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The Turkish government's decision to allow its military into northern Iraq to avenge recent ambushes by rebel Kurds is paving the way for a new hot spot and increased tensions between the US and Turkey, as well as between Baghdad and Ankara. And a vote by the US House of Representatives committee on foreign relations that officially terms the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as "genocide" is only inflaming the mix. - Ximena Ortiz (Oct 11, '07)[/b]

SUPER CAPITALISM, SUPER IMPERIALISM
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The processes of globalization have always been the result of active state policy and action, as opposed to the mere passive surrender of state sovereignty to market forces. Market forces cannot operate in a vacuum. They are governed by man-made rules. Globalized markets require the acceptance by local authorities of established rules of the dominant economy. Currency monopoly, of course, is the most fundamental trade restraint by one single dominant government. (Oct 11, '07)
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's agenda is centered on its further enlargement as well as lengthening its reach to undertake missions with new partners in every corner of the world. Many of its main challenges are in the Indian Ocean region, which makes a friendly India a priority. Washington fully backs a NATO-India partnership, while Delhi has some critical decisions to make. - M K Bhadrakumar (Oct 5, '07)

Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for taking on this tough project – and to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Crewdson for a great job of reporting.




Chicago Tribune

Special report

New revelations in attack on American spy ship

Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident

By John Crewdson

Tribune senior correspondent

www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story?coll=chi_business_ugc

October 2, 2007

Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.

"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available athttp://www.nsa.gov/liberty .

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.

But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.

One is Pat Blue, who still remembers having her lunch in Washington's Farragut Square park on "a beautiful June afternoon" when she was a 22-year-old secretary for a law firm.

Blue heard somebody's portable radio saying a U.S. Navy ship had been torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean. A few weeks before, Blue's husband of two years, an Arab-language expert with the NSA, had been hurriedly dispatched overseas.

As she listened to the news report, "it just all came together." Soon afterward, the NSA confirmed that Allen Blue was among the missing.

"I never felt young again," she said.

Aircraft on the horizon

Beginning before dawn on June 8, Israeli aircraft regularly appeared on the horizon and circled the Liberty.

The Israeli Air Force had gained control of the skies on the first day of the war by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. America was Israel's ally, and the Israelis knew the Americans were there. The ship's mission was to monitor the communications of Israel's Arab enemies and their Soviet advisers, but not Israeli communications. The Liberty felt safe.

Then the jets started shooting at the officers and enlisted men stretched out on the deck for a lunch-hour sun bath. Theodore Arfsten, a quartermaster, remembered watching a Jewish officer cry when he saw the blue Star of David on the planes' fuselages. At first, crew members below decks had no idea whose planes were shooting at their ship.

Thirty-four died that day, including Blue, the only civilian casualty. An additional 171 were wounded in the air and sea assault by Israel, which was about to celebrate an overwhelming victory over the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab states.

For most of those who survived the attack, the Six-Day War has become the defining moment of their lives.

Some mustered out of the Navy as soon as their enlistments were up. Others stayed in long enough to retire. Several went on to successful business careers. One became a Secret Service agent, another a Baltimore policeman.

Several are being treated with therapy and drugs for what has since been recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. One has undergone more than 30 major operations. Another suffers seizures caused by a piece of shrapnel still lodged in his brain.

After Bryce Lockwood left the Marines, he worked construction, then tried selling insurance. "I'd get a job and get fired," he said. "I had a hell of a time getting my feet on the ground."

With his linguistic background, Lockwood could have had a career with the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI. But he was too angry at the U.S. government to work for it. "Don't talk to me about government!" he shouts.

U.S. Navy jets were called back

An Israeli military court of inquiry later acknowledged that their naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the odd-looking ship 13 miles off the Sinai Peninsula, sprouting more than 40 antennas capable of receiving every kind of radio transmission, was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy," a floating electronic vacuum cleaner.

The Israeli inquiry later concluded that that information had simply gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats who picked up where the air force left off, strafing the Liberty's decks with their machine guns and launching a torpedo that blew a 39-foot hole in its starboard side.

To a man, the survivors interviewed by the Tribune rejected Israel's explanation.

Nor, the survivors said, did they understand why the American 6th Fleet, which included the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga, patrolling 400 miles west of the Liberty, launched and then recalled at least two squadrons of Navy fighter-bombers that might have arrived in time to prevent the torpedo attack -- and save 26 American lives.

J.Q. "Tony" Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America's carrier battle group, to bring the jets home.

When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."

McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has "absolutely no recollection of what I did that day," except that "I have a memory that I didn't know at the time what was going on."

The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed.

Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson's intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was "inconceivable" that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

The attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate," the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress.

"I don't think you'll find many people at NSA who believe it was accidental," Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, said in an interview.

"I just always assumed that the Israeli pilots knew what they were doing," said Harold Saunders, then a member of the National Security Council staff and later assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

"So for me, the question really is who issued the order to do that and why? That's the really interesting thing."

The answer, if there is one, will probably never be known. Gen. Moshe Dayan, then the country's minister of defense; Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister; and Golda Meir, his successor, are all dead.

Many of those who believe the Liberty was purposely attacked have suggested that the Israelis feared the ship might intercept communications revealing its plans to widen the war, which the U.S. opposed. But no one has ever produced any solid evidence to support that theory, and the Israelis dismiss it. The NSA's deputy director, Louis Tordella, speculated in a recently declassified memo that the attack "might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the LIBERTY was monitoring his activities."

Was the U.S. flag visible?

Though the attack on the Liberty has faded from public memory, Michael Oren, a historian and senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem, conceded that "the case of the assault on the Liberty has never been closed."

If anything, Oren said, "the accusations leveled against Israel have grown sharper with time." Oren said in an interview that he believed a formal investigation by the U.S., even 40 years later, would be useful if only because it would finally establish Israel's innocence.

