Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Sadr City Car Bombs Kill 41; Violence in Baghdad returns to 2008 Levels

AP reports that two car bombs ripped through a commercial district in Shiite East Baghdad (Sadr City) on Wednesday evening, killing at least 41 persons and wounding 68.

McClatchy challenges President Obama's assertion that violence is way down since last year. McClatchy figures show 200 killed in Baghdad alone in April, compared to 99 in March and 46 in February. The last time McClatchy recorded 200 deaths in the capital in a single month was March, 2008. So violence at least in Baghdad is back up to 2008 levels.

Ghaith Abdul Ahad explains the extra-constitutional mechanisms whereby Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa) have gained control of key intelligence, military and political units. It sounds to a lot of people like "Saddam lite." Although Abdul Ahad's article is as usual highly informed and perceptive, he does not talk about money. My guess is that al-Maliki is doing what he is doing with Iraq's oil revenue reserves, which give him enormous leverage over a poor, weak society. There are no oil countries that are true democracies with the sole exception of Norway; it is a tough thing to pull off, when the state can overwhelm society through its vast independent wealth.

Meanwhile, Aljazeera English reports on Arab-Kurdish political divisions and violence in Mosul in the north:



The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is demanding a formal apology from US Gen. Ray Odierno for a special operations raid in Kut that left two persons dead and stirred controversy in Iraq. The demand is probably related to the dispute between Iraq and the US over whether all combat troops should be withdrawn from major Iraqi cities (including Mosul--see above) this summer.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

' Baghdad

In three separate incidents the Iraqi Security Forces detonated under control three parked car bombs in Abu Disheer and Hay al Mualimeen in southern Baghdad, and in Amil neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad Wednesday morning.

A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy in Shaab neighbourhood, northern Baghdad at 3 p.m. Tuesday. No casualties were reported.

- Three parked car bombs detonated in sequence in a busy street in Sadr city in eastern Baghdad around 5:15 p.m. Forty one people were killed and sixty eight others were wounded.

- Around 6:50 p.m. a car bomb detonated in Risala neighborhood in west Baghdad on Wednesday. Five people were wounded. - Around 7 p.m. a roadside bomb targeted an American patrol in Khadraa neighborhood in western Baghdad on Wednesday. No casualties reported.

- Two car bombs detonated in Hurriyah neighborhood in northwest Baghdad around 8:15 p.m. on Wednesday. Two people were killed and eight others were wounded.

Nineveh

A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Qahira neighbourhood, downtown Mosul Tuesday injuring three policemen.

A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in New Mosul at 8 a.m. Wednesday injuring two policemen.

Kirkuk

A thermal grenade targeted American soldiers near a marketplace in Riyadh district, western Kirkuk, Wednesday afternoon, local police said. The American returned fire, killing two civilians and injuring four others, one of whom was a woman, the police said. An American military spokesman said the attack targeted a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol that was distributing micro-grant money requested by the people in the town to stimulate small business. The joint patrol was attacked by several individuals using a grenade and small arms fire and the unit returned fire, the U.S. said. The Americans added, “Current reports have been two enemy killed and one wounded. All three were taken to the Riyadh medical clinic. Coalition forces sustained one wounded, who is reported in good condition.”'



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Cloughley: PAKISTAN’S ARMY, THE TALIBAN, AND WASHINGTON

Brian Cloughley writes in a guest op-ed for IC:

Pakistan’s army continues to face challenges, not the least of which is the growing insurrection by Taliban and Taliban-supporting tribesmen in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) abutting Afghanistan. There has of late been much international criticism of the army for allegedly failing to take action against militants, and according to London’s Financial Times on April 26, Hillary Clinton “expressed bewilderment that one of the world's largest armies appeared unable to confront dozens of militants.”

First of all there are not “dozens” of militants : there are many thousands, most if not all encouraged into insurrection as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001-2002. Senior officers in Pakistan are extremely angry concerning the accusation that the army is “not doing enough” and it is a fact that since 2002 the army and the para-military Frontier Corps have suffered over 1800 killed and three times that number wounded in battles with insurgents, which is hardly an indication that there has not been action against them.

There is an understandable lack of sympathy for the US throughout Pakistan, stemming in part from the belief that the US does not care about Pakistan army or civilian casualties.

Then there is the matter of the army’s accountability, because it cannot take action without the approval – without the orders – of the civilian government. It appears to have escaped the attention of Pakistan’s more vociferous critics that the army is subordinate to the civil power, which, according to the US Secretary of State, is so casual concerning its responsibilities that it is deliberately letting the country plunge into chaos.

Clinton told the US Congress on April 23 that “I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists,” which is the sort of pronouncement to which the world became accustomed during the horrible Bush years – the arrogant insistence that everything bad that happened was the fault of everyone but Washington’s finest. The resentment caused in Pakistan has been immense, and Clinton’s words prompted a rare statement from the Chief of the Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, who commented pithily on “pronouncements by outside powers raising doubts on the future of the country.”

As any commander would be, Kayani is annoyed that the deaths of his soldiers are treated in such a cavalier, offhand fashion by a supposed ally. He went on to say that the army “never has and never will hesitate to sacrifice, whatever it may take, to ensure [the] safety and well-being of the people of Pakistan and the country’s territorial integrity”, and that “A country of 170m resilient people under a democratic dispensation, strongly supported by the army, is capable of handling any crisis that it may confront.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

*****

In the tribal areas, where all but one of the seven Agencies, Orakzai, adjoin Afghanistan, the army continues its operations against Taliban and Taliban-associated tribesmen, many of whom had no such liaison or inclination prior to military operations in the region.

Considerable disruption has been caused to tribespeople, hundreds of thousands of whom have been forced to flee their villages to exist in camps erected by the government and the UN High Commission for Refugees. Unfortunately the notable absence of young men in the camps has been assessed as indicating that many are joining the ranks of the insurgents. One patriarchal tribal was reported as saying in February 2009 that “Our youths have become bitterly angry. The courageous among them have joined Taliban, no matter whether they agree with their philosophy or not,” and it is apparent that the army’s clearance operations and US drone attacks inside Pakistan have created an unquantifiable but obviously most significant degree of extreme resentment in the tribal areas.

On 10 April 2009 The News newspaper in Pakistan, acting on a briefing by the authorities, reported that “Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent. Figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities show that a total of 701 people, including 14 al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed since January 2006 in 60 American predator attacks targeting the tribal areas of Pakistan. Two strikes carried out in 2006 had killed 98 civilians while three attacks conducted in 2007 had slain 66 Pakistanis, yet none of the wanted al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders could be hit by the Americans right on target. However, of the 50 drone attacks carried out between January 29, 2008 and April 8, 2009, 10 hit their targets and killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda operatives. Most of these attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence believed to have been provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who had been spying for the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan. The remaining 50 drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. The number of the Pakistani civilians killed in those 50 attacks stood at 537, in which 385 people lost their lives in 2008 and 152 people were slain in the first 99 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April 8).”

The head of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee, Carl Levin, acknowledged in March 2009 that “the price is very heavy” when drone missile strikes kill civilians, but said the strikes were “an extremely effective tool.” There appears to be no intention on the part of the United States to cease or even moderate the drone attacks, in spite of a forthright meeting between General Kayani and senior US representatives in Islamabad on April 8. Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Mr Holbrooke, President Obama’s envoy for the region, were again told that the strikes were unacceptable, but there was no meeting of minds.

There is much resentment concerning US policy throughout the country and at all levels of the army, which considers that unilateral strikes by the US reflect poorly on Pakistan’s position as a willing associate in the US effort to eradicate elements considered to be a threat to American security. In FATA the army has to bear with the knowledge that its operations are most adversely affecting the lives of ordinary citizens of Pakistan. The fact that these citizens are Pushtun tribals makes military action a delicate matter, as some fifth of soldiers are of Pushtun stock. There is no evidence that this has caused any disciplinary problem, but the fact remains that any commander would be unwise to ignore the sensitivity of committing troops of specific origins in operations that might involve their own kith and kin.

*****

A major problem for the army, however, was and continues to be unfamiliarity with counterinsurgency techniques. The great majority of units are trained in large-scale conventional manoeuvre warfare, and are skilled in armoured operations. When it became necessary to withdraw formations from the eastern border to counter militancy in the west, there were few if any units that had experience of the very different tactics essential in counterinsurgency. It was necessary to conduct in-area training of all units, not only those expecting to be directly involved in patrols, ambushes and attacks. Logistics elements, especially those operating or relying heavily on ground transport, are extremely vulnerable to action by dissidents, and it took many weeks for lessons to be learned and training imparted, during which time there were many casualties.

