Israel preparing for war with Syria, confirms general

Olmert, using a carrot and stick approach, offers direct peace talks with Syria, while preparing a blitzkrieg invasion of Syria. I wonder if Olmert can bring Assad to the table?
IsraelToday.co.ill

A senior Israeli general on Monday confirmed that the army is preparing for a full-scale war with Syria in the very near future.


Speaking at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, Maj.-Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven, who served as deputy commander of Israel's northern forces during last summer's war in Lebanon, said that the army is “preparing itself for an all-out war, and this is a major change in the military's working premise” following the 34-day conflict with Hizballah that many Israelis feel their nation failed to win.


The general said that when war breaks out, Syria will be prepared to suffer mass military and civilian casualties, while at the same time playing on Israel's sensitivity to civilian losses by striking Israel's home front with as many missiles as possible.


Syria “will try to hit Israel's home front in order to win diplomatic gains in peace talks that will follow, and also cause another split in Israeli society,” Israel National News quoted Ben-Reuven as saying.


In order to deny Syria this victory, Ben-Reuven said the Israeli army is training for a swift and overwhelming invasion of Syria “to knock out the areas from where missiles are launched against Israel as quickly as possible.”


He lamented that if Israel had responded to Hizballah's rocket attacks in such a manner, the Second Lebanon War would have ended much differently.

Abbas Moves Quickly to Demonstrate Leadership and Relevance

Abbas has never failed to impress me in his leadership of the PLO. He seems to be the man who is willing to do the job, and has effective strategies to diffuse or bring to the table naysayers.
It would appear that Abbas decided he can get a lot done without Hamas and intends to present to Gaza residents all he accomplished in the West Bank to leverage the people away from Hamas.
Los Angeles Times

Israeli officials said the offer went out selectively, to 178 Fatah militiamen, in the expectation that they would join the Palestinian security forces and turn full attention to disarming the rival Hamas movement, which calls for Israel's destruction.


By day's end, Palestinian officials said they believed that all those on the clemency list had agreed to the terms of the deal, which aims to bolster the Fatah-led Palestinian government in the West Bank and help advance peace talks between its leader and Israel.


[..]The clemency deal stopped short of pardon or amnesty. Israeli officials said they could resume efforts to arrest any of the militiamen and charge them with past offenses if a case-by-case review of their actions over the next three months warranted it.


Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, had been lobbying for such an arrangement for months in periodic U.S.-backed negotiations with Olmert.


Initially cool to the idea, Israeli officials embraced it after Abbas turned forcefully against Hamas, his partner in a power-sharing government, following the militant group's takeover of the Gaza Strip last month.


Abbas has vowed to disarm Hamas' clandestine armed wing in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. To do that, he has told Olmert, he needs to beef up his Preventive Security force with Al Aqsa gunmen but cannot recruit them out of hiding unless Israeli troops stop hunting them.

Impeach Cheney

Bill Moyers Journal this past Friday interviewed John Nicoles, a liberal reporter from The Nation and Bruce Fein, an ultra-conservative civil libertarian. Both passionately advocated for impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Look for this show in repeats or watch it on-line. It's well worth it. Here is an excerpt from the show and Fein's main bullet points outline the charges against Cheney that justify impeachment:

A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney.

• According to Fein, Cheney has: Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.


• Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone.


• Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.


• Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
  # Engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance programtargeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.


• Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.


• Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.


• Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq.

(Read Fein's SLATE article)

Bruce Fein is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on Constitutional law. Bruce Fein, photo by Robin Holland Graduating from Harvard Law School in 1972, Fein became the assistant director of the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Shortly after that, Fein became the associate deputy attorney general under former President Ronald Reagan.

