Palestinian Pundit

by Salim Lone
Global Research

"Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country.

As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements.

The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts.

An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists.

With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts.

The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peacekeepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed.

Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary — because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice.

The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance.

If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa.

Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Ogadenis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports.

The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace."

The Fascist And The Midwife Of Death:
Plenty To Smile About

Condi getting ready for her Middle Eastern tour

Threats, threats, threats ... about Iraq
Nothing, no plan, just tranquilizers for Palestine

(Hamed Atta, Al-Khaleej, 1/13/06).

(Click on to enlarge)
Contributed by Fatima.

By Kurt Nimmo

"Now that Bush has delivered Kristol’s speech, we can expect a full-court press in the corporate media to demonize Iran in preparation for an attack against that country.

“U.S. officials tell CBS News that American forces have begun an aggressive and mostly secret ground campaign against networks of Iranians that had been operating with virtual impunity inside Iraq,” CBS News reports, or rather reads from the neocon script.

“According to U.S. military figures, 198 American and British soldiers have been killed, and more than 600 wounded by advanced explosive devices manufactured in Iran and smuggled in through the southern marshes and along the Tigris River. Attempts to disrupt these networks, combined with the decision to send a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf as a warning to Iran, significantly raises the stakes, according to former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk.”

Indyk is a prominent Israel Firster. He “served” as U.S. ambassador to Israel, directs the rabidly pro-Israel Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, and is a member of the Middle East Strategy Group klatsch at the neolib Aspen Institute, where he rubs elbows with Henry Kissinger and Dianne Feinstein. Aspen is a pet project of the Rockefeller brothers and the Ford Foundation.

As it turns out, these “advanced explosive devices” are from Britain, not Iran."

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At a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming

By Robert Perry

"Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.”

Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.....

Reasons for Alarm

In his prime-time speech, Bush injected other reasons to anticipate a wider war. He used language that suggested U.S. or allied forces might launch attacks inside Iran and Syria to “disrupt the attacks on our forces” in Iraq.

“We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria,” Bush said. “And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Bush announced other steps that could be interpreted as building a military infrastructure for a regional war or at least for air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

“I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region,” Bush said. “We will expand intelligence sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies.”.....

Militarily, a second aircraft carrier strike force would do little to interdict arms smuggling across the Iran-Iraq border. Similarly, Patriot anti-missile batteries would be of no use in defeating lightly armed insurgent forces and militias inside Iraq.

However, both deployments would be useful to deter – or defend against – retaliatory missile strikes from Iran if the Israelis or the United States bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or stage military raids inside Iranian territory.

Iran has a relatively sophisticated arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles. Those short-range missiles could be fired at U.S. bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. The medium-range missiles could conceivably hit Tel Aviv.

Not only could Patriot missiles be used to knock down Iranian missiles while they’re heading toward their targets, but the fearsome firepower of two aircraft carrier strike forces could deter any Iranian retaliatory strike following a U.S. or Israeli attack.

In other words, the deployments would fit with Israel or the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear sites and then trying to tamp down any Iranian response.

Another danger to American interests, however, would be pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq seeking revenge against U.S. troops. If that were to happen, Bush’s escalation of troop levels in Iraq would make sense as a way to protect the Green Zone and other sensitive targets.

So, Bush’s actions and rhetoric over the past several weeks continue to mesh with a scenario for a wider regional war – a possibility that now mainstream journalists, such as Tim Russert, are beginning to take seriously....."

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While the celebrations for Israeli independence day are going on in other parts of the country, young Palestinian citizens of Israel observe a march taking place in the destroyed village of Hosheein in memory of the Nakba, 12 May 2005. (MAANnews/Charlotte de Bellabre)

Report: The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel, 12 January 2007

"We are the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the indigenous peoples, the residents of the States of Israel, and an integral part of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Muslim and human Nation. The war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the Israeli state on a 78 percent of historical Palestine. We found ourselves, those who have remained in their homeland (approximately 160,000) within the borders of the Jewish state. Such reality has isolated us from the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab world and we were forced to become citizens of Israel. This has transformed us into a minority living in our historic homeland."

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For all Mr Blair's personal salesmanship at the time, this began as a highly unpopular war, and it remains one

"......In seeking to blame the media for what he sees as the growing distaste of the British public for war, the Prime Minister is quite simply wrong. If there is, as he suggested, a crisis of confidence in the benefits of military force, it is one that he has brought upon himself.

Mr Blair observed, rightly, that modern technology makes it impossible for governments to shield the civilian public from the unpleasant reality of war - as was possible, for instance, during the Falklands war or, to a lesser extent, during the Gulf war. Government censorship, on political or taste grounds, is now almost impossible. As we saw with the execution of Saddam Hussein, eyewitnesses have the means to gainsay the sanitised version. The truth, however gory and dishonourable, will out.......

No, what we are looking at now is not a general crisis of confidence in the use of British military force, fostered by the sensation-driven modern media; it is a particular crisis of confidence precipitated by the débâcle of Iraq. For all Mr Blair's personal salesmanship at the time - the weapons of mass destruction and all that - this began as a highly unpopular war, and it remains one. Rather plaintively, Mr Blair said yesterday that the armed forces wanted public opinion "not just behind them, but behind their mission".

It is astounding that, almost four years on, Mr Blair still fails to understand that the mission is precisely the problem. And his address contained all the old deceits. He conflated, as he habitually does, the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though the one had UN approval and the other, crucially, did not. He spoke about the qualitatively different threat we face after 9/11, as though the prime reason for invading Iraq was terrorism. And yet again he rejected all suggestion that Britain's presence in Iraq might be a factor in the alienation of young British Muslims.

To this catalogue he has now added the notion that media coverage is turning the British public off the use of "hard" power. The voters may indeed be more wary of military interventions in future. And so may the MPs who represent them. If this is so, however, it will not be because the media have willed it, but because of the fatal misjudgement of a Prime Minister. "

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In the military sex-speak of the Pentagon, Iraq would endure a 'spike' of violence

By Robert Fisk
The Independent

".....There is something repulsive about this vocabulary, an aggressive language of superiority in which "key players" can "interact" with each other, can "impact" society, "outsource" their business - or "downsize" the number of their employees. They need "feedback" and "input". They think "outside the box" or "push the envelope". They have a "work space", not a desk. They need "personal space" - they need to be left alone - and sometimes they need "time and space", a commodity much in demand when marriages are failing.

These lies and obfuscations are infuriating. "Downsizing" employees means firing them; "outsourcing" means hiring someone else to do your dirty work. "Feedback" means "reaction", "input" means "advice". Thinking "outside the box" means, does it not, to be "imaginative"?

Being a "key player" is a form of self-aggrandisement - which is why I never agree to be a "key speaker", especially if this means participation in a "workshop". To me a workshop means what it says. When I was at school, the workshop was a carpentry shop wherein generations of teachers vainly tried to teach Fisk how to make a wooden chair or table that did not collapse the moment it was completed. But today, a "workshop" - though we mustn't say so - is a group of tiresome academics yakking in the secret language of anthropology or talking about "cultural sensitivity" or "core issues" or "tropes"......"

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King George, The Merciless
By Mr. Fish

"BAGHDAD (AFP) - Months after its last plan failed dismally to pacify Baghdad, the United States is pouring another 17,500 troops into the Iraqi capital to put new counter-insurgency tactics to the ultimate test.

Nicknamed "King David" by some within the US military, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, who led the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, will this year assume overall command of coalition troops in Iraq.

It will be a chance for him to put into practice a new US counter-insurgency manual, which the "warrior-scholar" co-wrote and published last month.

Drawing heavily on the lessons of nearly four deadly years in Iraq, the United States' biggest and deadliest war since Vietnam, the new doctrine challenges accepted practice and tactics long honed by the US military.

"Ultimate success in COIN (counter-insurgency) is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force," says the manual.

"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."

Most American soldiers in Iraq are holed up in fortress garrisons from which they venture only in heavy armoured convoys that send civilian traffic scurrying to avoid getting hurt by US guns or anti-American attacks.

Petraeus criticised the use of indiscriminate force, warning that heavier fire is more prone to "collateral damage" and mistakes, and widens the scope for insurgent propaganda to portray the US military as brutal.

"The key for counter-insurgents is knowing when more force is needed and when it might be counter-productive," the manual says."

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The New York Times

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — A recent series of American raids against Iranians in Iraq was authorized under an order that President Bush decided to issue several months ago to undertake a broad military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

“There has been a decision to go after these networks,” Ms. Rice said in an interview with The New York Times in her office on Friday afternoon, before leaving on a trip to the Middle East.

Ms. Rice said Mr. Bush had acted “after a period of time in which we saw increasing activity” among Iranians in Iraq, “and increasing lethality in what they were producing.” She was referring to what American military officials say is evidence that many of the most sophisticated improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, being used against American troops were made in Iran."

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The Old And The New Iraq Policy
By Baha Boukhari

Tell Amazon to Treat Carter's Book Fairly

"As longtime Amazon customers, we are deeply disturbed by your treatment of Jimmy Carter's important new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Under the "Editorial Reviews" heading – a space normally used either for the publisher's own description of a book, or for short, even-handed summaries from listing services such as Booklist and Publishers Weekly – you insist on running the complete, 20-paragraph, 1,636-word text of a review unabashedly hostile to Carter's viewpoint. You have refused to add information shoppers should have in evaluating this review: the fact that the reviewer, Jeffrey Goldberg, is a citizen of Israel as well as the United States, and that he volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, for which he worked as a guard at a prison for Palestinian detainees. And you have refused to balance his negative review by giving comparable space to a favorable assessment of the book, even though positive reviews by qualified experts have appeared in many reputable publications.

Because giving so much space in this location to such a negative review is so unusual – if not unprecedented – for Amazon, and because you have refused requests from many customers that you take a more balanced approach, we can only conclude that you are deliberately trying to discourage shoppers from ordering the former President's book.

This is contrary to Amazon's own interests as a bookseller. More important, it's also contrary to the interests of understanding, peace, and justice for all parties to the Israel/Palestine conflict

We are not interested in supporting a corporation that uses its power in the marketplace in such a biased and unconstructive way on such an important issue.

Accordingly, if you do not, by Jan. 22, remove the Goldberg review, move it to the more appropriate "See all Editorial Reviews" page, or restore a semblance of balance by giving comparable space and prominence to a more positive evaluation of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, we the undersigned pledge to:

1. Stop shopping at Amazon.com;

2. Completely close our accounts on your service; and

3. Encourage our friends, family, and associates to do likewise.

Sincerely, "

Click Here to Sign Petition

Head For The Nearest Bomb Shelter:
The Midwife Of Death Is In The Middle East, Again!

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (R) sits next to his daughter Sarah as he talks with people outside his house at Shati refugee camp in Gaza January 12, 2007. (REUTERS)

An Excellent Article

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 12 January 2007

"With his book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid reaching the top of the bestseller lists, former President Jimmy Carter appears to have made a breakthrough in the ossified debate on Israel-Palestine in the United States.

In dozens of packed appearances and in the media, Carter has shattered long-observed taboos by talking about "the abominable oppression and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid system of required passes and strict segregation between Palestine's citizens and Jewish settlers in the West Bank." It is still difficult to imagine any other senior US politician doing that.

Carter has been vilified by the pro-Israel lobbying industry in the United States with the frequent intimation that he is anti-Semitic. Yet even this furor demonstrates the hard limits which the debate still faces. In defending himself against such attacks, Carter has been careful to stress that he is only talking about the situation inside the territories occupied in 1967, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "I know that Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew. And so I very carefully avoided talking about anything inside Israel," he said.

Thus what even Carter acknowledges is that a debate about the racist nature of the Israeli state itself remains off-limits. An obvious question is how a "wonderful democracy" could operate a system of apartheid just a few miles away. Discrimination against non-Jewish citizens of Israel is legally enshrined and openly discussed in Israel. It includes separate and unequal education, laws that reserve the best land for Jews only, massive discrimination in allocation of resources, exclusion of non-Jews from government office, and the "Law of Return" that encourages Jews to move to the country while indigenous Palestinians remain banned from returning home.

The US media, with a few exceptions, continue to treat these facts, uncontroversial even within Israel, as if they don't exist. This underlines the persistent segmentation of the discussion of the conflict in the US and Europe. There is the official peace process industry, or mainstream discourse that dominates media coverage and government pronouncements resting on a number of false assumptions: the US and the "Quartet" are honest brokers; everyone agrees on the outlines of a two-state solution except for minor details; Israel has good intentions and merely awaits a Palestinian partner; Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is potentially that partner, while Hamas are outlaw extremists who must be curbed, forced to "recognize" Israel and "renounce terrorism" and so on.

Only rarely is reality allowed to intrude on this official discourse, which is what Carter did in a limited way. Sometimes bald facts also call it into question, if only momentarily, such as when Israel announced a major new settlement in the northern Jordan Valley part of the West Bank, just days after an Abbas-Olmert summit that the peace process industry had hailed as a breakthrough. A scab of distortion and spin quickly forms to cover up whatever reality may briefly have been revealed. What is remarkable about this official dialogue is that most Palestinians do not subscribe to it, with the exception of a minority who are the favored clients of the industry -- at this time, Abbas and his entourage, the US-armed and EU-backed Gaza warlord Mohammad Dahlan and the rest of the class that benefited directly from Oslo.

Contrasted with the official discourse is an insurgent one that remains marginalized in the academy, among activists and in the alternative media. But it is gaining strength. Like the vast majority of Palestinians, it continues to view the Palestine situation as one of anti-colonial struggle, comparable to the long fight against South African apartheid. Yet Carter's intervention offers the potential to connect these views; if it becomes legitimate to describe Israel's tyranny over the occupied Palestinians as "apartheid", it may not be long before Israel's own internal colonialism against more than one million Palestinians faces similar examination. When Israel is no longer viewed as a "wonderful democracy", as US politicians without exception continue to label it, then the possibility for genuine peace based on the principle that Palestine-Israel belongs to all who live in it without discrimination based on religion, ethnic or national origin may open up. This is the danger that pro-Israel groups clearly perceive and are working night and day to stop."

"Pentagon planners this week warned President George W. Bush that his "troop surge" plan could double U.S. casualties in Iraq in the coming year and result in 10,000 or more American deaths by the end of 2008.

In a classified assessment memo, military experts predicted violence against U.S. troops will increase "at a sustained pace" and concluded that increasing the use of soldiers for house to house searches in Baghdad will "dramatically alter" the "ratio of casualties to actions" in that civil-war torn city, says a military source familiar with the memo."

By Patrick Cockburn
CounterPunch

"The Iraqi government will be weakened by the US dispatching more troops to Iraq and may well be replaced by a more pro-American administration in Baghdad. The increase in American involvement in Iraq is also convincing Iraqis that the US occupation is going to be permanent. "Many people now think the Americans are never going to leave," said Ghassan Attiyah, the Iraqi political commentator.

Many Iraqis previously suspected that US claims that it would only stay in Iraq for a short period were false and they will now believe their suspicions were justified. The Shia majority also fear that Washington will impose a government better prepared to carry out US instructions than that of the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

At the heart of President Bush's speech was the message that it would be American views on what must be done in Iraq that must be obeyed. It will be very difficult for the Iraqi government to prevent the US launching an assault on the Shia bastion of Sadr City, home to two-and-a-half million people. In theory, sovereignty was returned to Iraq in June 2004, but Mr Maliki has said he cannot move a company of troops without US permission. The increase in the number of US brigades in Baghdad will increase US control....."

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Cliff Ahead! Stomp on the Gas!

By WILLIAM S. LIND
CounterPunch

".....Relying on more promises from Iraq's nominal government and requiring more performance from the Iraqi army and police are equally empty policies. Both that government and its armed forces are mere fronts for Shiite networks and their militias. If the new troops we send to Baghdad work with Iraqi forces against the Sunni insurgents, we will be helping the Shiites ethnically cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis. If, as Bush suggested, our troops go after the Shiite militias in Baghdad and elsewhere, we will find ourselves in a two-front war, fighting Sunnis and Shiites both. We faced that situation briefly in 2004, and we did not enjoy it.

All this, again, adds up to nothing. But if we look at the President's proposal more carefully, we find it actually amounts to less than zero. It hints at actions that may turn a mere debacle into disaster on a truly historic scale.

First, Mr. Bush said that previous efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two reasons, the second of which is that "there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." This suggests the new "big push" will be even more kinetic that what we have done in the past, calling in more firepower -- airstrikes, tanks, artillery, etc. -- in Baghdad itself. Chuck Spinney has already warned that we may soon begin to reduce Baghdad to rubble. If we do, and the President's words suggest we will, we will hasten our defeat. In this kind of war, unless you are going to take the "Hama model" and kill everyone, success comes from de-escalation, not from escalation.

Second, the President not only upped the ante with Syria and Iran, he announced two actions that only make sense if we plan to attack Iran, Syria or both. He said he has ordered Patriot missile batteries and another U.S. Navy aircraft carrier be sent to the region. Neither has any conceivable role in the fighting in Iraq. However, a carrier would provide additional aircraft for airstrikes on Iran, and Patriot batteries would in theory provide some defense against Iranian air and missile attacks launched at Gulf State oil facilities in retaliation.

To top it off, in questioning yesterday on Capitol Hill, the Tea Lady, aka Secretary of State Rice, refused to promise the administration would consult with Congress before attacking Iran or Syria.

As I have said before and will say again, the price of an attack on Iran could easily be the loss of the army we have in Iraq. No conceivable action would be more foolish than adding war with Iran to the war we have already lost in Iraq. Regrettably, it is impossible to read Mr. Bush's dispatch of a carrier and Patriot batteries any other way than as harbingers of just such an action.

The final hidden message in Mr. Bush's speech confirms that the American ship of state remains headed for the rocks. His peroration, devoted once more to promises of "freedom" and democracy in the Middle East and throughout the world, could have been written by the most rabid of the neo-cons. For that matter, perhaps it was. So long as our grand strategy remains that which the neo-cons represent and demand, namely remaking the whole world in our own image, by force where necessary, we will continue to fail. Not even the greatest military in all of history, which ours claims to be but isn't, could bring success to a strategy so divorced from reality. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's words give the lie to those who have hoped the neo-cons' influence over the White House had ebbed. >From Hell, or the World Bank which is much the same place, Wolfi had to be smiling.

No, Incurious George has offered no new strategy, nor new course, nor even a plateau on the downward course of our two lost wars and failed grand strategy. He has chosen instead to escalate failure, speed our decline and expand the scope of our defeat. Headed toward the cliff, his course correction is to stomp on the gas."

By Mike Luckovich

The War Party is down, but not out

By Justin Raimondo

"......Not quite. It is untrue that the Shi'ite death squads were unleashed only "in retaliation" for the depredations of their Sunni archrivals – they started their deadly work early on, and have been operating full blast ever since the Americans decided to tilt in their direction.

While the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr is a relatively recent phenomenon, the existence of Shi'ite death squads predated the attack on the Golden Mosque: the Badr Brigade, now re-dubbed the Badr Organization – the armed militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) – was founded in Tehran in the 1980s. It is the military wing of SCIRI, the biggest political party in Iraq, and the major winner of the "purple finger" elections that Bush hails as a "stunning achievement." The Badr Boyz are the biggest, most organized, best-financed death squad in the country: they are up to their turbans in sectarian killings, and have infiltrated the Interior Ministry on such a large scale that they virtually control the national police and other security branches. The Iraqi elections, far from being a countervailing influence to the death squads, served to empower them.....

Bush is giving the signal for the Shi'ite death squads – in which our own troops will be "embedded" – to redouble their dirty work: it's the "El Salvador option" made manifest. And all in the name of fighting sectarian violence! That's the beauty of it. Later on in his peroration, Bush avers that "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned, deadly acts of violence will continue. And we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties." Given the objective consequences of his policies, what he really meant was especially if our strategy works exactly as planned.....

The last sentence ought to give us pause, because it underscores the real danger of remaining in Iraq one day longer, never mind four to six months or a year. Bush clearly sees the struggle in regional terms, and seeks to expand the conflict beyond Iraq's borders. That has always been the point of our intervention in Iraq: to establish a launching pad for the "liberation" of the Middle East.

Why else are U.S. soldiers storming the Iranian consulate in Irbil, and taking six consular personnel hostage – clearly an act of war?......

The longer we stay in Iraq, the likelier we are to get sucked into an Iranian quagmire that will dwarf our present predicament by several orders of magnitude. I would bank on a Cambodia-style incursion, a la Richard Nixon – a maneuver that, executed in the volatile Middle East, is likely to cause a seismic explosion that would reverberate across the globe with tremendous force. That's why we don't need a "surge" – and every moment we delay in getting out of Iraq takes us closer to the edge of the abyss."

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A Good Article
by Paul Craig Roberts

".....Bush makes it clear that success in Iraq does not depend on the surge. Rather, "Succeeding in Iraq . . . begins with addressing Iran and Syria."...

Why is Bush telling these lies? Here is the answer: Bush says, "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

In those words, Bush states perfectly clearly that victory in Iraq requires US forces to attack Iran and Syria. Moreover, Bush says, "We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region."

What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerrilla ground war in Iraq?

The "surge" is merely a tactic to buy time while war with Iran and Syria can be orchestrated. The neoconservative/Israeli cabal feared that the pressure that Congress, the public, and the American foreign policy establishment were putting on Bush to de-escalate in Iraq would terminate their plan to achieve hegemony in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would mean the end of the neoconservatives' influence. It would be impossible to start a new war with Iran after losing the war in Iraq.

The neoconservatives and the right-wing Israeli government have clearly stated their plans to overthrow Muslim governments throughout the region and to deracinate Islam. These plans existed long before 9/11.

Near the end of his "surge" speech, Bush adopts the neoconservative program as US policy. The struggle, Bush says, echoing the neoconservatives and the Israeli right-wing, goes far beyond Iraq. "The challenge," Bush says, is "playing out across the broader Middle East. . . . It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time." America is pitted against "extremists" who "have declared their intention to destroy our way of life." "The most realistic way to protect the American people," Bush says, is "by advancing liberty across a troubled region.".....

