Bipartisan Panel Will Urge Pull-back of Troops in Iraq

New York Times has leaked information that the bipartisan panel lead by daddy's chief of staff will effectively repudiate the Bush policy of staying the course in Iraq.
The recommended "pull-back" basically endorces Murtha's proposal without specific time tables. Imagine that!

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.


The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.


A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”


The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.


The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries. (A brigade typically consists of 3,000 to 5,000 troops.) From those bases, they would still be responsible for protecting a substantial number of American troops who would remain in Iraq, including 70,000 or more American trainers, logistics experts and members of a rapid reaction force.

The Iraqi Quagmire

The author of this Op Ed, Nawaf Obaid, is an adviser to the Saudi government, managing director of the Saudi National Security Assessment Project in Riyadh and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. While speaking for himself, he represents a growing groundswell of public opinion in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and to a lessor extent Syria.
Turkey, on the other hand, looks at the stepped up terrorist activity of the Kurdish PKK, launching attacks into Turkey from safe havens in Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkish Special Forces remain in Kirkuk where the Kurds are determined to annex into their sphere of influence. Turkey has already threatened to intervene should that happen.
US troops are not helping the situation, but they are preventing a Sunni massacre. How paradoxical is it that our interests now lie with the Sunni minority! Time to switch sides?
The author suggests that the Saudis might raise production to cut the price of oil, handicapping the Iranians. The Iranians would have no choice but to sabatoge Saudi oil fields. Sunnis would certainly respond in kind. The world economy, starved of oil would crash economically. Al Qaeda would have it's way. Sunni countries would have to support any anti-Shia fighters.
The only viable attempt at solution is to bring Syria and Iran to the negotiation table and find a regional source of stability.
washingtonpost.com

One hopes he won't make the same mistake again by ignoring the counsel of Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who said in a speech last month that "since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited." If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis.


Over the past year, a chorus of voices has called for Saudi Arabia to protect the Sunni community in Iraq and thwart Iranian influence there. Senior Iraqi tribal and religious figures, along with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries, have petitioned the Saudi leadership to provide Iraqi Sunnis with weapons and financial support. Moreover, domestic pressure to intervene is intense. Major Saudi tribal confederations, which have extremely close historical and communal ties with their counterparts in Iraq, are demanding action. They are supported by a new generation of Saudi royals in strategic government positions who are eager to see the kingdom play a more muscular role in the region.


[...]Another possibility includes the establishment of new Sunni brigades to combat the Iranian-backed militias. Finally, Abdullah may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today's high prices. The result would be to limit Tehran's ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shiite militias in Iraq and elsewhere.


Both the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite death squads are to blame for the current bloodshed in Iraq. But while both sides share responsibility, Iraqi Shiites don't run the risk of being exterminated in a civil war, which the Sunnis clearly do. Since approximately 65 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite, the Sunni Arabs, who make up a mere 15 to 20 percent, would have a hard time surviving any full-blown ethnic cleansing campaign.


What's clear is that the Iraqi government won't be able to protect the Sunnis from Iranian-backed militias if American troops leave. Its army and police cannot be relied on to do so, as tens of thousands of Shiite militiamen have infiltrated their ranks. Worse, Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, cannot do anything about this, because he depends on the backing of two major leaders of Shiite forces.


There is reason to believe that the Bush administration, despite domestic pressure, will heed Saudi Arabia's advice. Vice President Cheney's visit to Riyadh last week to discuss the situation (there were no other stops on his marathon journey) underlines the preeminence of Saudi Arabia in the region and its importance to U.S. strategy in Iraq. But if a phased troop withdrawal does begin, the violence will escalate dramatically.


In this case, remaining on the sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia. To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia's credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's militarist actions in the region.


To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks -- it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse.

Anbar Belongs to Al Qaeda

A secret US Marine assessment of the prospects for pacification in Anbar Province in Iraq couldn't be more bleak. The reports asserts that they can't be defeated. The population of $1.2 million mostly former residents of hot spots like Falugia and Ramadhi, are impoverished and completely dependent on the Al Qaeda leadership that has usurped civil service infrastructure.
washingtonpost.com

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.


[...]The Marines' August memo, a copy of which was shared with The Washington Post, is far bleaker than some officials suggested when they described it in late summer. The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as "embroiled in a daily fight for survival," fearful of "pogroms" by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across the capital.


True or not, the memo says, "from the Sunni perspective, their greatest fears have been realized: Iran controls Baghdad and Anbaris have been marginalized." Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help U.S. forces because they are seen as likely to leave the country before imposing stability.


[...]"Despite the success of the December elections, nearly all government institutions from the village to provincial levels have disintegrated or have been thoroughly corrupted and infiltrated by Al Qaeda in Iraq," or a smattering of other insurgent groups, the report says.

NATO et al Meeting in Latvia Wednesday

On the 29th of November, on Russia's door step in Riga Latvia, two major meetings with related agendas will be held. The first is a NATO summit where heads of government from the 26 States together with Ministers of Defense and senior military brass of the "enlarged" Atlantic Alliance (NATO).
In a little publicized parallel meeting of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that Eisenhauer warned us about in his fairwell speech, will meet in Riga in a sessions separate only to protect protocol.
In Riga, in defiance of Moscow's concerns about the loyalty of it's bordering countries, NATO will debate including Turkey, Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. Then NATO delegates will smooze with MIC representatives who stand to benefit from the "long war" proposed by Bush to secure oil access.
Meanwhile Georgia is under extreme pressure from Russia to buckle under to maintain energy supplies.
GlobalResearch.ca

The venue is being held in a former Soviet Republic, regrouping for the first time all 26 members of the enlarged NATO, including Poland. It directly challenges Moscow's influence in Eastern and Central Asia. It signifies to Moscow that NATO enlargement is proceeding on Russia's doorstep.


Although Israel will not be represented at the Summit, NATO has developed in the last two years a close working relationship with Tel Aviv, which in practical terms provides Israel with a "de facto associate membership" within the Atlantic Alliance. The NATO Riga Summit will launch NATO's Rome based training program for its Mediterranean partner countries and members of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI). The latter includes a number of Arab countries as well as Israel.


From a US standpoint, this meeting will be used to build a European consensus on America's "long war". The purpose of the meeting is to rally support for the US led military adventure in the Middle East and Central Asia, which is intimately related, from a strategic standpoint, to the battle for oil and oil pipeline corridors.


The US-NATO military build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean as well as Washington's "New Middle East" will be on the agenda.


