TOPOFF: Largest Terror Exercise in U.S. History
October 3rd, 2007 Via: AP:

The nation is preparing for its biggest terrorism exercise ever next week when three fictional “dirty bombs” go off and cripple transportation arteries in two major U.S. cities and Guam, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Yet even as this drill begins, details from the previous national exercise held in 2005 have yet to be publicly released - information that’s supposed to help officials prepare for the next real attack.

House lawmakers were expected to demand answers Wednesday, including why the “after-action” report from 2005 hasn’t been made public. Congress has required the exercise since 2000, but has done little in the way of oversight beyond attending the actual events.

Next week will be the fourth Top Officials exercise - dubbed TOPOFF. The program costs about $25 million a year and involves the federal government’s highest officials, such as top people from the Defense and Homeland Security departments.

“The challenge with TOPOFF is not the exercise itself. It’s to move as quickly as possible to remedy what perceives to be the problems that are uncovered,” former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with AP this week.

Ridge, who launched his own security consulting company on Monday, said he’s a big fan of the TOPOFF exercises. But he said “it’s not acceptable” that the review from the 2005 exercise is still not released publicly.

The House Homeland Security emergency communications, preparedness and response subcommittee was holding a hearing Wednesday on the terrorism exercise program.

This year’s TOPOFF will build on lessons learned from previous exercises, according to the Homeland Security Department, which runs the program. The agency said the Oct. 15-19 exercise would be “the largest and most comprehensive” to date.

According to an internal department briefing of next week’s exercise obtained by AP, a dirty bomb will go off at a Cabras power plant in Guam; another dirty bomb will explode on the Steel Bridge in Portland, Ore., impacting major transportation systems, and a third dirty bomb will explode at the intersection of busy routes 101 and 202 near Phoenix.

Local hospitals and law enforcement agencies will be involved in the “attacks” by the dirty bombs, which are conventional explosives that include some radioactive material that would cause contamination over a limited area but not create actual nuclear explosions.

“Lessons learned from the exercise will provide valuable insights to guide future planning for securing the nation against terrorist attacks, disasters and other emergencies,” according to the department’s Web site.

The after action report from TOPOFF 3, which deals with issues that came up in the 2005 exercise, is supposed to identify areas for improvement. That report is still going through internal reviews.

The failure of the opponents to the war in Iraq to find more support stems from their failure to know and understand the facts. Congressional oversight is at a new low. A commentary that appeared in Politico on October 1 explains my point of view.




In Petraeus hearings, where was oversight?
By: Winslow T. Wheeler
October 1, 2007 07:00 PM EST

In 1972, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took detailed testimony from Secretary of State William P. Rogers about the continuing war in Indochina.

As a junior staffer for Sen. Jacob K. Javits (R-N.Y.), I watched committee chairman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) grill Rogers - almost literally.

Fulbright constantly prompted Rogers with fact after fact that his answers were incomplete or one-sided.

Fulbright knew all the facts, uncovered by an assiduous professional staff that discovered a whole lot more than what the Defense and State departments wanted them to know.

The situation became embarrassing for Rogers. At the end of the hearing, the secretary of state and his gaggle of staff filed past me in the audience seats.

They were not happy; one in the entourage turned angrily to an underling and hissed to him within my earshot, "Find out how that son of a b--h found all that out."

That's oversight.

Now consider four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus' recent appearances before House and Senate committees to issue his report on military progress in Iraq.

When Petraeus and his entourage filed out of the hearings, no one was frowning, no one was hissing.

You could almost see their secret smiles. Despite considerable preening for the cameras by members of both parties, there was precious little actual oversight to fact check the general's statements and assertions.

The Democrats didn't do their homework. They didn't even try; they may not know how.

Nothing better explains the Democrats' failure to win over a single new Republican vote in the Senate on measures to draw down troops, such as on an amendment by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) to increase fighting men and women's time at home.

Also, a proposal by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to set a specific withdrawal deadline won less than a third of the Senate.

After Petraeus' testimony, there is no stomach among Republicans to join Democrats in any substantive effort to retard the war in any manner, shape or form.

Most on Capitol Hill will cite two reasons: the overreaching, intemperate ad placed by MoveOn.org in The New York Times, attacking Petraeus as "General Betray Us," and Petraeus' calmly delivered set of facts and assertions that the surge in Iraq could just be working.

With some real progress, perhaps even a chance for triumph, what politician wants to be accused of seizing withdrawal from the jaws of victory - especially when the medal-bedecked advocate is being slandered by political operatives?



While MoveOn's hyperbolic gambit undoubtedly helped Petraeus, the greater key to his success was his performance during his testimony.

With apparent sincerity, he cited various encouraging data on sectarian violence, enemy attacks and other measures, thus creating the aura of data-based conclusions and recommendations.

A small number of Democratic questioners and the Government Accountability Office quibbled with some of his facts, but no one did any palpable damage to his arguments.

After two long days of questions, answers and speeches - mostly speeches - Petraeus' version of the facts commanded the political battlefield. From there, the only allowable conclusion was obvious: Give the surge a chance.

Information from the United Nations, multiple independent research organizations (such as icasualties.org and the Iraq Body Count) and The Associated Press - the best data publicly available - all dispute Petraeus and his optimism.

Worse, new polling data from the only people who really know if they are safer, Iraqi civilians, present a compelling case that almost everything, especially security, is worse in Iraq, not better.

(The case is compellingly made in an anonymous insider's analysis distributed by the project I direct at the Center for Defense Information.)

The data were available to members of Congress before the Petraeus hearings; a few senators and representatives even made use of them. However, they employed the data only as a prop for their carefully scripted speeches and, in a very few cases, actual questions to the general, which he pretty much ignored.

All that was politicking, not oversight.

Oversight is the most important thing Congress does - or, rather, should be doing. It means finding out exactly what the executive branch is doing and what is going on in the world.

Only that, not posturing, provides a sound foundation for competent legislation and the political coalitions needed to enact it.

Put simply, if you do not know with some precision what the problem is, you are not going to solve it. And if you don't have the data, mere rhetoric will not always save you, especially when you fail to refute the opposing case.

Winslow T. Wheeler spent 31 years working on Capitol Hill for the Government Accountability Office and for senators from both political parties. He is now the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company

Ahmadinejad
by Sheldon Richman, October 3, 2007 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is no one to admire, but when was the last time President Bush stood before a critical college audience and fielded tough questions? Bush appears only before handpicked friendly crowds. Even news conferences are barely adversarial because the media has the curious rule that the president -- any president -- deserves to be treated like royalty.

For all his weird statements about freedom, women, and homosexuals in Iran, not to mention his views on the Nazi treatment of Jews, at least Ahmadinejad took on all comers. He even accepted his host's insults with equanimity.

That people panicked about his appearance at the forum only made him look respectable. Too bad Ahmadinejad didn't use his time better. He might have educated the American people about the history of U.S.-Iran relations, of which most Americans are unforgivably ignorant.

He could have told them that in 1953 the CIA conspired with a brutal monarch who had been driven from power to overthrow an elected secular prime minister and restore the monarch to his throne. The shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, proceeded to rule as a dictator for the next quarter century with the help of his secret police, SAVAK, and U.S money and weapons. U.S. presidents often praised him as a great ally of the United States. The Iranian people understood who his patron was.

When they finally dethroned the hated shah in the religious revolution of 1979, and the U.S. embassy and personnel were seized, the American government pretended it was the aggrieved party. It has conducted subtle warfare against Iran ever since.

Ahmadinejad might also have taught the American people that in the 1980s, the U.S. government backed its ally -- Saddam Hussein of Iraq -- in his decade-long war against Iran. It provided Iraq critical economic aid and weapons, as well as intelligence and diplomatic recognition, and placed warships in the Persian Gulf to protect Iraqi oil in Kuwaiti tankers from Iranian attack.

Most interesting, the U.S. government licensed American companies to provide Saddam the means to make chemical and biological weapons. (Chemicals were used on the Iranians and Kurds. For a history of the conflict and U.S.involvement, see my "United States in the Persian Gulf" at http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=912)

During the war the USS Vincennes, while in Iranian waters, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf. All 290 people aboard were killed. American officials claimed -- dubiously -- that the plane was thought to be a military aircraft. No apology was ever issued, though compensation eventually was paid.

