Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Payback time

Published on 31 May 2007 in Israel. 1 Comment

Another day, another Israeli massacre in Palestine.

Of course, this information isn’t even “news” anymore, such is the regularity of these events. But in a show of solidarity, Israeli behaviour will start coming at a price. Boycotts are just the beginning.

In more encouraging news, the forthcoming book by Mearsheimer/Walt on the Israel lobby (out September) has received an early PR boost. Interestingly, the US-based Jewish Book Council was behind the talk.

In the months to come, an even harsher light will shine on the duplicitous role of the Zionist lobby. And, more importantly, their contribution to a ever-weakened Jewish state.

The plight of the Kurds

Published on 31 May 2007 in General. 1 Comment

Is the security of the Kurds really better now than under Saddam?

While the American military is trying to tamp down the vicious fighting between rival Arab sects in Baghdad, conflict between Arabs and Kurds is intensifying here, adding another dimension to Iraq’s civil war. Sunni Arab militants, reinforced by insurgents fleeing the new security plan in Baghdad, are trying to rid Mosul of its Kurdish population through violence and intimidation, Kurdish officials said.

And how will the US appease the demands of Turkey?

Turkey’s prime minister has said the US and Iraq should destroy bases of separatist Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.

and …

Ankara has repeatedly expressed its disappointment with Washington for what it says is a failure to crack down on Kurdish rebels who take refuge in northern Iraq and frequently attack soldiers and government targets in Turkey.

With each month of US occupation, the toll of unintended consequences continues to rise.

Common values

Published on 31 May 2007 in General and Israel. 0 Comments

Much is made of the common values shared between the US and Israel.  One of them just happens to be a fondness for torture

According to the report, the High Court of Justice’s ruling on the interrogation of suspects defined as “time bombs” allows for “almost any Palestinian prisoner to be tortured,” Israel Radio reported.

And here’s little food for thought…

“Enhanced Interogation” is a fairly close translation of the German Verschärfte Vernehmung …which was coined by the Gestapo.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Pathological dreams

Published on 31 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

It would make for fascinating reading to study a psychological evaluation of a man like Norman Podhoretz who hopes and prays for the bombing of Iran.  For Podhoretz, studying IAEA and intelligence reports that deny the existence of any nuclear weapons program in Iran is a waste of time.  His neocon spidy senses is all he needs to launch a preemptive bombing of Iran.

Podhoretz believes that “the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force–any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938.”

How do such deranged individuals rise to such prominent positions of influence?  After all Norman, it’s not like Iran didn’t offer to suspend its nuclear program, enter into peace talks with Israel, and wash its hands of Hamas and Hezbollah in 2003.  Don’t you just wish you had exercised common sense and agreed to talk with them, rather than brush them off?

Norman is a simple man.  When it comes to bombing counties that threaten no one, he doesn’t ask for much.

“As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will.”

Remembering the Liberty

Published on 31 May 2007 in General and Israel. 4 Comments

There is still a great deal of controversy surrounding the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. While the accepted narrative states that this was a tragic accident, there are many who refuse to accept it, particularly the surviving victims.

Former captain of the Liberty, Ward Boston, signed an affidavit stating unequivocally:

“The evidence was clear. Both Admiral [Isaac C.] Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack … was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received firsthand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate.”

Tim Fischer put it this way:

“If Israel did deliberately attack the most powerful nation on Earth, it knows it can do so and get away with murder. Worse still, U.S. military personnel now know that if the truth is politically inconvenient, they and their legacy are expendable.”

Justin Raimondo suggests that the Lobby had a role to play, but this theory is flawed. At the time, Israel’s lobby did not wield anywhere near the same influence that we are witnessing today. Nonetheless he does raise a valid argument:

Critics may aver that this is all ancient history, that there is no reason to bring up the attack on the Liberty, and even if it wasn’t an accident, it’s time to let bygones be bygones. The Lobby constantly asserts that anyone who even mentions this “incident” is nothing but an anti-Semite, because, after all, why talk about it now?

If indeed the attack was deliberate, then it begs the question as to what Lyndon Johnson’s reasons were for covering it up?

There are two theories that may explain this.

The Israelis attacked the Liberty, according to several books and a BBC documentary on the subject, in order to prevent the U.S. government from learning of Israeli plans to occupy the Golan Heights belongs to Syria, and which is still causing a great many problems for U.S. interests in the region.