Fomenting War Against Iran

The Peninsula On-line
US-led forces shot dead an alleged rogue Mahdi Army militia leader who commanded 120 fighters in eastern Baghdad, the military said in a statement yesterday.
The alleged militant, Said Jaffer, had a "history of terrorising the New Baghdad area by extorting money, kidnapping and carrying out extra-judicial killings on innocent citizens," the statement said.
"As a commander of more than 120 fighters, his cell is responsible for engaging military and police forces with small arms fire and emplacing explosively formed projectiles along travel routes."
US officials have long accused neighbouring Iran of supplying explosively formed penetrators, sophisticated roadside bombs capable of penetrating armoured vehicles, to Shi’ite militants in Iraq.
"Intelligence shows a clear link to his group partnering with outside Persian extremists, whose goal is to destroy the legitimate government of Iraq and create instability in the region," the statement said.
In the June 11 operation, US and Iraqi soldiers attempted to arrest Jaffer, but gunned him down when he drew a pistol on them, according to the statement.
The Mahdi Army of radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr has spawned rogue groups that operate outside the cleric's control, and which US officials have accused of receiving Iranian aid and support.
Meanwhile, US soldiers discovered a field of rocket launchers near a US army base south of Baghdad armed with 34 Iranian-made missiles, the military said yesterday.
"After several rockets hit FOB (Forward Operating Base) Hammer on July 11, the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team manoeuvred to find the source of the attack," a statement said.
The next morning an "unmanned aerial vehicle located 46 rocket launchers in the northern section of Besmaya Range Complex aimed at FOB Hammer. Thirty-four of the launchers were armed with Iranian 107mm rockets," it added.
The US army believes the other twelve rockets were launched at the base the day before. US commanders frequently accuse Iran of providing weapons, training and support to Shi’ite militias in Iraq, including many of the rockets launched at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.
Earlier this month, US commanders stepped up the charges, claiming that senior leaders of Iran's special forces and of the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah militia have trained Iraqi fighters and provided other support.
Iran has always denied that it is fomenting unrest in its war-torn neighbour, insisting that the US occupation is the cause of Iraq's woes.
Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency outlined - Los Angeles Times
Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.
About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.
Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.
He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.
Dissident Voice
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 97-0 for an amendment written by Joe Bomb Iran Lieberman, whose position on Iran is identical to Dick Cheney’s.
The amendment states that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act against the United States,” and demands the government of Iran “take immediate action” to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias. It also mandates a regular report on Iran’s anti-US activity in Iraq .
Charging Iran with killing US troops has nothing to do with the facts. It’s about beating the war drums and trying to convince Americans that in order to “protect our troops” the US must bomb Iran.
The unanimity of the vote is alarming. Hillary and Obama voted for it.
Israel 'Approved' to Strike Iran
Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs said he has received approval from the U.S. and Europe for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
"If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the U.S. will support us,” Avigdor Lieberman said following a meeting with NATO and European Union officials.
Lieberman said the Western powers recognized the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel, Israel Today magazine reported. But military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are "going to prevent the leaders of countries in Europe and America from deciding on the use of force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities,” and they are sending the message that Israel should "prevent the threat herself.”
Gareth Porter | US Briefing on Iran Discredits the Official Line
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace further underlined the weakness of the administration's case by declaring Monday in an interview with Voice of America, "It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Dispute Over Independence of Kosovo Threatens To Erupt

Russia has a long standing relationship with Serbia based on kinship with the Serbs. Kosovo, it's majority Muslim province has been occupied by NATO and functioning independently for many years. Clearly, the residents of Kosovo will fight for independence.
Serbia will attempt to suppress this latest rebellious province to save face for having lost the unity of Yugoslavia in a bloody civil war. The Russians will support them. But NATO stands in the way. This conflict could reignite the civil war in Serbia and the cold war with Russia. Worse yet, this civil war would quickly escalate to a region conflict fought by proxy within Serbia. There is a real risk of a hot regional war.
Forbes.com

France and NATO appealed for calm on Friday amid rising tensions over the future of Kosovo, while Russia called for an 'impartial' envoy to sort out divisions over the Serbian province's status.


[..]France backs the proposal by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari for Kosovo to be granted supervised independence -- a move staunchly opposed by Serbia and its powerful ally.


Kouchner arrived in Pristina after a visit to Belgrade where he had insisted that Serbia would have to make an agreement over Kosovo before it could join the European Union. Russia has threatened to use its UN Security Council veto to block any resolution that fails to meet with Belgrade's approval. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, on a visit to the Serbian capital on Friday, sought to keep a lid on the simmering tensions. 'I would like to repeat my call for calm end restraint from all sides. Then we can have a controlled process,' he said after talks with Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremi. 'This status quo is not tenable and we should avoid unnecessary delay in finding a solution for the statute of Kosovo.'


In what was seen as a message to Moscow, De Hoop Scheffer added: 'I hope that those who until now have prevented this resolution from being accepted will show the necessary flexibility.'

Is It Franken Vs Normie?

Juan Cole at Informed Comment appraises the Minnesota Senate race. He sees Franken as formidable and Coleman as "hilarious".

