Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_el...m_s_watch_p.htm

October 1, 2007

Is Freedom's Watch PNAC in Populist Drag?

By Elizabeth Ferrari

Is Freedom’s Watch PNAC in Populist Drag?



According to the Associated Press, Freedom’s Watch is new conservative group of “outsiders” who seek to influence a broad range of issues, unlike their close cousins, the Swiftboaters, who focused only on smearing John Kerry. But, the roster of PNACers involved in this project – L. Scooter Libby, Mary Maitlan, consultants from the so called “think tank” The American Enterprise Institute, as well as former White House officials Ari Fleisher and Bradley Blakeman, begs the question in what sense can this group be called “outsiders”. Outside of the West wing or, outside of the Bush Cabinet? Or, maybe only outside of public view?



This White House front group is dominated by people close to Dick Cheney, like Mel Sembler who also chaired the Libby defense fund and Kevin E. Moley who was a senior aide to Cheney’s 2000 campaign. It has been reported that the idea for the group resulted from a meeting of Florida Republicans where Cheney was the keynote speaker. The group was quickly welcomed to the conversation on Iraq by the neoconservative group Foundation for Defense of Democracies, led by Bill Kristol, Steve Forbes, Jeanne Kilpatrick, James Woolsey, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthammer -- indeed, the PNAC “A” team.



Freedom’s Watch has been selling itself as a grassroots organization although anyone who can read can determine very quickly that it isn’t. Their website exhibits none of the messiness of a working grassroots enterprise – in fact, it looks somewhat uninhabited. Their stated goals echo White House rhetoric, down to their favorite metaphor. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, our new enemy is Hitler, we are fighting another World War II and anyone who disagrees with their imperialism is Chamberlain. (They really need to come up with a new vehicle because this one is a dead giveaway.)



The group’s grassroots window dressing is being validated by the AP and also by the New York Times, who seem strangely unable to distinguish between real grassroots and neoconservative astroturf. Both outlets have compared Freedom’s Watch to MoveOn, a real grassroots group, repeatedly. Over this last weekend, AOL had a poll up comparing the two groups. The AP has referred to these two organizations as left and right “bookends” which is patently untrue. MoveOn has about 3.3 million members. It is unknown how many members Freedom’s Watch has besides the original 20 who could write million dollar checks.



The group’s first effort was an ad to rally support for Bush’s failed Iraq policy. The ad used the Administration’s strategy of conflating Iraq with 9/11. It deployed a veteran, (an amputee) as the mouthpiece for the message just as the Administration has from the outset used our service people as props for their public policy statements.



During the visit of the Iranian president, the group took out a big ad in the New York Times. The ad was a photograph of Ahmadinejad, the title was “TERRORIST!” and the ad ripped Columbia University. A complaint from Freedom’s Watch was also behind the Time’s apology for the MoveOn Petraeus ad. It’s ironic that the Times apologized for an ad critical of a general officer up to his chin in Bush propaganda but not for the ad that called out a visiting foreign head of state during an increasingly tense diplomatic moment.



Freedom’s Watch is planning a forum, in conjunction with AEI fellows, to develop a rationale and a PR campaign to sell a war on Iran. This is a private, not a public grassroots, gathering -- although there may be foie de gras and a few rounds of golf. If this isn’t PNAC in populist drag, we're looking at neocon twins separated at birth.

This is highly informative, very late, provocative, and all true.


Published on Monday, October 1, 2007 by
Truthdig.com<http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071001_israels_toy_soldiers/>

Israel's Toy Soldiers**

by Chris Hedges

If you are a young Muslim American and head off to the Middle East for a
spell in a fundamentalist "madrassa," or religious school, Homeland Security
will probably greet you at the airport when you return. But if you are an
American Jew and you join hundreds of teenagers from Europe and Mexico for
an eight-week training course run by the Israel Defense Forces, you can post
your picture wearing an Israeli army uniform and holding an automatic weapon
on MySpace.

The Marva program, part summer camp part indoctrination, was launched in
Israel in 1981. It allows participants, who must be Jewish and between the
ages of 18 and 28, to fire weapons, live in military barracks in the
Negevdesert and saunter around in an Israeli military uniform saluting
and taking
long hikes with military packs. The Youth and Education Corps of the Israel
Defense Forces run four 120-strong training sessions a year.

"Upon arrival, the participants experience an abrupt change into army life:
wearing uniforms, accepting army discipline, and learning the programs and
lessons integral to the program," the Let Israelis Show You Israel Web site
<http://www.israelfree.com/marva.asp>reads. "The program includes military
content such as: navigation, field training, weapons training, shooting
ranges, marches and more, as well as educational content such as: Zionism,
Jewish Identity, history and knowledge of the land of Israel. All of this is
taught in Hebrew in an intensive eight weeks."

"The participants finish the program after completing a short, intensive,
exhilarating military experience that allows them to taste Israel in a way
that they never could before-as part of the Israel Defense Forces," the site
reads. "They leave the program with a feeling of belonging and a strong
connection to Israel, and many return to Israel to continue the connection
that was created in the framework of the Marva course."

There are, of course, gushing testimonials about the program.

"I spent the first few days of Marva doubting my decision, wondering why I
had come, wondering if there was any way out. With all of the running,
yelling orders, discipline and Hebrew, I felt horribly out of place," writes
Canadian David Roth of his summer. "It was a completely different world from
the one I was used to. All that changed, though, by the end of the first
week. We had our first 'Masa' (Hike). It was very hard, but at the end, we
all knew, our M16s were waiting for us at the 'tekes' (Ceremony). We got
through the 8 kilometers and had our 'tekes' and got our guns. It felt
amazing, and from that point on Marva was incredible."

How have we reacted when we discovered that American Muslims were being
taught in a foreign country to fire machine guns at paper figures and
simulate military maneuvers? And what about the summer schools in
Gazaorganized by Islamic Jihad designed to train young Palestinians in
the
basics of military life? These Gaza camps, uncovered in 2001, were widely
denounced by Israel as proof that the Palestinians were teaching their
children to hate and kill.

The argument in favor of camps in Israel, as opposed to camps in Pakistan,
is that these young men and women are not going to come back and use what
they have learned to harm Americans. They are not terrorists. Muslims,
however, have not cornered the market on terrorism and violence. Radical
Jews have also been involved in terrorist attacks in Israel and the United
States.

I discovered an American in Israel in 1989 named Robert Manning. A huge,
burly man, Manning was living in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiyrat
Arba. When I found him he was carrying a pistol, a large knife strapped to
his leg and an M-16 assault rifle. He was part of a Jewish terrorist group
called Committee for Protection and Safety of the Highways that set up ad
hoc roadblocks and pulled Palestinians from cars to beat and often shoot
them. He was a follower of Meir Kahane, the leader of the Jewish Defense
League, who was implicated in terrorist attacks in the United States and
Israel. Manning served as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces in the West
Bank.