In parallel with the Summit, a major Security Conference ("The Riga Conference") starting on November 27, will bring together politicians, top military brass, corporate CEOs, defense and foreign policy analysts, "top feeder" media pundits, policy advisers and New World Order academics. (See list of participants below). In many regards, this parallel activity organized by the George Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center is more important from a strategic standpoint than the official Summit venue. Headed by Ronald D. Asmus, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration, the Transatlantic Center's task on behalf of NATO is to foster "transatlantic dialogue" between the Europe and America as well as actively seek European "cooperation in the broader Middle East and Black Sea regions".


The Conference is intent upon building a consensus within Europe regarding America's military agenda in the broader Middle East.


The European defense sector will be represented by key figures from the Franco-German aerospace conglomerate EADS, Italy's Finemecanica. Lockheed Martin's European President Scott Martin, among others will also be attending. Several members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the US Senate, will be in Riga for the conference together with representatives from major foundations including Soros, Carnegie, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman.


Among the participants are several key figures, who are known to play a behind a scenes role in international affairs, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security adviser and the author of The Grand Chessboard, former Mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani and Uzi Arad, formerly Mossad Director of Intelligence and foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Netanyhu, Marc Grossman, now with the Cohen Group, who was Under Secretary of State in GWB's first term in office (2001-2005), Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg of the German Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee, adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a staunch supporter of Israel.


Among the major themes of the Riga Conference are NATO's role in the Middle East, the broader issue of "Energy Security" as well as the enlargement of NATO to include the Ukraine and Georgia. Both of these former Soviet republics on Russia's doorstep are increasingly within the US-NATO geopolitical orbit . They are part of GUUAM, a 1999 military cooperation agreement with NATO. They play a strategic role in the structure of oil pipeline and transport corridors out of the Caspian sea basin.

Panel to Weigh Overture by U.S. to Iran and Syria

It's become increasingly clear that the bipartisan panel put together by James Baker, right hand man for Bush I, is designed to pressure Bush to do something different, not just to advise him. Bush has competing reviews going on with in the Joint Chiefs and his own administration.
And as the article says, he spent hours preaching to the panel about staying the course just two weeks ago.
This man is thick as a brick!
New York Times

A draft report on strategies for Iraq, which will be debated here by a bipartisan commission beginning Monday, urges an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative that includes direct talks with Iran and Syria but sets no timetables for a military withdrawal, according to officials who have seen all or parts of the document.


While the diplomatic strategy appears likely to be accepted, with some amendments, by the 10-member Iraq Study Group, members of the commission and outsiders involved in its work said they expected a potentially divisive debate about timetables for beginning an American withdrawal.


In interviews, several officials said announcing a major withdrawal was the only way to persuade the government of Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to focus on creating an effective Iraqi military force.


Several commission members, including some Democrats, are discussing proposals that call for a declaration that within a specified period of time, perhaps as short as a year, a significant number of American troops should be withdrawn, regardless of whether the Iraqi government’s forces are declared ready to defend the country.


Among the ideas are embedding far more American training teams into Iraqi military units in a last-ditch improvement effort. While numbers are still approximate, phased withdrawal of combat troops over the next year would leave 70,000 to 80,000 American troops in the country, compared with about 150,000 now.


“It’s not at all clear that we can reach consensus on the military questions,” one member of the commission said late last week.


Mr. Bush spent 90 minutes with commission members in a closed session at the White House two weeks ago “essentially arguing why we should embrace what amounts to a ‘stay the course’ strategy,” said one commission official who was present.

Lebanon Leader Assasinated - Middle East Continues to Destabilize

The name Gemayel is one of the most reviled across all of south Lebanon. Pierre, whose father still leads the Christian Militia Phalange, continued the tradition of being a lightning rod for controversy as part of the government coalition ruling Lebanon in it's move away from Syrian influence. The assasination was immediately blamed on Syria, but that is not entirely clear. Many benefit from his death, including others in his coalition, Hezbollah, and perhaps Syria.
Could Bashar really benefit from this death with all the negative pressure from the west, particularly the US and France? With his profile rising in the region, in part due to the victory of Hezbollah against Israel, he's been called into negotiations with Iraq and Iran to attempt to stabilize Syria's eastern border, perhaps he views he can spend some political capital on consolidating influence in Lebanon.
washingtonpost.com

One of Lebanon's most pronounced political crises in a generation slid into bloodshed Tuesday when assailants showered gunfire on a car carrying an anti-Syrian politician and scion of the country's most prominent Christian family, killing him and a bodyguard and pushing Lebanon a step closer to civil strife.


The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, a divisive figure in a country riven by sectarian tension, underlined the lack of red lines in the escalating struggle over Lebanon's political future that has followed this summer's war between Hezbollah and Israel. The struggle is crucial not only to the often zero-sum calculations of Lebanese politics but also to the regional ambitions of the United States, Iran, Syria and Israel.


"We will not allow assassins to control Lebanon's destiny and its people's future," Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said.


The shots along a busy street that killed Gemayel, the industry minister, reverberated across Beirut as dusk fell. In the city's Shiite Muslim south, where Gemayel was among the most reviled of Christian politicians, occasional gunfire erupted in celebration and some residents expressed satisfaction at his death. Across town, in Christian East Beirut, his supporters set fires in protest along usually busy intersections, sending smoke eddying over emptied streets. At the hospital where he was taken, scores gathered in the lobby and parking lot. Some hurriedly spoke into phones. Their eyes red, women sobbed and men wailed with grief.


"We want revenge!" a few shouted. "We want revenge!"


"I have one wish," Gemayel's father, former president Amin Gemayel, told them after nightfall, "that tonight be a night of prayer to contemplate the meaning of this martyrdom and how to protect this country. I call on all those who appreciate Pierre's martyrdom to preserve his cause and for all of us to remain in the service of Lebanon. We don't want reactions and revenge."

Israel Has Been Stealing Land From Palestinians

Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank have been controversial for many years. At times previous US presidents have urged restraint in building settlements.
How could the Israeli's find land on which to build in an area occupied by Arabs for hundreds of years? The Israeli have always stated the land was abandoned. However, there have been rumors for years that Israelis have driven the owners from the land and then seized it as abandoned.
Now however, an Israeli peace group called Peace Now has obtained documentation of the secret practice of seizing land that had not been abandoned, long covered up by the Israeli government.
May the truth come to roost on the Likudniks. May the American public condemn seizing Palestinian land and demand razing of settlements on Palestinian property.
washingtonpost.com

An Israeli advocacy group has found that 39 percent of the land used by Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property, which the organization contends is a violation of international and Israeli law guaranteeing property rights in the occupied territories.