Al Franken is proving himself a formidable political fundraiser as he revs up his campaign to be the Democrat who faces Neoconservative Senator Norm Coleman in the '08 elections.

It is tiresome that some observers dismissed Mr. Franken because he is a humorist. Lots of comedians have served in the US Congress, though few had been professional humorists before being elected.

Norm Coleman himself has said the most hilarious things. His positions on various issues are listed at this page (scroll down and look on the right). He wants to increase the number of people carrying concealed weapons in Minneapolis (after what happened at Virginia Tech, is that a good idea?), wants to fund the Iraq War indefinitely and no questions asked, opposes auditing contractors with Defense Department contracts in Iraq, and wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Like Joe Lieberman, he seems to be preparing his constituencies for a brutal aggressive war on Iran. He's just a barrel of monkeys.

Mike Ciresi seems to be falling behind on fundraising by a formidable 3 to 1 margin. But he still polls unfavorably against Coleman.

You have to take Franken's candidacy very seriously," said Carleton College political scientist Steven Schier. "He is a political figure with a national network, and being able to draw that money from outside Minnesota is something Mike Ciresi can't do."


There are still significant hurdles. Despite Franken's fundraising success, he has yet to capitalize in the most recent head-to-head poll. A May Mason-Dixon poll showed Coleman leading Franken 54 percent to 32 percent, with independents preferring Coleman by a 16-point margin. A plurality of respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of Franken.


Franken also faces a challenging path to win the Democratic nomination. In Minnesota, candidates are traditionally chosen through the party's statewide convention -- set for June 2008 -- making the nomination process fairly unpredictable. At the convention, the nomination is determined by a small core of the party's activists. Having strong organization in all of the state's counties is more important than having boatloads of cash. Both Franken and Ciresi -- and four other long-shot candidates -- have said they will abide by the results of the convention.

Ciresi has secured the endorcement of Betty McCullum, but is not getting the attention that Franken is. Time will tell.

Al Qaeda Stronger Than Ever

Thank you Dubya for your bang-em up job taking out Sadaam and creating the conditions that bin Ladin could recruit world wide. Within a loose network of copy cat terrorists, and a new generation of seasoned professionals, Al Qaeda will harass the west for generations to come.
KWTX

The Associated Press has learned that US intelligence analysts believe al-Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the 2001 terrorist attacks. The conclusion suggests that the group that launched the most devastating terror attack on the US has been able to rebuild, despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it.


Still, numerous government officials say they know of no specific, credible threat of a new attack. A counterterrorism official familiar with a five-page summary of the new government threat assessment calls it a stark appraisal.


The report will be discussed at the White House on Thursday as part of a broader meeting on an upcoming National Intelligence Estimate. The official and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the secret report remains classified.

Olmert Spins Up a Win in Lebanon, Calls for Direct Talks with Syria

In an amazing flurry of spin, Olmert Calls for direct talks with Syria. Claiming Israel won the war with Hizbollah, he expects to negotiate from a position of strength with Syria.
The truth is Olmert is facing repeated calls for his resignation. The Israeli public believes they lost the war with Hizbollah. Olmert seems to be grandstanding hoping to stretch his tenure in office by appearing to be Israel's one last hope for peace. It would appear even the Saudis think the offer of peace may be for real. Egypt's Mubarak and Jordan's Abdullah will meet with Olmert in the Sinai desert, once occupied by Israel and returned to Egypt in their peace agreement.
The Daily Star

Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert urged Syrian President Bashar Assad Tuesday to begin direct peace negotiations between the two countries, and advised him not to wait for US mediation.


Olmert made his comments in a rare interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiyya television station. Such an interview would have never been conducted without the prior approval of Saudi authorities.


In separate interviews with Spanish and Italian newspapers, Olmert listed Israel's "accomplishments" as a result of the summer 2006 war with Lebanon, claiming Hizbullah has "lost its will to fight Israel."


"Bashar Assad, you know that I am ready for direct talks with you," Olmert told Al-Arabiyya television on Tuesday.


"You [Assad] have been saying that you want the negotiations through the Americans. But they do not want to sit with you. I am ready to sit with you and talk about peace not war."


"I will be happy if I could make peace with Syria. I do not want to wage war against Syria," Olmert said.


Speaking of the much-criticized Lebanon war, Olmert spoke of Israeli gains from the conflict. "We are strange, we Israelis. We're sad even when we win at war," Olmert told the Italian newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, in comments also carried out on the Web site of Israel's Yediot Ahronot daily.