Republican US Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush's plan to be "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." In truth, it is far worse. It is naked aggression justified by transparent lies. No one has ever heard governments in Iraq, Syria, or Iran declare "their intention to destroy our way of life." To the contrary, it is the United States and Israel that are trying to destroy the Muslim way of life.

The crystal clear truth is that fanatical neoconservatives and Israelis are using Bush to commit the United States to a catastrophic course."

The Independent

"American forces stormed Iranian government offices in northern Iraq, hours after President George Bush issued a warning to Tehran that was described as a "declaration of war".

The soldiers detained six people, including diplomats, according to the Iranians, and seized documents and computers in the pre-dawn raid which was condemned by Iran. A leading UK-based Iran specialist, Ali Ansari, said the incident was an "extreme provocation". Dr Ansari said that Mr Bush's speech on future Iraq strategy amounted to "a declaration of war" on Iran.

"The risk is a wider war. Because of the underlying tensions, we are transferring from a 'cold war' into a 'hot war'," he said.

In his speech, the President accused Iran and Syria of providing material support for attacks on US troops, and vowed to stop the "flow of support" from across the border. "We will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq," he said....."

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Simon Tisdall
Friday January 12, 2007
The Guardian

"If George Bush's remodelled strategy for halting the Iraq disaster fails to work, it is becoming clear where the US administration will point the finger of blame: Tehran. For some months Washington has been moving aggressively on a range of fronts to "pin back" Iran, in Tony Blair's words. But Mr Bush's Iraq policy speech on Wednesday night marked the opening of a new, far more aggressive phase which could extend the conflict into Iranian territory for the first time since the 2003 invasion.

Mr Bush's choice of words constituted an unmistakable warning that US forces may in future conduct hot pursuit operations into Iran against terrorist suspects or their backers. "These two regimes [Iran and Syria] are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq," Mr Bush said."We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
Asked on CBS television yesterday whether that meant US troops could be sent across the Iranian border, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said that option was on the table. "We have to recognise that Iran is engaging in activities that endanger our troops."....."

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By Steve Bell, The Guardian

By Mike Whitney

"Even a cursory review of Bush’s speech shows that the president is less concerned with “security” in Baghdad than he is with plans to attack Iran. Paul Craig Roberts was correct in his article yesterday when he questioned whether all the hoopla over a surge was just “an orchestrated distraction” to draw attention away from the real war plan. (“Troop Escalation and Iran”, Information Clearinghouse”)

Apparently, it is.....

Iran had set up the embassy at the request of the Kurdish Governor-General who was not informed of US intentions to raid the facility and kidnap its employees. The American soldiers confiscated computers and documents just 5 hours after Bush had threatened Iran in his address to the nation.

Clearly, Bush is looking for a way to provoke a military confrontation with Iran. Now he has 5 Iranian hostages at his disposal to help him achieve that goal.....

“Seek and destroy”? Is that the plan?

A region-wide conflagration with results as uncertain as they are in Iraq?

So far, there’s no solid evidence that Iran is “providing material support for attacks on American troops.” All the same, the administration has consistently used “material support” as the basis for preemptive war. In fact, the so-called Bush Doctrine is predicated on the assumption that the US is free to attack whoever it chooses if it perceives a threat to its national security. The normal rules of self defense or “imminent danger” no longer apply......

Bush also intimated that he would strike out at other “armed militias” in Iraq; an indication that US forces are planning an offensive against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army. The Shiite cleric, al Sadr, is despised by the Washington Warlords and is described by the Pentagon as “the biggest threat to Iraq’s security.” Even so, al-Sadr has operatives placed strategically throughout the al-Maliki government (and within the Green Zone) and attacking him now would only make the occupation more perilous. In fact, an attack on the Mehdi Army could create a situation where Shiite militias cut off vital supply lines from the south making occupation virtually untenable.

Bush has decided to abandon all sense of caution and blunder ahead taking on all adversaries without concern for the consequences. It is a prescription for disaster....."

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President George W Bush's new strategy has the potential to unravel the current US-Shi'ite alliance in Iraq. Then the majority Shi'ites could turn into insurgents overnight, and the country would become a dangerous flashpoint between Iran and the US

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times

"......Indeed, the comparisons with Ngo Dinh Diem's fate in South Vietnam and Iraq are becoming more pronounced. Just as Diem was pressured with conditions on economic aid before his overthrow, Washington is now imposing "benchmarks" on the Iraqi government, such as how to divide up the oil revenue. These demands, irrespective of their merits, have the undesirable consequence of perpetuating the image of Baghdad's regime as a client state pure and simple, hardly conducive to the government's legitimacy requirements, and quest for internal peace and stability.

But don't expect any of the policy hawks behind Bush's make-believe "new strategy" to bother themselves with such details, given their imperial mindset on preventing the impression of an astounding failure. Yet few even in Washington seriously believe that such prescriptions falling seriously short of a "comprehensive new approach" as called for by the ISG and others have even a moderate chance of success. This save for the Israelis and their influence peddlers, who are quietly happy that Bush disregarded the panel's "linkage approach" that would have put the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians on the United States' policy agenda.....

These are, indeed, tall orders for a US military stretched thin and plagued with low morale and troop exhaustion. Senator John Warner has warned that Bush's plan would embroil the US in a bloody civil war, thus further complicating the US mission in Iraq, which has led to a "US-Shi'ite alliance", per the words of Washington pundit Edward Luttwak.

Yet a point missed by Luttwak and many other US analysts is the fragility of this alliance and the distinct possibility that under undue pressure by a combined force of Arab Sunnis, Israelis and US hawks, the alliance might crumble and thus turn the majority Shi'ites in Iraq into insurgents.....

The consequences of failure, he has warned, would be dire in terms of "radical Islamists" posing even bigger threats to America's precious allies in the oil region and to the US itself, and "Iran will be emboldened to pursue nuclear weapons and to dominate the region".

Thus the gist of Bush's "new strategy" is to make transparent the veiled purpose of long-term US power in Iraq, which is to deter Iranian power, protect America's vital interests and act as a bulwark against Islamist radicals and terrorists, without even an indirect allusion to an exit strategy. In historical retrospective, all this will likely remind us of is yet another US tragedy as previously seen in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria, tragedies inherited from the legacy of Western colonialism.

One net result of the White House's new strategy may indeed turn out to be the transformation of Iraq into a flashpoint between Iran and the US, in light of Thursday's news of a US raid on the Iranian Consulate in the city of Irbil, decried by Tehran as an act of provocation...."

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By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"The "war on terror" is back with a bang. First Afghanistan, then Iraq and now Somalia. And Iran could well be the next Islamic nation to be bombarded by the US - as President George W Bush telegraphed in his "surge" speech on Wednesday.

The Pentagon is thus already well engaged in its self-described "arc of instability" that runs from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East and the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Himalayas. President Hugo Chavez's tropical Venezuela may not be Islamic,but he's taking no chances - especially after the incendiary promise in his re-inauguration of "socialism or death".

"Surge" is now a global household name. It refers to the US attack on Africans in Somalia in search for elusive al-Qaeda masterminds - but they missed the main targets. It includes North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) killing scores of alleged Taliban in Paktika province in Afghanistan this week. The dead may have been 80, or may have been 150; nobody really knows about civilian casualties because there's not a single journalist in the area and NATO may spin what it wants. The Taliban say the dead are all civilians.

Surge also applies to the Pentagon getting into the business of attacking foreign consulates, confiscating national flags, computers and arresting people, as it happened with an Iranian diplomatic mission - according to Iraqi Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini - in Irbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.......

So many demons, so little time
The ICU has joined Hamas and Hezbollah in official Washington demonology. It's easy to preview the sequel. Those three, previously excluded, US-backed warlords who terrorized the country for years are taking over. The ICU people dissolved into the population - just like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Ba'athists in Iraq.

And a full-fledged Islamist guerrilla movement is being born. They will have plenty of targets to choose: Christian Ethiopian soldiers, warlord militias, "President" Yusuf's people, the odd American. The Hawiye clan is very influential in Mogadishu. It will never accept a president from the Darod clan, like Yusuf.

As far as the White House, Pentagon, CIA triad is concerned, at least for the moment they are getting the big prize: a client regime in the highly strategic Horn of Africa, facing the Gulf of Aden, next door to the Arabian Sea, and a stone's throw from the Persian Gulf. In addition - what else? - Somalia also happens to have oil...."

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By Kurt Nimmo

"Speaking through the unitary decider—sort of like a ventriloquist speaking through a dummy—the neocons have once again issued threats against Iran and Syria.

“In his speech to the American nation yesterday, President George W. Bush issued a warning to Iran and Syria, accusing them of taking deliberate action against U.S. forces in Iraq and enabling aid transfers to insurgents,” reports Haaretz.

“Bush said the U.S. intends to take action against Iranian proxies in Iraq, and vowed to find and destroy the networks supplying these groups with weapons and training.” In addition, and ominously if not predictably, Bush “also promised that the U.S. would work ‘with others’ in order to block Iran from developing nuclear arms and dominating the region.”

As if to underscore the importance and urgency of Iran’s prominent position on the neocon hit list, “American forces stormed Iranian government offices in northern Iraq,” essentially an act of war. “The soldiers detained six people, including diplomats, according to the Iranians, and seized documents and computers in the pre-dawn raid which was condemned by Iran. A leading UK-based Iran specialist, Ali Ansari, said the incident was an ‘extreme provocation’. Dr Ansari said that Mr. Bush’s speech on future Iraq strategy amounted to ‘a declaration of war’ on Iran,” reports the Independent.....

On the other hand, I say a war with Iran is indeed imminent, as the USS John C. Stennis strike group was not sent to the Gulf earlier this month to simply send a message—it was sent, bristling with warplanes and munitions, to attack Iran, as long planned by the neocons."

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Deteriorating relations between Fatah and Hamas could turn the spectre of war into a reality

By Khaled Amayreh from the West Bank
Al-Ahram Weekly

"After a week of fighting between Hamas and Fatah left more than a dozen people dead the spectre of civil war has never been more real for the four million Palestinians living in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In the Gaza Strip the poisoned atmosphere between Hamas and Fatah descended to new depths following the killing, by the Palestinian government's "executive force", of a high-ranking Fatah security officer last week. Fatah accused Hamas of executing the Fatah officer in his own home and in full view of his family. Hamas accused the officer and his men of killing a number of Hamas personnel.

The showdown between the two sides reached new levels on Sunday, 7 January, when tens of thousands of Fatah supporters, including police and security personnel, held a rally at the Al-Yamouk Stadium in downtown Gaza. The keynote speaker was Mohamed Dahlan, the controversial Fatah leader and member of Parliament accused by Hamas of attempting to oust Hamas from government by force. At the rally Dahlan launched a scathing attack on Hamas, calling the movement a "gang of murderous agents of Iran". He vowed to "teach Hamas a lesson" and make the movement "pay twofold for each and every provocation".

The Hamas retort was swift. "Dahlan and his cohorts," said a spokesman for the group, "are CIA agents who are trying to plunge the Palestinian people into chaos and civil war in the service of America and Israel". "Even the gasoline in their cars is paid for by the CIA," he added.

The latest confrontation between Fatah and Hamas began on 6 January, when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas branded the "Executive Force," answerable to PA Interior Minister Said Siyam, illegal "unless it is incorporated" into the Fatah- dominated Palestinian security forces. Abbas threatened to dissolve the 6000- strong force which he said was playing a "destructive role". Hamas rejected Abbas's remarks, arguing that the force was legal and that Abbas himself had issued a decree to that effect.

Hamas leaders, including Prime Minister Ismael Haniya, argued further that the force was created by a legitimate and democratically-elected government after Fatah-dominated security forces had proved unwilling and/or unable to maintain security and stem the rising tide of lawlessness.

The bulk of Fatah-dominated security agencies in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank refuse to carry out orders from the Hamas-led government. President Abbas, in addition, effectively withdrew most security-related powers from the government, prompting it to create its own police force, ostensibly to maintain law and order but also to provide security for Hamas leaders and government officials. Meanwhile, mutual recriminations and accusations continued, with each side blaming the other of contravening the law and endangering public peace as well as compromising Palestinian national interests.

The implosive atmosphere soon spread to the Israeli-occupied West Bank where Fatah forces are allowed to operate, especially in city-centres, as long as they do not interfere with Israeli army operations. (The Israeli army last week carried out a raid in the heart of Ramallah, killing five civilians, injuring many others and vandalising Palestinian property without facing any resistance from the increasingly-powerful US-armed Abbas presidential guard.)

On Sunday and Monday of this week, suspected Fatah militiamen went on a rampage of arson, shooting and abduction, targeting individuals and public figures believed to be affiliated with Hamas. In Ramallah itself, masked men armed with AK-47s torched several malls, department stores and money- changing offices, reportedly in full view of PA police and security forces. One of the targets was the Daraghmeh Mall where clothes worth a million Israeli shekels were burned. Several cars were torched and one, belonging to former Minister of Finance Salam Fayyadh, was shot at. The deputy-mayor of Ramallah, a Hamas- affiliate, was the target of a failed abduction attempt thought to be by Fatah militiamen.

In Nablus armed men from Fatah abducted the deputy-mayor, Mahdi Al-Hanbali, along with six other Hamas supporters. The abductors threatened to kill Hamas members in the West Bank whenever Fatah members are killed or attacked by Hamas in Gaza. Al-Hanbali and other abductees were subsequently released, a move suggesting that a possibility to patch things up between Fatah and Hamas still exists.

President Abbas has condemned the shooting and arson in Ramallah and the West Bank and has ordered his security forces to apprehend the perpetrators. He also promised to compensate the victims for losses which amount to millions of dollars.

Whether Abbas is in control of Fatah forces in the West Bank, especially the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB), which Hamas tacitly accuses of responsibility for the vandalism and arson, is doubtful. This, along with the Hamas assertion that the former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan has effectively taken over Fatah, bodes ill for any prospective reconciliation between the two groups.

Last week the Bush administration announced that the US would provide the PA leadership with more than $80 million dollars to bolster the Fatah- dominated security forces in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The US apparently hopes that military and financial assistance, which is being channeled with Israel's consent, will enable Fatah to defeat Hamas. But many Palestinians, including some Fatah leaders, such as the Damascus- based veteran Farouk Kaddumi, view the American "assistance" as interference in internal Palestinian affairs, aimed primarily at fanning the flames of civil war in the service of Israel and its designs to liquidate the Palestinian question.

This week a group of Palestinian intellectuals called on Egypt and other Arab countries to intensify mediation efforts between Hamas and Fatah, saying the prospect of civil war among Palestinians could soon be a reality."

A state with temporary borders would spell the end of the Palestinian cause and rights

Mustafa Barghouti
(The writer is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative)
Al-Ahram Weekly

"Every now and then it is useful to take a closer look at the nature of the ongoing struggle in Palestine, for it is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The general idea is simple. The Palestinians are fighting for a fully independent state on all the land occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and demanding recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, Israel, which wants to create a system of apartheid and domination, is trying to get the Palestinians to accept a state with temporary borders, minus Jerusalem and other areas, and minus independence. Israel's recent decision to build a new settlement in the Jordan Valley is a case in point.

Shall we have a comprehensive and final solution to the conflict, or a temporary and interim one similar to that of the Oslo Accords? This is the big question facing the Palestinians today. A long-term transitional deal is what Israel wants. The Israelis want to force the Palestinians to give up large segments of the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and abandon refugee rights as part of an interim solution. But such a solution is likely to be permanent, not temporary.

Also, Israel wants the Palestinian Authority to remain ineffective and shorn of sovereignty. It wants the authority to act as Israel's bodyguard while Israel maintains all economic, political and security power.

Israel is pushing for an interim solution because it doesn't want the Palestinians to benefit from opportunities the US debacle in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Middle East has created. With the Baker-Hamilton report calling for a solution to the Palestinian problem and with international community increasingly critical of Israel's policies, the tide is turning. Who would have imagined that a former US president, Jimmy Carter, would conclude that apartheid is worse in Palestine than it ever was in South Africa? The pressure on Israel is mounting, as is evident in the Spanish-French-Italian call for an international conference and a final settlement of the conflict. Europe wants a lasting solution to the Palestinian issue, and Israel -- fully cognizant -- is buying time.

Israel is trying to weaken the drive for genuine peace in the Middle East. In particular, it is trying to stop US officials from altering their policy in a way that could be beneficial to the Palestinians. And the Israelis are yet again using the Palestinians to avoid the consequences of a just and comprehensive settlement to the 40-year-old conflict.

Here is what Israel is doing. First, Israel is trying to portray the Palestinian scene as part of a battle between good and evil, a battle between those who belong to the so-called "Axis of Evil" and those described as moderates.

Second, Israel is trying to portray the conflict between Fatah and Hamas as a power struggle over who controls the occupied territories. The debate has thus been shifted to the nature and composition of government and to the terms under which Israel and other international parties would approve of the Palestinian government. This mustn't go on. The Palestinians need a unified national command, one that is capable of managing the conflict and breaking the siege.

Third, Israel is trying to get Fatah and Hamas to haggle, through international brokers, over partial and interim solutions. This also must stop. Fatah and Hamas should discuss their differences over the final peace settlement rather than waste their time on who is to negotiate a partial deal. It is essential for all Palestinian parties to denounce any partial deals and never accept a state with temporary borders.

The Palestinians need a unified position and strategy. They need a unified command, something that has been missing for almost three decades now. The last thing the Palestinians need is for domestic rivalries to distract them from managing the conflict. Let's keep in mind that political plurality can be a blessing or a curse. It would be a blessing if the Palestinians insist on a comprehensive solution. And it would be a curse if divisions weaken our negotiating position.

We need a government of national unity and we need it soon. More importantly, we need a unified command that can organise and coordinate action among the three components of the Palestinian people: those living outside Palestine; those living in the occupied territories; and those living in Israel, who are currently 22 per cent of the Palestinian population.

Opinion polls suggest that a majority of Palestinians and Israelis want a comprehensive solution. But the so-called Israeli peace movement has become inactive since talks shifted to partial and interim solutions. Israel must come to the realisation that apartheid is a non-starter and that the only way ahead is that of comprehensive peace. We've tried Oslo once. Let's not try it again. "

By Ed Stein, The Rocky Mountain News

By Ilan Pappe
The Electronic Intifada, 11 January 2007

"On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.

On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.....

On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.

The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?.....

A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip....."

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By Robert Dreyfuss

"At the tail end of the Vietnam war, when everyone in Washington knew that America had lost, peace talks stalled and President Richard Nixon ordered a massive bombardment of North Vietnam over Christmas, 1972. In a horrific and needless weeks-long reign of terror, the United States bombed cities and villages in Vietnam, including a devastating strike that demolished Bach Mai, Hanoi’s largest hospital. Once the president got that out of his system, the assault ended, the peace talks resumed and shortly thereafter the United States gave up on the war.

What President Bush is doing in Iraq is precisely the same thing. There is virtually no one in the foreign policy establishment, in the military or anywhere else who believes that the Iraq war can be won. But, by sending 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq to engage in a massive, citywide offensive in Baghdad, Bush is doing what Nixon did in 1972. He is unleashing carnage for reasons that are not military, but political and petulant. Many thousands of Iraqis, and not a few Americans, will die as a result—and, in the end, the United States will have to get out of Iraq anyway....."