Here is a summary of the Reports" href="http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=191&docid=2024">Peace Now Settlement Report. The full report is here.

The majority of settlements have been constructed either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land

• For the first time Peace Now is able to prove, that despite the State and settler’s claims, the majority of the settlements in the West Bank have been constructed on private Palestinian land and not on State land.


• 130 settlements were constructed either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land


• Around 60 thousand dunams of the land used by the settlements is actually private Palestinian land


• Private Palestinian land accounts for 40% of land used for settlements


• Construction of settlements of private Palestinian land is illegal according to the Supreme Court ruling, (Elon More precedent of 1979), and thus cannot be authorized. The result is that not only were the outposts constructed in an illegal manner, but also a large number of the veteran settlements were established on private Palestinian land and are thus illegal.


• The data presented here has been hidden by the State for many years, for fear that the revelation of these facts could damage it’s international relations. Only recently did Peace Now manage to obtain this material.


• Conclusion: For many years the state of Israel has been seizing thousands of dunams of private Palestinian land in order to construct settlements. The claim by the State and settlers that the settlements have been constructed on state land is misleading and false. The vast majority of settlement construction was done against the law of the land and the Supreme Court ruling and therefore unauthorized.

On a moral note this report paints a picture of the Israeli state acting in “daylight robbery” of Palestinian land and handing it over to Israeli settlers. The State has been taking advantage of the weakened status of the Palestinians in order to steal their land.

Avoiding Impeachment With Top-Secret Torture

The shear gall of this administration is astounding. Now they want to forbid the revelation of torture of unlawful combatants tried in military tribunals. So both the evidence and the means of obtaining it would therefore be forbidden to be revealed. The tribunals become little more than a rubber stamp for the arbitrary arrests and detentions that have repeatedly been demonstrated to include innocents time and time again. This is not to say some are not guilty.
But if there is to be credibility for the justice handed out by the tribunals, or the defendants appeals to federal court on their unlawful combatant status, there must be openness. Bush intends no such thing. He knows he's lied to the American people. Torture has been a routine practice since 9/11, much of it clearly illegal. He doesn't want to be impeached.
washingtonpost.com

BURIED WITHIN a recent government brief in the case of Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan is one of the more disturbing arguments the Bush administration has advanced in the legal struggles surrounding the war on terrorism. Mr. Khan was one of the al-Qaeda suspects who was detained in a secret prison of the CIA and subjected to "alternative" interrogation tactics -- the administration's chilling phrase for methods most people regard as torture. Now the government is arguing that by subjecting detainees to such treatment, the CIA gives them "top secret" classified information -- and the government can then take extraordinary measures to keep them quiet about it. If this argument carries the day, it will make virtually impossible any accountability for the administration's treatment of top al-Qaeda detainees. And it will also ensure that key parts of any military trials get litigated in secrecy.


The trouble is that at least some of the secrets the government is trying to protect are the very techniques used against people such as Mr. Khan -- and its means of protecting them is to muzzle him about what the CIA did to him. CIA official Marilyn A. Dorn said in an affidavit that Mr. Khan might reveal "the conditions of detention and specific alternative interrogation procedures." In other words, grossly mistreating a detainee now justifies keeping him quiet.


[...]The problem with this argument is not just its Kafkaesque sheen. If the courts accept it, it would have vast practical implications. The integrity of any military trials of the high-value detainees will depend on their excluding evidence obtained by unduly coercive means. By the logic of the government's argument, however, all of that litigation will have to take place in secret. Detainees are also supposed to be able to appeal their status as enemy combatants to the federal appeals court here in Washington. The government's logic would all but assure that the bulk of any such appeal would be secret as well. So accepting this theory would mean that no claim of torture could be resolved in a transparent and accountable fashion. Given the importance of open trials for the high-value detainees, it's hard to imagine a principle that would more thwart the effort to bring them credibly to justice.

Will Hezbollah Rule Lebanon?

Since Hezbollah essentially defeated the Israeli Army in it's invasion into Lebanon, Hezbollah has been full of themselves. At some point they were promising to make their win in the battle field pay off politically. Now seems to be the time.
A coalition of Druze, Sunni, and some northern Christian leaders support the anti-Syria pro US government. But since their allies best buddy bombed most of Lebanon to the stone age, leaving millions of cluster bomblets where children can find them, this coalition has been weakened. And General Aoun, for his own reasons, joined forces with the pro-Syrian Shi'ites swinging the balence of power.
Israel, some say at the US encouragement has defeated itself at it's northern border, taking on a conflict for which it wasn't prepared to pay the cost. Sound familiar? Bush and his buddies are making the world safe for militant Salafi, the philosophical base behind Al Qaeda, and Shi'a extremists. And now they want to take on Iran?
washingtonpost.com

In a deepening crisis that has paralyzed Lebanese politics, the leader of Hezbollah urged his well-organized followers to prepare for mass protests aimed at toppling the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


The order by Hasan Nasrallah, given in a speech Saturday that was broadcast Sunday, was the latest in a test of wills between Hezbollah and a government that Nasrallah dismissed as more representative of the U.S. ambassador than Siniora.


More than a simple political standoff in an always fractious country, many see the escalating struggle as perhaps the most decisive in Lebanon in a generation. It may determine which forces guide the country for years ahead: the coalition around Siniora that draws its strength from the country's Sunni Muslims, Druze and some Christians and has aligned itself with the United States and Europe, or Hezbollah's Shiite Muslim constituency, backed by Iran and Syria, and its Christian allies represented by a former Lebanese general.


As is common here, many see the struggle as a proxy battle involving the United States, Israel, Syria and Iran.


[...]Supporters of Siniora's government, critical of Hezbollah's role in starting the war this summer, have gone back and forth over whether they will greet protests with their own demonstrations. They view Hezbollah's campaign as effectively a coup d'etat aimed at derailing the international tribunal and ensuring that Hezbollah retains its weapons.


Still living in the shadow of a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, many Lebanese worry about the potential for violence if the crisis heads to the streets, where each movement has draped neighborhoods in the iconography and symbolism of its own view of history.

For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’

Israel is so desperate for support, they ally with a bigoted yet powerful fundamentalist Christian movement in the US despite their belief that the Nation of Israel will sacrifice itself in Armageddon in preparation for the Rapture, so that true believers can ascend directly to heaven.
If it weren't for the belief in the end times, these "Christians" in name only would be calling for new pogroms against the Jews for being the Christ killer.
New York Times

As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel.


[...]Now, in tandem with the Israeli government, many evangelical Christians have focused on a new villain, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Evangelical broadcasters and commentators have seized on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments questioning the Holocaust and calling for the abolition of the Israeli state. And many evangelicals now talk of the Iranian leader as a “mortal threat” to Israel.


