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| Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives |
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PREVENTING NUCLEAR TERRORISM -- IS BUSH UP TO THE TASK? GEORGE BUSH: We busted the A.Q. Khan network... JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, ... if you are elected, the single most serious threat you believe... is nuclear proliferation? BUSH: In the hands of a terrorist enemy. Presidential Debate, September 30, 2004 In Thursday's presidential debate, George Bush ended up playing me-too when he seconded John Kerry on the danger of nuclear proliferation. Trouble is, the number one proliferator -- A.Q. Khan -- has yet to be questioned and Bush seems too shy to ask. Bush's predilection for shock-and-awe might be related to his inability to focus on details. But when it comes to counter-proliferation policy and its application there's no escaping those darned details and all that damn complexity. It's really, really hard work -- a task that may be altogether beyond the intellectual capabilities of the current president. And in case anyone thinks that the danger of nuclear terrorism is just speculative, it was reported last week that a man had been detained in the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan attempting to sell nuclear bomb-grade plutonium on the black market. Bush can't let Musharraf off the hook Lead Editorial, Chicago Tribune (via Daily Times), September 30, 2004 The hunt for Osama Bin Laden was Topic 1 last week when Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf met with President Bush at the White House. The two leaders discussed other things, including Musharraf's efforts to retain his post as chief of the army. But apparently one thing that failed to rank high on the agenda was the threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons. To be specific, Bush reportedly didn't even try to persuade Musharraf to allow US or International Atomic Energy Agency officials a crack at interviewing Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program and one of the world's most brazen nuclear profiteers. Earlier this year, Khan's underground nuclear bazaar - dubbed the "nuclear Wal-Mart" by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei - was uncloaked, solving the mystery of how North Korea, Iran and Libya acquired so much nuclear technology so fast. The answer: Khan's network sold it to them. Khan, revered in his homeland as the father of the Pakistan bomb, confessed and was instantly pardoned by Musharraf. The Pakistan president apparently feared that his grip on power could be undermined by a long investigation and trial of a national hero. Musharraf insisted that Khan acted without government knowledge, a claim that is difficult if not impossible to believe. [complete article] The deal By Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker, March 1, 2004 On February 4th, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is revered in Pakistan as the father of the country's nuclear bomb, appeared on a state-run television network in Islamabad and confessed that he had been solely responsible for operating an international black market in nuclear-weapons materials. His confession was accepted by a stony-faced Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President, who is a former Army general, and who dressed for the occasion in commando fatigues. The next day, on television again, Musharraf, who claimed to be shocked by Khan's misdeeds, nonetheless pardoned him, citing his service to Pakistan (he called Khan "my hero"). Musharraf told the Times that he had received a specific accounting of Khan's activities in Iran, North Korea, and Malaysia from the United States only last October. "If they knew earlier, they should have told us," he said. "Maybe a lot of things would not have happened." It was a make-believe performance in a make-believe capital. In interviews last month in Islamabad, a planned city built four decades ago, politicians, diplomats, and nuclear experts dismissed the Khan confession and the Musharraf pardon with expressions of scorn and disbelief. For two decades, journalists and American and European intelligence agencies have linked Khan and the Pakistani intelligence service, the I.S.I. (Inter-Service Intelligence), to nuclear-technology transfers, and it was hard to credit the idea that the government Khan served had been oblivious. "It is state propaganda," Samina Ahmed, the director of the Islamabad office of the International Crisis Group, a nongovernmental organization that studies conflict resolution, told me. "The deal is that Khan doesn't tell what he knows. Everybody is lying. The tragedy of this whole affair is that it doesn't serve anybody's needs." Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who is a member of the Pakistani senate, said with a laugh, "America needed an offering to the gods -- blood on the floor. Musharraf told A.Q., 'Bend over for a spanking.'" [complete article] IAEA fears Brazil shopped on nuke black market - analyst By Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, September 30, 2004 The U.N. nuclear watchdog is concerned a Pakistani scientist who supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea with sensitive nuclear technology was also a supplier for Brazil, a nuclear analyst said on Thursday. Brazil dismissed the allegation as having "no coherence". "I know that they (the U.N.) are specifically worried about this," said Henry Sokolski, a former U.S. Pentagon official and currently head of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think-tank. "They are specifically worried about the Khan network being one of the sources of this programme," Sokolski told Reuters over the telephone. "I can't tell you how I know, but I know." Sokolski was referring to a nuclear black market run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, which supplied sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Several diplomats on the IAEA board of governors, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, confirmed this view. [complete article] Preventable nightmare By Graham Allison, Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2004 In October 2001, a top-secret team was dispatched to New York City to search for a nuclear bomb. According to a CIA agent code-named Dragonfire, Al Qaeda had gotten hold of a nuclear weapon produced by the former Soviet Union and had successfully smuggled it into the city. Under a cloak of secrecy that excluded even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, began a hunt for the 10-kiloton bomb whose Hiroshima-sized blast could have obliterated a significant portion of Manhattan. NEST is a SWAT team of "nuclear ninjas." When mobilized, members drop their day jobs as physicists, engineers and explosives experts to search for and dismantle weapons before they explode into mushroom clouds. Often undercover, a "sports fan" may hide his sophisticated radiation-detection equipment in a golf bag, a "businesswoman" in her attache case. If a nuclear device is found, teams compare it with NEST's catalog of existing designs and possible home-made bombs for clues about how to disarm it. But, as one member of the teams has conceded, even locating a nuclear device amid background radiation is like "looking for a needle in a haystack of needles." As NEST teams scoured New York City, Vice President Dick Cheney left Washington for a secret underground site, later disclosed to be on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. President Bush was concerned that Al Qaeda might have smuggled a nuclear weapon into the capital as well. Several hundred federal employees joined the vice president in his bunker for many weeks, preparing an alternative government should a nuclear explosion wipe out Washington. The suspected nuclear device in New York City was never found. But the threat was credible for good reasons. Did former Soviet stockpiles include a large number of 10-kiloton weapons? Yes. Could the Russian government account for all its nuclear bombs? No. Could Al Qaeda have acquired one? Yes. Could it have smuggled a nuclear weapon through border controls and into a U.S. city? Yes. In a moment of gallows humor, one official quipped that terrorists could have wrapped a bomb in one of the bales of marijuana routinely smuggled into cities like New York and Los Angeles. [complete article] Palestinians declare 'state of emergency' as Israelis kill seven more Agence France Presse (via Yahoo), October 2, 2004 The Palestinian cabinet declared a state of emergency in the Palestinian territories as Israeli troops killed another seven Palestinians in the early hours and another died of his wounds. