The Gates Critique – Boston Globe editorial
Iraq Must Seize Precious Opportunity – Anthony Cordesman, Financial Times
Bush Isn’t the Only Decider on Iraq – Bruce Ackerman, Los Angeles Times
Iraq Accountability Due – David Limbaugh, Washington Times
Public Sees Progress in War – Pew Research Center
Good News on Bush’s Watch? – Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times
Al Qaeda’s Emerging Defeat – Austin Bay, Real Clear Politics
Rewarding One's Friends - Robert Scheer, San Francisco Chronicle
Military Readiness and Waging War – John Brinkerhoff, Washington Times
A Few Good People – Victor Davis Hanson, Real Clear Politics
A Tribute to Howard – Greg Sheridan, The Australian
Annapolis: The Long Haul - Baltimore Sun editorial
Annapolis: It's a Start - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial
Palestine: Land of Prophets at a Loss – Alan Gold, The Australian
Annapolis Animosity - Meyrav Wurmser, National Review
Saudis Played Key Role - Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star
Annapolis Talks Likely to Fail – Rami Khouri, Daily Star
Pakistan: The General Retires – Washington Post editorial
Sharif, Bhutto and the (Ex-) General? – New York Times editorial
Ominous Future for Pakistan - Kamal Siddiqi, Boston Globe
Citizen Musharraf – Amir Taheri, New York Post
Destroying Lebanon for a Great Sinecure – Michael Young, Daily Star
Battle of the Youth Bulge - Gunnar Heinsohn, Weekly Standard
On the Archbishop of Canterbury – Giles Fraser, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Tolerance’ in Khartoum – New York Post editorial
British Muslims Should Protest Teddy Lunacy – Boris Johnson, London Daily Telegraph
Lesson in Russian Voter Fraud – Mark Almond, Canberra Times
Shutting Up Venezuela’s Chávez? – Roger Cohen, New York Times
Hugo Chávez's Vision in the Hills – Charles Lane, Washington Post

A 'Surge' for Afghanistan
by SWJ Editors
Gordon Lubold in today's Christian Science Monitor - A 'Surge' for Afghanistan.

The top general of the Marine Corps is pushing hard to deploy marines to Afghanistan as he looks to draw down his forces in Iraq, but his proposal, which is under discussion at the Pentagon this week, faces deep resistance from other military leaders.

Commandant Gen. James Conway's plan, if approved, would deploy a large contingent of Marines to Afghanistan, perhaps as early as next year. The reinforcements would be used to fight the Taliban, which US officials concede is now defending its territory more effectively against allied and Afghan forces.

Within the Pentagon, General Conway's proposal has led to speculation about which, if any, American forces would be best suited to provide reinforcements for a mission that, most agree, has far more political appeal than the one in Iraq. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has already recommended against the proposal, at least for now, a military official said Tuesday…

Conway says that Marines, who have been largely responsible for calming Anbar Province in Iraq, can either return home or "stay plugged into the fight" by essentially redeploying to Afghanistan...

Rick Rogers, San Diego Union-Tribune, on USMC current operations in Anbar, Iraq and implications for the Afghanistan mission - Marines' Duties go Well Beyond Combat.

... some Marine commanders and defense specialists question whether the Corps' expeditionary combat strengths are being wasted in Anbar.

The Marines are revered for their offensive capabilities, said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Va.

"At some point, we are going to have to ask why are we sending a quick-strike force to do nation building. It really would make more sense to send them to Afghanistan to chase insurgents than to have them helping locals in Anbar province build schools," Thompson said.

"If the mission becomes more reconstruction, then it is more of an Army job," he added.

The proposal for handing Marines the lead combat role in Afghanistan has been espoused by senior commanders such as Lt. Gen. [General] James Mattis, Helland's immediate predecessor at Camp Pendleton...

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "A 'Surge' for Afghanistan" »

bitterlemons-international.org Middle East Roundtable
Edition 44 Volume 5 - November 29, 2007



A Syrian nuclear program? • The Assads' nuclear itch - Ammar Abdulhamid

The Syrian nuclear program dates back to the 1980s and to Hafez Assad's ambitious drive to reach "strategic parity" with Israel. • The media has gone nuclear about Syria - Rime Allaf

It is incumbent on the media to exercise responsibility and to simply report the fact that the Israeli raid on Syria remains a mystery. • Killing four birds with one stone - Mark Fitzpatrick

If the bombed facility were a reactor under construction, it would not have presented a direct proliferation threat for several years. • Ambiguous preemption - Emily B. Landau

The success of this strike stands in stark contrast to the failure so far of international efforts to stop Iran.



The Assads' nuclear itch
Ammar Abdulhamid

The incredulity with which some quarters received the recent revelations that Syria does actually have a working nuclear program and not only nuclear dreams or ambitions, comes as an indication of how seriously ill-informed policymakers in the United States and Europe are. The ruling Assad regime in Syria has been seeking to establish a nuclear program for close to two decades now, even if no serious progress seems to have been made in this regard until the last 5-7 years.

The story of the Syrian nuclear program dates back to the 1980s, and specifically to the ambitious (or perhaps overambitious) drive of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad to, as he framed it, reach "strategic parity" with Israel. What this in essence boiled down to was a costly attempt at arms acquisition and development, including the importation of advanced missiles and missile technology from the Soviet Union and North Korea, and the developing of an advanced chemical weapons program in cooperation with these two countries and, at a later date, Iran as well. The idea of developing a nuclear program was also considered, but there was enough realism around to at least put it on a slower-moving track.

The story, however, took a different turn with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the realization by the Assad regime that achieving direct parity with Israel was no longer feasible, if it had ever been: the Syrian military was lagging far behind on important fronts and Syria simply lacked the necessary resources and allies to compensate. The new strategy that Assad ended up adopting put greater emphasis on developing the regime's short- and medium-range missiles and increasing and diversifying its existing chemical and biological weapons, while attempting to import wholesale some critical components, including a reactor, that could help to quickly launch an advanced nuclear weapons program.

In this regard, the late Assad initially hoped to acquire some necessary materials and know-how from former Soviet satellites and rogue scientists. But he soon discovered that the best that could be achieved this way was to acquire radioactive waste barely sufficient for constructing a few "dirty bombs". Seeing that these were not sufficient to serve as deterrents, Assad Sr. turned his attention elsewhere and engaged then Argentine President Carlos Menem. The latter, for a mixture of ideological and sentimental reasons (he was of Syrian descent himself, and so was his wife at the time) was very sympathetic to the Assad regime. Indeed, the gambit was about to pay off, as Menem was convinced to sell to his former co-nationalist a ready-made Argentinean reactor. But the sale was finally called off on account of increasing pressure from the Americans.

Frustrated, Assad and his men turned their attention to the Pakistanis and North Koreans. The Pakistani link, however, proved too unreliable. Despite some progress made in bilateral relations during the visit of then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to Syria in 1997, and despite the fact that the absence of a clear central authority in Pakistan created a real opportunity for buying some critical components, the complexity of Pakistani internal politics and the proliferation of middlemen proved too daunting to maneuver around.

The Assads had no other recourse then but to turn to North Korea.

But early contacts in this regard were interrupted on account of the transitional process that Syria witnessed between 1998 and 2001, with Bashar al-Assad inheriting his father's position as Syria's new narrowly-selected leader. Contacts resumed in 2002 when a rare high- level North Korean delegation paid a visit to Syria and met with Bashar and other top officials, thereby "officially" launching the process.

Still, cooperation between the two countries in this regard was always sporadic and was premised on the level of progress made by the international community in engaging the North Koreans with regard to their own nuclear program. It is safe to assume (on the basis of increasing reports concerning visits by North Korean officials and vessels over the last two years) that the Damascus regime intensified its efforts to elicit North Korean cooperation after the US-led invasion of Iraq and especially in the aftermath of the Assads' withdrawal from Lebanon and the launch of the UN probe into the Hariri assassination. For these developments meant that the Assads had to worry about their very survival now and not simply about achieving strategic parity with Israel.

It is this intensification of efforts on the part of the Assads that seems to have finally attracted the attention of the Americans and the Israelis. While this may not and should not be construed as a justification of the Israeli air-strike against the rumored nuclear site in northern Syria, it does at least put that mysterious event in the proper historical context, something that has so far been missing from the debate provoked by the attack.- Published 29/11/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian dissident and democracy activist. He currently serves as the director of the Tharwa Foundation, a US-based non-profit organization dedicated to improving relations among the different ethnic communities in Syria and the Muslim world.

The media has gone nuclear about Syria
Rime AllafThe most striking element of Israel's September 6 raid on Syrian territory was the aggressor's most unusual behavior, namely a reticence to brag about yet another illegal assault, to the point of imposing military censorship on media coverage. This after an equally unusual and totally spontaneous Syrian disclosure that a raid had in fact taken place, making the event even more peculiar. The normal, vague Syrian response to Israeli assaults had until then stopped, meekly and indefinitely, at reserving the right to retaliate.

By the time Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, some ten days later, declared having "a good deal of respect for the Syrian leader and for Syrian policy"--an unexpected sentiment not echoed by Israel's actions --there had been mysterious American leaks about alleged Syrian nuclear facilities or nuclear shipments and a growing array of theories about what had happened, adding much speculation but little actual information. When Syria suddenly cleaned up the site of the raid, a month later, most reports in the media and in the blogosphere triumphantly took this as an indication of Syria's "guilt."

Clearly, the latter's action did not significantly improve odds that the benefit of the doubt would be granted--even to the actual victim of aggression--especially as other Syrian sites attacked by Israel (such as the Golan town of Quneitra, systematically destroyed before Israel was forced to withdraw following the disengagement agreement in 1974) have been left intact in their desolation for decades, forced witnesses testifying about the violence of the enemy.

But no serious analyst or nuclear expert, not even hysterical fear mongers, can actually back up claims that Syria in its present condition could truly pose a threat to the security of Israel. As things stand, it is difficult to believe that Syria could develop into even a significant opponent to Israel, and as repeated reports by respected professionals in the field have stated, Syria's nuclear ambitions, if any, are modest, its capacities are non-existent and its potential for development in such matters is practically nil. No matter how it is presented, the nuclear linkage between Syria and North Korea or Iran has no basis.

Unfortunately, mainstream media's Pavlovian conditioning has ensured that the Bush administration's bait about supposed weapons of mass destruction, yet again, was taken unconditionally. Reliable villains don't come easy, and Syria has not done itself any favors in its clumsy handling of the affair. As usual, the official response was completely inadequate in comparison to the media-savvy exposes of both the attackers and the accusers; Syrian ministers with clearly unrelated portfolios and limited persuasive talents led the battle, while other officials gave contradicting information.

This in no way excuses the sloppy reporting and the rumors disguised as truth that covered the pages of newspapers and websites. In fact, most reports only exercised the necessary journalistic caution when covering Syria's initial announcement that it had been attacked, and that its air defense had challenged the Israeli planes and chased them out; until Israel actually confirmed the raid, making headline news, Syrian statements were described as alleged, claimed, supposed--anything but believable.

But even while doubting Syria's declarations, many reports, probably inadvertently, gave credibility to the argument of a nuclear Syria. Indeed, analysis seemed to accept the "normalcy" of the rumor that a nuclear facility had been hit, not only because it served the purpose of portraying Syria as a problem-maker in cahoots with even more undesirable regimes in the most dangerous of activities, but also because it elaborated on the reasons why Syria would want, or need, such capacities. As a deterrent against an occupying enemy whose own 200 plus nuclear warheads loom menacingly near, the only adequate measure is some of the same.

But while these well-presented arguments about Syrian needs by foreign (and generally anti-Syrian) media made perfect sense, they neglected to dig into the mountain of facts already covered by numerous proliferation reports, including details about the countries (mostly Western powers) that have assisted Syria and in which Syrian scientists have trained, and the description of the kind of research and production of which Syria is capable (mainly isotopes for medical and agricultural applications).

Such details, and the fact that unlike Israel, Syria is a signatory to the Non Nuclear Proliferation Treaty since 1969, do not support the scaremongering and the political agenda behind it. The events and the uncharacteristic behavior following the attack seem to suggest that both Syria and Israel have something to hide, and that they were surprised by each other's game as it was being divulged. For some analysts, repercussions of this raid are still being felt, from Annapolis to Beirut; for others still, the raid gave a new perspective on the preposterous plans for Tehran.

