Antony Loewenstein

One of the great beneficiaries of the Iraq war has been Iran. It is emboldened in ways almost unimaginable before 2003. This news is therefore unsurprising:

As Iran races ahead with an illicit uranium enrichment effort, nearly a dozen other Middle East nations are moving forward on their own civilian nuclear programs. In the latest development, a team of eight U.N. experts on Friday ended a weeklong trip to Saudi Arabia to provide nuclear guidance to officials from six Persian Gulf countries.

Other nations that have said they plan to construct civilian nuclear reactors or have sought technical assistance and advice from the IAEA, the Vienna-based United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, in the last year include Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Yemen, as well as several North African nations.

Here in Egypt many people I’m meeting tell me that although they’re uncomfortable with Iran’s hardline regime and abuse of human rights, they’re happy that Iran seems to be one of the only countries in the world standing up to the US. It’s clear that if the US (or Israel) decides to bomb the Islamic republic, they should prepare for a serious regional crisis. Very few Arabs will support the US action, leaving Western interests in the region exposed like never before (let alone the Iranian people themselves.)

Talk about stating the obvious

“If I look at people like Donald Rumsfeld, all I can say is, that verges on criminal negligence,” Kelly told the ABC of Rumsfeld’s failure to acknowledge problems in Iraq.

What I don’t get is where he gets “verges” from? Given the Bush administration’s admiration for failure and incompetence, this may explain why Cheney referred to Rummy as the greatest Defense Secretary the US has ever had.

It seems that not a week goes by when something new is not revealed about what the Bush administration were warned about or informed about prior to “liberating Iraq”.

Prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the nation’s intelligence services warned the president that a military invasion of Iraq would fuel Islamist extremism and provide an opportunity for al Qaeda and Iran to exploit post-invasion disorder there, according to a new report released Friday.

and…

The studies by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), redacted versions of which were released here Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that the US invasion and subsequent occupation would likely benefit al-Qaeda and boost political Islam throughout the region. It also predicted that “domestic groups (in Iraq) would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.”

In addition, the NIC anticipated the emergence of an insurgency consisting of ex-Baathists “(who) could forge an alliance with existing terrorist organizations or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare against the new government or Coalition forces.”

So what was the invasion all about? It couldn’t have been to bring peace and security to the Iraqi people, because the Bush gang knew that chaos would ensue. It couldn’t have been to fight terrorism, because they also knew that invading Iraq would provide a haven for Al Qaeda.

Was is to win a war? A series of secret war games in 1999 predicted that an invasion of Iraq would require 400-thousand troops, and even then chaos might ensue, so it doesn’t appear that winning was desired either.

We can only assume that the aims are the ones that have been achieved; military bases, a massive embassy and control of Iraq’s oil (still working on that one).

Military hardware is on its way to Lebanon to help the military fight the Saudi backed armed “terrorists” that the Lebanese government allowed into Lebanon in the first place, in the hope that they would attack Hizbollah.

Anyway, it’s well worth checking EDB’s latest post on the background to the current flare-up in Lebanon. It details how Fatah al-Islam has been armed and encouraged by the Siniora/Hariri forces in Lebanon as a counterweight to Hizbollah, quoting Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker piece from back in January:

Alastair Crooke, who spent nearly thirty years in MI6, the British intelligence service, and now works for Conflicts Forum, a think tank in Beirut, told me, ‘The Lebanese government is opening space for these people to come in. It could be very dangerous.’

Now for the wingnuts who still believe that Syria is behind this.

Crooke said that one Sunni extremist group, Fatah al-Islam, had splintered from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, in northern Lebanon. Its membership at the time was less than two hundred. ‘I was told that within twenty-four hours they were being offered weapons and money by people presenting themselves as representatives of the Lebanese government’s interests—presumably to take on Hezbollah,’ Crooke said.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

On the other hand, there might be a method to the madness.

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 24:

At the conference luncheon, Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s minister for intelligence services, hurried over to grab a seat next to us. Kasrils, a Jew, had never been to Israel (where he has relatives) until his visit to the territories earlier in the month, when he invited Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh to his country. He then made his first, quick trip to Tel Aviv, saw Rabin Square and ate fish in Jaffa. “It was the most pleasant evening I had,” he acknowledges.

When we talked he said the Israeli occupation is worse than apartheid: The whites never shelled the black neighborhoods with tanks and artillery. 

The political debate in Washington over the Iraq war is little more than a side-show. In the war-zone itself, a new reality is taking shape:

Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of education, the list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong.

It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say.

“It is good of these people to discuss accountability for theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi blood,” Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS.

The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by July 2006, 655,000 people had died as “a consequence of the war.” It has reported that the risk of death among civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

“By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason, and many millions disabled or badly injured just because of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington,” Ahmed said. “We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them even if takes us a lifetime.”

But Iraqis have no means to take action against occupiers.

The United States has not accepted jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which has the power to investigate complaints of genocide. The United States took the view that the court could conduct “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel.”