Some evangelical leaders say they are wary of reports that a panel including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III might recommend negotiating with Iran about the future of Iraq. “It certainly bothers me,” said Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and one of the most influential conservative Christians. “That has the same kind of feel to it as the British negotiating with Germany, Italy and Japan in the run up to World War II.”


At rallies this fall for Christian conservative voters, Dr. Dobson sometimes singled out Mr. Ahmadinejad as a reason to go to the polls, arguing that Democrats could not be trusted to face down such dangers. “Hitler told everybody what he was going to do, and Ahmadinejad is saying exactly what he is going to do,” Dr. Dobson explained. “He is talking genocide.”


The same name, with many pronunciations, comes up repeatedly on Christian talk radio shows, said Gary Bauer, a Christian conservative political organizer. “I am not sure there is a foreign leader who has made a bigger splash in American culture since Khrushchev, certainly among committed Christians,” he said.


Mr. Hagee, for his part, said Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel and the Holocaust were part of what motivated him to found Christians United For Israel late last year. Since the fight with Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said, he is doing all he can to keep the pressure on United States officials to take a hard line with Iran.


[...]Evangelicals’ support for Israel, of course, is far from uniform. Mr. Hagee is an author of several books about the interpretation of biblical prophecies. He says he believes the Bible assigns Israel a pivotal role as a harbinger of the second coming. Citing passages from Revelation and Ezekiel, he argues that conflict between Israel and Iran may be a sign that that time is approaching.


[...]Dr. Dobson, along with some other evangelicals, has expressed disappointment with what he saw as the Bush administration’s pressure on Israel to sign the cease-fire that ended the fight.


“They began by saying they had to take a hard line, by saying they would support Israel and they ended up urging them to compromise and go home,” Dr. Dobson said. “All that is going to do is allow everybody to reload. That didn’t solve anything.” (Mr. Hagee said that he believed the administration gave Israel “ample time” but that Israel erred by not “unleashing the full might of its ground troops” until it was too late.)


[...]The Israeli government temporarily cut off ties with the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson after he suggested that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke might have been God’s punishment for withdrawing from territory that belonged to the Biblical Israel. But then Mr. Robertson flew to Israel during the fight with Hezbollah. In a gesture of reconciliation, the Israeli government recently worked with him to film a television commercial to attract Christian tourists.

Hell On Earth

Human suffering at a scale found in Lagos Nigeria is beyond the comprehension of most westerners. Indeed, the inhabitants of Lagos may well have no concept of what they are surviving. Or they wouldn't be....
In the context of no rules, limited resources, and too large population, the human community devolves into that which created the story Lord of the Flies. The strong live off and consume the weak.
But the spirit of the human even faced with impossible conditions is forever hopeful. We must respect and share what we can with all such noble humans.
How to Save the World

Lagos is a city that most of its own residents acknowledge to be hell on Earth, but still struggle and scrape through each day with the grim determination to survive and, just maybe, buck all the odds and climb out of destitution. This is a city of staggering inequality and inequity, with a Gini index nearing a 'perfect' 1.0 -- almost all the wealth is held by a tiny minority of corrupt officials, criminals and mob leaders, and corruption and crime pervades all economic activity. This is a city of horrific and constant violence and the threat of violence -- dead and mutilated human bodies are ignored the way we ignore roadkill. This is a city of absolute hierarchy -- everyone is in thrall to those (ogas, -- literally 'masters') one step higher in the pyramid, from whom they get 'security' and a chance at the few pitiful jobs, and to whom they pay 90% of what they earn. This pyramid is entirely unofficial, but ironclad -- the cost of disregarding it is often your life. The struggle to survive is a 24/7 ordeal, so that, as one of the people in Packer's report puts it, in Lagos, "if you sit down, you die".


This is a city that doesn't have slums, it is a slum, all fifteen million people in every quarter of the city. It is a city where garbage and sewage and toxic waste is everywhere, where clean running water and flush toilets are virtually non-existent. Where disease is everywhere and ever-threatening. Where pollution is so bad that residents' faces are grey. Where police, authorities and gangs all extort money from anyone who wants anything or dares to enter their turf. Where fuel dumps and waste fuel spills lit afire constantly light up the night and choke the lungs with toxins. Where the only significant change from year to year are the endless streams of new immigrants and the building husks left behind from rampant arson. Where most of the population sleeps outdoors, often surrounded by mosquitos, garbage and sewage. Where gang wars between Moslems and Christians, often precipitated by trivial events, kill thousands.


Packer says "the human misery of Lagos not only overwhelms one's senses and sympathy but also seem irreversible". He quotes a city district senior administrator who describes the city as "an impending disaster...a powder keg...it's just going to boil over" as it grows to 23 million people by 2015, and by another million a year after that.


When Packer asked the editor of the city's largest newspaper what keeps the people of Lagos going, when they have no homes, no basic government services, no utilities, no jobs, and no order or security, he replies "They never believe there's no chance". Religion is big business in Lagos, and the people not only cling to the hope of salvation in the afterlife, they cling to the promise of capitalism and civilization that if they work hard enough they will succeed in pulling themselves out of their desperate situation. Both promises seem leaps of impossible faith, since there is no evidence anywhere to support either of them. This, it seems, is the nature of humanity -- no matter how far we fall from the grace of a joyful, easy, natural life, no matter how grim and brutal and full of pain and suffering our lives are, we plug on, never seeing how far we are from where we once were, never giving up, never becoming so full of grief for what we have lost, and forgotten, as to diminish our faith that, despite the fact that what we have been doing has got us into desperate straits, doing a little bit more of it will somehow get us out, lead us to salvation.

The Risk of Regional War In The Middle East

Incoming Democrats have a challenge to pull off a phased withdrawl from Iraq. The entire region is headed for conflagration across the entire oil producing area including sabatoge of each other's oil facilities.
The prospects of Shi'a-Sunni war is a chilling prospect that may well grow out of the US invasion of Iraq. It's very likely that the US would have to change sides in the war to counter the raw military power of Iran. The only real possible solution is bringing all parties to the table. I don't think we have a president who will do that.
washingtonpost.com

As Iraq's neighbors grapple with the various ideas put forward for solving the country's problems, they uniformly shudder at one proposal: dividing Iraq into separate regions for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and then speeding the withdrawal of U.S. forces.


"To envision that you can divide Iraq into three parts is to envision ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, sectarian killing on a massive scale," Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said Oct. 30 at a conference in Washington. "Since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited."