"The situation in Southern Lebanon is fundamentally different than it was a year ago. The Lebanese Army is deployed in the areas, along with a multi-national force, UNIFIL," he said.


"Hizbullah no longer threatens residents along the border. They lost their will for an additional fight with Israel. Their leader, [Sayyed] Hassan Nasrallah, and his senior commanders are hiding or not living as free men."

Turkish Invasion of Iraq Imminent

140,000 Turkish troops are massed at the Iraqi border, nearly as many troops as the US has in Iraq. They are poised to invade and secure the Iraqi-Turkish border area from PKK Kurdish extremists.
We may be seeing the beginning of the regional war in the Middle East sparked by the US invasion of Iraq.
The massacre of 152 Turkmen this weekend have riled both the 800,000 Turkmen in and around Kirkuk, but Turkey as well, who see them as unarmed kin they need to protect.
Thank you Dubya for a world of chaos.

Pakistan is Destabilizing Under Failed Bush Afghanistan Policy

Juan Cole has a new group blog with in depth foreign affairs analysis. The lastest post was a historical essay on the development of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan. Noting that Pakistan seems to be destabilizing with Musharraf as weak as ever, the author speculates that the confrontation at the Red Mosque was a convenient distraction from the dissatisfaction with the Musharraf. The majority of Pakistanis are not fundamentalists who are suspicious of fundamentalist Islam. The author believes the "Talebanization" of Pakistan is the result of the US pull out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq. The whole article is a good read. Here is the key excerpt.
Informed Comment Global Affairs

The strengthening of militant forces in Pakistan - and their inward gaze - has not come from any radicalization of Pakistani society but from the incomplete operation of US forces in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq drained away any plan for a viable and functioning Afghanistan. The defeated troops carried their tribal allegiances back across the border into the Northern and Western regions of Pakistan - and turned their attention onto Pakistani state. Musharraf, busy consolidating the military's dominion had no viable way of combating these tribes - he has no legitimacy. I could be writing an alternative version of this recent past, if democratic tendencies had actually been allowed to develop in Pakistan since 2001. You may call it 'paradoxical' but the only solution to de-Islamization of Pakistan is democracy - not the support of dictatorships.

Powell: "I Tried to Avoid This War"

Talk about too little, too late. Powell tells Times Online that he tried to talk the President out of the war. What Powell didn't understand is a good soldier is required when in uniform.
A statesman requires much more than blind obedience. Sometimes when the good of the country is at stake, one speaks the truth and forces the hand of others. Powell had an obligation to America to emphatically state his warnings to Congress and the people before this war started. His first loyalty was to the American people, not to Bush.

THE former American secretary of state Colin Powell has revealed that he spent 2½ hours vainly trying to persuade President George W Bush not to invade Iraq and believes today'€™s conflict cannot be resolved by US forces.


"€œI tried to avoid this war,"€ Powell said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. "€œI took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers."€


Powell has become increasingly outspoken about the level of violence in Iraq, which he believes is in a state of civil war. "€œThe civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,"€ he said. "€œIt'€™s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don't know any way to avoid it. It is happening now."€


He added: "€œIt is not a civil war that can be put down or solved by the armed forces of the United States." All the military could do, Powell suggested, was put "€œa heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew".


[...]According to Powell, the US cannot “blow a whistle one morning” and have all American forces just leave. The former secretary of state has twice met Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, to advise him on foreign policy. Despite his antiwar stance, Obama supports a phased withdrawal that could leave a “significantly reduced force” in Iraq for “an extended period”.


Defence experts believe it will be impossible to maintain the surge’s high troop levels beyond February at the latest, given the need to rotate and refresh troops. Powell, who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, said in Aspen that America’s volunteer army was already overstretched. He predicted that Bush would be forced to “face the situation on the ground” and alter course by the end of this year.

Turkey Ready to Invade Northern Iraq

Conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate. The US is arming it's former enemies in Anbar, further destabilizing Iraq while in Washington gears up to begin a phased withdrawal that seems to slated to begin next year. I suppose the military plan will be to pull back to the green zone and defend a figurehead government while the militias who already control the country fight it out in a civil war.
Meanwhile, the one so far peaceful part of Iraq is about to explode under an Turkish invasion designed to not only stop cross border incidents with Turkey, but to cast an intimidating pall on the coming vote in Kirkuk to determine it's regional affiliation.
The Daily Star

Turkey's government and military have agreed on detailed plans for a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels based in northern Iraq, the foreign minister said Friday. Abdullah Gul urged the United States and Iraq, which oppose a Turkish military move into Iraq, to crack down on rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. But he said Turkey was ready to stage an offensive if necessary.