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called on the world to end the "criminal and racist" Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which the Jewish state says is to root out militants firing homemade rockets into Israeli territory. But militants of the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas said on Saturday they would continue to fire the rockets and would target the port city of Ashkelon. [complete article] The Gazan pot is threatening to boil over By Amos Harel, Haaretz, October 1, 2004 Senior officers in the liaison office at the Erez checkpoint yesterday watched the direct broadcasts of the Arab television networks Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of the fighting in the most densely-populated place in the world. The reports, even those of three Palestinian children killed by a shell aimed at a cell that launched a missile at an IDF vehicle, failed to move the officers. The previous evening they visited Sderot and saw the blood-covered pavement after the death of two children by a Qassam rocket. When Israeli children die, the heart becomes callow to the pain of the other side. The IDF is intensifying its activity and when the area is as densely populated as Jabalya, the inevitable result is dozens of Palestinians killed, including numerous children. [complete article] Is anyone ever truly prepared to kill? By Jane Lampman, Christian Science Monitor, September 29, 2004 One dark night in Iraq in February 1991, a U.S. Army tank unit opened fire on two trucks that barreled unexpectedly into its position along the Euphrates river. One was carrying fuel and burst into flames, and as men scattered from the burning trucks, the American soldiers shot them. "To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles. But it wasn't over for him. "For the first years after the Gulf War it was tough," says the decorated soldier. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he did, the nightmares came. "I was very angry and got drunk all the time; I considered suicide for awhile." Like many young Americans sent off to war, he was highly skilled as a soldier but not adequately prepared for the realities of combat, particularly the experience of killing. Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities. [complete article] A failed "transition": The mounting costs of the Iraq war Foreign Policy in Focus, September, 2004 U.S. military casualties (wounded and killed): - Monthly average since June 28, 2004: 747 - Monthly average before the "transition": 449 Number of U.S. troops wounded in combat since the war began: 7,413 (94% occurred after May 1, 2003) Percentage of U.S. wounded unable to return to duty: 64% Iraqi soldiers and insurgents killed since May 1, 2003: 24,000 Iraqi civilians killed since March 20, 2003: 12,800-14,843 Contractor death rate: - Monthly average since June 28, 2004: 17.5 - Monthly average during the previous 14 months of occupation: 7.6 Number of civilian contractors killed: 154 Number of international journalists and media workers killed: 44 Number of insurgents in Iraq: - November 2003: 5,000 - August 2004: 20,000 Percentage of the world's population represented by countries (including the U.S.) - On original "Coalition of the Willing" list (March 2003): 19.1% - With forces in Iraq as of September 2004: 13.6% Percentage of Americans who believe that the Iraq War has worsened the U.S. image in the world: 69% [complete report] Debate reality check Bush By Tony Karon, Time.com, October 1, 2004 The Claim: President Bush says he tried diplomacy in Iraq, and went to war only when it failed. Reality Check: Numerous accounts from within the U.S. and allied governments suggest the Bush Administration had decided to invade Iraq even before it went to the UN in the fall of 2002, and had gone back to the international body only under pressure from moderates in its own ranks and from Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair. The termination of the UN inspection process had nothing to do with its progress; it was based primarily on the window of opportunity for an invasion presented by the seasonal calendar. [complete article] Kerry By Tony Karon, Time.com, October 1, 2004 The Claim: I have a plan for reaching out to the Muslim world and isolating the fundamentalists rather than allowing them to isolate us. Reality Check: Kerry has spoken of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in an aggressive PR strategy to change the Arab world's perception of the U.S. and of Israel. In reality, as the 9/11 commission concluded, the depth of U.S. support for Israel (on which there is no difference between Bush and Kerry) will be the prism through which much of the Muslim world perceives U.S. policy -- at least as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to rage. Again, it's not a question of PR or image, but of policy, and Kerry has thus far shown no inclination to change Washington's course in relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [complete article] Israel-Palestinian left out of U.S. debate By Carol Giacomo, Reuters, October 1, 2004 Many important foreign policy topics went unexplored during the first debate of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign but perhaps most unusual was the lack of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry gave the Jewish state -- America's key Middle East ally -- only one mention each during their 90-minute debate on Thursday night at the University of Miami. And in both cases, the references came in the context of achieving peace in Iraq, not the conflict between Israel and Palestinians that roils the region with no end in sight. [complete article] Israeli tanks start to reoccupy northern Gaza By Chris McGreal, The Guardian, October 1, 2004 Israeli tanks and troops yesterday began the largest reoccupation of northern Gaza since the start of the Palestinian uprising four years ago. Ariel Sharon ordered the tanks in to prevent Hamas from scuppering his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the territory and impose an emasculated state on the Palestinians. The Israeli offensive follows a Hamas rocket attack that killed two small children in the Israeli town of Sderot. Israel radio quoted Mr Sharon as telling his cabinet: "What can we do? The Jews, too, have a right to live. If this entails difficulties for the Palestinians, that is part of the price." Hundreds of soldiers backed by about 200 tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters reoccupied the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and took control of a 9km-wide area along the border. [complete article] Analysis: Reminiscent of Lebanon By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, October 1, 2004 The Israelis and Palestinians are entering the fifth year of the conflict between them on a new wave of escalation - and this time, in the Gaza Strip. And the defense establishment's prophesies that Palestinian attacks will intensify the closer the Israeli disengagement gets have come true in recent days. Political and security sources say there has been no change in the Palestinian modus operandi, but merely an accumulation of attacks that has forced Israel to mount a large-scale ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip. And so the Israel Defense Forces has set out on a mission to push the Qassam rocket firers out of range of Sderot, just as it invaded Lebanon in 1982 "to push back the Katyusha rocket launchers." The talk of "a buffer zone" and a prolonged IDF stay in the Strip are reminiscent of the security zone in Lebanon. [complete article] Hindering the helpers By Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, October 1, 2004 Recent reports that North Korea is trying to reduce the presence of foreign aid agencies in Pyongyang have highlighted the growing pressure on the isolated regime to open up. The pressure comes from two directions - inside-out and outside-in - that have come to reflect the differences between radical and cautious proponents of change. Hawkish inside-outers, who include US neo-conservatives and South Korean Christians, want to bring down the "great leader", Kim Jong-il, as quickly as possible. Their preferred method is to "squeeze" North Korea in order to encourage a mass exodus of refugees similar to that which led to the fall of the Berlin wall. Their recent successes have included the passage of a new bill through the US congress, aiming to provide financial support for refugees, and the growing number of North Korean asylum seekers flooding into embassies, consulates and international schools in China. Dovish outside-inners, on the other hand, fear that a sudden destabilisation will lead to starvation, war and economic chaos in north-east Asia. [complete article] World citizens use Web to weigh in on U.S. foreign policy By Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, October 1, 2004 Since the U.S. presidential election will affect people around the world, shouldn't everyone have a vote? A handful of Web-based groups are trying to at least give citizens of other countries a voice. "The World Speaks" is a loosely linked constellation of five international websites that discovered they had converged on the same idea: letting people talk to Americans through the Internet about the effects of U.S. foreign policy on the world. [complete article] Radiation levels prompt search By J.R. Roseberry, Washington Post, October 1, 2004 A team of Air Force and government security officials, radiation experts and military divers converged on the Georgia coast Thursday to investigate