Baghdad: No success? Build many many walls!

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From Independent UK via truthout.org :

America's Plan for Baghdad
By Robert Fisk
The Independent UK
Wednesday 11 April 2007

Divide and rule. A new counter-insurgency strategy to carve up the city into sealed areas. The tactic failed in Vietnam. So what chance does it have in Iraq?

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad - despite President George Bush's "surge" in troops - US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of "gated communities" - whose genesis was in the Vietnam War - will involve up to 30 of the city's 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

The system has been used - and has spectacularly failed - in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country's continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to "win" the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of "gating" areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory - again, with little success.

But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades - comprising about 40,000 men - south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful - and potentially aggressive - American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.

The latest "security" plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course - American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers - participated in a series of debates to determine how best to "turn round" the disastrous war in Iraq.

The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tal Afar by General Petraeus's men - and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment - in early 2005, when an eight-foot "berm" was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign as a success although Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control.

So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi "support bases" in nine of the 30 districts to be "gated" off. From these bases - in fortified buildings - US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these "gated communities" and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, "visitor" registration and restrictions on movement outside the "gated communities". Civilians may find themselves inside a "controlled population" prison.

In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a "secure environment". But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be "gated" and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be "enclosed" with everyone else.

A former US officer in Vietnam who has a deep knowledge of General Petraeus's plans is sceptical of the possible results. "The first loyalty of any Sunni who is in the Iraqi army is to the insurgency," he said. "Any Shia's first loyalty is to the head of his political party and its militia. Any Kurd in the Iraqi army, his first loyalty is to either Barzani or Talabani. There is no independent Iraqi army. These people really have no choice. They are trying to save their families from starvation and reprisal. At one time they may have believed in a unified Iraq. At one time they may have been secular. But the violence and brutality that started with the American invasion has burnt those liberal ideas out of people ... Every American who is embedded in an Iraqi unit is in constant mortal danger."

The senior generals who constructed the new "security" plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal - but officially "restricted" - field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the "gated communities" campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing "civil operations and revolutionary development support teams" in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the "provincial reconstruction teams" in Afghanistan - a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.

FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. "With good intelligence," it says, "counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact." But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the "gated" neighbourhood project.

"Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able," he told The Independent. "They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the 'gated communities' to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.

"The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being 'protected'."

The ex-officer's fears for American helicopter crews were re-emphasised yesterday when a military Apache was shot down over central Baghdad.

The American's son is an officer currently serving in Baghdad. "The only chance the American military has to withdraw with any kind of tactical authority in the future is to take substantial casualties as a token of their respect for the situation created by the invasion," he said.

"The effort to create some order out of the chaos and the willingness to take casualties to do so will leave some residual respect for the Americans as they leave."

FM 3-24: America's new masterplan for Iraq

FM 3-24 comprises 220 pages of counter-insurgency planning, combat training techniques and historical analysis. The document was drawn up by Lt-Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Baghdad, and Lt-Gen James Amos of the US Marine Corps, and was the nucleus for the new US campaign against the Iraqi insurgency. These are some of its recommendations and conclusions:

In the eyes of some, a government that cannot protect its people forfeits the right to rule. In [parts] of Iraq and Afghanistan... militias established themselves as extragovernmental arbiters of the populace's physical security - in some cases, after first undermining that security...

In the al-Qa'ida narrative... Osama bin Laden depicts himself as a man purified in the mountains of Afghanistan who is inspiring followers and punishing infidels. In the collective imagination of Bin Laden and his followers, they are agents of Islamic history who will reverse the decline of the umma (Muslim community) and bring about its triumph over Western imperialism.

As the Host Nation government increases its legitimacy, the populace begins to assist it more actively. Eventually, the people marginalise insurgents to the point that [their] claim to legitimacy is destroyed. However, victory is gained not when this is achieved, but when the victory is permanently maintained by and with the people's active support...

Any human rights abuses committed by US forces quickly become known throughout the local populace. Illegitimate actions undermine counterinsurgency efforts... Abuse of detained persons is immoral, illegal and unprofessional.

If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents. Aggressive saturation patrolling, ambushes, and listening post operations must be conducted, risk shared with the populace and contact maintained.

FM 3-24 quotes Lawrence of Arabia as saying: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."

FM 3-24 points to Napoleon's failure to control occupied Spain as the result of not providing a "stable environment" for the population. His struggle, the document says, lasted nearly six years and required four times the force of 80,000 Napoleon originally designated.

Do not try to crack the hardest nut first. Do not go straight for the main insurgent stronghold. Instead, start from secure areas and work gradually outwards... Go with, not against, the grain of the local populace.

Be cautious about allowing soldiers and marines to fraternise with local children. Homesick troops want to drop their guard with kids. But insurgents are watching. They notice any friendships between troops and children. They may either harm the children as punishment or use them as agents.

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FISA: Break into your house..copy your hard drive...

Think Fast

Two bombs went off today in Algiers killing 30 people, "the first such attacks in Algeria's capital in years. ... Residents said it was the first time since the 1990s that a powerful bomb targeted the centre of the Mediterranean city, where police had stepped up security following an upsurge in attacks by suspected Islamist insurgents in the countryside."

U.S. forces in Baghdad "are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter."

A new Bloomberg/LA Times poll finds that six in 10 "Americans expect a recession within a year and disapprove of President George W. Bush's handling of the economy even though the unemployment rate is at a five-year low."

Despite the fact that Sens. John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton are not taking part in the Fox News presidential debate co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the CBC released a statement last night "announcing that it stands by its plan." The statement said the caucus "will determine the format and select the panelists for the debates."

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has circulated a draft bill that would expand the government's surveillance powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, liberalizing how that law can be used. "The court-approved surveillance could include planting listening devices and hidden cameras, searching luggage and breaking into homes to make copies of computer hard drives."

"Sunni militants and residents of the Baghdad neighborhood of Fadhil fought a fierce daylong battle with the Iraqi Army and American soldiers on Tuesday in what appeared to be the most sustained confrontation since the start of the security plan to calm violence in the capital." Fighting began after Iraqi soldiers raided a Sunni mosque.

"Recent graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point are choosing to leave active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, a sign to many military specialists that repeated tours in Iraq are prematurely driving out some of the Army’s top young officers."

Yesterday, the Bush administration agreed to allow North Koreans suspected of money laundering and counterfeiting U.S. dollars to get their money back as part of a deal to "ensure that North Korea shuts down its nuclear reactor by the end of the week." Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton blasted the administration's decision, saying the retreat is "an image of surrender that is going to be hard to erase."

"Companies including Procter & Gamble Co. and Staples Inc. are pulling advertisements from Don Imus’ show due to the shock jock's on-air racial slur about the Rutgers University women's basketball team."

And finally: Rush Limbaugh is giving away eight, 80-gig video iPods to people who sign up for his e-mail newsletter. Now, "Phillip Torrone of Make magazine and Adafruit Laser Services, a laser-etching etching service for iPods and MacBooks, has kindly offered to etch OxyContin pills for free onto any Rush Limbaugh iPod." Torrone stated, "I'll etch pills all over it for free with my laser. We can then auction it off and give the $ to a group Rush [haters]."

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The importance of the US Navy...

From Strategic Forecasting Inc:

The Limitations and Necessity of Naval Power
By George Friedman

It has now been four years since the fall of Baghdad concluded the U.S. invasion of Iraq. We have said much about the Iraq war, and for the moment there is little left to say. The question is whether the United States will withdraw forces from Iraq or whether it will be able to craft some sort of political resolution to the war, both within Iraq and in the region. Military victory, in the sense of the unfettered imposition of U.S. will in Iraq, does not appear to us a possibility. Therefore, over the next few months, against the background of the U.S. offensive in Baghdad, the political equation will play out. The action continues. The analysis must pause and await results.