But unless--or rather, given Baghdad's recent experience, even if--the current American secretary of state can produce a vial of evidence to hold up during a session of the Security Council, it is incumbent on the media to exercise responsibility and to simply report the fact that the Israeli raid on Syria remains a mystery.- Published 29/11/2007 © bitterlemons-international.org

Rime Allaf is associate fellow at Chatham House in London.

Killing four birds with one stone
Mark FitzpatrickFor those who insist on assessments based on facts rather than inference and un-confirmable claims by anonymous officials, the body of factual information about Israel's September 6 attack on a Syrian military facility provides very thin gruel.

We know with certainty only that the facility north of the village of al-Tibnah bore some resemblance to the North Korean "research" reactor at Yongbyon (similar length and width but dissimilar height and lacking cooling tower and chimney), that it had an apparent pumping station and that it had been under construction since 2002. Perhaps by no coincidence, the CIA soon thereafter, in the January-June 2003 version of its biannual report to the US Congress sharpened its public assessment of Syria's WMD-related technology acquisition to say: "we are looking at Syrian nuclear intentions with growing concern." Previous CIA reports had said only that US intelligence was monitoring Syria's nuclear research and development program for any signs of weapons intent. Another relevant fact is that Syria razed the facility soon after the attack. This cover-up complicates any future on-the- ground assessment and confirms that Syria had something to hide-- although what country does not? The best guess is that it was a reactor under construction but this is still only a hypothesis.

Claims of North Korean involvement are easy to believe but even harder to substantiate with concrete information. Pyongyang was the first and one of the only countries to criticize the Israeli incursion of Syrian airspace, but it is not uncommon for Pyongyang to issue such condemnations. Rumors that North Korean personnel were killed in the attack have not been confirmed. Nor is there any corroboration to claims that the North Korean Namchongang Hi-Tech Engineering Service Company had an office in Syria involved in nuclear-related commerce, although it is known that dozens of North Korean missile experts have been stationed in Syria in connection with North Korea's Scud missile sales.

The International Atomic Energy Agency is usually the best source of unbiased information on nuclear proliferation claims. Yet the agency has been totally shut out, both by Syria, which could have asked for an IAEA assessment to prove that there was nothing nuclear-related at al- Tibnah, and by Israel and the US, which could have asked the IAEA to investigate their suspicions of undeclared nuclear work. Syria would not have been legally obliged to agree to an IAEA inspection request, but failure to notify the IAEA of a reactor under construction would be a safeguards violation under the new conditions for pre-notification of facilities promulgated by the IAEA Board of Governors in 1992.

If the bombed facility were a reactor under construction, it would not have presented a direct proliferation threat for several years, and then only if Syria also had access to a reprocessing facility to separate out weapons-usable plutonium from the irradiated fuel. Reprocessing plants are hard to hide, and the satellite imagery of al- Tibnah does not show anything resembling such a facility. Clandestine work elsewhere on reprocessing certainly is not out of the question, but Syria is not known to have nuclear expertise or infrastructure that would lend itself to this purpose.

Unless there is much more to the story than is known to date, it is reasonable to conclude that Israel's September 6 attack was not conducted to forestall an imminent Syrian nuclear weapons threat. If preemption was the motive, it could be that the target was material of potential use in a dirty bomb that could find its way into terrorist hands. It is more likely, however, that Israel attacked the al-Tibnah facility for a combination of strategic and political reasons. If so, Israel sent unmistakable warnings simultaneously to: Syria, that any attempt to develop a clandestine nuclear capability will be discovered and destroyed; North Korea, that it should not even think about nuclear cooperation with Israel's enemies; Iran, that Israel has both the will and the capability to destroy nuclear facilities that it judges to be threatening; and the major powers of the world, to take care of the Iran nuclear problem before Israel is compelled to take matters into its own hands.

If those messages were received, Israel will have killed four birds with one stone.- Published 29/11/2007 © bitterlemons- international.org

Mark Fitzpatrick is senior fellow for non- proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

<a name="836">Ambiguous preemption
Emily B. LandauSyria's ambitions in the nuclear realm did not arouse much attention prior to September 6 of this year. From time to time, reports would appear claiming that Syria was intent on moving in this direction, with concerns raised in the United States that it might have received assistance through A.Q. Khan's nuclear network, but these never engendered any sustained interest on the part of the international community. As for Syria's known nuclear program, it was too small to raise any concern.

Initial reports regarding Israel's alleged attack in early September maintained that the facility that was hit was apparently connected to secret nuclear activity being pursued in Syria with the assistance of North Korea. In response to these reports, some analysts in the US were quick to claim that there was no indication of significant nuclear activity in Syria that would justify such an attack. However, in the ensuing months information has emerged that supports what was initially reported, including satellite images proving that Syria took steps to totally destroy the remains of the facility. The latest theory--put forth by Israeli scientist Uzi Even--holds that what was hit might not have been a North Korean-style nuclear reactor but rather a bomb-making facility possibly housing several kilograms of plutonium for processing. Even's assessment is based on his reading of the satellite images of the Syrian facility.

It seems fairly clear today that although Syria had not in the past been a focus of attention in the nuclear realm, something very suspicious was going on lately, the exact nature of which is still not known. From Israel's point of view the situation was intolerable; in fact, Israel's action itself lends further credence to suspicions regarding what Syria was up to, as it is highly unlikely that Israel would have risked war with Syria for anything less than suspected nuclear activity (that would translate for Israel into a supreme strategic concern).

Israel's past record of dealing with WMD proliferation in the Middle East is varied. In 1981, when it sensed the world was not concerned enough with Iraq's nuclear program and viewed it as a direct and imminent threat to its population, Israel bombed Osirak in a preemptive military strike. Later, after the 1991 Gulf war, when Iraq's renewed nuclear efforts were exposed for all to see, Israel was prepared to allow the UN inspection regime to deal with its activities. At that point Israel also agreed to take part in the newly conceived arms control and regional security talks (ACRS) set up as part of the Madrid peace process. Here WMD arms control was discussed in a regional framework, with focus on threat perceptions and inter-state relations.

Toward the late 1990s, with the arms control talks suspended indefinitely, Israel's major focus turned to Iran's nuclear activity and it made great efforts to convince the West to wake up to this new but serious nuclear proliferation concern. From the late 1990s, there was also periodic speculation that Israel might decide to act militarily against Iran's facilities, as it did in Iraq. But following the revelations about Iran in 2002 and the new emphasis on proliferation hot-spots in the post-9/11 world, Iran finally became very much a focus of wider international concern.

Speculation as to possible Israeli military action continued and has even intensified in the past couple of years, but much has changed since 1981. First of all, international efforts are clearly focused on Iran, and even though they have not as yet borne fruit, Israel is released from the immediate pressure of acting alone. Moreover, beyond the familiar pros and cons of military action, an interesting aspect of the picture has to do with Israel's arms control dilemma, which has come into sharper focus through the handling of both Iran and Syria.

The key to this dilemma is embedded in Israel's security conception. On the one hand, there is the prescript that no country in the Middle East can be allowed to become a nuclear state that poses a threat to Israel's existence. But at the same time, there is Israel's own nuclear deterrent: its ultimate insurance policy. The fact that Israel is regarded as a de facto nuclear state means that when it comes to specific proliferation threats in the Middle East, Israel has a strong interest in eliminating them, but prefers not to draw unwarranted attention to itself.

In the case of Iran, once the international community became intensely involved the best option for Israel was to support these efforts. And when Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad became president and adopted the outrageous line that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, it was easier for Israel to at times adopt a more vocal stance on Iran: ironically, Ahmadinezhad's statements legitimized an Israeli nuclear deterrent by underscoring just why it was needed.

And then came Syria. In this case Israel apparently once again felt the need to act, and quickly. It did not want the case of Syria to grow into another Iran, where international determination proves to be neither strong nor long-lasting enough to halt the program, thereby enabling Syria (like Iran) to slowly push its plans forward. But still Israel did not want to draw attention to itself. So--perhaps as a corollary to its ambiguous nuclear policy--it carried out "ambiguous preemption".

Beyond Israel's own calculation, the success of this strike stands in stark contrast to the failure so far of international efforts to stop Iran, and in this sense highlights the essence of the arms control challenge that faces the broader international community today.- Published 29/11/2007 © bitterlemons- international.org

Emily B. Landau is senior research fellow and director of the Arms Control and Regional Security Project at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of Arms Control in the Middle East: Cooperative Security Dialogue and Regional Constraints (Sussex Academic Press, 2006).





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.

James Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela

Jeff Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Pam Martens
Crashing Citigroup

Peter Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession

Concerns about Mobile Phone Smuggling

By Aaron Mannes


Since Slate was kind enough to cite my thoughts on Syria’s attendance at the Annapolis Conference in its daily feature Today’s Blogs I thought I might return the favor.

Yesterday Slate’s Hot Document section published a PowerPoint briefing given by the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center to a Department of Agriculture workshop on Animal & Plant Biosecurity. The document is unclassified, but For Official Use Only (which in practice means very little.)

This slide stuck out.

Read the complete post.


November 28, 2007 10:13 PM Link

In Defense of Ron Paul*

Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Rights and Liberties: *Ron Paul's a wingnut, yes, but he's an anti-empire, anti-war wingnut who doesn't believe the president should be king.

Debate Audience Boos McCain for Comparing Ron Paul's Anti-War Stance to Appeasing Hitler [VIDEO]

Post by Adam Howard
War on Iraq: John McCain tries to take a cheap shot at Ron Paul about supporting US troops but it turns out Paul gets more donations from active duty military men and women than any of his Republican competitors. More »

• Full Post

Who Is Defending Pakistan's Democracy? Not the Politicians, It's the Judges
Medea Benjamin, AlterNet

The heroes in Pakistan aren't returning former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- it's the Supreme Court and High Court judges who stopped Musharraf's assault on the Constitution.

Arabs at Annapolis
After Annapolis, the burden will be on the U.S. to press Israel to deliver meaningful concessions.
Are you with us or against us?
What failed in Pakistan, as in Iraq, isn't just a regional U.S. policy, but the pillars of the Bush doctrine.
Will Syria’s presence at Annapolis stabilize Lebanon?
"There's been a very clear link in the past two weeks between the Lebanon crisis and Annapolis,"
How Islam influenced the European Renaissance
All the Islamic discoveries were used by the Europeans as the raw material for the Scientific Revolution.

China's and the World's Olympic Losers by Peter Kwong
Chinese rural migrants who move to the cities are like illegal immigrants entering another country. Without legal standing to live and work there, they exist in a legal void and are easy targets for exploitation. Yet they are the backbone of China's boom -- the exploited workers of "the world's factory."
more...

Like Madrid on Tranquilizers by Rami G. Khouri
For months there have been no indicators as to why any of the participants are showing up at Annapolis this week. A success -- lowball as it is -- would be the revival of some credibility for the Bush administration. But there are not even encouraging signs of that.
more...

"Why hold a peace conference now?!"
The Annapolis conference will never work, because Hamas, who were DEMORATICALLY-ELECTED are not invited.

'The Iraqis were better off under Saddam Hussein!'
Western states are responsible for Iraqi deaths, either by years of sanctions, bombings or killings by foreign troops.

"The ME doesn't need a U.S.-imposed democracy"
The Middle East being democratic is not in the interest of the U.S., which wants the region to remain in chaos.

The Ideal Opponent
Paul Waldman
November 28, 2007 | web only


Who are our potential presidents hoping to run against in the general election? Here's a rundown of the front-runners' ideal match-ups.

Some speculation on Republicans' desired opponents: Rudy Giuliani is dying to call Barack Obama weak on terror, Mitt Romney would relish the chance to paint John Edwards as the true phony, and Mike Huckabee would love to contrast himself with the amoral Hillary Clinton.

Wonk Wars: A roundup of the candidates' policy announcements.

Exporting the Anbar Awakening
Spencer Ackerman
November 27, 2007 | web only


The Bush administration's latest ploy in the war on terror is to recycle tactics from Iraq in Pakistan. But it's unlikely that the strategy of allying with tribal figures against al-Qaeda will work in Pakistan -- and it's unclear whether it worked in Iraq.