Questions about what happened to the Liberty have been kept alive by survivors' groups and their Web sites, a half-dozen books, magazine articles and television documentaries, scholarly papers published in academic journals, and Internet chat groups where amateur sleuths debate arcane points of photo interpretation and torpedo running depth.

Meantime, the Liberty's survivors and their supporters, including a distinguished constellation of retired admirals and generals, have persisted in asking Congress for a full-scale formal investigation.

"We deserve to have the truth," Pat Blue said.

For all its apparent complexity, the attack on the Liberty can be reduced to a single question: Was the ship flying the American flag at the time of the attack, and was that flag visible from the air?

The survivors interviewed by the Tribune uniformly agree that the Liberty was flying the Stars and Stripes before, during and after the attack, except for a brief period in which one flag that had been shot down was replaced with another, larger flag -- the ship's "holiday colors" -- that measured 13 feet long.

Concludes one of the declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag -- and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."

The Israeli court of inquiry that examined the attack, and absolved the Israeli military of criminal culpability, came to precisely the opposite conclusion.

"Throughout the contact," it declared, "no American or any other flag appeared on the ship."

The attack, the court said, had been prompted by a report, which later proved erroneous, that a ship was shelling Israeli-held positions in the Sinai Peninsula. The Liberty had no guns capable of shelling the shore, but the court concluded that the U.S. ship had been mistakenly identified as the source of the shelling.

Yiftah Spector, the first Israeli pilot to attack the ship, told the Jerusalem Post in 2003 that when he first spotted the Liberty, "I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag."

But the Liberty crewmen interviewed by the Tribune said the Israeli jets simply appeared and began shooting. They also said the Liberty did not open fire on the planes because it was armed only with four .50-caliber machine guns intended to repel boarders.

"I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship," Spector radioed his ground controller, according to a transcript of the Israeli air-to-ground communications published by the Jerusalem Post in 2004.

That transcript, made by a Post reporter who was allowed to listen to what the Israeli Air Force said were tapes of the attacking pilots' communications, contained only two references to "American" or "Americans," one at the beginning and the other at the end of the attack.

The first reference occurred at 1:54 p.m. local time, two minutes before the Israeli jets began their first strafing run.

In the Post transcript, a weapons system officer on the ground suddenly blurted out, "What is this? Americans?"

"Where are Americans?" replied one of the air controllers.

The question went unanswered, and it was not asked again.

Twenty minutes later, after the Liberty had been hit repeatedly by machine guns, 30 mm cannon and napalm from the Israelis' French-built Mirage and Mystere fighter-bombers, the controller directing the attack asked his chief in Tel Aviv to which country the target vessel belonged.

"Apparently American," the chief controller replied.

Fourteen minutes later the Liberty was struck amidships by a torpedo from an Israeli boat, killing 26 of the 100 or so NSA technicians and specialists in Russian and Arabic who were working in restricted compartments below the ship's waterline.

Analyst: Israelis wanted it sunk

The transcript published by the Jerusalem Post bore scant resemblance to the one that in 1967 rolled off the teletype machine behind the sealed vault door at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, where Steve Forslund worked as an intelligence analyst for the 544th Air Reconnaissance Technical Wing, then the highest-level strategic planning office in the Air Force.

"The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it," Forslund recalled. "The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.

"The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors."

Forslund said he clearly recalled "the obvious frustration of the controller over the inability of the pilots to sink the target quickly and completely."

"He kept insisting the mission had to sink the target, and was frustrated with the pilots' responses that it didn't sink."

Nor, Forslund said, was he the only member of his unit to have read the transcripts. "Everybody saw these," said Forslund, now retired after 26 years in the military.

Forslund's recollections are supported by those of two other Air Force intelligence specialists, working in widely separate locations, who say they also saw the transcripts of the attacking Israeli pilots' communications.

One is James Gotcher, now an attorney in California, who was then serving with the Air Force Security Service's 6924th Security Squadron, an adjunct of the NSA, at Son Tra, Vietnam.

"It was clear that the Israeli aircraft were being vectored directly at USS Liberty," Gotcher recalled in an e-mail. "Later, around the time Liberty got off a distress call, the controllers seemed to panic and urged the aircraft to 'complete the job' and get out of there."

Six thousand miles from Omaha, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, Air Force Capt. Richard Block was commanding an intelligence wing of more than 100 analysts and cryptologists monitoring Middle Eastern communications.

The transcripts Block remembered seeing "were teletypes, way beyond Top Secret. Some of the pilots did not want to attack," Block said. "The pilots said, 'This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?'

"And ground control came back and said, 'Yes, follow orders.'"

Gotcher and Forslund agreed with Block that the Jerusalem Post transcript was not at all like what they remember reading.

"There is simply no way that [the Post transcript is] the same as what I saw," Gotcher said. "More to the point, for anyone familiar with air-to-ground [communications] procedures, that simply isn't the way pilots and controllers communicate."

Block, now a child protection caseworker in Florida, observed that "the fact that the Israeli pilots clearly identified the ship as American and asked for further instructions from ground control appears to be a missing part of that Jerusalem Post article."

Arieh O'Sullivan, the Post reporter who made the newspaper's transcript, said the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces. He said he assumed those blank spaces occurred while Israeli pilots were conducting their strafing runs and had nothing to communicate.

'But sir, it's an American ship!'

Forslund, Gotcher and Block are not alone in claiming to have read transcripts of the attack that they said left no doubt the Israelis knew they were attempting to sink a U.S. Navy ship.

Many ears were tuned to the battles being fought in and around the Sinai during the Six-Day War, including those belonging to other Arab nations with a keen interest in the outcome.