Manning was wanted in California for murder. He had been charged in a 1980
mail-bomb killing as part of his involvement in the Jewish Defense League.
The bomb was intended for the owner of a local computer firm, but the
package holding the device was opened by the firm's secretary, Patricia
Wilkerson, who was killed instantly by the blast.

Manning, full of bluster and a bitter racism toward Arabs, used as his
pseudonym the name of the FBI agent in charge of his case, a bit of humor
that backfired on him by confirming my suspicion of his identify. I obtained
the picture from his California driver's license and showed it to his
neighbors at Kiyrat Arba. They identified him from the photo. I wrote an
article affirming that Manning, heavily armed and an active member of the
Israeli army, was living in a Jewish settlement. The Israeli government,
until that moment, said it had no information about his location. He was
extradited in 1993 and sentenced the next year to life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole for 30 years. He is in a maximum-security prison
in Florence, Colo.

Those who go through the Marva summer program are indoctrinated as
thoroughly as Muslims who go overseas and are told they are part of a
greater jihad for Islam. The results, given Israel's close alliance with the
United States, may not be negative for those in power in the United States,
but it may be very negative for those Americans defined as the enemy,
especially Muslims, should we suffer another 9/11. The program inculcates
hatred and a belief in the efficacy of violence to solve the problems in the
Middle East. It identifies Israel with militarism. It feeds the idea that a
Jew born in Brooklyn has a birthright to settle in Israel that is denied to
an American of Palestinian descent.

Jerusalem, aside from being one of the most beautiful cities in the world,
is one of the most literate, creative and intellectual. Do these young men
and women really know the best of Israel by spending eight weeks playing
soldier and glorifying the military? Is the cause of Israel advanced by
mirroring the twisted militarism of Islamic fundamentalists?

Terrorists arise in all cultures, all nations and all religions. We have
produced more than our share. Ask the people of Vietnam or Iraq. The danger
of a military program such as these is that it solidifies a mind-set of us
and them. It romanticizes violence. It widens the divide that leads to
conflict. It makes dialogue impossible. There are great Israeli
institutions, from the newspaper Haaretz to the courageous Israeli human
rights organization B'Tselem <http://www.btselem.org/English/> to
Peace Now<http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/homepage.asp>.
A summer working for them, rather than wearing an army uniform, unleashing
bursts of automatic fire in the desert and singing Israeli patriotic songs,
might actually help.

*Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly
two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of
"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
America.<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743284437?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim>
"*

© 2007 Truthdig, L.L.C.

URL to article: *http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/01/4223/*

October 8, 2007 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative


Sycophant Savior
General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington—if not in Baghdad.
by Andrew J. Bacevich
In common parlance, the phrase “political general” is an epithet, the inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court disaster—so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the former.
George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all “political generals” in the very best sense of the term. Their claims to immortality rest not on their battlefield exploits—Washington actually won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through brute force rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field commander at all—but on the skill they demonstrated in translating military power into political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great soldiers possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war’s political dimension.
David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting his recent assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the “way forward,” Petraeus demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst kind—one who indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative, namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes.
From the very beginning of the Iraq War, such harmony has been absent. The war’s military and political aspects have been badly out of synch. (In this regard, the hackneyed comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are tragically apt.) The failure to plan for an occupation, the wildly inflated expectations of Iraq’s rapid transformation into a liberal democracy, Donald Rumsfeld’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the insurgency’s existence until long after it had begun, the deeply flawed kick-down-the-door campaign that ensued once Rumsfeld could no longer deny reality: all of these meant that from the outset, the exertions of U.S. troops, however great, tended to be at odds with our stated political intentions. Our actions were counterproductive.
The Petraeus-Crocker hearings found Petraeus in a position to resolve that problem. Over the previous eight months, a discredited president had effectively abdicated responsibility for managing the war. “I trust David Petraeus” became George W. Bush’s mantra, suggesting an astonishing level of presidential deference. Sometime in early 2007, the task of formulating basic strategy for Iraq had effectively migrated from Washington to Baghdad, passing from the office of the commander in chief to the headquarters of the senior field commander. The president made it clear that he intended to takes his cues from his general. Military judgment would inform, even determine, political decisions.
The general has now made his call, and President Bush has endorsed it: the surge having succeeded (so at least we are assured), it will now be curtailed. The war will continue, albeit on a marginally smaller scale. As events develop, it just might become smaller still. Only time will tell.
Petraeus has chosen a middle course, carefully crafted to cause the least amount of consternation among various Washington constituencies he is eager to accommodate. This is the politics of give and take, of horse trading, of putting lipstick on a pig. Ultimately, it is the politics of avoidance.
A political general in the mold of Washington or Grant would have taken a different course, using his moment in the spotlight not to minimize consternation but to stir it up to the maximum extent. He would have capitalized on his status as man of the hour to oblige civilian leaders, both in Congress and in the executive branch, to do what they have not done since the Iraq War began—namely, their jobs. He would have insisted upon the president and the Congress making decisions that wartime summons them—and not military commanders—to make. Instead, Petraeus issued everyone a pass.