No Facebook friendships
November 28, 2007
In the hot air peace conference that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice are currently hosting, the Saudi Arabian delegates refused to shake hands with the Israelis More

Guantanamo no longer a Democratic party talking point
November 28, 2007
In a sentence: Guantanamo has a big vacancy sign out front since so many suspects have been released to their respective nations More

Playing Roulette in Pakistan
by Robert Scheer

Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran by Ismael Hossein-zadeh

The Myths of Military Progress
by Ron Jacobs

Annapolis Afterthought by Patrick Foy

In the Fox's Lair by William S. Lind

Iraq 3.0 by Sheldon Richman

The Algebra of Occupation
by Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy in Focus In 1805, the French army out maneuvered, outsmarted, and outfought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would flounder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas.

In 1967, it took six days for the Israeli army to smash Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, a Shi'ite militia fought the mightiest army in the Middle East to a bloody standstill in Lebanon.

In 1991, it took four days of ground combat for the United States to crush Saddam Hussein's army in the Gulf War. U.S. losses were 148 dead and 647 wounded. After more than five years of war in Iraq, U.S. losses are approaching 4,000, with over 50,000 wounded; 2007 is already the deadliest year of the war for the United States.

In each case, a great army won a decisive victory only to see that victory canceled out by what T.E. Lawrence once called the "algebra of occupation." Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire's collapse in World War I, Lawrence put his finger on the formula that has doomed virtually every military force that has tried to quell a restive population.

Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has cited Lawrence to this effect: "Rebellion must have an unassailable base... it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts. It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in a striking force, and 98 percent passive sympathy. Granted mobility, security... time and doctrine... victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive."

Failures of Occupation

There is an inexorable trajectory to this process. An army vanquishes another army, only to find that wars don't always end when generals surrender and capitals fall. When a few locals take up arms because they object to being occupied by "aliens," the occupiers act like armies, which are designed to kill people, not to win their hearts and minds.

So the occupiers break down doors and search for weapons, terrorizing and humiliating people in the process. They call in air strikes, which kill innocent bystanders. They choke off commerce and impose curfews to teach the locals a lesson, lessons that are never learned. For over 800 years the English beat, imprisoned, transported, shot, and hung hundreds of thousands of Irish, and it made the natives not the slightest bit quieter or more respectful. Indeed it made them quite the opposite.

In this process of trying to get the occupied to accept defeat, a certain corruption of spirit begins to seep into the soul of an army, transforming it from a war-fighting machine into a kind of monster.

Listen to some of these voices.

Reporter Chris Hedges, who talked with solders, officers, and medical personnel in Iraq, said his interviews "revealed disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops: innocents terrorized during midnight raids, civilian cars fired upon when they got too close to supply columns. The campaign against a mostly invisible enemy, many veterans said, has given rise to a culture of fear and even hatred among U.S. forces, many of whom, losing ground and beleaguered, have, in effect, declared war on all Iraqis." Sgt. Camilo Mejia told Hedges that, as far as the deaths of Iraqis at checkpoints, "This sort of killing of civilians has long ceased to arouse much interest or even comment."

Except among the survivors and relatives, of course, who now know who their enemy is. "Our children are being killed. Our homes are being destroyed. We are bombed. What should we do?" asks Abdul Qader, who lost seven family members in a June 29 U.S. air strike that killed 60 people in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

"The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person [Osama bin Laden]," one man told The New York Times. "So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan."

Israeli psychologist Nofer Ishai-Karen and psychology professor Joel Elitzur interviewed 21 Israeli soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories. They found that the soldiers routinely engaged in murder, assault, threats and humiliation, and many of them enjoyed it.

"The truth is that I love this mess – I enjoy it. It is like being on drugs," one soldier told them. Another said, "What is great is that you don't have to follow any law or rule. You feel you are the law, you decide. Once you go into the Occupied Territories, you are God."

One soldier told a story about seeing a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in his front yard during a curfew in Rafah. The soldier says his officer "grabbed the boy. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock... the next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing."

A few hours with the works of Goya will give one an idea of how the French army behaved in Spain.

Against All Enemies

An occupation is not a war against an army, it is a war against all. There are no front lines and no distinguishing uniforms, only an ambush or a roadside bomb that strikes without warning.

And when one does, a veteran told Hedges, "people just open up." A roadside bomb in 2005 set off a massacre by U.S. Marines in Haditha that killed 24 civilians. On March 4, 2007, following a suicide bomb, Marines in Afghanistan went on a rampage that killed 12 civilians. Occupation is only possible if the occupied are reduced to a category that places them outside the boundaries of a shared humanity. So the Iraqis becomes "Haji," just as two generations ago the Vietnamese became "Slopes." The Israeli right routinely refers to the Palestinians as "cockroaches."

Soon, everyone becomes an enemy.

When U.S. helicopter gun ships killed 16 people October 23 in a small northern Iraqi village near Tikrit, military officials said the dead were insurgents, because many of them were "military-age males," a category that embraces about one-third of the population.

Not many "hearts and minds" were won this past October near Tikrit.

What Soldiers Do

But "winning over the population," continues to be the illusion of every occupier. Testifying before Congress, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "Army soldiers can expect to be tasked with reviving public services, rebuilding infrastructure, and promoting good government."

And then there is the real world.

A survey conducted by the Office of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army Medical Command found that only 38% of Marines and 47% of Army soldiers thought civilians should be treated with dignity. Some 45% Army solders and 60% said they would report the killing of innocent civilians.

A recent ABC/BBC poll found that 78% of Iraqis say things are going badly for the country as a whole, 47% support immediate U.S. troop withdrawal while 79% oppose the presence of coalition forces, and 57% support violence against coalition forces.

Those are the "algebraical factors" of occupation, and as Lawrence concludes, "against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain."

Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.

Iraq 3.0
by Sheldon Richman, November 28, 2007

One gets the feeling that even the White House realizes the mess it’s made of Iraq. The other day the newspapers reported that the Bush administration has scaled back its objectives rather substantially. We might call it Iraq 3.0. First the plan was to create a democratic paradise which, domino-like, would spread freedom throughout the Middle East. When that didn’t work, the administration shifted to simply bringing some kind of order to Iraq, reconciling the three largest groups — Shi’a, Sunni, and Kurd.

That hasn’t gone too well either. The nearly two dozen political objectives that the military “surge” was intended to accomplish have largely gone unachieved. The violence level may have fallen (one never knows how temporary such things are), but there are many possible explanations for that. One horrifying explanation is that enough ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and emigration have occurred that less violence is “necessary” in the eyes of the various militias. That presumably is not the sort of peace President Bush had in mind.

So now the strategists in Washington have retooled. The New York Times says, “The Bush administration has lowered its expectations of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenue and holding regional elections. Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that some progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the intensified military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.”

Stage magicians call this “misdirection.” If you can’t have the audience look here, you must do something to make them look over there. Voilà!

Apparently item No. 1 on the new and improved American agenda for Iraq is approval of that country’s $48 billion budget. You read that right. The U.S. government is maintaining an occupation of a foreign country to help its government pass the budget!

The Times says the Iraqis claim to be doing this already, but no matter. When that budget is passed, presumably the White House will be hanging “Mission Accomplished” signs again and declaring victory. I can see the ticker-tape parade down Wall Street already.

But that’s not all. Other goals include getting the UN to renew the mandate that countenances the occupation. Now this one takes some thought. An objective of the occupation is to reauthorize the occupation. The boys in the U.S. Department of Logic must have worked overtime on that one.

Finally, the 3.0 agenda aims to get a law passed to let Ba’ath Party members back into government jobs. “This last goal was described by a senior Bush administration official as largely symbolic, since rehirings have been quietly taking place already without a law,” the Times reports.

There you have it: an agenda that can be accomplished. Every American should be proud of this can-do attitude. Never mind that armed Americans are patrolling other people’s country, entering homes, stopping them at check points — and are ready to shoot to kill if they can’t divine the intentions of the persons approaching them. It’s for their own good.

The other shoe has already dropped. The White House itself admits it is not meeting its goals in Afghanistan. The U.S. military may be beating the resurgent Taliban in individual battles, but it is losing the larger war.

It’s amazing how little you can get for $10 billion (or more) a month.

And where is the allegedly anti-war party these days? Who knows? The Democratic leadership, which has the power to cut off money for this madness, refuses to do it. The likely Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, sees U.S. troops in Iraq far into the future. The American people want out, but the politicians don’t listen.

This is the system Bush wants to bring to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, and editor of The Freeman magazine and author of “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East since World War II and the Folly of Intervention.”. Send him email.

Two Trillion Dollars for Worse Security October 10, 2007 As the cost of the catastrophe in Iraq and the U.S. defense budget continue to spiral out of control without oversight, let alone real opposition, veteran defense journalist George Wilson performs the important task of bringing the matter to the attention of Capitol Hill. The failure of the Democratic Congress to provide even a speed bump to these developments will surely go down in history as a sad accompaniment to the tender mercies of President George W. Bush’s handling of national security policy. George Wilson’s prescient commentary appeared in the Oct. 1 issue of Congress Daily.

US signs deal for long-term occupation of Iraq

by Jerry White

Global Research, November 28, 2007

President Bush and the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki signed an agreement Monday paving the way for the long-term occupation of the Middle Eastern country and its transformation into a semi-colonial protectorate of the US.

The “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship” outlines plans for the establishment of permanent US military bases in Iraq to suppress internal opposition to the US-installed regime and protect US economic and political interests throughout the region. It also provides for preferential treatment for US energy conglomerates and investors to exploit Iraq’s newly opened up oil resources.

The new agreement—signed during a secret videoconference between Bush and Maliki—without the slightest democratic pretenses in each country—exposes the repeated lies, peddled by the White House ever since the April 2003 invasion, that the US had no intention to set up permanent military bases or carry out an long-term occupation of Iraq.

The declaration calls for the current United Nations mandate—which has provided a legal fig leaf for the US occupation—to be extended one more year and thereafter to be replaced by a bilateral economic and security pact between the two countries.

The full details of the pact—including the size of the US occupying force—are to be worked out by July 31, 2008 and are scheduled to take effect in early 2009, i.e., after Bush leaves office. Although the agreement will commit US troops to remain in the country for years, if not decades, the White House insists that it will not rise to the level of a formal treaty, requiring congressional approval.

Maliki signed the declaration without any serious parliamentary debate. Sunni Arab and Shia politicians immediately denounced it, saying the agreement would lead to “US interference for years to come.” The Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group, said the Iraqi signatories of the declaration would be looked on as “collaborators with the occupier.”

Under the proposed formula, Iraqi officials told the Associated Press, Iraqi forces will take charge of internal security, and US troops will relocate to bases outside the cities. They foresee at least 50,000 American troops remaining in the country indefinitely. The White House says the bilateral agreement will not contain timetables for the withdrawal of troops.

White House deputy national security advisor Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute said the declaration signaled that the US “will protect our interests in Iraq, alongside our Iraqi partners, and that we consider Iraq a key strategic partner, able to increasingly contribute to regional stability.”

US forces will protect the interests of American energy companies once the country’s vast oil wealth—the second largest proven oil reserves in the world—are opened up to international and in particular US investment. This is only possible by intensifying US military repression of the Iraqi people and crushing popular opposition to the US-installed regime and the American occupation.

At the same time permanent US bases are being set up to project American military power throughout the Middle East and provide US forces increased capabilities to launch attacks against Iran, Syria and other countries.

Debka-Net-Weekly, a web site associated with Israeli military intelligence, said the US has plans to remove 100,000 troops by the end of 2009, leaving behind 50,000-70,000 in 20 huge land and air bases. “These bases,” the site wrote, “are under construction; they will be secured by broad swathes of space, fortified with weaponry and remote-controlled electronic devices.” US troops will be responsible for protecting Iraq’s borders from “external threats,” Debka reported, adding, “US air strength and special forces in these bases will have rapid deployment capabilities for reaching points outside Iraq at need.”

The US launched the Iraq war to establish unchallenged domination of the Middle East and fend off the growing inroads into the energy-rich region by its economic rivals, such as China and Russia. The economic advantages of occupying Iraq are spelled out in one of the principles outlined in the new US-Iraqi declaration, which calls for “facilitating and encouraging the flow of foreign investment to Iraq, especially American investments, to contribute to the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq.”