"I had a Libyan naval captain who was listening in that day," said a retired CIA officer, who spoke on condition that he not be named discussing a clandestine informant.

"He thought history would change its course," the CIA officer recalled. "Israel attacking the U.S. He was certain, listening in to the Israeli and American comms [communications], that it was deliberate."

The late Dwight Porter, the American ambassador to Lebanon during the Six-Day War, told friends and family members that he had been shown English-language transcripts of Israeli pilots talking to their controllers.

A close friend, William Chandler, the former head of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., said Porter recalled one of the pilots protesting, "But sir, it's an American ship -- I can see the flag!' To which the ground control responded, 'Never mind; hit it!'"

Porter, who asked that his recollections not be made public while he was alive because they involved classified information, also discussed the transcripts during a lunch in 2000 at the Cosmos Club in Washington with another retired American diplomat, Andrew Kilgore, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar.

Kilgore recalled Porter saying that he "saw the telex, read it, and passed it right back" to the embassy official who had shown it to him. He quoted Porter as recalling that the transcript showed "Israel was attacking, and they know it's an American ship."

Haviland Smith, a young CIA officer stationed in Beirut during the Six-Day War, said that although he never saw the transcript, he had "heard on a number of occasions exactly the story that you just told me about what that transcript contained."

He had later been told, Smith recalled, "that ultimately all of the transcripts were deep-sixed. I was told that they were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis."

Perhaps the most persuasive suggestion that such transcripts existed comes from the Israelis themselves, in a pair of diplomatic cables sent by the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Avraham Harman, to Foreign Minister Abba Eban in Tel Aviv.

Five days after the Liberty attack, Harman cabled Eban that a source the Israelis code-named "Hamlet" was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."

Harman repeated the warning three days later, advising Eban, who is now dead, that the White House was "very angry," and that "the reason for this is that the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."

According to a memoir by then-CIA director Richard Helms, President Johnson's personal anger was manifest when he discovered the story of the Liberty attack on an inside page of the next day's New York Times. Johnson barked that "it should have been on the front page!"

Israeli historian Tom Segev, who mentioned the cables in his recent book "1967," said other cables showed that Harman's source for the second cable was Arthur Goldberg, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The cables, which have been declassified by the Israelis, were obtained from the Israeli State Archive and translated from Hebrew by the Tribune.

Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts.

Asked whether he had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, "I sure did. I certainly did."

"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby recalled, "whatever that meant -- I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."

Kirby, now 86 and retired in Texas, said the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."

One set of transcripts apparently survived in the archives of the U.S. Army's intelligence school, then located at Ft. Holabird in Maryland.

W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel who spent eight years as chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the transcripts were used as "course material" in an advanced class for intelligence officers on the clandestine interception of voice transmissions.

"The flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship that he had been briefed on and that it was clearly marked with the U.S. flag," Lang recalled in an e-mail.

"The flight commander was reluctant," Lang said in a subsequent interview. "That was very clear. He didn't want to do this. He asked them a couple of times, 'Do you really want me to do this?' I've remembered it ever since. It was very striking. I've been harboring this memory for all these years."

Key NSA tapes said missing

Asked whether the NSA had in fact intercepted the communications of the Israeli pilots who were attacking the Liberty, Kirby, the retired senior NSA official, replied, "We sure did."

On its Web site, the NSA has posted three recordings of Israeli communications made on June 8, 1967. But none of the recordings is of the attack itself.

Indeed, the declassified documents state that no recordings of the "actual attack" exist, raising questions about the source of the transcripts recalled by Forslund, Gotcher, Block, Porter, Lang and Kirby.

The three recordings reflect what the NSA describes as "the aftermath" of the attack -- Israeli communications with two Israeli helicopters dispatched to rescue any survivors who may have jumped into the water.

Two of the recordings were made by Michael Prostinak, a Hebrew linguist aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121, a lumbering propeller-driven aircraft specially equipped to gather electronic intelligence.

But Prostinak said he was certain that more than three recordings were made that day.

"I can tell you there were more tapes than just the three on the Internet," he said. "No doubt in my mind, more than three tapes."

At least one of the missing tapes, Prostinak said, captured Israeli communications "in which people were not just tranquil or taking care of business as normal. We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said. "Everyone we were listening to was excited. You know, it was an actual attack. And during the attack was when mention of the American flag was made."

Prostinak acknowledged that his Hebrew was not good enough to understand every word being said, but that after the mention of the American flag "the attack did continue. We copied [recorded] it until we got completely out of range. We got a great deal of it."

Charles Tiffany, the plane's navigator, remembers hearing Prostinak on the plane's intercom system, shouting, "I got something crazy on UHF," the radio frequency band used by the Israeli Air Force.

"I'll never forget it to this day," said Tiffany, now a retired Florida lawyer. He also remembers hearing the plane's pilot ordering the NSA linguists to "start taping everything."

Prostinak said he and the others aboard the plane had been unaware of the Liberty's presence 15,000 feet below, but had concluded that the Israelis' target must be an American ship. "We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said.

After listening to the three recordings released by the NSA, Prostinak said it was clear from the sequence in which they were numbered that at least two tapes that had once existed were not there.

One tape, designated A1104/A-02, begins at 2:29 p.m. local time, just after the Liberty was hit by the torpedo. Prostinak said there was a preceding tape, A1104/A-01.

That tape likely would have recorded much of the attack, which began with the air assault at 1:56 p.m. Prostinak said a second tape, which preceded one beginning at 3:07 p.m., made by another linguist aboard the same plane, also appeared to be missing.

As soon as the EC-121 landed at its base in Athens, Prostinak said, all the tapes were rushed to an NSA facility at the Athens airport where Hebrew translators were standing by.