Another more recent theory has surfaced

It has long been assumed that Israel’s deliberate attack on the USS Liberty was just another of her made-to-order false flag operations done simply for the purpose of dragging an unwilling America into a Middle East war on the side of the Jewish state. However, new information uncovered by former BBC investigative journalist Peter Hounam reveals that America–and more specifically the administration of Lyndon Johnson–was not as much the unsuspecting victim in all of this that she has claimed these last 40 years. Based on relatively new evidence, the attack on the Liberty was actually part of a much larger plan and that the Liberty incident was just one domino in a series of them that had as the ultimate goal a real-live shooting war between the US and the USSR. Had the Liberty been sunk with no witnesses as planned, the world would be a much different place now as a result, and certainly not for the better.

In short, what was planned for that awful day in American history was that the a defenseless, unarmed American ship sailing in international waters off the coast of Egypt be sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean and that the Soviets and their Arab allies (in particular Egypt) would be blamed for the event.

Without a comprehensive investigation, these theories will remain pure speculation, however, they will continue to linger so long as the veil of secrecy surrounding this event is maintained.

Plame has last laugh

Published on 30 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

The right wing detractors who have insisted that Valerie Plame was not undercover have some humble pie to feast on.

“In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a ‘covert’ CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a ‘cover identity’ in order to disguise her relationship with the agency,” Newsweek reports.

Wilson’s covert status, which is substantiated in an employment report filed by Fitzgerlad, was cited as part of a recommendation to sentence former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to up to three years in prison.

CIA man, Larry Johnson, who has been adament that Plame was undercover since day 1, is lapping it up.

[Update: David Corn posted the first piece on this Friday night. He needs to do more self-promotion.] Man, the rightwing stooges are getting their collective asses handed to them on all fronts (e.g., a bird shits on Bush, Wolfowitz gets bounced from the World Bank, and rightwing bloggers, Flopping Aces and Charles Johnson in particular, were exposed making fraudulent claims). As Jackie Gleason used to say, “how sweet it is!”

[Note: Fitzgerald says that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) applied to Valerie at the time of her outing. Suck on that you rightwing hypocrites.]

How long do you think we’ll be waiting for the right wing blogosphere’s to issue a retraction and an apology to Plame?

Continue reading ‘Plame has last laugh’

Killing more Arabs soon, please get in line

Published on 30 May 2007 in Israel. 0 Comments

The latest book on Hilary Clinton proves yet again, why she is about as predictable as pro-war pundits and Republican voters are switching off (not, mind you, because the war is immoral or pointless, but because the US isn’t “winning”). It’s difficult to get inspired by the US presidential race, but then, just look at the Labor Party contest in Israel:

The proximity of the Winograd crisis and the Labor Party primaries helps explain the hysteria surrounding the wave of Qassams on the Western Negev, which started especially early this time. It could explain why the convoys of politicians visiting Sderot have been longer, and why the polishing of swords has been noisier than ever. The huge uproar already began in the first week, when the number of Qassams that fell in the area had not yet reached 100, about half the number that were identified last November and about 50 rockets less than the number that fell last June.

The government’s reactions and the military’s reprisal actions were also far more aggressive this time. Both were aided by the media uproar surrounding the scandal involving the lack of fortified secure rooms and the expectation of seeing a Gaza-version of Operation Defensive Shield. The restraint the government and the army are supposedly evincing in the Gaza Strip is serving as a smokescreen for the renewed fire in the West Bank.

This “restraint” is distracting attention from the mass arrests in the West Bank and from Olmert’s refusal even to discuss the proposal put forth by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to enforce the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, on condition that Israel agree to extend it to the West Bank. The “restraint” leaves no room for reports of new decrees affecting the inhabitants of the West Bank, such as the prohibition on bathing in the Dead Sea.

Once again, Israel’s political elite know that a few stray Qassams aren’t capable of doing much damage. Their actions are not about saving Israeli lives nor protecting the motherhood. This is about attempting to destroy the democratically elected government of Hamas, and convincing the world that not doing so threatens the country’s existence. It’s bollocks, of course, and only convinces the yes-men in Washington (and obedient Zionists in the Diaspora.)

If yet another Palestinian authority is ruined, further extremism is guaranteed, something that suits Israel’s military and political elite just fine. It’s also much easier for Zionists in the West to raise funds for more trees in the blooming desert.

