From Observer.Guardian.uk :
The land of the free - but free speech is a rare commodity You can say what you like in the US, just as long as you don't ask awkward questions about America's role in the Middle East
Henry Porter
Sunday August 13, 2006
The Observer
It used to be said that academic rows were vicious because the stakes were so small. That's no longer true in America, where a battle is underway on campuses over what can be said about the Middle East and US foreign policy.
Douglas Giles is a recent casualty. He used to teach a class on world religions at Roosevelt University, Chicago, founded in memory of FDR and his liberal-inclined wife, Eleanor. Last year, Giles was ordered by his head of department, art historian Susan Weininger, not to allow students to ask questions about Palestine and Israel; in fact, nothing was to be mentioned in class, textbooks and examinations that could possibly open Judaism to criticism.
Students, being what they are, did not go along with the ban. A young woman, originally from Pakistan, asked a question about Palestinian rights. Someone complained and Professor Giles was promptly fired.
Leaving aside his boss's doubtful qualifications to set limits on a class of comparative religion - her speciality is early 20th-century Midwestern artists such as Tunis Ponsen (nor have I) - the point to grasp is that Professor Giles did not make inflammatory statements himself: he merely refused to limit debate among the young minds in front of him.
This might be seen as a troubling one-off like the story involving the president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, who suggested that innate differences between the minds of men and women could be one reason why fewer women succeed in science and maths careers and was then ousted. But Giles's sacking is far more important because it is part of the movement to suppress criticism of Israel on the grounds that it is anti-semitic. A mild man, Giles seems astonished to find the battle for free speech in his own lecture theatre.
'It may be sexy to get on a bus and go to DC and march against war,' he said to me last week. 'It is much less sexy to fight in your own university for the right of free speech. But that is where it begins. That is because they are taking away what you can talk about.' He feels there is a pattern of intolerance in his sacking that has been encouraged by websites such as FrontPageMag.com and Campus Watch.
Joel Beinin of Stanford University is regularly attacked by both. Beinin is a Jew who speaks both Hebrew and Arabic. He worked in Israel and on an assembly line in the US, where he helped Arab workers understand their rights. Now, he holds seminars at Stanford in which all views are expressed. For this reason, no doubt, his photograph recently appeared on the front of a booklet entitled 'Campus Support for Terrorism'.
It was published by David Horovitz, the founder of FrontPageMag.com who has both composed a bill of rights for universities, designed to take politics (for which read liberal influence and plurality) out of the curriculum and a list of the 100 most dangerous academics in America, which includes Noam Chomsky and many other distinguished thinkers and teachers.
The demented, bullying tone of the websites is another symptom of the descent of public discourse in America and, frankly, one can easily see the attractions of self-censorship on the question of Middle East and Israel. Read David Horovitz for longer than five minutes and you begin to hear Senator Joseph McCarthy accusing someone of un-American activities.
At Harvard, a few weeks after what was called Summers's 'mis-step', a much greater row ensued when John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard published a paper called 'The Israel Lobby'. Brave because the alleged distortion of US pro-Israel foreign policy is unmentionable in American public life.
Their paper was printed only in the UK, in the London Review of Books. In America, there then followed what has been described as the massive 'Shhhhhhhhh!' Apart from the mud-slinging from sites such as Campus Watch and FrontPageMag, it has had little mainstream circulation and there has been no real debate.
I have read it several times and cannot disagree with an early point made by the authors. 'There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel's existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.' That is the crux. All Americans, to say little of the British who have been reluctantly welded to US policy, surely deserve the chance to know about the influence that lobbies such as the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) exert at times like these.
'The bottom line,' say Mearsheimer and Walt, 'is that AIPAC is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy is not debated there, even though the policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel.'
Later they say: 'The lobby's influence causes trouble on several fronts. It increases the terrorist danger that all states face, including America's European allies. It has made it impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a situation that gives extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the pool of potential terrorist and sympathisers and contributes to Islamic radicalism in Europe and Asia.'
You could add that the lobby's influence may, in the long run, be very much against Israel's interests.
That is my belief, but these things are rarely discussed in America. People look vaguely queasy when you raise the subject of the Israeli lobby, as though the only concern in American discourse is not to appear anti-semitic, a fear which, I suggest, is sometimes shamelessly played upon.
The right of people like Mearsheimer, Walt, Beinin, Giles and even Summers to say what they think must remain inviolate if we are not to lose the values the West insists its fighting for. A little boldness is called for on both sides of the Atlantic to question the pressure coming from both Jewish and Muslim quarters not to discuss issues openly because of various sensibilities.
In Britain, we should deplore with equal vehemence the temptation to give into special pleading from, for instance, the Muslim businessmen who do not want the film of Monica Ali's Brick Lane made in their area. They have no right to dictate to this ancient democracy of ours - now theirs - and so stifle free expression.
Last week, during Jon Snow's fascinating Channel 4 documentary about Muslim attitudes in this country, a woman said that British society was too decadent for her to allow her children to integrate completely. A moment's thought suggested that British democracy had much to offer over the appalling civic values found in most Muslim countries, the oppression of women in Islam, the untold domestic abuse and the tens of thousands of children sold into bonded labour in Pakistan - her husband's country of origin. Her prim separatism fails to grasp the value of our democratic institutions when set against societies run by Sharia law and so undermines them.
My view is that in America and Britain, we should think of free speech as an article of faith, as one of the ways that we define our civilisation against the forces that were to be unleashed on us this week, as well as the influences that stifle criticism of Israel and so enable the disgraceful actions in south Lebanon.
The interests of extreme proponents of Muslim and Jewish faiths combine in one way or another to assault our ancient democratic traditions and we must resist them.
Let the students like those in Douglas Giles's class ask whatever they like.
Wrap...
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Israel..Lebanon...on to Iran....
From truthout.org :
[an excerpt from article]
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081306Y.shtml
"... In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. "Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model," the government consultant said. "The Israelis told Condi Rice, 'You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that - thirty-five days.' "
There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: "If it's true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective - it was not about killing people." Clark noted in a 2001 book, "Waging Modern War," that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, "In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground."
Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, "Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians." (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)
Cheney's office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later - the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "
Cheney's point, the former senior intelligence official said, was "What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it's really successful? It'd be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon."
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top - at the insistence of the White House - and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely," he said. "It's an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.'s strictures, and if you complain about it you're out," he said. "Cheney had a strong hand in this."
The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition - including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt - that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. "But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it," the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney's office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states "in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative."
The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, "is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back."
Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. "There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," he said. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."
[cont at URL above]
Wrap...
[an excerpt from article]
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081306Y.shtml
"... In the early discussions with American officials, I was told by the Middle East expert and the government consultant, the Israelis repeatedly pointed to the war in Kosovo as an example of what Israel would try to achieve. The NATO forces commanded by U.S. Army General Wesley Clark methodically bombed and strafed not only military targets but tunnels, bridges, and roads, in Kosovo and elsewhere in Serbia, for seventy-eight days before forcing Serbian forces to withdraw from Kosovo. "Israel studied the Kosovo war as its role model," the government consultant said. "The Israelis told Condi Rice, 'You did it in about seventy days, but we need half of that - thirty-five days.' "
There are, of course, vast differences between Lebanon and Kosovo. Clark, who retired from the military in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for the Presidency in 2004, took issue with the analogy: "If it's true that the Israeli campaign is based on the American approach in Kosovo, then it missed the point. Ours was to use force to obtain a diplomatic objective - it was not about killing people." Clark noted in a 2001 book, "Waging Modern War," that it was the threat of a possible ground invasion as well as the bombing that forced the Serbs to end the war. He told me, "In my experience, air campaigns have to be backed, ultimately, by the will and capability to finish the job on the ground."
Kosovo has been cited publicly by Israeli officials and journalists since the war began. On August 6th, Prime Minister Olmert, responding to European condemnation of the deaths of Lebanese civilians, said, "Where do they get the right to preach to Israel? European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians." (Human Rights Watch estimated the number of civilians killed in the NATO bombing to be five hundred; the Yugoslav government put the number between twelve hundred and five thousand.)
Cheney's office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later - the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "
Cheney's point, the former senior intelligence official said, was "What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it's really successful? It'd be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon."
The Pentagon consultant told me that intelligence about Hezbollah and Iran is being mishandled by the White House the same way intelligence had been when, in 2002 and early 2003, the Administration was making the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. "The big complaint now in the intelligence community is that all of the important stuff is being sent directly to the top - at the insistence of the White House - and not being analyzed at all, or scarcely," he said. "It's an awful policy and violates all of the N.S.A.'s strictures, and if you complain about it you're out," he said. "Cheney had a strong hand in this."
The long-term Administration goal was to help set up a Sunni Arab coalition - including countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt - that would join the United States and Europe to pressure the ruling Shiite mullahs in Iran. "But the thought behind that plan was that Israel would defeat Hezbollah, not lose to it," the consultant with close ties to Israel said. Some officials in Cheney's office and at the N.S.C. had become convinced, on the basis of private talks, that those nations would moderate their public criticism of Israel and blame Hezbollah for creating the crisis that led to war. Although they did so at first, they shifted their position in the wake of public protests in their countries about the Israeli bombing. The White House was clearly disappointed when, late last month, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, came to Washington and, at a meeting with Bush, called for the President to intervene immediately to end the war. The Washington Post reported that Washington had hoped to enlist moderate Arab states "in an effort to pressure Syria and Iran to rein in Hezbollah, but the Saudi move . . . seemed to cloud that initiative."
The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, "is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back."
Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. "There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," he said. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."
[cont at URL above]
Wrap...
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Israel vs Hizbollah...
http://noquarter.typepad.com
/my_weblog/2006/08/hezbollah_as_ro.html#more
Very very interesting analysis/conversation at the above site concerning the UN
cease fire that's supposed to go into effect at 5AM Monday morning.
Wrap...
/my_weblog/2006/08/hezbollah_as_ro.html#more
Very very interesting analysis/conversation at the above site concerning the UN
cease fire that's supposed to go into effect at 5AM Monday morning.
Wrap...
Ashcroft making $$$ from Homeland Sec deals....
From Washington Post via truthout.org :
Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche
By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post
Saturday 12 August 2006
Ex-attorney general helps firms get homeland security deals.
Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.
Nearly two years after he left the Justice Department for a glass-and-marble office tower six blocks away, Ashcroft is building a lucrative consulting company helping security and other firms find business with federal agencies. Federal spending on homeland security is expected to reach nearly $60 billion in fiscal 2007, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
"It's a continuation of the aspiration I have that our nation have access to the best possible resources to fight terror, whether domestic or international," Ashcroft, founder of the Ashcroft Group LLC, said during a phone interview from his 150-acre cattle farm in rural Missouri, where he was spending a working vacation.
During his tenure, Ashcroft championed expanded federal powers to conduct surveillance in counterterrorism investigations. Now, he said, he wants the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to be aided by the tech world's "best of breed."
In all, Ashcroft's firm has 30 clients, many of which make products or technology aimed at homeland security, and about a third of which the firm has not disclosed, to protect client confidentiality. The firm also has equity stakes in eight client companies, a trend the company plans to continue as it gradually turns its focus toward venture capital.
Privacy experts and civil libertarians, who battled Ashcroft's policies to enlarge surveillance powers, warned that the types of businesses promoted by the former attorney general and other lobbyists are fast becoming a de facto branch of the government, beyond traditional oversight. They question whether the security offered by these firms, some of which specialize in analysis of government and private data, is balanced by adequate protection for civil liberties.
In an era of unprecedented collection and sharing of data between the government and the private sector, "we need checks and balances to match that paradigm shift," said Peter Swire, who served as a privacy counselor for the Clinton administration and now teaches law at Ohio State University.
Ashcroft's client list includes Nanodetex Corp. in New Mexico, which offers technology that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax or liquid explosives such as the type authorities say a group of terror suspects planned to use to blow up passenger jets between Britain and the United States. Another is Exegy Inc., a Missouri firm that does high-speed data mining.
Innova Holdings Inc. makes software that can remotely command robots and drones, or unmanned vehicles, the sort that police borders or fly above the mountains and valleys of Pakistan and Afghanistan searching for al-Qaeda cells. The company, which signed with Ashcroft's firm last week, has developed a technology for robots that will undertake a NASA repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Still another client is Dulles Research LLC, a small Northern Virginia firm that claims its technology can detect illicit networks like the group of men who went on to hijack four planes on Sept. 11, 2001. The firm says its technology detects the threat of terrorist behavior by analyzing people's actions -- not their identities, an effort to safeguard individuals' privacy.
"What network-analysis technology does is not look at the individual, but rather at the gravity and weight of relationships between people who appear to be doing something harmful to our interests or in opposition to the law," said Drew Eginton, Dulles Research's founder and chief executive.
For instance, he said, out of a data set that includes transactions of 20 million people with one another, "What you're looking for are the seven people who are doing something normal people don't do, simultaneously buying tickets to the same town with money orders, or sequentially visiting the same place one month apart using airline tickets that were paid with cash, or switching cellphones and every 60 days placing a 10-second voice mail to a person who went to that individual's school in Malaysia. We're looking for these very shadowy and unusual interactions that, based on a prior statistical case, predict the likelihood of trouble."
Behavioral pattern analysis has a good track record in the world of credit card fraud, where "millions" of transactions can be analyzed to extract patterns of illicit behavior, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The problem with detecting terrorist patterns of behavior is that there are not millions of terrorist transactions that can be analyzed on which to base a reliable model, he said.
What is the recourse, Dempsey asked, for people who are wrongly identified and targeted?
But Eginton said the point of using statistical analysis is to avoid the "false positive."
"We do not have a mature and complete mathematical understanding of what these people and networks will do," he said. "But we do have an understanding."
Another Ashcroft client is ChoicePoint Inc., a data marketer that gathers public records and sells access to them. Though the company already had a contract with the Justice Department dating to 1998, last year it signed on with Ashcroft's firm to help it connect with "the right people within the agencies who could match up our capabilities with their needs," said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer.
When it comes to privacy, Ashcroft, a 54-year-old Republican and former U.S. senator and Missouri governor, said there are "real reasons" why the government should not be in the business of warehousing information. "The private sector does a better job of maintaining and developing information," he said. Another reason, he said, is Americans "don't want government to have access to any more information than necessary."
The Ashcroft Group complies with federal disclosure rules, Ashcroft said. It has disclosed the identities of 17 companies and two trade groups that it represents before Congress or the executive branch. The other clients, for which the firm does not do government work, are covered by non-disclosure agreements.
The firm reported receiving $1.4 million in lobbying fees in the past six months. But that is a small fraction of its earnings. It offers strategic consulting and is set to launch a service to help companies prevent and clean up data breaches.
These days, Ashcroft, whose forthcoming book discusses his experience as attorney general, is relaxed and energized. "Ninety percent" of the people who approach him, he said, thank him for his service. "I think that people have the sense," he said, "that regardless of whether they agree with me or not, they knew that I was doing what I thought I ought to do."
--------
Staff researchers Richard Drezen and Robert Lyford contributed to this report.
Wrap...
Ashcroft Finds Private-Sector Niche
By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post
Saturday 12 August 2006
Ex-attorney general helps firms get homeland security deals.
Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.
Nearly two years after he left the Justice Department for a glass-and-marble office tower six blocks away, Ashcroft is building a lucrative consulting company helping security and other firms find business with federal agencies. Federal spending on homeland security is expected to reach nearly $60 billion in fiscal 2007, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
"It's a continuation of the aspiration I have that our nation have access to the best possible resources to fight terror, whether domestic or international," Ashcroft, founder of the Ashcroft Group LLC, said during a phone interview from his 150-acre cattle farm in rural Missouri, where he was spending a working vacation.
During his tenure, Ashcroft championed expanded federal powers to conduct surveillance in counterterrorism investigations. Now, he said, he wants the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to be aided by the tech world's "best of breed."
In all, Ashcroft's firm has 30 clients, many of which make products or technology aimed at homeland security, and about a third of which the firm has not disclosed, to protect client confidentiality. The firm also has equity stakes in eight client companies, a trend the company plans to continue as it gradually turns its focus toward venture capital.