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معقل زهور عدي

أضاف نشر جريدة الصندي تايمز بتاريخ 8/1/2007 لتقرير حول خطة عسكرية اسرائيلية يجري وضع اللمسات الأخيرة لها لضرب مجمعات الطاقة النووية في ايران مؤشرا جديدا حول تصاعد المواجهة بين الولايات المتحدة واسرائيل من جهة وايران من جهة أخرى وتمحور تلك المواجهة حول مسألة تقدم ايران نحو امتلاك أسلحة نووية.
ورغم الخلاف في النظرة بين السياستين الأمريكية والاسرائيلية تجاه ايران حيث تنظر السياسة الأمريكية الى الوضع في المنطقة من زاوية مصالحها الاستراتيجية خاصة في السيطرة على النفط ومنع الدولة الايرانية من تكوين قوة اقليمية تضع مسألة السيطرة المطلقة على النفط موضع تساؤل أو مساومة، تنظر السياسة الاسرائيلية الى القوة الايرانية الصاعدة كخطر مستقبلي لمنافسة في منطقة باتت اسرائيل تعتبرها مجالها الحيوي كقوة اقليمية، فالمسألة بالنسبة لاسرائيل لا تقتصر على احساسها بالخطر من استعمال السلاح النووي ضدها ولكنها تندرج في اطار ما يضيفه امتلاك السلاح النووي من قوة لايران تمكنها من الدخول بقوة كمنافس استراتيجي للقوة الاسرائيلية المتفوقة في منطقة شرق المتوسط.
اذن فنحن على الأغلب قد انتهينا من مرحلة الحوار الايراني ـ الأمريكي ودخلنا مرحلة المواجهة بدءا بتصعيد العقوبات الدولية وحشد الرأي العام ضد ايران، وصولا نحو الضربة العسكرية الشاملة.
وفي حين يصعب أن لايشعر المرء بالتعاطف مع ايران المستهدفة اسرائيليا وأمريكيا، فان من المناسب دق ناقوس الخطر للسياسة الايرانية التي كشفت ايران على نحو غير مسبوق في العالمين العربي والاسلامي، بحيث تكاد ايران تفقد حاضنتها الطبيعية ومصدر دعمها الحقيقي في أي مواجهة مقبلة.
لقد ابتدأت أخطاء السياسة الايرانية تتراكم منذ وقت طويل، وتجلى ذلك بتمكين الولايات المتحدة ومساعدتها في احتلال أفغانستان ثم العراق، ثم في انتهاج سياسة غير رشيدة تجاه العراق دافعة حلفاءها العراقيين للتحالف مع الاحتلال الأمريكي بهدف تثبيت سيطرتهم على العراق وافساح المجال بالتالي أمام النفوذ الايراني للتغلغل بطريقة أسفرت عن اثارة حفيظة المشاعر الوطنية للعراقيين. وبعد أن شعرت ايران أنها باتت تمتلك الورقة العراقية استدارت نحو الولايات المتحدة عارضة عليها المساومة مقابل غض النظر عن امتلاك السلاح النووي والاعتراف بايران قوة اقليمية وشريك في المنطقة(يمكن مراجعة حديث السيد على لارجاني يوم الخميس في 16/3/2006 والذي قال فيه حرفيا وفقا لجريدة الواشنطن بوست (حيث ان السيد الحكيم أحد القيادات المؤثرة في العراق قد طلب منا الحوار مع الأمريكيين فيما يتعلق بمستقبل العراق لذلك وافقنا على الحوار). و يقول السيد علي لارجاني سكرتير المجلس الأعلى للأمن القومي الايراني : (بامكاننا خلق الاستقرار والأمن في الأقليم ولكن ليس عبر لغة كلغة السيد بولتون (مندوب الولايات المتحدة لدى الأمم المتحدة آنذاك) ما هو مطلوب أناس يتمتعون بقدر كاف من الحساسية والتقدير بحيث يستطيعون التفكير بخطة طويلة الأجل) وبترجمة كلام السيد لارجاني للغة أكثر وضوحا فهو يقول للأمريكان : لسنا ضد استراتيجيتكم في المنطقة، ولكننا نحتاج الى من يقدر طموح ايران ودورها الاقليمي، وحين يتوفر لديكم ذلك المحاور فسنصل بالتأكيد للتفاهم المطلوب.
اليوم وصلت تلك السياسة الى حافة الافلاس، ويظهر سياق تطور المواجهة بين ايران والولايات المتحدة واسرائيل مدى قصر النظر الذي تمتعت به تلك السياسة وابتعادها عن العقلانية.
فالولايات المتحدة الأمريكية لا يمكن أن تقبل بقوة اقليمية تشاركها في أهم منطقة نفطية في العالم، وهي أكثر اصرارا على ذلك اليوم مما كانت عليه عشية الحرب على العراق، بعد أن استثمرت في الحرب على العراق مئات المليارات من الدولارات (يتراوح الرقم بين 300 – 500 مليار دولار) وعشرات الألوف من القتلى والجرحى، لقد ساهمت السياسة الايرانية غير الحكيمة في ادخال الدب الى الكرم بينما كانت تتعالى الصرخات ضد الشيطان الأكبر في طهران.
والخطأ الآخر الذي لا يقل أهمية هو الاساءة لمشاعر الوطنيين العراقيين ولمشاعر العرب في موقفها غير المبرر في دعم وتمكين قوى الاحتلال ودفع حلفائها بعيدا عن خط المقاومة، وغض النظر عن الممارسات الوحشية للميليشيات المحسوبة عليها.
لقد أسفرت السياسة الايرانية عن فشل مزدوج فلا هي تمكنت من اقناع الولايات المتحدة بالاعتراف بدورها الاقليمي كما تطمح اليه وغض النظر عن برنامجها النووي، ولا هي استطاعت استقطاب تعاطف ودعم الشعوب العربية والاسلامية بسياساتها المتقلبة وغير المبدئية.
لقد شعرت بحزن وألم عميقين وأنا أتصفح تعليقات الجمهور العربي في الصحافة الالكترونية على التقرير الذي نشرته الصندي تايمز بقرب ضربة عسكرية اسرائيلية لايران، تلك التعليقات التي لا تظهر أي قدر من التعاطف والتضامن المفترضين.
في النهاية لا يمكن النظر لايران كقوة عدوة بل لا بد من النظر اليها كحليف استراتيجي للأمة العربية، ولا يمكن مقاربة وضعها بأية صورة بوضع قوى الهيمنة الأمريكية والصهيونية، وأية محاولة لذلك تعني عدم معرفة العدو من الصديق والعمى الاستراتيجي.
في اللحظة الراهنة تستثمر الولايات المتحدة ليس فقط في الخلافات المذهبية للحشد ضد ايران تمهيدا لضربها ولكن أيضا في أخطاء السياسة الايرانية ذاتها خلال المرحلة السابقة.

هل هناك متسع من الوقت للسياسة الايرانية لتصحيح أخطائها؟
على أية حال ما هو مطلوب من ايران أن توقف الاعمال الوحشية للميليشيات المحسوبة عليها في العراق أولا، وأن تقف موقفا واضحا غير ملتبس ضد الاحتلال الأمريكي للعراق وتدعم المقاومة الوطنية بغض النظر عن الهوية المذهبية، وأن تكون مع وحدة العراق لا مع تقسيمه قولا وفعلا فالمواقف اللفظية لا تقنع أحدا.
أما على صعيد المنطقة فالمطلوب من ايران أن تعي أن الأمة العربية حليفتها وشريكتها وبالتالي أن تنظر بعين الاحترام لمشاعر العرب وتطلعاتهم رغم واقعهم البائس لا أن تنظر اليهم كأسلاب ومنطقة نفوذ، وكما قال الشاعر العربي:
واذا نابها الزمان بضر لاتكن أنت والزمان عليها

"Gaza - Palestinian masses encircled the home of Ibrahim Juma, an Islamic Jihad activist, in the Gaza Strip after receiving a telephone contact that he has to evacuate the house immediately along with his family because the Israeli air force would bomb it.

Local sources said that an IOF officer told Juma over the phone that he has to evacuate his home north of Gaza city within half an hour. However, the word spread and a larg number of people headed to Juma's home and surrounded it foiling the Israeli air raid.

This is the first time that the IOF command returns to such a policy since a truce between the IOF and Palestinian resistance factions was agreed almost two months ago.

Palestinian masses came up with this idea to block Israeli air strikes that flattened tens of civilian homes before the truce went into effect. "

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

"Israeli occupation forces, Tuesday night, rampaged through the town of Dura , 10 kilometers south west of Hebron , vandalizing property and terrorizing civilians, locals and eyewitnesses told PIC.

Eyewitnesses said as many as 20 army vehicles carrying dozens of crack soldiers raided the town in the quiet hours before dawn Wednesday amid sounds of shooting and blasts.

“I saw more than 20 army Jeeps, armored vehicles and trucks, in addition to at least one bulldozer, enter the town around 3: 30 am,” said Ahmed Sharah, a night-shift attendant at a petrol station near the main entrance to Dura.

“They were shooting into the air and making blasts to terrorize the people.”

Upon entering the town, the troops demolished the forefronts of two stores, a butcher's shop and a restaurant, belonging to Muhammed Abu Zneid and his brother Firas.

According to Muhammed Abu Zneid, the occupation troops “rounded up everybody in the home and pushed us onto the street.”

“They behaved like thugs and common criminals. They wouldn’t even let us put on our winter clothes.

“Then they started vandalizing our property and stealing our money,” he said.

Abu Zneid said the soldiers stole from his home $5000 and 12000 NIS in addition to Jewelry of unspecified value.

Eventually, the army began demolishing the front-doors of the two stores, crushing everything inside, including refrigerators. The commanding officer reportedly accused the family of harboring two “wanted persons” affiliated with Hamas’s military wing and demanded that they be handed over.

The family vehemently denied any knowledge in this regard and offered to open the doors so that the soldiers could see for themselves that there were no people inside.

“I told them I would open the doors for them, but they insisted on force-opening the two stores with the bulldozer. They apparently wanted to make us incur as much losses as possible.”

Abu Zneid estimated that losses incurred at more than $10,000.

Earlier, the Israeli army arrested several people in Dura, apparently in connection with “wanted persons,” an allusion to Palestinians activists suspected of involvement in resisting the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli army carries out a nearly nightly spate of arrests of suspected Palestinian activists, mostly on disingenuous charges pertaining to the resistance.

Most of the detainees are incarcerated for prolonged periods of time, often without charge or trial.

It is believed that Israel is detaining as many as 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance activists in as many as 25 prisons and detention camps throughout Israel.

Israeli leaders indicated on several occasions that the prisoners are effectively used as bargaining chips and “pressure cards” to blackmail the Palestinian leadership to give political concessions to Israel in return for freeing the prisoners. "

By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

"In a symbolic show of unity, a number of Hamas and Fatah lawmakers marched through downtown Hebron Monday, assuring townspeople and reporters of their determination to prevent factional strife from spreading to the Hebron district, the most populous in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The march came as local political and civic leaders were calling for speedy and concerted measures to forestall any possible occurrence of factional violence between Hamas and Fatah in the city and numerous surrounding towns and villages.

Taking part in the march were Hatem Qafisha and Samira Halayqa from Hamas and Akram Haymoni and Sahar Qawasmi from Fatah in addition to local Islamic and nationalist leaders and public figures.

"This district (Hebron) can't bear the occurrence of violence or civil war, this should be clear to all people here," said Akram Haymoni.

He told reporters that both Hamas and Fatah were sending out a clear message that "we are one people and that we will not allow political differences to turn into violence between the brothers."

"What binds us together is far greater than that which would keep us apart. Yes, we might sincerely and thoughtfully have different political views, but these differences should never ever be allowed to create a violent dichotomy between us."

The same message was echoed by Hatem Qafisha of Hamas who called "on every true Palestinian" to say a "clarion No" to inter-factional strife and civil war.

"We must stand united against the ominous specter of violence and civil war with all our strength. We know for sure that faceless Israeli agents are being mobilized in full in order to incite Palestinians one against the other. We must be vigilant and not allow our enemies to make us kill ourselves with our own hands."

Ahmed Tamimi, a former Director-General of the Interior Ministry, said "civil war in Hebron, God forbid, would consume everything and turn clan against clan, family against family and even brother against brother."

"We must send a clear and unmistakable message to both [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas and [Prime Minister Ismael] Haniya that they must sit down immediately and put an end to this disgrace.

"They must sit down for as long as it takes to overcome this problem and eliminate once and for all the prospects of civil war between the brothers."

Tamimi also spoke of the existence of a "third column," an allusion to Israeli collaborators and agents working "day and night" to fan the flames of civil war among Palestinians.

Tamimi said it was a foregone conclusion that Israel, through its agents and collaborators, was doing all it could to get Fatah and Hamas to fight and kill each other.

"They would instruct their agents to assault or shoot this or that figure from Hamas and Fatah and then the two sides, because of the mutual mistrust, would think that the other side perpetrated the attack. Hence, we would end up facing a vicious cycle of action and reaction while the Israelis are watching gleefully as we kill and attack each other."

Conference

Meanwhile, civic leaders in the Hebron region have called for a one-day conference aimed at giving local society more immunity against the prospect of inter-factional fighting.

According to organizers, dozens of clan leaders as well as public figures will participate in the conference which is expected to take place this week.

The conference is expected to adopt a "document of honor" that would treat any attack or assault by any Palestinian against any other Palestinian because of his political affiliation as an "act of treachery against God, His messenger, and the Palestinian people."

The document would also stipulate that violators would be expelled by their factions and clans and held fully responsible for their actions.

"The killer himself and his immediate family (not Hamas or Fatah) would be fully responsible for any crime," said one clan notable from Dura. "

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"......Bush is heading toward escalation, summoning his 21,500 men, supported by barely 11% of Americans. Escalation in Iraq is the name of the president's game, and that also applies to Somalia - the new Afghanistan.

In far from accidental timing, the good old "war on terror" is back from the grave (nobody really related to the "long war" newspeak). After all, the galleries had to be reminded that there's a Pentagon-concocted "arc of instability" running from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East and then to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Himalayas. The "war on terror" has expanded to the business of killing Africans, now afforded membership of the ever-expanding "axis of evil".....

With some aplomb, the White House/Pentagon axis has managed to turn Somalia into the new Afghanistan, in more ways than one and just in time for Bush's announcement of his escalation-tainted "new way forward". The Pentagon maintained it had "credible" intelligence before it decided to strike alleged al-Qaeda-infested villages in southern Somalia. This is highly suspect.

The intelligence was provided by unsavory, corrupt Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi - who came up with the clever plot of concocting a fictitious jihad conducted by "neo-Taliban" in Somalia and selling it handsomely to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon. He's now posing as a prime US ally in the "war on terror", just as Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov did in the autumn of 2001.

Zenawi's US-trained Ethiopian troops, the ones who invaded Somalia, are infested with CIA operatives and Special Forces - all of them flown in from the strategic US-controlled (since September 11, 2003) Camp Le Monier in Djibouti.....

But just when Washington and the Green Zone in Baghdad were abuzz with talk of regime change, Bush told Republican senators this week that his escalation and "new way forward" policies were basically designed by none other than Maliki, widely condemned for his support of Shi'ite death squads. It is astonishing that Maliki might actually have managed to convince Bush that he will frontally take on the militias of his ally Muqtada.

High on the White House wishful-thinking list is that Muqtada be isolated in the Iraqi Parliament as the US-trained Iraqi army, on Maliki's orders and helped by the Pentagon, crushes the Mehdi Army. Shi'ites killing Shi'ites? Now that's an extremely tall order. Yet this would lead, runs the scenario, to the mollifying of the Sunni Arab resistance. Sunnis would increase their voice in the government - supposing they were convinced there would be no more militia-conducted ethnic cleansing. The scenario completely "forgets" the SCIRI's Badr Organization, whose militias, much more organized and well trained than the Mehdi Army, are operating right from inside the Interior Ministry.....

The basic fact remains that Bush's escalation is designed to smash Muqtada's Mehdi Army. That can only mean, in practice, a mini-genocide of vast masses of unruly, extremely dispossessed Shi'ites: the coming battle of Sadr City, which the Pentagon has been itching to launch since the spring of 2004. The Pentagon is actually declaring war on no fewer than 2.2 million (poor) people. A sinister symmetry still applies: the Pentagon will attack dispossessed Shi'ite masses - just as the Israeli Defense Forces attacked dispossessed Shi'ite masses in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

There's more. Bush's escalation, according to his own speech, will ensure there will actually be two major battles on two different fronts: the battle of Sadr City, against Shi'ites, and the Great Battle of Baghdad, as the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) has been dubbing it. A tangential taste of this second front was provided this week by the day-long fight in Haifa Street between coalition and Iraqi forces against militants.....

Washington's successive divide-and-rule tactics - facilitating a possible genocide of Sunnis, contemplating a mass slaughter of Shi'ites, betting on a regional Sunni/Shi'ite war - never for a second lose sight of the riches of Iraqi. For Big Business, an Iraq eaten alive by Balkanization is the ideal environment for the triumph of Anglo-American petrocracy....."

Continue

A Comment
By Tony Sayegh

It was obvious, and it was stated on this blog weeks ago, that the main objective of the "surge" was to destroy Muqtada and his Mahdi army. It is the latest phase of the successful American strategy of having Iraqis destroy each other. Frankly, while most Arabs supported Muqtada in 2004 when he fought the occupation in Najaf, I don't think that he can count on that support today.

A lot has changed since then: Muqtada and his army became the major source of death squads; he became an important player in the occupation-imposed sectarian government; his death squads are ethnically cleansing Baghdad and other areas; his death squads have been terrorizing and killing innocent Palestinians in Baghdad who have no place to go; in spite of his empty rhetoric about ending the occupation, his Mahdi army relies on active support of the U.S. Army as seen just days ago when it called for U.S. air strikes on Haifa street in Baghdad; he cast his lot with Iran instead of forming a united front with the Iraqi resistance and that introduced its own set of contradictions since Iran (and SCIRI) favor Iraq's partitioning (euphemistically called federalism); and finally how can we forget the barbaric scenes of Muqtada's thugs chanting his name during the grizzly lynching and subsequent slaughter of Saddam. The last item was, of course, stage-managed, to demonize Muqtada (not a hard task) and justify the forthcoming U.S. move to destroy his army.

Few tears will be shed for Muqtada and his army this time.

A Good Comment
By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent

".....He has now become part of the White House's demonology in Iraq. At one time the US believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for all its problems in Iraq - problems that would be resolved once he was overthrown. Today Sadr, a 32-year-old cleric in his black robe with fierce, staring, dark eyes, is denounced as the fomenter of sectarian warfare.

Many Iraqi leaders never leave the Green Zone. Sadr has never entered it. He has a cult-like following. He controls Sadr City, the ramshackle, sprawling slum in east Baghdad which is home to two-and-a-half million Shia, important cities such as Kufa and provinces such as Maysan. He can probably put 100,000 armed militiamen into the field. Much of the Baghdad police force follows him. Army barracks where Shia units are stationed have pictures of him pinned to the walls.

Once in 2004 he was wanted "dead or alive" by the US forces and dismissed as "a firebrand". They soon found that his movement had deep roots. He controls 32 out of 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament. He is the most important ally of the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. In 2004, the US and its former exile allies paid a heavy price for trying to exclude him from power. In 2005 and 2006, they recognised his strength. He became part of the political process in Iraq while opposing the US-led occupation.

Now, astonishingly the US may be about to confront Sadr and his powerful social and political movement. This could lead almost immediately to a crisis for the US and President Bush's new strategy for Iraq.

If the US Army, along with Kurdish brigades of the Iraqi army, do assault Sadr City, they are unlikely to win a clean victory. The rest of Shia Iraq is likely to explode. A confrontation will convince many Shia that the US never intends to let them rule Iraq despite their success in the elections. The US is already at war with the five million-strong Sunni community and is now fast alienating the Shia. For the first time this year, polls showed that a majority of Shia approve of armed attacks on US-led forces.

An offensive against Sadr's Mehdi Army will be portrayed as an attempt to eliminate militias. But it is, in reality, an attack on one particular militia, because it is anti-American. The Kurdish brigades in the Iraqi army take their orders from the Kurdish leaders and not from Maliki. The US also has good relations with the other Shia militia, the Badr Organisation, which is the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

There is no doubt that the Mehdi Army includes death squads targeting Sunni - but this is also true of Badr.

.....Muqtada al-Sadr became so powerful so fast because he was in the same tradition as his relatives. His militiamen are generally not paid and supply their own weapons. They are beginning to have a core of trained, paid professionals but they were never as militarily effective as the Sunni insurgents, many of whom were experienced soldiers.

A US attack on Sadr will open another front in the war in Iraq. It would split the Shia coalition into pro- and anti-American factions. It would disrupt the Shia-Kurdish alliance. It probably would not conciliate the Sunni insurgents.

Sadr's movement thrives on martyrs. The only certain result of an all-out US assault on the Mehdi Army would be to deepen and widen the war in Iraq."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Leader
Thursday January 11, 2007
The Guardian

"George Bush's announcement last night that he is going to pour more troops into Iraq was the last throw of the dice in a misconceived enterprise that has dragged his country, this country and the Middle East into a nightmare. The package includes 17,500 more combat troops for Baghdad and 4,000 more marines for Anbar province, the cockpit of the Sunni insurgency. Over $1bn will be spent in economic aid. In return the Iraqis are to promise to crackdown on insurgents, regardless of sect or religion.

In opting for a troop surge, Mr Bush has ignored the message of the mid-term elections, the Iraq Study Group, Congress, his own top generals and most world opinion. US generals have difficulty enough maintaining current levels of combat-ready troops and are not convinced that more troops will make any difference. Rather than listen to them, Mr Bush has turned to the right, to those who argue that honour and the America's national interests require fighting on. One senses that "honour" is the more important of the two.......

Thus far, al-Maliki's record has not been good. He has been unable or unwilling to confront the main Shia warlord, Moqtada al-Sadr, on whom he depends for parliamentary support. His government cannot fight sectarianism, if entire ministries are working for the Shia militias. This was demonstrated by the execution of Saddam Hussein. On Tuesday alone, 40 bodies were found in Baghdad, the presumed work of the death squads.......

The claim peace is returning to Basra is as unreal as Mr Bush's hope that order can be brought to Baghdad. Surrounded by the wreckage of the disaster they created, both men still hope, against all reality, that somehow the pieces can be put back together again. But their project is dead. A few more troops, or a few more months, will not restore it. Both men are on their way out. By stringing the war along without admitting defeat, it will become the business of another British prime minister and another American president to end it."

By Tony Karon

"......But it was the characterization of Iran’s role that was most disturbing. Bush suggested that the Iraqi people had voted for united country at the polls, and seen their dreams dashed by the maneuvering of Iran and Syria and others. That’s a crock. Iran enthusiastically supported those elections, and why wouldn’t they? The Shiite majority voted overwhelmingly in favor of parties far closer to Tehran than they are to Washington. Moreover, while Bush implies that sectarianism was somehow a deviation from what the electorate had chosen, in fact the electorate had voted almost entirely on sectarian and ethnic lines. The sectarian principle is at the heart of the democratically elected government; it’s not some imposition by al-Qaeda or Iran.

Iran and Syria must be addressed, Bush said, but only as a threat — he accused them of offering support to insurgent forces attacking U.S. troops, and vowed to stop them. Almost in the same breath, he added: “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing ­ and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.”

Carrier strike groups and Patriot missile defenses are of no use in the counterinsurgency war in Iraq: They are an attempt to turn up the heat on Iran by preparing for an air strike, and putting in place the means to contain Iran’s response via its missile capability. Bush called for regional support, but only on the basis of his anti-Iran alliance — for the Sunni regimes, support for the U.S. in Iraq was cited as a duty in light of their common purpose in containing Iran.

So, essentially we’re now being asked to believe that the Iraqi government, dominated by Iran-friendly Shiite religious parties, is going to act in concert with Bush’s plan — and even Bush admitted that their support is the critical factor — giving U.S. forces the green light to take control of Sadr City from the Sadrists and so on, even as Washington moves its assets into position for a military strike on Iran. It may be, of course, that Washington is posturing in order to sweat Tehran into believing that a military strike is coming in order to intimidate the Islamic Republic into backing down, but frankly I wouldn’t bet on the collective strategic wisdom of Cheney-Rice and Khamenei-Larijani-Ahmedinajad combining to avoid a confrontation. And if the U.S. is raising the stakes, you can reliably expect Iran to do the same, probably starting in Iraq.

Even within the narrow Iraqi context, no matter what Maliki has told Bush, I wouldn’t bet on him coming through for the U.S. when the battle for Sadr City starts in earnest, and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, appalled by the violence, begins demanding that the U.S. go home.