Contrast this with an incident about year earlier, when an Iraqi warplane attacked the USS Stark, killing 28 men. The Reagan administration accepted Iraq's apology -- then blamed Iran for the tragedy.

The neoconservatives, who so demonized Saddam Hussein before the 2003 invasion, were his enthusiastic backers against Iran in the 1980s. (The 1986 Iran-Contra arms deal was a glaring exception.)

Ahmadinejad should have also pointed out that the U.S. government has warships in the Persian Gulf threatening Iran to this day and maintains economic sanctions, a form of warfare, against his country. To those who say that Iran is developing nuclear technology and helping to kill Americans in Iraq, he could point out that it's the U.S. government that invaded two of Iran's next-door neighbors and executed "regime change." Why shouldn't Iran be defensive and interested in acquiring a deterrent?

This would have been a useful lesson for Americans. Unfortunately, Ahmadinejad let the opportunity pass.

The American people would have no reason to fear this man if the U.S. government were not provoking him. There's an easy way to ensure that Iranians aren't killing Americans: bring the troops home and stay out of Middle East affairs.

Instead the Bush administration follows a policy that makes Ahmadinejad a hero, even among Arabs: threatening war. As Glenn Greenwald wrote at Salon.com, "Nobody has done more to inflate the importance and power of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, just by the way, is not even the leader of Iran, let alone the WorldWide Evil Axis of Hitlerian Dictators) than those who have focused on him obsessively."

Once again, an American president imperils the people by creating an enemy.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) and editor of The Freeman magazine.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Jacob Hornberger’s Blog [Blog Archives]


A Cancerous Growth in Our Nation's Capital
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Washington, D.C., officials are undoubtedly jumping up and down in their offices exclaiming, “We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!” after a new congressional report was published yesterday. The report declared that the United States has consolidated its position as the world’s leading arms dealer, accounting for 42 percent of the world market. Sales to developing countries accounted for 80 percent of the arms market. U.S. sales totaled $17 billion, up from $3.4 billion the previous year.

Well, hoorah for the U.S. military-industrial complex, which continues to fleece the American taxpayer to finance ever-growing expenditures for bombs, missiles, tanks, guns, and bullets to “rebuild” Iraq and Afghanistan (after destroying them) — and, of course, to ship out to foreign regimes, including those headed by brutal dictators.

Among the big buyers of U.S. armaments was Pakistan. You know, the country that is headed by a brutal military dictator who took power in a coup and who was a close friend and ally of the Taliban. Yes, I know what you’re thinking — that the U.S. government is dedicated to democracy. That’s why it supposedly invaded Iraq — well, after the WMDs that the U.S. had given Saddam failed to materialize. How in the world could the U.S. government possibly be supporting and selling arms to Pakistan, when it is ruled by a cruel and brutal anti-democratic military brute?

In fact, did you read in the paper how Pakistani ruler Musharraf had his henchmen attack lawyers who were doing nothing worse than simply protesting a ruling in Musharraf’s favor? His henchmen beat them with sticks. Yes, that’s the guy to whom the U.S. government and the U.S. military-industrial complex are delivering U.S. taxpayer-financed military weaponry.

President Eisenhower’s warnings against the military-industrial complex should have been heeded — and also the warnings of the Founding Fathers against standing armies and militarism.

First, U.S. officials go out and supports brutal dictators, such as Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, Musharraf, and countless others. Then they foment all types of hatred for the U.S. in Third World countries with such deadly and damaging policies as sanctions, embargoes, invasions, coups, military bases, interventions, and assassinations. Then, they use the terrorist blowback from those policies to strike fear within the American people, inducing them to trade away their freedoms, including due process and habeas corpus, in return for a “safety” that never comes. Then, they spend unlimited amounts of money for their military escapades, threatening both the economic and monetary well-being of the American people.

The real threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people lies not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or any other foreign country but rather right there in Washington, D.C., where a government that began as small and limited in power has metastasized into an enormous, out-of-control cancerous growth that is sucking the lifeblood out of our country. When will the American people finally figure it out?

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Donald Boudreaux's’s Blog [Blog Archives]

RoseCovered Glasses has left a new comment on your post "A Cancerous Growth in Our Nation's Capital by Jaco...":

I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. I believed another Vietnam could be avoided with defined missions and the best armaments in the world.

It made no difference.

We have bought into the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). If you would like to read how this happens please see:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/feature...spyagency200703

Through a combination of public apathy and threats by the MIC we have let the SYSTEM get too large. It is now a SYSTEMIC problem and the SYSTEM is out of control. Government and industry are merging and that is very dangerous.

There is no conspiracy. The SYSTEM has gotten so big that those who make it up and run it day to day in industry and government simply are perpetuating their existance.

The politicians rely on them for details and recommendations because they cannot possibly grasp the nuances of the environment and the BIG SYSTEM.

So, the system has to go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous.

This situation will right itself through trauma. I see a government ENRON on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning.

The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. The event to watch is the collapse of the MIC.

For more details see:

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/200...-armaments.html

Bush's Agenda in Iran

By Reese Erlich, AlterNet. Posted October 3, 2007.

Half the warships in the U.S. Navy now sit within striking distance of the country, and Bush and Cheney have stepped up their anti-Iran rhetoric.

I went on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes recently. It was the usual food fight where right-wing zealot Sean Hannity interrupts and hogs the camera, not allowing much dissent. But I was even more interested in the stand of "liberal" Alan Colmes.

We were debating whether Iran's President Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak at Columbia University. Colmes supported free speech. But in his introduction to the segment, he repeated almost every Bush falsehood about Iran, including its supposed, immediate plans to develop nuclear bombs, killing of American soldiers in Iraq and its grave danger to Israel. Unfortunately, his views reflect those of many mainstream Democratic Party leaders as well.

On Sept. 26, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed a "sense of the Senate" resolution calling on the United States to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. The resolution, pushed by former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman, continues the drum beat for war against Iran. While some staunch liberals such as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted nay, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton voted yes. (Click here for a full roll call vote.)

The Bush administration is preparing public opinion for a possible bombing attack on Iran. As with the months prior to the Iraq invasion, major Democratic Party leaders are climbing on board.

Half the warships in the U.S. Navy now sit within striking distance of Iran. Bush and Cheney have stepped up their rhetoric accusing Iran of threatening to start a "nuclear holocaust." The British press are predicting that the Bush administration will bomb Iran in the near future.

The White House is using the same propaganda techniques to whip up popular opinion against Iran that it used four years ago against Iraq. Here's the real story.

Iran has no nuclear weapons and couldn't have them for years. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body that was right about WMDs in Iraq, says it has no proof of Iranian plans to build nuclear bombs. The IAEA recently reached a binding agreement for Iran to reveal its past nuclear activities and allow full inspection of nuclear power sites.

The sophisticated EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) supposedly supplied by Iran to militias in Iraq are easily made in Iraqi machine shops and can be purchased commercially for mining operations.

For years Iran has given political, economic and military support to Shia and Kurdish militias, but the administration has never proven that Iran is intentionally targeting U.S. soldiers.

Iran does not plan, nor does it have the capability of "wiping Israel off the map." If Iran is such an immediate threat to Israel, why hasn't it already launched a conventional missile attack? Such aggression would invite immediate destruction of Iran by both Israel and the United States. So if Iran hasn't started a conventional attack in 28 years, why would it possibly launch an atomic attack, even assuming it could develop a few such weapons years from now? The Iranian leaders are angry; they are not crazy.

Iran does support Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, but such support does not constitute a threat of Jewish annihilation. The U.S. and Israeli governments consciously distort and exaggerate Iran's threat in order to justify immediate military action.

For two years the United States has helped splinter groups among Iran's ethnic minorities to blow up buildings, assassinate Revolutionary Guards and kill civilians in an effort to destabilize the Tehran regime. In short, the United States does to Iran what it accuses Iran of doing in Iraq.

The hardliners in the Bush administration, led by Cheney, see a dwindling opportunity to bomb Iran before Bush leaves office. They hope to launch a massive bombing campaign which will so weaken Tehran that the regime will fall and Iranians will see the United States as their savior. Does this sound the faintest bit familiar?

In reality, a U.S. attack would be disastrous. Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 25 percent of the world's oil supplies pass. Oil prices would skyrocket. Iran could encourage Hizbollah to launch missiles into Israel. Muslims would hold demonstrations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Iran could mobilize that anger and encourage Shiite parties in Iraq to attack U.S. troops.