"When the ethnic-religious break occurs in one country, it will not fail to occur elsewhere, too," Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Germany's Der Spiegel newsweekly recently. "It would be as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, only much worse. Large wars, small wars -- no one will be able to get a grip on the consequences."


In an analysis published last month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Obaid said sectarian conflicts could make Iraq a battleground for the region.


Obaid described widespread interference by Iranian security forces within Iraq. He urged Saudi Arabia, which is building a 560-mile wall on its border with Iraq, to warn Iran "that if these activities are not checked," Saudi Arabia "will be forced to consider a similar overt and covert program of its own."


In Damascus, a Syrian analyst close to the Assad government warned that other countries would intervene if Iraq descended into full-scale civil war. "Iran will get involved, Turkey will get involved, Saudi Arabia, Syria," said the analyst, who spoke on condition he not be identified further.


"Regional war is very much a possibility," said Hiltermann, the analyst for the International Crisis Group. Iraq's neighbors "are hysterical about Iranian strategic advances in the region," he said.


U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad last month ranked Syria and Iran with al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the country's principal Sunni Arab insurgent groups, in terms of destabilizing influences in Iraq. Despite that assessment, the United States has not held substantive talks with Syria regarding Iraq since 2004 or with Iran since the war began in 2003.


Diplomats and analysts increasingly are urging the Bush administration to reach out to both countries as part of a regional approach to quelling Iraq's troubles. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, leader of a panel preparing a set of policy recommendations for the Bush administration, already has endorsed the idea of seeking the help of Iran and Syria.


"The thing is, because Iran and Syria both have spoiling power in Iraq, if you could neutralize them," it would ease some of the many pressures within Iraq, Hiltermann said. But he said the two countries may demand a mighty trade-off: for Syria, U.S. help with its biggest stated aim, winning back the Golan Heights from Israel; for Iran, U.S. compromise over its nuclear program.

Musharraf Believes the War with the Taliban Is Lost

PINR has a disturbing analysis that tells us that perhaps Iraq is not the only disaster in the Middle East. Pakistani President Musharraf has always been a reluctant player in the war. His continued tenure as leader of Pakistan comes begrudgingly from the Pashtun tribes on the border with Afghanistan. They are the supporters of the Taliban. Indeed, the Pakistani intelligence service has consistently been supporting the Taliban to ensure stability on it's western border so it can attend to the real threat from India. Indeed, Pakistan intelligence is likely behind nuclear technology in the hands of Iran and North Korea.
What's most disturbing is that a respected independent think tank NOW thinks Musharraf has given up on Afghanistan.

Musharraf's thinking can be seen in his recent decision to make peace with tribal leaders in North Waziristan Agency and his attempt to make peace with tribal leaders in Bajaur Agency, the latter of which fell apart as outside forces likely pressured Musharraf to attack those with whom he was negotiating. Based upon these decisions, it is clear that Musharraf believes that international efforts to exclude the Taliban from political power in Afghanistan will fail. [See: "Intelligence Brief: Musharraf Struggles Against Tribal Militants"]


As part of this assessment, Islamabad recognizes that it cannot afford to lose political influence with the Pashtun tribes on the border. For instance, if the Taliban and its Pashtun supporters are not defeated in Afghanistan, then the movement will flourish. For Pakistan, which is most concerned about its eastern front with India, it would be a strategic blunder to spark an insurgency in the west.


Therefore, Islamabad's dealing with tribal militants displays its revised assessment that the Taliban will not be defeated in Afghanistan. The reason, however, that Islamabad continues to launch occasional strikes against tribal leaders, such as the incident that recently occurred in Bajaur Agency, is because Islamabad is still subject to its interest of cooperating with the United States and its allies in the "war on terrorism." Pakistan, therefore, is forced to follow dual policies which are, at some moments, contradictory.


If Musharraf were to cease attacks against tribal militants, it could force the United States and N.A.T.O. to launch autonomous attacks in Pakistani territory in order to neutralize threats that Islamabad refuses to handle. For the United States and N.A.T.O., it is clear that much of the Taliban's support and recruitment base is in Pakistan's tribal and frontier regions.


If U.S.-led cross-border attacks were to occur, it could spell the death knell of Musharraf's grip on power. Musharraf already faces domestic unrest over his cooperation with the United States, and his failure to prevent the United States and its allies from attacking Pakistani territory would make him extremely unpopular at home and could cause his very own power base, the military, to unseat him.


Therefore, Musharraf and the rest of the government in Islamabad are forced to walk a tightrope in the handling of Pashtun elements in the border region. Until it becomes clear which side is going to prevail -- either Kabul agrees to some form of a government power-sharing role with the resurgent Taliban, or the U.S.-led coalition turns the tide on the Taliban insurgency -- Islamabad will continue to pursue these contradictory policies.

Boycott of Hamas Government in Palestine Ends

The fortunes of the US in the Middle East are declining. Unequivocal support of Israel will lead to a hostile Middle East. The Arab League signals it sees the Bush Administration as biased against them. Death of a family of Palestinian means nothing against the perception of safety and working to secure safety in Israel.
Lobbing shells and cluster bombs into residential residential neighborhoods is ok if they are just Arabs. As Bolton says, believing anything less is anti-semitic.
Aljazeera.Net

Arab countries have agreed to lift the financial blockade on the Palestinians after the US vetoing of a draft United Nations resolution condemning the recent Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said at a meeting of the organisation in Cairo on Sunday: "There will be no compliance with any restriction imposed ... The Arab banks have to transfer money [to the Palestinians]. "Our message is loud and clear to those who take unfriendly positions against Arabs."


[...]Arab foreign ministers also called for a peace conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "according to international resolutions and the principal of 'land for peace'." The Arab League wants Hamas to endorse a 2002 initiative that calls for peace in exchange for land seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war - the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.


[...]John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, said the Arab-backed resolution was "biased against Israel and politically motivated".

Changing Course in the Middle East?

Blair, who far from a blind supporter of Bush's lead, has started a new initiative that may well have some progress. He correctly views the entire Middle East as geographically overlapping interacting theaters of conflict. Going for a comprehensive peace plan is the way to go. Otherwise, each feeds the turmoil and armaments in the other. I've heard rumor that Jimmy Carter has a book coming out on the same topic. Perhaps we can have a joint process unlike anything the Bush Administration has attempted.
But so far, Bush shows little inclination to do anything but stonewall. The Petty song "Won't back down..." rings in my head. The macho meatheads solution to any problem is stand your ground. It doesn't require any thinking or humility.
washingtonpost.com

President Bush came under new pressure yesterday at home and abroad to alter his policies in the Middle East. British Prime Minister Tony Blair pushed for a broader Arab-Israeli peace initiative to help stabilize Iraq, while the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee pledged to take a hard line on seeking early troop withdrawals.