* * *

In testifying before House and Senate committees about the current situation in Iraq, Petraeus told no outright lies. He made no blustery promises about “victory,” a word notably absent from his testimony. The tone of the presentation was sober and measured. It contained the requisite references to complexity and challenge. Petraeus acknowledged miscalculation and disappointment. In contrast to his commander in chief, he did not claim that U.S. troops were “kicking ass.”
Yet the essence of his message was this: after four years of futile blundering, the United States has identified the makings of a successful strategy in Iraq. The new doctrine that Petraeus had devised and implemented—the concept of securing the population and thereby fostering conditions conducive to reconstruction and reconciliation—has produced limited but real progress. This gives Petraeus cause for hope that further efforts along these lines may yet enable the United States to create an Iraq that is stable, unified, and not a haven for terrorists. In so many words, Petraeus told Congress that senior U.S. commanders in Iraq had finally found the right roadmap. The way ahead may be long and difficult—indeed, it will be. But Petraeus and his key subordinates know where they are. They know where they need to go. And above all, at long last, they know how to get there.
Critics have questioned the data that Petraeus offered to substantiate his case. They charge him with relying on dubious statistics, with ignoring facts that he finds inconvenient, and with discovering trends where none exist. They question whether to credit the much-touted progress in Anbar province to American shrewdness or to the vagaries of Iraqi sectarian and tribal politics. They cite the pathetic performance of the corrupt and dysfunctional Iraqi government. They note the disparity between the Petraeus assessment and those offered by the intelligence community, by the Government Accountability Office, and by congressionally appointed blue-ribbon commissions. They point out that other highly qualified and well-informed senior military officers—notably, Gen. George Casey, the army chief of staff, and Adm. William Fallon, commander of United States Central Command—have publicly expressed views notably at odds with those of General Petraeus.
The critics make a good case. Yet let us ignore them. Let us assume instead that Petraeus genuinely believes that he has broken the code in Iraq and that things are improving. Let’s assume further that he is correct in that assessment.
What then should he have recommended to the Congress and the president? That is, if the commitment of a modest increment of additional forces —the 30,000 troops comprising the surge, now employed in accordance with sound counterinsurgency doctrine —has begun to turn things around, then what should the senior field commander be asking for next?
A single word suffices to answer that question: more. More time. More money. And above all, more troops.
It is one of the oldest principles of generalship: when you find an opportunity, exploit it. Where you gain success, reinforce it. When you have your opponent at a disadvantage, pile on. In a letter to the soldiers serving under his command, released just prior to the congressional hearings, Petraeus asserted that coalition forces had “achieved tactical momentum and wrestled the initiative from our enemies.” Does that reflect his actual view of the situation? If so, then surely the imperative of the moment is to redouble the current level of effort so as to preserve that initiative and to deny the enemy the slightest chance to adjust, adapt, or reconstitute.
Yet Petraeus has chosen to do just the opposite. Based on two or three months of (ostensibly) positive indicators, he has advised the president to ease the pressure, withdrawing the increment of troops that had (purportedly) enabled the coalition to seize the initiative in the first place.
This defies logic. It’s as if two weeks into the Wilderness Campaign, Grant had counseled Lincoln to reduce the size of the Army of the Potomac. Or as if once Allied forces had established the beachhead at Normandy, Eisenhower had started rotating divisions back stateside to ease the strain on the U.S. Army.
Petraeus likes to portray himself as a thinking soldier. Having devoted his
Ph.D. dissertation to the lessons of Vietnam, he qualifies as a serious student of counterinsurgencies. He knows that they require lots of troops—many more than the United States has in Iraq relative to the size of the population there. He knows, too, that they require lots of time—on average, nine or ten years by his own publicly expressed estimation. The counter-insurgency manual that Petraeus helped draft prior to taking up command in Baghdad makes these points explicitly.
If Petraeus actually believes that he can salvage something akin to success in Iraq and if he agrees with President Bush about the consequences of failure —genocidal violence, Iraq becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks directed against the United States, the Middle East descending into chaos that consumes Israel, the oil-dependent global economy shattered beyond repair, all of this culminating in the emergence of a new Caliphate bent on destroying the West—then surely this moment of (supposed) promise is not a time for scrimping. Rather, now is the time to go all out—to insist upon a maximum effort.

* * *

There is only one plausible explanation for Petraeus’s terminating a surge that has (he says) enabled coalition forces, however tentatively, to gain the upper hand. That explanation is politics—of the wrong kind.
Given the current situation as Petraeus describes it, an incremental reduction in U.S. troop strength makes sense only in one regard: it serves to placate each of the various Washington constituencies that Petraeus has a political interest in pleasing.
A modest drawdown responds to the concerns of Petraeus’s fellow four stars, especially the Joint Chiefs, who view the stress being imposed on U.S. forces as intolerable. Ending the surge provides the Army and the Marine Corps with a modicum of relief.
A modest drawdown also comes as welcome news for moderate Republicans in Congress. Nervously eyeing the forthcoming elections, they have wanted to go before the electorate with something to offer other than being identified with Bush’s disastrous war. Now they can point to signs of change—indeed, Petraeus’s proposed withdrawal of one brigade before Christmas coincides precisely with a suggestion made just weeks ago by Sen. John Warner, the influential Republican from Virginia.
Although they won’t say so openly, a modest drawdown comes as good news to Democrats as well. Accused with considerable justification of having done nothing to end the war since taking control of the Congress in January, they can now point to the drawdown as evidence that they are making headway. As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsch observed, Petraeus “delivered an early Christmas present” to congressional Democrats.
Above all, a modest drawdown pleases President Bush. It gives him breathing room to continue the conflict in which he has so much invested. It all but guarantees that Iraq will be the principal gift that Bush bestows upon his successor when he leaves office in January 2009. Bush’s war will outlive Bush: for reasons difficult to fathom, this has become an important goal for the president and his dwindling band of loyalists.
Granted, no one is completely happy. Yet neither does anyone go away empty-handed. The Petraeus plan offers a little something for everyone, not least of all for Petraeus himself, who takes back to Baghdad a smidgen of additional time (his next report is not due for another six months), lots more money (at least $3 billion per week), and assurances that his tenure in command has been extended.
This outcome reflects the handiwork of someone skilled in the ways of Washington. Yet the ultimate result is to allow the contradiction between our military efforts in Iraq and our professed political purposes there to persist.

* * *

Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli is one officer keen to confront rather than ignore that contradiction. In an article appearing in the current issue of the journal Military Review, General Chiarelli writes:

The U.S. as a Nation—and indeed most of the U.S. Government—has not gone to war since 9/11. Instead the departments of Defense and State (as much as their modern capabilities allow) and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war while the American people and most the other institutions of national power have largely gone about their normal business.

