: a Democratic administration in power will just mean that we'll have Cheneyism without Cheney, at least when it comes to Iran.

The Iranians claim they aren't building weapons, only developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes because they want to export more of their oil. Yet who could blame them if they were building nukes – after being denounced as the main spoke on the "axis of evil" by the president of the United States and threatened with a heavy U.S. military buildup in Iraq and the Gulf? They once did offer to negotiate over not only their nuclear program but also their support for Hezbollah and radical Palestinian factions – but this offer was rudely rejected at the behest of Cheney and his cohorts. This offer should be reexamined and revived: it could and should provide the basis for a negotiated settlement of all outstanding issues between Washington and Tehran.

The United States lived with Soviet nukes aimed at American cities for 50-plus years: we can live with Iranian nukes aimed at Israeli cities (and Israeli nukes targeting Iranian cities). The alternative is war – and a regional conflagration that will have economic and geopolitical consequences that can only be catastrophic for America.

Conservatives Must Oppose Militarism and War
by Philip Primeau The fetishization of all things martial by the bulk of 21st-century conservatives is inescapable and worrisome. Whether it's rapturous warmongering in the pages of The Weekly Standard or embarrassing displays of machismo on the part of our president-cum-fighter pilot, the sentiment is difficult to evade, yet impossible to understand. It is a thoughtless and superficial obsession, and thoroughly unnatural, for militarism is at odds with everything for which the Right supposedly stands.

Until quite recently, conservatives – that is, people who support limited government, controlled spending, low taxes, individual liberty, rule of law, decentralization, restrained executive authority, and cautious foreign interaction – were skeptics of the military. They regarded it carefully and from a distance, knowing full well its shameful influence on past republics. There was, of course, full recognition of the importance of maintaining a force both dexterous and disciplined, but that reasonable concession was coupled with suspicion and vigilance.

This impulse was long crucial to Anglo-American conservatism, manifesting itself in numerous ways, from opposition to standing armies to advocacy of noninterventionism abroad. English conservative Edmund Burke passionately asserted that even the finest armies are "dangerous to liberty" and can subvert a free society. In the United States, the founders, whose classical liberalism constitutes the core of modern conservatism, enshrined gun rights and local militias in the Constitution because of their hesitation to establish a national military command. Looking backward, they admired not the imperious and pugnacious Caesar but the reluctant soldier Cincinnatus.

Their wariness was good and sensible. Robust, readily exercised armed forces are the antithesis of the conservative program. The military devours tax dollars, thus eliminating any possibility of genuine fiscal discipline. Quick, brutal strength is a tempting substitute for diplomacy, an invitation to war at each and every impasse. And, with a brooding eye toward the PATRIOT Act, it is evident that war triggers a rollback of personal liberty and a deterioration of the rule of law. For some time, these notions were conservative staples; a prime example of their old potency was the fierceness of Sen. Eugene Hale's opposition to President Theodore Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet," that early spearhead of America's global designs. Now only one Republican senator, the indomitable Chuck Hagel of Nebraska , possesses (and exhibits!) such moral tenacity.

The military is the most bloated and opaque organization in the United States, perhaps in the world. Yet few conservatives criticize this shadowy arm of the state. Are these really the same people who would have us believe that they champion good, clean, simple government? The military is constantly excused, with accusations of treachery and disloyalty hurled at anyone who dares bring reproach. Exceptionalism is the name of the game: every other government agency is suspect, but the most reckless, dangerous, and expensive of them all is coddled and protected. This is the most juvenile and grotesque sort of patriotism.

Let me be clear: I respect the men and women who serve our country. They are devoted servants of the Republic. The current conflict has entered my life in many ways, and it has proven the utter cruelty of war, as well as the impressive will and courage of those who suffer it in the trenches. American forces are indeed responsible for positive change throughout history (though not always). These facts stand without question.

That said, the military cannot rightfully be considered a proper tool for forging a world where liberty and democracy may flourish. Such notions are hideously liberal, for they are based on the most dangerous of utopian delusions: that men can be made at gunpoint to change; that nations can be built as easily as destroyed; that societies are artificial rather than organic and can be made to order. These ideas have none of the realism that distinguishes conservatism from dreamy liberal mush.

Furthermore, not merely militarism but war itself is repellent to any orthodox conservative. It is a great uprooter of men and material and a fine destroyer of tradition. The costs of conflict are monumental, the rewards too often minimal. With each falling bomb, international order is torn asunder – contrary to hawkish bombast, war is never fought to maintain or advance an existing order, but always to institute a new one. Bellicosity prompts a disregard for national and popular sovereignty, two important items on the conservative agenda. Randolph Bourne was correct: war is the health of the state, and true conservatism pictures the state as a necessary but terribly sour pill.

At the risk of fomenting internecine squabbling at a time when there should be unity, I urge neoconservative elements of the Right – especially those within the Republican Party – to reconsider their crush on military power and their infatuation with crusades based on Big Ideas. We should be proud of our military, yes, but not smitten by it. Forget petty chauvinism and imperial aggression – let there be real patriotism.

Fellow conservatives: about face?

June 27, 2007 Neoconned Again?
Philip Giraldi That the rhetoric used to justify war against Iraq sounds eerily similar to the case being made to start a war against Iran and Syria is not purely a coincidence. Many of the advocates of a muscular policy against countries regarded as outside the pale or perceived as a threat to Israel come from the same circle of neoconservatives, "resident scholars," and sound-bite experts who move seamlessly from think-tank to advocacy group to academia and back again. The pundits who made the case that led to the Iraq catastrophe are continuing to urge a larger, greater war that would engulf the entire Middle East, though many of them are now arguing that negotiations should precede nuking, if only to prove that diplomacy does not work.