the spot where a long-lost hydrogen bomb may be resting since it was dropped from a bomber in 1958. The team dragged sensors in the water and the divers collected soil samples during the day-long search in Wassaw Sound, near the beach resort community of Tybee Island, where the Olympic sailing competition was held in 1996. The bomb, a 7,600-pound Mark 15, which has been described as a hundred times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, was intentionally jettisoned from a B-47 bomber after a midair collision with a jet fighter. [complete article] Is Bush's biggest mistake too awful to admit? By William Saletan, Slate, October 1, 2004 How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? That's what it all comes down to -- this debate, this war, this election. For all the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the awful question John Kerry posed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 is the same one hanging over us now. This time, however, Kerry isn't raising the question. His opponent, the president of the United States, is raising it. Why? Because Iraq is different from Vietnam. We were attacked on 9/11. We thought Saddam Hussein was behind it. We thought Iraq posed the next threat. We don't want to believe that we were wrong, that we've committed $200 billion and sacrificed more than 1,000 American lives in error. We can't imagine asking thousands more to die for a mistake. Bush can't imagine it, either. So, he offers himself -- and you -- a way out. Ignore the bad news, he says. Ignore the evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated. Ignore the evidence that Saddam had no operational relationship with al-Qaida. Ignore the rising casualties. Ignore the hollowness and disintegration of the American-led "coalition." If these reports are true, as Kerry suggests, then it was all a mistake. How can we ask our troops to die for a mistake? We can't. Therefore, these reports must be rejected. They must be judged not by evidence, but by their offensiveness to the assumptions we embraced when we went to war. [complete article] U.S. casualties grim cost of Iraq war By Sandro Contenta, Toronto Star, September 26, 2004 At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives. They're the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq. They're the maimed and the scarred that hospital staff believe are largely invisible to an American public ignorant of their suffering. "They have no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever," says Col. Earl Hecker, a critical care doctor who trained at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. The broken bodies move some of the hospital's military staff to question a war producing the most American casualties since Vietnam. [complete article] U.S. forces storm Iraqi town, say 94 rebels killed By Sabah al-Bazee, Reuters, October 1, 2004 U.S.-led forces stormed Samarra Friday and said nearly 100 guerrillas were killed in air strikes and street-to-street combat during a major new American offensive to wrest control of the Iraqi town. Doctors at Samarra's hospital said 47 bodies were brought in, including 11 women, five children and seven elderly men. They said ambulances could not reach many wounded as fighting, which lasted throughout the night, was still going on. A spokesman for the U.S. 1st Infantry Division said an estimated 94 insurgents were killed. He said a U.S soldier was killed during the offensive and four wounded. [complete article] U.S. bases in Iraq: sticky politics, hard math By David R. Francis, Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2004 If a new Iraq government should agree to let American forces stay on, how many bases will the US request? One, as the United States Army currently maintains in Honduras? Six, the number of installations it lists in the Netherlands. Or maybe 12? But a dozen is the number of so-called "enduring bases" located by John Pike, director of GlobalSecurities.org. His military affairs website gives their names. They include, for example, Camp Victory at the Baghdad airfield and Camp Renegade in Kirkuk. The Chicago Tribune last March said US engineers are constructing 14 "enduring bases," but Mr. Pike hasn't located two of them. Note the terminology "enduring" bases. That's Pentagon-speak for long-term encampments - not necessarily permanent, but not just a tent on a wood platform either. It all suggests a planned indefinite stay on Iraqi soil that will cost US taxpayers for years to come. [complete article] A vast arms buildup, yet not enough for wars By Tim Weiner, New York Times, October 1, 2004 Amid one of the greatest military spending increases in history, the Pentagon is starved for cash. The United States will spend more than $500 billion on national security in the year beginning today. That represents a high-water mark, and it is creating boom times in the armaments industry. Yet the military says it has run $1 billion a month short over the last year paying for the basics of war fighting in Iraq: troops, equipment, spare parts and training. The disparity between spending on the arsenals of the future and the armies of today is great, and growing. The Pentagon will spend $144 billion in the coming year researching and building weapons for future wars, another record and twice the annual costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by most independent estimates. The Pentagon says it has 77 major weapons programs under development. They include the $200 billion Joint Strike Fighter project, a fleet of next-generation aircraft; a $112 billion Army program to create networks of weapons and communications systems; and an experimental Navy destroyer, the world's first $10 billion warship. Those 77 arms systems have a collective price tag of $1.3 trillion. That is nearly twice what they were supposed to cost, and 11 times the yearly bill for operating and maintaining the American military. [complete article] Police foil plot to kidnap U.S. officials in Green Zone By Jim Michaels, USA Today, September 30, 2004 Local police are holding four Iraqis accused of plotting to kidnap two U.S. officials inside the Green Zone, a heavily fortified area that houses the U.S. Embassy. The previously undisclosed arrests early this month, investigated by Baghdad's Major Crimes Unit, are the first plot uncovered to kidnap U.S. officials inside the Green Zone, say Baghdad police and Steven Casteel, the senior U.S. adviser to the Interior Ministry. The case raises concerns about militant capabilities to penetrate U.S. and allied government facilities. "The objective of the operation was to show how mujahedin (insurgents) ... are able to strike deep inside the Green Zone," said police 1st Lt. Khalid Abbas, a counterterrorism officer. The plan was hatched by Iraqis inside the Green Zone, including an Iraqi translator who worked closely with a U.S. security official, one of the two kidnapping targets, according to investigative reports and interviews this week with police. The other target was the official's female assistant. [complete article] See also, Baghdad's Green Zone 'island' prepares for rough seas (CSM).  KERRY - Now I must drink your blood! BUSH - Here's my neck - get it over with. The debate: Kerry's message - I can be president. Bush's message - I am president. It's really hard work. This election is a damn nuisance. The problem with Bush's conviction that he's going to get re-elected is that he makes it sound like manifest destiny rather than a democratic process. This might give some of his supporters a false sense of confidence but it doesn't empower them because it doesn't underline the fact that his victory depends on their choice. Anyone who truly thinks that Bush is president because this is God's will has less reason to vote than those who regard the election as the people's choice. After the election in 2000, before the result had been declared, Bush acted as though he had won and that the re-count was a mere technicality. He's trying a similar tactic now, presumably in the hope that if his opponents think the fight is unwinnable they'll give up trying. But what Bush revealed last night is that he's scared of his opponent; scared that Kerry might be doing a more convincing job of looking presidential. Every time Bush talks about how much hard work he has to do (he repeated the phrase twelve times in the debate), he sounds irked about the need to explain himself. Instead of sounding presidential he sounds like he's claiming he's too busy to have to deal with an election. The fact is, he's using the White House as a hiding place and the more often voters witness his fear and irritation the more transparent it will become that this is not a man who believes in the democratic process. You can't defend democracy if you don't demonstrate your faith in its operation. U.S. effort aims to improve opinions about Iraq conflict By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, Washington Post, September 30, 2004 The Bush administration, battling negative perceptions of the Iraq war, is sending Iraqi Americans to deliver what the Pentagon calls "good news" about Iraq to U.S. military bases, and