During this pause, we have been thinking about some of the broader questions involved in Iraq -- and about the nature and limits of American military power in particular. We recently considered the purpose of U.S. wars since World War II in our discussion of U.S. warfare as strategic spoiling attack. Now we turn to another dimension of U.S. military power -- the U.S. Navy -- and consider what role, if any, it plays in national security at this point.

Recent events have directed our attention to the role and limits of naval power. During the detention of the 15 British sailors and marines, an idea floated by many people was that the United States should impose a blockade against Iran. The argument was driven partly by a lack of other options: Neither an invasion nor an extended air campaign seemed a viable alternative. Moreover, the United States' experience in erecting blockades is rich with decisive examples: the Cuban missile crisis, barring Germany's ability to trade during World War II or that of the American South during the Civil War. The one unquestionable military asset the United States has is its Navy, which can impose sea-lane control anywhere in the world.

Finally, Iran -- which is rich in oil (all of which is exported by sea) but lacks sufficient refinery capacity of its own -- relies on imported gasoline. Therefore, the argument went, imposing a naval blockade would cripple Iran's economy and bring the leadership to the negotiating table.

Washington never seriously considered the option. This was partly because of diplomatic discussions that indicated that the British detainees would be released under any circumstances. And it was partly because of the difficulties involved in blockading Iran at this time:

1. Iran could mount strategic counters to a blockade, either by increasing anti-U.S. operations by its Shiite allies in Iraq or by inciting Shiite communities in the Arabian Peninsula to unrest. The United States didn't have appetite for the risk.

2. Blockades always involve the interdiction of vessels operated by third countries -- countries that might not appreciate being interdicted. The potential repercussions of interdicting merchant vessels belonging to powers that did not accept the blockade was a price the United States would not pay at this time.

A blockade was not selected because it was not needed, because Iran could retaliate in other ways and because a blockade might damage countries other than Iran that the United States didn't want to damage. It was, therefore, not in the cards. Not imposing a blockade made sense.

The Value of Naval Power

This raises a more fundamental question: What is the value of naval power in a world in which naval battles are not fought? To frame the question more clearly, let us begin by noting that the United States has maintained global maritime hegemony since the end of World War II. Except for the failed Soviet attempt to partially challenge the United States, the most important geopolitical fact since World War II was that the world's oceans were effectively under the control of the U.S. Navy.

Prior to World War II, there were multiple contenders for maritime power, such as Britain, Japan and most major powers. No one power, not even Britain, had global maritime hegemony. The United States now does. The question is whether this hegemony has any real value at this time -- a question made relevant by the issue of whether to blockade Iran.

The United States controls the blue water. To be a little more precise, the U.S. Navy can assert direct and overwhelming control over any portion of the blue water it wishes, and it can do so in multiple places. It cannot directly control all of the oceans at the same time. However, the total available naval force that can be deployed by non-U.S. powers (friendly and other) is so limited that they lack the ability, even taken together, to assert control anywhere should the United States challenge their presence.

This is an unprecedented situation historically. The current situation is, of course, invaluable to the United States. It means that a seaborne invasion of the United States by any power is completely impractical. Given the geopolitical condition of the United States, the homeland is secure from conventional military attack but vulnerable to terrorist strikes and nuclear attacks.

At the same time, the United States is in a position to project forces at will to any part of the globe. Such power projection might not be wise at times, but even failure does not lead to reciprocation. For instance, no matter how badly U.S. forces fare in Iraq, the Iraqis will not invade the United States if the Americans are defeated there.

This is not a trivial fact. Control of the seas means that military or political failure in Eurasia will not result in a direct conventional threat to the United States. Nor does such failure necessarily preclude future U.S. intervention in that region. It also means that no other state can choose to invade the United States. Control of the seas allows the United States to intervene where it wants, survive the consequences of failure and be immune to occupation itself. It was the most important geopolitical consequence of World War II, and one that still defines the world.

The issue for the United States is not whether it should abandon control of the seas -- that would be irrational in the extreme. Rather, the question is whether it has to exert itself at all in order to retain that control. Other powers either have abandoned attempts to challenge the United States, have fallen short of challenging the United States or have confined their efforts to building navies for extremely limited uses, or for uses aligned with the United States. No one has a shipbuilding program under way that could challenge the United States for several generations.

One argument, then, is that the United States should cut its naval forces radically -- since they have, in effect, done their job. Mothballing a good portion of the fleet would free up resources for other military requirements without threatening U.S. ability to control the sea-lanes. Should other powers attempt to build fleets to challenge the United States, the lead time involved in naval construction is such that the United States would have plenty of opportunities for re-commissioning ships or building new generations of vessels to thwart the potential challenge.

The counterargument normally given is that the U.S. Navy provides a critical service in what is called littoral warfare. In other words, while the Navy might not be needed immediately to control sea-lanes, it carries out critical functions in securing access to those lanes and projecting rapid power into countries where the United States might want to intervene. Thus, U.S. aircraft carriers can bring tactical airpower to bear relatively quickly in any intervention. Moreover, the Navy's amphibious capabilities -- particularly those of deploying and supplying the U.S. Marines -- make for a rapid deployment force that, when coupled with Naval airpower, can secure hostile areas of interest for the United States.

That argument is persuasive, but it poses this problem: The Navy provides a powerful option for war initiation by the United States, but it cannot by itself sustain the war. In any sustained conflict, the Army must be brought in to occupy territory -- or, as in Iraq, the Marines must be diverted from the amphibious specialty to serve essentially as Army units.

Naval air by itself is a powerful opening move, but greater infusions of airpower are needed for a longer conflict. Naval transport might well be critically important in the opening stages, but commercial transport sustains the operation. If one accepts this argument, the case for a Navy of the current size and shape is not proven. How many carrier battle groups are needed and, given the threat to the carriers, is an entire battle group needed to protect them?

If we consider the Iraq war in isolation, for example, it is apparent that the Navy served a function in the defeat of Iraq's conventional forces. It is not clear, however, that the Navy has served an important role in the attempt to occupy and pacify Iraq. And, as we have seen in the case of Iran, a blockade is such a complex politico-military matter that the option not to blockade tends to emerge as the obvious choice.

The Risk Not Taken

The argument for slashing the Navy can be tempting. But consider the counterargument. First, and most important, we must consider the crises the United States has not experienced. The presence of the U.S. Navy has shaped the ambitions of primary and secondary powers. The threshold for challenging the Navy has been so high that few have even initiated serious challenges. Those that might be trying to do so, like the Chinese, understand that it requires a substantial diversion of resources. Therefore, the mere existence of U.S. naval power has been effective in averting crises that likely would have occurred otherwise.

Reducing the power of the U.S. Navy, or fine-tuning it, would not only open the door to challenges but also eliminate a useful, if not essential, element in U.S. strategy -- the ability to bring relatively rapid force to bear.There are times when the Navy's use is tactical, and times when it is strategic. At this moment in U.S. history, the role of naval power is highly strategic.

The domination of the world's oceans represents the foundation stone of U.S. grand strategy. It allows the United States to take risks while minimizing consequences. It facilitates risk-taking. Above all, it eliminates the threat of sustained conventional attack against the homeland. U.S. grand strategy has worked so well that this risk appears to be a phantom. The dispersal of U.S. forces around the world attests to what naval power can achieve. It is illusory to believe that this situation cannot be reversed, but it is ultimately a generational threat. Just as U.S. maritime hegemony is measured in generations, the threat to that hegemony will emerge over generations. The apparent lack of utility of naval forces in secondary campaigns, like Iraq, masks the fundamentally indispensable role the Navy plays in U.S. national security.

That does not mean that the Navy as currently structured is sacrosanct -- far from it. Peer powers will be able to challenge the U.S. fleet, but not by building their own fleets. Rather, the construction of effective anti-ship missile systems -- which can destroy merchant ships as well as overwhelm U.S. naval anti-missile systems -- represents a low-cost challenge to U.S. naval power. This is particularly true when these anti-ship missiles are tied to space-based, real-time reconnaissance systems. A major power such as China need not be able to mirror the U.S. Navy in order to challenge it.