The desire to remake all of the Middle East, not just Iraq, has been around for some time. In April 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz warned, "There's got to be a change in Syria." Friends of Israel have frequently argued that Iran was the "real" enemy in 2003, not Iraq. As before, the advocates of war are being seconded by major voices in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, US News & World Report, and The Weekly Standard. All of the arguments against Iran, Syria, and Iraq have a common source, and they all make two basic points that are constantly repeated for maximum impact: the "axis of evil" states are developing weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorism. To make the case even more compelling, the assumption is then made that the weapons of mass destruction will inevitably be given to the terrorists to use. More recently, the allegations that Iran is supporting Iraqi insurgents and that Syria has been letting foreign jihadists infiltrate across its border have been added to the mix to make the case that Damascus and Tehran are actively engaged in killing American soldiers.

Current efforts to generate war hysteria parallel developments in 2002-3, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. To generate bipartisan support for the war, leading neoconservatives including Bruce Jackson, Richard Perle, and William Kristol launched in 2002 the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Active on the committee were Stephen Solarz, Robert Kagan, Newt Gingrich, and James Woolsey. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman served as honorary chairmen. They were supported by a broad range of other groups sharing the same agenda, notably the American Enterprise Institute and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). The Committee was disbanded after Iraq was invaded. Mission accomplished.

Currently, groups similar in sound and style have been actively making the case for war against Iran and Syria. Organizations like the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI) and the Lebanon Study Group are essentially neocon-funded-and-staffed advocacy groups that argue for the military option as the only way to end the threats posed by "rogue regimes." The FDI, which is headed by Kenneth R. Timmerman and includes fellow neocons Joshua Muravchik and Peter Rodman as founding members, features on its Web site the headlines "How to Topple the Mullahs" and "There Is an Alternative to the Baker-Hamilton Capitulation." All three are regarded as particularly close to the Israel lobby, and Timmerman in particular has frequently been linked to Mossad. He published a newsletter in Paris some years ago, Med News, that was believed to be funded by the Israeli intelligence service, and Mossad almost certainly provided material for his book Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. He has also written The French Betrayal of America. The FDI also cites American Enterprise Institute alum Michael Ledeen as an apparent authority on Iran, which is not at all surprising, as Ledeen is a self-described expert on practically everything. Referring to Iran and Syria, Ledeen has written, "It's time to bring down the other terror masters. Faster, please."

The Lebanon Study Group, which issued its 48-page strategy document in 2000 calling for ending Syria's presence in Lebanon, featured many of the same players. Richard Perle, Doug Feith, and Elliot Abrams were all signatories of the call-to-arms manifesto, which was co-authored by Daniel Pipes. Ironically, the report pitched its argument around the need the preserve Lebanon's Christian community. Christians have been in sharp decline in the Middle East since 2001, largely because of the collateral damage caused by aggressive Bush administration policies such as those advocated by the Lebanon Study Group. Congressman Eliot Engel of New York, a signatory to the document, followed up on its recommendations by introducing the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act, which was passed with overwhelming majorities in Congress in 2003.

The founder of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), Lebanese businessman Ziad Abdelnour, co-authored the Lebanon Study Group report with Pipes. The Committee has been relatively quiet since the passage of the Syrian Accountability Act in 2003, but it once included a whole pantheon of neocon luminaries in its Golden Circle of contributors, including Abrams, Perle, Feith, Ledeen, Paula Dobriansky, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser, Frank Gaffney, and Jeane Kirkpatrick. When the USCFL was founded in 1997, it found supporters among neoconservatives, Christian Zionists, and the Likud Party of Israel. It has links to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Christian Coalition on its Web site.

Apart from the incestuous nature of the groups advocating terrible retribution for recalcitrant Arabs and Persians, there are several major logical disconnects in the case being made against Syria and Iran. There is no actual evidence that either Syria or Iran has any weapons of mass destruction program. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Iranians between 1983 and 1986, but the Iranians did not retaliate in kind, possibly because they were either not able or unwilling to do so. Iran's government insists that its nuclear program exists for the peaceful generation of electricity, and there is no actual evidence to suggest that it is anything but that, only suspicions. Syria likewise might well have limited bio-chem weapons capabilities, but it has never used such weapons and evidence that they exist at all is lacking. Damascus does not have the technical capabilities to develop a nuclear weapon, and it is not likely that it will ever have the resources to do so.

Regarding the terrorist links, attempts to tie Iran to al-Qaeda are far-fetched for a number of reasons, including the historical antipathy of al-Qaeda to the Shi'ite religion. Syria likewise has no demonstrable ties to al-Qaeda. Both Iran and Syria do have links to Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as to several Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas. The groups in question all have one thing in common: they are directed against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and parts of south Lebanon, not against the United States. As such, whatever one believes about the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestine conflict, these groups do not constitute a threat to the United States, and their relationships with Syria and Iran should not constitute a casus belli for Washington. Former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a Christian, has recognized Hezbollah as a "respected and legitimate part of the Lebanese people and government." Most Lebanese would agree, in spite of real concerns about the long-term political objectives of the group, particularly in light of Hezbollah's extremely popular defeat of Israel's July 2006 invasion. A solid majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas the last time they were allowed to cast ballots, an exercise in democracy that the Bush administration is not likely to permit a second time.

Finally, there is the argument that Iran in particular and Syria to a lesser extent are both responsible for killing "our soldiers" in Iraq. One thing that all the stories about alleged Iranian and Syrian involvement have in common is their lack of substantiating detail. The stories are light on names, dates, places, and corroborating information. Most rely on anonymous government sources or unsourced assertions that are presented as fact.