"We have decided how to act, everything is clear," Gul told private NTV television. "We know what to do and when to do it," he said without providing details.


The government has come under pressure from the opposition to launch a military incursion as the country gears up for parliamentary polls on July 22.

Israel Continues to Steal Land on the West Bank

Israel's own peace movement documents continued efforts to steal land on the West Bank. From the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star:

Nine of every 10 Israeli settlements sprawl beyond their official boundaries in an attempt to grab more land in the occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians claim for a future state, a new report said Friday. Israel's settlements encroach on unallocated land even though most of the area in their own jurisdictions remains empty, according to the report from the dovish group Peace Now.


According to the report, 91 percent of the land allocated to settlements by the government is still empty, indicating that the use of land outside settlement boundaries does not "derive from a land shortage in the settlements" but from "a desire to expropriate more land."


Israeli authorities do little to enforce building laws in the settlements, the report said.

The US Fatal Attraction to Israel

Bush has been the latest and worst example of a US president manipulated by Israeli intelligence. We are caught up in the quagmire that is Iraq largely because the Neo-cons are heavily infiltrated and obviously controlled by Israeli intelligence through Douglas Feith and Franklin. Here is an excerpt from a great article by the former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times, Chris Hedges at AlterNet.

Washington was once willing to stay Israel's hand. It intervened to thwart some of its most extreme violations of human rights. This administration, however, has signed on for every disastrous Israeli blunder, from building the security barrier in the West Bank, to sealing off Gaza and triggering a humanitarian crisis, to the ruinous invasion and saturation bombing of Lebanon.


The few tepid attempts by the Bush White House to criticize Israeli actions have all ended in hasty and humiliating retreats in the face of Israeli pressure. When the Israel Defense Forces in April 2002 reoccupied the West Bank, President Bush called on then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "halt the incursions and begin withdrawal." It never happened. After a week of heavy pressure from the Israel lobby and Israel's allies in Congress, meaning just about everyone in Congress, the president gave up, calling Sharon "a man of peace." It was a humiliating moment for the United States, a clear sign of who pulled the strings.


There were several reasons for the war in Iraq. The desire for American control of oil, the belief that Washington could build puppet states in the region, and a real, if misplaced, fear of Saddam Hussein played a part in the current disaster. But it was also strongly shaped by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United States. Israel wanted Iraq neutralized. Israeli intelligence, in the lead-up to the war, gave faulty information to the U.S. about Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And when Baghdad was taken in April 2003, the Israeli government immediately began to push for an attack on Syria. The lust for this attack has waned, in no small part because the Americans don't have enough troops to hang on in Iraq, much less launch a new occupation.


Israel is currently lobbying the United States to launch aerial strikes on Iran, despite the debacle in Lebanon. Israel's iron determination to forcibly prevent a nuclear Iran makes it probable that before the end of the Bush administration an attack on Iran will take place. The efforts to halt nuclear development through diplomatic means have failed. It does not matter that Iran poses no threat to the United States. It does not matter that it does not even pose a threat to Israel, which has several hundred nuclear weapons in its arsenal. It matters only that Israel demands total military domination of the Middle East.


The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after 50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing a geopolitical nightmare. American soldiers and Marines are dying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli interests. There is no longer any debate within the United States. This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.


This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic terrorism against the U.S. and Israel will grow. It means that American power and prestige are on a steep, irreversible decline. And I fear it also means the ultimate end of the Jewish experiment in the Middle East.


The weakening of the United States, economically and militarily, is giving rise to new centers of power. The U.S. economy, mismanaged and drained by the Iraq war, is increasingly dependent on Chinese trade imports and on Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. China holds dollar reserves worth $825 billion. If Beijing decides to abandon the U.S. bond market, even in part, it would cause a free fall by the dollar. It would lead to the collapse of the $7-trillion U.S. real estate market. There would be a wave of U.S. bank failures and huge unemployment. The growing dependence on China has been accompanied by aggressive work by the Chinese to build alliances with many of the world's major exporters of oil, such as Iran, Nigeria, Sudan and Venezuela. The Chinese are preparing for the looming worldwide clash over dwindling resources.