(It is notable that the US army, under the auspices of General Petraeus, now commander in the region, found it necessary in 2006-2007 to produce a new instruction Manual (FM 3-24) on counterinsurgency. It had been realised, after three years conducting such operations, that much of the army was not properly trained for the nature of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

General Kayani has ordered that 2009 should be “The Year of Training”, focusing at the unit level rather than conducting major formation exercises, and aimed at improving all aspects of lower-level expertise. This will have the effect of cutting the number of large-scale exercises, resulting in reduced operating costs, although it will be necessary to maintain conventional skills. It can be expected that the army’s emphasis on counterinsurgency will be maintained and that increasing numbers of units and formations will rotate from the eastern border to the west should the internal security situation deteriorate, as it appears likely to do.

The army’s morale appears good, and general standards of discipline and training are more than satisfactory. It suffers from a lack of high-quality junior officers, but it is possible that economic trends may result in attraction of more young people to a military career. In spite of many strains, the army considers it represents solidity and continuity in an unstable state, but under Kayani and his likely successor the army will stay out of politics, although its chief will continue to have much influence.

Further, the army chief is reluctant to become involved in the purely policing aspects of internal security, as was evident at the time of the demonstrations in support of the dismissed Chief Justice (which contributed to president Zardari’s decision to restore him to his post), but will remain the force of last resort in the event of major domestic unrest. Although it is too much to expect that there will be rapprochement with India to the point of reductions in troop levels, the stress on large-scale operations will probably be modified, and fewer exercises involving armoured formations will be held.

Pakistan is experiencing severe strains, but can rely on the army to continue to perform its duties as required by the Constitution.

What the country and its army need is quiet, structured support from Washington. All the noisy and insulting public pronouncements by Clinton and others might make good headlines in western newspapers, but they are entirely counter-productive as regards the citizens of Pakistan, who see America as a preaching bully rather than a helper in this time of deep crisis.

Brian Cloughley

[This piece is adapted from Pakistan’s Army and National Stability published on April 22 by the Pakistan Security Research Unit of the University of Bradford (UK). Brian Cloughley’s book about the Pakistan Army, War, Coups and Terror, covering events up to February 2009, is published by Skyhorse Publishing (New York) in May 2009
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Pakistani Army Takes Capital of Buner, Pushing Back Taliban Advance; Obama Considering More Aid

The Pakistani military parachuted soldiers Tuesday into Buner, in the Malakand district of the North-West Frontier Province, to take on the estimated 500 militants who had made a bid to take over Buner. From all accounts, the Pakistani government of Asaf Ali Zardari does not think what happens in Buner is actually very important. But the Obama administration, alarmed at the spread of the Pakistani Taliban further into Malakand (which borders Afghanistan and so has security implications for US & NATO troops) has pressured Islamabad to intervene. LAT quotes former interior minister Tasnim Noorani to the effect that the Pakistani government will actually have to rule in Malakand if it is to succeed, since surgical military operations are unlikely to have a long-term success.

On Wednesday morning, it was announced that the Pakistani military had taken control of Dagar, the capital of Buner district. Fighting remained heavy in the area, with 70 militants claimed killed and another 350 or so still holding out in parts of the district.

The operation in Buner was launched after Pakistani intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Pakistani Taliban leader Mawlana Fazlullah and one of his commanders indicating that their plan was to feign a withdrawal from Buner and then to launch a surprise takeover. The Tehrik-i Taliban-i Pakistan (TTP) stands accused of killing or kidnapping local NWFP security personnel and kidnapping adolescent boys from villages for induction into the TTP paramilitary.

High Obama administration officials appear to have worked themselves into a frenzy about events in Malakand, and propose dealing with it by giving Islamabad more money more quickly than planned and also training Pakistani troops in counter-insurgency. Some US officials suspect duplicity on the part of the government of Pakistani President Asaf Ali Zardari. I take it that means they think the Pakistani military is sanguine about the spread of Talibanism in Malakand because the Pakistani Taliban might be useful in projecting Pakistani influence in the southern Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, which Islamabad considers its "strategic depth."



One of the reasons for which the Pakistani government has been unwilling to conduct major military operations against the militants in Swat Valley and Buner may be the risk of massive population displacement, which in turn could be more destabilizing than a few Taliban. Even in the fighting in the past few days to push the Pakistani Taliban out of parts of Malakand, 30,000 civilians were displaced from their homes. Some 300,000 were displaced by the Bajaur campaign last fall and into winter 2009. And altogether the UNO is estimating that 600,000 are now displaced by fighting in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province (and are so destitute that they need food aid), and Pakistani authorities believe it may be as much as a million. There are only 3.5 million persons in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and another say 17 million in the NWFP. My guess is that a good ten to fifteen percent of all the inhabitants of FATA are now internally displaced persons and many seem to be vulnerable.

The insecurity in the FATA areas is badly affecting the nearby capital of the North-West Frontier Province, Peshawar, which has seen militant attacks on its infrastructure and where the population now rushes home at nightfall.

The connection between the Pakistani Taliban advance in Malakand areas like Dir and the security of US troops fighting next door in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan is underlined by this CBS video:



Riz Khan covers the rise of the Pakistan Taliban in the North-West, noting that British PM Gordon Brown recently expressed anxiety that Pakistani Talibanism forms a threat to the security of London.



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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Obama's First Hundred Days in the Greater Middle East

The hundred day benchmark for journalists sizing up a new administration is probably inappropriate on foreign affairs, which are complicated and move slowly. Still, we can assess the changes in approach and tone between the Obama administration and its predecessor this winter and spring, to try to get a sense of where things are going.

Obama has engaged in a number of acts of public diplomacy toward the Muslim world that were intended to change the image of the United States in the region and to marshal for his purposes American soft power, which is among its largest assets in the region. (Contrary to what the American Right used to confidently assert, the Muslim world does not hate "our way of life," but rather loves the idea of democracy and loves US media. What they say they don't like is a lot of sleeping around and tolerance of gays; in other words, Muslim public opinion is not so different from that of many Americans in the deep red states).

Obama did an interview with al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based Arabic satellite news station, soon after he got into office. He offered a hand of friendship to Muslims, insisted that you can't stereotype 1.5 billion people with the actions of a few terrorists, and implied that al-Qaeda seemed to be running scared that it had lost George W. Bush as a recruiting tool.

Obama was making an important point. Radicalism in the Muslim world is very much wrought up with anti-imperialism, with a desire to push back against what local people see as an overbearing and arrogant American dictation to them of how to live their lives. Bush was a poster boy for that arrogance, slipping up and talking of a "crusade," denouncing "Islamic fascism" or "Islamic terrorism" (you can't have either since Islam forbids them), encouraging the Israeli right wing, and invading and occupying Muslim countries on a vast scale. The new president hoped to set a different tone, and by doing so to blunt the recruiting efforts of the radicals.

Obama's public diplomacy extended to Iran, which he addressed on the occasion of the Persian New Year. He stressed the opportunity for Iran to re-enter the world community through diplomacy with the US.

Although the US press interpreted the Iranian response as a rebuff, I argued that the leadership in Tehran greeted it with caution and adopted a wait and see attitude.

Note that the Bush administration had absolutely refused to deal with Iran diplomatically on any but the most narrow of technical issues (mainly security in Iraq), and had seemed to delight in zinging Tehran and constantly generating vaguely ridiculous charges against it of supporting al-Qaeda or the Afghan Taliban, and serially leaking to Sy Hersh stories that it might be nuked at any moment by the US and/or Israel.

The big moment for public diplomacy, however, was Obama's trip to Turkey. In 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, 56 percent of Turks had a favorable or very favorable view of the United States. By late in the Bush administration eight years later, that percentage stood at 9%. Bush was barely more popular in Turkey than was Bin Laden. But nearly 40 percent of Turks say that they have confidence in President Obama, making him the politician in Turkey with the very highest approval rating!

In an address to the Turkish parliament, Obama declared that the US is not and never will be at war with Islam the religion. (To be fair, Bush had said similar things when in Turkey, but his policies were so unpopular that it was difficult for him to be taken seriously on this point).

I wrote a commentary on Obama's speech to the Turkish parliament, which I argued emphasized the ability of Middle Easterners to democratize on their own, without "help" from a domineering Neoconservative Big Brother. In a historic passage, Obama pointed out that he himself had Muslim ancestry and had lived in a Muslim country (Indonesia), and that neither attribute (obviously especially the latter) was unusual among Americans.

On Iraq, Obama visited Baghdad and met with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. He outlined the specifics of the US withdrawal plan, which envisages US combat troops ceasing active patrols in Iraqi cities by August 1, 2009; a withdrawal of all combat troops by September 1, 2010, and the withdrawal of the remaining 40,000 or so logistical support and other US troops by Dec. 31, 2011. While US commander Gen. Ray Odierno clearly chafed at this timeline and wants to tweak it, even he recently said he was 10 out of 10 sure that it would be adhered to under current conditions.