"We told them what we had, and they immediately took the tapes and went to work," recalled Prostinak, who after leaving the Navy became chief of police and then town administrator for the village of Lake Waccamaw, N.C.

Another linguist aboard the EC-121, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said he believed there had been as many as "five or six" tapes recording the attack on the Liberty or its aftermath.

Andrea Martino, the NSA's senior media adviser, did not respond to a question about the apparent conflict between the agency's assertion that there were no recordings of the Israeli attack and the recollections of those interviewed for this article.

U.S. inquiry widely criticized

Rather than investigating how and why a U.S. Navy vessel had been attacked by an ally, the Navy seemed interested in asking as few questions as possible and answering them in record time.

Even while the Liberty was still limping toward a dry dock in Malta, the Navy convened a formal Court of Inquiry. Adm. John McCain Jr., the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and father of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chose Adm. Isaac Kidd Jr. to preside.

The court's charge was narrow: to determine whether any shortcomings on the part of the Liberty's crew had contributed to the injuries and deaths that resulted from the attack. McCain gave Kidd's investigators a week to complete the job.

"That was a shock," recalled retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, the inquiry's counsel, who said he and Kidd had estimated that a thorough inquiry would take six months.

"Everyone was kind of stunned that it was handled so quickly and without much hullabaloo," said G. Patrick March, then a member of McCain's staff in London.

Largely because of time constraints, Boston said, the investigators were unable to question many of the survivors, or to visit Israel and interview any Israelis involved in the attack.

Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, the Navy's former judge advocate general, was asked to assess the American inquiry's report before it was sent to Washington. But Staring said it was taken from him when he began to question some aspects of the report. He describes it now as "a hasty, superficial, incomplete and totally inadequate inquiry."

Staring, who is among those calling for a full congressional investigation on behalf of the Liberty's survivors, observed in an interview that the inquiry report contained several "findings of fact" unsupported by testimony or evidence.

One such finding ignored the testimony of several inquiry witnesses that the American flag was flying during the attack, and held that the "available evidence combines to indicate the attack on LIBERTY on 8 June was in fact a case of mistaken identity."

There are also apparent omissions in the inquiry's report. It does not include, for example, the testimony of a young lieutenant, Lloyd Painter, who was serving as officer of the deck when the attack began. Painter said he testified that an Israeli torpedo boat "methodically machine-gunned one of our life rafts" that had been put over the side by crewmen preparing to abandon ship.

Painter, who spent 32 years as a Secret Service agent after leaving the Navy, charged that his testimony about the life rafts was purposely omitted.

Ward Boston recalled that, after McCain's one-week deadline expired, Kidd took the record compiled by the inquiry "and flew back to Washington, and I went back to Naples," the headquarters of the 6th Fleet.

"Two weeks later, he comes back to Naples and calls me from his office," Boston recalled in an interview. "In that deep voice, he said, 'Ward, they aren't interested in the facts. It's a political issue and we have to put a lid on it. We've been ordered to shut up.'

"It's time for the truth to come out," declared Boston, who is now 84. "There have been so many cover-ups."

"Someday the truth of this will come out," said Dennis Eikleberry, a NSA technician aboard the Liberty. "Someday it will, but we'll all be gone."

James Ennes, now 74, who was officer of the deck just before the attack began, and later spent two months in a body cast, is one of the more vocal survivors. Like the others, Ennes is tired of waiting.

"We want both sides to stop lying," he said.

----------

bitterlemons-international.org Middle East Roundtable
Edition 37 Volume 5 - October 11, 2007



An American attack on Iran • Hizballah's reaction depends on its constituency - Nicholas Blanford

Hizballah does not have carte blanche to act as it pleases in matters of war and peace. • Brown's Wilsonian moment - Tim Llewellyn

British support for a US strike on Iran could be the end of Gordon Brown's tenure at Downing Street. • Dangerous obtuseness - Danielle Pletka

There is little sign that the Bush administration is planning an attack on Iran, but also little sign that it has developed an alternative policy. • Ramifications of a military strike against Iran - Sadegh Zibakalam

Even if aimed only against Iran's nuclear sites, an attack would be understood by Iran's leaders as tantamount to a declaration of war.



Hizballah's reaction depends on its constituency
Nicholas Blanford

Lebanon may sit at the opposite end of the Middle East from Iran, but many Lebanese fear that if the Islamic Republic is attacked by the United States or Israel in the coming months, this tiny Mediterranean country will be sucked into the vortex of retaliation.

Iran possesses a front seat in the Arab-Israel conflict through its Lebanese protege, Hizballah, which fuels persistent speculation that the party will be compelled to attack Israel as part of Iran's retaliatory package.

Hizballah officials have been cagey about the party's likely reaction, not formally committing themselves one way or another. However, top officials have said in the past that Iran has sufficient means to respond to an attack on its territory, suggesting that any external assistance would be superfluous. But these are fluid and uncertain times and the calculations of allies Hizballah, Syria and Iran are not set in stone but will be shaped by unfolding developments in the region.

"If an aggression occurs in the region, all possibilities are open. I cannot definitely say what our position will be if certain possibilities occur because in all the wars that we have so far fought, we were in a defensive position," Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hizballah's deputy secretary-general, told Ash-Sharq al-Awsat last month.

The polarization pitting the so-called "axis of resistance", grouping Iran, Syria and Hizballah, against the United States, Israel and Washington's Sunni Arab allies is more acute than ever, sharpening speculation of a looming regional conflict. Although Hizballah leaders have played down the prospect of an imminent war, they do not hide the fact that the party has undergone a massive recruitment, training and re-armament drive since the end of last year's 34-day war with Israel. Hundreds of young volunteers have undergone month-long basic training sessions, pounding the craggy mountains flanking the Bekaa Valley on 20-mile route marches with rifles, ammunition and rock-filled backpacks. Other volunteers have received specialist training in Iran where they learn how to plant roadside bombs and fire advanced anti-tank missiles.