U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of its closest allies. But Iraqis have found no way to proceed against these either.

With no doors of justice open to them, many Iraqis are now taking to unlawful ways to hit back at occupation forces and government targets.

“The only way to do it is at gunpoint,” 32-year-old Ali Aziz from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS. “They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous to talk about any other way of getting back what belongs to us.”

Aziz said he had lost several friends in attacks by U.S. soldiers. “The whole world is dealing with this in a hypocritical way, and there is only us to claim our rights the way we find proper.”

The source of the latest violence in Lebanon is murky, at best. In the latest edition of the Cairo-based paper al-Ahram Weekly, some essential background:

Little ground support is evident for Fatah Al-Islam among the Lebanese or Palestinians and both, initially, backed army bombardment of Nahr Al-Bared. Palestinian outrage, however, mounted with the civilian death toll. By Wednesday morning, when an uneasy truce was in place allowing exhausted civilians to flee by the thousand, 22 militants and 32 soldiers had been killed, according to Reuters. Dead civilians officially number 27, but with access to Nahr Al-Bared remaining dangerous while many buildings have been reduced to rubble, that toll can only rise.

Fatah Al-Islam splintered from Syrian-backed Fatah Al-Intifada in November, both Damascus and the group deny any link between them. Fatah Al-Islam’s ideology is Al-Qaeda-style Salafism — anti-Shia and anti-US. Experts say most militia members are northern Lebanese, joined by Palestinians, Syrians, Saudis and other Arab nationalities.

A political split between the Sunni-dominated government of Prime Minister Fouad Al-Siniora and the Shia resistance group Hizbullah forms the backdrop to Fatah Al-Islam’s growth, according to Ahmed Moussalli, an expert on Islamist movements at the American University of Beirut.

“In Lebanon in the last few months it seems the Hariri group has been channelling funds and allowing weaponry to enter in order to create a Sunni militia… to bargain with Hizbullah,” Moussalli said. Saad Al-Hariri, Al-Siniora and the rest of Lebanon’s pro-US, anti-Syrian government have stepped up pressure on Hizbullah to disarm.

Moussalli proffers that Fatah Al-Islam, Jund Al-Sham and the larger Usbet Al-Ansar are all affiliated with Al-Qaeda by ideology and because of Iraq. “They found a haven in Lebanon to rest, train and recruit, in particular in north Lebanon, which has always been a hotbed for radical fundamentalists.”

The paper also has an interesting article about the difficult relationship between Iran and Egypt.

Yesterday, Amnesty International published a report dealing with Israel and the Occupied Territories. It is a very comprehensive report and is a must read.

Ynet published THIS about the Report, without comment. The Jerusalem Post made an attempt at comment, but not much could be said to counter what Amnesty had to say. Israel’s response has been to ignore the report. Apart from that, the first thing Israeli forces did was arrest 30 leading members of Hamas, including government ministers.

Amnesty International accused both Israel and Hezbollah on Wednesday of committing war crimes during the Second Lebanon War last summer, saying both were guilty of indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas.

Looking at ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES section is very revealing.

Increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians resulted in a threefold increase in killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinian armed groups diminished by half.

Some 650 Palestinians, half of them unarmed civilians and including some 120 children, were killed by Israeli forces. This toll was a threefold increase compared with 2005 (i.e before Hams came to power).

Amnesty were equally scathing of the US.

Amnesty slams US for trampling on human rights

AMNESTY International yesterday launched a scathing attack on the United States, accusing it of trampling on human rights, and using the world as “a giant battlefield” in its “war on terror”.

The human rights group charged that the war in Iraq and the politics of fear being spread by the administration of US President George W Bush around the globe were fuelling deep international divisions.

Washington was also guilty of “breathtakingly shameless” double speak, claiming to be promoting human rights while at the same time brazenly flouting international law, the London-based group claimed in its 2007 annual report.

A contradiction if I ever saw one.

So, we’re fighting “them” over there so we don’t fight them here, if we leave they’ll follow us home, we’re fighting al Qaeda terrorists who want to kill us all, etc… etc… Except if the Iraqi government asks us to leave we’ll go home and wait for destruction.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to leave American troops there, no matter what the Iraqi government does? I know this is a question we’ve asked before, but you can begin it with a “yes” or “no.”

THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

Glenn Greenwald poses a good question and gives us a telling answer:

Q. If you’re a Bush administration official and you want to create a prominent headline in Time Magazine proclaiming what great improvement there is in Iraq, what do you do?

A. Have someone with a shiny military uniform go and flatter Joe Klein by whispering “secrets” in his ear all while demanding anonymity, and then he’ll dutifully run to the pages of Time and mindlessly repeat what he’s been told as though he has discovered some great journalistic scoop, which is how Time will treat it.

Klein’s article — entitled “Is al-Qaida on the Run in Iraq”? — is, according to Time’s site, the single most popular article in that magazine. And, predictably enough, it is being hailed by every standard war proponent.