Inside the Haaretz mind

Published on 30 May 2007 in Israel. 1 Comment

Matt Seaton, Guardian Comment is Free, May 29:

Since the world is not exactly overrun with liberal newspapers and bien-pensant media organisations, I had a natural curiosity, as a Guardian journalist, to hear (for once) how someone else does it. David Landau is the editor of a newspaper that is avowedly secular and progressive, and which has a set of editorial principles that would not disgrace a human rights organisation, and are certainly recognisable to an employee of the media group owned by the Scott Trust.

But there the resemblance begins to diminish, and special circumstances take over. For Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper edited (since 2004) by Mr Landau, is constitutionally Zionist, as well as secular and progressive. You’d think that being secular and progressive in Israel is the main challenge, and that being Zionist at least would be uncontroversial. But, as Mr Landau reminded us, this was Israel – where the demographic reality is that the fastest-growing political-religious group, because of a spectacularly high birthrate, is the ultra-Orthodox, who, inter alia, do not recognise the state of Israel. So, even to be Zionist in Israel, let alone secular and progressive, can be to go looking for trouble.

“Not a day goes by,” said Mr Landau ruefully (and yet also with a sense of it as a badge of courage, almost a sign that he’s doing his job correctly), “that I don’t get a call or an email saying, ‘I cancel my subscription.’” Then he added – and here I could certainly share the ruefulness – “but, of course, then they just go online and read us for free.”

Mr Landau, a solid-framed figure in his fifties, with trim beard, is himself a living link between the Guardian, for which he reported for many years, and Haaretz. But, as he emphasised, he is also a former correspondent for the Economist. His point was that, in his job, you have, somehow, to straddle ideological gulfs. Which he does in a third way, too, by being a practising Orthodox Jew – a fact that, clearly to the credit of both men, Haaretz’s publisher Amos Schocken ruled as irrelevant when appointing Landau to the editor’s post.

And this little bundle of contradictions encapsulated Mr Landau’s main theme: that the only way of negotiating your way through Israel’s impossibly self-divided body politic (let alone begin to think of the Palestinian question, and Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbours) is to invite that warring plurality of point of view in to your editorial pages. And this means, he argued, being willing to contradict yourself.

Missile Defense or just pork?

Published on 30 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

You have to wonder what the obsession with Missile Defense is really about, if not just a means to funnel obscene amounts of money to weapon’s manufacturers. When such weapons systems are tested, they are rigged to create the best possible outcome, yet routinely produce miserable results.

In a statement, Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen. “Trey” Obering called the event a “no test.”

The target did not reach sufficient altitude to be deemed a threat, and so the Ballistic Missile Defense System did not engage it, as designed…

There is always a risk of this occurrence since we are flying old Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) motors in our targets… and we have initiated a target modernization program, within our existing budget, which should mitigate these risks for the future. A target will be brought forward from a test scheduled for next fall and we will attempt to repeat this test this summer.

The bizarre conclusions drawn from such pathetic results is not only to pour more money into the program, but to place even more faith in their effectiveness.

The failed test underscored the need of the U.S. to install 10 interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against potential missile attack from Iran, Lehner said.

It showed that any missiles that Iran launched could similarly go astray and land in Europe even if Europe was not Iran’s target, he added.

Try as they might to pretend that the systems being installed in Eastern Europe are intended to thwart any missile launch from Iran, no one is fooled. The intended target is Russia, and Putin has not been afraid to express his displeasure at such aggression.

Meanwhile, Russia, who leads the world in missile and rocket technology, is proceeding to further develop the world’s most advanced missiles and rockets. It recently tested the new RS-24 missile, which is capable of carrying up to 10 warheads.  Like the Topol-M missile tested a few years ago, can change course after being launched, making it virtually unstoppable.

Welcome to the new arms race, one that the US is not guaranteed to win.

Peak Oil – real or manufactured?

Published on 30 May 2007 in General. 3 Comments

Good news. The problem of US energy dependency on foreign sources is solved

Colorado and Utah have as much oil as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, Libya, Angola, Algeria, Indonesia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates combined. Trapped in limestone up to 200 feet thick in the two Rocky Mountain states is enough so-called shale oil to rival OPEC and supply the United States for a century.

Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two biggest U.S. energy companies, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are spending $100 million a year testing methods to separate the oil from the stone for as little as $30 a barrel. A growing number of industry executives and analysts say new technology and persistently high prices make the idea feasible.