In March 2006, even Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted that there was no evidence to back up the claims of direct Iranian involvement in the development of the more effective IEDs. IEDs, which have been used by the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatists ETA among others, are not an Iranian innovation or something that is unique to Tehran's arsenal. The Iraqi army of Saddam Hussein included many specialists in ordnance-design working in its armories, nearly all of whom have been unemployed since 2003. Iraq's arsenals contained all the artillery shells and bombs one might possibly need to construct huge and highly sophisticated roadside weapons, all without any need for Iranian assistance. By one estimate, Iraqis have enough high explosives on hand to continue IED attacks at the current rate for the next 274 years. Hopefully, the United States will not still be occupying Iraq at that time.

Officials: Soviet-Era Caches, Not Iran, Arming Taliban
by Tahir Qadiry MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - While United States officials accuse Iran of arming a resurgent Taliban, officials here say the weapons are actually part of vast caches left behind by the Soviet army that fought a nine-year war in Afghanistan before withdrawing in 1988.

Ustad Basir Arifi, secretary for the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) program in northern Afghanistan, told IPS that weapons abandoned by the Soviet Union there are now being moved by professional smugglers to the southern provinces where the Taliban Islamist movement has its stronghold.

"Huge caches of weapons remained with the people from the Soviet Union period. These are now being smuggled to the south of Afghanistan. These weapons are bought in the north of Afghanistan and smuggled to the south to be used against government and foreign forces," Arifi said.

According to Arifi, security officials have on several occasions intercepted weapons being smuggled to the south. He said the DIAG has urged the government to take firm measures to avoid all this.

Abdul Aziz Ahmad Zai, the chief of DIAG, said his group was "very concerned over the issue. It shows that the Taliban are being fortified."

Zai did not rule out the possibility of weapons originating from outside Afghanistan. "Smugglers could be bringing weapons from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north. A good transit point could be Badakhshan province," he said without mentioning Iran.

Zai said powerful syndicates were carrying out the smuggling. "However, our security officials and the Interior Ministry are working very actively in this regard," he added.

According to Zai, the recent riots in northern Jowzjan province were an indicator of the fact that weapons were freely available to people. He also said that there still were armed groups in the north of Afghanistan. "It is a very great concern for us that there are lots of illegal armed groups in the north," he said.

Gen. Abdul Manan, representative of the defense ministry in the DIAG program, said the government has been able to collect 70,000 heavy and light weapons from the whole country under the DDR and DIAG programs. But he believes that at least a million more pieces were in the hands of armed groups in the north.

A gun smuggler operating from the Balkh province district told IPS that he has been in the business for the last two years. The Pashto-speaking, bearded man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he regularly comes to the north to buy different kinds of weapons. "I have employed people to collect weapons from people who have them and these are ferried to the south."

"I have my customers in Kandahar. When the weapons reach there, they come and receive it. I make a good profit. I can buy an AK-47 for $200 in the north and sell it for $400 in the south," he added. Occasionally he smuggles explosives as well.

Ahmad Shah, 45, a resident of Chemtal district in the Balkh province, freely admitted to supplying the smugglers with guns. "I earn my living through running this business," he told IPS.

Atta Mohammad Nur, the governor of Balkh province, neither accepts nor rejects the fact that the weapons are being smuggled to the south. "It could be right. Insurgents are doing their utmost to disrupt life in the country. They could be smuggling weapons from north to the south," he said.

Rohullah Samun, spokesman for the Jowzjan governor, accepts that vast amount of weapons still exist in the province. "People do have weapons. There are lots of illegal armed militias in Jowzjan and its neighboring provinces. Some of the warlords are regrouping," he said.

The reference was to Abdorrashid Dostum, one of Afghanistan's most formidable warlords. Dostum, who once supported the Soviets, has had a hand in the many regime changes that this war-torn country has seen over the last three decades and retains enormous influence in Jowzjan.

Dostum was among leaders who helped the U.S.-led forces to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001. Until recently he was regarded as the strongman of the north, but his role has been reduced to that of a military adviser to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai.

On June 13, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN television in Paris that there was "irrefutable evidence" that Iran was supplying weapons to the Taliban.

Ironically, the Taliban owes its origins largely to mujahedeen that were once armed and backed by the U.S. against communist rule in Afghanistan and the Soviet occupation.

(Inter Press Service)

4th branch of government?
By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published June 27, 2007

A What do you do when you are the vice president of the United States and some nitpicking outfit like the National Archives and Records Administration wants you to comply with the law? Why, you try to abolish the pesky agency.

That was Dick Cheney's response when asked to adhere to an executive order signed by President Bush to provide reports on the handling of classified information by his office. He hasn't bothered to file the required reports since 2003, and after blocking inspection of his records, he tried to shut down the archives office charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information.

Cheney takes the position that the disclosure law does not apply to him because his office is not an "entity within the executive branch." The vice president's only constitutional duty is to preside over the U.S. Senate, but he doesn't answer to the Senate either. In Cheney's world, he is neither accountable to the executive nor the legislative branch. So what is he - a rogue vice president or a fourth branch of government?

Since Cheney insists he is not a member of the executive branch, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., says he will file an amendment to the spending bill for executive operations that places a hold on funds for the vice president's office until Cheney clarifies to which branch of government he belongs.

From the start, Cheney has been obsessed with secrecy, and he will go to almost any length to keep his office dark - even admitting that he is a member of the executive branch, if that's what it takes. In 2001, Cheney asserted executive privilege in brushing off a congressional probe of his dealings with oil industry lobbyists in shaping the administration's energy policy.

So the question remains: To whom, if anyone, is Dick Cheney accountable?

US Elites Can't Decide Who Should Rule Palestinians
by Khody Akhavi U.S. President George W. Bush threw his full support behind President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (PA) last week, declaring the Fatah leader "the president of all the Palestinians."

With Hamas, the Islamist political party backed by Iran and described by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, firmly in control of Gaza, the administration is now attempting to bolster Abbas, who formed a new government in the West Bank following the Hamas takeover in Gaza.