In a truly nightmare scenario, Iran could encourage terrorist attacks inside the United States and in allied countries. When I interviewed Syria's President Bashar al-Asad in 2006, he said, "If you do a military strike, you will have chaos. It's very dangerous."

The people of Iran, leading democracy advocates and even conservative Iranian-American exile groups oppose an attack. They understand that U.S. bombs falling on Tehran will only rally people behind the current government.

In an open letter to the United Nations, former political prisoner and Iranian opposition leader Akbar Ganji wrote, "Even speaking about the possibility of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran. No Iranian wants to see what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan repeated in Iran."

I don't know with certainty if the United States will attack Iran. It is possible that the Bush administration is ratcheting up militarist rhetoric in order to intimidate European allies into tightening economic sanctions against Iran.

And the decision whether to bomb Iran depends, in part, on actions by the American people. Now is the time to let your national and local politicians know that we don't need another human disaster in the Middle East. Code Pink is organizing a national campaign to get local city councils to pass resolutions against attacks on Iran. Now is the time for anti-war demonstrations around the issues of both Iraq and Iran.



Reese Erlich is author of the new book The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.

Joint document of 6-party talks issued
The 2nd session of the sixth round of six-party talks ended in Beijing Wednesday with a joint document on the second-phase actions toward the denuclearization on Korean Peninsula.
• Full text of joint document of six-party talks

Nuclear Deal Reached with North Korea by Graham Bowley and Helene Cooper Nuclear Deal Reached With North Korea

By GRAHAM BOWLEY and HELENE COOPER
Published: October 4, 2007

North Korea has endorsed an agreement to disable all of its nuclear facilities by the end of the year, according to a joint six-nation statement released by China in Beijing today, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

The agreement sets out a timetable for North Korea to disclose all its nuclear programs and disable all facilities in return for 950,000 metric tons of fuel oil or its equivalent in economic aid.

Negotiators reached agreement on a draft plan in Beijing on Sunday after four days of six-nation talks. The United States had said on Tuesday that it endorsed the plan but was waiting for approval from other nations involved in the negotiations.

The announcement in China today gives final approval by the other five parties to the talks — Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and North Korea. The statement was released by Wu Dawei, head of the Chinese delegation to the talks.

As part of the agreement, North Korea will make a full declaration of all its nuclear programs by the end of the year and will complete the disabling of its plutonium-producing reactor at Yongbyon.

Mr. Wu said that as part of the agreement, Washington would lead an expert group to the capital, Pyongyang, "within the next two weeks to prepare for disablement" and would provide initial payment for the disablement activities.

The United States applauded the announcement. "North Korea will get started on its commitment to disable all its existing nuclear facilities by disabling the core nuclear facilities at Yongbyon by the end of the year," President Bush said in a statement. "North Korea also committed not to transfer nuclear materials, technology, or know-how beyond its borders."

Under an agreement reached in February, North Korea has shut down its Yongbyon facility, but the reactor still has to be fully disabled. According to Xinhua, the agreement today foresees the disablement of the five-megawatt experimental reactor, the reprocessing plant and the nuclear fuel rod fabrication facility in Yongbyon by December 31, 2007.

The progress in the disarmament talks came as the leaders of North and South Korea began the second day of a separate three-day summit meeting in Pyongyang, only the second such meeting between the states since the Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945.

Christopher R. Hill, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs and the lead American negotiator on the Korean nuclear issue, had breakfast on Tuesday with his two bosses — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush — to brief them on progress, said Sean D. McCormack, the State Department spokesman.

"We have conveyed to the Chinese government our approval for the draft statement," Mr. McCormack said Tuesday. "All the parties went back to their capitals. We studied it, examined it, gave our approval to the Chinese."

North Korea has also been seeking a joint statement that would include a written reference to being removed from a United States list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The senior administration official said on Tuesday that "we've agreed on a way forward on that," but declined to elaborate further.

The statement issued by China today said: "The D.P.R.K. and the United States remain committed to improving their bilateral relations and moving towards a full diplomatic relationship. The two sides will increase bilateral exchanges and enhance mutual trust." The initials stand for North Korea's formal name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The American official asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. A second senior administration official said the United States has told North Korea that one of the things it must disclose are details of whatever nuclear material it has been supplying to Syria. American and Israeli officials have indicated that a recent Israeli airstrike in Syria was directed at nuclear material supplied by North Korea.

If the North Koreans meet the schedule and disable their equipment, it would be a major victory for the Bush administration at a time when it is eager to claim progress on some diplomatic front to offset its problems in Iraq.

At a regular news briefing today, Dana M. Perino, the chief White House spokeswoman, said: "What is encouraging about it is that in the past you've seen that the North Koreans had shut down the Yongbyon facility. But what they've started to do now is to start dismantling it, and they have agreed to dismantle it by the end of the year. We are going to hold them to it. We are going to see if they're going to be able to make that deadline."

David E. Sanger and David Stout contributed reporting.

3. Oct 2007


North Korea agrees to disable key nuclear plants (Roundup)
Beijing - North Korea has agreed to disable key nuclear facilities ...more

Uri Avnery

6.10.07

Two Knights and a Dragon

THERE ARE books that change people's consciousness and change history. Some tell a story, like Harriet Beech Stowe's 1851 "Uncle Tom's Cabin", which gave a huge impetus to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Others take the form of a political treatise, like Theodor Herzl's "Der Judenstaat", which gave birth to the Zionist movement. Or they can be scientific in nature, like Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species", which changed the way humanity sees itself. And perhaps political satire, too, can shake the world, like "1984" by George Orwell.

The impact of these books was amplified by their timing. They appeared exactly at the right time, when a large public was ready to absorb their message.

It may well turn out that the book by the two professors, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy", is just such a book.

It is a dry scientific research report, 355 pages long, backed by 106 further pages containing some thousand references to sources.

It is not a bellicose book. On the contrary, its style is restrained and factual. The authors take great care not to utter a single negative comment on the legitimacy of the Lobby, and indeed bend over backwards to stress their support for the existence and security of Israel. They let the facts speak for themselves. With the skill of experienced masons, they systematically lay brick upon brick, row upon row, leaving no gap in their argumentation.

This wall cannot be torn down by reasoned argument. Nobody has tried, and nobody is going to. Instead, the authors are being smeared and accused of sinister motives. If the book could be ignored altogether, this would have been done - as has happened to other books which have been buried alive.

(Some years ago, there appeared in Russia a large tome by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the world-renowned laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature, about Russia and its Jews. This book, called "200 Years Together", has been completely ignored. As far as I know, it has not been translated into any language, certainly not into Hebrew. I asked several of Israel's leading intellectuals, and none of them had even heard of the book. Neither does it appear on the list of Amazon.com, which includes all the author's other works.)

THE TWO professors take the bull by the horns. They deal with a subject which is absolutely taboo in the United States, a subject nobody in his right mind would even mention: the enormous influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American foreign policy.

In a remorselessly systematical way, the book analyzes the Lobby, takes it apart, describes its modus operandi, discloses its financial sources and lays bare its relations with the White House, the two houses of Congress, the leaders of the two major parties and leading media people.

The authors do not call into question the Lobby's legitimacy. On the contrary, they show that hundreds of lobbies of this kind play an essential role in the American democratic system. The gun and the medical lobbies, for example, are also very powerful political forces. But the pro-Israel lobby has grown out of all proportion. It has unparalleled political power. It can silence all criticism of Israel in Congress and the media, bring about the political demise of anyone who dares to break the taboo, prevent any action that does not conform to the will of the Israeli government.

In its second part, the book shows how the Lobby uses its tremendous power in practice: how it has prevented the exertion of any pressure on Israel to for peace with the Palestinians, how it pushed the US into the invasion of Iraq, how it is now pushing for wars with Iran and Syria, how it supported the Israeli leadership in the recent war in Lebanon and blocked calls for a ceasefire when it didn't want it.

Each of these assertions is backed up by so much undeniable evidence and quotations from written material (mainly from Israeli sources) that they cannot be ignored.

MOST OF these disclosures are nothing new for those in Israel who deal with these matters.

I myself could add to the book a whole chapter from personal experience.