Whatever happens in Iraq -- or Iran -- the centrality of naval power is unchanging. But the threat to naval power evolves. The fact that there is no threat to U.S. control of the sea-lanes at this moment does not mean one will not emerge. Whether with simple threats like mines or the most sophisticated anti-ship system, the ability to keep the U.S. Navy from an area or to close off strategic chokepoints for shipping remains the major threat to the United States -- which is, first and foremost, a maritime power.

One of the dangers of wars like those in Iraq and Afghanistan is that they soak up resources and intellectual bandwidth. It is said that generals always fight the last war. Another way of stating that is to say they believe the war they are fighting now will go on forever in some form. That belief leads to neglect of capabilities that appear superfluous for the current conflict. That is the true hollowing-out that extended warfare creates. It is an intellectual hollowing-out.

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Update on slow posting...

Apologies to both Google and Blogger. They, I have learned, have absolutely no responsibility for the posts on my blog taking, for 5 days, a minute or more to even show themselves.

Another event...a server gone to hell...was responsible. At this moment, and since midnight last night, my posts load with lightning speed.

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From Easter Eggs to the DOD...

From American Progress:

Think Fast

President Bush, the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State all failed to mention Iraq publicly yesterday on the fourth anniversary of the "liberation" of Baghdad. Instead, "the lead item on the White House Web site, under the heading 'LATEST NEWS,' was a photograph of Clifford the Big Red Dog at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn."

MoveOn.org is hosting a "live 'virtual town hall' forum about the Iraq war, in what is being billed as the largest and most ambitious experiment yet in harnessing the power of Internet technology to reshape participatory democracy." Seven Democratic presidential candidates are expected to take part in the event tonight.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad invited Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in her delegation that met him in Damascus last week to make a return visit, Rep. Tom Lantos said. "I have every intention of going back," said Lantos, refusing to back down in the face of heavy criticism from the White House.

"A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records."

The late Jeane Kirkpatrick, "the godmother of the neoconservative movement," and former U.N. ambassador whom John Bolton sought to emulate, acknowledges in a posthumous memoir that the Iraq war was "something of a mistake."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) yesterday said that he would have "taken his tour of an Iraqi market last week even if he hadn't been accompanied by heavily armed U.S. soldiers." He added that the only reason he walked through Baghdad's Shorja market with 100 soldiers, three Blackhawks, and two Apache gunships was because "General Petraeus asked" him to do so.

"Public approval for Congress is at its highest level in a year as [the 110th Congress marks] 100 days in power and step up their confrontation with President Bush over his handling of the Iraq War, the issue that overshadows all others."

"Millions of dollars of North Korean funds, frozen for two years amid allegations of money laundering, are to be released," the Bush administration said. "The chief US nuclear envoy said the release of the funds cleared the way for the North -- which in October said it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon -- to begin shutting down the reactor later this week."

"Stem cells will be at the top of the agenda for the U.S. Senate" when it returns from recess today. The Senate will consider a bill to expand federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. President Bush vetoed a similar bill last year.

And finally: Each year, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression gives out Jefferson Muzzle awards to "the most egregious First Amendment violators." This year's winners: the Bush administration (for censoring scientists on climate change) and the Defense Department (for its "investigations of organizations that conducted peaceful anti-war protests").

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Blogger...all is forgiven!

Clicked on the URL and everything came up INSTANTLY!!! Cannot tell you how pleased I am. My world is once again functioning properly. This is good.

So...over on Kos, teacherken has a most excellent post on just what the results--sad--are for the use of NCLB. That is, that idiot No Child Left Behind idea.

And John Bolton is being his usual bull in the china shop self. Wouldn't matter except that he's the head of the World Bank, and is therefore in a position of power. If anyone should be deprived of power, he's in the top ranking.

Bush damned near blew himself up today, but was rescued--although improperly touched on the arm--by an employee of Ford. No comment.

And where is Gov Bill Richardson and Presidential Candidate? Sent to North Korea on a diplomatic mission. There is a valuable man.

Down in Crawford Texas, a group of absolute fools have put up billboards: Condi for President in 2008. Texas has been so contaminated by Bushites...to say nothing of Bush himself...that it's almost impossible to think they ever could have voted for former Gov Ann Richards.

Oh, how I miss Molly Ivins!

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GOOGLE/BLOGGER: FIX THE DAMNED SLOW POSTING!!!

I swear I don't know what's wrong with Google/Blogger techs! Here it is, Day 5 since the posts began to take a minute or more to get on the blasted screen. My hits are down to 1 or 2 a day because of this problem. Just absolutely disgusting. And going to "Blogger Help" is about as worthless an exercise as is possible. Status reports still says this problem has been fixed. They still lie in their teeth! It is NOT fixed.

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FIX Blogger! One min. wait till posts appear here.

Gawd! This is so frustrating! And in their status report, the techs say the long wait is fixed. Well hell no, it isn't!

SHAME, BLOGGER!!!

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This is Blackwater USA....

www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20070330_jeremy_scahill_on_soldiers_of_fortune

[an excerpt]

I think is the key point right now is that we need to start seriously looking in this country at the privatization of war as part of the bigger privatization agenda. Look at the prison system in this country right now. Not only do we have private corporations running prisons, but we also have faith-based prisons.

One of Eric Prince’s, the founder of Blackwater, one of his close political allies, Chuck Colson, was Nixon’s hatchet man. One of the first people that went to jail for the Watergate conspiracy. Chuck Colson has now reinvented himself as this evangelical leader. He runs a faith-based prison in Sugar Land, Texas, the former district of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. And he runs the lives of 200 prisoners and they are running it as a Christian missionary operation. And Chuck Colson speaks openly about how we need to bring the Christian word into the prisons to battle the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in prisons.

And so we see it in the prisons, we see it in law enforcement. Right now in this country there are more private law enforcement agents than there are official law enforcement agents. That’s incredible! That should disturb people. Because it’s not just about “is the private sector more efficient than the government?” It’s about accountability and oversight. Where are the laws that govern these privatized forces? We’ve seen that in Iraq there’s no laws that govern them, and in a way it’s the same at home here. If your kid gets killed by a private security guard outside of a Best Buy, what happens? How do you get justice for your son? I mean, I have a friend whose son was killed by a security guard. He’s gotten nowhere with it. What laws govern these people?

Harris:
Do you think it’s apathy? This is public information. Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman—pick a liberal journalist. They’ve all talked about the privatization and how it is overtaking our American citizenship. Jeremy, I’d be interested to know, what do you think has us so paralyzed that we’re not responding? We’re not up in arms about this, as I think we should be.

Scahill:
Well, I think you’re cutting at something really important here. I do agree with you that a lot of this stuff is in the public sphere, but I don’t think people understand how deep it has cut at this point. I was surprised, I wrote an Op-Ed for the L.A. Times [Jan. 25, 2007] and basically stated a bunch of things that we already know. There are 100,000 contractors in Iraq; the war has been greatly privatized. And I got so much mail from people who said “I had no idea about this,” including from congressional offices. And so I think that as much as we may think that this stuff is in the public sphere, that we may think people know about this, I don’t know that that’s so true.

And I think that this is something that’s really going to come back to bite us and is coming back to bite us very fast. And the fact of the matter is that Blackwater is expanding to California. They’re looking to open a new facility in San Diego. They’re expanding to Illinois. They’ve applied for operating licenses in all coastal states in the U.S. Their representatives met recently with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to discuss doing disaster response in California after earthquakes. This is all part of that privatization agenda, and the companies that benefit from it are well-connected companies, and that sort of embodies everything that President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address when he talked about unchecked corporate power with the rise of the military-industrial complex...

[cont reading..click link above]

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Cheney and the three lost nukes...

From WayneMadsenReport.com :

April 6-8, 2007

The CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) and British intelligence have evidence that then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lost three nuclear weapons in 1991. This was later used as a pretext to create the phony Niger yellowcake uranium story in the event the nukes showed up in Iraqi hands.