Another declares US support for aiding Iraq’s “transition to a market economy,” which includes opening up the nationalized oil industry to the control of ExxonMobil, Chevron and other US energy conglomerates.

Earlier this month the Iraqi government, guided by American legal advisors, cancelled a contract originally signed by the Saddam Hussein government in 1997 with the Russian company Lukoil, for the development of the vast oil field in Iraq’s southern desert. The West Qurna fields—with estimated reserves of 11 billion barrels, the equivalent of the worldwide proven oil reserves of ExxonMobil, America’s largest oil company—will now be opened to international, and in particular, US bidders.

Vladimir Tikhomirov, the chief economist at the Russian bank UralSib, told the New York Times, “From the Russian government perspective, Iraq is seen as occupied and its administration directed by Washington, particularly when it comes to oil. The Russians see the cancellation of the contract in Iraq as part of the US drive to keep control over the major oil fields there.”

The declaration of principles is loaded with Orwellian language aimed at concealing its nakedly imperialist aims. The US—which launched an illegal war and occupation that have resulted in the virtual destruction of an entire society and the deaths of more than one million Iraqis—declares its commitment to “deter foreign aggression.” All those who oppose the occupation are “terrorists” and “outlaws” who must be defeated and “uprooted” from Iraq.

The real face of the American military presence was shown this week when US troops fired on vehicles at roadblocks in Baghdad and north of the Iraqi capital, killing at least five people, including three women and a child, in two separate shootings.

The commitment to a long-term occupation hardly provoked a murmur from the Democratic Party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Bush for planning to leave office with a “US army tied down in Iraq and stretched to the breaking point, with no clear exit strategy.”

While opposing Bush for failing to efficiently wage the war the Democrats defend the same economic interests as the Republicans and have made it clear they will not end the occupation if they take control of the White House in 2009. In fact the military scenario envisaged in the deal signed by Bush corresponds to the bipartisan plans being worked out between the Bush administration and the Democrats for a “post-surge Iraq.”

Leading Democrats, such as presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have argued for the reduction of US forces and their redeployment from the cities to “over-the-horizon” positions where they could strike opponents of the US-backed regime, as well as Iran. Clinton in particular has argued that pulling US troops out of the cities would reduce US casualties, thereby making the long-term occupation of Iraq more politically palatable in the US, while still keeping forces available to defend US economic interests.

Global Research Articles by Jerry White

Olmert warns of 'end of Israel' Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would spell the end of the State of Israel. He warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established.

Mr Olmert was returning from the Annapolis conference in the US where he and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to launch formal peace talks.

The two leaders set a goal of reaching a peace deal with US support in 2008.




If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished
Ehud Olmert
US President George W Bush called Annapolis, the first substantive Arab-Israeli peace talks in seven years, a "hopeful beginning" for Mid-East peace. Mr Olmert said it was not the first time he had articulated his fears about the demographic threat to Israel as a Jewish state from a faster growing Palestinian population.

He made similar comments in 2003 when justifying the failed strategy of unilateral withdrawals from Israeli-occupied land which holds large Palestinian populations.

"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Mr Olmert is quoted saying in Haaretz newspaper.

New monitor

After the ceremonies at Annapolis and the White House, the US appointed former Nato commander Gen James Jones as its new Middle East envoy.




KEY ISSUES
Among his tasks will be to monitor how the Israelis and Palestinians live up to the security commitments made under the relaunched international peace plan known as the roadmap, which forms the basis for the negotiations. "Building security in the Middle East is the surest path to making peace in the Middle East," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of his appointment.

"Gen Jones is the best individual to lead our efforts in this essential endeavour."

Mr Bush promised to use American power "to help you as you come up with the necessary decisions to lay out a Palestinian state that will live side-by-side in peace with Israel".

According to the agreement, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will meet every other week and teams of negotiators led by a joint steering committee will meet on 12 December.




HAVE YOUR SAY Ignoring Hamas and the Iranian regime could increase their popularity in the Arab world
Shahram, Isfahan
Last year's Palestinian parliamentary election winner Hamas - which does not recognise Israel and has been shunned by the US and Israel as a terrorist organisation - immediately rejected Annapolis as a "failure". There have been angry protests in the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank since the summit.

Expectations had been low as representatives of more than 40 countries and international agencies gathered in Annapolis ahead of Tuesday's conference.

But in a joint statement concluded with only minutes to spare before the conference formally opened, the two sides agreed to launch negotiations for a treaty "resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception".

Both sides have said those "core issues" will include the thorny so-called "final-status issues" - the future of Jerusalem, borders, water, refugees and settlements - which have scuppered previous attempts at a peace deal.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/midd...ast/7118937.stm

Published: 2007/11/29 14:54:17 GMT

© BBC MMVII

IRAQ: Detentions Escalate in Diwaniyah
By Ali al-Fadhily*
DIWANIYAH, Iraq - Detentions have become commonplace in Iraq, but now more than ever before people are being detained after being accused of membership in "militias supported by Iran."
MORE >>

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Iran is developing two submarine fleets – one with a 12,000 km-range for Tel Aviv and US Mediterranean targets

November 27, 2007, 6:23 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iran's Kilo-class sub designed to reach Mediterranean

Our military sources report the Iranian Navy plans to deploy two submarine fleets – mini-subs in Persian Gulf waters for attacks on US shipping and Gulf oil facilities, and the Kilo class sub of Russian, Chinese and Iranian manufacture, for long-range targets in the Mediterranean, such as the US Sixth Fleet and Israel coastal towns, primarily Tel Aviv.

This was first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 326 on Nov.16.

To subscribe to [b]DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE [/b] .


Full article

DEBKAfile: Amid massive Arab presence in Washington, Bush and Maliki sign framework for “enduring” US troop presence in Iraq

November 27, 2007, 6:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

The deal in principle was concluded by the US president and Iraqi prime minister over a secure video-link Monday, Nov. 26, amid the hubbub leading up to the Annapolis Middle East conference.

Iraqi officials foresaw a long-term presence of 50,000 US troops, down from the current 170,000. They will withdraw to bases outside the cities. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that 20 huge land and air bases are currently under construction in Iraq.

Negotiations on the shape and size of the long-term US military presence will be wrapped up to a July 2008 deadline when the US intends to finish withdrawing the five combat brigades added in 2007.

More about this pivotal “declaration of principles” and its ramifications in DEBKAfile’s Special Report below.


Full article

Success in Iraq Demands More Time and More Troops

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 316, Aug. 31, 2007

September 10, 2007, 10:06 AM (GMT+02:00)

To subscribe to [b]DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE [/b] .

No matter how cleverly the US Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker fine-tune their conclusions in their report to Congress in September on their surge strategy in Iraq – conditional success, partial achievements, limited progress – they are all evanescent. Words cannot pin down the harsh, fast-moving realities of Iraq, 2007.

Eight of the most dominant trends are singled out by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources.

1. Along with improved security in some districts in and outside Baghdad, US commanders on the spot agree that they are still short of strength for cementing their control of the territory gained and completely routing al Qaeda and Sunni and Shiite insurgent forces. They also agree that the security gains and the measures they have put in place will soon melt away once American troops are gone.

2. The same manpower shortfall prevents their achieving sustainable gains in such places as Anbar to the West of Baghdad, Diyala to the East and Babil to the south.

3. With the troops currently at their disposal, US commanders cannot afford to detach fighting strength from Baghdad to shoring up other active fronts without security in the capital breaking down and the Shiites, who make up two-thirds of the city’s population, seizing control. According to the commanders, if the Shiites took over, there would be no stopping them carrying out genocidal “cleansing” of the Sunni Muslims still clinging to their homes in Baghdad.

4. Baghdad’s fall to the Shiites would spell the demise of Baghdad as the seat of central federal government. The country would then fall apart into three or four entities which would claim independence and sink into fraternal warfare. The American army would become irrelevant having lost is primary missions, barring the fight against al Qaeda.

5. US military successes in the western province of Anbar with several Sunni tribal chiefs pitching in to the American war on al Qaeda carry no long-life guarantees. The chiefs have thrown in their lot with the US for three reasons: First, to prevent al Qaeda appropriating their men and lands; second, to be at the receiving end of large amounts of weapons and cash from the Americans, the Saudis and the Arab emirates; third, to hold on to power bases for resuming their fight to drive the Americans from Iraq once al Qaeda is disposed of. The tribal leaders are quite capable of turning their guns against US forces at any moment.

6. The offensive against al Qaeda’s forces in Iraq is still unfinished. The jihadists appear to have lowered their profile, but nowhere, even in Anbar, do their followers seem to be at breaking point or near turning tail. The reverse is true: they are struggling towards a recovery from successive American blows.

On Aug. 24, the US Army in Iraqi released the following data:

The number of detainees held by the American-led military forces in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush; the inmate population grew from 16,000 in February 2007 to 24,500 today.

Nearly 85 percent of the detainees in custody are Sunni Arabs, the rest Shiites. About 1,800 claim allegiance to al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which US intelligence agencies conclude is foreign-led. About 6,000 more identify themselves as takfiris, or Muslims who denigrate Shiite and other Muslims as heretics.

In other words, roughly one-third of all detainees in Iraq are al Qaeda or extremist groups fighting shoulder to shoulder with them for a shared cause.

It may be safely estimated that three times the number of jihadi detainees are still at large and active. The figures therefore add up to an army of some 20,000 combatants willing to fight with or alongside al Qaeda in different parts of Iraq. This means that al

This means that al Qaeda and its allies in Iraq command the same number of combatants in mid-2007 as did Abu Musab al Zarqawi in 2005 when the Islamic extremist legions reached peak figures.

This applies equally to the Sunni Arab insurgents battling the US army. Their numbers stay high despite heavy battle losses, the massive Sunni exodus from Iraq and Shiite ethnic warfare.

Furthermore, the US-Saudi-UAE investment in turning Sunni tribal chiefs against al Qaeda has had an unfortunate side-product: the resurgence of the pro-Saddam Baathist guerilla movement, energized with fresh combat manpower, funds and the will to fight.

7. Iraqi government forces’ will to shoulder responsibility for security in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq remains slack. While their fighting skills have improved in certain areas, three of their inherent characteristics are unaffected. They are still unable to carry out operations independently without an American presence and support; their religious and tribal affinities override their national loyalty; and all their ranks are highly prone to penetration by al Qaeda or Sunni insurgents.

In these respects there has been little progress from the situation in 2005-2006.

8. Where matters have gone from bad to worse is in the scale of Iran’s military and intelligence penetration of Iraq and its spreading domination of Shiite militias.

One key door was opened to Tehran by the withdrawal of British troops from the South. This week, some 500 will move out of the beleaguered Basra Palace and join the bulk of the British force, 5,000 men, at the international airport base outside the city.

The British have been criticized by Iraq leaders for not doing more to prepare Basra for reverting to Iraqi government control and therefore laying the Shiite cities of the south open to a free-for-all among armed militias and Iran’s entrance to the void.

The holy cities of Karbala and Najef have so far escaped this deterioration, but they too are eyed closely by Tehran.

Iran has built up its menace to US forces in Iraq, raising it level with that of al Qaeda, by planting its agents everywhere and handing round guns, sophisticated roadside bombs and mortars indiscriminately to anyone willing to fight the American forces.

Considering these eight factors, the Bush administration’s new security program cannot be said to have achieved its purpose.

Pivotal US-Iraqi Deal Would Leave US Troop Presence in Iraq for Decades >

DEBKAfile Special Report

November 27, 2007, 6:01 PM (GMT+02:00)

US President George W. Bush made sure of a wall-to-wall Arab audience in Washington on Monday, Nov. 26, when, over a secure video-link, he signed a deal in principle with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki for an "enduring" US military presence in Iraq.

Iraqi officials foresaw a long-term presence of 50,000 US troops - down from the current 170,000.

Negotiations on the shape and size of the long-term US military presence, including military bases outside the cities, must be wrapped up by July 2008, when Washington intends to finish withdrawing the five combat brigades it added in 2007.

The US-Iraqi agreement would replace the UN mandate after its final extension to the end of 2008.

Maliki said in a televised address that the agreement provides for the US to support the "democratic regime in Iraq against domestic and external dangers," as part of a strategic partnership. The principles provide for US military roles in deterring foreign aggression against Iraq and helping Iraq fight terrorism. Baghdad will encourage foreign capital into Iraq - especially American investments in developing its oil resources.