The future is ominous. Not only do Israel's foreign policy objectives not coincide with American interests, they actively hurt them. The growing belligerence in the Middle East, the calls for an attack against Iran, the collapse of the imperial project in Iraq have all given an opening, where there was none before, to America's rivals. It is not in Israel's interests to ignite a regional conflict. It is not in ours. But those who have their hands on the wheel seem determined, in the name of freedom and democracy, to keep the American ship of state headed at breakneck speed into the cliffs before us.

Bush Covers His and Cheney's Butt with Libby

New York Times

It seems clear from the record that Vice President Dick Cheney organized a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson. And Mr. Libby, who was Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, was willing to lie to protect his boss.


That made Mr. Libby the darling of the right, which demanded that Mr. Bush pardon him. Those same Republicans have been rebelling against Mr. Bush, most recently on immigration reform, while Democrats in Congress have pursued an investigation into whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney lied about Iraq’s weapons programs.


All of this put immense pressure on the president to do something before Mr. Libby went to jail. But none of it was justification for the baldly political act of commuting his sentence.


Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.


Within minutes of the Libby announcement, the same Republican commentators who fulminated when Paris Hilton got a few days knocked off her time in a county lockup were parroting Mr. Bush’s contention that a fine, probation and reputation damage were “harsh punishment” enough for Mr. Libby.


Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

More BS About Iran In Iraq

It seems there is a lot of disinformation in the worldwide press about Iran these days. Much of it can be found in the London based Times Online, but some also turns up in the Moonies' Washington Times. Here is an article from an internet site of a small rural Arizona newspaper. Planted, created or whatever, there is less truth in this that meets the eye.
Bush just met with al-Hakim, leader of SCIRI, now SICI, the strongest Shia party in Iraq. They are close allies with Dawa, the organization that CREATED Hezbollah. Did Dawa bring Hezbollah to Iraq for training? Thats kinda like asking if George has the family over to the ranch! Duh! Is this news? No!
onelocalnews.com

Iranian forces helped plan of the most sophisticated militant assaults of the Iraq war — a January raid in which gunmen posed as an American security team and launched an attack that killed five U.S. soldiers, an American general said Monday.


The claims were an escalation in U.S. accusations that Iran is fueling Iraq‘s violence, which the government in Tehran has denied. It was also the first time the U.S. military has said Hezbollah has a direct role — which, if true, would bring a dangerous new player into Iraq‘s conflict.


Bergner said a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was captured March 20 in southern Iraq. Dakdouk, a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah, was sent to Lebanon "as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds Force" to finance and arm militant cells to carry out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops, he said.


The general also said that Dakdouk was a liaison between the Iranians and a breakaway Shiite group led by Qais al-Khazaali, a former spokesman for cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Bergner said al-Kazaali‘s group carried out the January attack against a provincial government building in Karbala and that the Iranians assisted in preparations. Al-Khazaali and his brother Ali al-Khazaali were captured with Dakdouk.

Meanwhile Robert Dreyfuss reports on Washington Post and Newsweek articles that details the working relationship the US has with Iran around Iraq. SICI/Dawa control is waning in the south where Sadr has been consolidating control.

Some scattered items in the news today shed yet more light on the oft-overlooked U.S.-Iranian alliance in Iraq. Yes, that would be the same U.S-Iran alliance that many Sunnis in Iraq, including Baathists and resistance leaders, keep talking about.


In an interview with Newsweek, Mohsen Rezai, the grand old man of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, says that Maliki's regime in Iraq "is of strategic importance to us. ... We want this government to stay in power. Rival Sunni countries oppose Maliki. We haven't."


The Post, meanwhile, writes about Amar Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the son of. He's taking over SCIRI, now SICI. (In the article, Robin Wright talks about the conference put together by Hakim, Iraq for All Iraqis, at which I spoke. No, she doesn't mention me.) But in addressing SICI's remaining power in Iraq, the Post notes that SICI's power in the south of Iraq is ever less and less. It quotes an Arab diplomat in Iraq thusly:

The only person who has grass-roots support is Sadr. Hakim has Bush receiving him at the White House and the ayatollahs seeing him in Iran. But Hakim's influence in southern Iraq began to ebb at the end of 2006.

So there you have it. Hakim has the support of the White House and the ayatollahs. And the Iranians are calling the survival of the Dawa-SICI regime in Baghdad "of strategic importance."