At least one of the nukes, however, ended up in the hands of North Korea. WMR has been told by a well-placed intelligence source in Britain that in early February 1991, the Pentagon sent out an emergency message rarely seen: three "Broken Arrows," or lost nuclear weapons in U.S. possession, were jettisoned in the Indian Ocean by a U.S. Air Force B-52, which had caught fire en route from Diego Garcia with three weapons of mass destruction being transported from South Africa after that nation began dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

On a return emergency route back to the U.S. base on Diego Garcia, the crew of the aircraft disposed of the bombs to avoid a cook off of their heat-triggered fuses. The B-52 later crashed. The three bombs landed in shallow waters off the Somali coast. Rather than retrieve the weapons, Cheney and the Bush I administration sat on their hands. In May 1991, the bombs were allegedly recovered by mercenaries working for Zimbabwean arms dealer John Bredenkamp, who is close to the regime of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe. The North Koreans have had a long standing military relationship with Mugabe and Bredenkamp.

Cheney's 1991 "lost" nukes: possible pretext for the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the outing of a covert CIA network.

WMR has learned that, although there was speculation the lost nuclear weapons ended up in the hands of Iran (and a strong but false belief by Cheney and his neo-con advisers that they went to Iraq), at least one was transferred to North Korea. Dr. Stephen Dresch, a former Michigan legislator and head of Forensic Intelligence, Inc., who helped criminally link FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio and mobster Greg Scarpa, Sr. of the Colombo crime family, discovered that the lost U.S. nuclear weapons wound up on the international black market and his report on the incident reached MI-6 in December 2003. Dresch also attended, along with a professional photographer, the coroner's inquest of British Ministry of Defense weapons of mass destruction expert Dr. David Kelly in 2004. There is reason to believe that Kelly was fully aware that one of the lost nuclear weapons was transferred to North Korea by international arms smugglers and that this information was also known to Vice President Cheney. Dresch died last August at age 62 of lung cancer.

On August 21, 2006, WMR reported the following: "As the Bush-Cheney administration gears up for a planned military attack on Iran, there is renewed interest by European intelligence analysts in the July 17, 2003 reported "suicide" of British Ministry of Defense weapons of mass destruction (WMD) specialist and UN Iraq weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly. In what is widely believed to have been a Blair government cover-up, Lord Hutton, in his official report, concluded that Kelly committed suicide in a wooded area near his Oxfordshire home using a dull knife to cut his left wrist and ingesting 29 over-the-counter analgesic tablets.

With the Bush administration now using the Iraq playbook to justify an attack on Iran, Kelly's knowledge about the disappearance of two South African nuclear-tipped missiles from a U.S. B-52 that crashed in the Indian Ocean in February 1991 may have sealed the British scientist's fate. ...

[cont reading at www.waynemadsenreport.com ]

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Torqued at Blogger...Talk about slow load!

Yes, I certainly am. What reader is gonna sit and wait a minute or more for a post on blogspot to appear? Go there, and what do I get? The list of post titles on the left side of the screen and no posts. And no posts. And still no posts. Found our very quickly that readers are simply not going to wait...and neither are the search engines.

So spent considerable time trying to email Blogger...all to no avail. Everything goes to other folks who use Blogger...and just sits there, unspoken to. I'm fit to be tied. This, 4-07-07, Saturday, is the third day in a row that this has gone on. I believe I'm gonna have to try another blogging site. Anybody have any ideas?

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Bush in staredown with troops...He looses...

From American Progress:

MILITARY -- 'STRANGELY QUIET' SCENE AS BUSH VISITS BASE WHERE MEDICALLY-UNFIT TROOPS WERE DEPLOYED:

On Wednesday, President Bush visited Fort Irwin, California, the main desert training camp where most U.S. soldiers are sent before deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush told the troops, "The government didn't say, you have to do this, you chose to do it on your own. You decided to put your country ahead of self in many ways."

That message must have resonated in a unique way for some of the soldiers present. As Salon.com's Mark Benjamin reported recently, Fort Irwin is where some soldiers with debilitating injuries and other medical conditions, including female soldiers who were pregnant, were deployed for weeks. "

All of the soldiers said they had no business being sent to Fort Irwin given their physical condition," Benjamin wrote. "In some cases, soldiers were sent there even though their injuries were so severe that doctors had previously recommended they should be considered for medical retirement from the Army. Military experts say they suspect that the deployment to Fort Irwin of injured soldiers was an effort to pump up manpower statistics used to show the readiness of Army units."

As the blog The Carpetbagger Report noted, Bush's remarks to the soldiers on Wednesday hardly produced the rally-like atmosphere of years past. Reuters reported that troops "sat quietly at their lunch tables, some joined by family members, as Bush spoke." The Houston Chronicle's Julie Mason described the event as "less than a rally, more than a stare-down" and said the troops were "strangely quiet."

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In DOJ Goodling waits till Friday then resigns...

From CBS8.com :

Gonzales Aide Goodling Resigns
Last Updated:04-06-07 at 2:16PM
WASHINGTON

The top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly quit on Friday, almost two weeks after telling Congress she would not testify about her role in the firings of federal prosecutors.

"I am hereby submitting my resignation to the office of attorney general," Monica M. Goodling said in a three-sentence letter. There was no immediate reason given, but her refusal to face Congress had intensified a controversy that threatens Gonzales' job.

Asserting her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, Goodling had rejected demands for a private interview with a House committee investigating the firings. Goodling was senior counsel to Gonzales and was the department's White House liaison before she took a leave amid the uproar over the prosecutors' ousters.

Calling her five-year stint at Justice an honor, Goodling told Gonzales in her letter, "May God bless your richly as you continue your service to America."

Goodling is at the center of the controversy because, as the bridge between the Justice Department and the White House, she may be best suited to explain how deeply Karl Rove and other members of President Bush's political team might have been involved in the firings. Congress also wants her to testify on Gonzales' role in light of his shifting explanations.

Her resignation comes less than two weeks before Gonzales' own planned testimony to Congress, which may determine his fate as attorney general. Several Republican lawmakers have joined Democrats in expressing deep dissatisfaction with him over the firings and other matters at Justice.

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Crimes...Contractors may not be punished...

From Secrecy News:

ARMY SEES GAP IN JURISDICTION OVER MIL CONTRACTORS

Contractors accompanying U.S. military forces in Iraq or elsewhere who commit crimes may be beyond the reach of law enforcement, a recent Army publication warns, because the
Defense Department has not yet updated its regulations to conform to a Congressional mandate, resulting in a "gap" in legal jurisdiction.

"In November 2006, Congress expanded UCMJ [Uniform Code ofMilitary Justice] authority over contractor personnel authorized to accompany the force. However, as of February 2007, DOD has provided no implementation guidance for this change in law."

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/contractors-p31.pdf

As of mid-March, there was still no such implementation guidance."The liability and accountability of contractor personnel in most cases is already provided for in U.S. law, international agreements, conventions, treaties, and Status of Forces Agreements."

"However, in some cases a gap may emerge where the contractor personnel are not subject to the UCMJ (only in time of declared war) and the contractor commits an offense in an area that is not subject to the jurisdiction of an allied government (for example, an offense committed in enemy territory)."

"In such cases, the contractor's crime may go unpunished unless other federal laws, such as the military extraterritorial jurisdiction act (MEJA) or the war crimes act (WCA) apply, or the contractor is otherwise subject to the UCMJ (for example, a military retiree)."

See "Contractors Accompanying the Force - Training Support Package," 12 March 2007:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/contractors.pdf

and related explanatory material: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/contractors2.pdf

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Feith's Office of Special Plans exposed...

From Secrecy Reports:

IG REPORT ON DOD INTEL OFFICE DECLASSIFIED

At the request of Sen. Carl Levin, the Department of Defense has declassified most of its February 2007 Inspector General report on the pre-Iraq war activities of the DoD Office of Special Plans, led by Douglas Feith.