Hizballah's military chiefs have been brainstorming new battlefield tactics to keep one step ahead of the Israeli army's own measures. Having yielded to an expanded United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon's southern border district, Hizballah has relocated to the mountains north of the Litani river, the limit of the UN-patrolled zone, where it is constructing a new line of defense in sealed-off "security pockets". And, sources close to Hizballah say, there has been a steady flow of arms to replenish the group's war-depleted arsenal, with an emphasis on improving its air defense capabilities.

In a speech marking the first anniversary of the end of the war, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah's secretary-general, confirmed that the weaknesses and strengths of both the Islamic Resistance and Israel had been closely analyzed in preparation for any future conflict. He warned Israel that should it launch another attack on Lebanon it would receive a "big surprise that could change the course of the war and the fate of the region."

Many analysts believe, however, that the 2006 Hizballah-Israel war will be the last fought solely between these two bitter foes. If any lesson was learned from last year's conflict it was that, short of committing genocide against Lebanon's Shi'ite community, Hizballah cannot be defeated militarily. That is why many analysts suspect that the next confrontation between Israel and Hizballah will be a component of a broader conflict possibly involving the US, Iran and Syria--a regional war intended to change the geo-political map of the Middle East in favor of Washington and its allies. Hizballah's strengthening of its military wing reflects this conviction as do the military preparations undertaken in recent months by Syria, and Tehran's tightening economic and military relationship with Damascus.

Yet Hizballah's freedom of action in terms of siding militarily with Iran in the event of an attack is constrained to a large extent by the interests of its Shi'ite constituency in Lebanon. The 2006 war was a conflict that Hizballah would have preferred to avoid. While the party subsequently was able to claim a "divine victory", it came at a steep price. It was forced to abandon the extensive military infrastructure that it had painstakingly constructed since 2000 in the southern border district, and, more crucially, it had to respond to its Shi'ite constituents who, though proud of the achievements of the Islamic Resistance, were not overly happy to have their homes destroyed by Israeli bombing again. Hizballah stands or falls on the level of support it earns from Lebanese Shi'ites, a stark reality that has helped shape the party's course of action since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Hizballah and Iran are spending tens of millions of dollars to shore up Shi'ite support through an extensive reconstruction campaign in Beirut's southern suburbs and in South Lebanon. There is little doubt that Hizballah will continue to be the dominant voice of Lebanon's Shi'ites, but it does not have carte blanche to act as it pleases in matters of war and peace irrespective of the views of its grassroots supporters. If Iran is attacked during the Bush administration's twilight months, any Hizballah reaction will be the result of having carefully balanced the scale and regional consequences of the assault with the likely impact on its domestic standing among Lebanese Shi'ites.- Published 11/10/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Nicholas Blanford is a Beirut-based journalist and author of "Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafiq Hariri and its Impact on the Middle East".

Brown's Wilsonian moment
Tim LlewellynAn American military attack on Iran would present the new prime minister of the United Kingdom, Gordon Brown, with a challenge not faced by any British leader since US President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to persuade PM Harold Wilson to send troops to Vietnam.

Harold Wilson was smarter than his successors in New Labour: he kept his support for the American mission moral, not physical (and he still received damaging political flak at home).

Matters have changed since then. The UK under Tony Blair's New Labour identified itself closely with George Bush's far right America, joining in, amid great popular opposition, the disastrous war in Iraq in March 2003. Gordon Brown has so far shown no concrete signs that he is drifting away from this involvement, that his stance is any less pro-American and Atlantically inclined than his predecessor's.

A military attack on Iran, however, would be a test for him of the utmost difficulty and significance.

First, a majority of the British public would oppose it and any hint of British collusion. Since 2003, the British have become totally disillusioned with the lies and failures that have invested the Iraqi invasion and occupation. They are not in the mood to stomach more such adventures, especially one that would offer even more cataclysmic consequences than the one in Iraq (it is so far the poor of Iraq and the British and American infantry who have borne the suffering---the misery would be spread across the earning and chattering classes here if America bombed and/or tried to topple the regime in Tehran).

Neither is this early 2003 in domestic political terms. Gordon Brown has less than half Tony Blair's majority in parliament of those days; he has nervously just ducked one opportunity for an election; and it is unlikely he could persuade or hoodwink his MPs into supporting him in a military assault against Iran alongside the US (and possibly Israel) as Blair did over Iraq with his half-truths, "dodgy" intelligence dossiers on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and his aura, in the eyes of his parliamentary followers, of victorious electoral genius.

Internally, Brown would have to cope with epic economic reverberations in the UK. Even a hint of military action in the Gulf, let alone Iranian closure of the Straits of Hormuz and a complete blocking of oil supplies, which is quite feasible, would send fuel prices soaring. Britain is already struggling. It has a potentially overheated economy damped only by rising interest rates. Petrol at the pump is more than $8.00 US an Imperial Gallon ($2.00 a liter): double that or more and the feed-through in prices and services would spark inflation (Brown's bete noir) and national alarm.

Labour's electoral fortunes would diminish cataclysmically. A parliamentary revolt against Brown by his own MPs would be very much on the cards if he tried to railroad Britain into military support, and, quite possibly, strikes of a vehemence and spread not seen since the 1970s (postal and transport workers are even now rocking the British system with sporadic industrial action and this under circumstances where the economy is performing reasonably well).

Militarily, Britain is trying to get out of Iraq and Brown must be silently praying that any American action against Iran would come when our commitment in Iraq is minimalized---it is supposed to be down to 2,500 "over-watch" soldiers, mostly in barracks, by the end of next year.