In the late 50s, I visited the US for the first time. A major New York radio station invited me for an interview. Later they cautioned me: "You can criticize the President (Dwight D. Eisenhower) and the Secretary of State (John Foster Dulles) to your heart's content, but please don't criticize Israeli leaders!" At the last moment the interview was cancelled altogether, and the Iraqi ambassador was invited instead. Criticism was apparently tolerable when it came from an Arab, but absolutely not coming from an Israeli.

In 1970, the respected American "Fellowship of Reconciliation" invited me for a lecture tour of 30 universities, under the auspices of the Hillel rabbis. When I arrived in New York, I was informed that 29 of the lectures had been cancelled. The sole rabbi who did not cancel, Balfour Brickner, showed me a secret communication of the "Anti-Defamation League" that proscribed my lectures. It said: "While Knesset Member Avnery can in no way be considered a traitor, his appearance at this time would be deeply divisive…" In the end, all the lectures took place under the auspices of Christian chaplains.

I especially remember a depressing experience in Baltimore. A good Jew, who had volunteered to host me, was angered by the cancellation of my lecture in this city and obstinately insisted on putting it on. We combed the streets of the Jewish quarters - mile upon mile of signs with Jewish names - and did not find a single hall whose manager would agree to let the lecture by a member of the Israeli Knesset take place. In the end, we did hold the lecture in the basement of the building of my host's apartment - and functionaries of the Jewish community came to protest.

That year, during Black September, I held a press conference in Washington DC, under the auspices of the Quakers. It seemed to be a huge success. The journalists came straight from a press conference with Prime Minister Golda Meir, and showered me with questions. Almost all the important media were represented - TV networks, radio, the major newspapers. After the planned hour was up, they would not let me go and kept me talking for another hour and a half. But the next day, not a single word appeared in any of the media. Thirty-one years later, in October 2001 I held a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, and exactly the same thing happened: many of the media were there, they held me for another hour - and not a word, not a single word, was published.

In 1968, a very respected American publishing house (Macmillan) brought out a book of mine' "Israel Without Zionists", which was later translated into eight other languages. The book described the Israeli-Arab conflict in a very different way and proposed the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel - a revolutionary idea at the time. Not a single review appeared in the American media. I checked in one of the most important book stores in New York and did not find the book. When I asked a salesman, he found it buried under a heap of volumes and put it on top. Half an hour later it was hidden again.

The book dealt with the "Two States for Two peoples" solution long before it became a world-wide consensus, and with my proposal for Israel's integration in "the Semitic Region". True, I am an Israeli patriot and was elected to the Knesset by Israeli voters. But I criticized the Israeli government - and that was enough.

THE BOOK by the two professors, who criticize the Israeli government from a different angle, cannot be buried anymore. This fact, by itself, speaks volumes.

The book is based on an essay by the two that appeared last year in a British journal, after no American publication dared to touch it. Now a respected American publishing house has released it - an indication that something is moving. The situation has not changed, but it seems that it is now possible at least to talk about it.

Everything depends on timing - and apparently the time is now ripe for such a book, which will shock many good people in America. It is now causing an uproar.

The two professors are, of course, accused of anti-Semitism, racism and hatred of Israel. What Israel? It is the Lobby itself that hates a large part of Israel. In recent years is has shifted even more to the Right. Some of its constituent groups - such as the neo-cons who pushed the US into the Iraq war - are openly connected with the right-wing Likud, and especially with Binyamin Netanyahu. The billionaires who finance the Lobby are the same people who finance the extreme Israeli Right, and most of all the settlers.

The small, determined Jewish groups in the US who support the Israeli peace movements are remorselessly persecuted. Some of them fold after a few years. Members of Israeli peace groups who are sent to America are boycotted and slandered as "self-hating-Jews".

The political views of the two professors, which are briefly stated at the end of the book, are identical with the stand of the Israeli peace forces: the Two-State Solution, ending the occupation, borders based on the Green Line, and international support for the peace settlement.

If this is anti-Semitism, then we here are all anti-Semites. And only the Christian Zionists - those who openly demand the return of the Jews to this country but secretly prophesy the annihilation of the unconverted Jews at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ - are the true Lovers of Zion.

EVEN IF not a single bad word about the pro-Israel lobby can be uttered in the US, it is far from being a secret society, hatching conspiracies like the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". On the contrary, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Federation and the other organizations vociferously boast about their actions and publicly proclaim their incredible successes.

Quite naturally, the diverse components of the Lobby compete with each other - Who has the biggest influence on the White House, Who scares the most senators, Who controls more journalists and commentators,. This competition causes a permanent escalation - because every success by one group spurs the others to redouble their efforts.

This could be very dangerous. A balloon that is inflated to monstrous dimensions can one day burst in the face of American Jews (who, by the way, according to the polls, object to many positions adopted by the Lobby that claims to speak in their name.)

Most of the American public now opposes the Iraq war and considers it a disaster. This majority still does not connect the war with the actions of the pro-Israel lobby. No newspaper and no politician dares to hint at such a connection - yet. But if this taboo is broken, the result may be very dangerous for the Jews and for Israel.

Beneath the surface, a lot of anger directed against the Lobby is accumulating. The presidential candidates, who are compelled to grovel at the feet of AIPAC, the senators and congressmen, who have become slaves of the Lobby, the media people, who are forbidden to write what they really think - all these secretly detest the Lobby. If this anger explodes, it may hurt us, too.

This lobby has become a Golem. And like the Golem in legend, in the end it will bring disaster on its maker.

IF I may be permitted to voice some criticism of my own:

When the original article by the two professors appeared, I argued that "the tail is wagging the dog and the dog is wagging the tail". The tail, of course, is Israel.

The two professors confirm the first part of the equation, but emphatically deny the second. The central thesis of the book is that the pressure of the Lobby causes the United States to act against its own interests (and, in the long run, also against the true interests of Israel.) They do not accept my contention, quoted in the book, that Israel acted in Lebanon as "America's Rottweiler" (to Hizbullah as "Iran's Doberman").

I agree that the US is acting against its true interest (and the true interests of Israel) - but the American leadership does not see it that way. Bush and his people believe - even without the input of the Lobby - that it would be advantageous for the US to establish a permanent American military presence in the middle of this region of huge oil reserves. In my view, this counter-productive act at was one of the main objectives of the war, side by side with the desire to eliminate one of Israel's most dangerous enemies. Unfortunately, the book deals only very briefly with this issue.

That does not diminish in any way my profound admiration for the intellectual qualities, integrity and courage of Mearsheimer and Walt, two knights who, like St. George, who have sallied forth to face the fearful dragon.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 10:28 30/09/2007
The war for the house
By Gideon Levy

Theirs is an apartment building no one has ever heard of. No architectural International Style, no style at all, just an apartment building. Five floors, 11 families, new tiles in one of the bathrooms. Situated on a hillside, the house hovers above the city below. Hovers? Hovered.

Many other buildings surround this one. Densely constructed, the houses almost touch one another. A narrow alley, the width of a person, separates the buildings. All of the residents of the apartment building are family members - parents, siblings and cousins. They built one floor on top of another, residing in cramped proximity. Residing? Resided.

Last Thursday, the bulldozer arrived. How did the bulldozer get to a home at the end of the narrow alleyway? Along the way, as they say, the bulldozer paved a route of destruction for itself, damaging all the homes in its path. Here it demolished a stone fence, there it cracked a wall. What difference does it make already? Some of the homes have now become hazardous for human residence, their cracked walls threatening to collapse. The bulldozer finally reached its destination and began razing the building.

The five stories collapsed like a house of cards, stirring up a huge cloud of dust, burying everything in the apartment building: kitchen utensils, furniture, toys, electronic appliances and memories. Nothing remained; everything was buried. Last week, I saw two children trying to save something: the new bicycles purchased for the school year. Demolished walls with iron rods protruding from them covered the red bikes the children struggled to extract. Finally, they uncovered them: bent, smashed. Pain surfaced on the faces of the children, a girl and a boy, nine or 10 years old. Nothing remained of their home. Just a row of children's clothing fluttered in the wind, hung on a wire descending from the remains of the roof. The staircase remains suspended in the air on iron rods, leading nowhere, threatening to crash down at any moment on our heads and upon the heads of the rummaging children.