No sooner had Bush, along with Israel and the European Union, pledged to resume the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid to the beleaguered PA than neoconservative commentators and some congressmen criticized Washington's public support of Fatah's "moderate" Palestinian government and demanded that rigid conditions be placed on any aid sent to the Palestinian territories.

"The administration should condition aid to the Abbas government on his promoting reform," wrote Republican Congressman Eric Cantor in a piece for National Review online. "Fatah must offer Palestinians something better than the engine of corruption and anti-Israel vitriol it has always been."

"We have no choice but to support him. But before we give him the moon, we should insist upon reasonable benchmarks of both moderation and good governance – exactly what we failed to do in the Oslo process," wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post.

Hidden between the lines is the belief among neoconservatives that there is no Palestinian "partner" for peace, that Fatah isn't the answer, and that there is no near-term solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, a position that bolsters the interventionist policies that have taken root within the neoconservative camp.

"The Palestinians are a backward people, indoctrinated toward brutality. They don't rate a sovereign state or anyone's help until they civilize themselves," wrote Andrew C. McCarthy of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in National Review online.

"We are enabling their hatred when we provide support without insisting that the Palestinian people – not just Abbas and Fatah, but the people – convincingly forswear revolution, terrorism, violence, ethnic-cleansing, and the goal of eliminating Israel."

While Bush's embrace of Abbas' emergency government appears to signal a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy, neoconservatives need not worry about just how much U.S. money will go to prop up the troubled Palestinian leadership. Even before Hamas swept the January 2006 Palestinian elections, U.S. aid to the PA was heavily monitored, barred, and restricted by Congress, and it does not appear that Bush's most recent overtures will translate into significant disbursement of funds.

"The whole business of putting onerous conditions on Palestinians has created the disaster that is occurring today. Equally absurd is the idea that the neocons are jumping for joy over the idea that there will not be a Palestinian state," said M.J. Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the dovish Israel Policy Forum (IPF).

"[Neoconservatives'] goal is the destruction of the idea of a Palestinian state, and it's as ridiculous and offensive as it was the first 20 or 30 years when the Arab leaders were saying Israel was an artificial construction that could just disappear," he said.

When Abbas came to power after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, Congress imposed strict limitations on funds for the Palestinians and demanded that the administration provide detailed reports regarding every dollar spent in the Palestinian territories.

What little economic support the U.S. does provide to the Palestinian territories is channeled through international aid organizations, such as USAID and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

"As we've seen in the past, Congress is more sacred than the pope and places conditions that are far more rigorous," said Ori Nir, communications director of Americans for Peace Now, a Zionist pro-peace group.

Israel has also withheld between $500 million and $600 million from the Palestinian government since Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006. Under a 1994 economic pact, Israel collects income tax from Palestinians who work in Israel and customs levied from Palestinian goods that come through the borders.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that Israel would disburse $350 million immediately, with the assurance from Abbas' government that the funds will not fall into the hands of Hamas. Israel froze those transfers once Hamas came to power.

"We need to see a new situation with the Palestinians as an opportunity which will lead eventually to talks on forming a Palestinian state," said Olmert at a press briefing following his Tuesday meeting at the White House. "We need to strengthen the financial situation in the Palestinian Authority and to create opportunities for cooperation."

When asked if pro-Israel lobby groups were in the process of promoting legislation aimed at severely restricting the flow of aid to Abbas' newly formed government, Josh Block, spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, acknowledged that, at least temporarily, there was a general climate of opportunity to support Abbas.

"We'd like to see [the PA] succeed, but we have to make sure that American taxpayer money goes to the right place, under commonsense conditions – auditing, accounting transparency," said Block. "That kind of accountability is what we would expect from anybody everywhere."

Other critics argue that while Bush's public support of Abbas and the "two-state solution" is a positive step that reflects the realist vision of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, it is too little too late.

"It's better than nothing. It's half of a good idea," said Rosenberg. "It would have been a great idea if they would have done it when it mattered."

(Inter Press Service)

Bargaining with Tehran
by Christopher Preble

Christopher Preble is the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He will be discussing U.S.–Iranian relations Wednesday at the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth.



The prospect of U.S. military action against Iran is making headlines — again.

On June 10, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I–Conn., said that the United States must "be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians." A week earlier, during a nationally televised debate, several of the leading GOP presidential contenders refused to rule out first use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Although Lieberman was primarily concerned with suspected Iranian activities in Iraq, most of the focus has been on Iran's nascent nuclear program. But to advocate preventive war at this stage presumes that Iran, having successfully mastered the nuclear fuel enrichment cycle, will not only proceed to the development of nuclear weapons but will then use these weapons.

We have heard such fatalism before.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey predicted in 1993 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb within a decade. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute warned in April 2003 that Iran might conduct a nuclear test that summer. Columnist Charles Krauthammer warned in January 2006 that Iran was "probably just months away" from the point of no return in its nuclear program.

Admittedly, achieving a verifiable end to Iran's nuclear ambitions is a difficult challenge. There are no magical solutions. Policymakers must choose from a set of imperfect options, but they must avoid a sense of panic. There is no imminent threat. We have time to carefully weigh the likely costs and prospective benefits of each of the four main options on the table.

Option One: Sanctions

Sanctions have been a key component of U.S. policy since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Historically, sanctions have a poor track record. They tend to hurt the very people most inclined to push a regime toward political reform, and with the possible exception of the South African apartheid regime in the 1980s, they almost never persuade a targeted government to abandon high–priority policies.

Sanctions spring from an impulse to do something regardless of its usefulness. The U.N. Security Council has approved two rounds of multilateral sanctions on Iran within the past nine months, so far with little success.