Privacy experts and civil libertarians, who battled Ashcroft's policies to enlarge surveillance powers, warned that the types of businesses promoted by the former attorney general and other lobbyists are fast becoming a de facto branch of the government, beyond traditional oversight. They question whether the security offered by these firms, some of which specialize in analysis of government and private data, is balanced by adequate protection for civil liberties.
In an era of unprecedented collection and sharing of data between the government and the private sector, "we need checks and balances to match that paradigm shift," said Peter Swire, who served as a privacy counselor for the Clinton administration and now teaches law at Ohio State University.
Ashcroft's client list includes Nanodetex Corp. in New Mexico, which offers technology that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax or liquid explosives such as the type authorities say a group of terror suspects planned to use to blow up passenger jets between Britain and the United States. Another is Exegy Inc., a Missouri firm that does high-speed data mining.
Innova Holdings Inc. makes software that can remotely command robots and drones, or unmanned vehicles, the sort that police borders or fly above the mountains and valleys of Pakistan and Afghanistan searching for al-Qaeda cells. The company, which signed with Ashcroft's firm last week, has developed a technology for robots that will undertake a NASA repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Still another client is Dulles Research LLC, a small Northern Virginia firm that claims its technology can detect illicit networks like the group of men who went on to hijack four planes on Sept. 11, 2001. The firm says its technology detects the threat of terrorist behavior by analyzing people's actions -- not their identities, an effort to safeguard individuals' privacy.
"What network-analysis technology does is not look at the individual, but rather at the gravity and weight of relationships between people who appear to be doing something harmful to our interests or in opposition to the law," said Drew Eginton, Dulles Research's founder and chief executive.
For instance, he said, out of a data set that includes transactions of 20 million people with one another, "What you're looking for are the seven people who are doing something normal people don't do, simultaneously buying tickets to the same town with money orders, or sequentially visiting the same place one month apart using airline tickets that were paid with cash, or switching cellphones and every 60 days placing a 10-second voice mail to a person who went to that individual's school in Malaysia. We're looking for these very shadowy and unusual interactions that, based on a prior statistical case, predict the likelihood of trouble."
Behavioral pattern analysis has a good track record in the world of credit card fraud, where "millions" of transactions can be analyzed to extract patterns of illicit behavior, said Jim Dempsey, policy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The problem with detecting terrorist patterns of behavior is that there are not millions of terrorist transactions that can be analyzed on which to base a reliable model, he said.
What is the recourse, Dempsey asked, for people who are wrongly identified and targeted?
But Eginton said the point of using statistical analysis is to avoid the "false positive."
"We do not have a mature and complete mathematical understanding of what these people and networks will do," he said. "But we do have an understanding."
Another Ashcroft client is ChoicePoint Inc., a data marketer that gathers public records and sells access to them. Though the company already had a contract with the Justice Department dating to 1998, last year it signed on with Ashcroft's firm to help it connect with "the right people within the agencies who could match up our capabilities with their needs," said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer.
When it comes to privacy, Ashcroft, a 54-year-old Republican and former U.S. senator and Missouri governor, said there are "real reasons" why the government should not be in the business of warehousing information. "The private sector does a better job of maintaining and developing information," he said. Another reason, he said, is Americans "don't want government to have access to any more information than necessary."
The Ashcroft Group complies with federal disclosure rules, Ashcroft said. It has disclosed the identities of 17 companies and two trade groups that it represents before Congress or the executive branch. The other clients, for which the firm does not do government work, are covered by non-disclosure agreements.
The firm reported receiving $1.4 million in lobbying fees in the past six months. But that is a small fraction of its earnings. It offers strategic consulting and is set to launch a service to help companies prevent and clean up data breaches.
These days, Ashcroft, whose forthcoming book discusses his experience as attorney general, is relaxed and energized. "Ninety percent" of the people who approach him, he said, thank him for his service. "I think that people have the sense," he said, "that regardless of whether they agree with me or not, they knew that I was doing what I thought I ought to do."
--------
Staff researchers Richard Drezen and Robert Lyford contributed to this report.
Wrap...
Friday, August 11, 2006
Solution tomorrow in Israel?
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc:
Special Report: Israel at Odds With Itself
The situation in Israel tonight has become extremely confused, verging on the chaotic. Government ministers, like the foreign minister and prime minister, are publicly feuding. The government is saying that the assault into Lebanon will definitely be rolling tonight while it has simultaneously implied that it intends to accept the cease-fire resolution. Leaders of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are demanding to be unleashed while leaks from some government members hint that they have no confidence in the military. The media has now surged into the battle with highly contentious columns and editorials.
There is a saying in Israel: "When the cannon roar, we fall silent." It means that, while there is a war on, politics -- and even public controversy -- are impermissible. That rule has clearly collapsed. Controversy has raged inside the government and military during wars, and some of it has been savage. But this combination of contradictory signals from the government and increasingly open battling is fairly unprecedented. The closest Israel has come to this was in 1967, between the time Egypt imposed a blockade on Israel's port of Eilat and the time Israel launched its attack on Egypt. We would judge this as worse.
There appear to be two basic and competing schools of thought. One argues that Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah without incurring unacceptable losses and re-occupying parts of Lebanon, thereby winding up in a counterinsurgency situation. The other school of thought argues that the price of accepting a cease-fire that leaves Hezbollah intact is much higher than the cost of war. The interesting thing is that Olmert himself seems to embody both views. On the one hand he is saying that the offensive is on while at the same time asserting that he is inclined to accept the cease-fire. In some ways, either position would be more comforting to Israelis than the apparent vacillation. There had been a belief that Olmert was using this as psychological warfare against Hezbollah, but the view is now spreading that it is doing more damage to the Israeli psyche than to Hezbollah's.
The cease-fire that appears to be on the table is rather extraordinary. It lacks a timetable and turns over the problem of disarming Hezbollah to the Lebanese government, which probably has neither the means nor the appetite for the job. In the unlikely event that this is achieved, French forces would then join the existing U.N. force. They would have the authority to actively suppress any breaches of the cease-fire. The argument against the cease-fire is obvious from the Israeli point of view. Olmert's view might be that accepting it means nothing since it has no time limit and the disarming of Hezbollah won't happen. Therefore, it allows Israel to accept the cease-fire without halting operations. Hezbollah has certainly achieved an extraordinary degree of success. It has fought IDF to a draw, with the Israelis clearly being concerned about the price of going up against it. It has also created an unprecedented political crisis in Israel, while its own base remains firm. Hezbollah's strategy has worked thus far, establishing it as the most effective force ever to confront the Israelis.
The pressure on Olmert from IDF is intense. But it is also intense politically. Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud, has remained virtually silent, holding off criticizing the government. He has even restrained some of his colleagues. Clearly, he does not want to destabilize the government now. Yet, at the same time, his relative steadfastness while the government tries to sort things out remains odd.
In looking at Israeli behavior -- which has become the most interesting and perplexing aspect of this conflict -- we are struck by an oddity. The Israeli leadership seems genuinely concerned about something, and it is not clear what it is. Obviously, the government doesn't want to take casualties, but this is not a political problem. The Israeli public can deal with high casualties as long as the mission -- in this case the dismantling of Hezbollah's capabilities -- is accomplished. The normal pattern of Israeli behavior is to be increasingly aggressive rather than restrained, and the government is supported. When a government becomes uncertain, it normally reverts to established patterns. We would have expected a major invasion weeks ago, and we did expect it. Something is holding the Israelis back and it is not simply fear of casualties. The increasing confusion and even paralysis of the Israeli government could be explained simply by division and poor leadership. But we increasingly have the feeling that there is an aspect to Israeli thinking that we do not understand, some concern that is not apparent that is holding them back from doing what they would normally do. Hezbollah has fought well, but it is hard to believe that the Israelis can't defeat them or that Israel can't take casualties. (Interestingly enough, Iran and Hezbollah, who are aiming for an imminent cease-fire to claim victory in this conflict, have remained silent while the discussion of a coming cease-fire intensifies.) As the pressure to act mounts and Israel doesn't act, the question of what is restraining them becomes increasingly important. We can't speculate on what their concern might be, because we don't know it. However, Olmert is acting as if he doesn't want to become too aggressive, and the reasoning is unclear.
When dawn comes over Lebanon, we might well find Israeli troops attacking in their traditional fashion, and the entire debate in Israel tonight will be of little importance. Then the question will be whether Hezbollah can continue to resist. However, while there are those who would argue that Israel's inability to decide clearly on a path is simply cover for action, our view is that the situation has gone well beyond that. Hezbollah is not being rattled at all. The Israelis are.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Special Report: Israel at Odds With Itself
The situation in Israel tonight has become extremely confused, verging on the chaotic. Government ministers, like the foreign minister and prime minister, are publicly feuding. The government is saying that the assault into Lebanon will definitely be rolling tonight while it has simultaneously implied that it intends to accept the cease-fire resolution. Leaders of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are demanding to be unleashed while leaks from some government members hint that they have no confidence in the military. The media has now surged into the battle with highly contentious columns and editorials.
There is a saying in Israel: "When the cannon roar, we fall silent." It means that, while there is a war on, politics -- and even public controversy -- are impermissible. That rule has clearly collapsed. Controversy has raged inside the government and military during wars, and some of it has been savage. But this combination of contradictory signals from the government and increasingly open battling is fairly unprecedented. The closest Israel has come to this was in 1967, between the time Egypt imposed a blockade on Israel's port of Eilat and the time Israel launched its attack on Egypt. We would judge this as worse.
There appear to be two basic and competing schools of thought. One argues that Israel cannot defeat Hezbollah without incurring unacceptable losses and re-occupying parts of Lebanon, thereby winding up in a counterinsurgency situation. The other school of thought argues that the price of accepting a cease-fire that leaves Hezbollah intact is much higher than the cost of war. The interesting thing is that Olmert himself seems to embody both views. On the one hand he is saying that the offensive is on while at the same time asserting that he is inclined to accept the cease-fire. In some ways, either position would be more comforting to Israelis than the apparent vacillation. There had been a belief that Olmert was using this as psychological warfare against Hezbollah, but the view is now spreading that it is doing more damage to the Israeli psyche than to Hezbollah's.
The cease-fire that appears to be on the table is rather extraordinary. It lacks a timetable and turns over the problem of disarming Hezbollah to the Lebanese government, which probably has neither the means nor the appetite for the job. In the unlikely event that this is achieved, French forces would then join the existing U.N. force. They would have the authority to actively suppress any breaches of the cease-fire. The argument against the cease-fire is obvious from the Israeli point of view. Olmert's view might be that accepting it means nothing since it has no time limit and the disarming of Hezbollah won't happen. Therefore, it allows Israel to accept the cease-fire without halting operations. Hezbollah has certainly achieved an extraordinary degree of success. It has fought IDF to a draw, with the Israelis clearly being concerned about the price of going up against it. It has also created an unprecedented political crisis in Israel, while its own base remains firm. Hezbollah's strategy has worked thus far, establishing it as the most effective force ever to confront the Israelis.
The pressure on Olmert from IDF is intense. But it is also intense politically. Benyamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud, has remained virtually silent, holding off criticizing the government. He has even restrained some of his colleagues. Clearly, he does not want to destabilize the government now. Yet, at the same time, his relative steadfastness while the government tries to sort things out remains odd.
In looking at Israeli behavior -- which has become the most interesting and perplexing aspect of this conflict -- we are struck by an oddity. The Israeli leadership seems genuinely concerned about something, and it is not clear what it is. Obviously, the government doesn't want to take casualties, but this is not a political problem. The Israeli public can deal with high casualties as long as the mission -- in this case the dismantling of Hezbollah's capabilities -- is accomplished. The normal pattern of Israeli behavior is to be increasingly aggressive rather than restrained, and the government is supported. When a government becomes uncertain, it normally reverts to established patterns. We would have expected a major invasion weeks ago, and we did expect it. Something is holding the Israelis back and it is not simply fear of casualties. The increasing confusion and even paralysis of the Israeli government could be explained simply by division and poor leadership. But we increasingly have the feeling that there is an aspect to Israeli thinking that we do not understand, some concern that is not apparent that is holding them back from doing what they would normally do. Hezbollah has fought well, but it is hard to believe that the Israelis can't defeat them or that Israel can't take casualties. (Interestingly enough, Iran and Hezbollah, who are aiming for an imminent cease-fire to claim victory in this conflict, have remained silent while the discussion of a coming cease-fire intensifies.) As the pressure to act mounts and Israel doesn't act, the question of what is restraining them becomes increasingly important. We can't speculate on what their concern might be, because we don't know it. However, Olmert is acting as if he doesn't want to become too aggressive, and the reasoning is unclear.
When dawn comes over Lebanon, we might well find Israeli troops attacking in their traditional fashion, and the entire debate in Israel tonight will be of little importance. Then the question will be whether Hezbollah can continue to resist. However, while there are those who would argue that Israel's inability to decide clearly on a path is simply cover for action, our view is that the situation has gone well beyond that. Hezbollah is not being rattled at all. The Israelis are.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
You're a FASCIST, Bush!
From truthout.org:
Fascists of All Varieties
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 11 August 2006
Reveling in yesterday's announcement that a plot to blow up American Airlines planes departing from British airports had been foiled by British authorities, George W. Bush leapt at the opportunity to sell his "war on terra" to whoever would listen. Using the best Madison Avenue technique money can buy, he was even ready to roll out a new slogan du jour on cue for the event. Today's phrase that pays: We are at war with "Islamic fascists."
First let me say that if British law enforcement did in fact do all of what the US mainstream press is implying they did, I thank them for finding an efficient, non-violent way to guard the public safety. "Efficient" and "non-violent" being the key words in the preceding sentence.
Efficiency and non-violence have been glaringly absent from US-British national security operations over the past five years. And that absence contributes greatly to the current atmosphere of conflict. War and a warlike mentality are espoused at every turn as the remedies of choice in dealing with all threats to Western security. As a result, Western security has suffered.
What worked in foiling the plot to destroy the airliners was good old fashioned police work and a solid investigation. Not military action. The tools used by British authorities are tools that were available on September 11th 2001. They were available the day the US invaded Iraq, and they are available today. We have always had good tools to safeguard our security. Launching massive invasions is not helping, it's adding to the rage that fuels the madness.
Fascism at Issue
Since, Mr. Bush, you have chosen to put the issue of fascism before the public, it begs a broader dialog on fascism's role in our lives today. I accept the challenge to enter that dialog. Frankly Mr. Bush, many Americans refer to you as a fascist. There really isn't any other way to state that than bluntly. Blowing up an airliner full of passengers is barbaric and completely unacceptable, regardless of the objectives of those involved, but it really doesn't fit the definition of fascism.
From Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language:
FASCISM: A system of government characterized by rigid one party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism and militarism, etc.
That's really the heart of the matter now isn't it, Mr. Bush. One might wonder if you are troubled by by the specter of fascism in your inner thoughts when you cast the accusation wildly into the public discourse.
What would the people of Iraq say about fascism if asked? But then they haven't been asked, have they - they've been liberated, of course. What would our founding fathers say about detention without due process, without end? Electronic surveillance of all Americans, without regard for the law? What is democracy if the citizens have no confidence in the integrity of their elections? Our military hurls five-hundred pound bombs all day and all night. They land on whom they land on. It is not an isolated act of madness, it is a coordinated act of state. All the while private corporations profit wildly.
Fascism, Mr. Bush, is not your strongest card. You should change the subject again.
You can send comments to t r u t h o u t Executive Director Marc Ash at: director@truthout.org.
Wrap...
Fascists of All Varieties
By Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t Perspective
Friday 11 August 2006
Reveling in yesterday's announcement that a plot to blow up American Airlines planes departing from British airports had been foiled by British authorities, George W. Bush leapt at the opportunity to sell his "war on terra" to whoever would listen. Using the best Madison Avenue technique money can buy, he was even ready to roll out a new slogan du jour on cue for the event. Today's phrase that pays: We are at war with "Islamic fascists."
First let me say that if British law enforcement did in fact do all of what the US mainstream press is implying they did, I thank them for finding an efficient, non-violent way to guard the public safety. "Efficient" and "non-violent" being the key words in the preceding sentence.