Equally important, though, the new Bush moves give Iran no incentive to cooperate, and plenty of incentive to tie the U.S. up in an increasingly messy situation in Iraq. And my suspicion is that Tehran has hardly begun to exercise its ability to cause chaos in Iraq.

Again, the Bush Administration has failed to grasp the most basic lesson of his failures in Iraq and elsewhere — that military force has its limits, and that power is a more complex thing. Instead of recognizing what the likes of Baker and Scowcroft have emphasized all along — that the basic crisis in the region is political — Bush is going the Cheney lock-and-load route. Perhaps that’s why Bush warned Americans to expect another year of bloodletting. And stupendously reckless adventurism though it may be, I wouldn’t bet against him launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. And then he’ll have to learn the same lesson all over again, because the region will be no safer or any more stable. On the contrary, I’d say it’s a safe bet that by the time he leaves the White House, the U.S. position everywhere from Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian territories to Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, will be considerably worse than it is now."

So into the graveyard of Iraq, George Bush, commander-in-chief, is to send another 21,000 of his soldiers. The march of folly is to continue...

By Robert Fisk

"There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush's announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq ­ still to be referred to as the "democratically elected government" ­ march in lockstep with America's best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa'ida. It will take time ­ oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington's top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week ­ but the mission will be accomplished.

Mission accomplished. Wasn't that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. "Bring 'em on!" he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. "We haven't yet killed enough of them," their videotaped statement announced.

Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become "hell" .

It is de rigueur, these days, to recall Vietnam, the false victories, the body counts, the torture and the murders ­ but history is littered with powerful men who thought they could batter their way to victory against the odds. Napoleon comes to mind; not the emperor who retreated from Moscow, but the man who believed the wild guerrilleros of French-occupied Spain could be liquidated. He tortured them, he executed them, he propped up a local Spanish administration of what we would now call Quislings, al-Malikis to a man. He rightly accused his enemies ­ Moore and Wellington ­ of supporting the insurgents. And when faced with defeat, Napoleon took the personal decision "to relaunch the machine" and advanced to recapture Madrid, just as Bush intends to recapture Baghdad. Of course, it ended in disaster. And George Bush is no Napoleon Bonaparte.

No, I would turn to another, less flamboyant, far more modern politician for prophecy, an American who understood, just before the 2003 launch of Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq, what would happen to the arrogance of power. For their relevance this morning, the words of the conservative politician Pat Buchanan deserve to be written in marble:

"We will soon launch an imperial war on Iraq with all the 'On to Berlin' bravado with which French poilus and British tommies marched in August 1914. But this invasion will not be the cakewalk neoconservatives predict ... For a militant Islam that holds in thrall scores of millions of true believers will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ...

"The one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war. They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon... We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before."

But George Bush dare not see these armies of the past, their ghosts as palpable as the phantoms of the 3,000 Americans ­ let us forget the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis ­ already done to death in this obscene war, and those future spirits of the dead still living amid the 20,000 men and women whom Bush is now sending to Iraq. In Baghdad, they will move into both Sunni and Shia "insurgent strongholds" ­ as opposed to just the Sunni variety which they vainly invested in the autumn ­ because this time, and again I quote General Odierno, it is crucial the security plan be " evenhanded". This time, he said, "we have to have a believable approach, of going after Sunni and Shia extremists".

But a "believable approach" is what Bush does not have. The days of even-handed oppression disappeared in the aftermath of invasion.

"Democracy" should have been introduced at the start ­ not delayed until the Shias threatened to join the insurgency if Paul Bremer, America's second proconsul, did not hold elections ­ just as the American military should have prevented the anarchy of April 2003. The killing of 14 Sunni civilians by US paratroopers at Fallujah that spring set the seal on the insurgency. Yes, Syria and Iran could help George Bush. But Tehran was part of his toytown "Axis of Evil", Damascus a mere satellite. They were to be future prey, once Project Iraq proved successful. Then there came the shame of our torture, our murders, the mass ethnic cleansing in the land we said we had liberated.

And so more US troops must die, sacrificed for those who have already died. We cannot betray those who have been killed. It is a lie, of course. Every desperate man keeps gambling, preferably with other men's lives.

But the Bushes and Blairs have experienced war through television and Hollywood; this is both their illusion and their shield.

Historians will one day ask if the West did not plunge into its Middle East catastrophe so blithely because not one member of any Western government ­ except Colin Powell, and he has shuffled off stage ­ ever fought in a war. The Churchills have gone, used as a wardrobe for a prime minister who lied to his people and a president who, given the chance to fight for his country, felt his Vietnam mission was to defend the skies over Texas.

But still he talks of victory, as ignorant of the past as he is of the future.

Pat Buchanan ended his prophecy with imperishable words: "The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history." "

You Never See These Clowns When Israel Invades And Attacks Palestinians; Their Job Is To Defend Israeli Settlements And Shoot In The Air
Palestinian militants from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to the Fatah Movement, fire in the air during a rally marking the forty-second anniversary of the founding of the group in the West Bank city of Nablus, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007. (AP Photo)

The Daily Telegraph

"The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified "non-lethal presidential finding" that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora.

The finding was signed by Mr Bush before Christmas after discussions between his aides and Saudi Arabian officials. Details of its existence, known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress, have been passed to The Daily Telegraph.

It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable.

The Bush administration hopes Mr Siniora's government, severely weakened after its war with Israel last year, will become a bulwark against the growing power of the Shia sect of Islam, championed by Iran and Syria, since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Bush's move is at the centre of a fresh drive by America, supported by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt as well as Israel, to stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East emerging from the collapse of Iraq.

The finding, drawn up at the White House by National Security Council (NSC) officials, is a sign of Mr Bush's growing alarm at the threat posed by Iran, which has infiltrated the Iraqi government and is training Shia insurgents as well as supplying them with roadside bombs.

A former US government official said: "Siniora's under siege there and we are always looking for ways to help allies. As Richard Armitage [a former deputy US secretary of state] said, Hizbollah is the A-team of terrorism and certainly Iran and Syria have not let up in their support of the group."

Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, is understood to have been closely involved in the decision to prop up Mr Siniora's administration and the Israeli government, which views Iran as its chief enemy, has also been supportive.

"There's a feeling both in Jerusalem and in Riyadh that the anti-Sunni tilt in the region has gone too far," said an intelligence source. "By removing Saddam, we've shifted things in favour of the Shia and this is a counter-balancing exercise.

Prince Bandar, now King Abdullah's national security adviser, made several trips to Washington and held meetings with Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East official on the NSC.

Prince Turki al-Faisal resigned abruptly as ambassador to Washington last month. Intelligence sources said that a principal reason for this was his belief he had been undermined by Prince Bandar, who had not told him of the Lebanon plan or even that he was visiting Washington.

As a quid pro quo to the Sunni Arab states, Mr Bush and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, have agreed to work harder to re-start negotiations about a peace deal with the Palestinians.

According to the Swoop website (theswoop.net), which contains briefings on diplomatic and intelligence matters: "US officials point to the Israeli release of some tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority as the first fruits of this approach.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer, said that such a finding would involve "various steps and types of non-military activity" agreed to by the Lebanese. "It takes two to tango. You're only those things that the Lebanese themselves would want you to do," he said.

Bush administration officials have spoken of their desire to promote "mainstream" Arab states and have even spoken of the existence of a "Sunni crescent" in the Middle East. But there is tension between this policy and the support for Nouri al-Maliki's Shia-led government in Iraq, which has links to Shia death squads and Iran.

"The administration is reaping its own whirlwind after Iraq," said the intelligence source. "For 50 years the US preferred stability over legitimacy in the Middle East and now it's got neither. It's a situation replete with ironies.""

by Paul Craig Roberts

"Is the surge an orchestrated distraction from the real war plan?

A good case can be made that it is. The US Congress and media are focused on President Bush’s proposal for an increase of 20,000 US troops in Iraq, while Israel and its American neoconservative allies prepare an assault on Iran.

Commentators have expressed puzzlement over President Bush’s appointment of a US Navy admiral as commander in charge of the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The appointment makes sense only if the administration’s attention has shifted from the insurgencies to an attack on Iran.

The Bush administration has recently doubled its aircraft carrier forces and air power in the Persian Gulf. According to credible news reports, the Israeli air force has been making practice runs in preparation for an attack on Iran.

Recently, Israeli military and political leaders have described Israeli machinations to manipulate the American public and their representatives into supporting or joining an Israeli assault on Iran.

Two US carrier task forces or strike groups will certainly congest the Persian Gulf. On January 9, a US nuclear sub collided with a Japanese tanker in the Persian Gulf. Two carrier groups will have scant room for maneuver. Their purpose is either to provide the means for a hard hit on Iran or to serve as sitting ducks for a new Pearl Harbor that would rally Americans behind the new war.

Whether our ships are hit by Iran in retaliation to an attack from Israel or suffer an orchestrated attack by Israel that is blamed on the Iranians, there are certainly far more US naval forces in the Persian Gulf than prudence demands.

Bush’s proposed surge appears to have no real military purpose. The US military opposes it as militarily pointless and as damaging to the US Army and Marine Corps. The surge can only be accomplished by keeping troops deployed after the arrival of their replacements. Moreover, the increase in numbers that can be achieved in this way are far short of the numbers required to put down the insurgency and civil war.

The only purpose of the surge is to distract Congress while plans are implemented to widen the war.

Weapons inspectors have failed to find a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Most experts say it would be years before Iran could make a weapon even if the Iranian government is actively working on a weapons program. Since the danger, if any, is years away, why is Israel so determined to attack Iran now?

The answer might be that Israel has the chance now. The Bush administration is in its pocket. The White House is working with neoconservatives, not with the American foreign policy community represented by the Iraq Study Group. Neoconservative propagandists are in influential positions in the media. The US Congress is intimidated by AIPAC. The correlation of forces are heavily in Israel’s favor.

Part of the Israeli/neoconservative plan has already been achieved with the destruction of civilian infrastructure and spread of sectarian strife in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. If Iran can be taken out with a powerful air attack that might involve nuclear weapons, Syria would be isolated and Hezbollah would be cut off from Iranian supplies.

Israel has two years remaining to use its American resources to achieve its aims in the Middle East. How influential will Israel and the neoconservatives be with the next president in the wake of a US defeat in Iraq and Israeli defeat in Lebanon? If the US withdraws its troops from Iraq, as the US military and foreign policy community recommend and as polls show the American public wants, the only effect of Bush’s Iraq invasion will have been to radicalize Muslims against Israel, the US, and US puppet governments in the Middle East. Extremist elements will tout their victory over the US, and the pressures on Israel to accept a realistic accommodation with Palestinians will be overpowering.

Now is the chance – the only chance – for Israel and the neoconservatives to achieve their goal of bringing Muslims to heel, a goal that they have been writing about and working to achieve for a decade. This goal requires the war to be widened by whatever deceit and treachery necessary to bring the American public along.

The US Congress must immediately refocus its attention from the surge to Iran, the real target of Bush administration aggression."

Coalition of the Lunatics vs. Iran, Iraq and Everyone Else

By RON JACOBS
CounterPunch

".......There's a document hanging around that's probably been George Bush's favorite reading material for the past few weeks. It's written by Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and is titled Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq. From all indications, this document is the blueprint for Mr. Bush's upcoming speech on Iraq. Operating on the belief that victory is still possible if only the US sends enough troops into Baghdad and other trouble spots in Iraq, Mr. Kagan's powerpoint presentation notes that as of December 2006, there were 52,500 US combat troops (Marines and infantry) in the country, of which 17, 500 were in Baghdad. Kagan continues by calling for a series of incremental increases in US combat troops through September 20007, when he hopes to see a total of 84, 000 combat troops wearing US uniforms in the war. If one projects the proportionate number of logistical forces that accompany this number of troops (at current levels it is approximately 1.6 logistical troops to every combat soldier--52,500 combat out of 140,000 total troops), that means there will be around 224,000 US troops in Iraq in the fall of 2007.

Leaving aside the question of how the White House and its warmongering generals plan to find all these soldiers and Marines, this means only one thing. The White House and its supporters have no intention of leaving Iraq until they control it--Green Zone, Al-Anbar and oil derrick. Ignoring the demands of the antiwar movement (which is not unusual), the advice of more seasoned empire builders like James Baker and his posse, and the desires of the majority of the people in the United States (not to mention the world), the policymakers whose policies got us into Iraq in the first place still have the only two ears Mr. Bush owns. This is to say the least, a dangerous fact......"

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By Kurt Nimmo

"Once again, we are served up an object lesson on who runs things in Washington.

“A major loophole in the Democrats’ recently unveiled ethics package will allow non-profit arms of controversial lobbying organizations to fund travel excursions for members of Congress,” reports Raw Story.

And who benefits from this “ethics exemption”? AIPAC, of course.

“All-expense-paid tours to Israel are among the most common overseas trips made by members of Congress and their aides,” writes the Jewish Daily Forward. “Watchdog groups, using data from congressional filings, have reported that Israel is the leading destination for privately sponsored congressional trips.”"

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Hierarchical and Relational Societies

By Col. DAN SMITH
CounterPunch

"......One could, in fact, do much worse than to survey the myths of a people or culture to gain an appreciation of the balance between hierarchical and relational propensities that distinguish a particular society. For example, a prominent U.S. myth is the inevitable triumph of the "exceptional" experiment summarized in the phrase "Manifest Destiny." The April 1859 Democracy Review opined:

"We are governed by the laws under which the universe was
created, and therefore, in obedience to those laws, we must of
necessity move forward in the paths of destiny shaped for us
by the great Ruler of the Universe."

This is the substance--the laws that govern the course of nature. The form, the image might change and did change: for the Puritans it was "the city on the hill," for the colonial revolutionary leaders it was Enlightenment principles. Ralph Waldo Emerson advised "hitch your wagon to a star," while John Soule, editor of the Terre Haute, Indiana Express, titled an 1851 editorial "Go west young man, and grow up with the country." By the end of the 19th century, "Manifest Destiny" served as the guiding narrative of the American experience.....

And this brings the issue full circle back to the Bush administration. For in the act of developing and applying the neocon orthodoxy, the true believers became so invested in attempting to make events conform to their vision that they could not admit even the smallest variation or interpretation to their creed. They mercilessly manipulated every available force--including fear of an enemy that allegedly had the intent and capability to cause extensive death and destruction--in defense of their "truth." In such an ideological fog, ordinary people and even government officials were not inclined or motivated to try to understand or to meet the "other"--which of course left no opportunity to "give face."

For the neocons, but for no one else, it was "win-win." Success was its own justification. Failure did not mean the vision was flawed but that the public lacked the will to carry through and reach the vision offered them. Everything depended on isolating the I.S. public from contact with the "enemy." For without contact, it was easier to exaggerate threats to the point that fear became communal hatred--cold, calculating, the type that consumes all feeling, sunders all charity, and excises all mercy as it tramples all justice.

This is the emptiness, the unpardonable sin, of Hawthorne's Ethan Brand.

Will it also be the sin of George W. Bush's administration--and the nation's?"

By Robert Scheer

"To surge or not to surge, that is the question. As our prince proposes, once again, to take arms against a sea of troubles, he responds not to the disaster that he has visited upon Iraq, but rather embraces a desperate strategy for salvaging what remains of his reign.

To win, perchance to dream. Few Americans, a mere 17 percent, according to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, think that sacrificing more Americans in patrols on the streets of Baghdad will reverse the slings and arrows of our outrageous Iraqi fortune, but giving a speech about it might provide our hapless Hamlet with some temporary political cover.

“All the world is really watching,” proclaimed Bush press secretary Tony Snow, “and it’s important to get this right.” Toward that end, as The New York Times reported, “The president’s aides were contemplating having Mr. Bush deliver it from the White House Map Room, a site replete with the history and imagery of World War II—imagery that Mr. Bush has invoked as he has sought to compare the campaign against terrorism to the struggle against totalitarianism and the Nazis. But the Oval Office, a more traditional setting, was also being considered.”

As for the speech’s content, it is by necessity an exercise in the absurd, as the president previewed in his soliloquy for doubting Republican senators his conviction that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has had a profound change of heart. This radical Shiite leader, who only days ago turned over Saddam Hussein to the tender mercies of a mob chanting its allegiance to the even more fanatical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, now is expected to lead U.S. troops in battle against his chief political ally and sponsor of much of Iraq’s most deadly sectarian fighting. Even Bush must know by now that those fellows with whom he is in bed over there bear us nothing but hate. Speak not of the pangs of despised love.

That must give pause to the president’s top advisers, but nonetheless they fail to confront the insolence of office that so fully characterizes this man. “Iraqis will take on this plan and lead it. We will be there to support them and be there to help them hold it,” said one senior U.S. official, who briefed the media offstage.

But some in attendance did claim afterward to have demurred. “I expressed reservations,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican. “I said, ‘Why should we expect any different result than previously,’ that I didn’t believe the Maliki government had demonstrated the political will or capacity or resoluteness for reconciliation, that the reason Americans are not supporting the war is because they see Iraqis fighting among themselves rather than for themselves, and I didn’t see the surge addressing the root causes of the violence.” Needless to say that patient merit of the unworthy went unnoticed by the brooding prince.

“He seemed very confident,” said Sen. Thad Cochran, a Republican from Mississippi. “I’m convinced he has come up with a proposal that he thinks will work.” But Cochran confessed to feeling lonely in his faith: “I think I was the only senator who acted like he would be supportive. I was surprised that no one said it but me.”

No matter such temporal considerations, for Bush’s preoccupation is the dread of something after the death of his presidency, when history will judge the calamity of his long political life and such judgment would likely bear the whips and scorns of time.

“I don’t understand what he thinks is going on in Iraq, but whatever it is, he doesn’t care about politics, or the Congress or his successor, when it comes to Iraq,” offered Richard C. Holbrooke, a veteran of foreign debacles authored by a rival clan. “He wants to either win the war or, since that is an impossibility, pass it on to his successor.”

Will the Congress deny him? That is the question posed by Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, who only weeks before had withdrawn support for his leader’s war: “What this sets up is a classic war powers confrontation between the White House and the Congress. Clearly he has the power to commit troops; the question is whether the Congress has the convictions to deny funding.” The senator admitted to having no such convictions: “It would be a dishonorable thing to budget away the bullets.” Better to spend them killing more of theirs and yours in an unworthy cause, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, and, as the bard foretold, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” Ay, there’s the rub."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

Iraqi "Police" = Negroponte-Trained Member Of A Death Squad

In backing a "surge" of fresh troops into Iraq, the George W Bush administration is trying to keep up the illusion that "victory" is still possible even though the leaders themselves have given up on it. Their real battle plan draws on Henry Kissinger's tried and tested strategy for surviving defeat: hang on until 2009 and blame the Democrats for stabbing the troops in the back.

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

".....The biggest backfire of such a policy would come as a result of a major political and military confrontation with militant Shi'ites in Baghdad and in southern Iraq. Lieutenant-General Ray Odierno told reporters he expects US troops to go into the massive Baghdad district known as Sadr City, because it is populated by working-class Shi'ites loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

If the United States does provoke a battle with Muqtada's Mehdi Army, there will undoubtedly be a major spike in battle deaths and in civilian casualties. The fighting also might well unhinge the highly tenuous arrangements that keep the Iraqi government from collapsing......

The sudden emergence of Kissinger as a key figure in Bush's Iraq policy deserves closer examination. Although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi'ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the US position in the war is actually weak and unstable. One of Kissinger's accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration's propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing.

But Bush may be equally interested in Kissinger's experience in shifting the blame for defeat to the Democrats. That is exactly what he tried to do in spring 1975 when the South Vietnamese military regime fell apart under the pressure of the North Vietnamese offensive. Even though Kissinger had privately admitted at the time of the Paris Agreement that the regime of president Nguyen Van Thieu was unlikely to survive, he insisted that Nixon's successor, president Gerald Ford, go through the motions of asking for an additional US$722 million in military aid on April 11, less than three weeks before the final collapse.

In his account of the period, Without Honor, journalist Arnold Isaacs recalls how Kissinger wrote Ford's speech so that the blame for the defeat in Saigon was clearly placed on Congress and his own role in Vietnam policy was vindicated....."

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By Dahr Jamail
Asia Times

".....The timing of this move is what should raise eyebrows, and for two main reasons. First, Negroponte is relieved of his job of intelligence director as the drums of war continue to be pounded by the diehard neo-conservatives, and Negroponte wasn't playing quite loud enough to the Tehran tune. McConnell may well be able to carry a louder tune for his pal Cheney, which may come in the form of a sonata of manufactured intelligence to justify an attack on Iran, which is important as time is growing short for Cheney and company.

Second and more immediate, the transfer of Negroponte into the State Department comes conveniently just as the announcement of the escalation of troops in Iraq is planned. Bush needs someone with experience in managing escalations and he needs look no further than this man. It is Negroponte who oversaw the implementation of the "Salvador Option" in Iraq, as it was referred to in Newsweek in January 2005.

Under the "Salvador Option", Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980s, retired Colonel James Steele. Steel, whose title in Baghdad was counselor for Iraqi security forces, supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi'ite militias in Iraq, to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.

Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies that turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was Negroponte. And it is this US-backed sectarian violence that largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today.

Under president Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras, where he played a major role in US efforts to topple the Nicaraguan government. The political history of Negroponte shows a man who has had a career bent toward generating civilian death and widespread human-rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and ethnic violence.

In Honduras he earned the distinction of being accused of widespread human-rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights while he worked as "a tough Cold Warrior who enthusiastically carried out president Ronald Reagan's strategy", according to cables sent between Negroponte and Washington during his tenure there. The human-rights violations carried out by Negroponte were described as "systematic".

The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Records document his "special intelligence units", better known as "death squads", composed of CIA-trained Honduran armed units who kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte had full knowledge of these activities while making sure US military aid to Honduras increased from US$4 million to $77.4 million a year during his tenure. Under his watch, civilian deaths skyrocketed into the tens of thousands.

Negroponte has been described as an "old-fashioned imperialist" and got his start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's Phoenix Program, which was responsible for the assassination of some 40,000 Vietnamese.