"It is important for the public to see why the Pentagon's Inspector General concluded that Secretary Feith's office' developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship,' which included 'conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community,' and why the Inspector General concluded that these actions were 'inappropriate'," Sen. Levin said.

"Until today, those details were classified and outside the public's view."See this news release from Sen. Levin, with a link to the newly declassified report:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2007/04/levin040507.html

Mr. Feith's Office issued a January 2007 rebuttal to a draft version of the IG report that is available here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/ousd011707.pdf

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From Age of Innocence to the WPA..Books & Films

From Publishers Lunch Weekly:

FICTION/DEBUT:

Saher Alam's THE GROOM TO HAVE BEEN, inspired by The Age of Innocence and set among the Indian Muslim community in North America, involving a young man torn between his heritage and his modern lifestyle who realizes his true love just as he begins to prepare for an arranged marriage and as the world reels in the wake of a national disaster that divides his friends and family, to Michael Mezzo at Spiegel & Grau, by Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management (US).

SCI-FI/FANTASY:

Lori Handeland's ANY GIVEN DOOMSDAY, the first in a new urban fantasy series where a psychic PI is given more powers than she bargained for and discovers herself fighting monsters of Biblical proportions to thwart an upcoming doomsday, to Jennifer Enderlin at St. Martin's, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Irene Goodman at Irene Goodman Agency.

GENERAL/OTHER:

Danielle Wood's ROSIE LITTLE'S CAUTIONARY TALES FOR GIRLS, in which Rosie, taking her cues from the Brothers Grimm and Scheherazade, tells her stories of love and desire, men and women, heartache and happiness in this linked collection of cautionary tales, to Khristina Wenzinger at MacAdam/Cage, by Julia Lee at Allen & Unwin (NA). khristina@macadamcage.com

Molly Jong-Fast's THE SOCIAL CLIMBER'S HANDBOOK, a social satire about upward mobility and murder, set on Manhattan's Upper East Side, pitched as a cross between Bergdorf Blondes and The Talented Mr. Ripley, to Bruce Tracy at Villard, by Andy McNicol at the William Morris Agency.

Sam Taylor's THE AMNESIAC, about a man who has lost the memory of three years of his life and who is driven to investigate, leading himself into a labyrinthine world of hidden texts, mysterious intruders and a possible murder, to Alexis Washam at Penguin, by Jason Cooper at Faber UK.

CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT:

Cecilia Galante's debut THE PATRON SAINT OF BUTTERFLIES, about two best friends who are forced to runaway from the religious commune they've lived in their entire lives, to Melanie Cecka and Elizabeth Schonhorst at Bloomsbury, at auction, by Jessica Regel at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency (NA).

Television writer Robin Epstein's GOD IS IN THE PANCAKES, the story of a 15-year old girl in the midst of an ethical dilemma: whether or not to help her favorite nursing home resident die, and how this affects her closest relationships, to Kate Harrison at Harcourt Children's, by Talia Cohen at the Laura Dail Literary Agency (NA).trcohen@LDLAinc.com

FILM:

Film rights to Jordan Belfort's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, to Warner Bros, with Alexandra Milchan, Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way, and Martin Scorsese's Sikelia Prods. producing, and Terence Winter (Sopranos) adapting, by Joel Gotler at Intellectual Property Group.

Russell S. Bonds's STEALING THE GENERAL, an account of the 1862 Union raid that sent a party of soldiers (and two civilians) behind Confederate lines to steal a locomotive and head back north, burning railroad bridges between Atlanta and Chattanooga to isolate the Confederate forces, to Paramount, for Misher Films (THE INTERPRETER, THE RUNDOWN), by Hotchkiss and Associates, on behalf of Westholme Publishing.

HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS:

National Book Critic's Circle Award winner Shelby Steele's A BOUND MAN, an examination of the complex racial issues that confront presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama in his race for the White House, to Liz Stein at Free Press, for publication in November 2007, by Carol Mann (world).

Naomi Wolf's THE END OF AMERICA: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, a call to return to the aspirations and beliefs of the Founding Fathers, and an indictment of the Bush administration and Congress, claiming that events of the last six years parallel steps taken in the early years of the 20th century's worst dictatorships, to Chelsea Green, for publication in September 2007 as a paperback original.

Bill Press's TRAINWRECK: THE END OF THE CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION, putting a number of conservative myths to rest once and for all, to Eric Nelson at Wiley, by Ronald Goldfarb.

ILLUSTRATED/ART:

L.A. Times writer Barbara Isenberg's CONVERSATIONS WITH FRANK GEHRY, richly illustrated book of conversations with architect Frank Gehry about his life and work, to Jonathan Segal at Knopf, for publication in 2008, by Susan Ramer at Don Congdon Associates (World).

MEMOIR:

Andre Agassi's memoir of his life on and off the tennis court, including accounts of how he has "used his success as an instrument for change in the world" in both "education reform and public service," to Sonny Mehta at Knopf, with Jonathan Segal editing, in a major deal, for well over $5 million, at auction, by Michael Carlisle and Richard Pine at Inkwell Management (world).Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT editor Dana Canedy's A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN, the story of her relationship with her artist/soldier fiance, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, who died in Iraq, leaving behind a 200-page journal containing his hopes and prayers and life lessons for the seven-month-old son he would never know, to Rachel Klayman at Crown, at auction, by Flip Brophy at Sterling Lord Literistic. Film rights optioned to Columbia Pictures for Escape Artists, with Denzel Washington producing and possibly starring.

REFERENCE:

NYT best-selling editors of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey's STATE BY STATE, a modern version of the WPA State Guides of the 1930s that goes beyond the red state/blue state dichotomy to create a portrait of the country featuring original writing on each of the 50 states by 50 leading novelists and journalists, to Dan Halpern and David Hirshey at Ecco, in a pre-empt, by David McCormick of McCormick & Williams Literary Agency and Zoe Pagnamenta of PFD New York (World).

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Blackwater in San Diego County...

From Raw Story:

Massive security contractor faces growing protest in rural California town over 842-acre base
Miriam Raftery and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday April 3, 2007

SAN DIEGO

Potrero, California boasts a broad swath of meadowland that currently houses derelict chicken coops.

Surrounded by the Cleveland National Forest, the property boasts a former chicken ranch and includes an environmentally sensitive, protected agricultural preserve southeast of San Diego.
But if private security contractor Blackwater USA gets its way, this 850-strong community will soon host an 824-acre military training base, replacing the erstwhile chicken ranch with fifteen firing ranges and an emergency vehicle operator’s course the length of ten football fields.

A RAW STORY investigation has already led to the removal of one lawyer connected to the project. The inquiry has also discovered that California congressman and current presidential candidate Duncan Hunter -- who is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee -- is a client of the firm, Blackwater USA, a massive US security contractor in Iraq.
Minutes of a planning meeting raise questions about whether Hunter was involved in lobbying for the project. At the Feb. 8, 2007 planning meeting, Vice President for Blackwater West Brian Bonfiglio said Hunter was one of the firm's clients.

"We talk with Duncan about many things," Bonfiglio said (emphasis in original).

Blackwater isn’t a stranger to controversy. In February 2004, families of four security contractors killed in Fallujah, who are suing the firm for information regarding their deaths, testified before the House Government Reform Committee.

The private security contractor has seen its federal contract revenues swell since Sept. 11. Six years ago, the firm raked in $250,000; today a single Iraq contract is valued at $300 million. Much of its work takes place in Iraq; the company was at one time responsible for the security of interim Iraq consul Paul Bremer. Blackwater now aims to expand operations by establishing several new training camps in addition to its headquarters in North Carolina.

Townspeople and environmentalists are squaring off against the company and public officials. The Portrero Planning Group approved the facility by a 7-0 vote in December – but since then more than half of the town's registered voters have signed a petition opposing the facility. Residents also say they are organizing a recall against members of the Planning Group who voted in favor.

Chairman of the Planning Group Gordon Hammers says he won’t reconsider the board’s decision.