Efficiency and non-violence have been glaringly absent from US-British national security operations over the past five years. And that absence contributes greatly to the current atmosphere of conflict. War and a warlike mentality are espoused at every turn as the remedies of choice in dealing with all threats to Western security. As a result, Western security has suffered.
What worked in foiling the plot to destroy the airliners was good old fashioned police work and a solid investigation. Not military action. The tools used by British authorities are tools that were available on September 11th 2001. They were available the day the US invaded Iraq, and they are available today. We have always had good tools to safeguard our security. Launching massive invasions is not helping, it's adding to the rage that fuels the madness.
Fascism at Issue
Since, Mr. Bush, you have chosen to put the issue of fascism before the public, it begs a broader dialog on fascism's role in our lives today. I accept the challenge to enter that dialog. Frankly Mr. Bush, many Americans refer to you as a fascist. There really isn't any other way to state that than bluntly. Blowing up an airliner full of passengers is barbaric and completely unacceptable, regardless of the objectives of those involved, but it really doesn't fit the definition of fascism.
From Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language:
FASCISM: A system of government characterized by rigid one party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism and militarism, etc.
That's really the heart of the matter now isn't it, Mr. Bush. One might wonder if you are troubled by by the specter of fascism in your inner thoughts when you cast the accusation wildly into the public discourse.
What would the people of Iraq say about fascism if asked? But then they haven't been asked, have they - they've been liberated, of course. What would our founding fathers say about detention without due process, without end? Electronic surveillance of all Americans, without regard for the law? What is democracy if the citizens have no confidence in the integrity of their elections? Our military hurls five-hundred pound bombs all day and all night. They land on whom they land on. It is not an isolated act of madness, it is a coordinated act of state. All the while private corporations profit wildly.
Fascism, Mr. Bush, is not your strongest card. You should change the subject again.
You can send comments to t r u t h o u t Executive Director Marc Ash at: director@truthout.org.
Wrap...
The Conyers Report....IS IMPORTANT!!!
From Tom Paine.com:
Criminal Administration
Jennifer Van Bergen
August 11, 2006
Jennifer Van Bergen is a journalist with a law degree. Her book, The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America has been called a “primer for citizenship.” She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net.
A few months from now, after midterm elections, if Democrats regain a majority in Congress—or if Democrats regain the Executive office in three years—almost the entire Bush administration could be standing trial.
That’s if Michigan Congressman John Conyers has his way. Conyers issued a scathing, nearly 400-page report detailing crimes that Conyers’ staff found were committed by members of the Bush administration.
Recently I wrote on TomPaine.com about White House liability for war crimes. The Conyers report is both a larger inquiry—looking into crimes committed other than only war crimes—and a smaller one, because it considers largely crimes related to the invasion of Iraq.
The report notes:
If the present administration is willing to misstate the facts in order to achieve its political objectives in Iraq, and Congress is unwilling to confront or challenge their hegemony, many of our cherished democratic principles are in jeopardy. This is true not only with respect to the Iraq War, but also in regard to other areas of foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties, and matters of economic and social justice.
Included in the report are such acts as Bush’s determination to go to war before obtaining congressional authorization; misstating and manipulating the intelligence to justify that war; encouraging and countenancing torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees; and cover-ups and retribution.
The report has not gotten much media attention, which is shocking given the serious and far-reaching allegations contained in it. The violations of 26 different federal laws and regulations range from committing fraud against the U.S., making false statements to Congress, misuse of government funds, obstructing Congress, retaliating against witnesses, and violations of the War Powers Resolution, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and war crimes and torture statutes and treaties. Conyers further details violations of laws relating to leaking and misuse of classified and other government information.
All in all, the picture painted is of an executive gone awry. It is an administration that has no qualms about lying either to its own Congress or to the public that voted it into office. Actively conspiring to interfere with and obstruct proper government functioning, decision-making, or oversight is not beneath this crew. What about going to war preemptively without authorization by Congress or the War Powers Resolution? No problem for this crowd: if there is no intelligence and no justification to support the decision to send our servicemen and women into battle, make it up. If someone stands up and tells the truth—reveals the lies—get back at him by leaking to the press that his wife is an undercover CIA agent. That puts her and her colleagues in danger and harms national security? So what? Nothing is going to stop these guys from carrying out their mission of aggression. It has nothing to do with preserving American values, democracy, or peace.
There is hardly a subject area relating to Iraq where the administration did not engage in some dirty tricks. The administration, according to the report, knowingly or recklessly made false statements about links between Saddam and al-Qaida and 9/11, Saddam’s alleged efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or his acquisition of uranium from Niger or possession of chemical or biological weapons, the Niger forgeries, and the “sliming” of Ambassador Joseph Wilson and outing of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. Nor did they tell the public the truth about what was being done to detainees: unlawful deportations, “ghosting” detainees, authorizing torture and more.
The extent of the criminal enterprise is breathtakingly upsetting. Why? Because we all know every piece of it but not until the list is all put together and the laws are set forth in front of us do we see what we already knew. This is a criminal administration.
There are few stones unturned in the Conyers Report, but two important laws which Conyers does not cite are the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the general conspiracy law.
(The report actually does cite another part of the conspiracy statute, conspiracy to defraud the government, but it doesn’t cite the general conspiracy clause. Conyers does not try to pull together the substantive offenses—the actual criminal acts. However, he doesn’t need to: Any prosecutor worth his salt would jump at RICO and conspiracy charges with these sets of facts.)
Either RICO or conspiracy are appropriate where there is evidence of an agreement by more than one person (conspiracy) to commit a crime, or where there is evidence of a “pattern of racketeering activity”—which can be any act from a long list of criminal enterprise behaviors, including obstruction of justice, obstruction of criminal investigations, traveling interstate to promote a criminal enterprise, transactions involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, international terrorism, and many others.
Either RICO or general conspiracy are used when many separate, otherwise unconnected acts may be viewed as part of a larger plan by more than one person. Indeed, when one considers the acts engaged in by the Bush administration which the report claims violate the law, it is hard to avoid the impression that they constitute a criminal plan or enterprise.
While Byron York commented in the conservative National Review that the Conyers Report is the “Democrats’ Impeachment Map,” the Democrats have taken no action and do not seem inclined to do so. But the report is both less and more than an impeachment map. Impeachment does not put criminals in jail. Conyers’ report could.
© 2006 TomPaine.com
Wrap...
Criminal Administration
Jennifer Van Bergen
August 11, 2006
Jennifer Van Bergen is a journalist with a law degree. Her book, The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America has been called a “primer for citizenship.” She can be reached at jvbxyz@earthlink.net.
A few months from now, after midterm elections, if Democrats regain a majority in Congress—or if Democrats regain the Executive office in three years—almost the entire Bush administration could be standing trial.
That’s if Michigan Congressman John Conyers has his way. Conyers issued a scathing, nearly 400-page report detailing crimes that Conyers’ staff found were committed by members of the Bush administration.
Recently I wrote on TomPaine.com about White House liability for war crimes. The Conyers report is both a larger inquiry—looking into crimes committed other than only war crimes—and a smaller one, because it considers largely crimes related to the invasion of Iraq.
The report notes:
If the present administration is willing to misstate the facts in order to achieve its political objectives in Iraq, and Congress is unwilling to confront or challenge their hegemony, many of our cherished democratic principles are in jeopardy. This is true not only with respect to the Iraq War, but also in regard to other areas of foreign policy, privacy and civil liberties, and matters of economic and social justice.
Included in the report are such acts as Bush’s determination to go to war before obtaining congressional authorization; misstating and manipulating the intelligence to justify that war; encouraging and countenancing torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees; and cover-ups and retribution.
The report has not gotten much media attention, which is shocking given the serious and far-reaching allegations contained in it. The violations of 26 different federal laws and regulations range from committing fraud against the U.S., making false statements to Congress, misuse of government funds, obstructing Congress, retaliating against witnesses, and violations of the War Powers Resolution, the Whistleblower Protection Act, and war crimes and torture statutes and treaties. Conyers further details violations of laws relating to leaking and misuse of classified and other government information.
All in all, the picture painted is of an executive gone awry. It is an administration that has no qualms about lying either to its own Congress or to the public that voted it into office. Actively conspiring to interfere with and obstruct proper government functioning, decision-making, or oversight is not beneath this crew. What about going to war preemptively without authorization by Congress or the War Powers Resolution? No problem for this crowd: if there is no intelligence and no justification to support the decision to send our servicemen and women into battle, make it up. If someone stands up and tells the truth—reveals the lies—get back at him by leaking to the press that his wife is an undercover CIA agent. That puts her and her colleagues in danger and harms national security? So what? Nothing is going to stop these guys from carrying out their mission of aggression. It has nothing to do with preserving American values, democracy, or peace.
There is hardly a subject area relating to Iraq where the administration did not engage in some dirty tricks. The administration, according to the report, knowingly or recklessly made false statements about links between Saddam and al-Qaida and 9/11, Saddam’s alleged efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or his acquisition of uranium from Niger or possession of chemical or biological weapons, the Niger forgeries, and the “sliming” of Ambassador Joseph Wilson and outing of his CIA wife, Valerie Plame. Nor did they tell the public the truth about what was being done to detainees: unlawful deportations, “ghosting” detainees, authorizing torture and more.
The extent of the criminal enterprise is breathtakingly upsetting. Why? Because we all know every piece of it but not until the list is all put together and the laws are set forth in front of us do we see what we already knew. This is a criminal administration.
There are few stones unturned in the Conyers Report, but two important laws which Conyers does not cite are the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and the general conspiracy law.
(The report actually does cite another part of the conspiracy statute, conspiracy to defraud the government, but it doesn’t cite the general conspiracy clause. Conyers does not try to pull together the substantive offenses—the actual criminal acts. However, he doesn’t need to: Any prosecutor worth his salt would jump at RICO and conspiracy charges with these sets of facts.)
Either RICO or conspiracy are appropriate where there is evidence of an agreement by more than one person (conspiracy) to commit a crime, or where there is evidence of a “pattern of racketeering activity”—which can be any act from a long list of criminal enterprise behaviors, including obstruction of justice, obstruction of criminal investigations, traveling interstate to promote a criminal enterprise, transactions involving chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, international terrorism, and many others.
Either RICO or general conspiracy are used when many separate, otherwise unconnected acts may be viewed as part of a larger plan by more than one person. Indeed, when one considers the acts engaged in by the Bush administration which the report claims violate the law, it is hard to avoid the impression that they constitute a criminal plan or enterprise.
While Byron York commented in the conservative National Review that the Conyers Report is the “Democrats’ Impeachment Map,” the Democrats have taken no action and do not seem inclined to do so. But the report is both less and more than an impeachment map. Impeachment does not put criminals in jail. Conyers’ report could.
© 2006 TomPaine.com
Wrap...
Thursday, August 10, 2006
And over San Diego's airport....
From a writer:
A small plane just flew over San Diego International Airport and took a good amount of time to skywrite BOO! directly over the field. I can't help but think it is in response to the UK incidents. It also shows that we're still vulnerable -- believe me, San Diego is not ready for ANYTHING.
Wrap...
A small plane just flew over San Diego International Airport and took a good amount of time to skywrite BOO! directly over the field. I can't help but think it is in response to the UK incidents. It also shows that we're still vulnerable -- believe me, San Diego is not ready for ANYTHING.
Wrap...
You, me, anybody...prosecuted!
From Secrecy News:
RECIPIENTS OF "LEAKS" MAY BE PROSECUTED, COURT RULES
In a momentous expansion of the government's authority to regulate public disclosure
of national security information, a federal court ruled that even private citizens who
do not hold security clearances can be prosecuted for unauthorized receipt and
disclosure of classified information.The August 9 ruling by Judge T.S. Ellis, III, denied
a motion to dismiss the case of two former employees of the American IsraelPublic
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who were charged under the Espionage Act with illegally
receiving and transmitting classified information. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/rosen080906.pdf
The decision is a major interpretation of the Espionage Act with implications that
extend far beyond this particular case.The Judge ruled that any First Amendment
concerns regarding freedom of speech involving national defense information can be
superseded by national security considerations."
Although the question whether the government's interest inpreserving its national
defense secrets is sufficient to trump theFirst Amendment rights of those not in a
position of trust with the government [i.e. not holding security clearances] is a
more difficult question, and although the authority addressing this issue is sparse,
both common sense and the relevant precedent point persuasively to the conclusion
that the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized
receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense,"
Judge Ellis wrote (p. 53).
The provisions of the Espionage Act are not impermissibly over broad or
unconstitutional, the Judge ruled, because they are limited by the requirements
that the prohibited behavior be both knowing and willful." The government must...
prove that the person alleged to have violated these provisions knew the [restricted]
nature of the information, knew that the person with whom they were communicating
was not entitled to the information, and knew that such communication was illegal, but proceeded nonetheless."
"Finally, with respect only to intangible information [as opposed todocuments], the
government must prove that the defendant had a reason to believe that the
disclosure of the information could harm the United States or aid a foreign nation...."
"So construed, the statute is narrowly and sensibly tailored to serve the government's
legitimate interest in protecting the national security, and its effect on First Amendment freedoms is neither real nor substantial as judged in relation to this legitimate sweep,"
Judge Ellis wrote (p. 63).
Others will disagree.For example, the classified 2004 report of Maj. Gen. Antonio
Taguba on prisoner abuse Abu Ghraib prison clearly fit the court's description of
national defense information that is closely held by the government. Moreover, its
unauthorized disclosure was likely to, and did in fact, harm the United States. And yet
that disclosure also served an important national purpose in prompting a public debate
over U.S. policy on prisoner detention and interrogation.
But under Judge Ellis' new interpretation, those reporters and others who communicated
this information to the public could apparently be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Judge Ellis concluded his opinion by noting that the provisions of the Espionage Act
"have remained largely unchanged since the administration of William Howard Taft."
Technological and other changes over the past century "should suggest to even the
most casual observer that the time is ripe for Congress to engage in a thorough review
and revision of these provisions to ensure that they reflect both these changes, and contemporary views about the appropriate balance between our nation's security and our citizens' ability to engage in public debate about the UnitedStates' conduct in the society of nations."
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
Wrap...
RECIPIENTS OF "LEAKS" MAY BE PROSECUTED, COURT RULES
In a momentous expansion of the government's authority to regulate public disclosure
of national security information, a federal court ruled that even private citizens who
do not hold security clearances can be prosecuted for unauthorized receipt and
disclosure of classified information.The August 9 ruling by Judge T.S. Ellis, III, denied
a motion to dismiss the case of two former employees of the American IsraelPublic
Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who were charged under the Espionage Act with illegally
receiving and transmitting classified information. http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/rosen080906.pdf
The decision is a major interpretation of the Espionage Act with implications that
extend far beyond this particular case.The Judge ruled that any First Amendment
concerns regarding freedom of speech involving national defense information can be
superseded by national security considerations."
Although the question whether the government's interest inpreserving its national
defense secrets is sufficient to trump theFirst Amendment rights of those not in a
position of trust with the government [i.e. not holding security clearances] is a
more difficult question, and although the authority addressing this issue is sparse,
both common sense and the relevant precedent point persuasively to the conclusion
that the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized
receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense,"
Judge Ellis wrote (p. 53).
The provisions of the Espionage Act are not impermissibly over broad or
unconstitutional, the Judge ruled, because they are limited by the requirements
that the prohibited behavior be both knowing and willful." The government must...
prove that the person alleged to have violated these provisions knew the [restricted]
nature of the information, knew that the person with whom they were communicating
was not entitled to the information, and knew that such communication was illegal, but proceeded nonetheless."
"Finally, with respect only to intangible information [as opposed todocuments], the
government must prove that the defendant had a reason to believe that the
disclosure of the information could harm the United States or aid a foreign nation...."
"So construed, the statute is narrowly and sensibly tailored to serve the government's
legitimate interest in protecting the national security, and its effect on First Amendment freedoms is neither real nor substantial as judged in relation to this legitimate sweep,"
Judge Ellis wrote (p. 63).