“The breakthrough is that now the oil companies have a way of getting this oil out of the ground without the massive energy and manpower costs that killed these projects in the 1970s,” said Pete Stark, analyst at IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colo., research firm. “All the shale rocks in the world are going to be revisited now to see how much oil they contain.”

One would assume that the implications of this are enormous. Apart from freeing the US from its reliance on Middle Eastern oil supplies, it could potentially deliver a financial boom for the country.

Due to the fact is that this is not a new discovery, one has to quesrion whether Peak Oil is real or a creation of big oil to manufacture scarcity. When we hear about oil scarcity, we must remember that scarcity is variable upon the current price of oil.

Given the modest annual investment made by the oil giants in perfecting these extraction techniques, one has to wonder if controlling the world’s oil (and therefore controlling potential rivals to US power) is more important to the ruling elite than establishing America’s energy independence.

AIPAC’s fingerprints

Published on 30 May 2007 in Israel. 1 Comment

It was widely reported that the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) was behind the sudden decision by Congressional House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to drop a provision requiring President Bush for Congressional approval prior to attacking Iran.

As reported in the May 16, 2007 issue of The Hill:

“The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an influential group that advocates strong U.S. ties with Israel, lobbied heavily to remove the Iran provision in the supplemental, arguing that the measure would weaken President Bush’s attempts to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons.”

If there ever was an irrefutable demonstration of Walt and Mearsheimer’s thesis, this must surely be it.

In other words, a Democratic Congress elected to end the Iraq war has willingly given up its right (and responsibility) to engage in public debate prior to a new act of war against Iran, a sovereign nation. By voting to look the other way, Congress has left this war decision to the discretion of an unpopular president, who has already failed once.

Why on earth would the Democrats, empowered to change the administration’s current foreign policy regime, ignore popular will? One reason, of course, is AIPAC.

If a conflict with Iran does eventuate, it’s predictable that Israel’s amen corner will attack any suggestion of Israel’s involvement as anti-Semitism.  Along with the the impending espionage trial of former AIPAC members, this time around the evidence will be much more difficult to dismiss.

Commander guy’s reality

Published on 30 May 2007 in General. 1 Comment

No wonder that Bush thinks that Iraq was harboring Al Qaeda, had WMD and was responsible for 9/11. He wasn’t lying, he just resides in a parallel universe.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the right wing mind.

The president says Democrats have it all wrong: the public doesn’t want the troops pulled out — they want to give the military more support in its mission.

“Last November, the American people said they were frustrated and wanted a change in our strategy in Iraq,” he said April 24, ahead of a veto showdown with congressional Democrats over their desire to legislation a troop withdrawal timeline. “I listened. Today, General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course.”

At least we know how the brains of right wing pundits…umm…..work. This comes as no surprise really.  After all, in the Bizzaro Bush World, war is peace, death is liberation, and torture is freedom.

Commander guy was on a roll.

Increasingly isolated on a war that is going badly, Bush has presented his alternative reality in other ways, too. He expresses understanding for the public’s dismay over the unrelenting sectarian violence and American losses that have passed 3,400, but then asserts that the public’s solution matches his.

“A lot of Americans want to know, you know, when?” he said at a Rose Garden news conference Thursday. “When are you going to win?”

Also in that session, Bush said: “I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, `Get out, you know, it’s just not worth it. Let’s just leave.’ I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well.”

No doubt, these polls all have it wrong too.

Of course, if Bush was even close to reality, maybe his approval numbers would not continue to head south, either.

The new bully arrives

Published on 29 May 2007 in General. 3 Comments

The new kid on the international block doesn’t seem to be bothering too many people:

Majorities around the world believe that China will catch up with the United States economically. It’s a prospect that leaves most of those polled—even Americans—unperturbed.

A multinational poll by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org finds that in most countries polled, majorities or pluralities believe the Chinese economy will grow to be as large as the US economy. In no country do most people think this would be mostly negative. Majorities in every country polled believe this is either a good thing or equally positive and negative.

“What is particularly striking is that despite the tectonic significance of China catching up with the US, overall the world public’s response is low key—almost philosophical,” said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.

This sanguine reaction is not because China is widely trusted. World Publics do not trust China any more than they trust the United States and distinctly less than they trust Japan.

China’s ascendance certainly brings some intriguing responses in Egypt. Many detest US foreign policy in the region and have little faith that China will be any better, but Washington has so badly burnt its bridges over there that any “new” country is seen as a welcome change. And people are willing to at least listen to what Beijing has to say. They no longer even do that with the US.