"I think it’s good for the community," he said in a recent interview with the East County Californian. "It provides jobs.”

“It will improve the general economy of the community and as a result, improve property values," he added. Hammers contended that arguments against the project "have absolutely no rhyme or reason" and that some opposition is based on misunderstanding of the project’s scope.
In a later email to RAW STORY regarding questions about whether noise would disturb nearby residents, Hammers wrote, "If the good science shows that Blackwater's claims are true then I will be a proud supporter of a vital partner with law enforcement and the war on terror," he said in an e-mail. "If good science shows that their claims are not true then they will lose my support."

[click this link to continue reading: http://rawstory.com/

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Afghans put head in green box, send to Bush...

From International Herald Tribune:

Meanwhile: The curious case of the severed head
H.D.S. Greenway
The Boston Globe
Tuesday, April 3, 2007

LONDON: Dr. Watson, late of Baker Street, and having himself served in Afghanistan, would have appreciated what he undoubtedly would have called: The Curious Case of the Severed Afghan Head.

When the green metal box first arrived in Washington from Kabul, allegedly bearing the skull of Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, President George W. Bush is said to have said, only half in jest: "So if it turns out to be Zawahiri's head, I hope you will bring it here."

Afghan tribal chiefs had sent what they believed to be the skull of Ayman al-Zawahiri in hope of collecting a $25 million reward. The Americans, needing proof, asked Egypt for a DNA sample from Zawahiri's brother, whom the Egyptians were holding.

According to Ron Suskind's account, in his "The One Percent Doctrine," the Egyptians offered to cut off the brother's arm and send it to CIA. Just a vial of blood will do, said a stammering CIA man.

The severed head turned out not to be Zawahiri's, and the skull was shipped to a warehouse in New York's Staten Island, according to Suskind. George Tenet, CIA director, got to keep the tin box it came in.

[cont reading at link below]

www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/03/opinion/edgreenway.php

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US, Iran Hostage Negotiations....

From Strategic Forecasting Inc:

The British Detainees: Reading Diplomatic Signals
By George Friedman

Last week, Iranian forces captured 15 British sailors and marines in the Shatt al-Arab area, where the territorial distinction between Iraq and Iran is less than clear. The Iranians claimed the British personnel were in Iranian territory; the British denied it.

The claims and counterclaims are less interesting than the fact that the Iranians clearly planned the capture: Whatever the British were doing in the area, the Iranians knew about it and had plans to do something in response. The questions are why, and why is this occurring now?

One explanation is that the British were on some sort of mission that the Iranians had to stop. A rumor circulating is that the British were involved in extracting an Iranian defector, and the Iranians were moving to block the defection. That's a possibility, but then the captured Britons hardly appeared to be operating as a covert team -- and if there was a defection under way, the secret had been blown a long time before, since the Iranians were able to amass the force used in the capture.

It seems to us that the capture of the British had less to do with any particular operation than with a more general desire on the part of the Iranians to capture the personnel and thereby create an international incident. The important issue, therefore, is why they wanted an incident, and why this particular sort.

By now, it is no secret that the Americans and Iranians are engaged in a complex negotiation that is focused on Iraq, but which also involves Iran's future nuclear capability. U.S. and Iranian officials met publicly in early March, and a further meeting is scheduled, but the most important discussions have taken place in private venues. It also is clear that there is a debate within Tehran, as well as within Washington, as to whether these talks should be going on, how the negotiations should be carried out and the role of force in the negotiations.

We suspect that the capture of the British detainees had something to do with the U.S. negotiations and with internal Iranian politics. At this point, both sides in the negotiations are trying to impress upon each other not only that they retain some options, but also that their moves cannot be easily predicted. Both want to be seen as retaining the option of surprise.

The capture of the British personnel, then, should be read not so much as the trigger for an international crisis as a diplomatic signal. If either the Americans or the Iranians believed it were possible to achieve their own ideal outcomes in negotiations, either the capture or the U.S. military surge into Iraq would not have come about. The game for each now is an effort to secure an outcome that can be lived with -- not an outright victory.

U.S. Signals and Limitations

The U.S. approach to the negotiations with Iran has been multifaceted.

First, by talking simultaneously with the Sunni insurgents, the Americans clearly have been letting the Iranians know that they have not been trapped into dealing only with the Iranians or Iraqi Shia when it comes to the future of Iraq.

Second, Washington has tried to keep the Iranian nuclear issue separate from the Iraq issue. Given that none of the world's great powers truly has an interest in seeing Iran get the bomb, Washington has international backing on some aspects of the Iran nuclear issue -- and does not want that confused with the question of Iraq, where support for its position is much weaker. Washington does not want to provide the Iranians with linkage between the issues; rather, it wants to maintain its ability to extract concessions over Iraq in exchange for concessions on the nuclear issue.

Third, and most important, the U.S. leadership consistently has emphasized that it has no fear of Iran and is not constrained politically or militarily. The entire objective of the U.S. surge strategy was to demonstrate that the administration retains military options in Iraq and is capable of using them. At the same time, the United States has carefully orchestrated a campaign to let the Iranians believe that it retains military options against Iran as well -- and is considering using them. The exercises by two U.S. carrier battle groups last week had been planned for quite a while and were designed to give the Iranians pause.

Finally, the United States has moved to arrest Iranian officials who had been operating quasi-diplomatic entities in Iraq. (The Iranians said they were diplomatic and the Americans said they weren't, so we will term them "quasi.") Rumors of imminent U.S. military action against Iran have swept the region. Totally uninformed sources around the world have been speculating for weeks about the possibility of unspecified U.S. action.

The rumors suited the Bush administration perfectly. The administration wanted the Iranians to feel endangered, so as to shape the Iranian negotiating process. This has certainly been the case amid congressional action to set a deadline for a withdrawal from Iraq. If the Americans are going to withdraw, then Iran has no motivation to negotiate; it need only wait.

The administration played off the congressional proposals to hint that the possibility of a forced deadline increases the pressure for the president to act quickly, rather than to wait.

The problem for the United States, however, is the issue of what sort of action it actually can take. It is in no position to undertake a ground invasion of Iran. Iran is a big country, and occupying it is beyond the capability of any force the United States could field -- at least, not without a massive increase of ground forces that would take several years to achieve, and that certainly is not under way at the moment.

The other option is an air campaign. And it is not clear that an air campaign would work. The example of Israel's failure in Lebanon last summer weighs heavily. The Israelis chose the air campaign option and failed to achieve a satisfactory outcome. The U.S. Army historically has seen the air campaign as useful only if it is followed by an effective occupation. The most successful air campaign, Desert Storm, worked in a much smaller battle-box than Iran, and was followed up by a multidivisional ground force in order to defeat the defending Iraqi force and occupy the territory.

In Iran, the quantity of air power needed for an outcome similar to that in Kuwait in 1991 is substantially greater than the United States has available, and as we have said, there is no follow-on ground force capable of occupying Iran.

The Iranian Signals

The Iranians, like the Americans, also have found it necessary to demonstrate a lack of intimidation. And for Iran, capturing 15 British sailors and marines was an excellent device. First, it raised the specter in the United States of another Iranian hostage crisis, reminding Bush of how the Iranians handled Jimmy Carter in 1979. Second, it showed that Iran is not concerned about possible retaliation by either the United States or the United Kingdom -- which has no options independent of the United States and is not driving negotiations over Iraq. Finally, the fact that action was directed against the British, rather than the Americans, slightly deflected the intensity of the crisis; because Americans were not taken captive, there was less pressure for the United States to do something about it.

But there is another dimension to this. The Iranians have shifted the spotlight away from Baghdad and to the southern region of Iraq -- to the area dominated by Shia and held by the British. The capture of the British personnel coincided with some fighting in the Basra area among Shiite militias. In this way, the Iranians have sent two signals. The first was that while the United States is concentrating its forces in Baghdad and Anbar province, Iran remains perfectly capable of whipping up a crisis in the relatively quiet south -- where U.S. troops are not present and where the British, who already have established a timeline for withdrawal, might not have sufficient force to contain a crisis.