Bush offered little indication that he is planning to adjust his approach, telling reporters gathered in the Oval Office that "the best military options depend upon the conditions on the ground" in Iraq. The president also met for more than an hour with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) and other members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which is looking to chart a new course in the war.


The day's events underscored the rapidly evolving political landscape for the White House, which finds itself trying to balance the desire for change voiced by the electorate last Tuesday with the president's frequently stated conviction that the United States must remain engaged militarily in Iraq until the government there can maintain its own security.


The White House will also have to deal with a Congress controlled by Democrats, a difference highlighted by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) as he outlined the new agenda of the Armed Services Committee, which for the past four years has been largely deferential to Bush's conduct of the war. Levin said he plans to step up the committee's activities, reviewing the state of military readiness and conducting more oversight of such issues as the rendition of terrorism suspects to countries suspected of practicing torture.


Levin also served notice that he intends to take a strong line on withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq, telling reporters that he thinks a slim majority of the Senate may back his call for a "phased redeployment" of more than 140,000 U.S. troops.


"We had 40 senators who voted that way essentially six months ago, roughly, and there may be 50 or 51 senators that will vote that way now," Levin said at a news conference, referring to a bill that would call on the president to inform the Iraqi government that U.S. forces would begin leaving Iraq in four to six months.


In London, meanwhile, Blair suggested a desire for a more aggressive Western initiative to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a key to tamping down violence in the region, a recommendation that is also reportedly under consideration by the Iraq Study Group. Blair said that resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute, stabilizing Lebanon and pressuring Iran to halt its support of militants are key to helping reduce bloodshed in Iraq.


"A major part of the answer to Iraq lies not in Iraq itself but outside it, in the whole of the region where the same forces are at work, where the roots of this global terrorism are to be found, where the extremism flourishes," said Blair, Bush's closest international ally on Iraq.

Iraq Is Disintegrating; Now What?

Iraq as we know it is falling apart. The only question now is if we can facilitate an outcome that does not lead to a regional war. Now that the US Government has been handed a mandate to change course in Iraq, the question is what to do. With the independent Leiberman in the mix of the new majority, support for the war in the Senate may remain at 50%. This may be sufficient to force a compromise between the President and Democratic leaders. Monica Duffy Toft at washingtonpost.com says it comes down to whose side do we pick to support in military outcome that seems inevitable. Civil war in Iraq, means regional war, whether it be by proxy or involving bordering countries. Turkey and Iran are committed to containing the Kurdish threat. The Sunnis in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are very concerned about a Shi'ite Cresent stretching from Iran to Lebanon, threatening to stir unreset in their Shi'a minorities.
Monica makes no hint that she gets this dynamic, she just talks about how war historically leads to the most stable outcome. How jaded is that? War could lead to sabotage at 20% of the world's oil sources and destroy the world economy.

Some 3 1/2 years after the U.S. invasion, most scholars and policy analysts accept that Iraq is now in a civil war. But many policymakers have not been willing to face up to the consequences. The key question is how Iraq will be stabilized. It is an important question, because the stability and prosperity of a post-civil-war state depends in large measure on how the war ends. The fighting can stop in a variety of ways -- by military victory or negotiated settlement. Historically speaking, military victories have been the most common and have most often led to lasting resolutions. So while a negotiated settlement may seem the most desirable end point, this resolution is frequently short-lived even with third-party support.


A negotiated settlement is what the United States has attempted to implement for the past two years in Iraq, and it is failing. The process of writing and adopting a constitution and electing a president and parliament were all designed to give each of Iraq's communities a say in the government. Although the Kurds and the Shiites participated fully in the process, the Sunnis did not. Consequently, the Sunnis do not see the government as representing, much less protecting, their interests. Although the Kurds participated in the formation of the government, they have maintained their distance while strengthening their own militia. The trend lines in Iraq are toward a continuation of this fragmentation. So the argument in favor of a sustained U.S. presence to help enforce a peace settlement ignores both the situation there and past precedent.


Military victories, by contrast, historically result in the most stable outcomes. The reason is that typically a strong faction with a robust military is preserved. In these instances, problems with democratization, governance and political institutions certainly remain, but the state that survives retains its monopoly on the legitimate use of force and is able to leverage that legitimacy to stabilize and institute peace. Only after peace is achieved can issues of democracy, development and justice be dealt with.

Iraqi Civil War: The Bush Legacy

The news continues to get bad in Iraq. Shia leaders want the Iraqi Army unleashed by the US. In response, Sunni leaders threaten to quit the government and take up arms.
There seems to be no hope of avoiding all out Civil War. The Shia leaders will actively sabatoge any progress towards a strong central government, preferring a strong southern Iraqi Shia province. Saudi Arabia decries this solution because that places Iranian agents on it's borders. The Saudis will continue to support the insurgency for that reason alone. The Sunnis will fight as long has they are faced with landlocked oil deprived poverty. The Kurds won't share the oil riches of Kirkuk. The Turks and their Iraqi brethern will not tolerate an oil rich Kurdish state on it's borders.
The only solution possible is to put the Iraqis and their neighbors in charge of the solution. There will be civil war, regional war or not. More US casualties will not serve any purpose. It's time to force a local solution.
The other solution is to forever forbid pre-emptive and voluntary war by the US. War only serves when there is no other option. There were plenty of options in dealing with Iraq. I'm convinced if Bush had stayed out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea would be no where near the threat they are today. The threat of war is MUCH more of a deterent than any direct action.
Guardian Unlimited

A stunning new death count emerged Thursday, as Iraq's health minister estimated at least 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war - about three times previously accepted estimates.


Moderate Sunni Muslims, meanwhile, threatened to walk away from politics and pick up guns, while the Shiite-dominated government renewed pressure on the United States to unleash the Iraqi army and claimed it could crush violence in six months.


After Democrats swept to majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld resigned, Iraqis appeared unsettled and seemed to sense the potential for an even bloodier conflict because future American policy is uncertain. As a result, positions hardened on both sides of the country's deepening sectarian divide.


Previous estimates of Iraq deaths held that 45,000-50,000 have been killed in the nearly 44-month-old conflict, according to partial figures from Iraqi institutions and media reports. No official count has ever been available, and Health Minister Ali al-Shemari did not detail how he arrived at the new estimate of 150,000, which he provided to reporters during a visit to the Austrian capital. But later Thursday, Hassan Salem, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, said the 150,000 figure included civilians, police and the bodies of people who were abducted, later found dead and collected at morgues run by the Health Ministry. SCIRI is Iraq's largest Shiite political organization and holds the largest number of seats in parliament.