Here lives the Mabruk family, not happily. The father, Ali, his sons and daughters. About three weeks ago, the Israel Defense Forces killed his son, Nasser; another son, Majid, is still wanted by Israel. A fighting family, active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A giant red flag of the Popular Front is now planted among the ruins of the house, protesting the world that has shown no interest in them. Not far from there, at the end of a row of houses, the soldier Ben Zion Henman was killed in a gun battle that erupted here about 10 days ago. Within the camp, Mohammed Khaled, 17, and Adib Salim, 38, were killed. Adib was a disabled tirmis [lupin bean] salesman, paralyzed on the right side of his body. He fell, bleeding, under a sign memorializing his brother, Jamal, a Hamas activist who was liquidated here by a missile in 2001. The IDF claims that the paralyzed Adib was armed. In its response, the IDF emphasizes as supporting evidence the fact that his brother was a terrorist.

It was a successful operation: The IDF prevented a horrible suicide attack. Some of the planners of this attack were here, among the alleyways of the Ein Beit Ilma camp, located on the western edge of Nablus. No one can dispute the need to carry out an operation like this, which prevented killing. The fact that only two Palestinians were killed during the three days of the nameless operation - this time the IDF did not follow its habit of assigning the operation one of the childish names it favors - attests to the caution the soldiers employed.

In this light, there is even more reason to ask: Why the apartment building? Why was it necessary to destroy the lives of 11 families? How will it contribute to the security of Israel, even if the IDF calls the building a "combat post?" When will we finally wean ourselves of this unnecessary and criminal means of destroying the homes of innocent people? Does the fact that the commander of the Popular Front in the camp lives in the house justify demolishing the entire five-story building? When will the IDF learn that the next terrorists will sprout from among these very ruins? Was not the urge for revenge aroused in the heart of the child who searched for the bicycle among the ruins of his home, who saw his world destroyed? Anyone wishing to become acquainted with the real "infrastructure of terror" is invited to travel to Nablus, to see the ruins of the home at the edge of the Ein Beit Ilma camp.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has been running a history of the rise of the Roman Empire with apparent allusions to our time and place. Not for the right-of-center....

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/empirerising/

Blackwater: Not in our backyards
By Patt Morrison
Schwarzenegger should never turn over the state's security to mercenaries, even
after an emergency.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izuz0Ex

Who's giving money to Bill Clinton?
By Matthew Yglesias
The former president should disclose his foundation's backers before his wife
goes up for election.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izu10Ek

Securing space
By Kevin P. Chilton
A Chinese missile test shows that, 50 years after Sputnik, ensuring the safety
of our satellites is crucial.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0Izu20El

How to Make the Arab Street Admire a Persian

Playing Into the Hands of Ahmadinejad
By MOHAMAD BAZZI

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says outrageous things, the world listens and condemns him. But that's exactly what he wants.

Beset by internal problems and the failure of his economic policies, Ahmadinejad revels in being an international outcast and provocateur. In turn, the controversy generated by his remarks bolsters his support at home.

His rhetoric is often aimed not just at appeasing conservatives inside Iran but at winning over the Arab world.
With his defiance toward the United States, his calls for wiping Israel off the map, his denial of the Holocaust and his tendency to dress in sport jackets, Ahmadinejad has captured the imagination of people in the Arab street. Walk into any coffeehouse in Cairo or Damascus, and the conversation quickly turns to Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Ahmadinejad has struck a chord with the Arab masses as no other Iranian leader has since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic cleric who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Arabs admire Ahmadinejad because they believe he is brave enough to stand up to the United States and Israel, he is mindful of his people's interests, and he is in touch with the common man. In whispers, Arabs talk of how the Iranian leader is different from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, who are dependent on American support to stay in power.

In a region ruled by kings and despots, Ahmadinejad has worked hard to cultivate his image as a populist hero. Ironically, he has become more popular among Arabs than among his own people, who are frustrated by his inability to deliver on promises to improve a stagnant economy, root out corruption and redistribute oil wealth. When Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust or threatens Israel, his rhetoric resonates more with Arabs than Iranians.

Ahmadinejad is a Shia Muslim and a Persian in a region dominated by Sunni Arabs. Historically, Arabs have been fearful of Iran's cultural and political influence. But he plays the anti-American and anti-Israel cards in an attempt to transcend the Persian-Arab rift and Sunni-Shia tensions, which are exacerbated because of the Iraq War. His rhetoric works. "He has the courage to stand up to America and Israel. What other leader in the world is doing that?" an Egyptian civil servant told me a few months ago over sips of mint tea in a Cairo coffeehouse.

Many Arabs--accustomed to leaders who build ostentatious palaces for themselves and rarely rub shoulders with the average Joe--admire Ahmadinejad's man-of-the-people persona. "He always wears common clothing, like his fellow countrymen," an Egyptian schoolteacher told me. "He doesn't think he's better than them."

After his speech this week at Columbia University, Ahmadinejad's stock in the Arab street is sure to rise even higher: Citizens of Iran and the Arab world are angry at Columbia University president Lee Bollinger for insulting the Iranian leader during his introduction.

Trying to appease his own critics for inviting Ahmadinejad to the campus, Bollinger called his guest a "petty and cruel dictator" and added, "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." Even Iranians who dislike their leader were shocked by the schoolyard taunts; in the Middle East you don't invite a guest to your home and then insult him.

Bollinger--and the entire uproar over the Columbia event--played right into the Iranian leader's hand. Ahmadinejad might be petty and cruel, but he is far from having enough authority to be Iran's dictator. The true levers of power in Iran rest with a group of unelected clerics, and particularly the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Under Iran's theocratic system, the supreme leader has final say in all political and social matters. His word is regarded as infallible, and he is thought responsible only to God. This unique structure was created for Khomeini.

Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini after his death in 1989, holds a lesser clerical rank, and reformers have been bolder in questioning his authority. But Khamenei exerts influence through his control of the armed forces and the 12-member Guardian Council, which answers directly to him.

Iran's president is not powerless, but it's important to understand that Ahmadinejad cannot dictate his country's nuclear policies or its relationship with the West. By demonizing Ahmadinejad and reacting to his every provocative remark, the West has improved his stature and helped him consolidate perhaps more power than he would have amassed on his own.

There is a more pragmatic way for the West to deal with Ahmadinejad: Ignore him. Don't make a big fuss about his antics. Without that sense of international outrage, he will be forced to turn his attention to Iran's internal problems. And he will lose his platform as a populist leader who is not afraid to stand up to the West.

Mohamad Bazzi, a former Newsday Middle East bureau chief, is a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The myth of the all-powerful Ahmadinejad
Despite what his detractors insist, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is no tinhorn dictator. He is an elected president with little power and not particularly popular within his own country, where he commands no military power. But there are many who make more of him as a near-satanic force, particularly the US Congress, which has recently given a virtual carte blanche for the White House to attack Iran at will. - Philip Giraldi (Oct 4, '07)

• "North Korea Nuclear Deal Comes Wrapped in Ambiguity," Analysis by Chris Buckley, Reuters
• "The Bank Behind Iran's Missles," By Vernon Silver, Bloomberg
• "ElBaradei Warns on 'Work Plan'," By James Blitz and Roula Khalaf, Financial Times
• "Obama Would Seek Nuclear Ban," By Andrew Stern, Reuters
• "Japan's New Premier Faces India Dilemma," By Masako Toki, Asia Times
• "India Sees Nuclear Deal as Key to Global Cooperation," Global Security Newswire

Dissenting At Your Own Risk By Cecilie Surasky Why is Israel's increasingly brutal 40-year occupation of Palestinian land regularly debated in the mainstream media abroad, including in Israel, but not here? And why is there an almost total lack of discussion among presidential candidates about the dollars that subsidize this occupation and the American diplomatic support that makes it possible?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18506.htm

Cholera spreads from Iraq to Iran--WHO expert: Cholera has struck at least 3,315 people in Iraq since mid-August, killing at least 15. WHO global cholera coordinator Claire-Lise Chaignat said that up to 10 cases have also been confirmed in Iran, near the Iraqi border.
http://snipurl.com/1rrwa

Why did Israel attack Syria?
04/10/2007 11:25:00 PM GMT
(Reuters) Israel committed a blatant act of aggression against its northern neighbor

In attacking Syria, Israel committed a blatant act of aggression against its northern neighbor of the kind denounced as the "supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

By Jonathan Cook

Israel's air strike on northern Syria last month should be understood in the context of events unfolding since its assault last summer on neighboring Lebanon.