If the United States had to inject forces into the south at this point, they would have to come from other regions of Iraq or from the already strained reserve forces in the United States. The Iranians are indicating that they can create some serious political and military problems for the United States if Washington becomes aggressive.

The second is a statement about the negotiations over Iraq. While they are interested in reaching a comprehensive settlement over Iraq, the Iranians are prepared to contemplate another outcome, in which Iraq fragments into regional entities and the Iranians dominate the Shiite south. In some ways, this is more than an acceptable alternative. For one thing, in holding the south, the Iranians would be in a position to impede or cut U.S. lines of supply running from Kuwait to central Iraq. Second, their forces would be in a position to bring pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia, unless the United States were to redeploy troops.

In other words, the shift of attention to the south poses a worrisome military challenge to the Americans. If the Iranians or Shia were to get aggressive in the south, the United States could be forced to spread its troops even thinner, leaving operations in the north severely weakened. The maneuver could help to collapse the Americans' position in Iraq by overloading them with responsibilities. Call, Raise -- Draw?

The Iranians have called the American hand and raised the stakes. Where the United States has been trying to generate a sense of danger on the part of Iran with rumors of airstrikes, the Iranians have signaled that they aren't worried about the airstrikes -- and then raised the American bet by forcing the United States to consider what its options might be if all hell broke loose in southern Iraq. Tehran is saying that it has more credible options than Washington does.

There is obviously a political debate going on inside Iran. As we have argued, there is deep consensus among Iranian leaders as to what outcome they want, but there is a faction led by older leaders, like Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, that does not underestimate the resources of the United States. And there is a faction that argues that the United States, at its weakest, must be pressured until it capitulates.

The capture of the British personnel could have been designed to enhance the power of the more aggressive faction. But because Iranian politics are opaque, it could be argued just as logically that the capture was designed to enhance Rafsanjani's position by setting up a game of "good cop, bad cop." In other words, Rafsanjani now can ask for concessions from the Americans to keep the other faction from going too far.

Whatever the inner workings of the Iranian elite, the move strengthens Iran's negotiating position in a number of ways. By holding the British captives, the Iranians are also trying to show the limits of Anglo-American power to their own public. One of the motives behind the capture was to demonstrate to Iranians that the Americans are incapable of taking action against Iran. (The British were less important in this context because they never were viewed by Tehran as being capable of or interested in decisive action against Iran.)

The capture of the detainees, then, solidifies Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's position by revealing American weakness. If the United States and the United Kingdom don't rescue the prisoners and don't take other military action, holding the detainees increases the credibility of the Iranian leadership -- not only in relation to the Americans, but also with the Iranian public.

The logic here would call for a rescue attempt. However, in order for the captives to be rescued, the following elements are required:

1. Intelligence on the captives' location must be perfect, to the point of providing information on their precise housing.

2. The hostages cannot be housed in multiple locations; otherwise, the operation becomes both more complicated and more likely to fail, unless timing is perfect.

3. There must be time to rehearse the extraction, during which the prisoners must not be moved.

4. There must be a light covering force protecting the direct guards. The involvement of heavily armed, trained and dispersed troops at the battalion level and above, equipped with anti-aircraft systems, makes a successful extraction very unlikely.

The Iranians are old hands at this game. We can assume that they have:

1. Obfuscated the location of the British by communications deception and other means, while moving the detainees around.

2. Separated the detainees into at least three groups, one very small and remote from the other two.

3. Obscured the sites where the British are being held, in order to make model construction and rehearsals impossible.

4. Covered the detainees with an interior group of guards embedded in a multi-brigade matrix, with heavy anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile concentrations.

Preparatory airstrikes by American or British forces would give away the extraction and force an abort.

That leaves the United States with the option of either accepting the status quo or initiating air operations against Iran. Now, the Iranian countermove -- creating chaos in southern Iraq -- seems daunting, but the Iranians might not have the influence in the region they would like others to believe: The Iraqi Shia are highly fragmented. But on the other hand, the Iranians do not have to impose a stable regime in southern Iraq right now. All they have to do is create instability there in order to weaken the Americans.

It comes down to the question of how lucky the U.S. leadership is feeling at the moment. Given past performance, we'd say George W. Bush is not a lucky man. If it can go wrong, it does go wrong for him. Symbolic airstrikes against Iran are conceivable, but an extended air campaign designed to smash Iran's infrastructure simply does not appear to us as a viable military option. Given Iran's size, the number of sorties designed to make a dent would be enormous.

The Americans would be banking on frightening the Iranians into negotiation. Air power did that in Kosovo, against a country fighting for a peripheral interest. In Vietnam, it failed. Iran seems more like Vietnam than Serbia. Therefore, we expect the United States to signal military action against Iran but not take it. We also expect the private talks between Iran and the United States to proceed with some sobriety. The Iranians know they have a weaker hand than it appears. Taking 15 captives is, in the end, not all that impressive by itself, and the rest hasn't played out yet. Thus, the saber-rattling will continue. That's what negotiations look like in the Middle East.

Wrap...

From McCain to O'Reilly dress-up doll...

From American Progress:

Think Fast

"They were just making fun of us and paid this visit just for their own interests," said Jaafar Moussa Thamir, a merchant in the Shorja market visited by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham's (R-SC) congressional delegation. "Do they think that when they come and speak few Arabic words in a very bad manner it will make us love them?"

In the "latest evidence of stepped up sectarian and insurgent killings outside Baghdad," a "truck bomber carrying food supplies killed eight Iraqi schoolgirls and a baby in the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Monday as suspected Sunni militants executed 21 Shiite workers north of Baghdad."

The Justice Department has notified Italia Federici that she is a target of the ongoing Abramoff investigation. Federici is the former girlfriend of Stephen Griles, the most senior Bush official thus far convicted in the Abramoff probe. Federici offered Abramoff access to high-level Bush administration officials in return for money.

"Despite repeated requests from a House committee chairman and government investigators, the Pentagon has failed to hand over its official assessments of the readiness of US-trained Iraqi security units to take over key functions from the US military."

"His job on the line, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales shelved plans for a family vacation and began prepping yesterday for a showdown with senators over the firings of federal prosecutors."

Meghan O'Sullivan, President Bush's "top day-to-day adviser on Iraq," who has "played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the past four years, will leave later this spring." O'Sullivan was known for her "steady optimism over the eventual outcome in Iraq."

Lawmakers are calling for the resignation of NASA's Inspector General, who "created a hostile and dysfunctional workplace...and compromised his independence by appearing to be close to former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe."

"The world needs at least 4 million health care professionals, the director-general of the World Health Organization said Tuesday." The crisis is "most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 24% of the global burden of diseases but has only 3% of the health workforce."

And finally: You, too, can now dress down Bill O'Reilly. Or dress him up. Cartoon Doll Emporium has released an interactive O'Reilly dress-up doll (falafel not included).

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From Bush baseball to Google's April Fool joke...

From American Progress:

Think Fast

For the second year in a row, President Bush will skip the tradition of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch in Washington's baseball home opener. With Bush's approval ratings stuck in the low 30s in recent polls, a White House spokeswoman "was asked whether the president feared he'd get booed. 'No,' she replied. 'Certainly not.'" Last Opening Day, Vice President Cheney filled in for Bush and was peppered with loud boos. (Watch it.)

Amir Raheem, a merchant at the Shorja market visited by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), disagreed with the senators' claims that the market is proof Iraq is getting safer. "Just yesterday, an Iraqi soldier was shot in his shoulder by a sniper, and the day before, two civilians were shot by a sniper as well. ... Everybody closes their shops by 2:30 p.m."
"Iraqi figures estimate civilian deaths in violence across the country rose by 13% last month, despite the security crackdown in Baghdad."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) "has installed longtime friends and political associates on several boards," including his dentist on the state dental board and his chiropractor as chair of the chiropractic panel. They are "facing complaints that they are unqualified, beholden to the industries they oversee or otherwise mired in conflicts of interest."