Unfortunately for Brown, Bush may have him in the mangle. The American president would want to do the business for his own party's and possible successor's electoral benefit, and that means in the near future.

Whatever troops Britain might or might not have in downgraded roles in Iraq or elsewhere in the region (the Royal Navy is always present in the Gulf), Brown's support for Washington would be seen there as a crucial test of that "special relationship" that suits America when it needs us but whose benefits are lost on the wider British public.

If they follow British precedent since World War II, Brown and his political and military establishment would be reluctant to be seen internationally as distancing themselves from the US and losing the privileges in terms of military and intelligence assistance and know-how they acquire from Washington, as well as that seat at the high table that the UK's leaders so cherish.

The question for Gordon Brown is so crucial that it is not even being asked or contemplated publicly in official circles here, Iraq and Afghanistan being enough to dominate UK foreign policy. For instance, the steady loss of British soldiers' lives in Iraq and Afghanistan is much more of an issue here than it is (allowed to be?) in the US.

It would be in Iraq and Afghanistan that Iran could move so effectively to damage western (British) interests and efforts if London did help attack Iran; but not only there: terrorist reprisals in mainland Europe and especially Britain, economic chaos, international pariah status---none of it can be ruled out.

It could certainly be the end of Gordon Brown's tenure at Downing Street.

On the other hand, avoiding it could, and should, herald a new and much more positive European, realistic, non-American approach to the Middle East by the British. That will have been a very long time coming and a painful transition for our political leaders to make. Most British voters would certainly---especially after Iraq---hope Gordon Brown would make the latter choice.- Published 11/10/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Tim Llewellyn was the BBC's Middle East correspondent and is now a freelance writer and broadcaster on the region's affairs.

Dangerous obtuseness
Danielle PletkaTo bomb or not to bomb, is that really the question? Washington has seen a frenzy of speculation about American plans to attack Iran, and rumormongers are, as usual, as uninformed as they are uninhibited in sharing their musings as fact.

Iran, its nuclear weapons program, its support for terrorism, its interference in Iraq and its brutal dictatorship cannot be reduced to a simple question about military action. More complicated still, the issues are intertwined, and addressing one without confronting the others may cause more problems than it solves.

Yet a curious passivity in face of these multiple issues means President George W. Bush may, by the end of his administration, leave himself only the alternative of launching a strike or kicking the can down the road to his successor, having failed to develop any other promising options for pressuring the Iranian regime.

On the nuclear front, Mohammad El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, appears determined to allow Iran to evade sanctions, let alone military action. Without the support of IAEA member states, he inked a deal with Tehran to answer outstanding questions about its nuclear program. This agreement, which allows Iran to drag out the inquiry into its clandestine nuclear activities into the foreseeable future, effectively undercuts efforts by the United States, United Kingdom and France to secure a third United Nations Security Council resolution tightening sanctions.

With Security Council action put off until November at the earliest, Iran is now free to move forward with its uranium enrichment program. Amazingly, Bush, who has described Iran's weapons programs as putting the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust", commented in late September that he is "hopeful that we can convince the Iranian regime to give up any ambitions it has in developing a weapons program, and do so peacefully".

As for Iranian support for international terrorism in Gaza, Lebanon, or anywhere else, the United States and the rest of the world appear equally unwilling to move ahead on useful steps. Iran has, without repercussions, violated the demand of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 not to "supply...arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government". Iranian proxy Hizballah has derailed the Lebanese democratic process with only murmured protests from erstwhile champions of democracy in Washington and Paris. American threats to sanction the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the spearhead of terrorist training and armament, have come to naught.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps is also at the heart of training both Sunni and Shi'ite terrorists in Iraq, and coordinates the supply of shaped explosive charges into Iraq and Afghanistan. US military sources estimate that Iran has been directly responsible for hundreds of US combat deaths. Iranian markings have been found on weapons caches in Iraq, training camps have been pinpointed near Tehran and Iranian "diplomats" have been arrested with insurgents. As Iranian efforts to destabilize Iraq and kill Americans escalate, some in the US military have clamored for the right of hot pursuit into Iran, or at least the right to strike Iranian training camps (as indeed the Iranians have not hesitated to strike their perceived enemies in northern Iraq with artillery barrages).

Thus far, however, the US government has not signed off on hot pursuit, insisting on pursuing bilateral talks that US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has described as "the appearance of discussion... instead of actually doing serious business".

Finally, there is the question of toppling the mullahs. In 2002, when President Bush said the United States stood with the people of Iran in their "quest for freedom", dissidents in Iran believed the tide had turned for them. If indeed it ever did, and there is scant evidence for the proposition, the tide has now receded. The Bush administration has explicitly disavowed regime change, either on its merits or as a means to ending the nuclear program, support for terror or the insurgency in Iraq.

In other words, there is little sign that the Bush administration is planning an attack on Iran, but also little sign that it has developed a coherent, energetic alternative policy.

Faced with the end of his presidency in 2008, the president may yet decide he cannot bequeath this nightmare to his successor. Indeed, there is ample anecdotal evidence that the president believes he may, in the end, have no choice but to launch an air strike on Iranian targets.

In that case, what will the US hit?

Recently, speculation has centered around an American strike on Iranian terrorist training camps, with the US taking a pass on the nuclear program. On the face of it, this is ridiculous. The Clinton administration proved the efficacy of the symbolic cruise missile attack in its bombing of a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan. A hole in the ground is no more likely to deter the Iranians than it did al-Qaeda. Worse yet, it will likely trigger a wave of terrorist response from the Iranians--a high price to pay for little reward.

More serious studies suggest a variety of key targets, including known nuclear installations, missile and air defense sites, Revolutionary Guard operations centers, intelligence ministries, etc. Strikes across a broad spectrum of Iran's terrorist and WMD infrastructure would have a huge impact, to be sure, but would raise a host of difficult questions as well. Would a military assault decapitate the regime? Would the Iranian people rise up in the rubble and take out the mullahs? There's no substantial reason to believe so. Most importantly, would such strikes end Tehran's WMD and terror programs?