Three key points emerge from this "declaration of principles."

1. President Bush needed this document - alongside the Annapolis Israel-Palestinian process - to prevent the policies he set in motion in the Middle East from expiring when his term of office ends. These policies are contingent on a permanent large-scale presence of US military, marine and air forces in the region – guaranteed up to app. 2030.

2. DEBKAfile's military sources refer to a master plan disclosed on this site and DEBKA-Net-Weekly in late 2006, whereby more than 100,000 US troops will quit Iraq by the end of 2009, leaving behind 50-70,000 in twenty huge land and air bases. These bases are under construction; they will be secured by broad swathes of space, fortified with weaponry and remote-controlled electronic devices.

The American troops will be responsible for protecting Iraq's borders from external threats, such as Iraq or al Qaeda, while Iraqi forces will be take charge of security in the cities.

3. US air strength and special forces in these bases will have rapid deployment capabilities for reaching points outside Iraq at need.

4. While this is not spelled out clearly, the declaration offers to reward the US for these defensive arrangements with preferential treatment for American investors in oil and other projects in Iraq. The United States thus plans to retain control over Iraq's oil resources.

Two flies in the ointment in this deal are noted by DEBKAfile's Iraq sources:

First, Americans will want explanations for the decision to keep an enduring US military presence in Iraq. Notwithstanding the recent success of US security strategy, the majority would prefer to see every last US soldier out of Iraq as soon as possible. This is especially so when the improvement may be short-lived and the violence recur.

Second, the Shiite prime minister's signature on the declaration will not suffice to make it binding on all segments of Iraqi society. It will have to stand up to Kurdish and Sunni Muslim approval in and outside parliament.

Third, as matters stand now, the Shiite-led central government in Baghdad does not call the shots in the Sunni regions of central Iraq or the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

Many bumps face the Bush-Maliki deal in the eight-month road up to its finalization. And even then, its practical segments will have to be adjusted to the satisfaction of the Iraqi government and the far-from stable conditions operating on the ground.

Democrats: Have They No Shame? This past Saturday the Democrats chose retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez to give their response, the same general accused in at least three lawsuits in the U.S. and Europe of authorizing torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners in Iraq. This, combined with the Democrats’ endorsement of Attorney General Michael Mukasey despite his unwillingness to label waterboarding as torture.

Paul Craig Roberts: America's day of reckoning is at hand The Bush administration responded to September 11 by initiating military aggression in the Middle East and by using fear and the "war on terror" to implement police state measures at home with legislation, presidential directives, and executive orders. Overnight the US became a tyranny in which people could be arrested and incarcerated on the basis of unsubstantiated accusation.

Froomkin: The White House 'After Party' Most Middle East experts agree that the chance of yesterday's summit leading to anything remotely concrete will decrease from slim to none without Bush's intense personal engagement. But other than presidential lip service to delegates at a conference at the Naval Academy to "support your work with the resources and resolve of the American government," there are scant signs that Bush intends to follow through.

Dahr Jamail: Military Slaughters Iraqi Civilians Name them. Maim them. Kill them. From the beginning of the American occupation in Iraq, air strikes and attacks by the U.S. military have only killed "militants," "criminals," "suspected insurgents," "IED [Improvised Explosive Device] emplacers," "anti-American fighters," "terrorists," "military age males," "armed men," "extremists," or "al-Qaeda."

The Truth about Colin Powell There has rarely been a better example of the influence of false narratives than the case of retired Gen. Colin Powell. Across the political spectrum, pundits encouraged the American people to trust Colin Powell. So, no one looked very closely at the troubling reality behind his pleasant façade. Which made him the perfect choice to sell the Iraq War.

Mr. Blackwell and The Hammer When he was not bashing the Republican leadership, expressing a desire to "bitch-slap" NYT columnist Paul Krugman, attending David Horowitz's annual Restoration Weekend, promoting his book "No Retreat, No Surrender," or claiming he no longer is interested in holding public office, Tom DeLay made time to meet up with Ken Blackwell and found a new "grassroots" organization aimed at retaking congress next year.

LEADERS: The dollar
The panic about the dollar
A full-blown dollar collapse would be disastrous. Thankfully, it need not happen

The Economist/YouGov poll
Gauging America's mood, this week with topical questions on foreign policy

Dog days of winter
Banks are gripped by worries about liquidity. How long will they go on?

US denies seeking permanent Iraq basesWhite House statement contradicts US ‘war czar’ announcement of Iraq bases discussions.

IAEA report nullifies enemies' efforts President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Wednesday that the recent report by the UN nuclear watchdog on Iran's nuclear program nullified efforts made by enemies. »

COMMENT
Israel's nukes missing from the table
Israel on the one hand pays lip service to the threat its nuclear weapons pose to the chances of genuine peace in the Middle East. Yet it appears to be serious about peace, as it was in this week's peace summit in Annapolis, without showing any initiative on its nuclear monopoly. - Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Nov 29, '07)

If Iran's Guards strike back ...
In the event of a US attack on Iran, it's a cinch that the "terrorist" Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps will fiercely retaliate with a volatile mix of sophisticated conventional forces and unconventional means. One thing is certain, however: US thinking has ignored the highly complex relationship between post-Ba'athist Shi'ite militias in Iraq and the Guards. (Nov 29, '07)

PATHOLOGY OF DEBT
PART 4: Lessons unlearned
Moody's Investors Service, unveiling a new ratings classification to cover structured debt, boasted in 2005 of the sector's resilience and strength in the face of market disruptions. Barely two years later, buyers are fleeing the very funds Moody's was praising. That would be no surprise if events of 2001 had been remembered. - Henry C K Liu
This is the fourth part of a five-part analysis.

PART 1: Banks as vulture investors

PART 2: Commercial paper
and pesky SIVs

PART 3: The credit guns
of August

Baptism of fire for Pakistan's army head

General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, Pakistan's new head of the army, had barely stepped into the shoes of Pervez Musharraf, now a civilian president, than he was given a decision to make that could change the fate of the country. Militants fighting the Pakistani army in the Swat Valley have called for a ceasefire. If Kiani accepts, he will appease large sections of the country. If he refuses, he has Washington to deal with. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Nov 29, '07)

http://openingmind.blogspot.com/

Stopping The Next Pearl Harbor

If enough people read this essay, we just might stop the Bush administration and Israel from engineering the next Pearl Harbor. The Japanese “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor was publicized two weeks in advance in the headlines of one newspaper. If our generation does not act to stop the Next Pearl Harbor, we will be responsible for launching of World War III and for the end of life as we knew it.

How could the Israelis and the Bush administration engineer us into World War III? There has been much talk of another 911. Previously, I have said too many people know that the World Trade Center was taken down by controlled demolitions so they cannot do that again and expect the same result. Nor can they set off a dirty bomb and radiate tens of thousands of Americans. As I said,would you want to walk around on the same streets as those thousands of people if you had irradiated them and induced terminal cancers in them? If they cannot pull off another 911, what can they do?

The Iranians have Russian-made SS-N-22 Sunburn and more advanced SS-NX-26 Yakhonts anti-ship missiles which were designed to sink American aircraft carriers. Both the Sunburn and the Yakhonts are unstoppable killing machines. In 2001 the incoming Bush administration tasked the Navy with finding a defense against these missiles but has not met the challenge to date. The Sunburn has a range of 90 miles and travels at Mach 2.5 nine feet above sea level. The Yakhonts has a range of 180 miles. The Iranians also have 300 NATO made Exocets and large numbers of Chinese Silkworm anti-ship missiles. The Iranians have recently said they will fire 11,000 missiles and artillery shells in the first minute of an attack They have Russian made artillery with ranges up to 180 kilometers. Within minutes of any attack on Iran by either Israel or the United States we could lose 20,000 plus sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf. Those who do not die immediately risk capture by the Iranians who have 1,000 fast rubber boats and an endless supply of men willing to commit suicide. The old Soviet military doctrine of mixing a few advanced weapons in with large numbers of older but deadly ones might succeed in creating a New Pearl Harbor. Our fleet is in the Persian Gulf and not in the Indian Ocean precisely so they would be in range of Iran's Russian made missiles. Sacrificing the lives of 20,000 sailors and marines is essential to the Zionist plan to launch World War III.

Vladimir Putin has formed a partnership with the nations of the Caspian Sea which obligates Russia to defend Iran against an American attack. This means the U.S. must wait for Iran to attack America before we can bomb the Iranians. The Israeli Lobby is so powerful in Russia that Putin could only defend Iran from an American attack and not from an an Israeli air assault using U.S. supplied bunker busting nuclear weapons. Iran has said that they would respond by attacking both the United States and Israel if this scenario occurs. If Iran defends itself as it said it will, those in Israel and the United States whose fondest dream is to launch World War III will have engineered Pearl Harbor II and will see their dreams and our nightmares come true. The American TV watching public would demand revenge because they would not know that their leaders deliberately sacrificed our sailors and marines. Thanks to Bush we have no military left to do anything but to use nuclear weapons to exterminate the Muslims and steal their oil for Wall Street.

Exterminating Muslims is not practical as there are 1.3 billion of them and we do not have enough soldiers to defend ourselves from the inevitable consequences. Giving Arab oil to Wall Street has not worked well either. Oil used to be $20 a barrel. After four and a half years of occupying Iraq, oil is closer to $99.

The CIA has used the term Blowback to describe Isaac Newton's law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Blowback to using nuclear weapons to kill Muslims will be enormous. The Iranians and their allies will close the Persian Gulf to oil exports and to the imports of military supplies into Iraq. Oil will hit $300 a barrel. China, Japan, Singapore and Korea have enough surplus dollars on hand to pay cash in advance for oil at $400 a barrel for the next three years. America could only borrow money to buy oil, but, if the American fleet in the Persian Gulf is sunk, the dollar will drown as foreigners will want to dump their dollars. The stampede would be first started by the Muslims who would refuse to either accept or to hold dollars. They would dump hundreds of billions of dollars And then as the dollar decline gains momentum, all foreigners, including the drug cartels, would have to get rid of theirs as well.

The Iranians recruited 40,000 suicide bombers. These are trained and educated people who could do a lot of damage. In 1993 The FBI recruited an Egyptian military intelligence officer to find some patsies to set off a bomb in the World Trade Center garage. One illiterate was supposed to park the van 15 feet from the central pillar. He couldn't because a New Yorker had parked illegally in the tow away zone. He was not educated enough to select another pillar. Because the FBI had recruited a scientifically illiterate dupe the bomb went off 15 feet from the pillar and only 6 people died. The 40,000 Iranian suicide bombers are not FBI-CIA recruits and will do a lot more damage.

The Iranians could set aside 500 or so men and women to use explosives to take out American oil refineries and chemical plants. A small input yields a big blast. There are 20 oil refineries and chemical plants in the Houston Metro area. Other oil refinery targets of interest would be in New York, New Jersey , California and wherever targets of opportunity are easily available. They could take out 25% of our refinery capacity as they have been given more than adequate warning by the Neocons of their intentions to bomb Iran. Gas could sell for $10.00 a gallon and require ration coupons to buy.

It would not take many men to blow up a sufficient number of power lines carrying electricity to cause a nationwide blackout. Without electricity the gas stations could not pump gas until the power was restored. Nor could anyone get money from a bank or use a credit card. The nationwide blackout, the sinking of our fleet and the collapse of the dollar would all be signs that America was through as a world power and probably also as a sovereign nation.

The Iranians have been buying a lot of weapons. For $5,000,000 they could have bought 5,000 shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons. They could hand them out to anyone willing to shoot down either an American airplane or helicopter. We have already lost 10% of our helicopters in Iraq. They could arm thousands of their suicide bombers with a couple thousand of those shoulder fired missiles and automatic weapons to take down our helicopters in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They could send other units to cut off supplies entering Iraq via the two roads running from Kuwait. We could lose a lot of soldiers and marines. And many more could be captured.

The U.S. Military Central Command (CENTCOM) website lists U. S. forces in 25 Muslim nations and in two others where Muslims are a minority. What would happen to Americans stationed on those bases if the locals cut off their water and other supplies? What would happen if our soldiers were attacked by rogue elements of the host nation's military who objected to the use of nuclear weapons to kill Muslim civilians? We have no military to send to rescue our men and women. We could use even more nuclear weapons to deter the local populations but that would be decidedly counter productive.