"As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan's tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama bin Laden to cement control over the network's operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials." Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA's bin Laden tracking unit, said, "Al Qaeda is still humming along, and with a new generation of leaders."

The American Prospect details the connections between former MZM lobbyist Mitchell Wade and Vice President Cheney, offering some clues as to how Wade was able to receive a federal contract from the Vice President's office without having any previous experience. From 1991-93, Wade worked in Cheney's Pentagon as an intelligence officer.

And finally: Google celebrated April Fool's Day yesterday by announcing that it will offer broadband Internet service through home plumbing systems -- Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP). "[T]oday our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and splat right onto your PC," said co-founder and president Larry Page in the facetious statement.

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Opening in June, in Iraq....a reminder.

From timesonline.co.uk :

From The Times
May 3, 2006
In the chaos of Iraq, one project is on target: a giant US embassy
From Daniel McGrory in Baghdad

THE question puzzles and enrages a city: how is it that the Americans cannot keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day, yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Irritation grows as residents deprived of air-conditioning and running water three years after the US-led invasion watch the massive US Embassy they call “George W’s palace” rising from the banks of the Tigris.

In the pavement cafés, people moan that the structure is bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built. They are not impressed by the architects’ claims that the diplomatic outpost will be visible from space and cover an area that is larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes. They are more interested in knowing whether the US State Department paid for the prime real estate or simply took it.

While families in the capital suffer electricity cuts, queue all day to fuel their cars and wait for water pipes to be connected, the US mission due to open in June next year will have its own power and water plants to cater for a population the size of a small town.

Officially, the design of the compound is supposed to be a secret, but you cannot hide the giant construction cranes and the concrete contours of the 21 buildings that are taking shape. Looming over the skyline, the embassy has the distinction of being the only big US building project in Iraq that is on time and within budget.

In a week when Washington revealed a startling list of missed deadlines and overspending on building projects, Congress was told that the bill for the embassy was $592 million (£312 million).

The heavily guarded 42-hectare (104-acre) site — which will have a 15ft thick perimeter wall — has hundreds of workers swarming on scaffolding. Local residents are bitter that the Kuwaiti contractor has employed only foreign staff and is busing them in from a temporary camp nearby.

After roughing it in Saddam’s abandoned palaces, diplomats should have every comfort in their new home. There will be impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumoured to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favourite US food chains, tennis courts and a swish American Club for evening functions.

The security measures being installed are described as extraordinary. US officials are preparing for the day when the so-called green zone, the fortified and sealed-off compound where international diplomats and Iraq’s leaders live and work, is reopened to the rest of the city’s residents, and American diplomats can retreat to their own secure area.

Iraqi politicians opposed to the US presence protest that the scale of the project suggests that America retains long-term ambitions here. The International Crisis Group, a think-tank, said the embassy’s size “is seen by Iraqis as an indication of who actually exercises power in their country”.

A State Department official said that the size reflected the “massive amount of work still facing the US and our commitment to see it through”.

BEHIND SCHEDULE

A US Inspector General’s report into reconstruction found that although $22 billion had been spent, water, sewage and electricity, infrastructure still operated at prewar levels
Despite “significant progress” in recent months, less than half the water and electricity projects have been completed

Only six of the 150 planned health centres have been completed

US officials spent $70 million on medical equipment for health clinics that are unlikely ever to be built. More than 75 per cent of the funds for the 150 planned clinics have been allocated

Task Force Shield, the $147 million programme to train Iraqi security units to protect key oil and electrical sites failed to meet its goals. A fraud investigation is under way

Oil production was 2.18 million barrels per day in the last week of March. Before the war it was 2.6 million

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And the name of Neal Bush's outfit is....?????

From AP via truthout.org :

Program's Creator Is Hired to Assess It
The Associated Press
Sunday 01 April 2007

The government contractor that set up a billion-dollar-a-year federal reading program for the Education Department and failed, according to the department's inspector general, to keep it free of conflicts of interest is one of the companies now evaluating the program.

Reading First, part of President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law, provides intense reading help to low-income children in the early elementary grades. RMC Research Corp. was hired to establish and implement the program starting in 2002, under three contracts worth about $40 million.

Recently, the Education Department's inspector general reported that RMC failed to keep the program free of conflicts of interest. For example, RMC did not screen subcontractors for relationships with publishers of reading programs.

Now, Reading First is in the midst of a congressionally mandated evaluation under a 2003 contract with a team that includes RMC, based in Portsmouth, N.H.

Lawmakers who have been investigating the Reading First program criticized the connection.

"If it's true that RMC was also hired to evaluate the effectiveness of the very program it was hired to help implement, then the conflict of interest could not be any clearer," Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House education committee, said Friday.

"It's a classic case of the fox guarding the chicken coop," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who chairs the Senate education committee.

The inspector general found that federal officials intervened to influence state and local decisions about reading programs, a potential violation of the law.

RMC did not return calls seeking comment. Nor did Abt Associates, a contractor based in Cambridge, Mass., that hired RMC as a subcontractor.

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DHS wants internet Master Key....

From Daily Kos via Raw Story:

Sat Mar 31, 2007 at 04:03:53 PM PDT

Slashdot and Cryptome report that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is demanding the master key for the DNS root zone - a demand that has other nations alarmed. With the master key, DHS would have control over the Internet, as Slashdot describes, quoting an "anonymous reader."

The key will play an important role in the new DNSSec security extension, because it will make spoofing IP-addresses impossible. By forcing the IANA [Internet Assigned Numbers Authority] to hand out a copy of the master key, the US government will be the only institution that is able to spoof IP addresses and be able to break into computers connected to the Internet without much effort.

The issue arose at Friday's meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Lisbon, Portugal.

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Homeless in the Library....

From TomDispatch.com :

Tomgram:
Ward, How the Public Library Became Heartbreak Hotel

Back in the 1950s, when every domestic scandal and nightmare, political or familial, wasn't the subject of a television show, the library was my peephole into the mysteries of the adult universe. The key question, when it came to interpreting the world back then, was this: Would the librarian who ruled over the juvenile section free you to enter the pay dirt of the rest of the library? Mine did. As a friend of mine, who arrived in this country as an immigrant at age 11, used to say of her library years, "I started with A." So did I. What an essential democratic institution the public library is.

Of course, today, the condition of America's public libraries is, at best, wildly variable. Some urban libraries of just the sort I used to haunt in my childhood have recently been losing out in the race for scarce tax dollars. They often face cuts in their hours, while their systems close branches and offer fewer services; others are carving out new roles for themselves as on-line information providers, advisers, and bustling cultural centers. So, while the bold architecture of the new main library in downtown Seattle has become a popular tourist attraction, libraries throughout the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast struggle to rebuild or just hang on.

Many public libraries are experimenting with new roles beyond the boundaries of story hour and homework help. Public access to the Internet and computers, for instance, is transforming our libraries into de facto e-government access points for such disparate services as disaster relief, Medicare drug plans, and even benefits for children and families. The Salt Lake City Public Library, the subject of today's Tomdispatch (and Library Journal's "2006 Library of the Year"), prides itself, for instance, on being a place "where democracy happens." It houses an NPR radio affiliate and a film center, as well as a coffee house and deli that encourage people to linger and talk.

But even if you are lucky enough to have one of these "catalytic" libraries in your neighborhood, rather than a branch that just shut down for lack of funds, there's a public-library challenge-cum-nightmare that is rarely acknowledged. As Chip Ward, a Tomdispatch regular who just retired as the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System, makes clear below, public libraries have become de facto daytime shelters for the nation's street people; while librarians are increasingly our unofficial social workers for the homeless (and often the disturbed). It's a dirty little secret that tells us all too much about the state of our nation today.

Tom

What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School
The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless
By Chip Ward

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her "nobody there" conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman's discomfort, and explains, "Don't mind me, I'm dead.

[click link to continue: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=180836 ]

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