From the leaks so far, it seems that more than half a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Syrian airspace to drop munitions on a site close to the border with Turkey. We also know from the U.S. media that the raid occurred in close coordination with the White House. But what was the purpose and significance of the attack?

It is worth recalling that, in the wake of Israel's month-long war against Lebanon a year ago, a prominent American neoconservative, Meyrav Wurmser, wife of Vice-President Dick Cheney's recently departed Middle East adviser, explained that the war had dragged on because the White House delayed in imposing a ceasefire. The neocons, she said, wanted to give Israel the time and space to expand the attack to Damascus.

The reasoning was simple: before an attack on Iran could be countenanced, Hezbollah in Lebanon had to be destroyed and Syria at the very least cowed. The plan was to isolate Tehran on these two other hostile fronts before going in for the kill.

But faced with constant rocket fire from Hezbollah last summer, Israel's public and military nerves frayed at the first hurdle. Instead Israel and the U.S. were forced to settle for a Security Council resolution rather than a decisive military victory.

The immediate fallout of the failed attack was an apparent waning of neocon influence. The group's program of "creative destruction" in the Middle East -- the encouragement of regional civil war and the partition of large states that threaten Israel -- was at risk of being shunted aside.

Instead the "pragmatists" in the Bush Administration, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, demanded a change of tack. The standoff reached a head in late 2006 when oilman James Baker and his Iraq Study Group began lobbying for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq -- presumably only after a dictator, this one more reliable, had again been installed in Baghdad. It looked as if the neocons' day in the sun had finally passed.

Israel's leadership understood the gravity of the moment. In January 2007 the Herzliya conference, an annual festival of strategy-making, invited no less than 40 Washington opinion-formers to join the usual throng of Israeli politicians, generals, journalists and academics. For a week the Israeli and American delegates spoke as one: Iran and its presumed proxy, Hezbollah, were bent on the "genocidal destruction" of Israel. Tehran's development of a nuclear program -- whether for civilian use, as Iran argues, or for military use, as the U.S. and Israel claim -- had to be stopped at all costs.

While the White House turned uncharacteristically quiet all spring and summer about what it planned to do next, rumors that Israel was pondering a go-it-alone strike against Iran grew noisier by the day. Ex-Mossad officers warned of an inevitable third world war, Israeli military intelligence advised that Iran was only months away from the point of no return on developing a nuclear warhead, prominent leaks in sympathetic media revealed bombing runs to Gibraltar, and Israel started upping the pressure on several tens of thousands of Jews in Tehran to flee their homes and come to Israel.

While Western analysts opined that an attack on Iran was growing unlikely, Israel's neighbors watched nervously through the first half of the year as the vague impression of a regional war came ever more sharply into focus. In particular Syria, after witnessing the whirlwind of savagery unleashed against Lebanon last summer, feared it was next in line in the U.S.-Israeli campaign to break Tehran's network of regional alliances. It deduced, probably correctly, that neither the U.S. nor Israel would dare attack Iran without first clobbering Hezbollah and Damascus.

For some time Syria had been left in no doubt of the mood in Washington. It failed to end its pariah status in the post-9/11 period, despite helping the CIA with intelligence on al-Qaeda and secretly trying to make peace with Israel over the running sore of the occupied Golan Heights. It was rebuffed at every turn.

So as the clouds of war grew darker in the spring, Syria responded as might be expected. It went to the arms market in Moscow and bought up the displays of anti-aircraft missiles as well as anti-tank weapons of the kind Hezbollah demonstrated last summer were so effective at repelling Israel's planned ground invasion of south Lebanon.

As the Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld reluctantly conceded earlier this year, U.S. policy was forcing Damascus to remain within Iran's uncomfortable embrace: "Syrian President Bashar al-Assad finds himself more dependent on his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than perhaps he would like."

Israel, never missing an opportunity to wilfully misrepresent the behavior of an enemy, called the Syrian military build-up proof of Damascus' appetite for war. Apparently fearful that Syria might initiate a war by mistaking the signals from Israel as evidence of aggressive intentions, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, urged Syria to avoid a "miscalculation". The Israeli public spent the summer braced for a far more dangerous repeat of last summer's war along the northern border.

It was at this point -- with tensions simmeringly hot -- that Israel launched its strike, sending several fighter planes into Syria on a lightning mission to hit a site near Dayr a-Zawr. As Syria itself broke the news of the attack, Israeli generals were shown on TV toasting in the Jewish new year but refusing to comment.

Details have remained thin on the ground ever since: Israel imposed a news blackout that has been strictly enforced by the country's military censor. Instead it has been left to the Western media to speculate on what occurred.

One point that none of the pundits and analysts have noted was that, in attacking Syria, Israel committed a blatant act of aggression against its northern neighbor of the kind denounced as the "supreme international crime" by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

Also, no one pointed out the obvious double standard applied to Israel's attack on Syria compared to the far less significant violation of Israeli sovereignty by Hezbollah a year earlier, when it captured two Israel soldiers at a border post and killed three more. Hezbollah's act was widely accepted as justification for the bombardment and destruction of much of Lebanon, even if a few sensitive souls agonized over whether Israel's response was "disproportionate". Would these commentators now approve of similar retaliation by Syria?

The question was doubtless considered unimportant because it was clear from Western coverage that no one -- including the Israeli leadership -- believed Syria was in a position to respond militarily to Israel's attack. Olmert's fear of a Syrian "miscalculation" evaporated the moment Israel did the maths for Damascus.

So what did Israel hope to achieve with its aerial strike?

The stories emerging from the less gagged American media suggest two scenarios. The first is that Israel targeted Iranian supplies passing through Syria on their way to Hezbollah; the second that Israel struck at a fledgling Syrian nuclear plant where materials from North Korea were being offloaded, possibly as part of a joint nuclear effort by Damascus and Tehran.

(Speculation that Israel was testing Syria's anti-aircraft defences in preparation for an attack on Iran ignores the fact that the Israeli air force would almost certainly choose a flightpath through friendlier Jordanian airspace.)

How credible are these two scenarios?

The nuclear claims against Damascus were discounted so quickly by experts of the region that Washington was soon downgrading the accusation to claims that Syria was only hiding the material on North Korea's behalf. But why would Syria, already hounded by Israel and the U.S., provide such a readymade pretext for still harsher treatment? Why, equally, would North Korea undermine its hard-won disarmament deal with the U.S.? And why, if Syria were covertly engaging in nuclear mischief, did it alert the world to the fact by revealing the Israeli air strike?

The other justification for the attack was at least based in a more credible reality: Damascus, Hezbollah and Iran undoubtedly do share some military resources. But their alliance should be seen as the kind of defensive pact needed by vulnerable actors in a Sunni-dominated region where the U.S. wants unlimited control of Gulf oil and supports only those repressive regimes that cooperate on its terms. All three are keenly aware that it is Israel's job to threaten and punish any regimes that fail to toe the line.

Contrary to the impression being created in the West, "genocidal hatred" of Israel and Jews, however often Ahmadinejad's speeches are mistranslated, is not the engine of these countries' alliance.

Nonetheless, the political significance of the justifications for the Israeli air strike is that both neatly tie together various strands of an argument needed by the neocons and Israel in making their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in early 2009. Each scenario suggests a Shia "axis of evil", coordinated by Iran, that is "actively plotting Israel's destruction". And each story offers the pretext for an attack on Syria as a prelude to a pre-emptive strike against Tehran -- launched either by Washington or Tel Aviv -- "to save Israel".

That these stories appear to have been planted in the American media by neocon fanatics like John Bolton is warning enough -- as is the admission that the only evidence for Syrian malfeasance is Israeli "intelligence".

It should hardly need pointing out that we are again in a hall of mirrors, as we were during the period leading up to America's invasion of Iraq and have been during its subsequent occupation.

Bush's "war on terror" was originally justified with the convenient and manufactured links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as well as, of course, those WMDs that, it later turned out, had been destroyed years earlier. But ever since Tehran has invariably been the ultimate target of these improbable confections.

There were the forged documents proving both that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger to manufacture nuclear warheads and that it was sharing its nuclear know-how with Iran. And as Iraq fell apart, neocon operatives like Michael Ledeen lost no time in spreading rumors that the missing nuclear arsenal could still be accounted for: Iranian agents had simply smuggled it out of Iraq during the chaos of the U.S. invasion.