At roughly that time, Steele was commander of the US Military Adviser Group in El Salvador. He also smuggled weapons to the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua and lied about it to the Senate Intelligence Committee, as documented in the final report of the Iran-Contra special prosecutor.

As a result of the work done by Negroponte, assisted by Steele, during the winter of 2004 and early spring 2005, daily life in Iraq, as described by the Washington Post, looks like what the death squads generated in Central America under their watchful eyes: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday - blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound."

Obviously it is better for Iraqi militias and resistance groups to be fighting one another instead of uniting to battle occupation forces. The age-old strategy of divide and conquer applied yet again.

Negroponte's strategy and oversight of the dirty war in Honduras assisted in producing a "victory" there, but it has failed dismally in Iraq. Nevertheless, when one has an administration that refuses to accept reality, bringing him back into the fold of the State Department may be a signal that it is willing to see much more blood seep into the sands of Iraq in the hope that it will produce something akin to stability.

Negroponte's appointment signals that Bush hopes to tap into his experiences from the medium-intensity war in Central America to do the same once again in Iraq. Coupled with the changes in the military and diplomatic team in Iraq, it is a clear signal that the US administration is ready, willing and able to head down the course of massive and indiscriminate escalation. It must be stopped."

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The obscure Bush administration official charged with coordinating the president's new Iraq strategy has been a consistent advocate of armed US intervention everywhere from Cuba to North Korea. US President George W Bush is taking his advice from the most hawkish of his hawkish advisers

A Very Informative Article
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times

"WASHINGTON - When President George W Bush unveils his long-awaited new strategy on Iraq on Wednesday night eastern US time, he will be relying heavily on the counsel of one J D Crouch II, perhaps the most hardline - if most obscure - of his hawkish advisers.


Over the past 15 years, the generally low-profile Crouch has taken any number of controversial positions, from advocating military action against Cuba and North Korea to blaming the 1999 Columbine High School student massacre in Colorado on "30 years of liberal social policy".

As deputy national security adviser, Crouch, who has held three posts in the Bush administration, chaired the inter-agency group charged with mapping out Bush's new Iraq strategy, whose main feature, it is expected, will be to add some 20,000 new US troops to the 140,000 already there in hopes of stabilizing Baghdad and rebellious al-Anbar province.

Crouch, whose substantive expertise is in arms control - or, more precisely, how the US can evade or undermine international efforts to promote arms control - has long been a favorite of Vice President Dick Cheney, whose own national security adviser, neo-conservative John Hannah, has reportedly played a key role in the deliberations over Iraq.....

.....only to be appointed the following year as ambassador to Romania, a post he held for just eight months before being recalled to Washington in early 2005 as deputy national security adviser under Stephen Hadley.

His return was described by Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland as evidence that Cheney was "charging ahead with undiminished influence and unshakable self-confidence".....

He moved in 1990 to the Pentagon, where he worked under then-under secretary of defense for policy Paul Wolfowitz. After the first Gulf War he was part of a team that included Wolfowitz; Cheney's future vice-presidential chief of staff until 2005, I Lewis Libby; and Washington's current ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and that prepared the draft DPG. Its leak to the New York Times sparked a major controversy that eventually prompted the Bush Sr administration to repudiate its more unilateralist proposals.....

He also joined the board of advisers of the ultra-hawkish Center for Security Policy, a lobby group funded by defense contractors and far-right Zionists associated with Israel's Likud Party and headed by hardline neo-conservative Frank Gaffney.

Other members of that board have included senior members of the current US administration, including Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East director on the National Security Council; former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle; former under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; and a number of former and current SMSU faculty members, including Van Cleave, Charles Kupperman, Keith Payne, and the former head of Reagan's Star Wars program, Henry Cooper....

Although such positions generally do not reflect neo-conservative views, neo-cons, including Perle and Gaffney, have, like Cheney, been among Crouch's most enthusiastic boosters over the years.

"Knowing him as I do," Gaffney, whose list of US adversaries against which Washington should be much more confrontational runs from Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela to China, Russia and France, told the St Louis Post Dispatch, "I'm almost certain that he is exercising influence, and influence that is reinforcing the most robust policies and positions of this administration." "

By Joel Pett, USA Today

With air strikes on Somalia and a surge in troops in Iraq, he is staking everything on a finale he can call victory

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday January 10, 2007
The Guardian

"Say what you like about George Bush, but no one can accuse him of following the crowd. When everyone from the American electorate to the US military brass, along with a rare consensus of world opinion, cries out with one voice to say "enough" of the war in Iraq, Bush heads in the opposite direction - and decides to escalate. When his army chiefs complain of desperate overstretch in the war on terror, he takes that as his cue to open up another front. And that's just this week.

On Sunday night the US military launched an air strike - not on Iraq or Afghanistan, but on southern Somalia. Some reports last night claimed that the bombing has continued ever since. If you didn't know that Somalia was on the enemies' list - if you're finding it hard, what with Syria and Iran and North Korea, to keep track of Washington's foes, don't blame yourself. These days the axis of evil is expanding faster than the European Union, with a couple of new members added every January......

The Republicans have form in this area, of course. In 1968, Richard Nixon was elected on a promise to end the war in Vietnam: instead, it intensified until another 55,000 US troops were dead, along with an estimated 2 million south-east Asians. But Bush's showing of his middle finger feels more brazen, if only because it is not only the American public he is ignoring, but people you would think he might respect.

Only weeks have past since the Iraq Study Group, led by his father's consigliere, James Baker, recommended a face-saving extrication from Iraq. That plan is now binned. So too are the senior military leaders who counselled against sending more troops to fight a losing war. General George Casey will no longer be in charge, while General John Abizaid has been relieved of his post running Central Command, or Centcom. Both men opposed the "surge", calling instead for a gradual US withdrawal. The Arabic-speaking Abizaid had the audacity to say as much publicly: "The Baghdad situation requires more Iraqi troops," not more Americans, he said.

So now we know what the much-vaunted new Bush strategy for Iraq amounts to: throw more gasoline on the fire. It's conceivable that Bush is, in fact, planning an eventual withdrawal, but hoping that one last push will give him something he can call victory as a finale. Psychologists spot similar behaviour in compulsive gamblers who, when in trouble, increase their bets, hoping for a win that will allow them to leave the table with dignity. They have a word for such thinking: delusional......"

It Became Necessary To Destroy Baghdad In Order To "Save" It:
A heavy cloud of smoke rises from aerial bombardements during firece fighting between insurgents and the Iraqi army, backed up by US forces, around Haifa street in central Baghdad. Iraqi security forces backed by US troops killed 50 militants in fierce clashes in central Baghdad.(AFP)

By Kurt Nimmo

"It figures. “President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq was crafted by a little known aide who is a strong advocate of escalating the troops and who alarmed Democrats over a decade ago when he proposed attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons to stop its nuclear program, the Wall Street Journal reports,” according to Raw Story.

It is said “J.D. Crouch, an academic turned deputy national security adviser,” crafted the neocon “surge” plan under the tutelage of Stephen Hadley, the Cheney and Straussian Wolfowitz understudy who replaced Condi as national security adviser after she took up her new digs in the State Department.

Taking Crouch under his wing is a natural, as both Crouch and Hadley are fascinated with using nuclear weapons against adversaries. According to Hadley, accusing the United States of criminal insanity for pursuing a policy of nuclear brinksmanship “destroys public confidence in our institutions and our leaders,” never mind that such leaders talking about using nukes should be run out of town and locked up in institutions for the criminally insane.

As well, the scurrilous Frederick Kagan, one of Bush’s criminal “minds” over at the American Enterprise Institute, played a big part in contriving the “surge” plan to kill more U.S. soldiers and Iraqis. In additional to conniving with PNAC as a war crime signatory, a crime that should be punishable by a long prison term at hard labor, if not a trip to the gallows, Kagan dreamed up the “real Iraq Study Group” report devised to counter the Iraq “recommendations” released by the Baker Boys last month.

“The increase in US troops cannot be short-term,” writes Kagan. “Clearing and holding the critical areas of Baghdad will require all of 2007. Expanding the secured areas into Anbar, up the Diyala River valley, north to Mosul and beyond will take part of 2008,” thus dumping the mess in the laps of the Democrats, who will likely take up residence in the White House next time around, as our rulers are weary of neocon braggadocio and murderous swaggering, preferring instead a return to the good old days when dirty work was done behind the scenes through “color revolutions” and other opaque machinations.

As for Crouch, he apparently horrified Democrats by authoring “an academic article [in 1995]… that called for dispatching more troops to South Korea, redeploying American tactical nuclear weapons to the country, and bombing North Korea if Pyongyang refused to abandon its nuclear program.” Obviously, Mr. Crouch was simply ahead of his time, as lobbing around nukes is all the rage in neocon Washington these days, especially if said nukes are aimed at Iran. So in vogue is this idea, the Israelis are now casually talking about nuking Iran, sort of as a way to get World War Four rolling in the new year.

In preparation for Bush’s “surge” speech, Hadley and Crouch trekked off to the pastoral Camp David retreat for an early-morning meeting with Condi the Destroyer and the newly installed Bush crime family intimate, Robert Gates. “White House officials declined to disclose any details of the conversations. Bush is meeting with his national security team again Thursday” at his faux cowboy ranch in Crawford, Texas, according to the Associated Press....."

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Latuff: Mothers don't like wars...except Barbara Bush!

George W. Bush has purged senior military and intelligence officials who were obstacles to a wider war in the Middle East, broadening his options for both escalating the conflict inside Iraq and expanding the fighting to Iran and Syria with Israel’s help.

An Important, Long Article
By Robert Parry

"....The choice of Fallon makes more sense if Bush foresees a bigger role for two aircraft carrier groups now poised off Iran’s coastline, such as support for possible Israeli air strikes against Iran’s nuclear targets or as a deterrent against any overt Iranian retaliation.

Though not considered a Middle East expert, Fallon has moved in neoconservative circles, for instance, attending a 2001 awards ceremony at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a think tank dedicated to explaining “the link between American defense policy and the security of Israel.”

Bush’s personnel changes also come as Israel is reported stepping up preparations for air strikes, possibly including tactical nuclear bombs, to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, such as the reactor at Natanz, south of Tehran, where enriched uranium is produced......

While some observers believe Israel may be leaking details of its plans as a way to frighten Iran into accepting international controls on its nuclear program, other sources indicate that Israel and the Bush administration are seriously preparing for this wider Middle Eastern war.

Whatever Iran’s intent, Negroponte has said U.S. intelligence does not believe Iran could produce a nuclear weapon until next decade. Negroponte’s assessment in April 2006 infuriated neoconservative hardliners who wanted a worst-case scenario on Iran’s nuclear capabilities, much as they pressed for an alarmist view on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion in 2003....

Some neocons complained that Negroponte was betraying the President. Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a leading figure in the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, called for Negroponte’s firing because of the Iran assessment and his “abysmal personnel decisions” in hiring senior intelligence analysts who were skeptics about Bush’s Iraqi WMD claims.....

In his personnel shakeup, Bush shifted Negroponte from his Cabinet-level position as DNI to a sub-Cabinet post as deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To replace Negroponte, Bush nominated Navy retired Vice Admiral John McConnell, who is viewed by intelligence professionals as a low-profile technocrat, not a strong independent figure.....

Negroponte’s departure should give Bush a freer hand if he decides to support attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Bush’s neocon advisers fear that if Bush doesn’t act decisively in his remaining two years in office, his successor may lack the political will to launch a preemptive strike against Iran.....

A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they’re shouted down,” the ex-official said. [New Yorker, April 17, 2006]....

But one way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel’s powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with the Congress.

Attacks on Iran and Syria also would fit with Bush’s desire to counter the growing Shiite influence across the Middle East, which was given an unintended boost by Bush’s ouster of the Sunni-dominated government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The original neocon plan for the Iraq invasion was to use Iraq as a base to force regime change in Syria and Iran, thus dealing strong blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

This regional transformation supposedly would have protected Israel’s northern border and strengthened Israel’s hand in dictating final peace terms to the Palestinians. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq backfired, descending into a sectarian civil war with Iraq’s pro-Iranian Shiite majority gaining the upper hand.....

One Israeli source told me that Bush’s interest in spreading the war to Syria was considered “nuts” by some senior Israeli officials, although Prime Minister Olmert generally shared Bush’s hard-line strategy against Islamic militants. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush Wants Wider War.”]....

Now, as two politically wounded leaders, Bush and Olmert share an interest in trying to salvage some success out of their military setbacks. So, they are looking at possible moves that are much more dramatic than minor adjustments to the status quo.

Democrats and some Republicans are questioning why Bush wants to send 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq and offer Iraqis some jobs programs, when similar tactics have been tried unsuccessfully in the past.

Indeed, one source familiar with high-level thinking in Washington and Tel Aviv said an unstated reason for Bush’s troop “surge” is to bolster the defenses of Baghdad’s Green Zone if a possible Israeli attack on Iran prompts an uprising among Iraqi Shiites....

Likely Hezbollah missile strikes against Israel would offer another pretext for Israel to invade Syria and finally oust Hezbollah’s allies in Damascus, as the U.S. neocons had hope would happen in summer 2006, the source said....

For some U.S. foreign policy experts, this potential for disaster from a U.S.-backed Israeli air strike on Iran is so terrifying that they ultimately don’t believe Bush and Olmert would dare implement such the plan. But Bush’s actions in the past two months – reaffirming his determination to achieve “victory” in Iraq – suggest that he wants nothing of the “graceful exit” that might come from a de-escalation of the war.....

But Bush does not appear to share that goal of limiting the damage. Instead, he is looking for ways to “double-down” his gamble in Iraq by joining with Olmert – and possibly outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair – in expanding the conflict.

Since the Nov. 7 congressional elections, the three leaders have conducted a round-robin of meetings that on the surface seem to have little purpose. Olmert met privately with Bush on Nov. 13; Blair visited the White House on Dec. 7; and Blair conferred with Olmert in Israel on Dec. 18.

Sources say the three leaders are frantically seeking options for turning around their political fortunes as they face harsh judgments from history for their bloody and risky adventures in the Middle East.

But there is also a clock ticking. Blair, who now stands to go down in the annals of British history as “Bush’s poodle,” is nearing the end of his tenure, having agreed under pressure from his Labour Party to step down in spring 2007.

So, if the Bush-Blair-Olmert triumvirate has any hope of accomplishing the neoconservative remaking of the Middle East, time is running out. Something dramatic must happen soon.That something looks like it may include a rush to Armageddon."

On the Wrong Side of the Clash of Civilizations

An Excellent Article
By JONATHAN COOK
CounterPunch

Nazareth.

".....For tourists and pilgrims, getting in or out of Bethlehem has been made reasonably straightforward, presumably to conceal from international visitors the realities of Palestinian life. I was even offered a festive chocolate Santa Claus by the Israeli soldiers who control access to the city where Jesus was supposedly born.

Seemingly oblivious to the distressing historical parallels, however, Israel forces foreigners to pass through a "border crossing" -- a gap in the menacing grey concrete wall -- that recalls the stark black and white images of the entrance to Auschwitz.

The gates of Auschwitz offered a duplicitious motto, "Arbeit macht frei" (Work makes you free), and so does Israel's gateway to Bethlehem. "Peace be with you" is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic on a colourful large notice covering part of the grey concrete. The people of Bethlehem have scrawled their own, more realistic assessments of the wall across much of its length.

Foreign visitors can leave, while Bethlehem's Palestinians are now sealed into their ghetto. As long as these Palestinian cities are not turned into death camps, the West appears ready to turn a blind eye. Mere concentration camps, it seems, are acceptable.....

Certainly, the continuing fall in the number of Christians in the Holy Land concerns Israel's leadership almost as keenly as the patriarchs and bishops who visit Bethlehem at Christmas -- but for quite the opposite reason. Israel is happy to see Christians leave, at least of the indigenous Palestinian variety.

(More welcome are the crazed fundamentalist Christian Zionists from the United States who have been arriving to help engineer the departure of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, in the belief that, once the Jews have dominion over the whole of the Holy Land, Armageddon and the "End Times" will draw closer.)....

Such sensationalist misrepresentations of Palestinian life are now a staple of the local and American media. Support for Hamas, for example, is presented as proof of jihadism run amok in Palestinian society rather than as evidence of despair at Fatah's corruption and collaboration with Israel and ordinary Palestinians' determination to find leaders prepared to counter Israel's terminal cynicism with proper resistance.

The clash of civilisations thesis is usually ascribed to a clutch of American intellectuals, most notably Samuel Huntingdon, the title of whose book gave the idea popular currency, and the Orientalist academic Bernard Lewis. But alongside them have been the guiding lights of the neocon movement, a group of thinkers deeply embedded in the centres of American power who were recently described by Ynet as mainly comprising "Jews who share a love for Israel".

In fact, the idea of a clash of civilisations grew out of a worldview that was shaped by Israel's own interpretation of its experiences in the Middle East. An alliance between the neocons and Israeli leaders was cemented in the mid-1990s with the publication of a document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm". It offered a US foreign policy tailor-made to suit Israel's interests, including plans for an invasion of Iraq, authored by leading necons and approved by the Israeli prime minister of the day, Binyamin Netanyahu....

Paradoxically, this vision of our future, set out by American and Israeli Jews, is steeped in fundamentalist Christian religious symbolism, from the promotion of a civilised West's crusade against the Muslim hordes to the implication that the final confrontation between these civilisations (a nuclear attack on Iran?) may be the End Times itself -- and thereby lead to the return of the Messiah.

If this clash is to be realised, it must be convincing at its most necessary confrontation line: the Middle East and more specifically the Holy Land. The clash of civilisations must be embodied in Israel's experience as a civilised, democratic state fighting for its very survival against its barbarian Muslim neighbours.

There is only one problem in selling this image to the West: the minority of Christian Palestinians who have happily lived under Muslim rule in the Holy Land for centuries. Today, in a way quite infuriating to Israel, these Christians confuse the picture by continuing to take a leading role in defining Palestinian nationalism and resistance to Israel's occupation. They prefer to side with the Muslim "fanatics" than with Israel, the Middle East's only outpost of Judeo-Christian "civilisation".

The presence of Palestinian Christians reminds us that the supposed "clash of civilisations" in the Holy Land is not really a war of religions but a clash of nationalisms, between the natives and European colonial settlers.

Inside Israel, for example, Christians have been the backbone of the Communist party, the only non-Zionist party Israel allowed for several decades. Many of the Palestinian artists and intellectuals who are most critical of Israel are Christians, including the late novelist Emile Habibi; the writer Anton Shammas and film-makers Elia Suleiman and Hany Abu Assad (all now living in exile); and the journalist Antoine Shalhat (who, for reasons unknown, has been placed under a loose house arrest, unable to leave Israel). The most notorious Palestinian nationalist politician inside Israel is Azmi Bishara, yet another Christian, who has been put on trial and is regularly abused by his colleagues in the Knesset.

Similarly, Christians have been at the core of the wider secular Palestinian national movement, helping to define its struggle. They range from exiled professors such as the late Edward Said to human rights activists in the occupied territories such as Raja Shehadeh. The founders of the most militant wings of the national movement, the Democratic and Popular Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine, were Nayif Hawatmeh and George Habash, both Christians.

This intimate involvement of Palestinian Christians in the Palestinian national struggle is one of the reasons why Israel has been so keen to find ways to encourage their departure -- and then blame it on intimidation by, and violence from, Muslims......

From Israel's point of view, the loss of Palestinian Christians is all to the good. It will happier still if all of them leave, and Bethlehem and Nazareth pass into the effective custodianship of the international Churches.

Without Palestinian Christians confusing the picture, it will be much easier for Israel to persuade the West that the Jewish state is facing a monolithic enemy, fanatical Islam, and that the Palestinian national struggle is really both a cover for jihad and a distraction from the clash of civilisations against which Israel is the ultimate bulwark. Israel's hands will be freed....."

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DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman

"U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a pair of air strikes on Somalia. Many people are believed to have been killed. The Pentagon says the target of the strikes were members of Al Qaeda connected to the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The attack is the first overt U.S. military action in Somalia since American troops departed the country in 1993 following the infamous "Black Hawk Down" episode.
The strikes come just weeks after U.S.-backed Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia and overthrew the Union of Islamic Courts. Reports have also emerged that suggest U.S. Special Forces and CIA paramilitary teams are now directly embedded with Ethiopian forces in Somalia. Earlier this year, the CIA was accused of backing a group of Somali warlords.

* Salim Lone, former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq and a columnist for the Daily Nation in Kenya. He has been closely monitoring the story. He joins us on the line from Nairobi."

Poised To Surge
By Steve Bell, The Guardian

How the escalation in Iraq is both a campaign move and a way to force Sunnis out of Baghdad and into second-class status.

By Tom Hayden

"Politically, the coming escalation by 20,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is best understood as the comeback strategy of the neoconservative Republicans rallying around Sen. John McCain's presidential banner.

The political spin-doctors are calling it a "surge," an aggressive term implying a kind of post-election erection for Bush and the neoconservatives. In fact, or course, it is an escalation, a term apparently carrying too much baggage from Vietnam.

The hardcore neoconservatives, their ranks thinned by defections publicized in Vanity Fair, leaped immediately to salvage the war from November's voter disapproval. Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and William Kristol of the Weekly Standard began promoting an increase of 50,000 troops, mainly to Baghdad. Bush, who all along said he was listening to his generals, now sacked generals Casey and Abizaid, who had plans to reduce troop levels over one year ago, and who now opposed more American soldiers in Iraqi neighborhoods. John Negroponte, a specialist in the black arts of counterintelligence, became the State Department's point man on Baghdad. U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, a Sunni who has been critical of the Shi'a-controlled interior ministry, was removed from his Baghdad post. An Ivy League general, David Petraeus, with a counterinsurgency agenda to prove, took over command of U.S. troops.

Right after the election, Sen. McCain was touring Baghdad with his potential running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, promoting the plan to escalate, although supported by only 20 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of independent voters, and a statistically-insignificant 4 percent of Democrats (L.A. Times/Bloomberg, Dec. 11, 2006).