If the Security Council managed to pass a broad–ranging sanctions package that included the one product on which Iran is so heavily dependent (oil), and if it succeeded in rigidly enforcing the system, the likely result would be skyrocketing world oil prices, making smuggling prohibited goods even more profitable. Driving the market further underground is likely to enrich Iran's rulers at their citizens' expense.

Option Two: Subversion

Under the Iran Freedom Support Act, the United States has been funding Iranian opposition groups with the goal of undermining the government in Tehran. The program's actual scope is almost laughably modest — $75 million in the 2007 budget — but the precedent set by the similarly modest Iraq Liberation Act should give anyone pause.

Undoubtedly, many young Iranians are fed up with repressive Islamist rule and want a more open society, but U.S. support for democratic–minded reformers allows the theocracy to claim that the U.S. is meddling in Iranian domestic affairs.

As Ted Galen Carpenter has noted, "A good many Iranians remember that the U.S. interfered once before in their country's internal affairs, and the result was not a happy one." In this context, reformers are branded as traitors and American stooges. No wonder, then, that prominent Iranian dissidents Shirin Ebadi and Muhammad Sahimi recently wrote that "no truly nationalist and democratic group will accept such funds."

Option Three: Military Action

But if sanctions are likely to fail, and if subversion might prove counterproductive, military action is the least desirable of all.

The costs of military action are almost certain to vastly exceed the benefits. What's more, even the advocates of military strikes believe that such attacks will merely postpone — not eliminate — the Iranian nuclear program.

Many pro–war analysts argue that the strikes can be limited to Iran's nuclear facilities and therefore will not devolve into an Iraq–style quagmire, but there are significant problems associated with this approach.

First, Iran's nuclear facilities are well hidden. A successful attack would require first–rate intelligence, and the House Select Committee on Intelligence concluded in 2006 that "American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear program."

Many Iranian nuclear facilities have been hardened against attack, with some buried under as much as 18 meters — 59 feet — of rock and concrete. Since our most effective conventional "bunker–busters" can only penetrate 6 meters — 20 feet — underground, the U.S. military might have to resort to low–yield nuclear weapons to bust the bunkers. Also, because many of the facilities are located in or near major population centers, bombing would result in significant civilian casualties.

Whether an attack used nuclear or conventional munitions, it probably would lead to a wider war.

Iranian leaders probably would conclude that the survival of the regime was at stake, and they would have no incentive to hold anything back. They could retaliate in several ways.

Although Iranian–sponsored terrorist attacks against the United States itself are unlikely, they cannot be ruled out entirely. More likely are attacks against U.S. interests in the region. Attacking fragile U.S. supply lines that snake from Kuwait to Baghdad through heavily Shiite southern Iraq would be a low–risk, high–reward strategy for Tehran.

Then there is the possibility that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Even the threats from mines and small suicide boats are sufficient to give military planners pause.

And although the Iranians might be doing themselves long–term harm by cutting off or severely restricting the flow of oil, their chief source of state income, even minor disruptions in the global oil market often result in short–term windfalls for oil exporters. Cambridge Energy Research Associates estimated in July 2006 that even a $5 increase in the price of a barrel of crude would generate an additional $85 million per week in revenues for Iran.

A likely unintended consequence of a military strike against Iran would be a potentially fatal blow to Iran's nascent political reform movement. Some of the leading proponents of military strikes against Iran hope that the Iranian people, under the stress of devastating aerial bombardment, will embrace the very people dropping bombs on them.

A "rally–'round–the–flag effect" that strengthens hard–liners and marginalizes reformers is far more likely.

It is nearly impossible to find Iranian dissidents who favor even targeted U.S. military strikes against their country. Shirin Ebadi has flatly warned that "any attack on Iran will be good for the government." The Hoover Institution's Abbas Milani, a founder of the Iran Democracy Project, agrees: "An American or Israeli attack on Iran would sound the death knell of [the democratic] movement."

Option Four: Deterrence

Deterrence has been tried before. The United States managed to deter some unpleasant people, including Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, from using nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

Could we not also deter the mullahs from engaging in suicidal behavior? Simply put, are the mullahs crazy?

Not at first glance. As Cato Institute foreign policy analyst Justin Logan documents in a recent paper, Iran's leaders have exhibited moments of prudence and pragmatism during the past 27 years, and they have even reversed course when confronted with overwhelming force.

As the Iran–Iraq War dragged into its eighth year, the costs of fighting on became too high, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini acted rationally. Though his earlier rhetoric had been uncompromising, the leader of the Iranian revolution sued for peace when faced with the prospect of complete and total destruction by the hated Iraqis, who were then backed by the equally hated United States.

Khomeini's successors would suffer a vastly greater defeat if they were foolish enough to launch nuclear weapons against the United States. They are almost certainly not that foolish.

The slightly more plausible prospect — that Iran would give nuclear weapons to a terrorist proxy, believing that it could shift the risks to others and avoid paying the ultimate price — is also highly unlikely because such a transfer would not advance Iran's strategic interests. What's more, the mullahs could not ensure that the weapons would only be used against their enemies. Iran has never been known to transfer chemical or biological weapons to its longtime proxy Hezbollah, and the transfer of nuclear weapons would be far more risky.

Deterrence carries its own risks. We had a few close calls during the Cold War. And we have yet to test our ability to deter states from transferring weapons to non–state actors. It is useful, however, to weigh the costs and risks of deterrence against the much higher costs and risks of preventive war.

Option Five: Bargain

There is one other option available to policymakers, however: Washington could offer a grand bargain to Tehran.

The Bush administration would renounce its stated policy of regime change in Iran and would offer to normalize diplomatic and trade relations. In exchange, Tehran would pledge to open its nuclear program to rigorous, on–demand international inspections to guarantee that nuclear material was not used for weapons purposes.

If the Iranians rejected such an offer, we could revert to alternative policies. If the theocracy endured, or if a new regime came to power but continued to move ahead with the nuclear program, the United States should be prepared to rely on deterrence.