The answer to this last question is unsure. A military strike would certainly set Iran back. It would buy time. But what would the United States or, more broadly, the international community do with that time to ensure that Iran doesn't accelerate its drive to acquire nuclear weapons to deter future interference in its plans?

Diplomats inside Tehran believe the regime is overconfident, certain that the United States cannot and will not attack. This is dangerous obtuseness. Of course the United States has ample firepower to level a good deal of Iran, and the war in Iraq has not diminished that capacity. (After all, no one has suggested ground forces invade.) As to whether the US actually should or would launch strikes, that may depend more on the success or failure of other options and Iran's own miscalculations.

If America and Britain are stymied by Russia and China in the United Nations there may be few diplomatic or economic options left to consider. Faced with the choice of accepting an Iranian nuclear bomb or ordering a strike, George W. Bush may choose the latter, risks and all.- Published 11/10/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Danielle Pletka is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

<a name="809">Ramifications of a military strike against Iran
Sadegh ZibakalamEver since the disclosure of Iran's nuclear program about five years ago the West, particularly the United States and some European powers, has confronted the fundamental question of what to do about it. Broadly speaking, three approaches have emerged.

The first can be described as the "carrot and stick" approach: employing a combination of threats and promises to persuade the Islamic leaders to abandon those parts of their nuclear program--most importantly uranium enrichment--that have the potential of being used to produce nuclear weapons. The second approach advocates strong measures by the international community, including the use of extensive sanctions and a trade embargo, in order to force the Islamic regime to freeze its uranium enrichment program. The third approach, which in part results from the futility of the other two approaches, advocates some sort of military action against Iran with the aim of preventing it from acquiring the ability to reach the stage where it can develop a nuclear weapon.

Every approach has its critics and opponents as well as supporters within the international community. Russia, China, India, the so-called non-aligned countries, some Latin American states, particularly those with left-wing governments, and some African states are among the supporters of the "soft approach". The second approach is strongly advocated by the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia and some Arab states that fear Iran turning into a nuclear power. Their motives for supporting strong sanctions against Iran vary. Some have territorial disputes with Iran, others resent Iran's increasing influence in the region, particularly in Iraq, and still others perceive Iran as a Shi'ite power threatening the Sunni Arab majority.

The third, or military, approach is broadly advocated by the US and its principal ally in the region, Israel. The chief argument cited by these advocates of the use of force to prevent the Islamic state from achieving its nuclear aims stems basically from the ineffectiveness of the other approaches. They argue that the sanctions imposed against Iran thus far by the Security Council have been ineffective in preventing it from pursuing its nuclear objectives. They therefore conclude that the use of force is the only viable option left to the international community in order to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in the region.

Perhaps the most fundamental question regarding the use of force against Iran concerns the extent of an attack. Should a strike against Iran be limited to its nuclear sites or should it aim to destroy the country's military, industrial and communications targets. Secondly, and regardless of the extent of the attack, what would be Iran's response to a military strike?

There can be little doubt that a military strike against Iran, even if aimed only against its nuclear sites, would be understood by its leaders as tantamount to a declaration of war. This means that every asset belonging to the perpetrator(s) of the military strike would be recognized as a "legitimate target". If the US becomes involved in such an operation, everything that relates to its armed forces in the region would be described as a legitimate target by the Iranian armed forces. The list would include US navy ships, military and command and communications centers in the region as well as all American personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is precisely in view of such a possibility that some advocates of the use of force against Iran suggest that any military operations against it must extend beyond its nuclear sites and must aim at destroying the country's capability to fight back after the first strike.

Whether or not a strike against Iran is extensive or simply limited to nuclear targets, there must be little doubt that either way it would be interpreted by Iran as a declaration of war against it. If Iran can strike back by deploying its air force as well as firing its missiles it will do so. If, however, it is rendered incapable of using its strategic weapons including its long-range missiles, Iran will resort to long-term guerrilla warfare that destabilizes the entire region for the foreseeable future.

To be sure, no one can predict with any degree of accuracy what will happen if a military operation is launched against Iran. The Islamic regime has room for maneuver geographically. One option it may decide to embark upon would be the disruption of the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. Hizballah in Lebanon offers another front Tehran may decide to open. And Iranian elite forces can target allied forces both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Next there are the possible domestic consequences of an attack on Iran. Some analysts are inclined to assess that the Islamic regime would become severely weakened in the event of such a strike. Others go further and argue that the regime might even fall. These ideas are more wishful thinking than reality. Not only would the Islamic regime not weaken, but its more radical and hard-line currents would be strengthened at the expense of its more pragmatic and moderate forces.

A military operation against Iran would create a huge groundswell of anti-western and anti-American sentiment there and would strengthen radical Islamic and Iranian patriotism. Such a social climate is very congenial to the rise of radical Islamic sentiment while at the same time inevitably suppressing voices of tolerance and moderation. In short, any military strike against Iranian nuclear targets may hinder Iran's progress toward becoming a nuclear power in the short term, but will undoubtedly unleash a wave of radicalism with all its dire consequences.- Published 11/10/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Sadegh Zibakalam is professor of Iranian Studies at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Tehran University. He is broadly regarded in Iran as an independent academic.





Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org and yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.