has curtailed distribution of reports showing increasing violence in that country. The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message. [...] White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked Tuesday about similarities between Bush's statements about Iraq and Allawi's speech to Congress last week, said he did not know of any help U.S. officials gave with the speech. "None that I know of," he said, adding, "No one at the White House." He also said he did not know if the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had seen the speech. But administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the prime minister was coached and aided by the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration. Among them was Dan Senor, former spokesman for the CPA who has more recently represented the Bush campaign in media appearances. Senor, who has denied writing the speech, sent Allawi recommended phrases. He also helped Allawi rehearse in New York last week, officials said. Senor declined to comment. [complete article] Plan would let U.S. deport suspects to nations that might torture them By Dana Priest and Charles Babington, Washington Post, September 30, 2004 The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago. The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote. The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. [complete article] Iran aide cites worse relations By James F. Smith, Boston Globe, September 30, 2004 Iran's foreign minister said yesterday his country's relations with the United States are about the worst ever, but he believes the upcoming US presidential election could open avenues for renewed dialogue, even if President Bush is reelected. At a breakfast with American editors, Kamal Kharrazi said the Bush administration's hostility toward Iran in recent years had created a climate of animosity and mistrust. Twice he cited US support of exiled Iranian opposition groups as evidence of US malice. Yet even though Bush early in his term labeled Iran part of the "axis of evil" and has stepped up accusations against Iran over its nuclear program and other issues, Kharrazi suggested that a second Bush term would not necessarily mean unending conflict. "Experience shows that a president who is in office for a second term usually becomes more realistic," Kharrazi said with a smile. [complete article] Iran backs holding Iraqi vote on time By Maggie Farley and Marjorie Miller, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2004 Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Wednesday that his nation supported holding parliamentary elections in January in neighboring Iraq even if continued violence there prevented balloting in some areas. "It won't be more secure in the spring," he said, in response to suggestions that the polling be delayed a few months until the country can be stabilized. "Elections have to be held on time." He acknowledged concerns of U.N. officials and others that some areas of Iraq -- especially the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad -- may still be too unstable for safe voting in January, but he said partial elections would be acceptable to Iran. "It is only several cities that would not be able to vote, and even in those cities, they could find a way," Kharrazi said in a separate interview Tuesday night. "This happens in many countries. Maybe they can join in the second round [of voting]. It all depends on the will of Iraq." A democratically elected government, Kharrazi said, would be perceived as more legitimate than the interim administration chosen by the United States, the United Nations and a small group of Iraqi politicians. An elected government would be "crucial" to weakening the insurgency, he said. [complete article] Israel vows open-ended operation in Gaza Daily Star, October 1, 2004 At least 24 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed in fierce battles in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday during a massive army raid which Israel vowed would be an open-ended operation. In London, meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called on Israel Thursday to stop assassinating Palestinian militants, and insisted the Palestinian Authority must rein in terrorist groups. In the single deadliest incident in a spiral of violence, an Israeli tank shell killed seven Palestinians near a school in Jabalya, Gaza's largest refugee camp, as Israeli forces thrust deep into the militant stronghold for the first time. Palestinian witnesses said the dead from the tank shell blast were all teenagers with no involvement in the heavy fighting that raged through the camp. [complete article] Just how bad is Iraq? By Farnaz Fassihi, personal email (via The Forward), September 27, 2004 [Farnaz Fassihi is the Wall Street Journal's Mideast correspondent in Baghdad. The following email was sent to friends in the US but has since been circulated widely on the Internet.] Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't .... There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second. It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come. [complete email] Comment -- In case anyone doubts that the WSJ's Mideast correspondent wrote this email, she confirmed that it was authentic when asked by The Poynter Institute's Jim Romenesko. Iraq rebel cities to be retaken in October - minister Reuters, September 29, 2004 U.S. and Iraqi forces will retake rebel-held cities in Iraq in October, Defence Minister Hazim al-Shalaan told Reuters on Wednesday. "You wait and see what we are going to do. We are going to take all these cities in October," Shalaan said. The western cities of Falluja and Ramadi, as well as some parts of Baghdad and the town of Samarra, north of the capital, are effectively controlled by insurgents. The U.S. military has previously said it will retake these areas by the end of the year so elections can go ahead as scheduled in January. U.S. commanders say they are waiting until Iraqi forces are large enough and sufficiently trained for the offensive. [complete article] Comment -- Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, has a penchant for talking tough. As I wrote in July: It seems like many of the official statements coming out of Baghdad these days need to be taken with a grain of salt. Even so, in "new Iraq," it's surprising how little attention the western media is giving to the minister of defense, Hazim al-Shalaan. A threat to "send death to Tehran's streets" sounds like a threat to fight terrorism with terrorism. Shalaan has previously said that he is willing to be tough with insurgents and "We will cut off the hands of those people, we will slit their throats if it is necessary to do so." And when he suggests that he is currently constrained by democracy but will abandon such constraints "if my people say do it now," one has to wonder, who exactly are Shalan's people? Now Shalaan boldly asserts that Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra and any other insurgent-controlled cities in Iraq will be retaken within a month. Is this just bluster or have Shalaan and Allawi actually persuaded the Pentagon to give the go ahead on a major offensive in the run-up to the US election? My guess is it's just bluster. Children massacred in Iraq bombs BBC News, September 30, 2004 Dozens of children have been killed in co-ordinated bomb blasts in Baghdad. Officials said at least 34 children were among 41 or more people killed when bombs were detonated near a water treatment plant as US troops passed by. At least 130 more were injured, many from the crowds gathered to watch an opening ceremony at the plant. Reports said a car bomb was followed by two more explosions as people rushed to help the injured. Deadly attacks were also reported elsewhere in Iraq. [complete article] Oil-rich Iraqi provinces push for autonomy By Roula Khalaf, Financial Times, September 29, 2004 Iraq's oil-rich southern provinces are considering plans to set up an autonomous region - a move that reflects their growing frustration with the central government in Baghdad. Members of the municipal council of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, have been holding talks with officials from councils in two neighbouring provinces on establishing a federal region in the south, following the example of the Kurdish north. The three provinces - Basra, Missan and Dhiqar - account for more than 80 per cent of the proved oil reserves of the country's 18 provinces and provide a large share of the national income. The talks are a political challenge to the embattled interim Iraqi government which is fighting a fierce insurgency in Sunni Arab areas, continued unrest in an impoverished Shia suburb of Baghdad and militant gangs bent on disrupting the country's reconstruction. [complete article] Comment -- This story was first reported by the Turkish newspaper, Zaman, on September 26. The Financial Times is now the first Western newspaper to pick up the story. Sounds to me like a few of the editors at the major US newspapers are asleep at the wheel. The possibility of an autonomous region of southern Iraq including 80% of the oil