The one thing we must not do is start another preventive war. That could engulf the entire region and threaten U.S. interests for many years to come.

This article appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on June 24, 2007.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ja...d_cheneyism.htm June 27, 2007

Cheney and Cheneyism

By James Brett

Dick Cheney is one thing and Cheneyism is another. Dick "Backseat" Cheney is a political cockroach. Open the door and in he scuttles, finding immediately the dark places in any space and feeding surreptitiously from the general mess. He acquires power by taking jobs that no one else really wants, and in this way resembles Iosip Vissarionovich Djugashvili (Uncle Joe Stalin) more than any other character preceding him. The Vice Presidency is such a job, a laughing stock, a glass of warm "spit," an obscure office where a Cheney could thrive. He has. He has been the power behind much in the CheneyBush administration, a fact we have identifed months and months ago.


Cheney has a low center of gravity, a knack for being unperturbed by the by-play of Washington politics, but make no mistake, he is keeping score, relentlessly.


Dick Cheney is a profane man who fancies himself cut from a mold that once cut Teddy Roosevelt. He is a "sportsman" and respecter of manly arts. When an "effete Vermonter" pissed him off, his "Go Fuck Yourself, Senator" came straight from the hip and was barely noticed by his prefrontal cortex or any other part of his brain that might be involved (in other people) with ethics and courtesy. Cheney believes that courtesy is a weakness, but that brash assertiveness is the mark of a survivor, a winner. Accordingly, Cheney does not think much of other human beings.

Cheney is a social darwinist, a person who believes that human life is meant to be a struggle for survival. For him survival is gaining control over his environment, and being one who acquired power by association with smarter people or richer people or just by accident, he sees himself as a survivor and the rest are, well, stooges. This aspect of Cheney's personality dominates his conscious and unconscious life.


Cheney has a bit of an inferiority complex because he does not have a very strong pedigree or resume. He coattailed Rumsfeld into Washington politics and made use of his singular opportunity like some sort of dark Horatio Alger, learning the back channels, the dirt, the seamy side and the levers of power. He has been astute and despite his modest intellect, he is above average in achievement, and it would be a very big mistake to underestimate his ability to reach a conclusion quickly. It would be appropriate to notice, nevertheless, that he (like many who are not well-endowed with synaptic agility) tends to hold onto his judgments despite accumulating evidence. This is part of his "manliness" construct, of course. Cheney is no wimp, at least not his own mirror.


Dick Cheney's grounding in the masculine mythos and in the survival of the fittest ethos of the 19th century American wild west, (as portrayed to the world on Wyoming license plates), and the strange moodiness that overcomes natives of the area during the Chinook winds off the slopes of the Rocky Mountains (rendering Casper as the per capita suicide capital of America) led him inexorably to the neocon ideology expressed by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).


You will recall that when the Constitution was written and ratified the United States was not a world power and was engaged in consolidating itself as an isolated continental power in North America, with unfriendly Spaniards to the south and semi-hostile, semi-friendly British to the north in Canada. The ideas in the PNAC credo do not quite fit our Constitution and, therefore, Cheney does not quite believe the Constitution fits anymore. I would not want to overemphasize the causal connection here. Cheney's animus was never quite ready for the give and take and balance that our Constitution requires. For Dick Cheney the Constitution is an old piece of paper, useful for giving a minimum structure in which to operate, but almost entirely without moral or principled implications. He just does not respect it, period.


Cheney is fundamentally and viscerally intolerant. To satisfy his own intellect, he does not have to concede anyone's hypotheses about life, government, politics. He reaches his own opinion and that is that. It is not pragmatism,; it is totalitarian, in fact. Cheney is not democratic and frankly disdains the idea that democracy is a better form of government than oligarchy or even kleptocratic corporatist fascism, which is his own faith and the proof that Cheney does not exist in a vacuum.


There are Cheneyists and Cheneyites all over the place. Cheney, like Stalin before him, has salted the federal government with people who are beholding to him and him alone for their position and sway. They were picked because they agree with Dick Cheney's analysis of history and government, namely, that there is too much opportunity there to be left to the hoi polloi, to democratic inefficiencies, to the vagaries of public opinion.


Cheneyism is a generalized phenomenon into which Dick Cheney fits in some ways only by accident. He seems to epitomize the callous disregard for rule of law, for might-makes-right foreign affairs, for secrecy and subterfuge, for torture, for anti-democratic spin and for spoils-system kleptomania, but actually Cheney is just the most visible and perhaps the most immediately dangerous practitioner of Cheneyism.


Cheneyism is a name we give to the dark, kleptofascist corporatists that swim among us. Their group is as old as the republic and never gives up trying to acquire power and riches so to acquire insulation from the vagaries of life. In Cheney's case no amount of insulation will protect him from his own dark damaged heart. Cheneyism is a false ideology, of course. The fittest are those who cooperate, not those who kill and torture and disdain the lives and minds of people they cannot use.


Cheneyism is, to paraphrase Rahm Emanuel on Countdown Tuesday evening, the credo of George Bush, for without that partnership Cheney would not be where he is today-the options behind "the Decider." Long time readers will recall that you saw here first the notion that Bush's declaration of being The Decider was partly in reaction to seeping knowledge that Cheney was the power behind the throne. But Cheneyism goes much, much farther than Bush. There are Cheneyistas in Congress, men and women who believe that their affiliation to the Republican party trumps their oath of office, particularly the idea that their number one job is to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States. The hardline party loyalists believe as Cheney does the moment he awakes hanging upside down in his cave on Naval Observatory hill that a republic need not be a democracy, but rather would be more effective and efficient as a corporatist republic, representing the needs of the masses through their employers, and-never forget-enriching those chosen to "public service" in the corporate ladder-climbing processes.