That's the context in which to view the newly reaffirmed alliance between Dawa and SICI. The New York Times actually had the gall to suggest that this alliance, proclaimed this week, could salvage Iraq, citing unnamed diplomats in Baghdad thus: "If Kurds were included and a true bloc of moderates could be formed, it could break some of the parliamentary paralysis."


How stupid. The fact is that no bloc of American-supporting moderates can rule Iraq, since they'd be opposed by the only forces with any real popular support: Sadr's Shia and the pro-resistance Sunnis.

Medical Professionals Turn Terrorist?

Why would six physicians sacrifice themselves in a terrorist incident? And how could people who are so competent, botch terrorist act so badly. Something is not right about this story. Either these guys really didn't do it, or there is an untold story. At this point the story doesn't hold water. It looks instead as an attempt to find a smoking gun that Iran is behind inspiring Iranian Kurds to attack the west.
Informed Comment

A cell made up of 7 medical personnel from Jordan and Iraq appears to have been behind the attempted bombing at Picadilly Circus on Friday and the actual car bombing at the Glasgow airport this weekend. One is a neurologist, Muhammad Asha, from Jordan. Another is an Iraqi physician, Bilal Abdulla. CNN is reporting that Asha's family back in Jordan is stunned. They are middle class, not religious, and intermarried with Christians.


Why would highly educated and relatively well off professionals behave this way? I think this sort of cell suggests that three kinds of sociological theory need to be synthesized in order to understand contemporary social movements-- Social constructivism, resource mobilization theory and European new social movement theory.


Here I'll just concentrate on one, social construction in the Jurgen Habermas (left) and the Peter Berger/ Thomas Luckmann (right) traditions. Groups construct life-worlds within which social action becomes plausible to them. This cell of highly networked professionals had developed a narrative about the world that required they do these horrible things. They weren't motivated by poverty, or class grievances. Their ideas came out of a logic of self and other, such that they likely included Fallujah in "self" and all British foreign policy in "other."


Gradually the shape of that narrative may emerge, though actually there are impediments to our understanding these hothouse terrorist ideologies. The perpetrators often kill themselves, taking most of the details with them. Mainstream media often are little interested in tracking down the details, and government spokesmen are positively eager to downplay or dispute the internal motivations of the criminals. All this is understandable, but it does law enforcement and the public discourse a disservice.


With regard to the 7/7/2005 underground bombings, one of the perpetrators, Shahzad Tanveer clearly was responding to what he saw as a vast Western/Indian conspiracy to massacre Muslims in Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq. The conspiracy-theory aspect of his thinking, which brought together disparate political struggles into a single over-arching plot, is typical of these violent ideologies. We know what he thought in part because journalists from local British newspapers in his home area went to Pakistan to seek out his relatives. But the enormous impact on him of the Iraq War was repeatedly denied by the Blair government.


It is too soon to know what exactly was the little lifeworld constructed by these expatriate physicians in Scotland. It could be al-Qaeda, it could just be garden variety Arab nationalism. Note that such extreme points of view thrive when small numbers of persons are in intensive social action within the group and somewhat isolated from their surroundings. They reinforce each other constantly, without encountering skepticism. (Outsiders would say "You believe what?") Medical personnel with odd hours, who hung out socially mainly with one another, and spoke Arabic with one another while not intensively discussing their ideas with Britons, would fit this profile. They may have received reinforcement from internet chat groups.


The kind of thinking they would be engaged in (I don't know details) would typically be, "Britain and the US are conducting a genocide against Arab Muslims in Iraq, are ethnically cleansing Fallujah, Baqubah, and Baghdad, and this must be stopped and cannot be borne. Something must be done, something dramatic, to draw the attention of an apathetic public to the kind of policies they are supporting."


The narrative will be one-sided, exaggerated, black-and-white, with pure heroes and black-hearted villains. Typically they were not upset when Saddam Hussein was massacring 300,000 Iraqis, or when the Talaban were massacring people in Mazar-i Sharif and Bamiyan. (Baathi or Salafi bombings of Shiites in Baghdad also likely do not disturb them). A foreign/indigenous dynamic informs their outrage, so that indigenous atrocities are not (as) objectionable as what are seen as imperial interventions.

Cheney's Dangerous Influence

Newsweek has an article about an interview with an old friend of Dick Cheney. He says Bush Sr had no faith in his son as president. So Cheney stepped in to be the "ghost" of the old man in the White House. Dubya would have a solid stateman behind him. Apparently, no one anticipated Cheney would become the orchestrator of the greatest executive power grab in US history.There was a Cabal in the White House, but it didn't just supplant the Secretary of State, the President himself was sidelined.