Chiarelli is correct. His statement goes directly to the heart of the matter. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to sustained bipartisan applause, President Bush committed the United States to an open-ended global war on terror. Having made that fundamental decision, the president and Congress sent American soldiers off to fight that war while urging the American people to distract themselves with other pursuits. The American people have done as they were asked.
The result, six years later, is a massive and growing gap between the resources required to sustain that global war, in Iraq and elsewhere, and the resources actually available to do so. President Bush, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff serving as enablers, has papered over that gap by sending soldiers back for a third or fourth combat tour and, most recently, by extending the length of those tours. In a country with a population that exceeds 300 million, one-half of one percent of our fellow citizens bear the burden of this global war. The other 99.5 percent of us have decided to chill out.
The president has made no serious effort to mobilize the wherewithal that his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require. The Congress, liberal Democrats voting aye, has made itself complicit in this shameful policy by obligingly appropriating whatever sums of money the president has requested, all, of course, in the name of “supporting the troops.”
Petraeus has now given this charade a further lease on life. In effect, he is allowing the president and the Congress to continue dodging the main issue, which comes down to this: if the civilian leadership wants to wage a global war on terror and if that war entails pacifying Iraq, then let’s get serious about providing what’s needed to complete the mission—starting with lots more soldiers. Rather than curtailing the ostensibly successful surge, Petraeus should broaden and deepen it. That means sending more troops to Iraq, not bringing them home. And that probably implies doubling or tripling the size of the United States Army on a crash basis.
If the civilian leadership is unwilling to provide what’s needed, then all of the talk about waging a global war on terror—talk heard not only from the president but from most of those jockeying to replace him—amounts to so much hot air. Critics who think the concept of the global war on terror is fundamentally flawed will see this as a positive development. Once we recognize the global war on terror for the fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get serious about designing a strategy to address the threat that we actually face, which is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The antidote to Islamic radicalism, if there is one, won’t involve invading and occupying places like Iraq.
This defines Petraeus’s failure. Instead of obliging the president and the Congress to confront this fundamental contradiction—are we or are we not at war?—he chose instead to let them off the hook.
Of course, if he had done otherwise—if he had asked, say, to expand the surge by adding yet another 50,000 troops—he would have distressed just about everyone back in Washington. He might have paid a considerable price career-wise. Certainly, he would have angered the JCS, antiwar Democrats, and waffling Republicans who want the war to go away. Even the president, Petraeus’s number-one fan, would have been surprised and embarrassed by such a request.
Yet the anger and embarrassment would have been salutary. A great political general doesn’t tell his masters what they want to hear. He tells them what they need to hear, thereby nudging them to make decisions that must be made if the nation’s interests are to be served. In this instance, Petraeus provided cover for them to evade their responsibilities.
Politically, it qualifies as a brilliant maneuver. The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.
__________________________________________
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

P5+2 Statement on Iran
(George Perkovich, Carnegie Analysis)

Monday, October 1
The P5+2 statement reveals that the Iran/IAEA deal effectively neutralized the U.S., French, and U.K. efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran in response to Iran's ongoing refusal to accede to UN Security Council resolutions. The statement basically says the world should wait and hope that Iran gives the IAEA full answers and that somehow all the outstanding issues are indeed resolved . . . When President Ahmadinejad said last week that the Iran case is closed in the Security Council and the matter belongs with the IAEA, he was absolutely wrong from a legal standpoint. The UN Security Council Resolutions remain active and binding. But some members of the Security Council, following the lead of Director General ElBaradei, are showing that President Ahmadinejad is having his way, at least for now.

"Six-Party Talks in Breakthrough Nuclear Deal," Digital Chosunilbo

• "Split in Group Delays Vote on Sanctions Against Iran," By Helene Cooper, The New York Times

• "U.S.-Kyrgyz Republic Cooperation Program for Combating Nuclear Smuggling," U.S. Department of State

• "Nuclear Warhead Design Hits Snag," By Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

• "Some EU Officials Want to Resist Nuclear Power Renaissance," Deutsche Welle

• "First Floating Nuclear Power Plant to Come into Service in 2011," RIA Novosti

IForeign Policy News and Commentary Update October 2, 2007

ranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad definitely got the villain treatment during his recent US visit, but Mosaic asks whether it's Americans he's even talking to. After all, getting tough with Uncle Sam earns big points in the Middle East.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20070...jad_is_smiling/

WHY THEY DON'T LIKE US: WOULD YOU FOLLOW THE COUNTRY THAT BUNGLED IRAQ? - ANNE APPLEBAUM (WASHINGTON POST, OCTOBER 2): The U.S.?s closest friends really dislike is not our traditional pushiness, our violent movies or even our current president (though they don't like him much) but our incompetence. We've been bad at looking after our allies over the past five years, bad at thanking them or compensating them for military contributions to Iraq, bad at maintaining very basic aspects of public diplomacy, such as student-exchange programs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0101331_pf.html

CAN'T WIN WITH 'EM, CAN'T GO TO WAR WITHOUT 'EM: PRIVATE MILITARY CONTRACTORS AND COUNTERINSURGENCY - P. W. SINGER (POLICY PAPER, FOREIGN POLICY AT BROOKINGS, SEPTEMBER): 'The Blackwater episode resonated negatively not merely inside Iraq, but throughout the Muslim world. Every single media source led with the episode in the days that followed, focusing in on how the US could hire such '...arrogant trigger-happy guns for hire, mercenaries by any other name.' as UAE based Gulf News put it. ... Ironically, the incident occurred at the very same time that Secretary of State Rice was in the region at a conference, hoping to jump start the Arab-Israeli peace process, an effort that many think is key to sucking the poison out of U.S.-Muslim world relations. Instead of a public diplomacy coup for the U.S., the regional press instead focused on what the leading Arabic newspaper al Hayat titled as Blackwater... Black Conference.'
http://www3.brookings.edu/fp/research/singer200709.pdf
SEN OBAMA IRAQ SECURITY CONTRACTORS AMENDMENT WINS APPROVAL IN SENATE PRESS RELEASE (NH INSIDER, SEPTEMBER 28): Excerpt from a letter (September 28) from Senator Barack Obama to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: 'I am concerned about the impact of this [Blackwater] incident, as well as others since the private contractor role at Abu Ghraib, on our overall effort to win the wider 'war of ideas' that is required to defeat terrorism. This recent incident and other incidents have been widely reported in the Muslim world, with negative implications for U.S. efforts. The result is that not only are the private contractors being blamed, but so is the U.S. government. Has the State Department conducted an analysis of the consequences of turning over such functions in a contingency operation zone to private contractors? Is this outsourcing actually hurting, rather than helping, our public diplomacy efforts, especially our efforts to win 'hearts and minds'?"
http://www.nhinsider.com/press-releases/se...-approval-.html
CHIEFS DECRY WAR IN PAKISTAN - WILLIS WITTER (WORLD AFFAIRS BOARD, OCTOBER 2): Pashtun tribal chiefs, who for centuries have held sway in the Hindu Kush mountain range along the border with Afghanistan, say they are being thrust into an Iraq-style war between violent Islamists and the Pakistani army. The views of chiefs underscore the difficulty of the State Department's effort to implement a key goal of public diplomacy -- to convince the Muslim world that the United States is not an enemy of Islam.
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/political...r-pakistan.html

DIPLOMATS AND BUREAUCRATS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE - K. DANIEL GLOVER (BELTWAY BLOGROLL, NATIONAL JOURNAL, OCTOBER 2): When diplomats and federal procurement folks join the blogosphere, you can rest assured that blogging is no longer just a fad -- and that's exactly what happened last week. The State Department launched a blog called Dipnote in advance of a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. "With Dipnote," wrote Sean McCormack, the assistant secretary of State for public affairs, "we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world." Other State Department officials who have posted entries are: Noel Clay, a press officer in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and Under Secretary Karen Hughes.
http://beltwayblogroll.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/10/

DECONSTRUCTING AHMADINEJAD?S VISIT: WHEN PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IS NOT PUBLIC DIPLOMACY E.C. NISBET (FRAMING CONFLICT: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, OCTOBER 1): http://framingconflict.blogspot.com/2007/1...visit-when.html