It is a brilliant strategy -- for a faction dealt a losing hand....."

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By Kurt Nimmo

"It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus “al-Qaeda” has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.

Earlier today, we learned a “U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia,” CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. “The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa,” apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. “The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia… where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States.”

In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily “al-Qaeda” but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Sharia, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.

Here in America, they are called the Somali Islamists—granted, a simplistic term, but then we here in America like our simplistic terms—and thus the Somali version of a Muslim is lumped in with all the other Islamists, including those we are told are fascist, never mind European fascist movements of the early 20th century have nothing to do with Islam, and the word “Islamofascists” is little more than a meaningless and rather crude political epithet....."

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by Nicola Nasser
(Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories)

"Revealing both the double standards of U.S. policies and the propaganda-oriented Israeli advocacy of “minority rights” in the Arab world, the U.S.-allied Iraqi Kurdish and sectarian leaders reacted angrily to James Baker-Lee Hamilton report because it recommended what they perceived as a possible American retract from federalism in Iraq and the Israeli Jews condemned as a catastrophic declaration of war an Israeli Arabs’ “future visions” because those visions could lead to a “federal” Israel.

Israel is still not “Jewish” neither in the demographic nor in the religious sense and the “Jewishness” of the state is still a strategic Zionist goal; hence the Israeli mainstream calls for the “transfer” of “non-Jews” and the Israeli official policies that boil down to nothing less than being ethnic cleansing practices. Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid was only the latest reminder of this existential problem that threatens both the very existence of the indigenous Arabs in Israel as well as the Zionist dream of Jews to lead an independent Jewish life.

Israeli Jews have to choose between Apartheid and a democratic state. A federal Israel could solve both an Israeli internal ethnic problem and as well be the right just, lasting and comprehensive approach to solving the Arab and Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which would spare the region more wars and violence; the ingredients of success are much more authentic than the U.S. , Israeli and Iranian-backed separatist and sectarian calls for federalism in Iraq . This approach would allow for the return of Palestinian refugees without “throwing the Jews to the sea” and would allow the Jews to lead an independent life without condemning Palestinians to an eternal exile in Diaspora.

Of course the expected Israeli-U.S. rejection of this approach rules it out as unrealistic politics, but the rejection would in no way make the arguments for it less authentic. The promotion of federalism in Iraq is increasingly developing into a double-edged weapon against its U.S. and Israeli advocates and could also turn against its Iranian supporters, whose multi-ethnic country of Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Balushis, etc. will certainly not abandon its Islamic unity for a western-style pluralistic federal alternative.

According to the last updated CIA World Factbook online, Iraqi Kurds represent between 15%-20% of the population and the “non-Jews (mostly Arabs)” represent 23.6% of all Israelis. While the Kurds share with the Arab majority of Iraq the same religion, culture, historical heritage, wide-spread inter-ethnic marriages and have never had an independent state of their own, the Israeli Arabs are all either Muslims or Christians, with a distinctive oriental Arab and Muslim culture and no common historical heritage whatsoever with their Jewish compatriots, who by the sword, dispossessed and displaced the Arab majority to create their “Jewish” state and who are to this day ruling out the emergence of a Palestinian – Arab state on only a portion of their ancestral land.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and Israel have incessantly incited and supported a separate Kurdish entity in northern Iraq and since the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in 2003 imposed as a fait accompli a “constitutional” federal system that would honour that support and as well address a similar Iranian-supported sectarian “separation” in the south, but could not yet be translated into a reality on the ground.

However neither Washington nor Tel Aviv would even ponder the possibility of a potential similar solution for the second class citizenship of the larger Arab minority of more than 1.2 million in Israel , which has a much better case for a federal arrangement with the Israeli central government. Instead the colonialist settlement of Arab land, the “transfer” and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Arabs were the components of the official Israeli Jewish solution, which had and have its strategist representatives in Israel ’s successive governments, with Washington either turning closed eyes or only verbally and shyly protesting....."

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The Arab World Today

"BAGHDAD, Janaury 8, 2006 - A new video of Saddam Hussein's corpse, with a gaping neck wound, was posted on the Internet early Tuesday, the second leaked release of clandestine pictures from the former leader's hanging.

The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.

The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30.

As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam's head and neck.

His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.

The newest video leak was likely to increase the angry reaction over the way the execution was carried out. There already has been a global outcry about the undignified manner in which the Shiite-dominated government hanged Saddam, a Sunni."

***

To me the lynching and subsequent slaughter of Saddam by the Shiite thugs in Baghdad, with full backing and jubilation by Iran, is a blunder of historic proportions by Tehran. The U.S. couldn't have orchestrated it better than this. At a time when the U.S. is preparing to hit Iran hard and is trying to form an Arab alliance against it, Iran obliged and made this task that much easier. Instead of being a major force for Muslim unity against U.S. aggression, Iran chose sectarianism in Iraq, instead.

If and when Iran is bombed by Usrael, I am afraid that Tehran should not expect the overwhelming support that Hizbullah received last summer from most Arabs and Muslims. Tehran will have itself and its opportunistic and sectarian policies in Iraq to blame. It will stand alone, just as Usrael planned it.

Tony Sayegh

by Dahr Jamail

"As part of a massive staff shakeup of Bush's Iraq team last week, it was announced that John Negroponte, the current U.S. National Intelligence Director who has also conveniently served as the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005 is being tapped as the new Deputy Secretary of State.

It is a move taking place at roughly the same time when Mr. Bush is to announce his new strategy for Iraq, which most expect entails an escalation of as many as 20,000 troops, if not more. Bush has already begun preparations to replace ranking military commanders with those who will be more supportive of his escalation.

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East, Gen. John Abizaid, will likely be replaced by Adm. William Fallon, currently the top U.S. commander in the Pacific. Gen. George Casey, currently the chief general in Iraq, would be replaced by Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who headed the failed effort to train Iraqi security forces. Thus, those not in favor of adding more fuel to the raging fire are to be replaced with those who are happy to oblige.

Former NSA director and veteran of over 25 years in intelligence, retired Vice Adm. Mike McConnell who happens to be an old friend of Dick Cheney (who personally intervened on his old buddy's behalf) will succeed Negroponte as national intelligence director. McConnell, willing to oblige his neo-con pal Cheney, may prove more hawkish regarding Iran than Negroponte was.

The timing of this move is what should raise eyebrows, and for two main reasons. First, Negroponte is relieved of his job of intelligence director as the drums of war continue to be pounded by the die-hard neocons, and Negroponte wasn't playing quite loud enough to the Tehran tune. McConnell may well be able to carry a louder tune for his pal Cheney, which may come in the form of a Sonata of manufactured intel to justify an attack on Iran, which is important since time is growing short for Cheney and Co.

Second and more immediate, the transfer of Negroponte into the State Department comes conveniently just as the announcement of the escalation of troops in Iraq is planned. Bush needs someone with experience in managing escalations and he needs look no further than this man. It is Negroponte who oversaw the implementation of the "Salvador Option" in Iraq, as it was referred to in Newsweek in January 2005.

Under the "Salvador Option," Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980's, Ret. Col James Steele. Steel, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shia militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.

Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today.

Under Reagan, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980's where he played a major role in U.S. efforts to topple the Nicaraguan government. The political history of John Negroponte shows a man who has had a career bent toward generating civilian death and widespread human rights abuses, and promoting sectarian and ethnic violence.

In Honduras he earned the distinction of being accused of widespread human rights violations by the Honduras Commission on Human Rights while he worked as "a tough cold warrior who enthusiastically carried out President Ronald Reagan's strategy," according to cables sent between Negroponte and Washington during his tenure there. The human rights violations carried out by Negroponte were described as "systematic."

The violations Negroponte oversaw in Honduras were carried out by operatives trained by the CIA. Records document his "special intelligence units," better known as "death squads," comprised of CIA-trained Honduran armed units which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte had full knowledge of these activities while making sure U.S. military aid to Honduras increased from $4 million to $77.4 million a year during his tenure. Under his watch civilian deaths sky-rocketed into the tens of thousands. Negroponte has been described as an "old fashioned imperialist" and got his start during the Vietnam War in the CIA's Phoenix program, which was responsible for the assassination of some 40,000 Vietnamese.

At roughly that time, Col. James Steele was commander of the U.S. Military Advisor Group in El Salvador. He also smuggled weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua and lied about it to the Senate Intelligence Committee, as documented in the Final Report of the Iran/Contra Special Prosecutor.

As a result of the work done by Negroponte, assisted by Steele, during the winter of 2004 and early spring 2005, daily life in Iraq, as described by the Washington Post looks like what the death squads generated in Central America under their watchful eyes: "Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at the morgue at midday Monday--blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their heads. Many of the bodies were sprawled with their hands still bound."

Obviously it is better for Iraqi militias and resistance groups to be fighting each other instead of uniting to battle occupation forces. The age-old strategy of divide and conquer applied yet again.

Negroponte's strategy and oversight of the dirty war in Honduras assisted in producing a "victory" there, but it has failed dismally in Iraq. Nevertheless, when we have an Administration which refuses to accept reality, bringing him back into the fold of the State Department may be a clear signal that it is willing to see much more blood seep into the sands of Iraq in the hope that it might produce something akin to stability.

Negroponte's appointment signals that Bush hopes to tap into his experiences from the medium-intensity war in Central America to do the same once again in Iraq. Coupled with the changes in the military and diplomatic team in Iraq it is a clear signal that the Administration is ready, willing and able, to head down the course of massive and indiscriminant escalation. It must be stopped."

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

"WASHINGTON — President Bush will outline his "new way forward" in Iraq on Wednesday to a nation that overwhelmingly opposes sending more U.S. troops and is increasingly skeptical that the war can be won.

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday shows a daunting sales job ahead for the White House, which is considering a plan to deploy up to 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.

POLL RESULTS: Bush approval | Feelings on Iraq

Those surveyed oppose the idea of increased troop levels by 61%-36%. Approval of the job Bush is doing in Iraq has sunk to 26%, a record low.....

Among key findings:

•Nearly half of those surveyed say the United States can't achieve its goals in Iraq regardless of how many troops it sends. One in four say U.S. goals can be achieved only with an increase in troop numbers.

•Eight in 10 say the war has gone worse than the Bush administration expected. Of those people, 53% say Bush deserves "a great deal" of blame; 41% place a great deal of blame on Iraqi political leaders.

•By 72%-25%, Americans say Bush doesn't have a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. Congressional Democrats fare only a little better: 66%-25%.

Even so, Democrats take control of Congress amid a wave of good feeling. By 2-to-1, Americans say they want congressional Democrats, not Bush, to have more influence over the direction of the nation."

Hamas responds to harsh criticism from Fatah, accuses latter of collaborating with Israel, US to overthrow gov't. Fatah call Hamas 'Shiite agents' while Hamas negotiate with Islamic Jihad over possible merge

"A day after Fatah leaders spoke out against Hamas , Hamas are now warning of a "revolutionist sect within Fatah" which is trying to lead the Palestinians into civil war. The past 24 hours in Gaza and the West Bank have been relatively quiet though tensions are still running extremely high; especially if judged by statements made by both sides.

Hamas spokesman Dr. Fouzi Barhoum told reporters at a press conference on Monday that there are those in Fatah who are in league with the Zionist-American conspiracy to stage a coup and overthrow the elected Palestinian government – this as punishment for the fact that the government refuses to recognize the State of Israel .

Barhoum said that there are Israeli and American interests shared by Fatah and that the economic and political siege led by the US, Israel and officials within the PA is designed to defeat the Islamic movement – represented by Hamas which won the Palestinian vote.

Barhoum said that Muhammad Dahlan – the leading Fatah leader in Gaza who once tried to overthrow Yasser Arafat – now seeks to overthrow the current government.

Barhoum said that over the course of the past month there were 70 incidents in which Hamas establishments and leaders were attacked, including parliament and the prime minister's office.

He said that Hamas will not let the situation come to civil war and addressed Fatah leaders, calling them back to the Palestinian negotiation table.

Hamas, said Barhoum, will not allow a group seeking a coup to destroy it, nor will the movement allow the Zionist enemy victory.

"The kidnapping of Hamas officials by Fatah is taking place while Israel continues to arrest movement leaders," he said.

Fatah compares Hamas with Iraqi Shiite leader

Hamas' scathing comments were issued in response to a harsh speech by Muhammad Dahlan on Sunday during a Fatah rally in which he called Hamas "murderers" and said that Fatah will respond when its people are attacked. Barhoum said that Dahlan's speech was an invitation for civil war.

Meanwhile – despite a relative lull in gunbattles – the two warring factions devoted their time to pointing fingers over recent events and specifically over President Mahmoud Abbas' declaration Saturday that Hamas' special security force was illegal.

While Hamas says that the decision was engineered by the revolutionary group surrounding Abbas, the press have labeled Hamas "Sadari", after Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, an archenemy of Iraqi Sunni Arabs and who reportedly participated in Saddam Hussein's execution.

Fatah imply that Hamas is being run by Iranian Shiite interests and in response to Hamas' use of the term "Israeli agents" regarding Fatah – the latter has labeled Hamas "Shiite agents".

Hamas, Islamic Jihad tie the knot?

Ynet has learned that in preparation for a potential face-off and in light of Fatah's US-supplied weapons, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are in talks to possibly unite their ranks.

A Palestinian source says that leaders from both organizations have met in Damascus and in Gaza and it has been decided that the groups will form a unified front against Fatah.

The matter was discussed in these meetings between Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal and Islamic Jihad Secretary General Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. It was decided in these meetings that Islamic Jihad would initially support Hamas in the public and in the media to strengthen the organization.

In recent days Islamic Jihad has adopted virtually all of Hamas' positions in the question of its special force and who shoulders the responsibility for what has occurred on the Palestinian street.

At the time it remains unclear if, should larger-scale clashes erupt, Islamic Jihad fighters will physically join Hamas but both sides continue to prepare for the possibility of an upcoming conflict, while still calling for a return to negotiations."

by Patrick Cockburn
The Independent

"......New White House plans to win a victory in Iraq are at about the same level of puerile idiocy as the scheme of those ill-informed Chinese officials 150 years ago. The plan, to be announced this week, comes just after the gruesome and semi-public execution of Saddam Hussein. Seen by Iraq's 5-million-strong Sunni community as a sectarian lynching, aided and abetted by the US, his killing will ensure that the Sunni insurgent groups will be flooded with more recruits than they can handle.

At the heart of President George Bush's scheme to stave off defeat is the famous "surge" in US troop numbers of some 20,000 to 30,000 men, in addition to the 145,000 soldiers already in Iraq. These extra forces are somehow expected to gain control of greater Baghdad - with a population of 7 million - and central Iraq, something the US army has failed to do in three and a half years.

It is one of the most long -sustained American myths in Iraq that if they had had significantly more combat brigades in the first year of the war, the insurgency would have been swiftly crushed. Generals in the Pentagon critical of the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and eager to put all the blame on him for the débâcle, claim all would have been well had he sent a bigger army. A rash of best-selling books in the US published last year - much of their information leaked by those same generals - take it as a proven fact that a central reason for US failure to control Iraq then was lack of troops. Essentially, the same argument is used to justify the temporary dispatch of reinforcements today.

As a means to victory the "surge" is likely to be as effective for the US army as cutting off the supply of rhubarb was for the Chinese. Belief in the utility of sending reinforcements ignores one the main lessons of the war in Iraq. The Iraqis do not like being occupied any more than anyone else.

Most were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but they never welcomed the occupation. The Iraq Study Group chaired by James Baker took this on board. It pointed out that 61 per cent of Iraqis favour armed attacks on US- led forces, according to reliable opinion polls.

The occupation has always fuelled the insurgency. More US troops means more resistance. Everybody in Baghdad wants armed men they can trust from their community protecting their street. A friend in Sunni west Baghdad told me: "The Mojahideen (insurgents) have ordered all the young men in our districts to take their guns and organise shifts so we are permanently guarded."

It is doubtful if the US can make a dent in the ever-growing strength of the Sunni guerrillas. But the extra troops might be used for an ever more dangerous purpose. They could be used to take on the Mehdi Army, the followers of the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whom the US currently believes to be the source of so many of its woes.

The US government has shown an extraordinary inability to learn any lessons from its failures in Iraq. The last time Muqtada al-Sadr's men fought the US, on two occasions in 2004, they lost a lot of militiamen but gained greatly in credibility in the eyes of Iraqis. This time round they will be much stronger. They also have far more legitimacy for Iraqis than many of the returned exiles, the so-called "moderates" that Washington is ceaselessly trying to promote despite their dismal showing at the polls. The one certainty about the "moderate" government Washington is seeking to install is that it will more dependent on the US than that of Nouri al-Maliki, the current prime minister.

There is a hidden history to the US and British occupation of Iraq. In 1991 President George Bush senior did not want to overthrow Saddam Hussein for fear that he would be replaced by Shia religious parties sympathetic to Iran. The same dilemma faced George W Bush, the son, after 2003. When the US was compelled to hold elections in 2005 the 60 per cent of Iraqis who are Shia voted for these religious parties.

Ever since the US has been trying to divide the Shia political alliance and keep the Iraqi government under its effective control. Mr al-Maliki says he cannot move a company of soldiers without US permission. The US army said it was handing over security control of Najaf to Iraqis - and a few days later killed the representative of Muqtada al-Sadr in the city. Just possibly the US might succeed in allying itself with the Badr Organisation - the Iranian-trained militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq - against the Mehdi Army. But the result would likely be an intra-Shia civil war in addition to Sunni-Shia war and the Sunni-US war.

While the White House pretends that American defeat can be avoided in Iraq, real measures to end the fighting languish. The building blocks for peace should include the appointment of a peace envoy: probably a senior official from the Arab world trusted in the US and the Middle East and acting on behalf of the UN. He should start talks about calling an international conference at which all the players inside and outside Iraq can meet.

A central theme of the conference should be the total withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq, leaving no bases behind. Any final agreement should be in the shape of an international treaty including guarantees for minorities such as the Iraqi Kurds and Sunni. Finally Iraq should be neutralised like Austria in Europe in the 1950s.

There is no chance of this happening under Mr Bush. The reversal of policy would be too great and the admission of failure too humiliating.

Instead he is responding to failure like a First World War general on the Western Front, sending another 20,000 to 30,000 surging over the top in the vain hope that they will finally make the vital breakthrough which will lead to victory."

by Paul Krugman
N.Y. Times

"The only real question about the planned “surge” in Iraq — which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation — is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.

Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they’re cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be “the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.”

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they’re delusional. Mr. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration’s unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one’s losses — the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.

Of course, such gambling is easier when the lives at stake are those of other people’s children.

Well, we don’t have to settle the question. Either way, what’s clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush’s character flaws.

I began writing about the Bush administration’s infallibility complex, the president’s Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power — the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity — it’s a recipe for disaster.

Consider, on one side, the case of the C.I.A.’s Baghdad station chief during 2004, who provided accurate assessments of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. “What is he, some kind of defeatist?” asked the president — and according to The Washington Post, at the end of his tour, the station chief “was punished with a poor assignment.”

On the other side, consider the men Mr. Bush has turned to since the midterm election. They constitute a remarkable coalition of the unwilling — men who have been wrong about Iraq every step of the way, but aren’t willing to admit it.

The principal proponents of the “surge” are William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. Now, even if the Joint Chiefs of Staff hadn’t given the surge a thumbs down, Mr. Kristol’s track record should have been reason enough to ignore his advice. For example, early in the war, Mr. Kristol dismissed as “pop sociology” warnings that there would be conflict between Sunnis and Shiites and that the Shiites might try to create an Islamic fundamentalist state. He assured National Public Radio listeners that “Iraq’s always been very secular.”

But Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan appealed to Mr. Bush’s ego, suggesting that he might yet be able to rescue his signature war. And am I the only person to notice that after all the Oedipal innuendo surrounding the Iraq Study Group — Daddy’s men coming in to fix Junior’s mess, etc. — Mr. Bush turned for advice to two other sons of famous and more successful fathers?

Not that Mr. Bush rejects all advice from elder statesmen. We now know that he has been talking to Henry Kissinger. But Mr. Kissinger is a kindred spirit. In remarks published after his death, Gerald Ford said of his secretary of state, “Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend.”

Oh, and Senator John McCain, the first major political figure to advocate a surge, is another man who can’t admit mistakes. Mr. McCain now says that he always knew that the conflict was “probably going to be long and hard and tough” — but back in 2002, before the Senate voted on the resolution authorizing the use of force, he declared that a war with Iraq would be “fairly easy.”

Mr. Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be “sacrifice.” But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities — a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong."

DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman

"Controversy continues over Jimmy Carter's recent book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." In it, the former US President criticizes Israel for what he calls the "continued control and colonization of Palestinian land." Carter faults Israeli settlement expansion for the failure of the peace process and is also highly critical of the US role in the Middle East, particularly its history of using veto power on the UN security council to block more than 40 UN resolutions critical of Israel.

The book has seen growing media attention which began even before its publication in late November. Leading Democrats quickly distanced themselves from the book and it was immediately condemned by Jewish leaders and organizations around the country. Long-time Carter Center Fellow Kenneth Stein resigned his position in protest of the book. In a letter addressed to Carter and distributed to the media, he accused Carter of omission, factual errors, and plagiarism.

Today - a debate on the book with two leading scholars:

* Gil Troy, professor of American history at McGill University and author of several books including "Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today."

* Norman Finkelstein, professor of Political science at DePaul University in Chicago. His latest book is "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History." His latest article is titled "The Ludicrous Attacks on Jimmy Carter's Book" is posted on Counterpunch.org."

Continue

This Road is for Jews Only

By SHULAMIT ALONI
(Shulamit Aloni is the former Education Minister of Israel. She has been awarded both the Israel Prize and the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel)
CounterPunch

"Jewish self-righteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such an extent that we fail to see what's right in front of our eyes. It's simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practises its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.

The US Jewish Establishment's onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp. All this is done in order to keep an eye on the population's movements and to make its life difficult. Israel even imposes a total curfew whenever the settlers, who have illegally usurped the Palestinians' land, celebrate their holidays or conduct their parades.