Many US observers, who are withdrawal fundamentalists, do not understand that the advances made by the Iraqi army depend heavily on US logistical and air support, and that a precipitous withdrawal might well leave the country in chaos. They also don't understand that an Iraq in chaos would be unacceptable to the US and its regional allies, and would draw American troops right back in. Obama's measured withdrawal, which has the support of the Iraqi government, is a good compromise and has a 50/50 chance of success. The heavy-casualty bombings of recent weeks in Baghdad and Mosul are a security, not a military challege, and probably will not affect the timeline.

In contrast, Bush fought tooth and nail against a US withdrawal from Iraq, and last year this time Dick Cheney was alleging that the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq would be taken over by al-Qaeda and used to attack the US mainland if American troops went home. Those who cannot see a difference between Obama and the Bush administration on this issue are blind.

The Obama administration has succeeded in changing the tone of US diplomacy with the Greater Middle East. Note that a better job could have been done. Aljazeera would have been a more effective place to do an interview than al-Arabiya, since it is much more widely watched. There were a few aggressive notes in the speech to Iran, which were gratuitous and helped to provoke the grumpy Iranian response.

In polling, publics in the Middle East did see positive changes in US policy, with about 40% praising the changes. In Lebanon and the UAE it was over 50%, while in the outlier, Iran, it was only 29%. Still, the trend lines are the right ones.

Still, tone is easy, where there is a will. Substance is hard.

Obama, to remain credible, will have to stick to the Iraq withdrawal timetable. The fall in violence in the Shiite south and in some Sunni Arab areas to my mind has a lot to do with the realization of militiamen that they needed resort to violence to accomplish the goal of a US departure from their country.

Obama has been dealt a difficult hand in the hot spots. It is highly unlikely that he can accomplish much on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, given the far rightwing racist character of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government (it would be as though Jean-Marie Le Pen had come to power in France). The Palestinians themselves have been successfully divided by Israel and the US, and by their own leaders' factiousness (Hamas in Gaza is in its own way like a Jean-Maire Le Pen scenario on the Palestinian side).

Obama's appointment of George Mitchell as special envoy was a slap at the powerful US Israel lobbies, insofar as he is a skilled diplomat and capable of being at least somewhat even-handed.

But Obama has said nothing about the horrific Israeli assault on the civilian population of Gaza, both a gratuitous war of choice and the continued blockade, which is actually stunting the growth of children. Jordan's King Abdullah II, close to the region's problems warns of a new war if Obama does not make breakthroughs. At the very least, the continued imposed statelessness, large-scale theft from, and brutalization of the Palestinians by the Israelis promises to continue to generate terrorism and anti-Americanism unless these problems are resolved.

Obama seems to think that Afghanistan can be resolved through sending more troops, which is highly unlikely to be the case. And despite his hard line on Pakistan, he has been unable to convince Islamabad to take the Pakistani Taliban seriously as a threat to the whole of Pakistan. (Pakistanis tend to see them as particularly strict Muslim Pushtuns, not a new phenomenon and not relevant to most Punjabis and Sindhis; and they tend to want the disputes settled through parleys instead of massive military operations.)

So, an "A" on style, which is all that could probably be accomplished in 100 days. We need to come back and judge substance a year from now. But the challenges are enormous, especially at a time when domestic economic and health concerns are the primary focus of the American public.

Obama was saddled with two wars abroad (three if you count northern Pakistan), a persistent terrorism problem exacerbated by those wars, an unprecedentedly bad US image, and a festering Israel/Palestine conflict that had been virtually ignored for eight years, and which is poisoning the whole region.

It is too soon to tell whether he can succeed in handling this very full plate. But he has at least stopped digging us into a hole, and there is some prospect of him succeeding on at least some fronts.

It is hard to remember now how bad things were a year ago, in April of 2008, in this regard. How hopeless issues looked on all fronts, how absent and arrogant the supposed decider was, how perfidious and devious the real president-behind-the-scenes was. Obama cannot fix the world's problems simply by taking office or making some speeches. But he does give people hope with his style, intelligence, grasp of issues, and clear ethical imperatives. It is a new day. It is a new day.

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Monday, April 27, 2009

Al-Maliki Denounces US Raid as Violating SOFA;
Larijani dissatisfied with US

AP reports that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has denounced a US raid in Kut as a violation of the security agreement between Washington and Baghdad.

WaPo goes further and says that al-Maliki is actually calling for the troops involved to be prosecuted in Iraqi courts.

The US said its troops were targeting a major funder of militias, whom they accused of receiving monies and material from Iran. I.e. this was about the so-called 'special cells' or pro-Iranian groups inside the Shiite militias. Kut has a lot of Sadrists, who follow Muqtada al-Sadr and there are still Mahdi Army units active there. The raid left an innocent female bystander dead. Six captured alleged militiamen were released by the US military after al-Maliki's protest.

In Kut, hundreds gathered in an anti-US demonstration.

The US maintains that the raid was coordinated with the Iraqi government. But it appears that the officials the US dealt with were local and that they neglected to pass news of the plan up to their superiors.

Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the US must notify the Iraqi government before it takes military action.

Al-Maliki is touchy about such an operation in Kut and probably wants personal approval in such matters. Kut is in the Shiite south, where al-Maliki has been attempting to spread the influence of his Islamic Mission Party (Da'wa). It has a significant Sadrist constituency, and al-Maliki is trying to put together coalition provincial governments with the Sadrists. So the US raid made al-Maliki look weak and puppet-like and made him unpopular in a key area where he wants support.

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Iraqi government officials are expecting further bombings this week, as the country prepares for a conference on investing in Iraq later this week. The officials say that the guerrillas are attempting to dissuade foreign investors and to give them the impression that Iraq is unstable and a poor place to invest. The guerrillas hope to keep the government of Nuri al-Maliki weak so as to be able to overthrow it.

The speaker of the Iranian House has warned Iraqi insurgents that Tehran would track them down and punish them for the attacks this past week on Iranian pilgrims to holy shrines in Iraq. He also took up the theme that the US might be behind attacks on Iranian targets.

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Sunday, April 26, 2009

Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics

Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days.

And Stephen Walt also is asking why there are such varying assessments of Pakistan's security prospects. He suggests that one problem is the difficulty of predicting a revolutionary situation. But Pakistan just had a revolution against the military dictatorship! The polling, the behavior in the voting booth, the history of political geography, aren't these data relevant to the issue? Why does no one instance them?

As I have said before, although the rise of the Pakistani Taliban in the Pushtun areas and in some districts of Punjab is worrisome, the cosmic level of concern being expressed makes no sense to me. Some 55 percent of Pakistanis are Punjabi, and with the exception of some northern hardscrabble areas, I can't see any evidence that the vast majority of them has the slightest interest in Talibanism. Most are religious traditionalists, Sufis, Shiites, Sufi-Shiites, or urban modernists. At the federal level, they mainly voted in February 2008 for the Pakistan People's Party or the Muslim League, neither of them fundamentalist. The issue that excercised them most powerfully recently was the need to reinstate the civilian Supreme Court justices dismissed by a military dictatorship, who preside over a largely secular legal system.

Another major province is Sindh, with nearly 50 mn. of Pakistan's 165 mn. population. It is divided between Urdu-speakers and the largely rural Sindhis who are religious traditionalists, many of the anti-Taliban Barelvi school. They voted overwhelmingly for the centrist, mostly secular Pakistan People's Party in the recent parliamentary elections. Then there are the Urdu-speakers originally from India who mostly live in Karachi and a few other cities. In the past couple of decades the Urdu-speakers have tended to vote for the secular MQM party.

Residents of Sindh and Punjab constitute some 85% of Pakistan's population, and while these provinces have some Muslim extremists, they are a small fringe there.

Pakistan has a professional bureaucracy. It has doubled its literacy rate in the past three decades. Rural electrification has increased enormously. The urban middle class has doubled since 2000. Economic growth in recent years has been 6 and 7 percent a year, which is very impressive. The country has many, many problems, but it is hardly the Somalia some observers seem to imagine.

Opinion polling shows that even before the rounds of violence of the past two years, most Pakistanis rejected Muslim radicalism and violence. The stock of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda plummeted after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The Pakistani Taliban are largely a phenomenon of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas west of the North-West Frontier Province, and of a few districts within the NWFP itself. These are largely Pushtun ethnically. The NYT's breathless observation that there are Taliban a hundred miles from Islamabad doesn't actually tell us very much, since Islamabad is geographically close to the Pushtun regions without that implying that Pushtuns dominate or could dominate it. It is like saying that Lynchburg, Va., is close to Washington DC and thereby implying that Jerry Falwell's movement is about to take over the latter.

The Pakistani Taliban amount to a few thousand fighters who lack tanks, armored vehicles, and an air force.