Others will disagree.For example, the classified 2004 report of Maj. Gen. Antonio
Taguba on prisoner abuse Abu Ghraib prison clearly fit the court's description of
national defense information that is closely held by the government. Moreover, its
unauthorized disclosure was likely to, and did in fact, harm the United States. And yet
that disclosure also served an important national purpose in prompting a public debate
over U.S. policy on prisoner detention and interrogation.
But under Judge Ellis' new interpretation, those reporters and others who communicated
this information to the public could apparently be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Judge Ellis concluded his opinion by noting that the provisions of the Espionage Act
"have remained largely unchanged since the administration of William Howard Taft."
Technological and other changes over the past century "should suggest to even the
most casual observer that the time is ripe for Congress to engage in a thorough review
and revision of these provisions to ensure that they reflect both these changes, and contemporary views about the appropriate balance between our nation's security and our citizens' ability to engage in public debate about the UnitedStates' conduct in the society of nations."
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
Wrap...
News...various and sundry...
From American Progress:
Think Fast
Red: The security alert level "for commercial flights [to the United States] originating in the United Kingdom." The move to the highest level of alert was made after "Britain said it had foiled a plot to blow up flights to the United States." All other commercial flights to or from the United States will operate under orange ("high").
The Department of Transportation announced yesterday a "U.S. government computer loaded with approximately 133,000 drivers' and pilots' records - including Social Security numbers - was stolen last month."
A neocon cuts and runs. Prominent neoconservative Max Boot, writing in the Los Angeles Times, suggests "reducing U.S. forces from today's level of 130,000 to under 50,000 and changing their focus from conducting combat operations to assisting Iraqi forces."
$14.6 billion. China's trade surplus with the United States in July, its highest ever. The number is "raising doubts as to whether any conventional policy measures will be able to significantly reduce the imbalance."
The "Prince of Darkness" speaks. Joseph Steffen, a former member of the administration of Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R-MD) nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness," admitted "he teamed with the governor's appointments office in targeting workers to be terminated and that their political affiliations informed his recommendations." Steffen's admission appeared to be at odds with sworn testimony from other members of the Ehrlich administration.
Reports of "harassment and discrimination against Muslims are rising." According to a new USA Today/Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans said they "felt at least some prejudice against Muslims" and 22 percent "wouldn't want Muslims as neighbors."
Emily Hesaltine, a 20-year-old intern for the Federation of American Scientists, took two months to single-handedly improve the Department of Homeland Security's preparedness site, Ready.gov. Check out her work at ReallyReady.org.
And finally: Porn star Mary Carey is once again running for California governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I think I'm more serious now," Carey said. "As you can see I'm dressed more seriously. I've got brown in my hair because brunettes are taken more seriously." Carey plans to "barnstorm across California colleges in a 'shock the vote' tour aimed at her core constituency: young men."
Wrap...
Think Fast
Red: The security alert level "for commercial flights [to the United States] originating in the United Kingdom." The move to the highest level of alert was made after "Britain said it had foiled a plot to blow up flights to the United States." All other commercial flights to or from the United States will operate under orange ("high").
The Department of Transportation announced yesterday a "U.S. government computer loaded with approximately 133,000 drivers' and pilots' records - including Social Security numbers - was stolen last month."
A neocon cuts and runs. Prominent neoconservative Max Boot, writing in the Los Angeles Times, suggests "reducing U.S. forces from today's level of 130,000 to under 50,000 and changing their focus from conducting combat operations to assisting Iraqi forces."
$14.6 billion. China's trade surplus with the United States in July, its highest ever. The number is "raising doubts as to whether any conventional policy measures will be able to significantly reduce the imbalance."
The "Prince of Darkness" speaks. Joseph Steffen, a former member of the administration of Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R-MD) nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness," admitted "he teamed with the governor's appointments office in targeting workers to be terminated and that their political affiliations informed his recommendations." Steffen's admission appeared to be at odds with sworn testimony from other members of the Ehrlich administration.
Reports of "harassment and discrimination against Muslims are rising." According to a new USA Today/Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans said they "felt at least some prejudice against Muslims" and 22 percent "wouldn't want Muslims as neighbors."
Emily Hesaltine, a 20-year-old intern for the Federation of American Scientists, took two months to single-handedly improve the Department of Homeland Security's preparedness site, Ready.gov. Check out her work at ReallyReady.org.
And finally: Porn star Mary Carey is once again running for California governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I think I'm more serious now," Carey said. "As you can see I'm dressed more seriously. I've got brown in my hair because brunettes are taken more seriously." Carey plans to "barnstorm across California colleges in a 'shock the vote' tour aimed at her core constituency: young men."
Wrap...
al Qaeda attack on planes leaving London for US....
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc....Special Report:
Special Report: The Tactical Side of the U.K. Airliner Plot
British authorities said Aug. 10 they thwarted a militant Islamist plot to attack as many as 10 U.S.-bound passenger jets flying out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. They also said they are taking extraordinary measures at British airports, such as banning carry-on luggage on trans-Atlantic flights. Liquids such as toiletry items and drinks and some small consumer electronic devices also are being banned. Media outlets are reporting that the operation would have caused an unimaginable catastrophe.
Such an operation, however, was both imaginable and practicable. Indeed, a very similar operation -- called Operation Bojinka -- had been planned in 1994. After his participation in the first World Trade Center bombing, Abdel Basit (also know by the name on his fraudulent Iraqi passport, Ramzi Yousef) settled down in Manila, Philippines. He assembled a cell of operatives who began to plan a long list of terrorist attacks. One of those was Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously destroy 12 airliners en route to the United States from Asian cities. Basit and his cell developed a modular improvised device constructed of a doll stuffed with nitrocellulose, a detonator and a timer made from a modified Casio wristwatch. Once through screening and on the plane, the devices were to be assembled in the aircraft's restroom.
On Dec. 11, 1994, the cell tested its device on Philippine Airlines flight 434. It detonated, but did not bring down the plane. In fact it killed one only person and wounded 10 -- not the spectacular results the militants had hoped for. Based on their test results, they went back to the drawing board and decided to augment their main charge with a liquid form of an acetone peroxide explosive, which they were going to place in contact lens solution bottles. This additional quantity of a powerful explosive would be sure to give them the added punch they needed.
However, while brewing the liquid explosive they lost control of the reaction and their apartment caught fire. One of Basit's laptop computers was recovered from the apartment and the plans for Bojinka were discovered. Basit left the Philippines and fled to Pakistan, where he later tried to continue the plot. He was in the process of implementing it when one of his bombers got cold feet and turned him in.
Based on this history, and the example of convicted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, a plot like the one thwarted Aug. 10 in Britain is not far-fetched. It is very much within the capabilities of al Qaeda and smaller independent jihadist groups. Also, when viewed through this historical lens, it is easy to understand why authorities made the decision to ban liquids and small electronic items from the passenger cabins.
Indeed, nearly five years after Sept. 11 and Reid's attempted attack, civil aviation is still vulnerable. Such attacks are not that difficult to plan and execute and there are many ways that explosives can be concealed in addition to liquids. Once liquids are banned from planes, jihadists will find another alternative.
The Bojinka plan called for the plotters to board flights with multiple legs, hide the devices and then jump off before the devices activated. The current plot, however, almost certainly was designed to use suicide operatives, because of the airports and the flights -- direct to the United States -- involved. With as many as 10 flights reportedly being targeted, that meant they had identified and trained at least 10 suicide operatives.
Though that is only half the number of operatives involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, it is nonetheless a significant number of suicide operatives for a single mission. When combined with the number and types of targets involved -- al Qaeda is fixated on aircraft -- it does appear as if this current operation was connected to al Qaeda.
There are claims that the detainees are British citizens of Pakistani origin, revealing that al Qaeda's London management team was still largely intact following the July 2005 attacks against London's transit system.
Many questions remain, such as why the authorities waited as long as they did to wrap up this plot -- seemingly at the last minute.
There are two possible explanations for this: First, because this was a very big and complex operation, it took authorities longer to identify all the operatives involved. They did not want to miss any of the suicide operatives, planners or bombmakers, and leave them free to strike another day. This difficulty might have been further complicated by al Qaeda involvement, as the group practices better operational security than grassroots cells and it would have made it harder (and taken longer) for the informant and the authorities to connect all the dots and identify all the components of the organization.
The British government still is embarrassed that it was unable to identify all the elements of the 2005 Underground bombings, so there would be an incredible amount of pressure on investigators to make sure they identified all of them this time.
Second, the informant might not have come forward until the operation was well under way. The informant very possibly is one of the suicide operatives who got cold feet and changed his mind. He might not have made the decision to bail out of the operation until quite late in the game, and then it took the British government some additional time to verify the threat, identify the other elements of the cell and then swoop in and arrest them. Either way, somewhere in the attack cycle there was a serious breakdown in operational security -- and the plot was thwarted.
These arrests demonstrate the threat remains very real. One of two other factors also is in play, however. Either the British government's counterterrorism efforts are sufficiently robust as to allow them to penetrate al Qaeda operations in some instance at least, or, as we have discussed in the past, al Qaeda's operational security has been degraded. Either way, penetration is now more possible -- raising the possibility that, though al Qaeda remains a threat, it is not the strategic threat it once was.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Special Report: The Tactical Side of the U.K. Airliner Plot
British authorities said Aug. 10 they thwarted a militant Islamist plot to attack as many as 10 U.S.-bound passenger jets flying out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. They also said they are taking extraordinary measures at British airports, such as banning carry-on luggage on trans-Atlantic flights. Liquids such as toiletry items and drinks and some small consumer electronic devices also are being banned. Media outlets are reporting that the operation would have caused an unimaginable catastrophe.
Such an operation, however, was both imaginable and practicable. Indeed, a very similar operation -- called Operation Bojinka -- had been planned in 1994. After his participation in the first World Trade Center bombing, Abdel Basit (also know by the name on his fraudulent Iraqi passport, Ramzi Yousef) settled down in Manila, Philippines. He assembled a cell of operatives who began to plan a long list of terrorist attacks. One of those was Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously destroy 12 airliners en route to the United States from Asian cities. Basit and his cell developed a modular improvised device constructed of a doll stuffed with nitrocellulose, a detonator and a timer made from a modified Casio wristwatch. Once through screening and on the plane, the devices were to be assembled in the aircraft's restroom.
On Dec. 11, 1994, the cell tested its device on Philippine Airlines flight 434. It detonated, but did not bring down the plane. In fact it killed one only person and wounded 10 -- not the spectacular results the militants had hoped for. Based on their test results, they went back to the drawing board and decided to augment their main charge with a liquid form of an acetone peroxide explosive, which they were going to place in contact lens solution bottles. This additional quantity of a powerful explosive would be sure to give them the added punch they needed.
However, while brewing the liquid explosive they lost control of the reaction and their apartment caught fire. One of Basit's laptop computers was recovered from the apartment and the plans for Bojinka were discovered. Basit left the Philippines and fled to Pakistan, where he later tried to continue the plot. He was in the process of implementing it when one of his bombers got cold feet and turned him in.
Based on this history, and the example of convicted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, a plot like the one thwarted Aug. 10 in Britain is not far-fetched. It is very much within the capabilities of al Qaeda and smaller independent jihadist groups. Also, when viewed through this historical lens, it is easy to understand why authorities made the decision to ban liquids and small electronic items from the passenger cabins.
Indeed, nearly five years after Sept. 11 and Reid's attempted attack, civil aviation is still vulnerable. Such attacks are not that difficult to plan and execute and there are many ways that explosives can be concealed in addition to liquids. Once liquids are banned from planes, jihadists will find another alternative.
The Bojinka plan called for the plotters to board flights with multiple legs, hide the devices and then jump off before the devices activated. The current plot, however, almost certainly was designed to use suicide operatives, because of the airports and the flights -- direct to the United States -- involved. With as many as 10 flights reportedly being targeted, that meant they had identified and trained at least 10 suicide operatives.
Though that is only half the number of operatives involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, it is nonetheless a significant number of suicide operatives for a single mission. When combined with the number and types of targets involved -- al Qaeda is fixated on aircraft -- it does appear as if this current operation was connected to al Qaeda.
There are claims that the detainees are British citizens of Pakistani origin, revealing that al Qaeda's London management team was still largely intact following the July 2005 attacks against London's transit system.
Many questions remain, such as why the authorities waited as long as they did to wrap up this plot -- seemingly at the last minute.
There are two possible explanations for this: First, because this was a very big and complex operation, it took authorities longer to identify all the operatives involved. They did not want to miss any of the suicide operatives, planners or bombmakers, and leave them free to strike another day. This difficulty might have been further complicated by al Qaeda involvement, as the group practices better operational security than grassroots cells and it would have made it harder (and taken longer) for the informant and the authorities to connect all the dots and identify all the components of the organization.
The British government still is embarrassed that it was unable to identify all the elements of the 2005 Underground bombings, so there would be an incredible amount of pressure on investigators to make sure they identified all of them this time.
Second, the informant might not have come forward until the operation was well under way. The informant very possibly is one of the suicide operatives who got cold feet and changed his mind. He might not have made the decision to bail out of the operation until quite late in the game, and then it took the British government some additional time to verify the threat, identify the other elements of the cell and then swoop in and arrest them. Either way, somewhere in the attack cycle there was a serious breakdown in operational security -- and the plot was thwarted.
These arrests demonstrate the threat remains very real. One of two other factors also is in play, however. Either the British government's counterterrorism efforts are sufficiently robust as to allow them to penetrate al Qaeda operations in some instance at least, or, as we have discussed in the past, al Qaeda's operational security has been degraded. Either way, penetration is now more possible -- raising the possibility that, though al Qaeda remains a threat, it is not the strategic threat it once was.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
al Qaeda video-taping like mad...
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc:
Al Qaeda's Egyptian Bet
By Fred Burton
Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in yet another new videotape Aug. 5, announcing that Egyptian militant group Gamaah al-Islamiyah (GAI) has joined forces with al Qaeda. The 20-minute video -- a professionally produced tape from al Qaeda's as-Sahab media arm that aired on Al Jazeera -- included a lengthy interview with Mohammed al-Hakayma, who was identified as a leader of GAI.
Al-Hakayma, who also is known as Abu Jihad al-Masri, said GAI's move is designed to help spiritual leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman -- who is serving a life term in prison in the United States -- and to "repel the attacking enemy which is occupying the countries of the Muslims." He also indicated that a "large number" of GAI members, including "Mujahid Sheikh" Mohammed al-Islambouli, have again decided to take up arms -- meaning a return to GAI's violent roots, which were repudiated years ago by many GAI members and leaders.
The timing of al Qaeda's announcement is interesting. With Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, waging a fierce battle against the Israelis, al-Zawahiri's announcement apparently was made with the goal of raising Sunni al Qaeda's profile. (News of the video, however, was quickly drowned out by coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war.)
The announcement also seems to have been intended to signal that al Qaeda has an operational cell in Egypt, and to thrust a new regional commander into the spotlight -- in hopes of offsetting losses the organization has suffered in Iraq and other realms.
If that is the case, however, al Qaeda would seem to be making a public bet. Its credibility and sought-after image as the "vanguard" of revolutionary Islam is under threat. If the video is not followed by attacks of some significance in Egypt -- demonstrating al Qaeda's ability to expand in a strategically crucial and emotionally symbolic region -- the organization's relevance on the world stage likely will be even further diminished.
Gamaah al-IslamiyahGAI is one of two main militant Islamist groups that emerged in Egypt in the 1970s; the other was al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The groups allegedly conspired together to assassinate Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Despite the many arrests that followed al-Sadat's killing, the groups were not entirely crushed; together, they provided a foundation to which today's jihadist movement can be linked.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, GAI carried out dozens of bombings and armed attacks against tourists, the Egyptian government, Coptic Christians and businesses in Egypt. Notable among these were the attempts to kill Egypt's prime minister and the ministers of information and the interior in 1993, the thwarted plot to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo in 1995, and the Luxor attack in 1997, where dozens of tourists were killed. The group also claimed credit for strikes abroad, such as an attempt on Mubarak's life in Addis Ababa in June 1995 and the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in November 1995.
Cairo thumped down on both GAI and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1990s, arresting thousands of suspected terrorists and executing or killing others during raids. The crackdown was most effective, however, in prompting some influential militants to reconsider their strategy and tactics -- some of them, including GAI leaders, renouncing violence. (In 2005, a former GAI member made an unsuccessful run for a seat in parliament.)