If that were not enough, the generals commanding the region frequently issue further orders, regulations, instructions and rules (let us not forget: they are the lords of the land). By now they have requisitioned further lands for the purpose of constructing "Jewish only" roads. Wonderful roads, wide roads, well-paved roads, brightly lit at night--all that on stolen land. When a Palestinian drives on such a road, his vehicle is confiscated and he is sent on his way.

On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. "Why?" I asked the soldier. "It's an order--this is a Jews-only road", he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. "It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some antisemitic reporter or journalist take a photo so he that can show the world that Apartheid exists here?".....

Humanitarian activists cannot transport Palestinians either.

Did man of peace President Carter truly err in concluding that Israel is creating Apartheid? Did he exaggerate? Don't the US Jewish community leaders recognise the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 7 March 1966, to which Israel is a signatory? Are the US Jews who launched the loud and abusive campaign against Carter for supposedly maligning Israel's character and its democratic and humanist nature unfamiliar with the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 30 November 1973? Apartheid is defined therein as an international crime that among other things includes using different legal instruments to rule over different racial groups, thus depriving people of their human rights. Isn't freedom of travel one of these rights?

In the past, the US Jewish community leaders were quite familiar with the meaning of those conventions. For some reason, however, they are convinced that Israel is allowed to contravene them. It's OK to kill civilians, women and children, old people and parents with their children, deliberately or otherwise without accepting any responsibility. It's permissible to rob people of their lands, destroy their crops, and cage them up like animals in the zoo. From now on, Israelis and International humanitarian organisations' volunteers are prohibited from assisting a woman in labour by taking her to the hospital. [Israeli human rights group] Yesh Din volunteers cannot take a robbed and beaten-up Palestinian to the police station to lodge a complaint. (Police stations are located at the heart of the settlements.) Is there anyone who believes that this is not Apartheid?

Jimmy Carter does not need me to defend his reputation that has been sullied by Israelophile community officials. The trouble is that their love of Israel distorts their judgment and blinds them from seeing what's in front of them. Israel is an occupying power that for 40 years has been oppressing an indigenous people, which is entitled to a sovereign and independent existence while living in peace with us. We should remember that we too used very violent terror against foreign rule because we wanted our own state. And the list of victims of terror is quite long and extensive.

We do limit ourselves to denying the [Palestinian] people human rights. We not only rob of them of their freedom, land and water. We apply collective punishment to millions of people and even, in revenge-driven frenzy, destroy the electricity supply for one and half million civilians. Let them "sit in the darkness" and "starve".

Employees cannot be paid their wages because Israel is holding 500 million shekels that belong to the Palestinians. And after all that we remain "pure as the driven snow". There are no moral blemishes on our actions. There is no racial separation. There is no Apartheid. It's an invention of the enemies of Israel. Hooray for our brothers and sisters in the US! Your devotion is very much appreciated. You have truly removed a nasty stain from us. Now there can be an extra spring in our step as we confidently abuse the Palestinian population, using the "most moral army in the world"."

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

".....Israel's part, General Tira says, is to "prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US. We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of air bases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran."

British commentators report that "the British media appears to be softening us up for an attack on Iran." Robert Fox writing in The First Post (January 6) says, "Suddenly the smell of Britons being prepared for an attack on Iran is all pervasive.".....

Bush showed that he was in Israel's pocket when he blocked the world's attempt to stop Israel's bombing of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Many commentators believe that the failure of the neoconservatives' "cakewalk war" has destroyed their influence. This is a mistaken conclusion. The neoconservatives are long time allies of Israel's right-wing Likud Party and are part of the Israel Lobby in the US. The Israel Lobby represents the views of only a minority of American Jews but nevertheless essentially owns both political parties and most of the US media. As the neoconservatives are an important part of this powerful lobby, they remain extremely influential......

Neoconservatives have called for World War IV against Islam. In Commentary magazine Norman Podhoretz called for the cultural genocide of Islamic peoples. The war is already opened on four fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iran....

The Israeli/neoconservative plan, of which Bush may be a part or simply be a manipulated element, is to provoke a crisis with Iran in which the US Congress will have to support Israel. Both the Israeli government and the American neoconservatives are fanatical. It is a mistake to believe that either will be guided by reason or any appreciation of the potentially catastrophic consequences of an attack on Iran. US aircraft carriers sitting off Iran's coast are sitting ducks for Iran's Russian missiles. The neoconservatives would welcome another "new Pearl Harbor."....

If truth be known, there is nothing to stop the Israeli/neoconservative cabal from widening the war in the Middle East.

As I previously reported, the neoconservatives believe that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would force Muslims to realize that they have no recourse but to submit to the Isreali/US will. The use of nuclear weapons is being rationalized as necessary to destroy Iran's underground facilities, but the real purpose is to terrorize Islam and to bring it to heel.

Until the US finds the courage to acquire a Middle East policy of its own, Americans will continue to reap the evil sowed by the Israel Lobby."

No-goodniks and the Palestinian shootout

Over the past 12 months, the US has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on - and bring down - Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. Egypt and Jordan, which assisted with the arms deliveries, are fast cooling to the idea, as are Israel and many in the Pentagon. Yet the architect of the project, Elliott Abrams - the last neo-con standing - is winning his fight to provide the Palestinians with enough rope to, he hopes, hang themselves

An Important Article
By Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke
Asia Times

"US Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams - whom Newsweek recently described as "the last neo-con standing" - has had it about for some months now that the United States is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure.

In the immediate aftermath of the Palestinian elections won by Hama last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a "hard coup" against the newly elected Hamas government - the violent overthrow of its leadership with arms supplied by the US.

While the businessmen were shocked, Abrams was adamant - the US had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that it could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.

While those closest to him now concede that Abrams' words were issued in a moment of frustration, the "hard coup" talk was hardly just talk. Over the past 12 months, the United States has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank.

A large number of Fatah activists have been trained and "graduated" from two West Bank camps - one in Ramallah and one in Jericho. The supplies of rifles and ammunition, which started as a mere trickle, have now become a torrent (the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reports that the US has designated an astounding US$86.4 million for Abu Mazen's - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' - security detail), and while the program has gone largely without notice in the US press, it is openly talked about and commented on in the Arab media - and in Israel.

Thousands of rifles and bullets have been poring into Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan, the US administration's designated allies in the program.

At first, it was thought, the resupply effort (initiated under the guise of "assist[ing] the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the roadmap to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza", according to a US government document) would strengthen the security forces under the command of Abbas.

Officials thought that the additional weapons would easily cow Hamas operatives, who would meekly surrender the offices they had only recently so dearly won. That has not only not happened, but the program is under attack throughout the Arab world - particularly among America's closest allies.

While both Egypt and Jordan have shipped arms to Abbas under the Abrams program (Egypt recently sent 1,900 rifles into Gaza and the West Bank, nearly matching the 3,000 rifles sent by the Jordanians), neither King Abdullah of Jordan nor Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak believe the program will work - and both are now maneuvering to find a way out of it.

"Who can blame them?" a Bush administration official told the authors recently. "While Mubarak has no love for Hamas, they [Egyptians] do not want to be seen as bringing [it] down. The same can be said for Jordan."

A Pentagon official was even more adamant, cataloguing official Washington's nearly open disdain for Abrams' program. "This is not going to work and everyone knows it won't work. It is too clever. We're just not very good at this. This is typical Abrams stuff."

This official went on to note that "it is unlikely that either Jordan or Egypt will place [its] future in the hands of the White House. Who the hell outside of Washington wants to see a civil war among Palestinians? Do we really think that the Jordanians think that's a good idea? The minute it gets under way, Abdullah is finished. Hell, 50% of his country is Palestinian."

Senior US Army officers and high-level civilian Pentagon officials have been the most outspoken internal administration critics of the program, which was unknown to them until mid-August, near the end of Israel's war against Hezbollah. When then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld learned about it, he was enraged, and scheduled a meeting with President George W Bush in an attempt to convince him the program would backfire.

Rumsfeld was concerned that the anti-Hamas program would radicalize Muslim groups among US allies and eventually endanger US troops fighting Sunni extremists in Iraq. According to these authors' reports, Rumsfeld was told by Bush that he should keep his focus on Iraq, and that "the Palestinian brief" was in the hands of the secretary of state. After this confrontation, Rumsfeld decided there was not much he could do.

The Abrams program was initially conceived last February by a group of White House officials who wanted to shape a coherent and tough response to the Hamas electoral victory of January. These officials, the authors were told, were led by Abrams, but included national security advisers working in the office of the vice president, including prominent neo-conservatives David Wurmser and John Hannah. The policy was approved by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The president then, the authors were told, signed off on the program in a Central Intelligence Agency "finding" and designated that its implementation be put under the control of the CIA. But the program ran into problems almost from the beginning. "The CIA didn't like it and didn't think it would work," the authors were told in October. "The Pentagon hated it, the US Embassy in Israel hated it, and even the Israelis hated it." A prominent American military official serving in Israel called the program "stupid" and "counter-productive".

The program went forward despite these criticisms, however, though responsibility for its implementation was slowly put in the hands of anti-terrorism officials working closely with the State Department. The CIA "wriggled out of" retaining responsibility for implementing the Abrams plan, the authors have been told.

Since at least August, Rice, Abrams and US envoy David Welch have been its primary advocates, and the program has been subsumed as a "part of the State Department's Middle East initiative". US government officials refused to comment on a report that the program was now a part of the State Department's "Middle East Partnership Initiative", established to promote democracy in the region. If it is, diverting appropriated funds from the program for the purchase of weapons may be a violation of congressional intent - and US law.

The recipients of US largesse have been Abbas and Mohammad Dahlan, a controversial and charismatic Palestinian political leader from Gaza. The US has also relied on advice from Mohammad Rashid, a well-known Kurdish/Palestinian financier with offices in Cairo. Even in Israel, the alliance of the US with these two figures is greeted with almost open derision.

While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has hesitantly supported the program, many of his key advisers have made it clear that they want to have nothing to do with starting a Palestinian civil war. They also doubt whether Hamas can be weakened. These officials point out that since the beginning of the program, Hamas has actually gained in strength, in part because its leaders are considered competent, transparent, uncorrupt and unwilling to compromise their ideals - just the kinds of democratically elected leaders that the Bush administration would want to support anywhere else in the Middle East.

Of course, in public, Rice appears contrite and concerned with "the growing lawlessness" among Palestinians, while failing to mention that such lawlessness is exactly what the Abrams plan was designed to create. "You can't build security forces overnight to deal with the kind of lawlessness that is there in Gaza, which largely derives from an inability to govern," she said during a recent trip to Israel.

"Their [the Hamas-led PA] inability to govern, of course, comes from their unwillingness to meet international standards." Even Middle East experts and State Department officials close to Rice consider her comments about Palestinian violence dangerous, and have warned her that if the details of the US program become public, her reputation could be stained.

In fact, Pentagon officials concede, Hamas' inability to provide security to its own people and the clashes that have recently erupted have been seeded by the Abrams plan. Israeli officials know this, and have begun to rebel. In Israel, at least, Rice's view that Hamas can be unseated is now regularly, and sometimes publicly, dismissed.

According to a December 25 article in Ha'aretz, senior Israeli intelligence officials have told Olmert that not only can Hamas not be replaced, but that its rival, Fatah, is disintegrating. Any hope for the success of a US program aimed at replacing Hamas, these officials argued, will fail. These Israeli intelligence officials also dismissed Abbas' call for elections to replace Hamas - saying that such elections would all but destroy Fatah. Ha'aretz reported:
Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet Sunday [December 24] that should elections be held in the Palestinian Authority, Fatah's chances of winning would be close to zero. Diskin said during Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting that the Fatah faction is in bad shape, and therefore Israel should expect Hamas to register a sweeping victory.
Apparently, Jordan's King Abdullah agrees. On the day that article appeared, December 25, Abdullah kept Abbas waiting for six hours to see him in Amman. Eventually, Abdullah told Abbas that he should go home - and only come to see him again when accompanied by Hamas leader and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Most recently, Saudi officials have welcomed Haniyeh to their country for talks, having apparently made public their own views on the US program to replace Hamas. And so it is: one year after the election of Hamas, and one year after Abrams determined that sowing the seeds of civil war among a people already under occupation would somehow advance America's program for democracy in the Middle East, respect for America's democratic ideals has all but collapsed - and not just in Iraq."

***



To put what is happening in perspective, see this item published in February, 2005 by the Washington Post:

Iran-Contra Figure to Lead Democracy Efforts Abroad.

"Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, was promoted to deputy national security adviser to President Bush. Abrams, who previously was in charge of Middle East affairs, will be responsible for pushing Bush's strategy for advancing democracy."

The United States is not Rome, and strengths and weakness are no longer measured alone by a nation's number of combatants. Yet President George W Bush's "new" Iraq strategy will call for thousands more troops, when withdrawal is the only viable option

By Ramzy Baroud
Asia Times

"....Disgruntled Democrats are not alone in objecting to Bush's imprudent proposal; the military leadership also finds it reckless and futile. Therefore, top army brass Generals George Casey and John Abizaid, who are deeply skeptical regarding increasing troop numbers in Iraq, are on their way to be replaced by war supporters.....

Moreover, the president reportedly intends to endorse William Fallon to head US Central Command. The choice of Fallon, according to Tim Reid, The Times of London's reporter in Washington, as the top military commander in the Middle East - to replace Abizaid - came as a big surprise to the Pentagon, for the former is a naval officer with little experience in that region.

But things will fall neatly in place when one considers that Bush's choice has more to do with Iran than repairing the damage done in Iraq: "Any mission against Tehran would rely heavily on carrier-based aircraft and missiles from the Persian Gulf," according to The Times, and the expertise of Fallon is most needed in that type of military scenario....

Most of the new troops will be positioned in Sunni areas in Baghdad and al-Anbar province, seen as the heart of the resistance. Only a naive person would argue that such a stratagem would lead to anything other than greater bloodshed and further enlivening and validating the so-called insurgents.

Although the "Sunni insurgency" remains the prime target of the US military in Iraq, there is a growing realization among US officials and war generals that the unruly Shi'ite militias and their death squads are a greater cause of instability and violence.

Ironically, the rise of the Shi'ite militias was an early US strategy that put the many Shi'ite factions on a crash course with the Sunni resistance: thus dividing and weakening the Iraqis and lowering the risk of American casualties.

Now that the Iraqi army and police are composed mostly from those same militant thugs, many Iraqis find themselves victimized by their supposed national army and police force. Those who are expecting Iraqis to "take responsibility for their future" seem oblivious to the fact that the future of Iraq is most bleak under the current US-devised sectarianism where Sunnis are murdered with impunity and Shi'ites are blown up in their markets.

The humiliating execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein at the hands of masked Shi'ite guards purporting to be an executive arm of a legitimate government was indeed the last attestation that will forever categorize the ongoing strife in Iraq as one between Shi'ite and Sunni, the former allied to invading foreigners and the latter fighting for mere survival...."

They have failed to take on the principal reason they were elected and, tragically, the US public is unlikely to force them to

Gary Younge
Monday January 8, 2007
The Guardian

"........In an attempt to intervene between the supine and the stubborn, the Iraq Study Group last month offered Bush a stern rebuke - but also a way out. This week it will receive his response as he plans to rebuff popular opinion, political opposition and establishment advice and call for a "surge" of between 20,000 and 40,000 troops in Iraq to "stabilise" the situation. The word surge, like every other premise for this war, is misleading. It suggests a brief increase when, in fact, his advisers have told him the extra troops would have to be there for at least 18 months.

"Clearly, this is not a move to shift public opinion," explains Gelpi. "The only thing that Bush can do to turn around public opinion is turn around the situation on the ground. It's a gamble. It's his last chance. This is about his legacy." As such, it poses a clear challenge to the Democratic Congress's legitimacy and to America's democratic political culture.

For if the Democratic Congress is unwilling to use any means at its disposal to fulfil its democratic mandate, then it will be left to the public to make their displeasure known. It is two years and tens of thousands of lives, some of them American, before the next presidential election. The American people clearly don't want this. A CBS poll last month showed that 18% wanted to see an increase in troop levels compared with 59% who want them either decreased or withdrawn completely. The question is: what are they going to do about it?

The tragic answer is probably nothing. For while opposition to the occupation is clearly broad, its depth is more difficult to fathom. "It's rare when people seriously publicly engage," says Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator of the largest anti-war organisation, United for Peace and Justice. "They watch it on TV, they read about it in the newspapers. They get angry, but that doesn't necessarily mean they engage. So it's difficult to know the depth of feeling."

We have been here before. Sensing the unpopularity of the war in Vietnam, Nixon stood for the presidency in 1968 claiming he had a secret plan to end the conflict. It was so secret the Vietnamese hadn't even heard of it. There was no doubt that feelings ran deep then, but it would be another seven years before American troops withdrew. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" a young John Kerry asked the Senate foreign relations committee in 1971. We have long known it was a mistake. Sadly, the last person to die for it is still a long way off. "

Maliki Is Threatening Countries That Condemned The Lynching
By Naser Jafari

(Click on to enlarge)

From Juan Cole:

"Al-Zaman reports in Arabic on the new security plan for Baghdad put forth by PM al-Maliki. Musa Abu Tawq and Ali al-Musawi write that some members of parliament have denounced the plan as unconstitutional because parliament has never been given the opportunity to vote on it. MP Hussein al-Faluji of the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni religious)insisted that the plan must be presented to parliament.

Others are criticizing the plan because it concentrates on Sunni West Baghdad and exempts Shiite Sadr City in the east. Members of parliament warned that this lack of even-handedness would exacerbate civil conflict rather than ending it. Kurdish politician Mahmud Osman objected to the planned use of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who are in Iraqi army units, saying he worried that it might provoke fighting between Arabs and Kurds. He admitted that the plan had been approved by President Jalal Talabani and the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masoud Barzani. Three Iraqi army brigades are expected to head down from northern Iraq to the capital, two of them Kurdish. MP al-Faluji also said that the use of the Peshmerga should be presented to parliament for its approval.

Al-Zaman maintains that militiamen [a code word for the Shiite Mahdi Army] attacked the Baghdad district of al-Rahmaniya on sunday, killing 3 persons and wounding 10 among locals who were defending their homes. The militiamen set fire to 10 dwellings. At the same time, the Mahdi Army in Sadr City has begun a conscription drive to expand its ranks. Every family with a male between the ages of 15 and 45 is being forced to relinquish him to the militia."

This Is What Over 140,000 U.S. Troops Control In Iraq
The Green Republic Of Maliki

د.إبراهيم حمّامي

لكل شرفاء الوطن، لكل أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني الصابر المصابر

لم يعد هناك مجال للتأويل والتفسير، لم يعد هناك وقت لتصفيف الكلمات والعبارات، لم يعد الوضع يحتمل المجاملة والدبلوماسية والسياسة والتكتيك، فقد عزم عبّاس ودحلان ومن معهما وبشكل لا لبس فيه على توجيه أجهزتهم لضرب الشعب الفلسطيني وإرادته ومقاومته، وأصدروا لذلك القرارت والمراسيم وتحت مسميات عدة ليس أقلها منع الفوضى والفلتان الأمني الذي كان ومازال صنيعتهم، وهاهي الحملة قد بدأت للنيل من صمود شعبنا إرضاءً لحكام تل أبيب وحفاظاً على امتيازاتهم من بطاقات خاصة ووكالات وعمولات وصفقات لبيع كل شيء حتى الشرف والكرامة.

لقد حول هؤلاء شعبنا إلى مجرم إرهابي يقوم بممارسة العنف والإعتداء، وكأن الشعب الفلسطيني هو الذي يقوم بالإجتياحات والإعتقالات والإغتيالات وباقي الممارسات الإحتلالية، التي لم يحرك عبّاس ودحلان ساكناً لمواجهتها وحماية شعبنا منها، بل لم يجرؤوا حتى على مجرد التنديد بها أو إدانتها، ليتلقى هؤلاء الصفعة تلو الصفعة من الاحتلال وجنرالاته باستعذاب غريب وخضوع وخنوع تستحي منه الأرانب، ليفردوا ريشهم الآن في ضرب شعبنا والاستئساد عليه.

قوانين عباس وصلاحياته التي يتبجح هؤلاء بها ويهددون بمعاقبة من يخرقها، هي نفسها الذي زجت بأبناء شعبنا في زنازين الوقائي والاستخبارات، وعباس ومن معه هم من أطلقوا العنان للمجرمين الكبار ممن نهبوا خيرات البلاد ليستوزروا ويعينوا سفراء، وهم أنفسهم من رفضوا حتى الآن التحقيق في أسباب مرض ووفاة عرفات، وهم من برأ عصابة الأسمنت، وهم من يغض الطرف عن الاعتقالات بدون محاكمات، وهم الذي يتجاهلون الزعران من منتسبي الحزب الحاكم كالحاكم بأمره في جنين، وهم الذين عجزوا عن إنصاف مظلوم أو مغبون، فعن أي قانون يتحدث هؤلاء، وعن أي سلطة وسيادة وهم لا يملكون قرار نفسهم، وعن أي وحدانية والاحتلال يصول ويجول على مرأى ومسمع من حجرات نومهم؟

ترى إن طُبق هذا القانون الوهمي الذي أصبح ككلمة حق أريد بها باطل، فكم سيزج في السجون الأوسلوية من عباد، وكم ضحية سنعد على أيدي هؤلاء الجلادين، وكم شهيداً سيسقط برصاص المرتزقة حرّاس المستوطنات من قوات لحد الجديدة التي تقف متفرجة أمام ممارسات الاحتلال الذي تقوم بحمايته؟

لقد أصبح هم هذه الزمرة تنفيذ أوامر المحتل دون عناء تفكير، ودون خجل، ودون حتى تقديم المبررات، وأصبح شغلهم الشاغل تجريم شعبنا ومعاقبته على تهمة عدم القبول بالاحتلال، لتمرير مخططاتهم التسووية الجاهزة، فبعد كل تحقير للشعب ومقاومته تنهال المساعدات العسكرية للقوات اللحدية وتنفق عشرات الملايين من الخارج لدعمهم.