Behind the eyes of the warmongering US hawks

Published on 29 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Military interventionists are still cynically manipulating public opinion, says Matthew Carr

While the foreign policy think-tank Chatham House declares Iraq to be on the point of total collapse, the intellectual architects of pre-emptive war continue to attract surprisingly respectful media attention.

One can be revolted – but not surprised – at the spectacle of Bush and Blair, the Laurel and Hardy of the War on Terror, congratulating each other on their strategic vision from the White House lawn. But whose bright idea was it to let Richard Perle, the US hawk known as the ‘prince of darkness’, make a PBS documentary arguing that the world needs more military ‘interventions’? And what explains the ubiquitous media presence of John Bolton, the troglodyte former US ambassador to the UN?

Only last week Bolton was interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme.

Listening to that conversation was a grim experience that was not unlike being trapped with the Kevin Spacey serial killer character from Seven.

It wasn’t just that Bolton’s arguments were bizarre and illogical to the point of insanity, such as his description of Humphrys and the millionaire philanthrophist George Soros as members of the ‘extreme left’. Or his ludicrous assertion that the invasion of Iraq has laid the basis for a more stable and peaceful Middle East. It wasn’t even his fanaticism, his arrogance and his utter contempt for the opinions of the non-American world. What is striking about Bolton is the savagery and homicidal intent that shows through the statesmanlike patter.

In the same week that Bolton was explaining why ‘we’ should act against Iran, the son of Andrew Bacevich was killed serving in Iraq. An ex-US Army colonel and a political conservative, Bacevich has been a passionate and outspoken critic of the Iraq war from the beginning.

Having served in Vietnam, Bacevich knows war at firsthand and wrote a book analysing how the American public has become ’seduced’ by a fantasy version of cost-free militarism.

This process of seduction is partly due to the tireless efforts of war trolls such as Perle and Bolton. To the imperial mindset of these desktop warriors, foreign policy always boils down to the cathartic killing of America’s enemies, generally of the darker-skinned variety. No matter how great the carnage, they are unrepentant and utterly indifferent, dismissing the destruction of entire societies as strategic victories.

These men are cynical, shameless and without honour. Asked by a distraught young American widow whose husband had died in Iraq why the administration went to war, Perle replied without batting an eyelid that the information on ‘our desks’ kept saying that Saddam had WMD. Perle does not mention that such information was essentially commissioned – a manoeuvre that enables men like him to lie without actually lying.

Perle, Bolton and co often pontificate on the unique moral evil of terrorism. But in their contempt for human life and their appetite for war they are not that different from Osama bin Laden. Unlike Osama, they will not be found in the Hindu Kush carrying a Kalashnikov. They are war trolls, endlessly manipulating the public from TV studios. In this sense they are more like the Roman senators who grew rich and fat while the legions went out to ‘create a wasteland and call it peace’, as Tacitus once put it.

The war trolls would have us believe that they are the grown-ups, defending us from the coming barbarism. But watch out next time you see them on Newsnight. Behind the oily gravitas of the prince of darkness lies a different kind of barbarism. And look closely at the gleaming eyes of the ex-UN ambassador with his walrus moustache. You might just detect a big kid, living out a fantasy of violence and control, while he operates the PlayStation game that just happens to be the world the rest of us live in.

The next time you hear these people being interviewed, try and keep a mental note of how many lies they use to support their arguments, not to mention the fact that every one of them is benefiting financially from the war state.

Enemies among us

Published on 29 May 2007 in General. 4 Comments

US troops are beginning to doubt the worthiness of the cause in Iraq, and who could blame them?

“I thought, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we still here?’ ” said Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. “We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”

No matter how noble the intentions of the troops, there is no avoiding he fact that they are occupiers. Apart from the Iraqi people, the Iraqi security forces they believe they are there to help are always going to resent their country being controlled by an occupying power.

Risks of staying

Published on 29 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Glenn Greenwald has written yet another superb piece that not only challenges the wisdom behind the apparent dangers of withdrawing from Iraq, but what motivates those who maintain this argument.

Conventional wisdom has led to the acceptance that withdrawing from Iraq would lead to even worse bloodshed that we are witnessing now. The peculiar thing about this position is that it has been, by and large, brought to us by the same people who were wrong about every aspect of the war (pre and post invasion). These are the same people who pre invasion, warned us of the dangers of not invading, while insisting that the setback would be minimal.