In 1997, when the GAI leadership declared a cease-fire, the group split into two factions: The larger, moderate one, led by Mustafa Hamza, supported the cease-fire; the smaller, more radical faction, led by Rifai Ahmad Taha, called for a return to armed operations. This split is critical in understanding the significance of al-Zawahiri's recent announcement. It is only this second branch that has joined forces with al Qaeda -- the moderate faction has denounced al-Zawahiri's declaration and publicly renewed its commitment to nonviolent tactics.
The Radical Link
Connections between GAI's radical faction and al Qaeda are strong and, in fact, well-established -- to the point that al-Zawahiri's recent announcement hardly qualifies as news. Perceptions that the groups were linked have existed for quite some time, even though a formal alliance may not have been in place. GAI members and leaders were active in the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where they trained and fought alongside al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad and other "Afghan Arabs" such as Osama bin Laden.
Following the Soviet withdrawal, these Egyptian jihadists moved on to fighting in Bosnia, where they were implicated in numerous plots targeting American diplomatic and military targets in the Balkans and other parts of Europe. Their activities were not lost on U.S. intelligence and Balkan security services.
Several GAI members were killed in Bosnia; others were detained with the assistance of the U.S. government and returned to Egypt.
During the 1990s, GAI members also were trained at al Qaeda facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, and some -- like Mustafa Hamza -- worked for businesses bin Laden owned in Sudan. Given these ties, it is widely believed that bin Laden and al Qaeda helped organize and fund the attempt on Mubarak's life in Addis Ababa in 1995.
Ties between GAI radical Taha and al Qaeda leaders are even more firmly established, however. In 1998, when bin Laden formed the "World Islamic Front," Taha was one of the signatories to the fatwa calling for "jihad against Jews and crusaders." He also was shown in a video, released in September 2000, alongside bin Laden and al-Zawahiri as they called for the U.S. government to free GAI's spiritual leader from prison. Also, in a statement released shortly after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, Taha called for strikes against U.S. and Israeli ships passing through the Suez Canal and for attacks against U.S. military, diplomatic and civilian interests in Egypt.
The Egyptian government convicted Taha of planning and sanctioning past terrorist attacks and, in 1992, sentenced him to death. It is believed he was captured in Syria and "rendered" to Egypt shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
Reviewing the Tape
According to al-Zawahiri's Aug. 5 announcement, the militant GAI faction that joined al Qaeda is led by Mohammed al-Islambouli -- a younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, an Egyptian militant (and lieutenant in the Egyptian army) who played a leading role in al-Sadat's assassination.
Mohammed al-Islambouli has been associated with bin Laden since the 1980s, when he -- like al-Zawahiri and many other Egyptian militants -- reportedly worked with bin Laden's Maktab al-Khadamat (also known as the Afghan Services Bureau) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. GAI spiritual leader Abd al-Rahman also worked with the Maktab al-Khadamat; later, while living in Brooklyn, he headed the al-Kifah Refugee Center or “Brooklyn Jihad Office,” which funneled recruits and funds to bin Laden's organization.
Al-Islambouli is believed to have lived in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion in October 2001, and long has been thought to be part of the group of key Egyptian advisers surrounding bin Laden.
The very mention of al-Islambouli -- the brother of "the man who killed Pharaoh" -- in this recent video seems purposeful. The family name alone carries considerable significance among jihadists; for example, Chechen militants calling themselves the "Islambouli Brigades" have claimed credit for attacks against Russia. However, it is worth noting that it was al-Hakayma -- not radical GAI's topmost leader al-Islambouli -- who was featured in al Qaeda's video.
This also was done deliberately, with a specific message in mind. Al-Hakayma was shown carrying a gun -- denoting him as al Qaeda's military point man for the region -- whereas, intriguingly, al-Zawahiri was shown in the earlier portion of the video without his trademark weapon leaning against the wall.
Because al-Hakayma was interviewed in a grove of palm trees, it is plausible that he was filmed in Egypt rather than the rugged mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan. Not only would this demonstrate that as-Sahab has a great deal of freedom in its movements, but also that GAI has boots on the ground in Egypt and an operational leader who is in the country and ready to conduct attacks.
The very length of the interview with al-Hakayma signals his importance in al Qaeda's eyes. The leadership clearly is attempting to establish him as a regional commander -- much like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq, or a string of other (less notable) commanders have been in Saudi Arabia.
Implications
To date, al Qaeda has not had a presence in Egypt proper, despite the large number of senior Egyptian cadres who have been with the organization since its inception. A number of attacks in Sinai have been carried out by an al Qaeda-inspired grassroots group called Tawhid wa al-Jihad, but this group (believed to be composed of Bedouins) is very different from the GAI faction now claiming allegiance to al Qaeda.
On the whole, the network has not had an Egyptian equivalent to the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or al Qaeda in Iraq nodes.
Though it is not known how many veteran GAI members have joined with al-Islambouli and al-Hakayma in the return to militant tactics (something that al-Hakayma referred to in the video as "adhering to the original line of approach"), the group has a number of battle-tested cadres who have proven to be effective and deadly in the past. These seasoned militants could be called upon to share their experience and skills with a new generation of recruits.
That said, it must be noted that the political and social environment in Egypt has changed considerably since GIA's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. There are now a number of Islamist groups vying for the affections of young recruits. Some of these groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have decided to operate within the bounds of the political system; others, like GAI's moderate faction, are not quite sure of the strategy they want to pursue but have renounced violence as "misguided" -- a powerful condemnation in the Islamic context.
Thus, it is not at all certain that the radical faction will be able to recapture the strength and ability it displayed in the 1980s and 1990s. It also should be noted that, despite Taha's calls for strikes against American and Israeli targets in Egypt in 2000, an actual campaign against such targets never materialized. (Moreover, assuming Taha was indeed rendered to Egyptian authorities in 2001, he would have been subjected to vigorous interrogation, and any networks his factions may have had in place in Egypt prior to the arrest were, in all probability, compromised and disrupted.)
We have noted before that al Qaeda has been engaged in quite a media blitz this year -- which, with 18 recordings featuring bin Laden and al-Zawahiri alone, already is its most prolific ever for public statements. However, the downside to all of this media activity is that the repeated calls for Muslims to mobilize and conduct attacks worldwide, and in specific locations, seem to have been largely ignored. Indeed, over the past year al Qaeda has taken significant losses in Iraq (with the death of al-Zarqawi), in Pakistan (where al-Zawahiri was nearly killed), and elsewhere.
On the whole, al Qaeda has proven far more successful at issuing statements since 9/11 than in actually carrying out spectacular attacks. Now, given the symbolism and emphasis attached to the GAI announcement, al Qaeda appears to be raising the stakes for itself -- and to be doing so in public. It well might be that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are playing a strong card, from a jihadist perspective -- but if they are not, and a campaign of some significance does not materialize in Egypt, al Qaeda and as-Sahab could find themselves losing this round.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Al Qaeda's Egyptian Bet
By Fred Burton
Ayman al-Zawahiri appeared in yet another new videotape Aug. 5, announcing that Egyptian militant group Gamaah al-Islamiyah (GAI) has joined forces with al Qaeda. The 20-minute video -- a professionally produced tape from al Qaeda's as-Sahab media arm that aired on Al Jazeera -- included a lengthy interview with Mohammed al-Hakayma, who was identified as a leader of GAI.
Al-Hakayma, who also is known as Abu Jihad al-Masri, said GAI's move is designed to help spiritual leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman -- who is serving a life term in prison in the United States -- and to "repel the attacking enemy which is occupying the countries of the Muslims." He also indicated that a "large number" of GAI members, including "Mujahid Sheikh" Mohammed al-Islambouli, have again decided to take up arms -- meaning a return to GAI's violent roots, which were repudiated years ago by many GAI members and leaders.
The timing of al Qaeda's announcement is interesting. With Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, waging a fierce battle against the Israelis, al-Zawahiri's announcement apparently was made with the goal of raising Sunni al Qaeda's profile. (News of the video, however, was quickly drowned out by coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah war.)
The announcement also seems to have been intended to signal that al Qaeda has an operational cell in Egypt, and to thrust a new regional commander into the spotlight -- in hopes of offsetting losses the organization has suffered in Iraq and other realms.
If that is the case, however, al Qaeda would seem to be making a public bet. Its credibility and sought-after image as the "vanguard" of revolutionary Islam is under threat. If the video is not followed by attacks of some significance in Egypt -- demonstrating al Qaeda's ability to expand in a strategically crucial and emotionally symbolic region -- the organization's relevance on the world stage likely will be even further diminished.
Gamaah al-IslamiyahGAI is one of two main militant Islamist groups that emerged in Egypt in the 1970s; the other was al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The groups allegedly conspired together to assassinate Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Despite the many arrests that followed al-Sadat's killing, the groups were not entirely crushed; together, they provided a foundation to which today's jihadist movement can be linked.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, GAI carried out dozens of bombings and armed attacks against tourists, the Egyptian government, Coptic Christians and businesses in Egypt. Notable among these were the attempts to kill Egypt's prime minister and the ministers of information and the interior in 1993, the thwarted plot to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo in 1995, and the Luxor attack in 1997, where dozens of tourists were killed. The group also claimed credit for strikes abroad, such as an attempt on Mubarak's life in Addis Ababa in June 1995 and the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in November 1995.
Cairo thumped down on both GAI and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad during the 1990s, arresting thousands of suspected terrorists and executing or killing others during raids. The crackdown was most effective, however, in prompting some influential militants to reconsider their strategy and tactics -- some of them, including GAI leaders, renouncing violence. (In 2005, a former GAI member made an unsuccessful run for a seat in parliament.)
In 1997, when the GAI leadership declared a cease-fire, the group split into two factions: The larger, moderate one, led by Mustafa Hamza, supported the cease-fire; the smaller, more radical faction, led by Rifai Ahmad Taha, called for a return to armed operations. This split is critical in understanding the significance of al-Zawahiri's recent announcement. It is only this second branch that has joined forces with al Qaeda -- the moderate faction has denounced al-Zawahiri's declaration and publicly renewed its commitment to nonviolent tactics.
The Radical Link
Connections between GAI's radical faction and al Qaeda are strong and, in fact, well-established -- to the point that al-Zawahiri's recent announcement hardly qualifies as news. Perceptions that the groups were linked have existed for quite some time, even though a formal alliance may not have been in place. GAI members and leaders were active in the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where they trained and fought alongside al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad and other "Afghan Arabs" such as Osama bin Laden.
Following the Soviet withdrawal, these Egyptian jihadists moved on to fighting in Bosnia, where they were implicated in numerous plots targeting American diplomatic and military targets in the Balkans and other parts of Europe. Their activities were not lost on U.S. intelligence and Balkan security services.
Several GAI members were killed in Bosnia; others were detained with the assistance of the U.S. government and returned to Egypt.
During the 1990s, GAI members also were trained at al Qaeda facilities in Sudan and Afghanistan, and some -- like Mustafa Hamza -- worked for businesses bin Laden owned in Sudan. Given these ties, it is widely believed that bin Laden and al Qaeda helped organize and fund the attempt on Mubarak's life in Addis Ababa in 1995.
Ties between GAI radical Taha and al Qaeda leaders are even more firmly established, however. In 1998, when bin Laden formed the "World Islamic Front," Taha was one of the signatories to the fatwa calling for "jihad against Jews and crusaders." He also was shown in a video, released in September 2000, alongside bin Laden and al-Zawahiri as they called for the U.S. government to free GAI's spiritual leader from prison. Also, in a statement released shortly after the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, Taha called for strikes against U.S. and Israeli ships passing through the Suez Canal and for attacks against U.S. military, diplomatic and civilian interests in Egypt.
The Egyptian government convicted Taha of planning and sanctioning past terrorist attacks and, in 1992, sentenced him to death. It is believed he was captured in Syria and "rendered" to Egypt shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
Reviewing the Tape
According to al-Zawahiri's Aug. 5 announcement, the militant GAI faction that joined al Qaeda is led by Mohammed al-Islambouli -- a younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, an Egyptian militant (and lieutenant in the Egyptian army) who played a leading role in al-Sadat's assassination.
Mohammed al-Islambouli has been associated with bin Laden since the 1980s, when he -- like al-Zawahiri and many other Egyptian militants -- reportedly worked with bin Laden's Maktab al-Khadamat (also known as the Afghan Services Bureau) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. GAI spiritual leader Abd al-Rahman also worked with the Maktab al-Khadamat; later, while living in Brooklyn, he headed the al-Kifah Refugee Center or “Brooklyn Jihad Office,” which funneled recruits and funds to bin Laden's organization.
Al-Islambouli is believed to have lived in Afghanistan prior to the U.S. invasion in October 2001, and long has been thought to be part of the group of key Egyptian advisers surrounding bin Laden.
The very mention of al-Islambouli -- the brother of "the man who killed Pharaoh" -- in this recent video seems purposeful. The family name alone carries considerable significance among jihadists; for example, Chechen militants calling themselves the "Islambouli Brigades" have claimed credit for attacks against Russia. However, it is worth noting that it was al-Hakayma -- not radical GAI's topmost leader al-Islambouli -- who was featured in al Qaeda's video.
This also was done deliberately, with a specific message in mind. Al-Hakayma was shown carrying a gun -- denoting him as al Qaeda's military point man for the region -- whereas, intriguingly, al-Zawahiri was shown in the earlier portion of the video without his trademark weapon leaning against the wall.
Because al-Hakayma was interviewed in a grove of palm trees, it is plausible that he was filmed in Egypt rather than the rugged mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan. Not only would this demonstrate that as-Sahab has a great deal of freedom in its movements, but also that GAI has boots on the ground in Egypt and an operational leader who is in the country and ready to conduct attacks.
The very length of the interview with al-Hakayma signals his importance in al Qaeda's eyes. The leadership clearly is attempting to establish him as a regional commander -- much like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Iraq, or a string of other (less notable) commanders have been in Saudi Arabia.
Implications
To date, al Qaeda has not had a presence in Egypt proper, despite the large number of senior Egyptian cadres who have been with the organization since its inception. A number of attacks in Sinai have been carried out by an al Qaeda-inspired grassroots group called Tawhid wa al-Jihad, but this group (believed to be composed of Bedouins) is very different from the GAI faction now claiming allegiance to al Qaeda.
On the whole, the network has not had an Egyptian equivalent to the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula or al Qaeda in Iraq nodes.
Though it is not known how many veteran GAI members have joined with al-Islambouli and al-Hakayma in the return to militant tactics (something that al-Hakayma referred to in the video as "adhering to the original line of approach"), the group has a number of battle-tested cadres who have proven to be effective and deadly in the past. These seasoned militants could be called upon to share their experience and skills with a new generation of recruits.
That said, it must be noted that the political and social environment in Egypt has changed considerably since GIA's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s. There are now a number of Islamist groups vying for the affections of young recruits. Some of these groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have decided to operate within the bounds of the political system; others, like GAI's moderate faction, are not quite sure of the strategy they want to pursue but have renounced violence as "misguided" -- a powerful condemnation in the Islamic context.
Thus, it is not at all certain that the radical faction will be able to recapture the strength and ability it displayed in the 1980s and 1990s. It also should be noted that, despite Taha's calls for strikes against American and Israeli targets in Egypt in 2000, an actual campaign against such targets never materialized. (Moreover, assuming Taha was indeed rendered to Egyptian authorities in 2001, he would have been subjected to vigorous interrogation, and any networks his factions may have had in place in Egypt prior to the arrest were, in all probability, compromised and disrupted.)
We have noted before that al Qaeda has been engaged in quite a media blitz this year -- which, with 18 recordings featuring bin Laden and al-Zawahiri alone, already is its most prolific ever for public statements. However, the downside to all of this media activity is that the repeated calls for Muslims to mobilize and conduct attacks worldwide, and in specific locations, seem to have been largely ignored. Indeed, over the past year al Qaeda has taken significant losses in Iraq (with the death of al-Zarqawi), in Pakistan (where al-Zawahiri was nearly killed), and elsewhere.