The Pakistani military is the world's sixth largest, with 550,000 active duty troops and is well equipped and well-trained. It in the past has acquitted itself well against India, a country ten times Pakistan's size population-wise. It is the backbone of the country, and has excellent command and control, never having suffered an internal mutiny of any significance.

So what is being alleged? That some rural Pushtun tribesmen turned Taliban are about to sweep into Islamabad and overthrow the government of Pakistan? Frankly ridiculous. Wouldn't the government bring some tank formations up from the Indian border and stop them?

Or is it being alleged that the Pakistani army won't fight the Taliban? But then explain the long and destructive Bajaur campaign.

Or is the fear that some junior officers in the army are more or less Taliban and that they might make a coup? But the Pakistani military has typically sought a US alliance after every coup it has made. Who would support Talibanized officers? Not China, not the US, the major patrons of Islamabad.

If that is the fear, in any case, then the US should strengthen the civilian, elected government, which was installed against US wishes by a popular movement during the past two years. The officers should be strictly instructed that they are to stay in their barracks.

What I see is a Washington that is uncomfortable with anything like democracy and civilian rule in Pakistan; which seems not to realize that the Pakistani Taliban are a small, poorly armed fringe of Pushtuns, who are a minority; and I suspect US policy-makers of secretly desiring to find some pretext for removing Pakistan's nuclear capacity.

All the talk about the Pakistani government falling within 6 months, or of a Taliban takeover, flies in the face of everything we know about the character of Pakistani politics and institutions during the past two years.

My guess is that the alarmism is also being promoted from within Pakistan by Pervez Musharraf, who wants to make another military coup; and by civilian politicians in Islamabad, who want to extract more money from the US to fight the Taliban that they are secretly also bribing to attack Afghanistan.

Advice to Obama: Pakistan is being configured for you in ways that benefit some narrow sectional interests. Caveat emptor.

---

Update: In answer to some comments below. First of all, the Pakistani military is not "unable" to stop the Taliban in the North-West Frontier Province. The Zardari government is just not desirous of alienating the Pushtuns by being heavy-handed. They only sent in 250 special ops troops to deal with Buner, which is a very light touch for an army with lots of artillery, tanks and fighter jets.

Pakistan now is not like Russia in 1917. Its two main political parties are of old standing, have contested many elections, have millions of supporters and canvassers. The main threat to the PPP government is parliamentary-- that it will be unseated by the Muslim League if it fails a vote of no contest and there are new elections.

All the military coups in Pakistan have been made from the top by the army chief of staff. Therefore Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is the man to watch. He was Benazir Bhutto's army secretary and has ties to the Pakistan People's Party. Not a Talib.

The hype about Pakistan is very sinister and mysterious and makes no sense to someone who actually knows the country.

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Maliki Government Resists Deal with Baathists

The NYT reports that behind the scenes the US has been pressuring Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to find a way to reconcile with former Baathist elements, but that he has refused.

Actually the Arab press has been reporting for some time on this issue. From the point of view of an Iraqi government dominated by fundamentalist Shiites and by Kurds, the Baath Party had been putting them in mass graves for the previous three decades and they refuse to deal with it. In fact, they consider it positively unconstitutional to have any dealings with the Baath Party. The NYT ascribes the problem mainly to al-Maliki and ironically enough quotes Ahmad Chalabi as more reasonable. Chalabi spear-headed the effort to "debaathify" Iraq and urged that the party be treated as Nazi, and served on the Debaathification Commission alongside al-Maliki.

All the Sunni-majority provinces roundly rejected the constitution to which the Iraqi government is now appealing, and you can't have a national government under those conditions.

This is why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's characterization of the Sunni Arab guerrilla's actions as the last gasp of rejectionists is wishful thinking (not to mention un-artful in evoking Dick Cheney so powerfully).

Many Sunni Arabs in Iraq and in the Arab world are simply not reconciled to Iraq being ruled by pro-Iran Shiite fundamentalist parties in alliance with Kurdish autonomists. What distinguishes the guerrillas is not their greater rejectionism but their continued hope that direct action can change the status quo, which many Sunni Arabs have given up on.

For more see John Aloysius Farrell.

Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, blamed the US directly for the attacks in Iraq this week. Since one of the attacks was on the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim, an important holy figure for Shiite Muslims, Khamenei was implying that the US military is deliberately targeting shrines sacred to the religion. These are inflammatory charges, and I interpret them as a sign that Khamenei is running scared from Obama's popularity with the Iranian public, and attempting to blunt pressures on him from reformists to reciprocate Washington's new interest in dialogue.

Aljazeera English reports on the plight of Iraqi refugees who have fled Baghdad and still refuse to return because they are unconvinced that the security situation in the capital has improved all that much. Many are traumatized from watching loved ones or friends killed.



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Saturday, April 25, 2009

Shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim Targeted, 60 Killed, 125 Wounded

Update: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Baghdad Saturday morning on a mission to assess the reasons for the recent rise in large-scale bombings.

Two suicide bombers killed 60 persons and wounded 125 outside the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kazim in northern Baghdad on Friday, in an attack that is much more dangerous than the previous horrific bombings this past week in Iraq.

Musa Kazim is the seventh Imam in Shiite belief, and his shrine is sacred to believers. (See explanation all the way at the end at asterisk). Had it been destroyed, Iraq could have seen another paroxysm of Sunni-Shiite violence such as followed on the February, 2006, destruction of the Askariyah shrine in Samarra (tomb of the 10th & 11th Imams and associated with the messianic figure, the Twelfth Imam).

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that security specialists in Iraq are puzzled at the degree of insider knowledge about facilities and schedules exhibited by the bombers in recent days. They had to penetrate three checkpoints to reach the area just outside the shrine of Musa Kazim, for instance. And earlier this week bombers had breached the security of police in the Shiite neighborhood of Karrada, and knew about the schedule of Iranian Shiite pilgrims moving through Muqdadiya. Likewise, the radicals appear to have gotten from somewhere a new supply of high-powered explosives and sophisticated bomb vests.

In contrast, Defense Ministry official Maj. Gen. Abd al-Aziz Muhammad Jasim saw the attacks as opportunistic and as focusing on soft targets, and he said that the days when the Sunni Arab radicals could take and hold territory were over for good.

The area around the shrine, Kadhimiya (in the Iraqi pronunciation, with the "dh" like the English "the") is largely Shiite and is on the west side of the Tigris, traditionally a more Sunni area (before the Shiites took over many western neighborhoods). It is across a bridge from the strongly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiya, on the eastern side of the Tigris, which is surrounded and sometimes besieged by Shiite neighborhoods. As al-Hayat points out, the bridge between the two neighborhoods had to be closed at the height of the low-intensity ethnic civil war of 2006-2007, and was only recently reopened. Shiites will suspect that the bombers infiltrated across that bridge from Adhamiya, and sectarian tensions are now boiling again.

Al-Hayat adds: Shiite cleric Jalal al-Din Saghir of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq lamented in his Friday sermon that sectarian tensions were again rising. Sunni preacher Mahmud Jawad al-`Isawi said at the mosque attached to the shrine of Sufi great Abd al-Qadir Gilani that there was a danger of going back to "square one" (with regard to security and sectarian relations).

Aljazeerah English reports on the difficulties facing the Iraqi government with regard to national reconciliation of Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The recent upsurge in violence is covered.



McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Friday:

' Baghdad

- Two suicide bombers detonated in seconds near the Kadhemiyah shrines in Kadhemiyah neighborhood around noon. At least 60 pilgrims were killed and 125 others were wounded , 25 Iranians were among the killed with 80 others were wounded.

- Around 8:30 p.m. a magnetic bomb detached to a police officer’s car in Saidiyah neighborhood in southern Baghdad on Friday. Major Raad Meki was killed at once and three other people were wounded who were in the area.

Diyala

- A car bomb detonated in Jalwlaa town in northeast Diyala targeting a police patrol around 7:15 p.m. Two people were killed and 26 others were wounded including 6 policemen. '



*Shiites hold that after the Prophet Muhammad died, religious and temporal authority in Islam should have passed to his son-in-law, Ali, and then to Ali's sons with Fatimah, the daughter of the Prophet-- Hasan and then Husayn. Husayn was martyred in 680 and succeeded by his son, Ali Zayn al-Din. His successor was his eldest son, Muhammad Baqir. The latter was succeeded by Ja`far al-Sadiq, who was the founder of the Twelver Shiite legal tradition. He had two sons, Isma`il and Musa al-Kazim. Initially Isma`il was set to succeed him, but for some reason (the early sources differ on why), he set Isma`il aside in favor of his younger brother, Musa al-Kazim. There was a major schism in Shiite Islam over this succession issue, with some believers insisting on sticking with Isma`il and his descendants, becoming the Ismailis. The Twelver Shiites, who predominate in Iraq and Iran, followed Musa al-Kazim, and they even now maintain that Isma`il died at a young age and so was never appointed Imam in the first place. Musa Kazim is said to have been imprisoned for 4 years by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, and Shiite folk tradition maintains that the caliph did in the imam. The Abbasid caliphs were rivals for power with the Shiite Imams.