It is abundantly evident that these pundits have ulterior motives.

Here are just a handful of quotes:

But these same pundits who dole out lectures about how Seriousness requires an acknowledgment of risks focus — just as they did when advocating the invasion — on only one side of the risk ledger. These Serious War Pundits studiously ignore the risks of keeping 150,000 troops in the middle of that region under the control of George Bush and Dick Cheney. There is virtually no discussion of the risks of that course of action.

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The most glaring of these risks is the prospect of military conflict with Iran — the by-product not of some deliberative democratic debate over whether to go to war with that country, but rather a natural outgrowth of our occupation of Iraq.

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Lt. General William Odom argues that the risks of leaving are being exaggerated by withdrawal opponents as a rank fear-mongering device to scare people out of supporting withdrawal — in exactly the same way these same advocates exaggerated the “threat” posed by Saddam in order to scare people into supporting the war.

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One of the most under-discussed facts with regard to Iraq is that the very people who conceived of the invasion and who are the architects of our current military strategy have always believed, and still believe, that we must go to war with Iran. Our current strategy in Iraq was designed and, to a large degree, implemented with that goal in mind.

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What they seek — by their own acknowledgment — is a conflict with Iran and Syria, and they want to stay in Iraq because that is how that goal can be achieved. Joe Lieberman published an Op-Ed at the end of last year declaring that America’s real enemy in this “war” is Iran. Charles Krauthammer and John Podhoretz last year both proclaimed — excitedly — that U.S. war with Iran was inevitable, and that (according to Krauthammer) it would be less than a year away.

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But what if, as appears clearly to be the case, that is not really the goal of the people in charge of what we are doing in Iraq? What if the real goal in staying, as seems to be the case, is to maximize the possibility of war in the Greater Middle East? And/or what if, as Avedon Carol persuasively argues, the real goal is to establish a permanent military presence in Iraq, such that we are never really going to leave, because we don’t actually want to leave?

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But willful recklessness is no excuse. Purposely shutting one’s eyes to the likely consequences of the course one advocates does not exonerate anyone from responsibility for those consequences. And the severe risks of staying Iraq — beyond the guaranteed loss of thousands of more lives and billions and billions of dollars — have simply been erased from our current debate.

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And there in lies the rub. When these people insist we support the troops, what they really mean is that we should support their war. Ignoring the fact that the US military is overstretched already, their position is that so long as the US has a military presence in Iraq, the likelihood of an armed confrontation with Iran and Syria is increased.

We’ve always been winning in Anbar

Published on 28 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

A wonderful example of the shamelessness and delusion of the wingnut fraternity (aka Instapundit) care of Instaputz.

Putz added to his ludicrous “you’d think lefty bloggers would be happy if things were going badly in Iraq” post.

I’m starting to think that they don’t follow the news all that closely. It’s true — as Michael Yon noted in an earlier email — that Anbar isn’t perfectly peaceful. But it’s also true that it’s changed quite drastically since it was being written off last year. That’s news — if you care about reality, rather than just rooting for America Bush to lose.

What, no “nanny-nanny-boo-boo”?

Here’s the problem: Putz has been insisting we’ve been winning in Anbar for three years. Read these posts and decide who it is doesn’t follow the news or care about reality.

10/6/06

Don’t let the media convince you that things are going badly in Iraq. The Anbar tribes are now fighting al Qaeda on their own initiative, and the Shi’ite-dominated government is slowly dismantling al Sadr’s Mahdi Army…Our strategy in Iraq is sound. It’s keeping our own casualties down, and it’s forcing the Iraqis to defend themselves.

Don’t despair. We’re winning.

10/5/06

ED MORRISSEY looks at events in Anbar province, and observes: “The tribal backlash shows why the Zarqawi strategy was always a loser.”

10/2/06

A GROWING INSURGENCY in Iran?
UPDATE: Plus, a look at Anbar tribes vs. Al Qaeda from Bill Roggio.

9/22/06

STRATEGYPAGE OFFERS A RATHER POSITIVE TAKE on what’s going on in Anbar province.

9/21/06

Good work has been and continues to be done in Anbar. The military has a problem with public affairs, plain and simple, and fails to realize that the impact on remaining silent on this report far outweighs the need to keep the information classified.

1/27/06

IRAQ THE MODEL: “Iraqi tribes in Anbar arrest 270 Arab and foreign al-Qaeda members!”