On the whole, al Qaeda has proven far more successful at issuing statements since 9/11 than in actually carrying out spectacular attacks. Now, given the symbolism and emphasis attached to the GAI announcement, al Qaeda appears to be raising the stakes for itself -- and to be doing so in public. It well might be that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are playing a strong card, from a jihadist perspective -- but if they are not, and a campaign of some significance does not materialize in Egypt, al Qaeda and as-Sahab could find themselves losing this round.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
On the way: Television and Books....
From Publishers Lunch Weekly:
FICTION/DEBUT:
Nikita Lalwani's first novel THE SQUARE ROOT, about a young British Indian adolescent math prodigy whose parents are grooming her to attend Oxford University at age fourteen, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Jin Auh at The Wylie Agency (US).
Rights have already been sold at auction to Viking UK, Doubleday Canada and Penguin India.
Sarah Addison Allen's debut novel GARDEN SPELLS AND SOUTHERN BELLES and another book, pitched as "in the tradition of Fannie Flagg and Alice Hoffman," to Nita Taublib and Shauna Summers at Bantam Dell, by Andrea Cirillo and Kelly Harms of the Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).
UK rights to Carolyn Mays at Hodder & Stoughton, in a pre-empt, by Peggy Gordijn of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Edgar-nominated author of HOMICIDE MY OWN, Anne Argula's WALLA WALLA SUITE and another book, both featuring Quinn -- a female PI of a certain age whose hard-boiled investigations are tempered by an unorthodox and melancholic wisdom, to Fleetwood Robbins at Ballantine, by Vicky Bijur of the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
GENERAL/OTHER:
Debra Ginsberg's THE GRIFT, about a woman who, after faking her psychic abilities for years to great profit, is suddenly bestowed with the real gift of prophecy and must use it to divine which one of her vengeful clients has murdered her lover, to Sally Kim at Shaye Areheart Books, in a very nice deal, by Linda Loewenthal at the David Black Literary Agency (World).
Stephen Gallagher's THE KINGDOM OF BONES, an historical novel set in nineteenth century America and England, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, in a nice deal, by Howard Morhaim at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency (NA).
Boston Globe columnist and author of GRACEFULLY INSANE, Alex Beam's A GREAT IDEA AT THE TIME, chronicling University of Chicago gurus Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins and Robert Benton, in a light-hearted but literate style that gets at the comedy of those who compiled the canon of the Great Books of western literature. to Lisa Kaufman at Public Affairs, in a very nice deal, by Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management (world English).
TELEVISION:
Anne Ursu's THE SHADOW THIEVES, the first book of the trilogy THE CRONOS CHRONICLES, about the adventures of two pre-teen cousins who find themselves in the midst of a supernatural civil war, to Once Upon a Time Films, producing for the Disney Channel, by Josie Freedman, on behalf of Tina Wexler at ICM. Evan Spiliotopoulos will adapt.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Youngest partner in the history of Kissinger Associates and former TIME editor Josh Cooper Ramo's HAYEK'S GARDEN, a rethinking of globalization and politics, drawing upon complexity and network theory, cutting-edge economics, and politics to reveal why our leaders keep getting the world wrong -- and the hidden logic that explains everything from Hezbollah to Hong Kong, to Geoff Shandler at Little, Brown, by Amanda Urban at ICM (world).
Rights have been sold so far to Little, Brown UK; to Gerhard Riemann Verlag in Germany, in a pre-empt; and to Contact in Holland.heather.fain@hgbusa.com
THE MEDICI GIRAFFE: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power author Marina Belozerskaya's TO WAKE THE DEAD: How Cyriacus of Ancona Invented Classical Archaeology and Helped Usher in the Renaissance, about the historical moment when antiquity was just becoming a cultural force, by tracing the life of the merchant/diplomat/spy who was first to see that ancient ruins could be seen as a gateway into the past -- that the stones could be 'read,' to Alane Mason at Norton, in a very nice deal, by Rob McQuilkin at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (World).rob@lmqlit.com
MEMOIR:
From the blogger of waiterrant.net WAITER RANT, an insider's look at a waiter's life at an upscale New York area restaurant -- dubbed Kitchen Confidential at the front of the house, to Emily Takoudes at Ecco, in a pre-empt, by Farley Chase at the Waxman Literary Agency (NA).
UK:
James Scurlock's MAXED OUT, what "Fast Food Nation was to the food industry," but for the debt industry, to Carole Tonkinson at Harper, by Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group. caitlin.green@harpercollins.co.uk
Wrap...
FICTION/DEBUT:
Nikita Lalwani's first novel THE SQUARE ROOT, about a young British Indian adolescent math prodigy whose parents are grooming her to attend Oxford University at age fourteen, to Jennifer Hershey at Random House, at auction, in a two-book deal, by Jin Auh at The Wylie Agency (US).
Rights have already been sold at auction to Viking UK, Doubleday Canada and Penguin India.
Sarah Addison Allen's debut novel GARDEN SPELLS AND SOUTHERN BELLES and another book, pitched as "in the tradition of Fannie Flagg and Alice Hoffman," to Nita Taublib and Shauna Summers at Bantam Dell, by Andrea Cirillo and Kelly Harms of the Jane Rotrosen Agency (NA).
UK rights to Carolyn Mays at Hodder & Stoughton, in a pre-empt, by Peggy Gordijn of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
MYSTERY/CRIME:
Edgar-nominated author of HOMICIDE MY OWN, Anne Argula's WALLA WALLA SUITE and another book, both featuring Quinn -- a female PI of a certain age whose hard-boiled investigations are tempered by an unorthodox and melancholic wisdom, to Fleetwood Robbins at Ballantine, by Vicky Bijur of the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency.
GENERAL/OTHER:
Debra Ginsberg's THE GRIFT, about a woman who, after faking her psychic abilities for years to great profit, is suddenly bestowed with the real gift of prophecy and must use it to divine which one of her vengeful clients has murdered her lover, to Sally Kim at Shaye Areheart Books, in a very nice deal, by Linda Loewenthal at the David Black Literary Agency (World).
Stephen Gallagher's THE KINGDOM OF BONES, an historical novel set in nineteenth century America and England, to Shaye Areheart at Shaye Areheart Books, in a nice deal, by Howard Morhaim at Howard Morhaim Literary Agency (NA).
Boston Globe columnist and author of GRACEFULLY INSANE, Alex Beam's A GREAT IDEA AT THE TIME, chronicling University of Chicago gurus Mortimer Adler, Robert Hutchins and Robert Benton, in a light-hearted but literate style that gets at the comedy of those who compiled the canon of the Great Books of western literature. to Lisa Kaufman at Public Affairs, in a very nice deal, by Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management (world English).
TELEVISION:
Anne Ursu's THE SHADOW THIEVES, the first book of the trilogy THE CRONOS CHRONICLES, about the adventures of two pre-teen cousins who find themselves in the midst of a supernatural civil war, to Once Upon a Time Films, producing for the Disney Channel, by Josie Freedman, on behalf of Tina Wexler at ICM. Evan Spiliotopoulos will adapt.
HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:
Youngest partner in the history of Kissinger Associates and former TIME editor Josh Cooper Ramo's HAYEK'S GARDEN, a rethinking of globalization and politics, drawing upon complexity and network theory, cutting-edge economics, and politics to reveal why our leaders keep getting the world wrong -- and the hidden logic that explains everything from Hezbollah to Hong Kong, to Geoff Shandler at Little, Brown, by Amanda Urban at ICM (world).
Rights have been sold so far to Little, Brown UK; to Gerhard Riemann Verlag in Germany, in a pre-empt; and to Contact in Holland.heather.fain@hgbusa.com
THE MEDICI GIRAFFE: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power author Marina Belozerskaya's TO WAKE THE DEAD: How Cyriacus of Ancona Invented Classical Archaeology and Helped Usher in the Renaissance, about the historical moment when antiquity was just becoming a cultural force, by tracing the life of the merchant/diplomat/spy who was first to see that ancient ruins could be seen as a gateway into the past -- that the stones could be 'read,' to Alane Mason at Norton, in a very nice deal, by Rob McQuilkin at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin (World).rob@lmqlit.com
MEMOIR:
From the blogger of waiterrant.net WAITER RANT, an insider's look at a waiter's life at an upscale New York area restaurant -- dubbed Kitchen Confidential at the front of the house, to Emily Takoudes at Ecco, in a pre-empt, by Farley Chase at the Waxman Literary Agency (NA).
UK:
James Scurlock's MAXED OUT, what "Fast Food Nation was to the food industry," but for the debt industry, to Carole Tonkinson at Harper, by Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group. caitlin.green@harpercollins.co.uk
Wrap...
BushCo determined to have TORTURE!!!
From American Progress:
TORTURE -- ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO NARROW WAR CRIMES ACT:
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a U.S. war crimes law "passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions." The changes would mean interrogators would no longer face possible prosecution for committing "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of prisoners.
Examples of these "outrages" could include acts "such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."
"This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting'" the Geneva Conventions, said retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn. "The plan has provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the entity responsible for safeguarding the Geneva Conventions."
Two weeks ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke privately with lawmakers about the need for "protections" against prosecution for "actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire."
Wrap...
TORTURE -- ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO NARROW WAR CRIMES ACT:
The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a U.S. war crimes law "passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions." The changes would mean interrogators would no longer face possible prosecution for committing "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of prisoners.
Examples of these "outrages" could include acts "such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."
"This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting'" the Geneva Conventions, said retired Army Lt. Col. Geoffrey S. Corn. "The plan has provoked concern at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the entity responsible for safeguarding the Geneva Conventions."
Two weeks ago, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke privately with lawmakers about the need for "protections" against prosecution for "actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire."
Wrap...
Ned Lamont standing tall..Leiberman: Sore loser...
From TomPaine.org :
Triumph Of The New Moral Center
Robert L. Borosage
August 09, 2006
Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future.
Ned Lamont’s stunning upset of incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary race on Tuesday sends shock waves through the dead sea of American politics.
Lamont did the impossible—this virtual unknown beat in his own party’s primary an 18-year incumbent with universal name recognition, a $12 million campaign war chest and the support of Washington insiders, the punditry and the corporate lobbies.
His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman prided himself on being the president’s leading Democratic ally in touting the war. After his defeat, Democrats will show more backbone in challenging the current disastrous course and more Republicans will look for ways to distance themselves from the president.
Lamont’s victory was propelled by a rising tide of progressive energy—activists who are tired of losing elections to the right and disgusted with cautious politicians who duck and cover rather than stand and fight. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman exemplified those Democrats who establish their “independence” by pushing off the causes of their own party and embracing the right’s agenda. His voters didn’t abandon him; he abandoned them long ago. After his defeat, incumbents in both parties may begin to listen more closely to their voters and less avidly to their donors.
Lamont’s victory was fueled by a new generation coming into politics with a passion—and organizing over the Web. Over the past year, the Washington establishment has scorned them as extreme and mocked them for failing to win anything. After Tuesday, there will be no more “bring em on” challenges issued to the bloggers.
Most important, Lamont represents a new moral center in American politics – a challenge to the failed status quo and a demand for a new direction that a growing majority of Americans are searching for. Bring an end to the disastrous occupation in Iraq and bring the troops home with honor. Change priorities to invest in our schools, in universal pre-kindergarten, in modern infrastructure. Champion affordable national health care for all. These are not issues from the “edges of our politics,” as Lieberman suggests, but ideas whose time has come.
Lieberman, in a classic sore-loser posture, refuses to accept the verdict of the voters. The man who spent the last weeks of his campaign boasting that he was a good Democrat now announces he’ll form his own party and denounces partisan politics. The man who last week said he had gotten the message and would go to Washington to challenge the president’s policies now says he’ll go to Washington to make common cause with Republicans to “get things done.”
But his brand of “getting things done” is exactly what Americans are turning against.
He joined with the president in championing the war in Iraq—got that done.
He joined with Republicans and corporate lobbies in passing corporate trade deals that have destroyed American manufacturing and undermined wages in America—got that done.
He joined with conservatives in championing the privatization of Social Security—at least he was blocked there.
He joined with CEOs in defending off the books, stock options that gave CEOs a multimillion-dollar personal incentive to cook the books and raid pension funds—got that done.
He doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t that things aren’t getting done—the problem is that the things he was helped to produce are weakening this country abroad and undermining workers and middle-class families at home.
Lieberman’s sore loser campaign will be well financed by the corporate lobbies he has served. Since he has no new ideas to offer, he’ll run a nasty negative campaign of personal vilification against Lamont, trying to smear him before voters have a chance hear what Lamont has to say.
And that race will be a test for every Democratic leader. Will they come to support Lamont and the new energy, the new ideas, the new moral center that he represents? Or will they offer nominal support but stay away, refusing to challenge Lieberman’s low-road campaign? Their reactions will be a true measure of who is ready to fight for a new direction for this country and who is not.
© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )
Wrap...
Triumph Of The New Moral Center
Robert L. Borosage
August 09, 2006
Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future.
Ned Lamont’s stunning upset of incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary race on Tuesday sends shock waves through the dead sea of American politics.
Lamont did the impossible—this virtual unknown beat in his own party’s primary an 18-year incumbent with universal name recognition, a $12 million campaign war chest and the support of Washington insiders, the punditry and the corporate lobbies.
His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman prided himself on being the president’s leading Democratic ally in touting the war. After his defeat, Democrats will show more backbone in challenging the current disastrous course and more Republicans will look for ways to distance themselves from the president.
Lamont’s victory was propelled by a rising tide of progressive energy—activists who are tired of losing elections to the right and disgusted with cautious politicians who duck and cover rather than stand and fight. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman exemplified those Democrats who establish their “independence” by pushing off the causes of their own party and embracing the right’s agenda. His voters didn’t abandon him; he abandoned them long ago. After his defeat, incumbents in both parties may begin to listen more closely to their voters and less avidly to their donors.
Lamont’s victory was fueled by a new generation coming into politics with a passion—and organizing over the Web. Over the past year, the Washington establishment has scorned them as extreme and mocked them for failing to win anything. After Tuesday, there will be no more “bring em on” challenges issued to the bloggers.
Most important, Lamont represents a new moral center in American politics – a challenge to the failed status quo and a demand for a new direction that a growing majority of Americans are searching for. Bring an end to the disastrous occupation in Iraq and bring the troops home with honor. Change priorities to invest in our schools, in universal pre-kindergarten, in modern infrastructure. Champion affordable national health care for all. These are not issues from the “edges of our politics,” as Lieberman suggests, but ideas whose time has come.
Lieberman, in a classic sore-loser posture, refuses to accept the verdict of the voters. The man who spent the last weeks of his campaign boasting that he was a good Democrat now announces he’ll form his own party and denounces partisan politics. The man who last week said he had gotten the message and would go to Washington to challenge the president’s policies now says he’ll go to Washington to make common cause with Republicans to “get things done.”
But his brand of “getting things done” is exactly what Americans are turning against.
He joined with the president in championing the war in Iraq—got that done.
He joined with Republicans and corporate lobbies in passing corporate trade deals that have destroyed American manufacturing and undermined wages in America—got that done.
He joined with conservatives in championing the privatization of Social Security—at least he was blocked there.
He joined with CEOs in defending off the books, stock options that gave CEOs a multimillion-dollar personal incentive to cook the books and raid pension funds—got that done.
He doesn’t get it. The problem isn’t that things aren’t getting done—the problem is that the things he was helped to produce are weakening this country abroad and undermining workers and middle-class families at home.
Lieberman’s sore loser campaign will be well financed by the corporate lobbies he has served. Since he has no new ideas to offer, he’ll run a nasty negative campaign of personal vilification against Lamont, trying to smear him before voters have a chance hear what Lamont has to say.
And that race will be a test for every Democratic leader. Will they come to support Lamont and the new energy, the new ideas, the new moral center that he represents? Or will they offer nominal support but stay away, refusing to challenge Lieberman’s low-road campaign? Their reactions will be a true measure of who is ready to fight for a new direction for this country and who is not.
© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )
Wrap...
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
The break point has come and gone...