Cheney may fall. He may die of heart failure. He may get impeached. The problem is that like all good cockroaches, he has multiplied and his kind are in the cracks and boldly strutting down the boulevards of Washington. Meanwhile the press believes they have identified an anomolous creature. They are wrong. Cheney is just the darkest of his kind.


JB



Authors Website: http://americanliberalism.org

Authors Bio: James R. Brett, Ph.D. taught Russian History in several universities before becoming an academic administrator. His academic interests have been in the history of science and the history of ideas, particularly Marxism and classical liberalism, but also psychology and consciousness studies. He became an acknowledged expert on curriculum and faculty research administration. He is a frequent contributor to liberal and progressive blogs and is the founder and publisher of The American Liberalism Project.

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Understanding General Petraeus's Strategy
Testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
by Frederick W. Kagan
06/27/2007 10:00:00 AM



Testimony delivered by Frederick W. Kagan, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, June 27, 2007.

American military forces in Iraq are now entering the second phase of their kinetic operations even as political efforts continue on a separate but linked track. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus are in the midst of a multi-faceted program that will not proceed in a linear way and will not generate clear and consistent metrics in all of its phases. The early signs are positive in a number of respects, although difficulties and challenges clearly remain. But it is too soon to evaluate the outcome of an operation that is just moving into the first of several phases intended to produce significant positive change in the situation overall.

It is now beyond question that the Bush Administration pursued a flawed approach to the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2007. That approach relied on keeping the American troop presence in Iraq as small as possible, pushing unprepared Iraqi Security Forces into the lead too rapidly, and using political progress as the principal means of bringing the violence under control. In other words, it is an approach similar to the one proposed by the ISG and by some who are now pushing for political benchmarks and the rapid drawdown of American forces as the keys to success in the war. It is no more likely to work now than it was then. Political progress is something that follows the establishment of security, not something that causes it. The sorts of political compromises that Iraq's parties must make are extraordinarily difficult--one might even say impossible--in the context of uncontrolled terrorism and sectarian violence. And the Iraqi Security Forces, although significantly better than they were this time last year, are still too small and insufficiently capable to establish security on their own or even to maintain it in difficult and contested areas without significant continuing coalition support.

For all of these reasons, the president changed his strategy profoundly in January 2007, and appointed a new commander in General Petraeus and a new Ambassador in Ryan Crocker to oversee the new approach. This new approach focuses on establishing security in Baghdad and its immediate environs as the prerequisite for political progress. It recognizes that American forces must be in the lead in many (but not all) areas, and that they will have to remain in areas that have been cleared for some time in order to ensure that security becomes permanent. The aim of the security strategy is to buy space and time for the political process in Iraq to work, and for the Iraqi Security Forces to mature and grow to the point where they can maintain the dramatically improved security situation our forces will have helped them to establish.

The scale of the problem required an increase in American forces in Iraq, which the president ordered in January, of around 40% (from the equivalent of 15 brigade combat teams to more than 21). It also required a multi-phased approach on both the military and the political side of the equation, which has been begun.

The first phase began on January 10th with the announcement of the new strategy and the beginning of the movement of the 5 additional Army brigades and Marine elements into the theater. That deployment process was only completed at the beginning of this month--in fact, critical enablers for those combat forces are still arriving in theater. As the new units entered Iraq, the U.S. military commanders began pushing those that were already in the theater forward from their operating bases into Joint Security Stations and Combat Outposts in key neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere. The purpose of these movements was not to clear-and-hold--the units present in theater were not sufficient in numbers to conduct such operations. The purpose was instead to establish positions within those key areas and to develop both intelligence about the enemy and trust relationships with the local communities that would make possible decisive clear-and-hold operations subsequently. During this phase of the operation, additional Iraqi Security Forces deployed to Baghdad in accord with a plan developed jointly by the U.S. and Iraqi military commands. All of the requested units appeared in the first Iraqi Army rotation, and the Iraqi military has just completed its second rotation of units into Baghdad--again, all designated units arrived, and their fill levels were generally higher than in the first rotation.

Generals Petraeus and Odierno did not allocate the majority of the new combat power they received to Baghdad. Only 2 of the additional Army brigades went into the city. The other 3 Army brigades and the equivalent of a Marine regiment were deployed into the areas around Baghdad that our generals call the "Baghdad belts," including Baqubah in Diyala province. The purpose of this deployment was not to clear-and-hold those areas, but to make possible the second phase of the operation that began on June 15. The purpose of this operation--Phantom Thunder--is to disrupt terrorist and militia networks and bases outside of Baghdad that have been feeding the violence within the city. Most of the car bomb and suicide bomb networks that have been supporting the al Qaeda surge since January are based in these belt areas, and American commanders have rightly recognized that they cannot establish stable security in the capital without disrupting these networks and their bases.

But even this operation--the largest coordinated combat operation the U.S. has undertaken since the invasion in 2003--is not the decisive phase of the current strategy. It is an operation designed to set the preconditions for a successful clear-and-hold operation that will probably begin in late July or early August within Baghdad itself. That is the operation that is designed to bring security to Iraq's capital in a lasting way that will create the space for political progress that we all desire.

The U.S. has not undertaken a multi-phased operation on such a large scale since 2003, and it is not surprising therefore that many commentators have become confused about how to evaluate what is going on and how to report it. Sectarian deaths in Baghdad dropped significantly as soon as the new strategy was announced in January, and remain at less than half their former levels. Spectacular attacks rose as al Qaeda conducted a counter-surge of its own, but have recently begun falling again. Violence is down tremendously in Anbar province, where the Sunni tribes have turned against al Qaeda and are actively cooperating with U.S. forces for the first time. This process has spread from Anbar into Babil, Salah-ad-Din, and even Diyala provinces, and echoes of it have even spread into one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad--Ameriyah, formerly an al Qaeda stronghold. Violence has risen naturally in areas that the enemy had long controlled but in which U.S. forces are now actively fighting for the first time in many years, and the downward spiral in Diyala that began in mid-2006 continued (which is not surprising, since the Baghdad Security Plan does not aim to establish security in Diyala).