Joe Klein’s latest column is headlined:

Is al-Qaeda on the Run in Iraq?

As you might expect, the article is a load of garbage that doesn’t provide an answer, either in the affirmative or negative. For those who dote on the Bush Administration, 3 days of decreased violence can only mean one thing – the war is being won.

And then there is Klein’s assurance that what his special military friend told him is consistent with what was said by “several other sources.” There is, of course, no need to provide any information about these “several other” corroborating sources — government? military? those invested in the pro-war position? AEI “war scholars”? — because Klein knows who they are and thinks they’re credible and you can and should just trust his judgment.

The Grand Poobah of wingnuts, Glenn Reynolds, predictably ran to Klain’s defense. On Joe Klein’s column, Reynolds writes:

You know, if I didn’t know better I’d think that some of the lefty bloggers would actually be happier if things were going badly.

The deluded Reynolds seems to have missed the fact that things ARE going badly. Very badly. For example, in Anbar province, today and this from Juan Cole.

Guerrillas Kill 9 US GIs
Over 100 Dead in New Wave of Violence
Sectarian Killings at forefront Again

But war critics aren’t supposed to notice such realities, because it’s just plain unpatriotic, not to mention rude.

But the real fault lies with anyone who points any of this out, because they want the U.S. to lose. What is most amazing is that the same people (like Reynolds) who have been lying to the country for four straight years about all of the Glorious Progress being made in Iraq continue to expect that when they speak, anyone other than the shrinking band of hard-core war supporters will listen.

And if anyone doubts that the audience that Reynolds plays to is indeed shrinking, there’s this.

As President Bush and Congress hammer out an Iraq war funding bill, a CBS News/New York Times poll shows the number of Americans who say the war is going badly has reached a new high, rising 10 percent this month to 76 percent.

Following Giuliani’s dummy spit during the last Republican debate, it occurred to Ron Paul that poor Rudi is factually challenged. Paul has offered to help him get up to speed on foreign affairs. It might come in useful if he were ever to become president.

“I’m giving Mr. Giuliani a reading assignment,” the nine-term Texas congressman said as he stood behind a stack of books that included the report by the commission that examined the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. …

“I don’t think he’s qualified to be president,” Paul said of Giuliani. “If he was to read the book and report back to me and say, ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I would reconsider.”

Giuliani spokeswoman responded with this:

“It is extraordinary and reckless to claim that the United States invited the attacks on September 11th. And to further declare Rudy Giuliani needs to be educated on September 11th when millions of people around the world saw him dealing with these terrorist attacks firsthand is just as absurd.”

The best they got is that he was there that day, so that makes him an authority on Middle Eastern politics.

The New York Times put it on their blog. Paul’s press release condensed it into a kind of Foreign Affairs for Dummies, for Giuliani.

“His [bin Laden] rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources — Islam, history, and the region’s political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War…”

– 9/11 Commission Report, pages 48-49

“One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believe — at the urging of senior U.S. leaders — that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we do. The Islamic world is not so offended by our democratic system of politics, guarantees of personal rights and civil liberties, and separation of church and state that it is willing to wage war against overwhelming odds in order to stop Americans from voting, speaking freely, and praying, or not, as they wish.”

– Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 8

“We assume, moreover, that bin Laden and the Islamists hate us for our liberty, freedoms, and democracy — not because they and many millions of Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam or because the U.S. military now has a ten-year record of smashing people and things in the Islamic world.”

– Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 165

“The U.S. invasion of Iraq is Osama bin Laden’s gift from America, one he has long and ardently desired, but never realistically expected.”

– Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 213

“Although suicide terrorism is virtually always a response to foreign occupation, only some occupations lead to this result. Suicide terrorism is most likely when the occupying power’s religion differs from the religion of the occupied, for three reasons. A conflict across a religious divide increases fears that the enemy will seek to transform the occupied society; makes demonization, and therefore killing, of enemy civilians easier; and makes it easier to use one’s own religion to relabel suicides that would otherwise be taboo as martyrdom instead.”

– Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win, page 22

“An attempt to transform Muslim societies through regime change is likely to dramatically increase the threat we face. The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community’s way of life. … Even if our intentions are good, anti-American terrorism would likely grow, and grow rapidly.”

– Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win, page 245

“The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001 did not ‘attack America,’ as political leaders and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders, whose innocence is, of course, no different from that of the civilians killed by American bombs in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.”

– Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, page XV

“The term ‘blowback,’ which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of ‘terrorists’ or ‘drug lords’ or ‘rogue states’ or ‘illegal arms merchants’ often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.”

– Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, page 8

Let’s hope Rudi does his homework.

Keith Olberman tells it like it is, more than once. Even for those with low expectations, the Democrats have not not only been a miserable failure, but have betrayed their voters.

You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans.
You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”
Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning… is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do

Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

You know you’ve messed up when even Democratic fan boys like Kos are pissed off.

But today, that trust of the voters was betrayed. Democrats proved that they won’t fight for what is right, nor will they fight to keep the promises they made the electorate.