From Strategic Forecasting, Inc:
Break Point: What Went Wrong
By George Friedman
On May 23, we published a Geopolitical Intelligence Report titled "Break Point." In that article, we wrote: "It is now nearly Memorial Day. The violence in Iraq will surge, but by July 4 there either will be clear signs that the Sunnis are controlling the insurgency -- or there won't. If they are controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. If they are not controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. Regardless of whether the [political settlement] holds, the U.S. war in Iraq is going to end: U.S. troops either will not be needed, or will not be useful. Thus, we are at a break point -- at least for the Americans."
In our view, the fundamental question was whether the Sunnis would buy into the political process in Iraq. We expected a sign, and we got it in June, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed -- in our view, through intelligence provided by the Sunni leadership. The same night al-Zarqawi was killed, the Iraqis announced the completion of the Cabinet: As part of a deal that finalized the three security positions (defense, interior and national security), the defense ministry went to a Sunni.
The United States followed that move by announcing a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq, starting with two brigades. All that was needed was a similar signal of buy-in from the Shia -- meaning they would place controls on the Shiite militias that were attacking Sunnis. The break point seemed very much to favor a political resolution in Iraq.
It never happened. The Shia, instead of reciprocating the Sunni and American gestures, went into a deep internal crisis. Shiite groups in Basra battled over oil fields. They fought in Baghdad. We expected that the mainstream militias under the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) would gain control of the dissidents and then turn to political deal-making.
Instead, the internal Shiite struggle resolved itself in a way we did not expect: Rather than reciprocating with a meaningful political gesture, the Shia intensified their attacks on the Sunnis. The Sunnis, clearly expecting this phase to end, held back -- and then cut loose with their own retaliations. The result was, rather than a political settlement, civil war. The break point had broken away from a resolution.
Part of the explanation is undoubtedly to be found in Iraq itself. The prospect of a centralized government, even if dominated by the majority Shia, does not seem to have been as attractive to Iraqi Shia as absolute regional control, which would guarantee them all of the revenues from the southern oil fields, rather than just most.
That is why SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim has been pushing for the creation of a federal zone in the south, similar to that established for the Kurdistan region in the north. The growing closeness between the United States and some Sunnis undoubtedly left the Shia feeling uneasy.
The Sunnis may have made a down payment by delivering up al-Zarqawi, but it was far from clear that they would be in a position to make further payments. The Shia reciprocated partially by offering an amnesty for militants, but they also linked the dissolution of sectarian militias to the future role of Baathists in the government, which they seek to prevent. Clearly, there were factions within the Shiite community that were pulling in different directions.
But there was also another factor that appears to have been more decisive: Iran. It is apparent that Iran not only made a decision not to support a political settlement in Iraq, but a broader decision to support Hezbollah in its war with Israel. In a larger sense, Iran decided to simultaneously confront the United States and its ally Israel on multiple fronts -- and to use that as a means of challenging Sunnis and, particularly, Sunni Arab states.
The Iranian Logic
This is actually a significant shift in Iran's national strategy. Iran had been relatively cooperative with the United States between 2001 and 2004 -- supporting the United States in Afghanistan in a variety of ways and encouraging Washington to depose Saddam Hussein. This relationship was not without tensions during those years, but it was far from confrontational. Similarly, Iran had always had tensions with the Sunni world, but until last year or so, as we can see in Iraq, these had not been venomous.
Two key things have to be borne in mind to begin to understand this shift. First, until the emergence of al Qaeda, the Islamic Republic of Iran had seen itself -- and had been seen by others -- as being the vanguard of the Islamist renaissance. It was Iran that had confronted the United States, and it was Iran's creation, Hezbollah, that had pioneered suicide bombings, hostage-takings and the like in Lebanon and around the world.
But on Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda -- a Sunni group -- had surged ahead of Iran as the embodiment of radical Islam. Indeed, it had left Iran in the role of appearing to be a collaborator with the United States. Iran had no use for al Qaeda but did not want to surrender its position to the Sunni entity.
The second factor that must be considered is Iran's goal in Iraq. The Iranians, who hated Hussein as a result of the eight-year war and dearly wanted him destroyed, had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And they had helped the United States with intelligence prior to the war. Indeed, it could be argued that Iran had provided exactly the intelligence that would provoke the U.S. attack in a way most advantageous to Iran -- by indicating that the occupation of Iraq would not be as difficult as might be imagined, particularly if the United States destroyed the Baath Party and all of its institutions.
U.S. leaders were hearing what they wanted to hear anyway, but Iran made certain they heard this much more clearly.
Iran had a simple goal: to dominate a post-war Iraq. Iran's Shiite allies in Iraq comprised the majority, the Shia had not resisted the American invasion and the Iranians had provided appropriate support. Therefore, they expected that they would inherit Iraq -- at least in the sense that it would fall into Tehran's sphere of influence.
For their part, the Americans thought they could impose a regime in Iraq regardless of Iran's wishes, and they had no desire to create an Iranian surrogate in Baghdad. Therefore, though they may have encouraged Iranian beliefs, the goal of the Americans was to create a coalition government that would include all factions. The Shia could be the dominant group, but they would not hold absolute power -- and, indeed, the United States manipulated Iraqi Shia to split them further.
We had believed that the Iranians would, in the end, accept a neutral Iraq with a coalition government that guaranteed Iran's interests. There is a chance that this might be true in the end, but the Iranians clearly decided to force a final confrontation with the United States.
Tehran used its influence among some Iraqi groups to reject the Sunni overture symbolized in al-Zarqawi's death and to instead press forward with attacks against the Sunni community. It goes beyond this, inasmuch as Iran also has been forging closer ties with some Sunni groups, who are responding to Iranian money and a sense of the inevitability of Iran's ascent in the region.
Iran could have had two thoughts on its mind in pressing the sectarian offensive. The first was that the United States, lacking forces to contain a civil war, would be forced to withdraw, or at least to reduce its presence in populated areas, if a civil war broke out. This would leave the majority Shia in a position to impose their own government -- and, in fact, place pro-Iranian Shia, who had led the battle, in a dominant position among the Shiite community.
The second thought could have been that even if U.S. forces did not withdraw, Iran would be better off with a partitioned Iraq -- in which the various regions were at war with each other, or at least focused on each other, and incapable of posing a strategic threat to Iran. Moreover, if partition meant that Iran dominated the southern part of Iraq, then the strategic route to the western littoral of the Persian Gulf would be wide open, with no Arab army in a position to resist the Iranians. Their dream of dominating the Persian Gulf would still be in reach, while the security of their western border would be guaranteed.
So, if U.S. forces did not withdraw from Iraq, Iran would still be able not only to impose a penalty on the Americans but also to pursue its own strategic interests. This line of thinking also extends to pressures that Iran now is exerting against Saudi Arabia, which has again become a key ally of the United States. For example, a member of the Iranian Majlis recently called for Muslim states to enact political and economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia -- which has condemned Hezbollah's actions in the war against Israel.
In the larger scheme, it was apparent to the Iranians that they could not achieve their goals in Iraq without directly challenging Saudi interests -- and that meant mounting a general challenge to Sunnis. A partial challenge would make no sense: It would create hostility and conflict without a conclusive outcome. Thus, the Iranians decided to broaden their challenge.
The Significance of Hezbollah
Hezbollah is a Shiite movement that was created by Iran out of its own needs for a Tehran-controlled, anti-Israel force. Hezbollah was extremely active through the 1980s and had exercised economic and political power in Lebanon in the 1990s, as a representative of Shiite interests. In this, Hezbollah had collaborated with Syria -- a predominantly Sunni country run by a minority Shiite sect, the Alawites -- as well as Iran.
Iran and Syria are enormously different countries, with many different interests. Syria's interest was the domination and economic exploitation of Lebanon. But when the United States forced the Syrians out of Lebanon -- following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005 -- any interest Syria had in restraining Hezbollah disappeared.
Meanwhile, as Iran shifted its strategy, its interest in reactivating Hezbollah -- which had been somewhat dormant in relation to Israel -- increased.
Hezbollah's interest in being reactivated in this way was less clear. Hezbollah's leaders had aged well: Violent and radical in the 1980s, they had become Lebanese businessmen in the 1990s. They became part of the establishment. But they still were who they were, and the younger generation of Hezbollah members was even more radical. Hezbollah militants had been operating in southern Lebanon for years and, however relatively restrained they might have been, they clearly had prepared for conventional war against the Israelis.
With the current conflict, Hezbollah now has achieved an important milestone: It has fought better and longer than any other Arab army against Israel. The Egyptians and Syrians launched brilliant attacks in 1973, but their forces were shattered before the war ended. Hezbollah has fought and clearly has not been shattered. Whether, in the end, it wins or loses, Hezbollah will have achieved a massive improvement of its standing in the Muslim world by slugging it out with Israel in a conventional war. If, at the end of this war, Hezbollah remains intact as a fighting force -- regardless of the outcome of the campaign in southern Lebanon -- its prestige will be enormous.
Within the region, this outcome would shift focus way from the Sunni Hamas or secular Fatah to the Shiite Hezbollah. If this happens simultaneously with the United States losing complete control of the situation in Iraq, the entire balance of power in the region would be perceived to have shifted away from the U.S.-Israeli coalition (the appearance is different from reality, but it is still far from trivial) -- and the leadership of the Islamist renaissance would have shifted away from the Sunnis to the Shia, at least in the Middle East.
Outcomes
t is not clear that the Iranians expected all of this to have gone quite as well as it has. In the early days of the war, when the Saudis and other Arabs were condemning Hezbollah and it appeared that Israel was going to launch one of its classic lightning campaigns in Lebanon, Tehran seemed to back away -- calling for a cease-fire and indicating it was prepared to negotiate on issues like uranium enrichment. Then international criticism shifted to Israel, and Israeli forces seemed bogged down. Iran's rhetoric shifted.
Now the Saudis are back to condemning Hezbollah, and the Iranians appear more confident than ever. From their point of view, they have achieved substantial psychological success based on real military achievements. They have the United States on the defensive in Iraq, and the Israelis are having to fight hard to make any headway in Lebanon. The Israelis have few options. They can continue to fight until they break Hezbollah -- a process that will be long and costly, but can be achieved. But they then risk Hezbollah shifting to guerrilla war unless their forces immediately withdraw from Lebanon.
Alternatively, they can negotiate a cease-fire that inevitably would leave at least part of Hezbollah's forces intact, its prestige and power in Lebanon enhanced and Iran elevated as a power within the region and the Muslim world. Because the Israelis are not going anywhere, they have to choose from a limited menu.
The United States, on the other hand, is facing a situation in Iraq that has broken decisively against it. However hopeful the situation might have been the night al-Zarqawi died, the decision by Iran's allies in Iraq to pursue civil war rather than a coalition government has put the United States into a militarily untenable position. It does not have sufficient forces to prevent a civil war. It can undertake the defense of the Sunnis, but only at the cost of further polarization with the Shia. The United States' military options are severely limited, and therefore, withdrawal becomes even more difficult.
The only possibility is a negotiated settlement -- and at this point, Iran doesn't need to negotiate. Unless Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq, firmly demands a truce, the sectarian fighting will continue -- and at the moment, it is not even clear that al-Sistani could get a truce if he wanted one.
While the United States was focused on the chimera of an Iranian nuclear bomb -- a possibility that, assuming everything we have heard is true, remains years away from becoming reality -- Iran has moved to redefine the region. At the very least, civil war in Lebanon (where Christians and Sunnis might resist Hezbollah) could match civil war in Iraq, with the Israelis and Americans trapped in undesirable roles.
The break point has come and gone. The United States now must make an enormously difficult decision. If it simply withdraws forces from Iraq, it leaves the Arabian Peninsula open to Iran and loses all psychological advantage it gained with the invasion of Iraq. If American forces stay in Iraq, it will be as a purely symbolic gesture, without any hope for imposing a solution. If this were 2004, the United States might have the stomach for a massive infusion of forces -- an attempt to force a favorable resolution. But this is 2006, and the moment for that has passed.
The United States now has no good choices; its best bet was blown up by Iran. Going to war with Iran is not an option. In Lebanon, we have just seen the value of air campaigns pursued in isolation, and the United States does not have a force capable of occupying and pacifying Iran. As sometimes happens, obvious conclusions must be drawn.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Break Point: What Went Wrong
By George Friedman
On May 23, we published a Geopolitical Intelligence Report titled "Break Point." In that article, we wrote: "It is now nearly Memorial Day. The violence in Iraq will surge, but by July 4 there either will be clear signs that the Sunnis are controlling the insurgency -- or there won't. If they are controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. If they are not controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. Regardless of whether the [political settlement] holds, the U.S. war in Iraq is going to end: U.S. troops either will not be needed, or will not be useful. Thus, we are at a break point -- at least for the Americans."
In our view, the fundamental question was whether the Sunnis would buy into the political process in Iraq. We expected a sign, and we got it in June, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed -- in our view, through intelligence provided by the Sunni leadership. The same night al-Zarqawi was killed, the Iraqis announced the completion of the Cabinet: As part of a deal that finalized the three security positions (defense, interior and national security), the defense ministry went to a Sunni.
The United States followed that move by announcing a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq, starting with two brigades. All that was needed was a similar signal of buy-in from the Shia -- meaning they would place controls on the Shiite militias that were attacking Sunnis. The break point seemed very much to favor a political resolution in Iraq.
It never happened. The Shia, instead of reciprocating the Sunni and American gestures, went into a deep internal crisis. Shiite groups in Basra battled over oil fields. They fought in Baghdad. We expected that the mainstream militias under the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) would gain control of the dissidents and then turn to political deal-making.
Instead, the internal Shiite struggle resolved itself in a way we did not expect: Rather than reciprocating with a meaningful political gesture, the Shia intensified their attacks on the Sunnis. The Sunnis, clearly expecting this phase to end, held back -- and then cut loose with their own retaliations. The result was, rather than a political settlement, civil war. The break point had broken away from a resolution.
Part of the explanation is undoubtedly to be found in Iraq itself. The prospect of a centralized government, even if dominated by the majority Shia, does not seem to have been as attractive to Iraqi Shia as absolute regional control, which would guarantee them all of the revenues from the southern oil fields, rather than just most.
That is why SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim has been pushing for the creation of a federal zone in the south, similar to that established for the Kurdistan region in the north. The growing closeness between the United States and some Sunnis undoubtedly left the Shia feeling uneasy.
The Sunnis may have made a down payment by delivering up al-Zarqawi, but it was far from clear that they would be in a position to make further payments. The Shia reciprocated partially by offering an amnesty for militants, but they also linked the dissolution of sectarian militias to the future role of Baathists in the government, which they seek to prevent. Clearly, there were factions within the Shiite community that were pulling in different directions.
But there was also another factor that appears to have been more decisive: Iran. It is apparent that Iran not only made a decision not to support a political settlement in Iraq, but a broader decision to support Hezbollah in its war with Israel. In a larger sense, Iran decided to simultaneously confront the United States and its ally Israel on multiple fronts -- and to use that as a means of challenging Sunnis and, particularly, Sunni Arab states.
The Iranian Logic
This is actually a significant shift in Iran's national strategy. Iran had been relatively cooperative with the United States between 2001 and 2004 -- supporting the United States in Afghanistan in a variety of ways and encouraging Washington to depose Saddam Hussein. This relationship was not without tensions during those years, but it was far from confrontational. Similarly, Iran had always had tensions with the Sunni world, but until last year or so, as we can see in Iraq, these had not been venomous.
Two key things have to be borne in mind to begin to understand this shift. First, until the emergence of al Qaeda, the Islamic Republic of Iran had seen itself -- and had been seen by others -- as being the vanguard of the Islamist renaissance. It was Iran that had confronted the United States, and it was Iran's creation, Hezbollah, that had pioneered suicide bombings, hostage-takings and the like in Lebanon and around the world.
But on Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda -- a Sunni group -- had surged ahead of Iran as the embodiment of radical Islam. Indeed, it had left Iran in the role of appearing to be a collaborator with the United States. Iran had no use for al Qaeda but did not want to surrender its position to the Sunni entity.