reserves sounds like it could be an element in a US exit strategy that would amount to saying: We secured the oil supply. If the central and western parts of Iraq go to hell, that's their problem. Let freedom reign? Oh yeah. The people of Iraq must cherish their dreams and we'll cheer them on -- from a safe distance. While there's no reason to imagine that the US is a driving force behind this move for autonomy, it's possible that it is quietly (very quietly!) being given a green light by Washington. If hope is given up that Iraq can remain united, a divide-and-rule strategy could easily be pursued by the US that would limit Iran's influence by splitting the Shia south in two. (The Shia provinces containing Najaf, Karbala and Kut fall outside the proposed area of autonomy.) US forces would then have the more manageable task of providing security for an area just over a tenth the size of Iraq. Needless to say, this is all speculation on my part. CBS cancels broadcast on Bush's use of forged Iraqi WMD documents By Patrick Martin, World Socialist, September 30, 2004 In a development that highlights the cowardice and subservience of the US media -- and suggests there is far more to the so-called "memogate" affair at CBS News than has so far been made public -- the network confirmed September 27 that it had cancelled a planned "60 Minutes" broadcast exposing the use of forged documents by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war. The program focused on documents supplied to the US embassy in Italy that allegedly confirmed Iraqi efforts to acquire large quantities of uranium in the west African country of Niger during the last years of Saddam Hussein's regime. The documents were the basis of the claim by President Bush in his State of the Union speech in January 2003 that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa, a charge the White House was later forced to retract. [...] The "60 Minutes" segment was initially slotted for broadcast in June, but was put off because of unspecified new developments, according to CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards. It was finally scheduled for the evening of September 8, but network officials decided to replace it with the report on Bush's National Guard service that included purported memos from Bush’s former commander that turned out to be bogus. That decision itself demonstrates the bankruptcy of what passes for professional journalism in the United States. CBS decided to shelve a report carefully prepared over six months, documenting systematic lying by the US government to justify an illegal war in which tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than a thousand Americans have died, and replaced it with a tabloid-style exposure of Bush's efforts to avoid combat more than three decades ago. [complete article] Earlier reports referred to in this article are Newsweek's, The story that didn't run, and Salon's, The Cowardly Broadcasting System. Freedom's just another word By Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, September 29, 2004 I can tell you the week the United States lost the war in Iraq. It was 18 months ago. Baghdad had fallen with almost no resistance. The dictator Saddam Hussein had fled. A U.S. Marine draped an American flag over the tyrant's statue and then Symbolic Saddam was dragged to the ground, proclaiming Iraq's freedom with a photo op. Freedom. What could that mean to Iraqis? Many things. What did it mean? Looting. Baghdad, which surrendered virtually intact, was soon torn apart by mobs of scavengers sacking government buildings, pillaging the great museums, ransacking the struggling hospitals, vivisecting the electrical guts of the national infrastructure just to strip copper from the wiring. Meanwhile the American soldiers on the scene stood by, and watched, and did nothing, because nobody told them to do otherwise and, anyway, there weren’t enough of them on the ground to impose order. When asked that week about the chaos sweeping Baghdad's streets, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a simple explanation. "Freedom's untidy," he said. "Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that's what's going to happen here." Iraqis are still waiting for that last part, and their hopes are fading by the day. That same week, Rumsfeld's deputy secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the man with the grand plan to remake the Middle East as a bastion of democracy, couldn't give the Senate a very good sense of how that would happen now that the great moment of liberation had arrived. "Democracy is a messy thing," he explained. Did these guys have any idea what they were talking about then? Do they now? The question's worth asking as we hear President George W. Bush repeat his mantra "freedom is winning," despite all the indications to the contrary. [complete article] Record shows Bush shifting on Iraq war President's rationale for the invasion continues to evolve By Marc Sandalow, San Francisco Chronicle, September 29, 2004 President Bush portrays his position on Iraq as steady and unwavering as he represents Sen. John Kerry's stance as ambiguous and vacillating. "Mixed signals are the wrong signals," Bush said last week during a campaign stop in Bangor, Maine. "I will continue to lead with clarity, and when I say something, I'll mean what I say." Yet, heading into the first presidential debate Thursday, which will focus on foreign affairs, there is much in the public record to suggest that Bush's words on Iraq have evolved -- or, in the parlance his campaign often uses to describe Kerry, flip-flopped. [...] The president no longer expounds upon deposed Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's connections with al Qaeda, rarely mentions the rape and torture rooms or the illicit weapons factories that he once warned posed a direct threat to the United States. In the fall of 2002, as Bush sought congressional support for the use of force, he described the vote as a sign of solidarity that would strengthen his ability to keep the peace. Today, his aides describe it unambiguously as a vote to go to war. Whether such shifts constitute a reasonable evolution of language to reflect the progression of war, or an about-face to justify unmet expectations, is a subjective judgment tinged by partisan prejudice. [complete article] Two views on war, both seen lacking By Bryan Bender and Thanassis Cambanis, Boston Globe, September 29, 2004 President Bush and Democrat John F. Kerry are arguing heatedly over the best way to stabilize Iraq, bring about democratic elections, and minimize American casualties. But specialists in Washington and Baghdad say both candidates are ignoring many of the basic realities on the ground in Iraq that will constrain the US-led occupation no matter who is in the White House next year. As he campaigns for reelection, Bush has been emphasizing the need to ''stay the course" in Iraq, where he says the situation is improving despite daily attacks on Americans and Iraqis, difficulties in training sufficient numbers of indigenous security forces, and the slow pace of reconstruction. Kerry, who in the past 10 days has sharpened his criticism of Bush's Iraq policy, says the situation in the country is worse than Bush describes and wants to put more of an international force into the country to relieve some of the burden on the United States, even though nations such as France and Russia have shown no inclination to participate. Iraq has become the key issue in the presidential race and is sure to be at the center of tomorrow night's presidential debate in Coral Gables, Fla. But officials steeped in the day-to-day handling of the postwar situation say that when it comes to the nuts and bolts of Iraq policy, many of the candidates' positions seem both similar and unrealistic. [complete article] Memo to Kerry from Europe: Help (for Iraq) is not on the way By Bruno Giussani, TomDispatch, September 29, 2004 As the series of presidential debates starts off in Florida, it is easy to guess what the candidates will say about Iraq. President Bush will repeat that things there "are going in the right direction" and reiterate his intention to "stay the course." John Kerry will describe the situation as a "crisis of historic proportions" and point to his four-point plan, outlined in a speech last week at New York University, to turn things around. The first point has now made it into his television ads as a four-word sound bite: "Allies share the burden." I am in doubt about the exact meaning that Senator Kerry gives to the word "allies." He may well be thinking of Russia or Pakistan; but if, as I suspect, he means Europe, well, here is another four-word sound bite: "That will not happen." [complete article] Catastrophic success The worse Iraq gets, the more we must be winning By William Saletan, Slate, September 28, 2004 In 1999, George W. Bush said we needed to cut taxes because the economy was doing so well that the U.S. Treasury was taking in too much money, and we could afford to give some back to the people who earned it. In 2001, Bush said we needed the same tax cuts because the economy was doing poorly, and we