Election Night Shenanagens

Alternet has the low down on continued attempts at organized voter fraud. Anyone who thinks our way of life is not threatened need to consider the past two presidential elections.

Rumsfeld Out, Gates In at DOD

In a move that is clearly too little too late, Bush accepts Rumsfeld resignation. I'm sure many Republican Congressmen are wailing and gnashing their teeth at the move. The timing betrays the intransigence that is represented in this President. As washingtonpost.com quotes former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta.

The fact that the defense chief lasted so long in the job was essentially a reflection of the fact that, in firing Rumsfeld, "you are basically admitting you made some serious mistakes in the conduct of the war.

The selection of Gates signals that Bush has relented to the style of quiet pragmatic and cautious diplomacy that reflected his father's tenure in the White House.
New York Times

In choosing Robert M. Gates as his next defense secretary, President Bush reached back to an earlier era in Republican foreign policy, one marked more by caution and pragmatism than that of the neoconservatives who have shaped the Bush administration’s war in Iraq and confrontations with Iran and North Korea.


Soft-spoken but tough-minded, Mr. Gates, 63, is in many ways the antithesis of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brash leader he would replace. He has been privately critical of the administration’s failure to execute its military and political plans for Iraq, and he has spent the last six months quietly debating new approaches to the war, as a member of the Iraq Study Group run by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton.


A hint of the approach Mr. Gates might bring to the job, drawing on his experience at the end of the cold war, can be found in his remarks in 2004 at the release of the Council on Foreign Relations report, called “Iran: Time for a New Approach.”


“One of our recommendations is that the U.S. government lift its ban in terms of nongovernmental organizations being able to operate in Iran,” Mr. Gates said. “Greater interaction between Iranians and the rest of the world,” he said, “sets the stage for the kind of internal change that we all hope will happen there.”

Dems Win, but So Does Negative Politics

I must say I'm less than ecstatic about all the Democratic gains around the country. In my state, Minnesota, Democratic sweep of the legislature is tempered by re-electing a Republican Incumbent Governor. A Democratic control of the US House, is tempered by a Senate race still deadlocked in two cliffhanger elections.
I'm saddened by the state of US politics. Today elections are dominated by slick TV ads with less interest in the truth, more in inflaming passions in the electorate. Prejudice took a front seat in several elections with mixed results. Choosing between two evils cause the electorate to seek out a squeaky clean mundane candidate, with no rough edges but also no outstanding attributes. Our leaders tend to be followers. That makes our form of government more prone to power politics than it already is.
MindBlog

When you go into the voting booth, you’re trying to decide whom to accept or whom to reject. Are you judging who the good candidate is or who the less bad candidate is? The effort by each side to coat the opposition in slime has made many of us cynical, giving us the sense that our task is to reject the worst, not select the best. Nobody’s any good, we think, but some are worse than others. Let’s keep those candidates out of office. Our job becomes one of denying, not awarding, office. What that means is that if you want to win an election, you need to find candidates..., who give us no reason to say no, rather than [one] who present[s] a complex set of features, some attractive and some problematic.

Perle Has Sour Grapes About Iraq

Often described as a leader of neo-con thought, Richard Perle is out doing damage control for the neo-con movement, blaming Bush, Rumsfeld, and, incredibily, the "depraved" Iraqi people for the failure in Iraq. He now says invading Iraq was wrong. He was the man who led the charge to Iraq.
Los Angeles Times

Richard N. Perle, the former Pentagon advisor regarded as the intellectual godfather of the Iraq war, now believes he should not have backed the U.S.-led invasion, and he holds President Bush responsible for failing to make timely decisions to stem the rising violence, according to excerpts from a magazine interview.


Perle — a leading neoconservative who chaired the Pentagon's defense advisory board for the first three years of the Bush administration — is quoted in January's Vanity Fair as saying the U.S. might have been able to strip Saddam Hussein of his ability to build unconventional weapons "by means other than a direct military intervention."


[...]Perle's prominent advocacy of invasion after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — and his close relationship with the war's top architects, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy Defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the former Pentagon policy chief — makes his reversal particularly noteworthy.


Perle told Vanity Fair he did not anticipate the "depravity" currently underway in Iraq, saying, "The levels of brutality we've seen are truly horrifying." He said "huge mistakes" had been made in the management of the war, and he blamed disloyalty among top Bush administration officials for a failure to get the policy correct. "The decisions did not get made that should have been," he said. He continued: "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible…. "I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."


Although the excerpts do not show who Perle blames for disloyalty or mismanagement, he appears to lay the blame at the feet of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the military leaders who put together the war plan. "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad," he said.

Commercial Fishing Collapsing

Imagine, commercial fishing in the oceans gone in 40 years. Given that many countries get most of their protein source from the oceans, this is a serious problem. Of course, the rich will see this as a profit opportunity. They can open fish farms and sell at premium prices. Reminds me of those folks poo pooing global warming, itching to drill for oil at the arctic and antarctic polls.
washingtonpost.com

An international group of ecologists and economists warned yesterday that the world will run out of seafood by 2048 if steep declines in marine species continue at current rates, based on a four-year study of catch data and the effects of fisheries collapses.


[...]The 14 researchers from Canada, Panama, Sweden, Britain and the United States spent four years analyzing fish populations, catch records and ocean ecosystems to reach their conclusion. They found that by 2003 -- the last year for which data on global commercial fish catches are available -- 29 percent of all fished species had collapsed, meaning they are now at least 90 percent below their historic maximum catch levels.


The rate of population collapses has accelerated in recent years. As of 1980, just 13.5 percent of fished species had collapsed, even though fishing vessels were pursuing 1,736 fewer species then. Today, the fishing industry harvests 7,784 species commercially.

Pretext for War?

Could Bush be pushing for a November surprise? Could this be the pretext for war with Syria and Lebanon that the Neo-cons have been looking for?
Los Angeles Times

In an unusual statement, the Bush administration charged Wednesday that there was "mounting evidence" that Iran, Syria and the militant group Hezbollah were trying to engineer the overthrow of the elected government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.


American officials said they had evidence that the two countries were trying to help create a new "unity" government that would give greater influence to their Hezbollah allies.


They contended that Syria was also trying to block legislation that directed Lebanese cooperation with an international tribunal investigating the slaying of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Syrian officials have been implicated in the February 2005 attack.