AGAINST MUSLIMS: NEOCONS USE CNN TO CONTINUE PSYOPS AGAINST AMERICAN MUSLIMS - (SUBUL AL-SALAM, OCTOBER 1): 'It should be noted that CNN is a branch of the 4th Army PSYOPS group staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), 'a shadowy government propaganda agency that planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies,' as Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting revealed way back in 2000.'
http://abdulhalimismail.blogspot.com/2007/...st-muslims.html

DOD APPROVED STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PLAN FOR AFGHANISTAN (MOUNTAINRUNNER,SEPTEMBER 30): http://mountainrunner.us/2007/09/dod_appro...ic_communi.html
9/11 IS OVER - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 30): Before 9/11, the world thought America's slogan was: 'Where anything is possible for anybody.' But that is not our global brand anymore. Our government has been exporting fear, not hope: 'Give me your tired, your poor and your fingerprints.' Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/...agewanted=print

THE POLITICS OF CONFIDENCE - ROGER COHEN (NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 1): The unpopularity of George W. Bush has led many to believe global America-hating will ebb once he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009. That's a dangerous assumption. It's dangerous because the extent of American power will continue to invite resentment whoever is in the White House, and because America's perception of the terrorist threat will still differ from that of its Asian and European allies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/opinion/...agewanted=print

COUNTING CIVILIAN DEATHS IN IRAQ MICHAEL DOBBS (WASHINGTON POST, OCTOBER 1): Without more information from Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) on the methods used to combine American and Iraqi data, it is impossible to tell whether Petraeus is "cooking the books," in the charged language of the recent MoveOn.org ad.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checke...aths_in_ir.html

TRENDS IN IRAQ - MICHAEL O'HANLON (WASHINGTON TIMES, OCTOBER 1): The bottom line, that must not be forgotten amid all the competing reports and confusion and politics, is that U.S. government databases show clear and significant reductions in Iraqi civilian fatalities over the course of 2007.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart

OUR DISGRACEFUL REFUGEE SCORE CARD: WHY DOES THE U.S. TAKE IN FAR FEWER REFUGEES -- ESPECIALLY IRAQIS -- THAN IT SHOULD? - ANNA HUSARSKA (LOS ANGELES TIMES, SEPTEMBER 29): Whether on purpose or by lack of commitment, the Bush administration failed to meet its own minimal standard of offering a haven to a few thousand of the most vulnerable Iraqis. This is wrong. Such failure makes the U.S. lose hearts and minds across Iraq.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commen...omment-opinions

IRAQ "BRAINS" DREAM OF STUDYING ABROAD - (ISLAMONLINE.NET & NEWS AGENCIES, OCTOBER 1): Troubled with the daily car bombs and threats of violence, Iraq's top-notched students want to escape the chaotic future of their war-ravaged nation.
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satelli...-News/NWELayout

SUBCONTRACTING THE WAR EDITORIAL (NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 1): Iraqis -- whose hearts and minds the Bush administration insists it is finally winning -- were infuriated by the reported killing at of least eight Iraqis, including an infant. killings, by guards from Blackwater USA, assigned to protect American diplomats. The fact that American diplomatic activity in Iraq nearly came to a halt when Blackwater was grounded for a few days shows how much American operations have come to depend on mercenaries.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/opinion/...agewanted=print

THE SHADOW ARMY - JANINE R. WEDEL (BOSTON N GLOBE, SEPTEMBER 30): The Iraq war has exposed the dangers of contracting out vital state functions to private actors.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial...ow_army?mode=PF

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE IRAQI: BLACKWATER AND PRIVATE MILITARY FIRMS IN IRAQ - WAJAHAT ALI (COUNTERPUNCH, SEPTEMBER 29/30): As of September 2007, Blackwater continues its convoy movements on the streets of Iraq. The black heart of American private military firms in Iraq has a strong, healthy pulse indeed.
http://www.counterpunch.org/ali09292007.html

BLACKWATER WAVES: THE PRIVATE SECURITY FIRM HAS MADE PLENTY OF ENEMIES IN IRAQ AND IN WASHINGTON ? EDITORIAL (WASHINGTON POST, OCTOBER 2): For some time to come, Blackwater or other security companies will be needed to protect senior U.S. diplomats and other personnel. The focus of the current reviews should be ensuring that they conform to the standards governing U.S. troops and can be held accountable when they commit excesses.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7100101435.html

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE - PETE HEGSETH (NATIONAL REVIEW, SEPTEMBER 30): The sounds of silent progress in Iraq will eventually overcome the steady drumbeat of defeat here at home.
http://tank.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDN...MTRkNDdjNDY5MDM=

YOU CAN'T WIN WITH CIVIL WARS: HISTORY TEACHES THAT CONFLICTS LIKE IRAQ DRAG ON AND RARELY PRODUCE PEACE DEALS - BARBARA F. WALTER (LOS ANGELES TIMES, OCTOBER 2): The sad irony of the civil war in Iraq is that by deposing Saddam Hussein, we've created a situation that is likely to remind us of why we supported him for so long in the first place.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...inion-rightrail

THE END OF BONAPARTISM AND THE WAR ON TERROR JUAN COLE (INFORMED COMMENT: THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST, HISTORY, AND RELIGION, OCTOBER 1): For the 'globalized business' crowd, the Iraq war was not a sacred mission, as it was for the Neoconservatives, but rather just another lowering of barriers to investment and business (which might also have opened the Arab world up, which would have been all to the good).
http://www.juancole.com/2007/09/end-of-bon...-on-terror.html

HISTORY AND THE DRUMBEAT OF WAR - JAMES CARROLL (BOSTON GLOBE, OCTOBER 1); Fortunately the Bush administration's generic embrace of "preventive war" is discredited by Iraq, which is the main reason to hope no preemptive attack on Iran is coming.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial..._of_war?mode=PF

A HEADLINE YOU'RE NOT READING: IRAN READY TO WORK WITH US ON IRAQ - ANTHONY KAUFMAN (HUFFINGTON POST, OCTOBER 1)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-kauf...ea_b_66669.html

AN IRANIAN UNIVERSITY INVITES BUSH TO SPEAK - ROBIN WRIGHT (WASHINGTON POST OCTOBER 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...?hpid=sec-world

BUSH VS. IRAN: TO BOMB OR NOT TO BOMB? ? EDWARD M. GOMEZ (SFGATE.COM, OCTOBER 1)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate...;entry_id=20758

BLOGGING AHMADINEJAD IN TEHRAN - TOM PARKER(NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 30): Excerpts of what Iranian bloggers had to say about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?s visit to Columbia University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/...tml?ref=opinion