Since then our media have proved that they have no less of an appetite for such preposterous tales. If Iran's involvement in stirring up its fellow Shia in Iraq against the U.S. occupation is at least possible, the same cannot be said of the regular White House claims that Tehran is behind the Sunni-led fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few months ago the news media served up "revelations" that Iran was secretly conspiring with al-Qaeda and Iraq's Sunni fighters to oust the U.S. occupiers.

So what purpose does the constant innuendo against Tehran serve?

The latest accusations should be seen as an example of Israel and the neocons "creating their own reality", as one Bush adviser famously observed of the neocon philosophy of power. The more that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are menaced by Israel, the more they are forced to huddle together and behave in ways to protect themselves -- such as arming -- that can be portrayed as a "genocidal" threat to Israel and world order.

Van Creveld once observed that Tehran would be "crazy" not to develop nuclear weapons given the clear trajectory of Israeli and U.S. machinations to overthrow the regime. So equally Syria cannot afford to jettison its alliance with Iran or its involvement with Hezbollah. In the current reality, these connections are the only power it has to deter an attack or force the U.S. and Israel to negotiate.

But they are also the evidence needed by Israel and the neocons to convict Syria and Iran in the court of Washington opinion. The attack on Syria is part of a clever hustle, one designed to vanquish or bypass the doubters in the Bush Administration, both by proving Syria's culpability and by provoking it to respond.

Condoleezza Rice wants to invite Syria to attend the regional peace conference that has been called by President Bush for November. There can be no doubt that such an act of détente is deeply opposed by both Israel and the neocons. It reverses their strategy of implicating Damascus in the "Shia arc of extremism" and of paving the way to an attack on the real target: Iran.

Syria, meanwhile, is fighting back, as it has been for some time, with the only means available: the diplomatic offensive. For two years Bashar al-Assad has been offering a generous peace deal to Israel on the Golan Heights that Tel Aviv has refused to consider. Last month, Syria made a further gesture towards peace with an offer on another piece of territory occupied by Israel, the Shebaa Farms. Under the plan, the Farms -- which the United Nations now agrees belongs to Lebanon, but which Israel still claims is Syrian and cannot be returned until there is a deal on the Golan Heights -- would be transferred to UN custody until the dispute over its sovereignty can be resolved.

Were either of Damascus' initiatives to be pursued, the region might be looking forward to a period of relative calm and security. Which is reason enough why Israel and the neocons are so bitterly opposed. Instead they must establish a new reality -- one in which the forces of "creative destruction" so beloved of the neocons engulf yet more of the region. For the rest of us, a simpler vocabulary suffices. What is being sold is catastrophe.

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

Iraqi Insurgent Faction Breaks Silence, Accusing Al-Qaida of Fanaticism, Torture, and Murder

By Evan Kohlmann


A breakaway Sunni insurgent faction from the 1920 Revolution Brigades known as "Hamas in Iraq" has issued a formal response to recent allegations by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of Al-Qaida's "Islamic State of Iraq." In an official communiqué dated October 2, Iraqi Hamas accused Al-Qaida of inflicting "great suffering" on ordinary Iraqi Sunnis: "every day they witnessed heads or headless bodies lying in their streets. Each one of these victims had been accused of a so-called ‘crime’ prohibited by Al-Qaida fatwahs... then [Al-Qaida] attacked Ameriyyat [al-Fallujah] with a car bomb packed with chlorine gas canisters, and they even laid siege to the area to prevent food and fuel from getting to people. Finally, they killed several men at the local market and smashed their heads against boxes of food... We [have] witnessed dozens of beheaded bodies and none of them were Americans. Rather, they were all local people from the area—people who, at one point, had supported the Al-Qaida network until they themselves had become disposable." In fact, according to Hamas in Iraq--as a result of the various crimes Al-Qaida has committed against innocent Muslim civilians--"the Al-Qaida network has actually made people here think that the occupation forces are merciful and humane by comparison."

Click to view English translation of Iraqi Hamas Communiqué in Response to Al-Qaida c/o Globalterroralert.com

See also:
- ISI/Al-Qaida official statement on the 1920 Revolution Brigades
- [NEFA Foundation]: English transcript of Sept. 14, 2007 audio message from ISI leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi
- Iraqi Islamic Resistance Front (JAAMI) Response to Speech by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi
- [NEFA Foundation]: "State of the Sunni Insurgency in Iraq: August 2007"

Top Saudi Cleric Issues Warning

By Michael Jacobson


Earlier this week, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al-Asheikh – the most senior Wahhabi cleric in Saudi Arabia -- released a rather surprising religious edict. In this fatwa, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia instructed Saudis not to leave the Kingdom to participate in jihad – a statement directed primarily at those considering going to Iraq. Al-Asheikh said that he decided to speak up, “after it was clear that over several years Saudis have been leaving for jihad” and that “our youth…became tools carrying out heinous acts.” Perhaps even most significantly, Al-Asheikh also addressed potential donors, urging them to “be careful about where [their money is] spent so it does not damage young Muslims.”

Read More »

Afghanistan's Taliban: US Tactics - Defeat or Negotiate?

By Jeffrey Imm


As Afghanistan President Karzai offers to negotiate with the Taliban and provide them a place within the Afghanistan government, a visible split in tactics is evident between the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military. In my previous posting, I addressed the question "Are the Taliban "The Enemy" or Not?" Apparently, that is an open question to the U.S. government organizations forming policy and tactics in the Afghanistan war.

The misguided concept that there can be a "good Taliban" and "bad Taliban" allows for such confusing tactics as the State Department calling for negotiations with Taliban, while the U.S. military kills and hunts for the Taliban as an enemy. It is also a further reflection of the lack of a coherent national strategy on Jihad and political Islamism as also previously discussed. As previously reported, the recently published "Taliban constitution" for Afghanistan clearly conveys what the Taliban ideology truly is.

Today, a representative of the U.S. State Department supported the efforts of President Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban's and its leader Mullah Omar. AFP reports: "The deputy head of the European and Eurasian Affairs office at the State Department, Kurt Volker, said Washington welcomed President Hamid Karzai's bid to sit down with radical Afghan groups, as long as they rejected violence. 'We don't want there to be continuing warfare or conflict in Afghanistan. For that to happen, reconciliation is an important part of the mix'. Volker said it was crucial to offer incentives to former insurgents."

U.S. State Department's Volker's position on Afghanistan negotiations with Mullah Omar and the Taliban has apparently ignored State's comments on Mullah Omar's wanted poster that "[a]lthough Operation Enduring Freedom removed the Taliban regime from power, Mullah Omar remains at large and represents a continuing threat to America and her allies". But then again, the State Department have removed Mullah Omar's wanted poster from the main listing of wanted terrorists. New Kerala also reports the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte also did not reject Afghanistan's call for talks with the Taliban. New Kerala reports that the United Nations holds a similar position quoting UN Secretary General's Special Envoy in Kabul Tom Koenigs: "So far many have said that we do not negotiate with terrorists, meaning also the Taliban. However the Taliban is multi-faceted. You cannot lump all of them together."

Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues to view the Taliban as the enemy. On Monday, DPA reports that the U.S. military killed 20 Taliban. On Sunday, the U.S. military decided to put up more wanted posters to capture and kill the Taliban leaders (that the U.S. State Department wants Afghanistan to negotiate with). AP reported that "to help track down 12 insurgent commanders, posters and billboards are to go up around eastern Afghanistan with their names and pictures. Rewards ranging from $20,000 to $200,000 are available for information leading to their capture. 'We want the people in that area to know who this guy is and know he's a bad guy, and when they spot him to turn that guy in,' military spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher said." (Mullah Omar was not included in the new poster, as he is viewed by the military as a separate high value target still worth $10 million -- the UN has stated that Mullah Omar will stay on their blacklist, regardless.)