When foreigners dump a few trillion dollars buying oil, gold, silver, copper, food and other commodities, those dollars will not disappear. The people who sell a few hundred billion dollars of commodities will have been given dollars that will be rapidly approaching zero value as prices soar. They will have to get rid of their new found money very quickly. Economists call this phenomenon the velocity of money. If the GNP is 12 trillion and the money supply is ten trillion, the dollar turns over 1.2 times a year. But, if Americans and foreigners collectively decide that the dollar is toast, it will turn over once every 6 months, then once every 3 months and then once a month. If velocity goes from 1.2 to 12, then prices will go up 1,000%. Pensions and savings will lose 90% of their value. After tax wages will decline by more than 50% even if workers can get raises because the working poor will be pushed into tax brackets designed for the wealthy. This increase in the velocity of money is what happened to the Weimar Republic in 1923.

The economic dislocations from the war and inflation will cause a depression and could lead to 25% unemployment just like in 1933. We have more than doubled our population since the 1930s. And our culture has changed. What do you expect young people to do if they were without a job and had no money to buy gas or food? What would you expect parents to do if their children had not eaten for three days? What do you think the 43,000,000 elderly and disabled on Social Security would do if they had nothing to eat? What would you expect America's street gangs to do in every major city? Would you be willing to walk down a street where thousands of people have neither food nor gas money and no way to pay the rent and utilities? The people who deliver the food and other services to you will have to live in those neighborhoods as they will not likely make enough to move to a safe neighborhood like yours. They might have to flee the cities thus cutting off the vital services you need. The crime rate will be enormous. This is in addition to the terrorist campaign previously mentioned. The public will demand and gladly accept martial law. Since the politicians who will give us martial law in either 2008 or 2009 work for the banks, they will also give us currency controls. Currency controls allow the government to regulate how much of your money you can spend. The wealthy will have sent their money overseas and have bought oil or gold. You will not be allowed to withdraw your money from the bank until it has become absolutely worthless. The purpose of currency controls is to allow the elite to dump their dollars while the poor will losse what little they did have. It is long past time that you heeded my warnings to get your savings out of dollars and out of the United States.

Martial law is the intended result of the the Next Pearl Harbor, the deliberate sacrificing of 20,000 sailors and marines in the Persian Gulf. Martial law will not mean the cancellation of the 2008 elections. Why would the bankers want to stop the people from voting for the candidates who will permanently enslave the citizenry by merging the United States with Canada and Mexico to form the North American Union (NAU)? The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Bilderberg Society have said they want to merge the U.S. into the NAU by 2010. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has 120 people working to make this happen. The NAU will abolish the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If the President-elect in 2008 does not follow orders and end American sovereignty, the bankers can always assassinate him as they did President Kennedy in 1963 and his brother Robert Kennedy in 1968. Bobby was shot in the back 5 times. The “lone assassin” was never seen behind him, could not have shot him and does not even know what happened that night. The press did little to investigate the killing of the man favored to win the 1968 election and will do nothing to uncover the truth if another candidate is murdered in 2008. More recently the news media has covered up the killing of 3,000 Americans in controlled demolitions on 9-11-2001.

What would happen if there were no Pearl Harbor in the Persian Gulf? If there were no enemy at the gates, the voters might blame Wall Street for the coming economic debacle. There are two Presidential candidates, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, who want to repeal the Federal Reserve Act which created the Depression of 1929-1939 and the coming Hyperinflationary Depression. Wall Street used World War II to cure the high unemployment rate of the Great Depression. World War III will be used to eliminate democracy, to grab oil and other natural resources for Wall Street, to exterminate all those who resist the New World Order and to starve to death anyone in the Third World who cannot afford to pay the vigorish on their loans.

Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy issued non-interest bearing Treasury Notes and were killed by “lone assassins” for their efforts. If they had lived, we would not have a nine trillion dollar debt and would not be paying several hundreds of billions for interest on the “debt”. Money is a commodity that measures the value of all other commodities and services. Prices are a ratio of the amount of money in circulation to all the goods and services available. If you increase the GNP and the money supply by identical rates, you will have a constant ratio and stable prices. Notice that there is no mention of Treasury bonds being issued. Under the Federal Reserve system, the Treasury Secretary issues 100 billion dollars in bonds which he gives to the Federal Reserve in exchange for 100 billion dollars in Federal Reserve Notes. The Federal Reserve gets the money by paying 3 ½ cents on the dollar to the Bureau of the Mint. The taxpayers are then obligated to pay interest to the Federal Reserve until the end of time. There is no need to issue bonds so there never was a reason to have a government debt. Of course you never will hear about that in the news or even on a typical college campus. Both of these institutions are controlled by Wall Street.

The people of the Third World have a lot in common with the citizens of America. They both toil on the Global Plantation to pay the vigorish on fraudulent loans. The bankers create money and expect you to pay them even though the money the banks created devalued the pensions and savings of the working class in America. The citizens of the United States will soon learn that their masters think as little of them as they do of the poor in the underdeveloped nations. As I have said previously, at least 200 billion dollars a year is stolen from unaudited federal government contracts. That money has been sent overseas to finance drug running, to be invested in foreign currencies, oil, gold and other commodities. When the coming Hyperinflationary Depression arrives, the bankers will be able to buy America for pennies on the dollar. They will own everything. Wall Street has had the foresight to have the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act passed to take away your ability to resist. Martial law will eliminate any opportunity you might have had to just say no to dictatorship and to permanent poverty.

What can we do to stop the Next Pearl Harbor from happening? We have been given a few months time to organize our resistance. Fortunately for us, the Israelis have a government that is as corrupt as ours. The Israelis recently announced that a billion shekels or about 250 million dollars went missing from their civil defense fund. The Israeli citizenry had been promised that new gas masks and other protective gear would be issued to them. About half of the country received theirs when the other half was told that there was no money left. That means that we cannot expect Israel to attack Iran for several months. I would like to suggest what we could do peacefully to prevent martial law from being used to cover the theft of our pensions, our savings, our property, our country and our democracy.

1) Continue with the 9-11 Truth Movement. I tell everyone to look at the videos of World Trade Center Tower 7 collapsing at www.WTC7.net . If the voters knew that the World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 were taken down by controlled demolitions on 9-11-2001, they might demand our leaders tell the truth.

2) Begin a new Truth Movement for Missing Money. Billions of dollars are being stolen from taxpayers each week because we are not allowed to audit federal spending. Do you really expect subsidiaries of defense contractors to adequately audit the wrong doing of their parent companies? Go to www.Solari.com and type in “missing money” in the search box.

3) Tell people the specific consequences of what will happen if we allow Israel to attack Iran with American made bunker busting nuclear weapons. Tell them the economic consequences. Tell them that our sailors and marines will be deliberately sacrificed so we can have martial law and complete the transfer of all wealth to Wall Street.

4) If you see a candidate for office, you might ask them about the missing money and why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have passed stricter auditing laws to protect the taxpayers. Study the issues in advance, ask the best short question you can and have a friend get it down on videotape so the rest of us can see it.

5) Please do everything you can to share the information about the coming Pearl Harbor in the Persian Gulf. If enough people know what to expect, then the people who think they own the government will not be able to launch World War III just so they can have martial law, eliminate democracy, steal all of your pensions and savings and permanently cut your pay 50%.

6) If you know someone who is well known and is trusted and respected by the American public, share a few ideas with them about the Missing Money and the collapse of WTC Tower 7. Give them time to absorb the issues. Then ask him or her to go public. We need one well known and respected American to come forward to encourage others to resist treason, tyranny and the killing of a few billion poor people.


The world is ruled by men who think that War, Economic Collapse, Hyperinflation, mass starvation and abrogating the Constitution and Bill of Rights are a Game. They have no regard for your life nor for the lives of your family and friends. They will continue doing what they have been doing until we stop them. We are the world's last best chance.

PM to Haaretz: Two states or Israel is done for

By Haaretz Correspondents and AP ,

By Aluf Benn, David Landau, Shmuel Rosner and Barak Ravid

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/929233.html



WASHINGTON - "If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz yesterday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.



"The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," Olmert said, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."



Olmert pointed out that he had said similar things in an interview he gave four years ago, when he was deputy prime minister under Ariel Sharon, in which he revealed for the first time his proposal for a withdrawal from most of the occupied territories.



"Since then, I have systematically repeated those positions," he said, adding that people "will say I'm having problems and that's why I'm trying to do [a peace process], but the facts must be dealt with justly."



Olmert said the Annapolis conference "met more than we could have defined as the Israeli expectations, but that will not absolve us of the difficulties there will be in the negotiations, which will be difficult, complex, and will require a very great deal of patience and sophistication."



According to Olmert, "we now have a partner," in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "He is a weak partner, who is not capable, and, as Tony Blair says, has yet to formulate the tools and may not manage to do so. But it is my job to do everything so that he receives the tools, and to reach an understanding on the guidelines for an agreement. Annapolis is not a historic turning point, but it is a point that can be of assistance."



The prime minister said that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will continue to head up the Israeli negotiating team.



"There will also be people acting on my behalf, who will have a very significant role in this process, and the ones ultimately who will be in charge of this matter will be the leaders on both sides. That is why we announced that we will continue to meet regularly."



General James Jones, who was NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until 2006, has been appointed the U.S.'s new security coordinator in the territories. According to a senior diplomatic source, Jones will determine whether Israel and the Palestinians have met their commitments in accordance with the "road map" plan, and will draw up security plans for transfering responsibility for additional Palestinian cities from the Israel Defense Forces to Abbas' forces.



Yesterday, Olmert and Abbas met again separately with President George W. Bush, and later joined him, along with their chief negotiators, Livni and Ahmed Qurei, for a brief ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to inaugurate the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.



"One thing I have assured both gentlemen is that the United States will be actively engaged in the process," Bush said. "We will use our power to help you as you come up with the necessary decisions to lay out a Palestinian state that will live side-by-side in peace with Israel." "Yesterday was an important day, and it was a hopeful beginning," Bush said with the leaders at his side. "No matter how important yesterday was, it's not nearly as important as tomorrow and the days beyond. I appreciate the commitment of these leaders, working hard to achieve peace. I wouldn't be standing here if I didn't believe that peace was possible, and they wouldn't be here either if they didn't think peace was possible." Unlike their three-way handshake on Tuesday, the leaders did not shake hands in the Rose Garden.



Olmert also met yesterday with China's foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, and spoke by phone with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He also briefed the cabinet members by phone.



Olmert departed the U.S. last night and will be arriving in Israel this afternoon, in time for the Knesset's special session marking the 60th anniversary of the UN partition plan that called for the formation of a Jewish homeland.



Irangate



Olmert's private conversation with Bush yesterday centered on blocking the Iranian nuclear threat. Olmert told reporters yesterday that "there is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office."



At a meeting earlier this week in Washington, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov informed Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Russia has decided to supply the nuclear fuel rods for Iran's Bushehr power plant.



The fuel will be sent to Iran in special packaging, in keeping with the instruction of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Lavrov told Barak, adding that "it is not so simple to open these packages without it being discovered."



Lavrov's announcement contradicts Russian President Vladimir Putin's promise, during his meeting with Olmert several weeks ago, not to supply the fuel for the reactor in Bushehr.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentat...icle3204028.ece


Adrian Hamilton: Annapolis's sole purpose is to serve the Bush agenda

Published: 29 November 2007


There can have been few more excruciating sights than President Bush parading the Israeli and Palestinian leaders before the cameras at the Annapolis summit on Tuesday, clasping their hands, squeezing their shoulders, pushing them together for a handshake and then leaving them to return to their seats like awkward boys summoned to the podium to be congratulated for their efforts at a school prizegiving.



But then that was only right for the occasion. Why were President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert there in the first place, if not because the White House had propelled them there with not an iota of prior agreement between them? And why did their joint statement of intent single out the end of 2008 as the time by which they hoped to reach a peace settlement? Because that is when President Bush will be leaving office.



This is not just the carping of a Bush critic. No one in their right mind would wish for anything other than peace to come to the Middle East. For the last four decades since the 1967 war, Palestinians and Arabs everywhere have begged and prayed for the West, and America in particular, to enter the fray and force the pace of peace. One could hardly complain that this is what Washington now appears to be doing, and under a president who has so long resisted it.