GUEST POST: THE INVENTION OF AN ANTI-CHRIST - JON STOKES (TOM PAINE, SEPTEMBER 28): The 'wingers need an Antichrist, the Bushies need a pretext, and the Israelies need protection... All of this makes Ahmadenijad the Most Dangerous Man Alive, and someone whose country must be invaded at all costs.
http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/guest_pos...nti_christ?tx=3

ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY: SHIFTING TARGETS -- THE ADMINISTRATION?S PLAN FOR IRAN. - SEYMOUR M. HERSH (NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 8): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10...?printable=true

SHIFTING TARGETS - KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL (NATION, OCTOBER 1): The Administration is intent on taking us into another military disaster -- which will destabilize the region and the world and make the US less secure.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=238617

SO WHAT ABOUT IRAN? HOW TO MAKE IRAQ LOOK LIKE WHIPPED CREAM - URI AVNERY (COUNTERPUNCH, SEPTEMBER 29/30): One thing I am ready to predict with confidence: whoever pushes for war against Iran will come to regret it. http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery09292007.html

THE REGION: AHMADINEJAD'S AGENDA BARRY RUBIN (JERUSALEM POST, OCTOBER 1): Ahmadinejad's goals are his control over Iran, Iran's control over the Persian Gulf area (especially Iraq), Israel's destruction, Iranian leadership of the Middle East, and even world domination, in roughly that order.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...ticle%2FPrinter

THE USUAL SUSPECT - JEFFREY GOLDBERG (NEW REPUBLIC, OCTOBER 1): The unmistakable message of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is that the destruction on September 11 was caused in significant measure by the Jews. Who really benefits from making anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism seem so indefensible?
http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=200710...=goldberg100807

ISRAEL'S TOY SOLDIERS - CHRIS HEDGES (TRUTHDIG, OCTOBER 1): .
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200710...s_toy_soldiers/

BUSH, OIL AND MORAL BANKRUPTCY RAY MCGOVERN (TOMPAINE.COM, OCTOBER 1): So why the pressure for a wider war in the Middle East in which any victory will be Pyrrhic for Israel and for the U.S. The short answer is arrogant stupidity; the longer answer?what the Chinese used to call "great power chauvinism" and oil.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/10/0..._bankruptcy.php

A SMALL OUTBREAK OF MIDEAST HOPE - JIM HOAGLAND (WASHINGTON POST, SEPTEMBER 30): The belated U.S. mediation in the Middle East led by Condi Rice does illuminate three long-term changes that have to be taken into account in judging whether the secretary of state can wring agreement on principles from Olmert and Abbas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2801336_pf.html

WINNING UGLY: IRAQ DOESN?T NEED TO BE A KODAK MOMENT - VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (NATIONAL REVIEW, OCTOBER 1): The current orthodoxy that America is losing the war on terror inside and outside Iraq, while bereft of allies, is simply not true. Instead we are winning; it's ugly perhaps, but winning nonetheless.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Mjg0Y...NTliMTliMzQwMzQ=

A TERRORIST BILL OF RIGHTS? EDITORIAL (WASHINGTON TIMES, OCTOBER 1): This week, House Democrats say they plan to hold hearings on a misguided bill that would grant habeas corpus rights to terrorist detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The proposal would allow terrorists to publicly challenge their status as detainees in the U.S. court system, fracturing the cohesive structure already in place to ensure that highly dangerous suspects are held and processed in a secure and timely fashion.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart

TERROR DATABASE GETS PLENTY OF HITS - SARA A. CARTER (WASHINGTON TIMES, OCTOBER 1): The Terrorist Screening Center has detected more than 40,000 people trying to gain entry into the U.S. who either associated with terrorist groups or were known terrorists themselves, and the database is only going to get better, says the agency's chief.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.d...mplate=printart

NOT A NATION AT WAR - DONALD H. HORNER JR. (BALTIMORE SUN, SEPTEMBER 28): The minuscule size of our armed forces relegates the "global war on terror" to the status of other out-of-sight, out-of-mind activities. We follow this war about as much as we pay attention to the daily operations of the Department of Agriculture.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/o...0,3785168.story

U.S. IS TOP ARMS SELLER TO DEVELOPING WORLD - THOM SHANKER (NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 1): The United States maintained its role as the leading supplier of weapons to the developing world in 2006, followed by Russia and Britain, according to a Congressional study to be released Monday. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the top buyers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01wea...agewanted=print

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_al...ndle_the_le.htm

October 2, 2007

Can We Handle the Lesson of Ahmedinejad's U.S. Visit?

By Alan Hurwitz

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the United States caused a lot of political static. I see the encounter as a learning opportunity and test of strength for our own expressed democratic values. As such, I give us about a C-.

The "welcome" of Columbia President Lee Bollinger was outrageous – self-serving pandering to potential political fallout. The confrontive reaction of CNN to its own expert’s criticism of the statement (“a fontal assault”) made Fox News look wimpy by comparison.

What exactly was President Bollanger’s characterization? “Exhibiting qualities of a petty dictator”, and “Being dangerously uninformed about world events.” Etiquette aside, this sounds a little close to home. He was talking about the Iranian president, wasn’t he?

Can you imagine the probable reaction to President Bush being invited to speak at a major Iranian university, and being attacked and ridiculed by the university's president in the same way?

Walking off the stage would be quite understandable, as would other manifestations of umbrage at this breach of diplomatic standards. It’s difficult to predict. As we know, our president has trouble reacting quickly to unexpected news and events. He might have just kept reading whatever he was reading.

To his credit, President Bush’s words were on target. The Iranian president’s appearance was a testimony to confidence in our system and values. We don't fear ideas that are critical of our own. I'm glad the right speechwriter was on duty that day. Good going, Mr. President! I wish I could believe he wouldn’t have squashed the whole visit, could he have done so.

To be clear, the Iranian president is quite a piece of work. His government, if not he personally, have been responsible for much persecution and pain in his own country, and quite probably terrorist attacks as far away as Argentina. I’m personally offended and sometimes frightened by his ideas that the Holocaust didn't happen and Israel shouldn't exist. If he wasn’t one of the people that invaded our embassy and took our people hostage way back when, he certainly could have been, or perhaps would have liked to be.

Buddhists have a concept that people sometimes come into our lives to facilitate our learning. President Ahmadinejad's visit forces us to rise to our own rhetoric, with regard to free speech and also our willingness to take in uncomfortable views – perhaps to improve our understanding of our place in the today’s world.

Many of the Iranian president's views challenge assumptions that many Americans have come to see as just the way things are. How can one country tell another country it can’t develop nuclear energy? Some would question the right of countries to prohibit others from even developing nuclear weapons, at least without some agreement involving those earlier nuclear countries.