The second factor that must be considered is Iran's goal in Iraq. The Iranians, who hated Hussein as a result of the eight-year war and dearly wanted him destroyed, had supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And they had helped the United States with intelligence prior to the war. Indeed, it could be argued that Iran had provided exactly the intelligence that would provoke the U.S. attack in a way most advantageous to Iran -- by indicating that the occupation of Iraq would not be as difficult as might be imagined, particularly if the United States destroyed the Baath Party and all of its institutions.
U.S. leaders were hearing what they wanted to hear anyway, but Iran made certain they heard this much more clearly.
Iran had a simple goal: to dominate a post-war Iraq. Iran's Shiite allies in Iraq comprised the majority, the Shia had not resisted the American invasion and the Iranians had provided appropriate support. Therefore, they expected that they would inherit Iraq -- at least in the sense that it would fall into Tehran's sphere of influence.
For their part, the Americans thought they could impose a regime in Iraq regardless of Iran's wishes, and they had no desire to create an Iranian surrogate in Baghdad. Therefore, though they may have encouraged Iranian beliefs, the goal of the Americans was to create a coalition government that would include all factions. The Shia could be the dominant group, but they would not hold absolute power -- and, indeed, the United States manipulated Iraqi Shia to split them further.
We had believed that the Iranians would, in the end, accept a neutral Iraq with a coalition government that guaranteed Iran's interests. There is a chance that this might be true in the end, but the Iranians clearly decided to force a final confrontation with the United States.
Tehran used its influence among some Iraqi groups to reject the Sunni overture symbolized in al-Zarqawi's death and to instead press forward with attacks against the Sunni community. It goes beyond this, inasmuch as Iran also has been forging closer ties with some Sunni groups, who are responding to Iranian money and a sense of the inevitability of Iran's ascent in the region.
Iran could have had two thoughts on its mind in pressing the sectarian offensive. The first was that the United States, lacking forces to contain a civil war, would be forced to withdraw, or at least to reduce its presence in populated areas, if a civil war broke out. This would leave the majority Shia in a position to impose their own government -- and, in fact, place pro-Iranian Shia, who had led the battle, in a dominant position among the Shiite community.
The second thought could have been that even if U.S. forces did not withdraw, Iran would be better off with a partitioned Iraq -- in which the various regions were at war with each other, or at least focused on each other, and incapable of posing a strategic threat to Iran. Moreover, if partition meant that Iran dominated the southern part of Iraq, then the strategic route to the western littoral of the Persian Gulf would be wide open, with no Arab army in a position to resist the Iranians. Their dream of dominating the Persian Gulf would still be in reach, while the security of their western border would be guaranteed.
So, if U.S. forces did not withdraw from Iraq, Iran would still be able not only to impose a penalty on the Americans but also to pursue its own strategic interests. This line of thinking also extends to pressures that Iran now is exerting against Saudi Arabia, which has again become a key ally of the United States. For example, a member of the Iranian Majlis recently called for Muslim states to enact political and economic sanctions against Saudi Arabia -- which has condemned Hezbollah's actions in the war against Israel.
In the larger scheme, it was apparent to the Iranians that they could not achieve their goals in Iraq without directly challenging Saudi interests -- and that meant mounting a general challenge to Sunnis. A partial challenge would make no sense: It would create hostility and conflict without a conclusive outcome. Thus, the Iranians decided to broaden their challenge.
The Significance of Hezbollah
Hezbollah is a Shiite movement that was created by Iran out of its own needs for a Tehran-controlled, anti-Israel force. Hezbollah was extremely active through the 1980s and had exercised economic and political power in Lebanon in the 1990s, as a representative of Shiite interests. In this, Hezbollah had collaborated with Syria -- a predominantly Sunni country run by a minority Shiite sect, the Alawites -- as well as Iran.
Iran and Syria are enormously different countries, with many different interests. Syria's interest was the domination and economic exploitation of Lebanon. But when the United States forced the Syrians out of Lebanon -- following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005 -- any interest Syria had in restraining Hezbollah disappeared.
Meanwhile, as Iran shifted its strategy, its interest in reactivating Hezbollah -- which had been somewhat dormant in relation to Israel -- increased.
Hezbollah's interest in being reactivated in this way was less clear. Hezbollah's leaders had aged well: Violent and radical in the 1980s, they had become Lebanese businessmen in the 1990s. They became part of the establishment. But they still were who they were, and the younger generation of Hezbollah members was even more radical. Hezbollah militants had been operating in southern Lebanon for years and, however relatively restrained they might have been, they clearly had prepared for conventional war against the Israelis.
With the current conflict, Hezbollah now has achieved an important milestone: It has fought better and longer than any other Arab army against Israel. The Egyptians and Syrians launched brilliant attacks in 1973, but their forces were shattered before the war ended. Hezbollah has fought and clearly has not been shattered. Whether, in the end, it wins or loses, Hezbollah will have achieved a massive improvement of its standing in the Muslim world by slugging it out with Israel in a conventional war. If, at the end of this war, Hezbollah remains intact as a fighting force -- regardless of the outcome of the campaign in southern Lebanon -- its prestige will be enormous.
Within the region, this outcome would shift focus way from the Sunni Hamas or secular Fatah to the Shiite Hezbollah. If this happens simultaneously with the United States losing complete control of the situation in Iraq, the entire balance of power in the region would be perceived to have shifted away from the U.S.-Israeli coalition (the appearance is different from reality, but it is still far from trivial) -- and the leadership of the Islamist renaissance would have shifted away from the Sunnis to the Shia, at least in the Middle East.
Outcomes
t is not clear that the Iranians expected all of this to have gone quite as well as it has. In the early days of the war, when the Saudis and other Arabs were condemning Hezbollah and it appeared that Israel was going to launch one of its classic lightning campaigns in Lebanon, Tehran seemed to back away -- calling for a cease-fire and indicating it was prepared to negotiate on issues like uranium enrichment. Then international criticism shifted to Israel, and Israeli forces seemed bogged down. Iran's rhetoric shifted.
Now the Saudis are back to condemning Hezbollah, and the Iranians appear more confident than ever. From their point of view, they have achieved substantial psychological success based on real military achievements. They have the United States on the defensive in Iraq, and the Israelis are having to fight hard to make any headway in Lebanon. The Israelis have few options. They can continue to fight until they break Hezbollah -- a process that will be long and costly, but can be achieved. But they then risk Hezbollah shifting to guerrilla war unless their forces immediately withdraw from Lebanon.
Alternatively, they can negotiate a cease-fire that inevitably would leave at least part of Hezbollah's forces intact, its prestige and power in Lebanon enhanced and Iran elevated as a power within the region and the Muslim world. Because the Israelis are not going anywhere, they have to choose from a limited menu.
The United States, on the other hand, is facing a situation in Iraq that has broken decisively against it. However hopeful the situation might have been the night al-Zarqawi died, the decision by Iran's allies in Iraq to pursue civil war rather than a coalition government has put the United States into a militarily untenable position. It does not have sufficient forces to prevent a civil war. It can undertake the defense of the Sunnis, but only at the cost of further polarization with the Shia. The United States' military options are severely limited, and therefore, withdrawal becomes even more difficult.
The only possibility is a negotiated settlement -- and at this point, Iran doesn't need to negotiate. Unless Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite cleric in Iraq, firmly demands a truce, the sectarian fighting will continue -- and at the moment, it is not even clear that al-Sistani could get a truce if he wanted one.
While the United States was focused on the chimera of an Iranian nuclear bomb -- a possibility that, assuming everything we have heard is true, remains years away from becoming reality -- Iran has moved to redefine the region. At the very least, civil war in Lebanon (where Christians and Sunnis might resist Hezbollah) could match civil war in Iraq, with the Israelis and Americans trapped in undesirable roles.
The break point has come and gone. The United States now must make an enormously difficult decision. If it simply withdraws forces from Iraq, it leaves the Arabian Peninsula open to Iran and loses all psychological advantage it gained with the invasion of Iraq. If American forces stay in Iraq, it will be as a purely symbolic gesture, without any hope for imposing a solution. If this were 2004, the United States might have the stomach for a massive infusion of forces -- an attempt to force a favorable resolution. But this is 2006, and the moment for that has passed.
The United States now has no good choices; its best bet was blown up by Iran. Going to war with Iran is not an option. In Lebanon, we have just seen the value of air campaigns pursued in isolation, and the United States does not have a force capable of occupying and pacifying Iran. As sometimes happens, obvious conclusions must be drawn.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Wrap...
Monday, August 07, 2006
San Diego Green Party says no to Diebold...
From Brad Blog:
San Diego Greens Call for Removal of Electronic Voting Machines
THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA
www.cagreens.org
GREEN PARTY OF SAN DIEGO, CA
www.sdgreens.org
August 07, 2006
Released Aug 04, 2006
A Resolution of the Green Party of San Diego County, California calling for the removal
of electronic voting machines from the County of San Diego.
The Green Party of San Diego County does not endorse the protocols used for obtaining
and tabulating votes during the June 6 primary and previous elections.. As we outline
below, the process is fundamentally insecure leading to election results that are neither
accurate nor verifiable.
Whereas voting machines are known to have gone home overnight with poll workers
who had not undergone background checks, and who had unsupervised access to
these voting machines, as documented by Pamela Smith, Nationwide Coordinator, www.VerifiedVoting.org and Verified Voting Foundation, and poll workers Terry
Olson, Brian C. Baer, Patricia Mack Newton, and others, and admitted to by Registrar
of Voters Mikel Haas, who told the Union Tribune, that the practice of sending home
voting machines with poll workers "has been followed without incident for about 40 years." (Electronic voting machines have not been in use for 40 years, so the
Registrar's statement appears to be inaccurate.)…
(1) Whereas the multiple means of a single individual undetectably "hacking" both
optical scan and touch-screen machines have been documented by the Brennan
Center Report, the second report of the Irish Commission on Electronic Voting, and
the Hursti Reports…
(2) Whereas the Secretary of State has ignored his own technical advisory panel
regarding security safeguards submitted in their report on November 8, 2005…
(3) Whereas the machine count on optical scan machines used in two different
Iowa primary elections were found by a hand recount to have been inaccurate
and to have altered the results of the elections…
(4) Whereas observers have noted that there does not appear to be any public
oversight of the security of ballots between an election and a recount, the recount
process is no more transparent than the first tally, and the costs of recounts are
prohibitive ..
(5) Whereas the electronic voting machines to be used in the November election in
San Diego county produce no paper trail and cannot be verified or audited to ensure
accuracy…
(6) Whereas all vote counting must be public and it is humanly impossible to view
any tallying of votes which takes place within optical scan, touch screen machines or
central tabulators so as to ascertain that they have not been programmed to display
an incorrect result….
(7) Whereas the costs of the maintenance of electronic voting machines are prohibitive…
(8) Whereas the Registrar of Voters apparently plans to hire, at taxpayer expense,
at least one extra poll worker per precinct, a specialist whose duties include turning
the new voting machines on and off..
(9) And whereas all electronics quickly become obsolete and must be replaced, while
the costs and reliability of paper and pencil have remained relatively steady for
hundreds of years……
It has been resolved by the Green Party of San Diego County to call for the Board
of Supervisors of San Diego County to terminate the contracts with Diebold for
costly voting machines that do not and cannot meet certification standards, and to
put in place verifiable elections procedures, preferably paper ballots that would be
hand counted at the precincts in full public view.
This resolution adopted by the County Council of the Green Party of San Diego
County:
SOURCES:
1 http://votetrustusa.org/http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2932http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/32802.html
?1152131323
2 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20
Summary.pdf http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htmhttp:/
/www.blackboxvoting.org/
3 http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/2005_pmp_
report_final.pdf
4 http://votetrustusa.org/
5 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070706B.shtml
6 http://www.votetrustusa.org/
7 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20
Summary.pdf http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htmhttp://
www.blackboxvoting.org/
8 http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/19518.htmlhttp:/
/www.bbvforums.org
/forums/messages/8/9658.html
9 Registrar of Voters employment application__
Disclaimer: State, local, and candidate press releases made available here represent
the opinions of the original source only. Opinions expressed by a state party or
candidate do not necessarily represent the views of the Green Party of the United
States. State party contact information, when provided with candidate releases, does
not imply state party endorsement of the opinions expressed nor of the candidate
(prior to gaining formal nomination by the party).___
Office: PO Box 57065 Washington, D.C. 20037Email: office@gp.org 202-319-7191
or toll-free (US): 866-41GREEN
Wrap...
San Diego Greens Call for Removal of Electronic Voting Machines
THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA
www.cagreens.org
GREEN PARTY OF SAN DIEGO, CA
www.sdgreens.org
August 07, 2006
Released Aug 04, 2006
A Resolution of the Green Party of San Diego County, California calling for the removal
of electronic voting machines from the County of San Diego.
The Green Party of San Diego County does not endorse the protocols used for obtaining
and tabulating votes during the June 6 primary and previous elections.. As we outline
below, the process is fundamentally insecure leading to election results that are neither
accurate nor verifiable.
Whereas voting machines are known to have gone home overnight with poll workers
who had not undergone background checks, and who had unsupervised access to
these voting machines, as documented by Pamela Smith, Nationwide Coordinator, www.VerifiedVoting.org and Verified Voting Foundation, and poll workers Terry
Olson, Brian C. Baer, Patricia Mack Newton, and others, and admitted to by Registrar
of Voters Mikel Haas, who told the Union Tribune, that the practice of sending home
voting machines with poll workers "has been followed without incident for about 40 years." (Electronic voting machines have not been in use for 40 years, so the
Registrar's statement appears to be inaccurate.)…
(1) Whereas the multiple means of a single individual undetectably "hacking" both
optical scan and touch-screen machines have been documented by the Brennan
Center Report, the second report of the Irish Commission on Electronic Voting, and
the Hursti Reports…
(2) Whereas the Secretary of State has ignored his own technical advisory panel
regarding security safeguards submitted in their report on November 8, 2005…
(3) Whereas the machine count on optical scan machines used in two different
Iowa primary elections were found by a hand recount to have been inaccurate
and to have altered the results of the elections…
(4) Whereas observers have noted that there does not appear to be any public
oversight of the security of ballots between an election and a recount, the recount
process is no more transparent than the first tally, and the costs of recounts are
prohibitive ..
(5) Whereas the electronic voting machines to be used in the November election in
San Diego county produce no paper trail and cannot be verified or audited to ensure
accuracy…
(6) Whereas all vote counting must be public and it is humanly impossible to view
any tallying of votes which takes place within optical scan, touch screen machines or
central tabulators so as to ascertain that they have not been programmed to display
an incorrect result….
(7) Whereas the costs of the maintenance of electronic voting machines are prohibitive…
(8) Whereas the Registrar of Voters apparently plans to hire, at taxpayer expense,
at least one extra poll worker per precinct, a specialist whose duties include turning
the new voting machines on and off..
(9) And whereas all electronics quickly become obsolete and must be replaced, while
the costs and reliability of paper and pencil have remained relatively steady for
hundreds of years……
It has been resolved by the Green Party of San Diego County to call for the Board
of Supervisors of San Diego County to terminate the contracts with Diebold for
costly voting machines that do not and cannot meet certification standards, and to
put in place verifiable elections procedures, preferably paper ballots that would be
hand counted at the precincts in full public view.
This resolution adopted by the County Council of the Green Party of San Diego
County:
SOURCES:
1 http://votetrustusa.org/http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2932http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/32802.html
?1152131323
2 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20
Summary.pdf http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htmhttp:/
/www.blackboxvoting.org/
3 http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/2005_pmp_
report_final.pdf
4 http://votetrustusa.org/
5 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070706B.shtml
6 http://www.votetrustusa.org/
7 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20
Summary.pdf http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htmhttp://
www.blackboxvoting.org/
8 http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/19518.htmlhttp:/
/www.bbvforums.org
/forums/messages/8/9658.html
9 Registrar of Voters employment application__
Disclaimer: State, local, and candidate press releases made available here represent
the opinions of the original source only. Opinions expressed by a state party or
candidate do not necessarily represent the views of the Green Party of the United
States. State party contact information, when provided with candidate releases, does
not imply state party endorsement of the opinions expressed nor of the candidate
(prior to gaining formal nomination by the party).___
Office: PO Box 57065 Washington, D.C. 20037Email: office@gp.org 202-319-7191
or toll-free (US): 866-41GREEN
Wrap...
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