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Friday, April 24, 2009

A Modest Proposal: George's Day and Saving Bookstores (and not bad for Florists either)

There is a delightful custom in Barcelona. On April 23, St. George's Day, men give their girlfriends or wives a rose. And the women give their male beloved a book. The gift of the book is said to have been initiated in 1926 as a commemoration of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote

The rose is more traditional. It is said that after St. George killed the dragon to save the maiden, a droplet of its blood sprouted into a rose.

Perhaps under Catalonian influence, April 23 has already been adopted by UNESCO as the International Day of the Book. However, I don't think very many people know about this day.

The advantage of the way the Barcelonans do it is that it ties book-giving to individual romance, and so makes it universal. Obviously the precise Catalonian custom, however quaint and colorful, is pretty sexist and needs updating. But if it is altered slightly, I think we have here a commemoration worth widely adopting.

I propose that whoever loves someone else romantically of any sex give the loved one both a book and a rose for George's Day.



If we do it that way, I think George's Day could be promulgated successfully as a day internationally observed by individuals, just as Valentine's Day has become.

April 23 has the advantage of falling at a time of year when there is little to drive customers to bookstores. Moreover, despite UNESCO's effort, there is no popularly recognized special day for book-buying. One can give a book on lots of occasions, but it is just one possible gift among many. Having a special day on which only a book will do as a gift would be a great good thing. And, of course, buying someone a Kindle file would also work.

It is true that St. George is a Catholic saint and so on the surface not suited to universal commemoration. But I know of nothing objectionable about him, and the main legend associated with him is that of killing the dragon. That is of course a mythic deed common in world mythology-- Indra and Vrta, Faridun and Zohak, Thor and the Midgaard serpent. Killing the dragon of ignorance on behalf of the Book is a universal.

Besides, in the US we don't have a problem widely commemorating St. Valentine's Day. And then there is our appropriation from Catholic sources of St. Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mardi Gras, and virtually any other excuse to get tipsy, so why not at least put one saint to literate use?



What say you, bloggers and bibliophiles? Shall we push George's Day, April 23, with all the vigor that the jewelers put into Valentine's Day?

It isn't too late even this year. After all, we could start with a vague St. George's season (and the Eastern Orthodox observe dates other than April 23). But next year we could push to make it really big.

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Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Gonzales Signed off on Torture

McClatchy reports that torture was reauthorized in spring of 2003 by four Bush administration officials: Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. It has already been revealed by McClatchy that the reason for the reaffirmation to the CIA to go on intensively waterboarding and otherwise torturing Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad was to get them to allege an operational tie between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, a link that did not exist.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell were absent from the reauthorization meeting. (My guess is that they were too smart to come to it, realizing that it could be a one-way trip to the International Court of Justice at the Hague.)

The McClatchy headline also indicates that these four officials may have pressured the lawyers who wrote bizarre legal opinions saying that torture is OK in US law when it is not. (If they had written legal opinions saying that murder was OK, would that also be a matter of mere legal interpretation that might legitimately differ from attorney to attorney? But then what is the difference between torture and murder in the law, or in ethics?)

The reauthorization of torture contravenes the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is signatory, which is to say, it contravenes US law.

Liz Cheney defended her father from charges of authorizing torture on MSNBC.

Liz Cheney should be reminded that the Nuremberg process executed at least one person for persistently advocating crimes against humanity even though he never killed anyone with his own hands.

It is therefore a matter for some concern that the offenses may only be investigated and adjudicated in Europe, relatively toothlessly.

Mark Follman reminds us that the legality or uselessness of torture is not the only issue. There is also the issue of morality and of its warping effect on the torturers.

But note that the March waterboardings were not for the purpose of increasing national security; they were intended to provide a propaganda victory for an illegal war plan. That is not just wrong, it is evil.

See also Tom Engelhardt's essay on the sacrifices (of other people) we think necessary to 'make us safe,' this time in Afghanistan.

John McCain, himself tortured in North Vietnam, is asking that no Bush administration officials be prosecuted for advising or authorizing torture.

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At Least 78 Killed in Iraq Bombings;
AP: At Least 110,000 Dead in Violence

Brian Murphy of AP reports that bombings in Iraq killed 78 persons on Thursday

A female suicide bomber in the upscale Shiite neighborhood of Karrada in Baghdad struck a crowd that had gathered to receive Red Crescent aid, killing 31, including 8 police officers, and wounding 50.

To the northeast, near Muqdadiya, a suicide bomber hit a restaurant frequented by Shiite pilgrims from Iran on their way to the Shiite holy sites (Samarra, Kazimiya, Najaf, Karbala, etc.) in Iraq. That bombing killed at least 47 people and wounded 69, the bulk of them Iranians. The province of Baqubah, where the bombing took place, contains a mixed population of Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds and is among the more violent places in Iraq, as the three groups continue to jockey for position and to mount low-intensity warfare against one another. Since Iran is a major support for Diyala's Shiites, Sunni Arab guerrillas want to attack that lifeline, making sense of the killing of the Iranian pilgrims.

Actually, McClatchy says that the restaurant was so badly damaged that it collapsed, and many more bodies are likely to be pulled out of the rubble.

There have been 33 major bombings in Iraq in April.

Kim Gamel of AP gets the scoop-- she reports that she has sprung from the Iraqi ministry of health the tabulated figures on violent deaths in Iraq since 2005. Altogether, combining the Iraqi list of over 87,000 death with tolls kept by other sources back to 2003, AP is estimating 110,000 dead by violence since the US invasion of Iraq began. This figure excludes guerrillas and militiamen whose fellow fighters did not want them going to an official morgue. The number is almost certainly only a fraction of the real deaths, which could number in the hundreds of thousands according to cluster surveys. Likewise, the AP number excludes those Iraqis killed by lack of potable water and other breakdowns in service delivery, including medical care, who are probably as numerous as those killed in violence.

Nir Rosen argues that the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement has decisively lost, with Baghdad having become a largely Shiite city that denies Sunni cells demographic cover, and that both Shiites and Sunnis now recognize this change. He says that al-Maliki can crack down on the Sunni "Awakening Councils" with impunity as a result.

I agree with Nir that the Sunni Arabs have lost the guerrilla war. However, that can have other outcomes than quiescence. Those who lose a guerrilla war often turn to terrorism as a force multiplier. The winter of the Sunni Arabs' discontent could be a long one.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that Iraq's reconciliation commission will decline to negotiation with the two large Baath cells of Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri and Muhammad Yunus al-Ahmad. These two are considered "Saddamist" under the terms of the Iraqi constitution, and so talking to them is a "red line" that the commission is unwilling to cross.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq for Thursday:

' Baghdad

A suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest detonated near a gathering of National Police while they were distributing humanitarian aid in 52 Street, Karrada, central Baghdad Thursday. The explosion killed 28 people and injured 50 others.

A roadside bomb exploded near juvenile hall in Tobchi, central Baghdad injuring two civilians at 6 p.m.

Diyala

A suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest detonated in a roadside restaurant 45 km to the east of Baquba killing 55 people including two Iraqis, 16 women and one child; the rest were Iranian men and injuring 68 others at 2.30 p.m. Thursday. Most of the people in the restaurant were Iranian pilgrims on their way to visit the holy shrines in Karbala and Najaf.

Two houses belonging to displaced families from Timim tribe were blown up Thursday morning, the first in al Mualimeen neighbourhood, western Baquba and the other in Tahrir neighbourhood in east Baquba. The houses were empty and they belonged to two Shiite families who had intended to return.

Gunmen attacked and killed Sheikh Salih Mustafa Mohammed, sheikh of al Askar tribe in the marketplace in northeastern Baquba at 10 a.m. Thursday.

A roadside bomb targeted Mubarak Hammad al Obaidi, commander of Sahwa in Khalis county. The incident took place in al Atheim district, around 15 km to the north of Baquba Thursday evening. Obaidi and three of his aids were killed and two others were injured.

Salahuddin

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt detonated inside al Khulafaa Mosque in Dhiluiyah district, 90 km to the south of Tikrit, Wednesday during evening prayers killing four worshipers, injuring 15 others amongst which was Yasir Mahmoud, brother of Mulla Nathum Mahmoud, head of Support Councils in Dhiluiyah.

Nineveh

A roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi Army patrol in al Zahraa neighbourhood, eastern Mosul, Thursday morning injuring two civilians

A parked car bomb targeted a U.S. military convoy in Suk al Nebi neighbourhood, eastern Mosul. No casualties were reported.