But this is not where the White House is heading. Forget all the rolling acres of analysis devoted to what separates the sides, the compromises that might be reached, the grave opinions as to how this is the "best chance" for peace in a decade and all the other guff that surrounds these talks, as it has surrounded all its many predecessors.



A lasting peace is not the primary point of this exercise, although the participants might be happy if it did achieve it. The Annapolis process is here for one purpose only, and that is for the final justification of Bush's presidency, his "legacy" after all the failures in Iraq and elsewhere. It will be regarded as a success if he gets to the elections next November with the parties still talking, or there having been a breakdown that can be clearly blamed on one side or another, presumably in this case the Palestinians.



Make no mistake about it. The process set in motion at Annapolis is a humiliation for the Palestinians, made all the worse because they have no choice but to go along with it, mouthing the platitudes of peaceful intent without the slightest confidence that they can achieve, or be given, anything in return for their promises of good behaviour.



And they are having to do it before an Arab world equally dragooned into acting as cheerleaders, unable to resist the pressure of Washington and fearful of looking bad if they didn't attend. No one believes in the efficacy of the project, certainly not the ordinary Palestinian or Israeli, but their leaders are there because they feel they cannot afford not to be.



If you doubt that interpretation, read the text of President Bush's speech in opening the conference. Well over half is given over to a catalogue of what the White House wants – no, demands – from the Palestinians and how it sees the talks not as a resolution of the Palestinian cause but an exemplar of Bush's long-vaunted vision of democracy for the whole Middle East. After the failure in Iraq, now it is Palestine, and behind it the Arab League, that is being asked to act as America's frontline force in the manichean struggle against fundamentalism in the Middle East.



"The Palestinians," said Bush in a revealing passage, "must show the world they understand that, while the borders of a Palestinian state are important, the nature of a Palestinian state is just as important. They must show that a Palestinian state will accept its responsibility, and have the capability to be a source of stability and peace – for its own citizens, for the people of Israel, and for the whole region."



Israel in contrast is asked to do little more than "remove unauthorised outposts, end settlement expansion and find other ways for the Palestinian Authority to exercise its responsibilities without compromising Israel's security". In other words, Israel is under no pressure to move on the bigger issues of right of return, the status of Jerusalem or the dismantling of authorised settlements on the West Bank.



Introducing a wonderful concert by the Joubran Trio at the Barbican recently, the trio's leader explained to the audience that the three brothers were Palestinian, before adding with quiet emphasis: "We do not seek peace. We seek justice." There was a moment of stunned silence before the largely Arab crowd erupted in acclamation.



You won't see the word justice in President Bush's speech, nor for that matter in President Abbas's. The reason is simple. The Palestinians won't get that, whatever the end of the process, from Annapolis, from Israel or from this administration.



a.hamilton@ independent.co.uk

The neo-imperialists strike back....

Jonah Goldberg:
At peace with Pax Americana
Does being the leader of the free world make the U.S. an empire? November 27, 2007
For lack of a better word, the United States is getting tagged as an "empire" from all quarters. Indeed, it's been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google "Spanish-American War" if you're unfamiliar with this period.)

The empire charge has long been a staple bit of rhetoric lobbed about by those on the political extremes -- and has even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon "the ambitions of empire." Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says that America could afford healthcare if we weren't paying the freight on "running a world empire." The word "empire" substitutes for an argument; there are no good empires, just as there are no good fascists, or racists, or dictators.

In recent years, however, there's been an attempt to rehabilitate the e-word. Historian and former Times columnist Niall Ferguson deserves primary credit for the mainstreaming of the empire debate with his 2004 book "Colossus." He faced the empire charge head-on, saying, in effect, "Yeah, so what's your point?" The world needs a stabilizing, decent watchman to keep the bad guys in check and to promote trade, he argued, and the United States is the best candidate for the job.

Ferguson concedes, however, that the American people don't want an empire, don't think that they have one, and even our elites have no idea how to run one. As David Frum noted at the time in the National Review, Ferguson "repeatedly complains that his particular fowl neither waddles nor quacks -- and yet he insists it is nevertheless a duck."

Even as he strives to rehabilitate the idea of empire, Ferguson acknowledges that the word has limitations. It "is irrevocably the language of a bygone age," he writes at the end of his book. It has become irretrievably synonymous with villainy.

Critics of American foreign policy point to the fact that the U.S. does many things that empires once did -- police the seas, deploy militaries abroad, provide a lingua franca and a global currency -- and then rest their case. But noting that X does many of the same things as Y does not mean that X and Y are the same thing. The police provide protection, and so does the Mafia. Orphanages raise children, but they aren't parents. If your wife cleans your home, tell her she's the maid because maids also clean homes. See how well that logic works.

When they speak of the American empire, critics fall back on cartoonish notions, invoking Hollywoodized versions of ancient Rome or mothballed Marxist caricatures of the British Raj. But unlike the Romans or even the British, our garrisons can be ejected without firing a shot. We left the Philippines when asked. We may split from South Korea in the next few years under similar circumstances. Poland wants our military bases; Germany is grumpy about losing them. When Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, refused to let American troops invade Iraq from its territory, the U.S. government said "fine." We didn't invade Iraq for oil (all we needed to do to buy it was lift the embargo), and we've made it clear that we'll leave Iraq if the Iraqis ask.

The second verse of the anti-imperial lament, sung in unison by liberals and libertarians, goes like this: Expansion of the military-industrial complex leads to contraction of freedom at home. But historically, this is a hard sell. Women got the vote largely thanks to World War I. President Truman, that consummate Cold Warrior, integrated the Army, and the civil rights movement escalated its successes even as we escalated the Cold War and our presence in Vietnam. President Reagan built up the military even as he liberalized the economy.

Sure Naomi Wolfe, Frank Rich and other leftists believe that the imperialistic war on terror has turned America into a police state. But if they were right, they wouldn't be allowed to say that.

Two compelling new books help explain why our "empire" is different from the Soviet or Roman varieties. Walter Russell Mead's encyclopedic "God and Gold" argues that Anglo-American culture is uniquely well suited toward globalism, military success, capitalism and liberty. Amy Chua's brilliant "Day of Empire" confirms why: Successful "hyperpowers" tend to be more tolerant and inclusive than their competitors. Despite its flaws, Britain was the first truly liberal empire.

America has picked up where the British left off. Whatever sway the U.S. holds over far-flung reaches of the globe is derived from the fact that we have been, and hopefully shall continue to be, the leader of the free world, offering help and guidance, peace and prosperity, where and when we can, as best we can, and asking little in return. If that makes us an empire, so be it. But I think "leader of the free world" is the only label we'll ever need or -- one hopes -- ever want.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
_________________________________________

Economist.com




The Arab-Israeli summit in Annapolis

Big turnout, small result
Nov 29th 2007 | ANNAPOLIS
From The Economist print edition

An agreement on further peace talks, if not much else

THEY almost didn't make it, but in the last hour Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, agreed on a joint statement. Four months of preliminary talks had failed to produce what Mr Abbas and Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, had hoped to brandish at this week's peace summit in Annapolis: an agreement to predetermine some aspects of the final-status deal that would ultimately create a Palestinian state next to Israel. In the end, Ms Rice had to settle for less, but the Palestinians and Israelis did agree two things. Final-status talks will begin on December 12th. And the United States will monitor both sides' compliance in the meantime with the "road map" peace plan of 2003, under which Israel is meant to freeze settlement-building in the West Bank while the Palestinian Authority (PA) takes action against militants who attack Israel.

Both these agreements still lack some important detail, however. While teams of negotiators will work continuously to hammer out all the issues of a peace deal—the borders of the Palestinian state, the division of Jerusalem, the fate of 4.5m Palestinian refugees abroad, the sharing of water resources, and so on—nobody has specified whether the starting point will be a blank slate or a previous near-deal such as the informal 2001 Taba agreement negotiated in Egypt. That could make a big difference to how fast things progress. So too could the fact that there will be no American go-between for them.

Likewise, the United States has agreed to supervise both sides' compliance with the road map; a potential win for the Palestinians since in the past Israel has been the de facto arbiter of performance. But it is unclear how, and how strictly, America will actually do this. So far, it has only appointed a general, James Jones, as a security envoy to the PA. Much clearer is that Israel will not make his job easy. An Israeli official says that any impression that Mr Olmert plans a total construction freeze, as the road map stipulates, is a "convenient misperception".

A more telling measure of Mr Olmert's intentions may be how vigorously he goes after the 100-plus "unauthorised" outposts established by hardline settlers, of which the road map requires him to dismantle around 60. Previous attempts to take even one down have led to violent clashes between the police and settlers, who are regrouping for a showdown after losing their fight to stay in the Gaza Strip in 2005. As for the Palestinians, the American arbitrator will find himself squeezed between the Israeli reading of the road map—that the PA must entirely dismantle terrorist groups before any final-status deal that the two sides reach can go into effect—and the Palestinian one, which is that it need only get the task well under way.

The two sides hope to conclude the final-status deal itself within a year. But given the complexity of the issues and the fragile politics on each side, this looks over-ambitious to some. Mr Olmert will have to keep conceding enough to keep the peace process going, but not so much that it prompts right-wing parties to leave his coalition. They have already started throwing out banana skins, such as a parliamentary bill earlier this month that would make it much harder for Israel to give up any of Jerusalem to the PA. Mr Abbas, for his part, having got much less out of Annapolis than he originally insisted on, is vulnerable to the jibes of Islamist opponents. His security forces have been cracking down with unusual harshness on anti-Annapolis demonstrations in the West Bank this week, something that could cost him precious legitimacy.

A coalition of the fearful

For a conference so thin on content, though, Annapolis was surprisingly thickly attended. Few expected Saudi Arabia to send its foreign minister, but there he was, along with 40 leaders, many from Islamic states without diplomatic ties with Israel. To what extent this is a victory for President George Bush, though, is also not yet clear.

One reason the Arabs showed up, as American officials argue, is because they may share Mr Bush's desire to create a united, mostly Sunni front against mostly Shia extremists led by Iran. Syria's decision to send its deputy foreign minister—less than a full negotiator, but more than just a token presence—in return for a merely token discussion at Annapolis about Syrian-Israeli peace may have signalled that Syria, too, is worried about ending up on the wrong side of the barricades. The show of solidarity certainly produced some alarmed noises from Tehran and fist waving from its Islamist allies, Lebanon's Hizbullah and the Palestinians' Hamas.

Yet the Saudis and others may also have come because they felt they had no choice. It would have been too easy for America to paint them as the cause of Annapolis's failure. With Lebanon fearing more civil conflict as it tries to break a deadlock over the election of a president, Syria's role is crucial; some, indeed, think its invitation to Annapolis is what has prevented Lebanon from exploding already. But Mr Bush offered Syria no concessions, instead giving it a clear rebuke in his speech with a reference to Lebanon's need for an election "free from outside interference and intimidation" (see article). The question now is whether America can convert the show of support it got at Annapolis into anything more substantial.

Commentary: Osama's echo chamber
Washington (UPI) Nov 28, 2007 - What do the Archbishop of Canterbury, Patrick J. Buchanan and Osama bin Laden have in common? All three believe America is on a path to national suicide. Bin Laden, of course, is hoping to make it happen. America's existential crisis, says the leader of the Anglican Church, was caused not only by America's actions, but also by a misguided sense of its own mission, and scorned the "chosen myth ... more

Separate Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan - Korb and Duggan, Baltimore Sun
Still No Way Out of Iraq? – New York Times editorial
Winning Baghdad – Ralph Peters, New York Post
A Partner For Dealing With Iran? - Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post
Al Qaeda’s Emerging Defeat – Austin Bay, Washington Times
Musharraf Stands Alone – Washington Times editorial
Musharraf’s Tasks – London Times editorial
Citizen Musharraf - Chicago Tribune editorial
Should the U.S. Abandon Pervez Musharraf? – Markey and Haqqani, Foreign Policy
If You Thought Musharraf Was Bad - Mansoor Ijaz, Los Angeles Times
A Leader for Lebanon – Los Angeles Times editorial
Who are the Financiers of Islamization? – Diana West, Washington Times
Saudi Petrodollars at Work - Deborah Weiss, Human Events
Mosques May Not be So Moderate – Paul Goodman, London Daily Telegraph
A New Mideast Try - San Francisco Chronicle editorial
In Kosovo, Appearances Deceive – Christian Science Monitor editorial
Democracy’s Last Chance in Venezuela – USA Today editorial
Thorns in the Congo – Michael Gerson, Washington Post
Wounds of China’s Cultural Revolution? – David Brooks, New York Times
John Bolton: Diplomats are Dangerous – Con Coughlin, London Daily Telegraph
Our Changing Nation – Cal Thomas, Washington Times
A Teddy Bear Called Mohammed – London Daily Telegraph editorial

Bill Clinton, Antiwar?