9/04

If the pattern of American casualties shows that most fighting is happening in Al-Anbar it is not because Administration officials are manufacturing the results to camouflage a “widening insurgency”. It is because there is no power vacuum among Kurds and Shi’ias as complete as that in the Sunni triangle. Civil war, if it eventuates, will not be result of military failure but from a lack of commitment to create a replacement Iraqi State. If we build it, it will come.

As Glenn Reynolds demonstrates time and time again, the right wing wasn’t kidding when they say they are creating their own reality.

Nearing game over

Published on 28 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

While life in Iraq for the average Iraqi becomes truly unbearable (this missive is essential to understand what Western journalists simply cannot see) and the Bush administration cares little for the “liberated” people themselves, Dick Cheney is apparently keen to attack Iran with the US military. The Washington Note reports:

The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well — as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an “end run strategy” around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney’s team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran’s nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

The idea that the US military could strike Iran and not expect the most serious blowback is unimaginable. Being here in the Middle East, and speaking to a host of writers, bloggers and intellectuals, it’s clear that even amongst the most Western-friendly of them, the US is truly hated these days. It is as simple as that. For Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and supporting autocratic regimes in the region, literally nobody believes the “democracy” rhetoric coming out of the US. Furthermore, the ability of the US to gather support from anybody other than the corrupt and authoritarian elites is non-existent. This reality is virtually ignored in the Western media, as if these poor oppressed people are just waiting for some good old fashioned US liberation.

Welcome to the new Middle East.

Middle Eastern “democracy”

Published on 28 May 2007 in General. 0 Comments

Wael Abbas, Washington Post, May 27:

Last Thursday, I returned to my country, Egypt, after several weeks in the United States on a Freedom House fellowship. I came home full of anxiety. I feared that the authorities would arrest me as soon as I set foot on Egyptian soil.

That didn’t happen. But as I went through the airport arrival procedures, I felt that I was being closely watched and followed. Men using walkie-talkies observed me from a distance. When I joined my family members outside the terminal, they, too, told me that they had been watched while waiting for me.

I could still be arrested. And if I am, it will be because I dared to speak the truth about President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, which continues to receive billions in foreign aid from the U.S. government — including funds ostensibly intended to support democracy. It will be because I dared to expose the actions that have made Mubarak’s administration one of the world’s foremost violators of human rights, according to human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.

I am an Egyptian blogger. And the Mubarak regime is out to get me and others like me.

It is engaged in an all-out campaign against those of us who use the Internet to report the truth about what is happening in Egypt. It is spreading rumors about us and targeting us for character assassination. Judges allied with the government have filed lawsuits against more than 50 bloggers, accusing them of blackmail and of defaming Egypt and demanding that their blogs be shut down. Meanwhile, security officials appear on television to claim that the bloggers are violating media and communications laws.

Is this the kind of regime you want your tax money to support?

The largest price to pay

Published on 28 May 2007 in Israel. 0 Comments

Illegality has never stopped Israel’s behaviour before, but this is certainly a blow from inside the belly of the beast:

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

The declaration by Theodor Meron, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser at the time and today one of the world’s leading international jurists, is a serious blow to Israel’s persistent argument that the settlements do not violate international law, particularly as Israel prepares to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the war in June 1967.

The legal opinion, a copy of which has been obtained by The Independent, was marked “Top Secret” and “Extremely Urgent” and reached the unequivocal conclusion, in the words of its author’s summary, “that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Judge Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia until 2005, said that, after 40 years of Jewish settlement growth in the West Bank – one of the main problems to be solved in any peace deal: “I believe that I would have given the same opinion today.”

Judge Meron, a holocaust survivor, also sheds new light on the aftermath of the 1967 war by disclosing that the Foreign Minister, Abba Eban, was “sympathetic” to his view that civilian settlement would directly conflict with the Hague and Geneva conventions governing the conduct of occupying powers.

Despite the legal opinion, which was forwarded to Levi Eshkol, the Prime Minister, but not made public at the time, the Labour cabinet progressively sanctioned settlements. This paved the way to growth which has resulted in at least 240,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank today.

After decades of furious and determined settlement building, Israel has created a monster that seems to know few bounds. I have long argued that a type of civil war is quite likely when, and if, the international community finally pressures Israel to give up its colonial addiction to land. A small but violent minority of settlers will resist, and Israel will only have itself to blame.