had to return the money so that people would spend and invest it. Bush's arguments made the wisdom of cutting taxes unfalsifiable. In good times, tax cuts were affordable. In bad times, they were necessary. Whatever happened proved that tax cuts were good policy. When Congress approved the tax cuts, Bush said they would revive the economy. You'd know that the tax cuts had worked, because more people would be working. Three years later, more people aren't working. But in Bush's view, that, too, proves he was right. If more people aren't working, we just need more tax cuts. Now Bush is playing the same game in postwar Iraq. When violence there was subsiding, he said it proved he was on the right track. Now violence is increasing, and Bush says this, too, proves he's on the right track. [complete article] IN MISSILE DEFENSE THE JOURNEY IS THE GOAL Interceptor system set, but doubts remain By Bradley Graham, Washington Post, September 29, 2004 At a newly constructed launch site on a tree-shorn plain in central Alaska, a large crane crawls from silo to silo, gently lowering missiles into their holes. The sleek white rockets, each about five stories tall, are designed to soar into space and intercept warheads headed toward the United States. With five installed so far and one more due by mid-October, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is preparing to activate the site sometime this autumn. President Bush already has begun to claim fulfillment of a 2000 presidential campaign pledge -- and longtime Republican Party goal -- to build a nationwide missile defense. But what the administration had hoped would be a triumphant achievement is clouded by doubts, even within the Pentagon, about whether a system that is on its way to costing more than $100 billion will work. Several key components have fallen years behind schedule and will not be available until later. Flight tests, plagued by delays, have yet to advance beyond elementary, highly scripted events. [...] This notion of building first and improving later lies at the heart of the administration's approach, which defense officials have dubbed "evolutionary acquisition" or "spiral development." Bush has scaled back President Ronald Reagan's vision of a vast anti-missile network and pursued a less ambitious system. At the outset, the system will be aimed only at countering a small number of missiles that would be fired by North Korea, which is 6,000 miles from the West Coast of the United States. But Bush also has funded an expanded array of missile defense projects, including land- and sea-launched interceptors, an airborne laser, and space-based weapons. So far, he has spent $31 billion on missile defense research and development, and his plans call for an additional $9 billion to $10 billion a year for the next five years. Beyond that, the administration has provided no final price tag. In 2005, the cost of missile defense will consume nearly 14 percent of the Pentagon's entire research-and-development budget. While more money has gone into missile defense under Bush than into any other military R&D project, the Pentagon has exempted the missile defense program from the traditional oversight rules meant to ensure that new weapons serve the needs of military commanders. [complete article] 4 years later: 4,342 Palestinians and Israelis have been killed By Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star, September 29, 2004 Four years ago this week, the Palestinians erupted in a spontaneous intifada against the Israeli occupation that began in 1967. While Iraq and global terrorism have captured much of the world's attention since 2001, the intifada and the wider Palestinian-Israeli struggle fester at the core of a concentric circle of conflicts and tensions that continue to spread menacingly from Palestine-Israel, to the wider Middle East, to the entire world. Focusing diplomatic and political energy on this core issue in the Middle East would pay substantial dividends in reducing tensions and active conflicts elsewhere in the region and the world. As the intifada enters its fifth year this week, two new credible reports highlight the deteriorating situation for Palestinians and the political dynamics that must be addressed to get out of this worsening cycle. A well-documented report by the information clearinghouse of Palestinian non-governmental organizations, the Palestine Monitor, provides a chilling overview of the human and economic toll of occupation and resistance - 4,342 killed on both sides. The respected independent research organization the International Crisis Group (ICG) for its part outlines the virtual chaos inside Palestinian political society in the West Bank, blaming this on both the Israeli occupation and indigenous Palestinian political paralysis. These two short but powerful reports make compelling reading, and deserve widespread consideration for what they portend if the current situation persists. [complete article] See the Palestine Monitor's report and the ICG's report. King Abdullah sees extremists getting upper hand in upcoming Iraq elections Daily Star, September 29, 2004 Extremists will have the upper hand in Iraqi elections if voting is held amid the current violence, Jordan's King Abdullah II said in an interview published Tuesday, voicing profound pessimism at the possibility of the elections being fair. Abdullah, who met with President Jacques Chirac in Paris on Tuesday, told the daily Le Figaro that "it seems impossible to organize indisputable elections in the chaos of Iraq today," but he noted that Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is determined to go ahead with the vote, scheduled for late January. "If elections take place in the current disorder, the best organized faction will be the extremists," Le Figaro quoted Abdullah as saying. "The results will reflect this advantage of the extremists. In such a scenario, there will be no chance that the situation gets better." [complete article] Truckers say it's not safe out there They contradict government's optimistic picture By Borzou Daragahi, San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2004 The last time Walid Mohammad Waij faced death on the highway, he yelled in its face. Crammed with light bulbs, flower pots and other assorted made-in-China household goods, Waij's Volvo tractor-trailer was headed toward the Syrian border when armed bandits pulled up alongside and ordered him to stop. It was his third stick-up in as many months, and Waij decided he'd had enough. "I yelled out the window at them," he recalls. "I told them, 'Even if you fire at my head, I am not going to stop.' " Luckily, the bandits fell back in search of easier prey. But for Waij, that was it. "I'm getting out of the business," said the 47-year-old. "The roads are too dangerous. Anything is better than getting killed." Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, during his visit to Washington last week, said that all but three of Iraq's 18 provinces are safe. But Iraqi truckers who traverse the country's desolate highways tell a different story. Most of Iraq's countryside -- outside the three northern provinces under the control of Kurdish militias since 1991 -- has become a lawless no-man's land, they say, where criminals rob and kill with impunity. [complete article] Italy debates the cost of freeing hostages By Sophie Arie, Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2004 Euphoria still lingers in the air after the triumphant homecoming of two Italian aid workers held hostage in Iraq. But concern intensified Wednesday that by saving the "two Simonas," Italy may have inspired a whole new phase of kidnapping in Iraq, sending a message to criminal gangs that western hostages are worth millions of dollars. Amid reports that at least $1 million was paid for the release of Simona Pari and Simona Parretta after 21 days of agonizing negotiations with their captors, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said only that the government made "a very difficult choice." But Gustavo Selva, chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee, confirmed that the two women were saved by cash. "The lives of the girls was the most important thing," Mr. Selva said in an interview with France's RTL radio. [complete article] President of Iraq says U.S. is using Israeli-style "collective punishment" By Ashraf Khalil, Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2004 U.S. forces have launched multiple offensives targeting Shiite rebels in the densely populated district [of Sadr City]. U.S. forces said a "precision strike" Monday killed four insurgents, but hospital officials said 10 people, including civilians, were killed. Tuesday's attack injured at least three people, officials at Sadr City's Jawader Hospital said. It was unclear whether any insurgents were killed or injured. In recent weeks, U.S. forces have also launched regular airstrikes on the town of Fallouja, west of Baghdad, which is controlled by Sunni Muslim insurgents. Although U.S. military operations supposedly are coordinated with Iraqi leaders, the Americans' increasing reliance on air attacks drew criticism Tuesday from the U.S.