The offers by the Afghanistan government to negotiate with the Taliban and to allow them to join the government have not diminished the Taliban's viciousness and commitment to Jihad. On Saturday, Reuters reports that the Taliban took credit for a suicide bomb on an Afghan army bus killing 30 in Kabul. On Sunday, Reuters reports that the Taliban killed 11 police. On Sunday, AP reports that the Taliban murdered a 15 year old boy by hanging him to death because he had U.S. money in his pockets. On Monday, AP reports that the Taliban killed eight police. On Tuesday, AP reports that a suicide bomber killed 13 police and civilians, including a mother and her two children, and several of the wounded had no legs. A mechanic said: "One woman was holding a baby in her arms, and they were both killed... Half of the woman's face was blown off." The reaction of the Afghanistan government's Health Minister Mohammad Amin Fatem: "Please stop killing Muslims." So, is it OK to kill non-Muslims? Again, what are we trying to achieve in Afghanistan?

Read More »

[b]Exclusive: Among the Many Faces of Terrorism: Children

[/b] The Editors

While American children study math, geography and science, children throughout Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East are attending madrassahs, where the curriculum is one of extremist Islam. It’s an uncomfortable reality, but according to FSM Editors, one that cannot be ignored.






[b]Exclusive: No Money to Keep Ayaan Hirsi Ali Safe in the U.S.

[/b] Adrian Morgan

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author of “Infidel” and outspoken critic of Islam, recently left the US because the Dutch government refused to continue paying her necessary security detail. FSM Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan chronicles Hirsi Ali’s life – a fascinating tale of steadfast courage and resolve.






[b]Afghanistan's Taliban: US Tactics – Defeat or Negotiate?

[/b] Jeffrey Imm

President Bush’s former White House press secretary Scott McClellan once said, “We do not negotiate with terrorists.” That was then, this is now. FSM Contributing Editor Jeffrey Imm has a troubling report about the State Department’s willingness to negotiate with “good Taliban” in Afghanistan – and the dangers posed by this obvious lack of coherent strategy.




[b]Brainy Republicans Support U.N. Sea Treaty

[/b] Cliff Kincaid

The press fiddles while America burns. That’s the implication in this report by FSM Contributing Editor Cliff Kincaid, who worries that a lack of coverage of the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty hearings could mean its ratification – thus posing a serious threat to US sovereignty.






[b]War in the Popular Media

[/b] Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman

There’s a war going on in the Middle East, but according to FSM Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman, there’s another one going on right under your nose – and it’s being waged on television and the silver screen.

hursday, October 4, 2007 Jacob Hornberger’s Blog [Blog Archives]


Monetary Crises and Welfare-Warfare Adventures
by Jacob G. Hornberger

As we have been saying for the last several years, the out-of-control federal spending to fund both domestic welfare-state programs and foreign warfare-state adventures, would ultimately threaten the economic and financial well-being of the American people.

Among the threats were inflation, i.e., a debasement of the currency, and a flight from the dollar, resulting in a major monetary crisis. Today, the Telegraph is reporting that two countries — Vietnam and Qatar — are planning to reduce their purchases of U.S. treasuries and other dollar bonds. Within the article there are links to the following related articles:

“Fears of Dollar Collapse as Saudis Take Fright”
“China Threatens ‘Nuclear Option’ of Dollar Sales
“Jump Off the Deranged Bull Now”


This is what the neo-cons and other pro-empire interventionists never thought would happen. They figured that they could invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq without any risk to the American people whatsoever. They even dreamed of using Iraq’s oil revenues to finance their imperial adventurism.

Meanwhile, many Americans continued supporting the Afghan and Iraq escapades despite the fact that federal spending was going through the roof. As long as the Bush people were standing fast against tax increases, the idea was that somehow, magically, the U.S. government could continue spending money as if there were no tomorrow.

What the feds were doing, of course, was borrowing to finance their ever-growing expenditures. That borrowing entailed sucking billions of dollars of private savings into the coffers of the U.S. government, along with massive borrowing from central bank reserves of foreign regimes, including such communist countries as China and Vietnam. That credit squeeze finally erupted with tremendous fanfare in the housing market, where people have been unable to refinance their adjustable home mortgages. (It would be interesting to know how many people who have been hurt by the mortgage crisis were also ardent supporters of the military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.)

Still, something had to give, as we have long maintained here at FFF. Ultimately, all that borrowing has to be repaid, either with tax money or by inflation (i.e., simply printing the money to pay off the debt). Not surprisingly, the feds have chosen inflation because they know that the average public-schooled American is unlikely to figure out that it’s the feds, not the speculators and business community, who are fleecing them as prices in the economy rise.

That’s what the recent half-point drop in official interest rates by the Fed all about. Fed officials knew that that all that debt that has been piling up for the last several years had to be paid either with taxes or inflation. The Fed, realizing that the Bush people weren’t about to raise taxes, blinked. The signal was sent to the currency markets: the Fed is going to accommodate the debt by printing the money to pay it off.

That’s what is behind the plummeting dollar. People are reluctant to hold an asset that is likely to continue dropping in value. There are people who say that the Chinese communist regime would never dump the dollar because it wouldn’t be in their interest to do so. Don’t count it. For one, it might be in their interest to do so if there is a stampede for the exits and the dollar is dropping precipitously. Second, sometimes politics trumps self-interest and if the Bush people make the Chinese communist rulers angry, say, with tariffs, they might just put politics above money.

In my opinion, we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. If there is a run on the dollar, it is impossible to predict how bad the crisis could become. Regardless, everyone should keep an important point in mind: Despite predictable hoopla against speculators and capitalists, the root cause of the monetary crisis will be out-of-control federal spending on both domestic welfare-state programs and foreign warfare-state programs, including the military escapades in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Imperial Playground: The Story of Iran in Recent History

by Andrew G. Marshall

Global Research, October 4, 2007

PART 1

In recent months and even years, the United States and it’s close allies have been stepping up efforts to display Iran in a very negative light, labeling it as a terrorist nation bent on developing nuclear weapons to use against Israel and other allies of the United States in the Middle East, and possibly further outside of the region, or to deliver those nuclear weapons to the hands of terrorists hoping to use them against the United States and its allies.

If a war takes place with Iran, orchestrated by Israel, the United States and other allies, then there will be a massive transformation of not only the Middle East as a whole, but the entire geo-political structure of the world. Simply stated, if a war on Iran occurs, everything changes. So, it is extremely important and necessary to analyze the process of building the case for a war with Iran, as well as the current stance of the Iranian government, the historical relationship between Iran and the West, namely the United States and Britain and how far along these war preparations have already come to the point where there is currently a “secret war” taking place within Iran’s borders being directed by the West, namely, the United States.

As the United States is the sole superpower and empire in the world today, most commentators focus primarily just on relations between America and Iran to explain the current situation developing between the two countries, usually not going further back than just a few years, and as far back as the mainstream media will tell the story is to 1979, when Iran had a revolution, in which they threw out the Shah of Iran, who was backed by the Americans and British, and replaced that form of secular government with a religious one. However, as important as this event was between Iranian and American relations, it is important to go further back to truly understand the dynamic relations that the United Kingdom, and later, the United States (the Anglo-American alliance) have had with Iran. It is important to understand history so that we don’t repeat it. So, it is important to note that the United States only became a global superpower after World War 2, which left it the only major country in the world not devastated by the war. As the European and Asian countries lay in ruins, America built up its power and saw fit to expand its influence across the globe, for the first many decades in the guise of deterring the spread of Communism by the Soviet Union, the other great power in the world. However, in decades to come, the United States asserted itself an imperial status, and in 1989, at the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States was left as the sole superpower in the world, and saw fit to maintain that status. But before the Second World War, it was the United Kingdom, or Great Britain that was the predominant world power, having exerted its influence throughout the entire globe.

It is during this period to which I will return to help identify the origins and causes of the current conflict between the Anglo-Americans (Britain and the United States), and Iran, as well as other great powers. Iran has often played the part of an imperial and hegemonic battleground between great nations and empires, and clearly, not much has changed.

Imperial Rumblings and the Road to World War

As the old British colonial system began to collapse in the late 18th Century, notably with the American Revolutionary War against the British colonialists from 1775-1783, the necessity for a new system of empire was drastically needed. This opportunity arose in the early 19th Century, as William Engdahl put it in his book, A Century of War, in the year 1820, “Acting on the urgings of a powerful group of London shipping and banking interests centered around the Bank of England, and Alexander Baring of Baring Brothers merchant bankers, parliament passes a statement of principle in support of the concept advocated several decades earlier by Scottish economist Adam Smith: so-called ‘absolute free trade’.”1 He continued by explaining this concept; “If they [the British] dominated world trade, ‘free trade’