A gunman threw a hand grenade at a group of civilians in Ras al Jada neighbourhood, western Mosul injuring four.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt attempted to get inside one of the headquarters of the Peshmerga (the Kurdish forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party) in Barzan village to the northwest of Mosul Wednesday. The Peshmerga suspected him and shot at him, then he detonated without causing any casualties. A few minutes later a car bomb exploded some distance away injuring two Peshmerga members.'



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Thursday, April 23, 2009

REVISED TRANSCRIPT: LIZ CHENEY DEFENDS HER FATHER ON MSNBC

MSNBC sent me this by email. I couldn't find it on the web, so I'm reprinting here- JRIC

REVISED TRANSCRIPT: LIZ CHENEY DEFENDS HER FATHER ON MSNBC

NEW YORK – April 23, 2009 – Liz Cheney, former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Bush administration and the daughter of the former vice president, Dick Cheney spoke to MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell earlier today about new information that suggests her father signed off on harsh interrogation practices.

NORAH O'DONNELL, MSNBC ANCHOR: Also, there may be some new information today on who signed off on tough tactics to question terrorists. The Senate Intelligence Committee now says Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice helped direct a small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing these harsh interrogation practices. Also, Rice gave the first verbal OK for the use of waterboarding in July 2002.

Liz Cheney is a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Bush administration and the daughter of the former vice president, Dick Cheney.

Liz, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

LIZ CHENEY, FORMER U.S. DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Thanks, Norah. Good to be here.

O'DONNELL: Did the former vice president, Dick Cheney, was he the prime mover behind directing this small group of Justice Department lawyers to come up with an authorization for these harsh tactics?

L. CHENEY: That's actually not what the document says that you're referring to. There's absolutely no question that this was a program that was widely approved and supported within the administration. I think there's no secret here that the National Security Council reviewed the program. The National Security Council ensured that it had legal approval before going forward with these techniques.

But I want to go back to one thing we heard the attorney general say, Norah, which I found troubling. He said that he had not seen the memos or any memos talking about the effectiveness of this program. And I think it's very important for people to ask the question, had the president, before President Obama made the decision to release the tactics and the techniques, had nobody reviewed the effectiveness of the program? Had his attorney general and the president himself looked at whether in fact these programs had gained intelligence that was critical for saving -- for the security of the nation?

O'DONNELL: Well Liz, we'll get to that argument in a minute, about do the means justify the ends. Whether torture justifies...

L. CHENEY: Well, it wasn't torture, Norah, so that's not the right way to lay out the argument.

O'DONNELL: OK.

L. CHENEY: Everything done in this program, as has been laid out and described before, are tactics that our own people go through in SEER training and that our own people have gone through for many years. So it's really – does a fundamental disservice to those professionals who are conducting this very effective program and to those people who approved the program in order to keep this nation safe and prevent attacks through the program to call it torture.

O'DONNELL: Liz, the CIA, on its own after 2005, stopped waterboarding on its own. The U.S. prosecuted people for waterboarding after World War II.
So to suggest there's a consensus out there that waterboarding is not torture is not in fact accurate.
Cont'd (click below or on "comments")

L. CHENEY: No, I think it is accurate. There were three people who were waterboarded. And two of those people are people who gave us incredibly important and useful information, information that saved American lives after they were waterboarded. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.

And I would just refer your viewers to the really important op-ed piece that Mike Hayden and Attorney General Mukasey wrote laying out why this program worked, why it was effective and what damage has now been done to our national security by releasing the tactics of this program (ph).

O'DONNELL: Well, the current director of the national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, has said this about those particular memos, he says this, quote, "the information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances. But there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."

We have a full screen of this – no, let me, I want to put this full screen up, because this is very important. Could we please get this up on the screen?

L. CHENEY: It is important, Norah, but let me comment to that.

O'DONNELL: The bottom line – the bottom line is that these techniques have hurt our image around the world.

L. CHENEY: Norah, I'm sure you know...

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: ... director says that the damage that has done has far outweighed any information that was gleaned. And in fact, there is a disagreement about whether other tactics other than waterboarding could have gotten valuable information.

L. CHENEY: Norah, I'm sure you know that actually the first statement that DNI Blair put out internally acknowledged the incredible effectiveness of these programs and acknowledged that very important intelligence had been gained. And that it was only after the White House got a hold of the statement, edited the statement, censored it I would say, and put it out publicly that his language changed.

So I think this is another instance where people need to take a very close look at the fact you've had four former CIA directors talk about how effective this program is and why memos should not have been released, and the fact that DNI Blair changed his assessment of the program should raise some questions in people's minds.

O'DONNELL: I want to get back again – we can debate this, but I want to get back to specifically, what role the vice president had in directing lawyers to authorize these memos. Was it from the vice president's office, Dick Cheney, who said to those men -- John Hugh (ph), Jay Bibby (ph)– we need to come up with a way to interrogate these al Qaeda suspects after 9/11? Why doesn't he own up to the fact that he was the prime mover behind that?

L. CHENEY: Norah, there was no direction of lawyers from the vice president. That's not how this process worked. And I think that you can look at exactly how the process worked, which is, the CIA said we have Abu Zubaydah and we think he's got important information that further attacks are imminent and therefore, we need to know what we can do.

And the National Security Council met and discussed this. This is actually all laid out in Senator Rockefeller's timeline, which doesn't say what you're alleging that it says, which makes clear that the questions laid out to OlC were, what's possible and when. And if you've read the memos, in fact, that were released, you'll see that they were very, very careful in laying out exactly what could be done and for exactly how long.

So the notion...

O'DONNELL: Well, let me put that up on the screen, because we do have that and that's the first full screen that I was going to get to, which is the Cheney and Rice signed off on these interrogations. Very first graphic...

(CROSSTALK)

L. CHENEY: But Norah, what you're doing is reading a headline – but Norah, you're reading a headline from an A.P. story or McClatchy story. That's not what the document itself says.

Now, I think it's very important, however, to be clear...

O'DONNELL: The Senate Intelligence lays out that in those initial meetings were the vice president..

L. CHENEY: Absolutely.

O'DONNELL: ... the national security adviser...

L. CHENEY: That's absolutely right.

O'DONNELL: ... Powell, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld were not in those initial meetings. So if those were that small group of people, why won't you say that the vice president was one of the prime movers in..

(CROSSTALK)

L. CHENEY: There's no question that the vice president of the United States supported the program, as did the national security adviser, as did the secretary of state, as did the attorney general, as did the entire National Security Council. There is nobody who has been clearer about being out there saying this is a good program, this saved American lives than the vice president. So there's nothing about owning up here, because this was a good program and people are very proud of what we've accomplished.

Now setting aside that, what you're doing is reading headlines and talking about direction of lawyers, which is a very different thing. And there's no assertion that that's what went on. The lawyers' opinions were sought in order to make sure that the program that the CIA ran stayed within the law. And the lawyers did a very responsible and professional job of laying out exactly what were the limits of how far we could go. And that is precisely what makes it so damaging that these memos have now been released.

O'DONNELL: Listen to yourself – listen to yourself, Liz, "how far we could go."

L. CHENEY: That's right.

O'DONNELL: How far could we go with detainees? I mean, how far could we... Torture them in order to get information?

L. CHENEY: How far – no. For how many minutes you could ask them certain kind of questions. How many...

(CROSSTALK)

L. CHENEY: I'm sorry, it's very, very important point.

O'DONNELL: It's a very important point.

L. CHENEY: It is a very important point.

O'DONNELL: The Geneva Convention were established...

L. CHENEY: Norah, there is nothing...

O'DONNELL: ... to protect our men and women in the military. So that America would be a beacon in the world so when our men and women are captured overseas that they would not be tortured. We would never want our people to...

L. CHENEY: Norah, are you going to give me a chance to answer your question?

O'DONNELL: Let me finish my point.

L. CHENEY: I get your point, Norah, but the point is – no, Norah, wait a second...

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: ... America no longer cares about torture?

L. CHENEY: That's not what the world is hearing, Norah. First of all...

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: .. and if gets valuable information, then OK, we're for it. Is that the message they send?

L. CHENEY: Norah, that may be what you're saying, but that's not what I'm saying.

O'DONNELL: OK.

L. CHENEY: What I'm saying that is there were a series of tactics, a series of techniques that had all been done to our own people. We did not torture our own people, these techniques are not torture. The memos laid out...

O'DONNELL: Did we torture other people?

L. CHENEY: No.

O'DONNELL: You just said, we did not torture our own people.

L. CHENEY: Therefore, the tactics are not torture. We did not torture. The memos laid out the extent of exactly how far we could go before it would become torture, because it was important we not cross that line into torture.

As General Hayden and Attorney General Mukasey laid out, the problem is that now we've said to our enemies, look, this is exactly how far we're g going to go. So our enemies, who we know read this stuff online, will now train to be able to withstand that.