-backed interim Iraqi president. Drawing a parallel between U.S. tactics in Iraq and Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, President Ghazi Ajil Yawer said the U.S. strikes were viewed by the Iraqi people as "collective punishment" against towns and neighborhoods. Footage of injured and dead women and children being pulled from bombed buildings "brings to mind Gaza," Yawer said in an interview on CNN. Yawer's comments echo criticism of American military tactics in the spring, when members of the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council stridently protested a Marine siege of Fallouja. [complete article] CIA pessimistic about Iraq By Dana Priest and Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post, September 29, 2004 A growing number of career professionals within national security agencies believe that the situation in Iraq is much worse, and the path to success much more tenuous, than is being expressed in public by top Bush administration officials, according to former and current government officials and assessments over the past year by intelligence officials at the CIA and the departments of State and Defense. While President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others have delivered optimistic public appraisals, officials who fight the Iraqi insurgency and study it at the CIA and the State Department and within the Army officer corps believe the rebellion is deeper and more widespread than is being publicly acknowledged, officials say. People at the CIA "are mad at the policy in Iraq because it's a disaster, and they're digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper," said one former intelligence officer who maintains contact with CIA officials. "There's no obvious way to fix it. The best we can hope for is a semi-failed state hobbling along with terrorists and a succession of weak governments." [complete article] Reports in Iraq show attacks in most areas By James Glanz and Thom Shanker, New York Times, September 29, 2004 Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants. The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials. The type of attacks ran the gamut: car bombs, time bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, small-arms fire, mortar attacks and land mines. "If you look at incident data and you put incident data on the map, it's not a few provinces, " said Adam Collins, a security expert and the chief intelligence official in Iraq for Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group Inc., a private security company based in Las Vegas that compiles and analyzes the data as a regular part of its operations in Iraq. [complete article] Insurgents are mostly Iraqis, U.S. military says By Mark Mazzetti, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2004 The insistence by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and many U.S. officials that foreign fighters are streaming into Iraq to battle American troops runs counter to the U.S. military's own assessment that the Iraqi insurgency remains primarily a home-grown problem. In a U.S. visit last week, Allawi spoke of foreign insurgents "flooding" his country, and both President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, have cited these fighters as a major security problem. But according to top U.S. military officers in Iraq, the threat posed by foreign fighters is far less significant than American and Iraqi politicians portray. Instead, commanders said, loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime -- who have swelled their ranks in recent months as ordinary Iraqis bristle at the U.S. military presence in Iraq -- represent the far greater threat to the country's fragile 3-month-old government. [complete article] Two Simonas freed 'for $1m ransom' By Jack Fairweather and Bruce Johnston, The Telegraph, September 29, 2004 Two Italian women held hostage for three weeks in Baghdad were freed yesterday, amid reports that a million-dollar ransom had been paid. Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, both aid workers aged 29, were seized from their office in Baghdad on Sept 7. They arrived at the Ciampino military airport in Rome last night where they were met by relatives and friends and the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. They appeared in good health and were wearing Middle Eastern dress. Asked how they were amid an emotional reunion with their families, Miss Pari smiled and replied: "We're fine". [...] Asked if a ransom had been paid, a member of Mr Berlusconi's office skirted the issue but said: "When you're talking about hostages, there are no two cases alike. "You can't compare how the Italian government reacts to how the British Government does." Mr Berlusconi told parliament that the secret services had located their whereabouts earlier this week, but rather than risk violence, the Italian government had preferred to negotiate. [complete article] U.S. reacts calmly to N. Korea nuke claim By Barry Schweid, Associated Press (via The Guardian), September 28, 2004 The Bush administration responded calmly Tuesday to North Korean claims it has turned the plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods into nuclear weapons. Senior administration officials said they were not abandoning the six-nation talks designed to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program, even as they acknowledged negotiations will not resume this month despite previous North Korean commitments to do so. They suggested North Korea might be wooed back to the table later this year after the U.S. presidential election and after the board of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency meets in November and reviews South Korean experiments with enriched uranium and plutonium. North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su Hon disclosed Monday at the United Nations that his country had converted the spent nuclear fuel rods, saying it would serve as a deterrent to increasing U.S. nuclear threats and to prevent a nuclear war in northeast Asia. [complete article] Couldn't have said it any better himself By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, September 28, 2004 It's a political whodunit: Since Ayad Allawi delivered his address to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, foreign policy devotees have been searching for the ghostwriter of the speech, which sounded curiously familiar to American ears. The White House denies that anybody in the administration did it. Several of the usual suspects outside the administration, including former White House officials Karen Hughes, Dan Senor and David Frum, have also denied culpability. But those searching for a ghostwriter of the Allawi speech may be overthinking things. Maybe the prime minister simply went to the White House Web site and combed through some of President Bush's speeches. Consider the similarities: "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein." -- Allawi "The world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power." -- Bush "There are terrorists . . . who seek to make our country the main battleground against freedom, democracy and civilization." -- Allawi "The killers know that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror." -- Bush "It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding." -- Allawi "It's tough at times . . . but there is steady progress." -- Bush [complete article] Comment -- Whether or not George Bush and Iyad Allawi avoided any risk of contradicting each other by employing the same speechwriter is ultimately beside the point. Their respective messages are each woven out of a set of empty platitudes that just as likely pepper their discourse off the podium as they do when addressing the public. This is the language of minds untroubled by facts and of opinions unburdened by analysis. PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT Swagger vs. substance By Paul Krugman, New York Times, September 28, 2004 Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation. But what will the print media do? Let's hope they don't do what they did four years ago. [...] The Kerry campaign is making hay over Mr. Bush's famous flight-suit stunt, but for me, Mr. Bush's worst moment came two months later, when he declared: "There are some who feel like the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on." When they really did come on, he blinked: U.S. forces - obviously under instructions to hold down casualties at least until November - have ceded much of Iraq to the insurgents. During the debate, Mr. Bush will try to cover for this dismal record with swagger, and with attacks on his opponent. Will the press play Karl Rove's game by ... confusing political coverage with drama criticism, or will it do its job and check the candidates' facts? [complete article] U.S. bombs insurgent targets in Baghdad; civilian toll reported By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2004 Rising civilian deaths have put U.S. officials on the defensive. According to the Iraqi Health Ministry, nearly 3,200 Iraqi civilians have died since April in terrorist attacks and clashes between U.S. forces and