I had lunch with Vic Gold, an old friend of the Cheney’s, on the third day of the Post series. I asked him how he felt reading about Dick’s dark adventures. “A tremendous feeling of validation,” he said. In a recent book, Gold described Cheney as a “mega-maniacal paranoid” whose secret empire within the government had captured the Bush presidency and helped bring the Republican Party to the brink of ruin. Gold’s book, published in April, is titled: “Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP.” (It was originally titled “How the Neo-Cons Took Over the GOP,” but midway through the process, Gold got so angry he changed the verb to “Destroyed.” )


This is a huge turnabout for Gold, 78, a veteran Republican operative. Close to the Bushes and the Cheneys, he once shared office space with Lynne Cheney and in 1996 was prepared to support Dick Cheney for president. When he decided not to run, Cheney told Gold, “I don’t want to spend three quarters of my time running around raising money.” That sounded rational to Gold, who’d been kicking around politics for a long time, having worked for a string of Republicans from Barry Goldwater, his hero, to the disgraced Spiro Agnew and finally “the old man,” George H.W. Bush. Unlike others who’ve known Cheney for 30 years, Gold doesn’t think his erstwhile friend has changed. “Men do not change, they unmask themselves,” he says, quoting a Swiss writer. What happened to Cheney is “opportunity,” says Gold. Pushed forward by George and Barbara Bush, who had no confidence in their eldest son, Cheney was supposed to serve as the ghost of Bush Senior hovering around the White House.


Cheney took on the job and with, George W.’s acquiescence, made himself the locus of power. What nobody anticipated is the extent to which the quiet man with the lopsided mouth would insinuate himself into everything--and the devastating consequences of his influence, particularly the Iraq War. Gold, a slight man with wispy white hair and a hair-trigger temperament calls Bush “President Dodo.” He’s known Bush since the ’80 campaign, and while he doesn’t really think he’s dumb, he knows he can be manipulated. “He’s playing the role of president, strutting around,” says Gold. “He’s the weakest president in my memory.”


The Bushes prize loyalty, but about a year ago, Gold had reached a point where his respect for the elder Bush, whose autobiography he had helped write, was not enough for him to keep quiet. The administration in his view had become a danger to the Constitution and what America stands for in the world. He wrote to tell 41 about the book he was writing, and he got a letter back saying, “We’ve been friends a long time and we’ll continue to be friends. I am sure I will not like what you say about our son.” And then in a grace note typical of the old man, “but I don’t think too much of the neocons myself.”


Cheney’s great selling point was that he did not plan to run for president, setting him apart from most vice presidents who harbor personal ambition. He didn’t have to worry about being popular. But the idea was flawed. In the end, Cheney’s lack of viability as a political figure became his license to do whatever he wants, an outcome nobody foresaw, least of all his unsuspecting patron, George H.W. Bush.

Fox Further Tarnishes It's Credibility

Boston.com has a pretty incredible story about Fox News, taking what it appears as a known parody and presenting it as hard news in some sort of perverse sort of intolerant humor at the expense of Muslims. Talk about the height of bad taste. What's amazing is the teacher who was harassed for days by the crazies that watch Fox News is only asking for $75000!

Lewiston School Superintendent Leon Levesque is seeking $75,000 in federal court in Portland to deter what his attorney Bernard J. Kubetz characterized as irresponsible reporting by Fox News Channel. The parody, on a Web site called Associated Content.com, was of the school district's response to a prank in April at Lewiston Middle School. Levesque suspended a pupil for tossing a ham bone on a table occupied by Somali students, knowing the Muslims would be offended. Muslims consider pork unclean.


The lawsuit contends that Fox reported the parody as fact on its "Fox and Friends" show on April 23. The show's anchors repeated a comment attributed to Levesque, that "These children have got to learn that ham is not a toy," and that there was an effort afoot to create an "anti-ham response plan." A Fox and Friends anchor even assured viewers they were "not making this up," according to the lawsuit.


"It appears to me that Fox News acted in a grossly irresponsible way and took some information that was really not very plausible, did not do any substantial fact-checking, and put it out as hard news," Kubetz said.


Levesque said he was overwhelmed for days with phone calls and hate mail, including threatening calls to his home.


Fox did a brief on-air retraction, but Levesque called it unsatisfactory. A Fox News spokesman in New York said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

Sixty Years After World War II