All of these trends are positive. The growing skill and determination of the Iraqi Army units fighting alongside Americans is also positive. Some Iraqi Police units have also fought well. Others have displayed sectarian tendencies and participated in sectarian actions. Political progress has been very slow--something that has clearly disappointed many who hoped for an immediate turnaround, but that is not surprising for those who always believed that it would follow, not precede or accompany, the establishment of security at least in Baghdad. And negative sectarian actors within the Iraqi Government continue to resist making necessary compromises with former foes. Overall, the basic trends are rather better than could have been expected of the operation so far, primarily because of the unanticipated stunning success in Anbar and its spread. But it remains far too early to offer any meaningful evaluation of the progress of an operation whose decisive phases are only just beginning.

To say that the current plan has failed is simply incorrect. It might fail, of course, as any military/political plan might fail. Indications on the military side strongly suggest that success--in the form of dramatically reduced violence by the end of this year--is quite likely. Indications on the political side are more mixed, but are also less meaningful at this early stage before security has been established.

Great commanders in history have understood two critical truths: the situation in war is constantly changing, and decisions must take that change into account--and, therefore, that it is best to delay decisions until the last possible moment to ensure that they are made on the basis of the most recent and accurate understanding of the situation, rather than on preconceptions formed in different circumstances. The situation in Iraq is very different today from what it was in January 2007, to say nothing of November 2006. It will be very different in September, and still more different in December of this year. It would be a great error to attempt to decide now upon the strategy to pursue when the current plan has actually been implemented, because we cannot now predict what the situation will be then with any confidence or accuracy. And it would be a very grave error indeed to rush now to abandon the first strategy that offers some real prospect for success in favor of a return to an approach that has already failed repeatedly.

--Frederick W. Kagan

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Middle East Quarterly: Jihad's New Leaders

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross


Over the past year, a number of prominent terrorists -- including Shamil Basayev and Abu Hafs al-Urdani -- were killed on the battlefield, and there have also been a host of less publicized kills and captures. But although the death of any prominent terrorist is a victory for the United States and its allies, our terrorist enemies possess what CIA director General Michael Hayden has described as a "'deep bench' of lower-ranking personnel capable of stepping up to assume leadership responsibilities." As new terrorist leaders emerge, terrorist strategy is shifting discernibly.

My colleague Kyle Dabruzzi and I have a new article in the Summer 2007 issue of Middle East Quarterly examining how jihadist strategy is changing. An excerpt:

They may represent disparate communities, but each of these new terrorist leaders employs similar strategies. First, they are more aware of their international image than their predecessors. While they seek to shock and strike fear into their enemies, they also wish to appear reasonable to their constituents and the larger Muslim population. While the Taliban engaged in massacres, and Zarqawi distributed videos showing the beheading of captives, the new leaders minimize overt acts of brutality that could undermine public support. Second, the new jihadists consider management of civil society more than did their predecessors. They do not wish to preside over failed states. The Islamic Courts Union actually raised Somalia’s standard of living modestly. Third, these new leaders have exploited advanced communications technologies to improve their outreach and forge broader alliances. It should not surprise that jihadist movements have grown stronger. Examination of each of their cases and areas of operation demonstrates how these new jihadist leaders have enacted these new strategies.

Somalia: Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys

On June 5, 2006, the fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union (ICU) seized Mogadishu and, over the next several months, consolidated control over the country’s other major cities. However, as they moved on Baidoa, the last bastion of the U.N.-recognized government, Ethiopian forces swept through the country, forcing the ICU from Mogadishu and other major cities. The Ethiopian government remained concerned about the ICU because its predecessor and major component, Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya (AIAI), had sponsored Islamic separatist groups in the Ethiopian border province of Ogaden. Nevertheless, the ICU’s brief success catapulted it into a model for other jihadist groups. Twice, Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Islamic fighters to flock to Somalia to support the ICU.

Despite their routing, the ICU leadership survived the Ethiopian advance. ICU leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has called for insurgency, and the U.N.’s Monitoring Group on Somalia has warned that "the ICU is fully capable of turning Somalia into what is currently an Iraq-type scenario, replete with roadside and suicide bombers, assassinations, and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities." Already, there are initial signs that Ahmed's threat is not empty. In early 2007, ICU militants attacked African Union peacekeeping forces and attempted to assassinate President Abdullahi Yusuf.

The man most likely to lead the insurgency is Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys. As a 42-year-old Somali army colonel fighting in the 1977 war against Ethiopia, he won a medal for bravery. He then worked to establish himself as a respected religious figure and also a political leader with considerable clout in Islamic extremist circles. In 1991, Aweys co-founded and led AIAI, which sought to create an Islamic state in the Horn of Africa. Then, starting in 2006, he served as head of the ICU's consultative council in which capacity he shaped ICU policies, which brought a strict version of Shari'a (Islamic law) to Somalia but in a manner that was more consistent with economic growth and civil society than previous jihadist attempts at imposing Islamic law.

The article is not yet posted on Middle East Quarterly's web site, but the full text (minus the footnotes) can be found here, at the web site for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. For more on this topic, see an adaptation from the MEQ article that appeared at The Daily Standard this morning, as well as a recent symposium in which I participated at Front Page Magazine that explores evolving jihadist strategies.

June 28, 2007 12:35 AM Link

Giuliani's 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

By Faiz Shakir and Nico Pitney and Amanda Terkel and Satyam Khanna and Matt Corley, Center for American Progress. Posted June 28, 2007.


During a speech Monday at Pat