]Thought this might interest some of you....best, Steve Clemons
--
Steven Clemons
Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation
and Publisher, www.TheWashingtonNote.com

202-986-2700, ext. 307
202-986-3696 fax
clemons@newamerica.net Email



http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002407.php
(web link article has hyperlinks)

October 11, 2007
How Many Moral Waivers Has Blackwater Issued?
by Steve Clemons

A while back, I got interested in the fact that the Pentagon has issued more than 125,000 "moral waivers" to recruits in order to continue to meet manpower requirements. While issuing these waivers for various kinds of felonies -- including theft and assault -- the military under its highly righteous most senior general, Joint Chiefs Commander Pete Pace, continued to legally harrass and expel discovered homosexuals in its ranks.

This raises the questions about norms in private military contractors -- like Blackwater.

I don't know the answers but it would be interesting to know if Blackwater has issued any moral waivers to its recruits -- or whether it has any moral benchmarks at all. Someone really ought to ask.

Also, does Blackwater have a "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy? Or does it allow homosexuals into its private combat operations (as opposed to the gay folks at headquarters doing the planning and pushing paper)? Or does it discriminate against any homosexuals joining its ranks?

Would be interesting to know.

Former DoD official and defense policy staffer at CSIS and the Council on Foreign Relations John Hillen used to focus on the "norms gap" between society and the Department of Defense -- and he'd side with the anti-gay bias of the Pentagon in general. But Blackwater USA and other private contractors raise a new question not about the gap between their outfits and American society -- but about the norms gap between a Blackwater operation and the miiltary.

My New America Foundation colleague and friend Jim Pinkerton -- who used to hang out with the current President when "W" was a lost puppy looking for purpose under the political direction of Lee Atwater -- has written a great essay on Blackwater -- with particular focus on the cockiness of the firm's CEO, Erik Prince.

>From Pinkerton's "Blackwater Fights War the Way America Wants It":

In a recent session convened by The American Spectator magazine, Prince made a CEO-y pitch for his company. Using modern non-bureaucratic management techniques, such as differential pay for differential skills and performance -- and extra money for, say, working over the Christmas holidays -- Blackwater can, he says, deliver more value for the taxpayers.

And what of those shootings in Iraq? Well, that's off the record. Suffice it to say that Prince is fully aware of the investigators and litigators circling his company, and yet the onetime Navy SEAL, still ramrod straight in posture and deportment, has no intention of bowing down.

Indeed, Prince is sometimes startling in his independence -- even to those who pay his fees. The "surge" notwithstanding, the Blackwater man sees no decrease in the number of attacks on his teams in Iraq. Yet even more startlingly, he declares that American troops "should not be on the ground for more than 90 days." That is, after that much time, GIs are sure to wear out their welcome.

Some might say it's good for Prince's business for even more war-fighting to be privatized. But his suggested "term limiting" of American military occupation is an implicit criticism of the Bush administration, which hopes to see troops in Iraq for decades to come.

In fact, Americans aren't likely to stay in Iraq too much longer; there aren't many Muslim places where Christian soldiers are welcomed. And that's the best argument for using contractors: If we find ourselves in murky situations around the world, it's probably better to deploy shadowy companies, avoiding the Stars and Stripes bannered overhead.

For missions in a "long twilight struggle," what's a better name than Blackwater?

Did anything worthwhile come out of the nearly unnoticed war profiteering hearings earlier this year?

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note


___________________________________________

• "Partial Progress," By Sharon Squassoni, Carnegie Analysis
• "Stark Differences on Arms Threaten U.S.-Russian Talks," By Thom Shanker and Steven Lee Myers, The New York Times
• "'No Real Data' on Iranian Nuclear Ambitions, Putin Asserts," By Peter Finn and Robin Wright, The Washington Post
• "U.S. Targets Illegal Sales to Enemies," By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times
• "US Eyes Boom in Nuclear Reactors," BBC News
• "Deal Baradei," Op-Ed by C. Raja Mohan, The Indian Express

CIA investigates conduct of its inspector general
By Greg Miller
The internal inquiry is prompted by senior agency officials who say they were
criticized unfairly in the watchdog's reports on secret overseas prisons.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0I2ZQ0Ec

Nobel goes to Doris Lessing
By Josh Getlin
Famously contrarian, the British author defies genres and categories, but is
best known for exploring women's lives.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0I2ZR0Ed

Stalemate threatens Mideast peace talks
By Richard Boudreaux and Paul Richter
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are far apart in the run-up to a U.S.-backed
conference set for next month.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0I2ZS0Ee

Turkey recalls ambassador to U.S.
By Paul Richter
The government's move in response to the genocide bill approved by a House panel
may foreshadow more forceful measures.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/eBZ...Io30G2B0I2Ze0Ew

Analysis: DoJ's counter-proliferation push
Washington (UPI) Oct 11, 2007 - Federal law enforcement officials Thursday rolled out a new initiative to counter what they said were increased efforts by China, Iran and others to obtain sensitive U.S. technology for weapons systems and industrial development. A wide range of federal departments, including intelligence agencies, are working together on the new effort, which will employ the aggressive tactics used to ... more

NKorea tests new solid-fuel missile, MP says
Seoul (AFP) Oct 11, 2007 - North Korea has successfully tested a highly mobile short-range missile which could hit targets inside South Korea with chemical or explosive warheads, a lawmaker said Thursday. The communist state successfully launched the KN-02 missile in June, said Kim Hak-Song of the opposition Grand National Party, who is a member of parliament's defence committee. Quoting a recent report to parliam ... more

Rising exports push down US trade gap; China, oil deficit still high
Washington (AFP) Oct 11, 2007 - The US trade deficit narrowed in August, as a jump in exports helped by a weak dollar offset higher costs for imported oil, government data showed Thursday. The lion's share of the month's 57.6 billion-dollar deficit came from oil imports and from China, but excluding those factors, the trade balance showed improvement. Adjusted for inflation, the deficit was the lowest since February 20 ... more

Taiwan independence 'doomed to failure': China
Beijing (AFP) Oct 10, 2007 - C