But U.S. officials declined to provide details, saying they could not disclose information from intelligence sources. Sean McCormack, the chief State Department spokesman, said there were "strictures" on what he could say because "we collect a lot of information I can't talk about."


He said Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah recently warned in a speech that "the Siniora government take certain steps or Nasrallah and his compatriots would see that it falls."

The Right To Vote

Women's right to vote


The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."


They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.


Thus unfolded the Night of Terror on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.


For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/misc/clarify3.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/05/MNG1ME3JJG1.DTL
Before The Voting Rights Act
The extension of the franchise to black citizens was strongly resisted. Among others, the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and other terrorist organizations attempted to prevent the 15th Amendment from being enforced by violence and intimidation. Two decisions in 1876 by the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of enforcement under the Enforcement Act and the Force Act, and, together with the end of Reconstruction marked by the removal of federal troops after the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, resulted in a climate in which violence could be used to depress black voter turnout and fraud could be used to undo the effect of lawfully cast votes.
Once whites regained control of the state legislatures using these tactics, a process known as "Redemption," they used gerrymandering of election districts to further reduce black voting strength and minimize the number of black elected officials. In the 1890s, these states began to amend their constitutions and to enact a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench white political supremacy.
Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for "crimes of moral turpitude." These laws were "color-blind" on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively. Other laws and practices, such as the "white primary,", attempted to evade the 15th Amendment by allowing "private" political parties to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members.
As a result of these efforts, in the former Confederate states nearly all black citizens were disenfranchised and removed from by 1910. The process of restoring the rights taken stolen by these tactics would take many decades.

War Games in the Middle East to South Asia

From the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, war games involving the US, Israel, NATO, Britain, France, Bahrain, Australia, Canada, and India are taunting Iran, seeking to provoke a pretext to make war against Iran and possibly Syria. The exercises presents a massive display of US and coalition naval power including aircraft carriers, submarines, guided missile destroyers and frigates.
Ground forces in Northern Iraq and Georgia, and likely Azerbaijan are engaging in similar ground-based maneuvers.
Patrol boats from Iran have probed close to the Fleet in the Gulf, but not close enough to provide the pretext. But barring any action by Iran, Cheney has been planning another scenario.
GlobalResearch.ca

The large scale naval display of US military hardware consisted in intercepting and searching vessels "suspected of trafficking" in "weapons of mass destruction". The exercise was conducted under the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). It consisted in developing "procedures for intercepting smugglers of unconventional weapons" [targeting shipping between North Korea and Iran].


[...]Leaked military documents to the Washington Post suggest that these Pentagon plans are predicated on the possibility of "a major terrorist attack" and the need to retaliate in self-defense if and when the US or its allies are attacked:

"A third plan sets out how the military can both disrupt and respond to another major terrorist strike on the United States. It includes lengthy annexes that offer a menu of options for the military to retaliate quickly against specific terrorist groups, individuals or state sponsors depending on who is believed to be behind an attack. (WP 23 April 2006)

This "contingency plan" uses the pretext of a "another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States" to prepare for a major military operation against Iran, while pressure is also exerted on Tehran in relation to its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program.


What is diabolical in this decision of the US Vice President is that the justification presented by Cheney to wage war on Iran rests on Iran's presumed involvement in a hypothetical terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred:.

The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. ... Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War , The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

Are we to understand that US, British and Israeli military planners are waiting in limbo for "the opportunity" of a terrorist attack, which would then provide "the justification" for the launching of a military operation directed against Syria and Iran? In the words of the Pentagon, quoted verbatim in the Washington Post (23 April 2006):

"Another [terrorist] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan." (quoted in the Washington Post, 23 April, 2006, emphasis added)

Georgia Playing a Dangerous Game With Russia

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has been poking the Russian bear with impuny. And it appears Russian President Vladimir Putin is spoiling for a first military move to reaquire territorial losses from the break up of the Soviet Union. Georgia is dependent on Russian gas, yet they keep attempting to embarass Russia for it's excesses. Russia has very little to lose. The criticism they would face for annexing Georgia would be deflected by Russian participation in other bigger fish to fry: North Korea and Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Bush appears to be fanning the flames, happy to find a new ally who he can buddy up with after most have abandoned the President as a warmonger. I feel for the people of Georgia who have bore the brunt of the conflict and will suffer the most should the Russian Bear move to stomp out it's wayward neighbor.
Foreign Policy

The relationship, prickly since the breakup of the former Soviet Union, took a sharp turn for the worse in late September, when Georgia arrested four Russian soldiers for alleged spying and threatened to block Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Russia responded with a ham-fisted crackdown on all things Georgian, cutting off trade and telecommunications to the country and deporting planeloads of Georgian citizens.


Media coverage of the dispute has focused on the behavior of the principal antagonists, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But there is another powerful player who has remained far off stage: the United States. Its fingerprints aren’t obvious, but Washington has helped to fuel this crisis—by showering Georgia with cash and praise, by extending the promise of NATO membership, and by standing silent as Saakashvili and his government made ever rasher attacks on Russia.


[...]Georgia, with fewer than 5 million people, depends on Russia for natural gas, a lesson reinforced last winter when Russia used the excuse of a still-unexplained pipeline explosion to cut off the taps. Last spring, Russia ratcheted up the pressure, shutting its market to wine and Borjomi mineral water, Georgia’s two most important exports. Now, it is threatening the country’s biggest source of hard currency, cash sent home by the nearly 1 million Georgians who work in Moscow and St. Petersburg.


Saakashvili’s claim to be fighting the good fight against a hegemonic Russia has been dented by the way he’s handled his country’s own territorial disputes. He came to power promising to reunite Georgia with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two regions that broke away in the bloodshed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has spent more time rattling sabers than building trust, however, with the predictable result that many of the residents in those regions have taken Russian passports and now look to Moscow, not Tbilisi, as the more reliable engine of jobs and security.


Saakashvili has also come under fire for his management of the parts of Georgia his government controls. Ethnic Armenians and Azerbaijanis say they are as marginalized as ever. Human Rights Watch, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and other outside groups have documented judicial corruption, police abuse, and the gross mistreatment of prison inmates, including the deaths of seven prisoners last March in a “riot” that critics say was set off by prison authorities themselves.


That same week in Tbilisi, hundreds of demonstrators protested the government ’s alleged cover-up of the Interior Ministry’s involvement in a high-profile murder. One of the country’s most prominent television newscasters quit her job on camera, to protest attempts to censor the news at the government-affiliated channel.


And where was Saakashvili during all the turmoil? He was at the White House, basking in the glow of President George W. Bush’s praise. Saakashvili “is a man who shares the same values I share,” Bush said. “He believes in the universality of freedom.”