Now, setting that aside, this argument about the Geneva Conventions, in terms of the – you know, this idea that somehow al Qaeda abides by the Geneva Conventions. If al Qaeda captures an American, they cut his head off. So I think it's very important for us to sort of take a step back from the emotion of this and say we needed to be able to get evidence about imminent attacks.
We knew these guys had information, the information that was provided saved American lives, and the techniques were not torture. And I think it's important for the American people to be able to see the entire argument laid out.

O'DONNELL: OK. Liz Cheney, stay with us, because we're going to have much more not only about these particular harsh interrogation memos that some people are calling torture memos, whether the vice president will participate, will testify before a truth commission, and the future of the Republican Party. We've got a lot more coming up right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The world outside there, both our friends and our foes, will be quick to take advantage of a situation if they think they're dealing with a weak president or one who's not going to stand up and aggressively defend America's interests.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: Back with us is Liz Cheney, she, of course, the former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Bush administration and the daughter of the former vice president, Dick Cheney.

All right, Liz, did the vice president just call the president a weak president?

L. CHENEY: I think that he is concerned that some of the things that we've seen President Obama do, particularly on his overseas trip, in terms of not taking the opportunity to stand up and defend America when Daniel Ortega delivers a 50-minute screed against the United States...

O'DONNELL: Is that really appropriate, though, to call the current sitting president weak?

L. CHENEY: I think what he said is you begin to look weak and there's a danger if our enemies think we are weak. I think it's important to be very precise about what he said.

But I there's a real concern. I mean the message that we saw coming out of the last few foreign trips, you know, set aside republican and democrat, as an American, it concerns me when I've got a president who doesn't stand up and say, wait a minute. You know, I'm going to defend the United States of America because we are the beacon of hope for people all around the world.

O'DONNELL: He didn't said he wasn't going to defend America.

L. CHENEY: He didn't do it though, Norah. He didn't do it. He stood up after Ortega attacked the nation, attacked our policies for the last 40 years, and President Obama said, well, look I was only three months old.

Now, you know, that's not the kind of strong defense of the nation that I'd like to see.

O'DONNELL: Let me read to you what the former president, George W.
Bush, said on March 17th in Calgary. He said, quote, "I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him," talking about President Obama. "There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence."

So Liz, what are you doing here? What's the vice president doing?

L. CHENEY: Well, the vice president thinks it's very important when you see the country begin to go down paths that are concerning and dangerous, and when you see the current administration making decisions that really do have the potential to make us less safe, in those circumstances, I would say the vice president doesn't' think that there's an obligation to be silent. In fact, I think he believes the opposite, which is that there's an obligation to stand up and say, wait a second. You know, there are important reasons why we put policies in place. They clearly kept us safe for seven years.

And it's very important as this administration now begins to dismantle some of those things, that the public, you know, understand and have the ability to have a debate about what direction we're going to go in.

O'DONNELL: The latest former vice president's approval ratings, Cheney, favorable, 21 percent, unfavorable 58 percent.

Is it possible that the American people have already made a judgment about whose right on this issue? They voted for change, they don't agree with your point of view, with your father's point of view?

L. CHENEY: You know, I think – obviously, they voted for change. I think there are lot of reasons why the republicans lost this election. I do think that the Republican Party needs to do some rebuilding.

But I think that all of that is domestic politics and poll numbers.
And I think that we are at a crossroads as a nation. We're at a moment where we can either remember that we're at war and remember that there are people out there who really would like to do us great damage and great harm and keep those policies in place that have kept us safe, or we go back to treating this like a law enforcement matter.

And I think when you're dealing with issues that are of that grave importance, spending a lot of time looking at poll numbers is irresponsible.

O'DONNELL: Well, the former vice president is now calling the sitting vice president essentially a weak president. That he's concerned he's going -- he said essentially said he's worried that he's no longer going to ask terrorists tough questions, which I'm sure our men and women are going to ask terrorists tough questions.

L. CHENEY: The question is, Norah....

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: ... answer the questions, I think that's the question.

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: ... did Vice President Cheney get permission from President Bush to speak out like this?

L. CHENEY: He doesn't need permission. But we were just watching...

O'DONNELL: Do they talk regularly?

L. CHENEY: They do.

But let me say one thing. We were just watching Attorney General Holder, and he made a very important point. He talked about the task forces that have been set up to review interrogation techniques. And this is one of the things that's so concerning about the release of these legal memos and it's another thing General Hayden points out.

President Obama said to his National Security Council, you tell me whether or not the tactics in the Army Field Manual are sufficient and you report back to me about whether those are sufficient to protection the nation.
And they haven't reported back yet. That is underway. That review is underway. And in the meantime, we have released the information about what other tactics are.

So it's really a situation where there's, you know, the president has not only tied his own hands, but he's tied potentially the hands of all future presidents by putting this material out before he himself even knew whether his task force was going to tell him, yes, you need those tactics.

O'DONNELL: Well, the Senate Armed Services Committee came out with a report yesterday. And the chairman of that committee, Carl Levin, said essentially, there's a direct link between what happened in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. That these types of interrogation practices led to what we saw at Abu Ghraib. And I think there's been a pretty general agreement across the world that what happened at Abu Ghraib was despicable.

L. CHENEY: Absolutely what happened at Abu Ghraib is despicable. What Senator Levin is saying and the report that you've mentioned, clearly you've heard republican members of Congress and republican senators on TV all day today pointing out that that was a partisan report.

So, Abu Ghraib was despicable, the people that did those things are being prosecuted and have been prosecuted and punished. That is not the CIA interrogation program. That was a situation in which people were doing things that were clearly against the law and they shouldn't have been doing. And it's a very convenient thing for, you know, democrats in Congress and people who are trying to sort of make partisan attacks here to point Abu Ghraib. I think we all should be able to say we agree that was a crime and that was despicable.
And that's not part of this current debate.

O'DONNELL: Well, the question is whether that led – some of those -- opening the door to those harsh interrogation tactics led to a misunderstanding that happened at Abu Ghraib.

We're going to have much more with Liz Cheney...

L. CHENEY: But I don't think there's any evidence that it did, by the way.

O'DONNELL: All right, when we come back, more with Liz Cheney, including what Megan McCain had to say to day about the former vice president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'DONNELL: And we are back with Liz Cheney.

And Liz, I want to play for you something that Megan McCain, who of course is the daughter of John McCain, was co-hosting on "The View" this morning and she had some tough words for your father, the former vice president.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEGAN MCCAIN, THE VIEW: The DNC just did an ad. And it has Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney as the new faces of the Republican Party...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my God, how scary.

MCCAIN: Well, I mean, it's hard people like me that really want new energy and new blood when they – it's very unprecedented for someone like Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to be criticizing the president. It's very unprecedented a former vice president, you know, obviously Karl Rove – and I just – you know, my big criticism is just, you had your eight years, go away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: You have a reaction to that?

L. CHENEY: Look I disagree with her. But I think it's great to have young people actively engaged in politics. And I think that one of the things that we're seeing that's, I think, is fascinating, in the early months of this administration, something that I thought would take longer, frankly. And I think you're seeing people around the country, young people in particular, look at those tea parties we had a couple of weeks ago, people coming out just saying, wait a second here. There are a lot of things that we love about this nation and we don't want to see those things take away.

So I think that, you know, it's terrific to have people engaged in the process. I would encourage more people to get engaged and I think it's a good thing for the party.

O'DONNELL: Do you think Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican Party?

L. CHENEY: I think that Sarah Palin's terrific. I think that there are a lot of young, you know, leaders out there that we see, people in Congress. I'm a big fan of Adam Putnam, who I hope will one day run for governor of Florida. People like Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan. You know, we've got a lot of very smart, very talented, young members of Congress, some governors out there as well, who I really do think represent, you know, where the party will go in the future.

O'DONNELL: And given that 90 percent of John McCain's voters were white in this past election, do you acknowledge your party has a long way to go when it comes to minorities and reaching out to younger people, too?

L. CHENEY: I do think we have a lot to do. And I think that the Obama campaign was a masterful campaign. And I think the new techniques that they set out and that they implemented are ones that we need to be studying closely and learning from and stealing the next time around.

O'DONNELL: All right, Liz Cheney, thank you so much for joining us
here on MNSBC.

L. CHENEY: Thanks, Norah. Great to be here.


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Pelosi was Briefed on Harman's Wire Tap

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says she was briefed several years ago that Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) had shown up in a wiretap. Pelosi denies that she was pressured by Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban to appoint Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

But then at the end of the interview, Pelosi says that Harman did not get the job because of internal term limits. She said, “The only reason Jane was not chosen is because she already had two terms. It had nothing to do with wiretaps or Iraq.”

Iraq? Who said anything about Iraq? The accusation was that Harman was to be rewarded for getting off the hook two career employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who are being tried for espionage.