How can a country self-righteously berate another country for “interference” in an adjoining co-religionist country, when that country itself has more than 150,000 troops there, having overthrown the country’s government and destroyed its infrastructure? Oh yeah, the same country that sets up “no-fly zones” in other countries and calls it aggression when those countries resist.

Some assumptions that came to be accepted by the U.S. and others, and silently tolerated by a large part of the world, are now being questioned. The questioning may begin by obnoxious, “Who-do-they-think-they-are” kind of leaders that, mercifully for us, don’t have the elegance to do it more effectively.

The most dangerous lies and slander occur under the radar, like the belief that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attack. For many of the current generation, especially from other parts of the world, the Holocaust, as real as it is for us, is just another historical reference – in this day of omnipresent Internet news, much of it of questionable validity.

We should welcome arguments that challenge our world view, legitimate and otherwise, coming into public view, where we can shed light for others, and perhaps learn something for ourselves. In any case, people will most remember how we act more than what anyone says about us. We make our own credibility.

If we believe in the values of the free marketplace of ideas, we must be up to countering even outrageous arguments, from Iran or Fox News. Dismissing the ideas or their presenters as “evil” doesn't cut it anymore. There are too many in today’s flatter world that don't automatically share our assumptions of “good” and “evil”.

What used to be” obvious”, isn’t so obvious anymore, even if much of it is ultimately right. Thank you, Mr. Iranian President, for our opportunity to learn something and set some records straight.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=397

US dominates arms sales to Third World

WASHINGTON: The United States retained its dominance of the Third World arms market for the eighth year in a row in 2002, according to the latest in an annual series of reports produced by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries.

Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the US government.

New arms agreements with developing nations totalled 17.7 billion dollars, a 10 per cent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, US sales came to 8.6 billion dollars, or almost 48 per cent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 per cent the previous year.

Washington was followed by Russia, which sold 5.7 billion dollars worth of arms; Ukraine (1.6 billion dollars); Italy (1.5 billion dollars); and Germany and France (1.1 billion dollars each).

China was the leading recipient of conventional arms transfers in 2002, accounting for 3.6 billion dollars in purchases; followed by South Korea (1.9 billion dollars); India (1.4 billion dollars); and Oman (1.3 billion dollars).

Of the 10 top recipients, five were in the Middle East - Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, in addition to Oman - and four in Asia, with Malaysia ranking eighth behind China, Korea and India.

Chile, which ranked tenth on the strength of a major purchase of advanced fighter jets from the United States, was the only country outside the other two regions, which have been the developing world's biggest customers for conventional arms for the past decade.

While the Middle East proved the bonanza market of the 1980s - particularly when warring Iran and Iraq, as well as Saudi Arabia, were making huge purchases - Asia, particularly China and India, was the big buyer of the last seven years, according to the report, 'Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1995-2002'.

In that period, China ranked number one, with 17.8 billion dollars worth of purchases; the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ranked second at 16.3 billion dollars; and India third at 14.1 billion dollars, suggesting the emergence of a new arms race between the world's two most populous nations that could dominate the marketfor some time, particularly if purchases in the Middle East continue to decline in relative terms.

The United States, which has sharply upgraded its military relationship with India in the last several years, particularly since the beginning of Washington's "war on terrorism", has made little secret of its hopes of integrating Delhi into a containment strategy against Beijing.

The 84-page report, whose graphs and tables are ritually pored over by intelligence analysts around the world to glean key trends and possible future military threats to their governments, tracks both actual deliveries of arms, as well as new agreements that will result in eventual deliveries.

The time between the signing of an agreement and actual delivery can stretch beyond a decade, depending on many factors.

In addition to covering the value of sales and deliveries each year and over periods as long as seven years, the report also tracks the transfer by various countries and categories of countries of specific weapons systems.

It found, for example, that a total of 60 surface-to-surface missile systems were transferred last year, none of which was supplied by the United States, Russia, China, the four major West European countries (France, Britain, Germany, and Italy) or "all other European countries".

Suppliers of the missiles were found in a category called "all others", which includes North Korea, South Africa, and Israel.

The report does not identify the individual suppliers in a category because that information remains classified.

In the introduction, Richard Grimmett, who has authored the report since it was first published some two decades ago, stressed that the overall trend in arms purchases by the developing world has been downward since the early 1990s, when countries that could afford them bought large quantities of advanced US weapons systems that were displayed during the 1991 Gulf War.

While arms transfers were up in 2002 compared to the previous year, the 17.7 billion dollars in new agreements was still the second lowest in the last seven years.

Grimmett stressed that it was still too soon to assess the impact, if any, of the "war on terrorism", including the ouster of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and this year's war in Iraq.

Economic conditions in specific countries as well as the state of the world economy continued to be a major factor constraining arms buying, according to Grimmett. "Economic as well as military considerations have factored heavily in (developing country) arms purchasing decisions, a circumstance likely to continue for some time," he wrote.

This has benefited both wealthier developing countries vis-a- vis their rivals, as well as those arms suppliers that can provide credit or are willing to provide offset arrangements or joint-production ventures with buyer states in what has become a more competitive market.

The report noted that Russia, which has encountered strong competition for the number two spot on the arms suppliers' list since 1995, intends to offer more flexible credit and payment arrangements than it has in the past in order to secure its ranking.

While China has been the fourth biggest supplier over the same period, "its role is more as a consumer than a buyer", Grimmett told IPS, noting that over the past seven years, the combined sales of the big four European suppliers rival Russia's sales.

Indeed, as a group, the four countries claimed 12 per cent of total sales in 2002, up from 5 per cent in 2001.

Two major buyers of the past decade - Saudi Arabia and Taiwan - are fading as consumers in more recent years, the report says. Riyadh has faced financial constraints and, in fact, is still absorbing weapons systems worth some 64.5 billion dollars that it purchased in the early 1990s.

Taiwan, which ranked second to Saudi Arabia with respect to deliveries since 1995 (20 billion dollars) has dropped out of the top 10 in purchasers, much to the frustration of anti-China hawks in the Bush administration.

Different suppliers also penetrated different regional markets over the same seven-year period. Asia - particularly China, India, and Malaysia - accounted for 82 per cent of Russia's arms sales, or about one-half of all arms sold to the region.

US sales to Middle Eastern clients accounted for 76 per cent of its total arms sales since 1999 and about the same percentage of all sales to the region in that period. It also became the dominant supplier to Latin America in the last three years, primarily on the strength of the warplanes for Chile.

Germany (due to a big sale to South Africa) and Russia were the biggest single arms sellers to Africa in the last three years, at 16 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. By contrast, Washington accounted for only one percent of sales to that continent.