insurgents. American officials say the civilian toll has been exaggerated. A senior military official called reports of civilian deaths in Fallouja "propaganda" and suggested that local hospitals had been infiltrated by insurgent forces. "We have seen pictures [of injured people] but we can't authenticate that the individuals in the hospital are in the hospital because of [a U.S.] attack that day," the official said. [complete article] Comment -- George Bush's message, when he debates John Kerry on Thursday, and the message coming from US officials in Baghdad who suggest that reports on civilian deaths are "propaganda," are each demonstrations of perception management. The US Department of Defense defines perception management thus: Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all levels to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator's objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations. This is how the Pentagon works and it's how the White House works. But the key to understanding what this means is to recognize that anyone outside the perception management system is in effect "foreign." That's why officials in Baghdad make statements which ostensibly correct misconceptions that might reside in the minds of Iraqis while actually planting doubts in the minds of Americans. That's why George Bush speaks about "the American people" as an entity for which he expresses a certain fondness yet in relationship to which he stands clearly apart. And while commentators such as Paul Krugman might hope that the substance of George Bush's statements in the debate is given sharp scrutiny by the print media, the essential message -- the message about which Bush will remain unwavering, is: I must govern. That conviction alone will likely exert far more influence than anything he does or doesn't say. It's a message he will undoubtedly convey in his swagger. And whether this gets reinforced through favorable "drama criticism" on the editorial pages of the New York Times or Washington Post is of little concern to Bush and Rove because these particular forums of analysis are unlikely to have much influence in the wider adjudication over who "won" the debate or on who will win the election. Prewar assessment on Iraq saw chance of strong divisions By Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger, New York Times, September 28, 2004 The same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said Monday. The estimate came in two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council, an independent group that advises the director of central intelligence. The assessments predicted that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict. One of the reports also warned of a possible insurgency against the new Iraqi government or American-led forces, saying that rogue elements from Saddam Hussein's government could work with existing terrorist groups or act independently to wage guerrilla warfare, the officials said. The assessments also said a war would increase sympathy across the Islamic world for some terrorist objectives, at least in the short run, the officials said. The contents of the two assessments had not been previously disclosed. They were described by the officials after two weeks in which the White House had tried to minimize the council's latest report, which was prepared this summer and read by senior officials early this month. [complete article] Progress or peril? Measuring Iraq's reconstruction (PDF format) Center for Strategic and International Studies, September, 2004 Two months after the United States transferred sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government, on June 28, 2004, Iraq remains embroiled in an insurgency, with security problems overshadowing other efforts to rebuild Iraq's fragile society in the areas of governance and participation, economic opportunity, services, and social well-being. U.S. policymakers attempt to strike a balance between promising a U.S. exit strategy and promising to stay the course. Reports of gruesome violence compete with triumphalist descriptions of success in various areas. Post-conflict reconstruction theory and practice have advanced considerably over the last few years, yet the U.S. government and the international community still lack forward-leaning, pragmatic, reliable models for measuring progress in post-conflict settings. Efforts to assess progress in Iraq have been lost in the midst of rumors on the one end and overblown lists of achievements on the other. The sources usually relied upon, from media to U.S. government generated, do not on their own tell a complete story, and often reflect underlying biases or weaknesses. The Iraqi voice has been a key missing ingredient in most discussions and assessments of Iraq's reconstruction. In this context, we set out to develop a broad-based, data-rich, multidisciplinary model for measuring progress in Iraq that has as its core the Iraqi perspective. [complete report (PDF format)] Iraqi city on edge of chaos By Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2004 Insurgents are killing and kidnapping government officials, police and Iraqi national guard members in an apparent campaign to destabilize this city, the capital of Sunni Muslim-dominated Al Anbar province west of Baghdad. The rash of attacks threatens to eliminate the interim Iraqi government's control over Ramadi, notwithstanding the presence just outside the city of thousands of U.S. Marines and Army soldiers who back the government's authority. The provincial governor's three sons were kidnapped, and released only after he resigned. More recently, the deputy governor was kidnapped and killed, his body found this month. The president of the regional university and the provincial directors of the national sewage and communications ministries have also been kidnapped, and 10 contractors working for the United States have been assassinated. Then there are the ominous posters that appeared on the walls of mosques a couple of weeks ago. Directed at Iraqi police and national guardsmen, they read, "Quit or we'll kill you." [complete article] Taking on Sadr City in a pickup truck By Steve Fainaru, Washington Post, September 28, 2004 The convoy stopped in a single-file line: a half-dozen U.S. armored military vehicles and one gray Nissan pickup truck, all of them idling in a dirt lot in the insurgent-controlled slum called Sadr City. In the pickup were five members of the Iraqi National Guard, resting up after patrolling with U.S. troops. The men sipped water in the hot midday sun. They wore bulletproof vests but no helmets as they sat in their unarmored truck. Without warning, an orange fireball engulfed the area, followed by a deafening explosion and then gray smoke that blotted out the sun. When it cleared, the Nissan and the Iraqis inside it were riddled with marble-size ball bearings that had sprayed from a roadside bomb. "They're dead! All of them are dead!" shouted an American soldier who had rushed to the vehicle. "Make sure!" shouted another. "See if any of them are moving." "They're done," said the first, turning away. "They're all done." Three Americans -- all gunners whose job requires them to stand partially exposed in the rear hatches of the bulletproof Humvees -- sustained wounds, though none that were life-threatening. Dozens of other U.S. troops on the scene escaped unharmed, thanks largely to their vehicles' armor. The blast, witnessed by a Washington Post reporter riding in an armored Humvee directly behind the Nissan on Monday afternoon, demonstrated the uneven vulnerability of U.S. forces, who are equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry and armor, and their Iraqi allies, who fight the same battles using vastly inferior equipment. [complete article] U.S. says more Iraqi police are needed as attacks continue By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, September 28, 2004 Although interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and President Bush emphasized last week that progress is being made in training Iraqi police, others say the going has been slow. A senior U.S. official in Iraq said in an interview last week that the new goal for 135,000 officers may not be reached for two more years under the best of circumstances. Officials point, among other things, to a lack of qualified personnel and appropriate training facilities. More than 750 Iraqi police officers and hundreds more recruits have been killed over the past 10 months, said the senior official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. At the same time, officials in Baghdad said such attacks on recruits haven't stemmed the flow of willing volunteers. [complete article] Comment -- George Bush has characterized this steady flow of volunteers as an expression of Iraqis' faith in their own future but there's just as much reason to see it as a sign of desperation. As he knows from his own experience, when a man can choose between enjoying the good life or risking dying for his country, those who can, usually choose the good life. As a man who rarely takes the risk of facing a tough question, George Bush should not assume that he knows the |