Makes you wonder what Harman had to do with getting up the Iraq War, which seems to be another strand in all this. Pelosi admitted to disagreements with major campaign funder Saban over Iraq.

Curioser and curioser.

Laura Rozen has more.

End/ (Not Continued)


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Cheney, Rumsfeld Pressured for Torture to Justify Iraq War;
5 Killed in Iraq Mosque Bombing

Jonathan S. Landay at McClatchy has discovered the real reason that Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad were tortured dozens of times in the run-up to the Iraq War. It was because Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were trying to get them to say that Saddam Hussein had operational links with al-Qaeda, so as to have a firm justification for the war.

The US military has now combed through 6 million captured Iraqi government documents and has entirely failed to find any evidence of operational links between the secular Arab nationalist Baath Party and the radical fundamentalist al-Qaeda cult.

The information supplied to Landay by knowledgeable insiders is perhaps the clearest evidence yet that high officials in the Bush administration personally ordered repeated torture to be employed, and that they did so for partisan political gain rather than for national security.

See also Mark Follman's fine essay on 'Why Dick Cheney keeps Torturing Us.'

On Wednesday, a teenaged suicide bomber detonated his payload inside a Sunni Arab mosque in Dhulu'iya, a one-time stronghold of radicalism. Presumably the now much reduced number of radicals are angry at local tribal leaders who defeated them and sided with the US military, and the bombing is revenge.

The mosque bombing comes in the wake of a string of such attacks in recent weeks. A suicide bombing on Monday in Sunni-majority Diyala Province to the east killed four policemen and wounded 8 US soldiers.

A UN task force headed by special envoy Steffan de Mistura concluded Wednesday that a power-sharing compromise would be best for Kirkuk. Joost Hiltermann, who knows that terrain intimately, fears that the report will be ignored by all sides, who will feel they have more to gain from fighting than from sharing. This is why I say that President Obama had best intervene directly to get a grand compromise on Kirkuk that might forestall violence, before the US loses its leverage as it draws down troops.

Al-Zaman says that the report advises against partitioning Kirkuk. That is too bad, because I personally think partitioning it would be the best solution and might avert further bloodshed.

Tensions are also running high between Arabs and Kurds in Ninevah Province, where some Kurds are boycotting the provincial government because they feel they were shortchanged in the awarding of patronage by the Sunni Arab victors.


McClatchy reports other political violence in Iraq on Wednesday:

' Nineveh

A parked car bomb targeted the motorcade of a colonel in the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces in the central marketplace in Zummar district, 70 km to the northwest of Mosul at 9.30 a.m. Wednesday. No casualties were reported.

A suicide car bomb targeted a checkpoint in Zummar district near Rabeia area manned by Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces at around 10 a.m. Wednesday. The checkpoint personnel waved for the driver to stop, when he didn't they opened fire at him and the car bomb detonated at a distance from the checkpoint injuring two Peshmerga. One civilian passerby was also injured by mistake by fire from the checkpoint personnel.

- Gunmen killed a salesman in front of his shop in Al-Zihour neighborhood in eastern Mosul on Wednesday afternoon.

- A roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi patrol in Suq AlMaash neighborhood in western Mosul on Wednesday. One soldier was wounded.

Kirkuk

Gunmen kidnapped Fayadh Yaseen, an Arab judge in Kirkuk court as he was leaving his home in Khadraa neighbourhood on his way to work Wednesday morning.

Gunmen killed engineer Tariq Mustafa, an employee of Kirkuk municipality during an attempt to kidnap him in central Kirkuk.

Baghdad

- Around 10 p.m. a gunman threw a grenade on an Iraqi national police check point at the high way which leads to the Ministry of Finance building in downtown Baghdad on Wednesday. One policeman was killed and three others were wounded including two civilians.

Salahuddin

- Around 8:30 p.m. a suicide bomber detonated himself among a crowd of prayers at Al-Khulafa mosque in Dhuluiyah town (60 miles north of Baghdad). Five people were killed and 16 others were wounded, police said. '


End/ (Not Continued)


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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Harman Admits She Talked to American;
Saban said Involved

On being interviewed by Robert Siegel of National Public Radio on Tuesday, Rep. Jane Harman kept denying she knew which conversations had been referred to by the Congressional Quarterly report, even seemed to question the existence of the conversations.

But then Siegel pressed her and she suddenly remembered something about the conversation:

' MR. SIEGEL: But, indeed, if what happened was, initially, your phone wasn’t tapped; the person you were talking with was being tapped. And if that was an investigation of a foreign agent, is it realistic to think that anybody is going to release a completely unredacted transcript of that conversation?

REP. HARMAN: Well, let’s find out. I mean, the person I was talking to was an American citizen. I know something about the law and wiretaps. There are two ways you do it. One is you get a FISA warrant, which has to start with a foreign suspected terrorist, a non-American foreigner. If this was FISA, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that would have had to happen.

MR. SIEGEL: But if you know that it was an American citizen –

REP. HARMAN: If it was Article III, FBI wiretap, that’s different. But I don’t know what this was. And I don’t know why this was done. And I don’t know who the sources are who are claiming that this happened are and I think –

MR. SIEGEL: But you are saying that you know it was an American citizen. So that would suggest that you know that there was a –

REP. HARMAN: Well, I know that anyone I would have talked to about, you know, the AIPAC prosecution would have been an American citizen. I didn’t talk to some foreigner about it.

MR. SIEGEL: You never spoke to an Israeli? You never spoke to an Israeli about this.

REP. HARMAN: Well, I speak to Israelis from time to time. I just came back from a second trip to Israel in this calendar year. . . '


It seems obvious to me that Harman knew exactly which conversation had been tapped, and remembered exactly to whom she was talking at the time, which was an American citizen. (By the way, an American citizen recruited by Mossad would still be an Israeli spy or agent, run by an Israeli field officer. In fact, in tradecraft terms, an attempt was made to turn Harman herself into an agent. "Agent" is used in popular parlance to refer to field officers, but this is not a technical usage. The agent is the local.)

Her later protestations that logically speaking she could only have been talking to an American are weak, and then she undermines them by saying she talks to Israelis. So she can't know she was talking to an American as a matter of logic, as she implied when challenged.

There is an immense irony in her faux horror that she was wiretapped without her knowledge, since the allegation against her is that then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dropped the investigation of her over the deal she seems to have made with the Israeli agent, precisely in order to retain her as an advocate of warrantless wiretapping. The tap on the Israeli agent, into which she fell, was apparently in fact court-authorized, so she was being treated better than she wanted the rest of us treated.

Another piece of breaking news is that Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban may have been involved. That is, he was a major funder for Nancy Pelosi and the thinking was that he would threaten to cut his campaign contributions to her if she did not make Harman the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Saban admits that he is "sometimes" Avigdor Lieberman. That is about the scariest thing I've heard a billionaire say since the 1930s.

Although it is being suggested by some that Saban himself was the Israeli agent under surveillance, that cannot be assumed on present evidence.

Phil Weiss has more on Saban, whose endowed center at the otherwise liberal Brookings Institute pushed the Iraq War and kept trying to put the situation in post-invasion Iraq in a good light.

I once corresponded with someone who was well-connected, and said I was amazed at something people at the Saban Center were saying. He explained the bizarre statements to me, saying that "the word is, the client is happy with them." The client is Saban.

As usual, you'd be amazed what you can find out on wikipedia.

Saban is in fact off the rails on Israeli nukes and on the alleged need to attack Iran:
'
Do you still feel, as you once did, that America's attitude toward Israel is liable to deteriorate?

"At the moment there is no sign of a crisis. But we must not be complacent. The two pillars of the state are the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S., Dimona [the site of Israel's nuclear reactor] and Washington. [Israel] must do all we can to maintain the alliance with America. A major crisis at the wrong time could be a disaster, a disaster." . . .

You meet frequently and quite intimately with Israeli and American decision-makers. What do you tell than about the situation regarding Iran?

"The Iranians are serious. They mean business. [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is not a madman. [....] When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language. His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal. And for a religious person of deep self-persuasion, that supreme goal is worth the liquidation of five and a half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a religious leadership that is convinced that the annihilation of Israel will bring about the emergence of a new Muslim caliphate? Israel cannot allow that. This is no game. It's truly an existential danger." '


I mean, this is absolute nonsense. Ahmadinejad has never threatened to kill any Jews at all, much less millions of them. And nothing in the Shiite beliefs about the coming of the Mahdi requires militancy. In fact, strict Shiite law forbids offensive jihad or holy war until the Mahdi appears, since only he has authority to declare it.

Saban is that most dangerous of persons, a billionaire ignoramus and fanatic with enormous political influence.

As for little old non-millionaire me, I think the American Israel Public Affairs Committee should have to register as the agent of a foreign state. Maybe Saban too.

End/ (Not Continued)


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