On the other hand, "all other European" countries - mainly Central and Eastern Europe - accounted for a whopping 37 per cent of total weapons transfers to Africa, and a clue as to the source of small arms that are fuelling the region's many civil conflicts, according to Grimmett.-Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

The Anti-Empire Report
On Fascism, Imitation Anti-Semites and Burma

by William Blum / October 2nd, 2007

If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?

I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As the war clouds darkened, I’d be surrounded by intrigue, spies omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the opportunity to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping desperate people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think “Casablanca”. And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists (while the United States and Britain stood aside, when not actually aiding the fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario would have heightened — the fate of Europe hung in the balance. Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland … one could have devoted one’s life to working against all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide; what could be more thrilling, more noble? (Full article …)

Ex-White House Lawyer Targets Spy Tactic
By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

sfgate_get_fprefs(); (10-02) 17:55 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

A former top lawyer for the Bush administration on Tuesday said that parts of the President Bush's much-criticized eavesdropping program were illegal.

There were aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program "that I could not find the legal support for," Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But he would not say exactly what law or constitutional principle the surveillance violated. Goldsmith said the White House has forbidden him from saying anything about the legal analysis underpinning the program — key details long sought by majority Democrats and some Republicans.

As the Justice Department's top legal adviser to the White House from 2003 to 2004, Goldsmith was in charge of writing formal legal opinions and interpretations for the executive branch.

The legal rationale for the program is so secretive it initially was not even shared with top officials, including the general counsel of the National Security Agency, which conducted the surveillance.

Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey also was not "read into," or advised about, the TSP program, despite his role in implementing the warrantless surveillance. As deputy, Comey would have been responsible for approving warrantless surveillance requests when the attorney general was not available.

Goldsmith said he assumes that the White House does not want the legality of the TSP program scrutinized, and he said "the extreme secrecy — not getting feedback from experts, not showing it to experts — led to a lot of mistakes."

The legal justification for the eavesdropping program has been a central point of a standoff between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. The Vermont Democrat has said he wants certain information about the administration's surveillance and interrogation methods before he will schedule confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey, Bush's choice for attorney general.

Key to the debate is a March 2004 showdown at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as he recovered from gall bladder surgery.

Goldsmith, who was in the room, confirmed Comey's earlier account that a physically weak Ashcroft rebuffed White House officials who were trying to get him to reauthorize the eavesdropping program. According to Goldsmith, Ashcroft said he believed the program was illegal.

Goldsmith also confirmed he was among Justice Department lawyers who threatened to resign after the hospital stand off because of the White House's attempt to get around the Justice Department's opinion of the program. The threat of a mass walkout ultimately convinced the White House to adjust the program.

In his testimony, Goldsmith also contradicted former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who told the committee earlier this year there was no dissent in the administration about legality of the program.

Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. government eavesdropped on an undisclosed number of people and entities in the United States without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court was created 30 years ago to oversee surveillance activities inside the country after Congress learned the government had been secretly eavesdropping on Americans for decades, in some cases for political gain.

The FISA court is meant to balance the government's need to periodically collect intelligence inside the United States and the U.S. public's right to privacy. Secret FISA court orders can compel telecommunications companies to cooperate with government surveillance requests and indemnify them from lawsuits.

The Bush administration has asked Congress to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated. Around 40 lawsuits related to the surveillance are pending in federal courts. The administration has refused to give Congress details on the companies' involvement.

On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee went to the companies themselves, asking AT&T, Verizon and Qwest for details on the government's secret surveillance program.

Of the three, reportedly only Qwest rebuffed the government, insisting on a FISA court order first.The law prohibits telecommunications companies from sharing customer records without a court order.

The committee asked in letters sent Tuesday whether the companies allowed government agencies to install equipment on telecommunications lines to copy private Internet traffic, whether they have provided information on customers' networks of associates to the FBI, and whether they have ever been offered legal indemnity or compensation for cooperating with surveillance requests.

Congress approves $1.2 billion worth of US-funded Israeli arms purchases, including 50 huge GBU-28 guided bunker busters

October 2, 2007, 10:30 PM (GMT+02:00)

American GBU-28 guided bunker buster sold to Israel

DEBKAfile’s military sources report the package, discussed by US Pentagon and Israel defense ministry officials, aims at replenishing the seriously depleted Israel Air Force stocks of missiles, bombs and fuel to their level prior to the 2006 Lebanon war, ready for any potential war contingency. Some of these items will be delivered shortly; others over a five-year period.

They include thousands of missiles, tens of thousands of new bombs worth $799 million and 132 gallons of jet fuel worth $308 million.


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Better basic services will ease Iraq violence: US commander
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Sydney (AFP) Oct 2, 2007 - Floods and droughts will become more frequent in Australia and cyclones more intense, as the world's driest inhabited continent heats up due to global warming, a new scientific report warned Tuesday. Sea levels are expected to rise and snow and rainfall to decrease as average temperatures in some areas rise by as much as five degrees Celsius within 70 years, according to the report by govern ... more

Japan may scale down naval mission for Afghanistan
Tokyo (AFP) Oct 3, 2007 - Japan said Wednesday it may scale down a naval mission supporting US-led forces in Afghanistan to try to resolve a row with the opposition that helped bring down the previous government. Lawmakers are to debate whether to halt the refuelling of foreign supply ships in the Indian Ocean so Japan is not seen to be providing indirect support for military activities outside of the Afghanistan the ... more

Blackwater gets a united defense
By Peter Spiegel
At a congressional hearing, the security firm and the State Department deny
accusations of disciplinary problems and seek to portray highly trained
contractors who shoot only when threatened.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izhf0Ev

U.S. to have say in power line siting
By Janet Wilson
In a boost for utilities, the Southland is deemed a key energy corridor,
allowing federal officials to overrule the state and condemn property.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izhi0Ey

Congressmen propose war tax
By Noam N. Levey
As the House passes a measure requiring more reports on Iraq, three Democrats
unveil a plan to spread the 'sacrifice.'
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izho0E5

Britain to cut troop level in Iraq
By Alexandra Zavis
Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he plans to pull out 1,000 of his nation's
5,500-strong force by year's end.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izhp0E6

Israel lifts veil on airstrike against Syria
By Richard Boudreaux and Borzou Daragahi
The nation's media can now cite foreign news reports about last month's
operation but may not publish other data they uncover.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izhq0E7

Accept the Blackwater mercenaries
By Max Boot
Contractors are a fact of war, but they need stronger oversight.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izh70EA

Ahmadinejad finds it warmer in Latin America
By Daniel P. Erikson
Hugo Chavez and company are giving the Iranian president an entree into the U.S.
sphere of influence.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izh80EB

Israel says