Purported bin Laden Message to Europe: Quit Afghan War

Panel Rebuffs White House Privilege Claim

A Tenuous 'Peace' in Anbar

Iraqi Lawmakers Protest US Guards

Signs of US-Syria Thaw After Summit

A Payoff for Syrians: Seats at the Table, at Least

Jordan Asked Nixon to Attack Syria, Declassified Papers Show

Kissinger in 1969: Israelis Most Likely to Use Nukes

Deja Nuke
Kissinger - 'If we expose the program we risk tightening Soviet hold on Arabs' Photo: AFP

Kissinger in 1969: Israelis most likely to use nukes

Declassified memo authored by President Nixon's prominent national security advisor indicates administration was deeply concerned by possibility Israel was developing nuclear arms
Ynetnews

Former US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger vexed over the prospects of a Middle East arms race in late 1960's, according to a New York Times report on Thursday, based on newly revealed historical documents, made public by the US National Archives.

Israel was "more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons," Kissinger wrote in a detailed memorandum to President Richard Nixon on July 19 1969, while all eyes in the US were on the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Kissinger said the reason for this was because Israelis are "one of the few people whose survival is genuinely threatened."



Kissinger also suggested the possibility that Israel had stolen American materials for its own nuclear program. "This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us and may even have stolen from us," the veteran strategist wrote.



"There is circumstantial evidence that some fissionable material available for Israel's weapons development was illegally obtained from the United States about 1965," Kissinger said. He dismissed attempts to locate the material, writing that "we could never cover all conceivable Israeli hiding places."



"Israel will not take us seriously on the nuclear issue unless they believe we are prepared to withhold something they very much need," Kissinger wrote, going on to recommend the US threaten to rescind the sale of the Phantom fighter jets, holding the much-needed aircraft hostage until Israel yielded.



"On the other hand, if we withhold the Phantoms and they make this fact public in the United States, enormous political pressure will be mounted on us," Kissinger extrapolated. "We will be in an indefensible position if we cannot state why we are withholding the planes. Yet if we explain our position publicly, we will be the ones to make Israel's possession of nuclear weapons public with all the international consequences this entails."



Such a move would also potentially "spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement."



After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir later that year, Nixon said: "The problems in the Mideast go back centuries. They are not susceptible to easy solution. We do not expect them to be susceptible to instant diplomacy."



And so the policy of vagueness regarding Israel's nuclear program was born and remains to this day.

Army defiant despite Pakistan's divide
A major political divide has emerged in Pakistan ahead of January's national elections, with several key parties saying they will boycott the vote. The smooth transition at the head of the military, though, will ensure that the country remains on course in the "war on terror". New army boss General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani has already responded to a peace offer from militants with threats of bombs and bullets. - Syed Saleem Shahzad (Nov 30, '07)

The Sharif factor comes into play
In the emerging troika of democratic elements, Islamic parties and the military that is likely to govern Pakistan, former premier Nawaz Sharif can be expected to play a part. He is certainly not the US's choice, but he would please Saudi Arabia, which was instrumental in his return from exile. The Taliban, too, stand to benefit. - M K Bhadrakumar (Nov 30, '07)

US 'declaration' a setback for Maliki
Just when things were going so well, Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki finds himself in trouble following his reluctant decision to sign a US-authored "declaration of principles", which includes a ban on all militias. Critics call the declaration "flawed and ambiguous" as it has no timetable for a US withdrawal, and the Sadrists are seething. - Sami Moubayed (Nov 30, '07)

Bin Laden and Future Jihad in Europe

By Walid Phares


What is interesting about the latest audio message of Usama Bin Laden, carried by al Jazeera, is its delayed argument. Strangely he is trying to convince the Europeans - seven years later - that they are wrong to have followed the United States into Afghanistan. Why?

In his speech - irrespective of the ritual investigative questions regarding its location, technology and other details - the central issue appears to be his growing concern with the European role in Afghanistan, and perhaps because of it, the potential growth of that role in the fight against the forces of Jihadism worldwide. As a reader of the Jihadi strategic mind, I believe that the speech writers (Bin Laden himself or his “advisors”) are looking ahead in their evaluation of future European involvement in the so-called War on Terror, and are positioning al Qaeda to “own” it. The significance of this is, as al Qaeda’s war room has showed in the past, they are skilled at anticipating trends.

Don’t we remember how in February 2003, way before the US Marines brought down the Saddam statue in April, a Bin Laden audio tape called on the Jihad fighters to begin heading to Iraq, “for Baghdad, the second capital of the Caliphate would be falling into the hands of the Kuffar (infidels)”? In a sense, this is how I read this new Bin Laden tape: he is asking the Europeans to leave the battlefield of Afghanistan now, because he is projecting that events may push the nations of Europe to expand further their involvement overseas. The hidden message in his speech is by far greater than the words aired on al Jazeera, or even the entire text his followers are claiming the Qatari-funded channel “didn’t air.” We’ll come back later to the al Qaeda/al Jazeera labyrinth. The question now is about the essence of the message.

Read More »


The commander of the Jihadi mother ship says the Afghans sustained the Soviet occupation for many years; hence he warns the European governments that their forces deployed in that country will be continuously attacked. That was the first salvo. Then he “informed” them that they’d made a tremendous mistake by deploying along with US troops and dislodging the Taliban in 2001. He argued that since he was the man behind the massacre of Manhattan, the regime of the Taliban had nothing to do with it. “I am responsible for the attacks of 9/11,” said Bin Laden. (I suggest making sure this declaration is well saved to document future trials and respond to current allegations that Jihadists have nothing to do with it.) He added - the classic refrain - that 9/11 “was in response to aggression in Palestine and Lebanon.” Usama insisted that Taliban ministers didn’t even know that he was launching this operation.

That part, I must admit, came as a surprise to me. Why is he attempting to distance his protectors from the Ghazwa (Jihadi raid) seven years later? We’ll come back to this later as well.

Meanwhile, US administration spokespeople rushed to “explain” that the Afghani people are “happier now because they are better administered.” I disagree with this PR logic. Nations wouldn’t be happier with foreign forces just because richer governments can distribute goodies. This argument won’t buy support among the public there.

Washington’s spokespeople must be clear on the principles, seven or seventy years afterwards: the US removed the Taliban regime because this regime was responsible for the acts of the terror group al Qaeda, executor of the massacres in New York and Washington. The Taliban - under international law - had the opportunity to arrest al Qaeda leaders and dismantle their camps, but it didn’t. As such, the Greater Middle East audience must hear solid counter arguments coming out of America and the free world about this particular issue, not “explanations” about what the Coalition is doing now in Afghanistan. After the democratic elections in that country, the legitimate government is responsible for the presence and deeds of NATO and UN troops anyway. But In the war of ideas, no allegation should be allowed to fly unchecked.

Bin Laden alleged that the Taliban didn’t know about the operation, but he ignored the fact that the Jihadi regime and its spokespeople “blessed” the attacks afterward, and that they continue, even today, to do so in their media. Usama has forgotten that in one of his videotapes he boasted that even his close comrade Sleiman Abul Ghais didn’t know about it. But even though the preparation for the terror “operations” weren’t shared with all levels of power among the Taliban or even al Qaeda, the war against America has been declared since 1998. These are simple counter arguments but they need to be made in response to this statement by the leader of the War on Terror.

Future recruits will be fed with Bin Laden’s rhetoric about the innocence of his Taliban brothers and hence, we may find these arguments made by future suicide terrorists blasting against targets in European cities. “This is in response to your illegitimate and unjust attacks against Afghanistan,” would scream the Shaheed in his or her prepared videotape before they spread mayhem. A strong and direct response to today’s false arguments, delivered in Arabic via satellite channels, would have been the appropriate response, minutes after the al Jazeera airing. What is important is not how we satisfy our perception of a good image, but how we affect the perception of those who are about to be indoctrinated or recruited to the other side.

Back to Usama’s Euro concerns. In short, he is preparing the psychological terrain for an escalation on European soil. Remember Madrid. His cells struck the trains while claiming it was because of the unjust presence of Spanish troops in Iraq. It is very possible that future strikes in Europe would be accompanied with claims related to French, British, Spanish, Danish, Dutch and other military presence in that part of central Asia. The potential forthcoming attacks are being prepared now with al Qaeda propaganda.

Interestingly Bin Laden mentions Blair, Brown, Aznar and Sarkozy. While the first three past and current prime ministers have ordered troops into and within Iraq, the French President has inherited a previous military policy in Afghanistan. What links all these leaders in the mind of Bin Laden? In my estimate, it is not only the past; rather it is the future. The Jihadi supreme commander has been advised by his operational emirs and advisors in Europe that the fight is coming to that continent. Many combat Salafists are already deployed and preparing for violence in Britain, Spain, Scandinavia, Germany and the Benelux. The so-called youth gangs in French suburbs - manipulated by the radical clerics - are already in a state of war against the French state.

Global Jihad in Europe has begun. Al Qaeda wants to claim it, own it and boast about its coming spread. That’s what is on Bin Laden’s mind.

As a classic leader of Jihadism, he wants to warn beforehand that what is to come in Europe is “because” of its alliance with the US and its military presence in Afghanistan, an “occupied Muslim land.” In reality, the dice has already rolled: the Jihadists have already waged their campaign on that continent but the al Qaeda master wants to father it and widen it.

***************

Dr Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels. He is the author of The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracies.

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November 30, 2007 08:50 AM Link TrackBack (0) Print
NEFA Foundation: Complete Transcript of Latest UBL Audio Recording, "Message to the Peoples of Europe"

By Evan Kohlmann


The NEFA Foundation has obtained a copy of the new audio recording from Al-Qaida leader Usama Bin Laden, titled "A Message to the Peoples of Europe." During his speech, Bin Laden acknowledged being "responsible for 9/11", but strongly criticized the U.S. and its European allies for continuing military operations in Afghanistan even after they had "destroyed the camps of al-Qaida and killed some of its members." In addressing his European audience, Bin Laden insisted, "the American tide is ebbing, by the grace of Allah... So it is better for you to restrain your politicians who are thronging the steps of the White House."

A complete English-language transcript of Bin Laden's message is now available on the NEFA Foundation website, c/o the TerrorWatch subscription service.

November 30, 2007 02:15 AM Link

New Bin Laden Audio Tape Demands Europeans Halt Afghanistan Ops (updated)

By Andrew Cochran


The new audio tape from Osama bin Laden is being released this afternoon on Al Jazeera. in it, OBL demands that the Europeans end their cooperation with the U.S. against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The release of the tape was announced by as-Sahab on November 26. ABC News reports that "Bin Laden says he was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and that the people and government of Afghanistan are innocent victims of America's war there." A quote from the tape from NBC News: "The American tide is ebbing, so it is best for you to press your leaders to change their policies." This is the fourth tape from OBL this year. Read reactions to his last tape, released in October, by Walid Phares and by me. More on this tape later.

November 29, 2007 01:28 PM Link

Hillary Clinton’s Oil Addiction
by Joshua Frank / November 30th, 2007

At a global warming forum held in Los Angeles on November 17, Hillary Clinton touted her green credentials to a packed auditorium of concerned voters. While the senator was careful not to step on the toes of her corporate campaign contributors, Hillary did proclaim that she has a “bold, comprehensive” plan to move the United States toward energy independence. (Full article …)

Putting Peace First
by Kevin Zeese / November 30th, 2007

In recent debates the candidates were asked whether they will support the nominee of their party. Despite increasingly harsh rhetoric between the candidates only two candidates had the courage to put peace before their party and refused to issue blanket support for their party nominee. Rep. Ron Paul and Rep. Dennis Kucinich responded they would not support the nominee unless the nominee opposed war as an instrument of foreign policy. (Full article …)