ما تسعى إليه زمرة الفساد والإفساد هو مواجهة مفتوحة تنتهي بتطويع وتركيع هذا الشعب وتدجينه كما يتوهمون، والقضاء على كل من يرفض نهج أوسلو من فصائل ومجموعات وأفراد، وعلى رأسها جميعاً كتائب شهداء الأقصى التي يراد لها أن تدخل حظيرة أوسلو طيعة مطيعة وبأي ثمن، فبعد العرض العباسي المغري قبل عام ونصف بمنح قادة الكتائب 100000 دولار لكل منهم، يزيد عباس ودحلان أنه يجب حل مشاكلهم الاجتماعية والاقتصادية ودمجهم في الأجهزة الأمنية، وكأن دافعهم كان الفقر والعازة وانخفاض المستوى الاجتماعي، وكأنما يقول أنتم بنادق للإيجار وسنستأجركم، أي مهانة تلك وأي تسفيه هذا؟

هذا نداء لكل حر شريف أينما كان وفي أي منصب هو: لنرفض جميعا مخطط الاحتلال الذي تسعى زمرة أوسلو لتطبيقه، بضرب بعضنا ببعض، ليتحول الصراع إلى حرب داخلية لا منتصر فيها، وليقف الاحتلال متفرجاً عن بعد، هانيء البال بتحقيق مراده، وبدون خسائر من جانب المحتل، إذ أن السلطة الواحدة التي تريد فرض هيبة القانون وانهاء الفلتان (..) تقوم بذلك وعلى أكمل وجه، حتى وان كانت السلطة تلك لا يملك رئيسها قرار دخول المرحاض دون اذن من الاحتلال، وان تجرأ وأعلن أنه سيطلق سراح أحد المعتقلين، كما حدث مع سعدات، فلا بأس من أن يقوم موفاز وباقي جنرالاته بتذكير فخامة الرئيس أنه لا يملك حق اصدار مثل هذا القرار.

هذا نداء لكل مواطن وفرد أن يعلنها وبصراحة: لا وألف لا لتوجيه البنادق والرصاص نحو صدور أبنائنا، لنرفض جميعاً على اختلاف مشاربنا وألواننا أن تسيل شلالات الدم الفلسطينية إرضاءاً لهذا الطرف أو ذاك.

أخي في أجهزة السلطة الأمنية، هل تقبل أن تتحول لنائب عن الإحتلال في مواجهة أبناء شعبك؟ هل أصبح العدو هو ابن شعبك من أي لون آخر كان، وهل جهازك الأمني هو لعميل مجرم كدحلان ليتحكم بكم وبقراراكم؟ هل تقبل أن تواجه أخاك أو ابن عمك أو جارك؟ هل ستقبل بأن تقتحم منازل الآمنين بحثاً عن السلاح غير الشرعي كما يدعي قادتك، هل ستقبل بأن تكون أداة تنفيذ في يد من لا يخاف الله؟ أخي فكر جيداً، وارفض أن تكون طرفاً في المؤامرة، استقل، تمارض، تقاعد، افعل ما شئت، لكن لا توجه رصاصك نحو أبناء شعبك.

أخي الفرد والعنصر والشرطي والجندي والضابط، لا تخشى على راتب أو رتبة غمست بالذل والمهانة، ولا تقبل أن يأكل أولادك من ثمن دماء شعبك سحتاً إلى يوم الدين، ارفض أوامر الظلاّم والعملاء، كن رجلاً، فالرجال وقت الشدائد والمحن وهذا ابتلاء وامتحان، أخي ابن فلسطين فكر ثم فكر ثم قرر، لكن لا تكن أبداً مع من سيلعنهم التاريخ.

أخي وابن وطني، ما سيحدث إن أقررتموه وكنتم طرفاً فيه تتحملون مسؤوليته تماماً كمن عذّب ويعذب في غياهب معتقلات الأمن الوقائي والإستخبارات، أو كمن يطلق النار من فرقة الموت، أو يقتحم منازل الآمنين، ومنع الإقتتال والفتنة مسؤولية وواجب وأمانة، لن يفيدك رؤساؤك شيئاً يوم تقع الواقعة، فمسؤليتك قائمة لا محالة كمجرم حرب ان حوكمت يوماً على ما ستقترفه ان لم تتوقف الآن، فإن سقطت مقتولاً وأنت تهاجم أبناء شعبك فلن يفيدك هؤلاء شيئاً، ألم تقرأ قوله تعالى في سورة البقرة.

"إِذْ تَبَرَّأَ الَّذِينَ اتُّبِعُواْ مِنَ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُواْ وَرَأَوُاْ الْعَذَابَ وَتَقَطَّعَتْ بِهِمُ الأَسْبَابُ. وَقَالَ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُواْ لَوْ أَنَّ لَنَا كَرَّةً فَنَتَبَرَّأَ مِنْهُمْ كَمَا تَبَرَّؤُواْ مِنَّا كَذَلِكَ يُرِيهِمُ اللّهُ أَعْمَالَهُمْ حَسَرَاتٍ عَلَيْهِمْ وَمَا هُم بِخَارِجِينَ مِنَ النَّارِ "،

نعم لن يفيدوك بشيء لا في الدنيا ولا فى الآخرة، فإثمك على نفسك، ولن تفيد الحجج والذرائع أنك عبد مأمور ينفذ الأوامر فالمسؤولية فردية أولاً وأخيراَ.

أبناء شعبي المخلصين، في فلسطين أرض الرباط، أرزاقكم ليست بيد السلطة أو عبّاس أو دحلان، بل بيد من خلقكم وسوّاكم وكتب ما لكم وما عليكم يوم ولدتكم أمهاتكم، اتركوا مناصبكم ومواقعكم وارفضوا تنفيذ أوامر الظلمة ممن ارتضوا أن يكونوا أداة لتنفيذ رغبات المحتل، ارفضوا العمل تحت امرة المجرمين والعملاء، لا تخشوا من فقر أو عوز، أو من فقدان منصب أو امتياز، فموقفكم هو الشرف والامتياز، ومن يرزق بلا حساب لا يغفل ولا ينام.

بترككم مواقعكم ورفضكم التعامل مع المفسدين ستحولون دون تحول مجتمعنا إلى مجتمع متصارع في غابة من الرصاص وسفك الدماء بحجة الشرعية، وستمنعوا حدوث الكارثة التي يتمناها أعداء هذا الشعب، فإن لم تفعلوا فما الفرق بينكم وبين عملاء جيش لحد الذين وقفوا في وجه شعبهم لينتهي بهم المطاف في مزابل تل أبيب والتاريخ، بالله عليكم ما الفرق؟

أبناء فلسطين، أنتم أمام خيارين لا ثالث لهما، إما أن تساهموا في مجزرة بشعة يتم الإعداد لها باسمكم لتريح الإحتلال وتقض مضاجعنا، أو أن تمنعوا هذه المأساة بأن تقفوا وقفة عز وفخار فتحقنوا دماؤكم ودماء أهلكم وذويكم، ليكن اختياركم اختيار الحق والعدل، ولتعلنوا بكل ما أوتيتم من قوة، لا لمحاولات تحويلنا إلى أكياس رمل وحراس للمستوطنات، لا لتزوير ارادتنا، لا لتسفيه مقاومتنا وتجريمها، لا لمنح الإحتلال صك براءة من جرائمه، لا لتوجيه الرصاص نحو أبناء شعبنا، ولا لتحويلنا إلى قطعان غنم تنفذ أوامر الظلمة.

ليس المطلوب بكثير، وليس المطلوب توجيه البنادق نحو رموز السلطة، لكن المطلوب عصيان الأوامرالتي قد تصدر لضرب شعبنا وقواه، وهذا يحتاج إلى جهد جماعي وتكافل على أعلى مستوى، سبق وأن نجحنا فيه في إنتفاضة الحجارة الأولى، وعلى أسس نبذ الأنانية ومد يد العون للغير لنتحول لمجتمع متراص متكاتف يواجه ما قد تقوم به عصابات السلطة التي ارتضت تنفيذ الأوامر ضد شعبها في محاولة لكسر إرادتنا، وإضعاف عزيمتنا بل ومعاقبتنا.

إنما النصر صبر ساعة، والنصر لا يكون فقط في ميادين الوغى، لكن النصر ايضاً على النفس والهوى والمغريات من مناصب ورواتب وحوافز وامتيازات.

زمرة أوسلو اختارت وارتضت طريقها ونهجها المنفذ لرغبات الإحتلال، وهاهي بدأت هجومها على كل ما هو فلسطيني دون استثناء، وتحت نفس المسميات والذرائع من اصلاح وفرض سيادة القانون التي تعني في عرف أوسلو الإبقاء على نفس الرموز في مواقعها أو في مواقع جديدة وبنفس الصلاحيات والإمتيازات ولو على حساب دماء شعبنا وتضحياته، فهل نختار نحن أيضاً طريقنا ونهجنا؟

أبناء فلسطين

هذا النداء لكم جميعاً: أفشلوا مخططات الفتنة، لا تسمحوا بإراقة دماء شعبكم، لا تتحولوا إلى جزارين لشعبكم، لا تقبلوا بتجريم شعبكم، لا تحموا المحتل وتنوبوا عنه، قاطعوا، ارفضوا، عارضوا، تمردوا، اعصوا، افعلوا ما شئتم لكن لا توجهوا رصاصكم نحو اخوة لكم، ولا تكونوا طرفاً في خطيئة وجريمة لن يغفرها التاريخ.

إن كنا اليوم نطالب أبناء الأجهزة الأمنية بوقفة عز، فالشعب بكل فئاته مطلوب منه أن يتحرك ويقول كلمته، جماهير الشعب الفلسطيني برجالها ونسائها، بشيبها وشبابها، بصحيحها وسقيمها، مطالبة أن تنزل إلى الشوارع بقدها وقديدها، بمئات الألوف، وفي حركة جماهيرية سلمية لتحول دون تنفيذ مخطط الجبناء العملاء، ولتحافظ على خيارها وحقوقها.

إن السلبية اليوم هي مشاركة حقيقية في المخطط الذي يعد لتركيع شعبنا، لنقل كلمتنا ولنخرج جميعاً نفترش الأرض ونلتحف السماء، حتى نحسم الأمر لصالح الشعب وحقوقه، وليس لصالح أحد من البشر أو التنظيمات، إن الحركة الشعبية الجماهيرية هي الرد الحقيقي على كل من يحاول الاستفراد بالضفة الغربية تحت حماية ورعاية الاحتلال، ورد حقيقي يحسم الصراع لصالح من يستحق ألا وهو الشعب الفلسطيني الصابر المصابر.

صورة نضالنا تتشوه، وتعاطف العالم وشعوبه معنا بدأ يهتز، ومجرمو وسفاحو أوسلو كشروا عن أنيابهم، والمخطط القادم رهيب رهيب، وقد تكون هذه المواجهة الجولة الأخيرة في صراع الحق مع الباطل، فهل نبقى على الهامش ننتظر أن يقرر غيرنا عنا بعد أن تسيل دماءنا إرضاء للإحتلال؟

دور كل فرد اليوم هو أمانة سيسأل عنها، ولن ينفع بعد اليوم لوم ولا عتب، وإن وقعت الكارثة وسالت الدماء فكلنا خاسر، إلا المحتل! احسموا أمركم وشاركوا وبكل حضارة وبشكل سلمي تام في فرض إرادتكم بدلا من أن تفرض إرادة الغير عليكم، فإن تقاعسنا فلا نلومن إلا أنفسنا!

"وَاتَّقُواْ يَوْماً لاَّ تَجْزِي نَفْسٌ عَن نَّفْسٍ شَيْئاً وَلاَ يُقْبَلُ مِنْهَا عَدْلٌ وَلاَ تَنفَعُهَا شَفَاعَةٌ وَلاَ هُمْ يُنصَرُونَ"

اللهم إني قد بلغت اللهم فاشهد.

The Mangy Mouse That Thought It Has Roared

An Excellent Piece
By Tony Karon

".... But any honest assessment will not fail to recognize that the increasingly violent conflict between Hamas and Fatah is not only a by-product of Secretary Rice’s economic siege of the Palestinians; it is the intended consequence of her savage war on the Palestinian people – a campaign of retribution and collective punishment for their audacity to elect leaders other than those deemed appropriate to U.S. agendas. Moreover, the fact that the conflict is now coming to a head is a product of Rice’s micromanagement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s political strategy – against his own better instincts.

Rice’s siege strategy was premised on the belief that the economic torture of the entire Palestinian population would either force the Hamas government to chant the catechism of recognizing Israel-renouncing violence-abiding by previous agreements (again, Israeli leaders have to giggle at that one!) — or else, preferably, force the Palestinian electorate to recant the heresy of choosing Hamas as its government in the first place. Frustrated by the failure of this collective punishment to produce the desired results — and mindful of the need to quickly reorder Palestinian politics in order to satisfy the urgent need of the increasingly marginal Arab autocracies that Washington seeks to mobilize against Iran — she has stepped things up a notch, cajoling the hapless Abbas to take steps to toppled a government democratically elected only 11 months ago and beefing up the forces of the Fatah warlords dedicated to taking down Hamas in order to restore their own power of patronage......

Anyway, thanks to Conflicts Forum, we now know also that Elliot Abrams, the last of the Likudniks in senior Bush Administration positions, has spoken openly of the need for the U.S. to fund, arm and train Fatah activists to launch a “hard coup” against the elected Hamas government (Abrams, of course, is a veteran of Reagan -era Latin America policies, so he has some experience in these things.) This is more berserk social engineering from the neocon Likud crowd, and most of the U.S. government (as well as the Israelis) know that the extensive effort to promote a coup are doomed to fail, but fail bloodily.

Even Middle East experts and State Department officials close to Rice consider her comments about Palestinian violence dangerous, and have warned her that if the details of the U.S. program become public her reputation could be stained. In fact, Pentagon officials concede, Hamas’s inability to provide security to its own people and the clashes that have recently erupted have been seeded by the Abrams plan. Israeli officials know this, and have begun to rebel. In Israel, at least, Rice’s view that Hamas can be unseated is now regularly, and sometimes publicly, dismissed.....

Abbas is a man of good intention, but has no political base of his own. His power is derived from two constituencies: The remnants of a Fatah organization in steady decline over the past decade, and all but shattered by its defeat in the January 2006 elections, its only organized formations now being squadrons of gunmen answerable to various warlords, and the bureaucracy of the PA. And the United States, at least to the extent that it represents the only game in town for the realization of Abbas’s preferred strategy of patient diplomacy in pursuit of Palestinian statehood, because it’s the only party capable of delivering Israeli compliance. That, of course, is an abstraction, because no matter how capable the U.S. is of delivering Israeli compliance with a peace deal, it has no intention of doing so — not under the Bush Administration, and I have to say, I’m pessimistic about the chances of the Democrats doing it, either. Still, Abbas has no alternative but to jump through whatever hoops Washington places before him, because once he gives up hope of a U.S. mediated solution, his own political role is over.

Curiously enough, in this instance the interests of the U.S. Administration and those of the corrupt and self-serving Fatah warlords and bureaucrats coincide entirely. So entrenched was the sense in Fatah’s leadership of entitlement to rule over the Palestinians that its activist leadership had been pressing Abbas, from the moment the election results were announced, to move to topple Hamas. The fact that Fatah had been repudiated by the people would have demanded a thorough reorganization and democratization, a political “long march” in which the organization restored its standing among ordinary Palestinians by standing by them, working for them, listening to them and articulating their aspirations, as Hamas had done so successfully. Instead, the Fatah leadership demanded that Abbas make a coup and reinstate them, restoring their power of patronage.

And Condoleezza Rice, in her typically callous arrogance (remember those “birthpangs of a New Middle East” that shook Beirut last summer?) supported them: The Palestinian people would have to pay for their folly in defying her and electing Hamas, and would have to keep paying until they were ready to recant.

Abbas, still mindful of the national interest, sought a unity government with Hamas, based on a compromise document forged between Fatah and Hamas prisoners held in Israel. But Rice was having none of it — it didn’t require Hamas to grovel sufficiently and apologize for disrupting the Bush administration’s somnambulent stroll in Middle Eastern fantasy — and pressed Abbas to abandon the plan, and instead seek national unity on terms less acceptable to Hamas.

And then, together with the venal warlords and corrupt bureaucrats of Fatah, Rice finally prevailed on Abbas to threaten to call new elections — which he did three weeks ago, touching off the latest bout of violence. Hamas is unlikely to accept the call — why would it, since it has been forced on the Palestinians from outside — and any election held without their participation would be meaningless. No matter, the U.S. appears to be pressing ahead in forcing Abbas into a violent confrontation with Hamas. (Was it just a Freudian slip that Abbas made clear on Saturday in declaring Hamas’s militias in Gaza “illegal” that he had, earlier in the day been on the phone with Condi?) So, Gaza will bleed. And it will starve. And it will burn. Until the Palestinians are ready to rue the day they ever dared to choose their own leaders over those chosen for them by Rice, and Bush and Blair."

By Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun

"The bungling of Saddam's trial and execution hurts America's reputation.

Just when it seemed the Bush-Cheney Administration couldn't drag America's reputation any lower, it did.

The U.S. is now being rebuked around the globe for delivering President Saddam Hussein of Iraq to a Shiite lynch mob.

Washington professed surprise and denied blame for this disgusting, gruesome atrocity. But Saddam had been under U.S. guard in a U.S.-run prison in the U.S.-run Green Zone. What did U.S. officials think the mob of U.S.-backed Shiite thugs intended to do with Saddam? Give him a parade? ....

By contrast, the UN's new South Korean secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who was shoe-horned into office by Washington, shamefully supported Saddam's execution even though the UN has long opposed the death penalty. An inauspicious start for a timid yes-man....

Good, responsible presidents know when to listen to their generals, and when to retreat from stalemated or lost wars. If Bush does send thousands more troops to Iraq, he will be risking more American lives in a desperate, 11th-hour political gamble to show voters he has a new plan to resolve the horrible mess in Iraq he created.

Twenty or thirty thousand more U.S. troops thrown into the cauldron of Iraq will make little military difference. One hundred fifty thousand or more might, but the U.S. has run out of soldiers.

If Bush pours more troops into this -- a lost war -- he will fall into the trap of many bad gamblers who double up their bets in a reckless effort to recoup previous losses.

Bush continues ignoring his generals while still heeding the siren song of the neo-cons around him. Their goal is not advancing America's interests, but totally destroying Iraq, then Iran.

Sen. John McCain, the current Republican presidential front-runner, has joined Bush and Cheney in urging more troops be sent to Iraq. All three have clearly lost touch with reality and their nation's basic values.

Call it Saddam's curse."

The N.Y. Times

"BEIRUT, Lebanon — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”......

By standing up to the United States and its client government in Baghdad and dying with seeming dignity, Mr. Hussein appears to have been virtually cleansed of his past.

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”......

But shortly after his execution last Saturday, a video emerged that showed Shiite guards taunting Mr. Hussein, who responded calmly but firmly to them. From then on, many across the region began looking at him as a martyr.

“The Arab world has been devoid of pride for a long time,” said Ahmad Mazin al-Shugairi, who hosts a television show at the Middle East Broadcasting Center that promotes a moderate version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. “The way Saddam acted in court and just before he was executed, with dignity and no fear, struck a chord with Arabs who are desperate for their own leaders to have pride too.”.......

At the heart of the sudden reversal of opinion was the symbolism of the hasty execution, now framed as an act of sectarian vengeance shrouded in political theater and overseen by the American occupation......"

Latuff: The Curse of Saddam Hussein

"Gaza - Six Palestinian armed wings on Sunday told a press conference in Gaza city that they would use force if they have to in order to stop civil war in the PA-run lands and held PA chief Mahmoud Abbas responsible for ramifications of his latest decision on the interior ministry's executive force.

They said that they would not allow "agents and traitors" to drag the Palestinian arena into the marsh of civil war even if "we have to chop off a number of treacherous elements and strike them with an iron first".

The armed wings of Hamas, popular resistance committees, Fatah and PFLP-GC vowed before the Palestinian people to remain the shield of national unity.

They expressed surprise at Abbas' decision outlawing the PA interior ministry's executive force, noting that it came in harmony with Israeli demands.

The armed wings urged members of all security apparatuses not to allow conspirators to drive a wedge between them and members of the executive force, renewing their support for that force. "

"Damascus - Dr. Mousa Abu Marzouk, deputy political bureau chairman of the Hamas Movement, on Sunday affirmed that international and regional pressures along with internal struggle in the Palestinian arena aimed at controlling the national decision making.

He stressed that the Palestinian "national project" should be re-built in order to include all Palestine and not only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas leader said that two programs were present in the Palestinian arena the first encouraged a settlement with Israel and the second championed resistance to grab rights, which is winning vast popularity.

He noted that many countries did not like the second program, adopted by Hamas, and thus tried all sorts of political, economic and diplomatic siege and other pressures in a bid to eliminate that option.

Abu Mazrouk opined that the chaotic events and security mess in the West Bank and Gaza fell in line with an American scheme aimed at spreading what they call "creative chaos".

He warned that Israel might exploit the current internal Palestinian differences to expand colonization of the West Bank and to judaize occupied Jerusalem. "

By Kurt Nimmo

"It only took Steny Hoyer a few hours to please his masters.

“Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable, new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Jerusalem Post hours after entering the party leadership position. The Maryland Democrat said the view is shared by his party, rejecting assertions that the Democrats would be weaker than the Republicans on Iran…. He also said that the use of force against Teheran remained an option.”

Some may think the word “masters” is a bit too strident. But regular readers of this blog realize both parties are essentially controlled by AIPAC, a well documented fact, and AIPAC is a front for the racist Likud and Kadima parties in Israel.

“AIPAC works closely with leaders on both sides of the aisle, each deeply committed to strengthening the bonds between the United States and Israel. No matter who wins the upcoming elections, AIPAC is confident that Congress will continue to support a strong Israel and a strong relationship between the United States and its most reliable ally in the Middle East,” an AIPAC statement declared last November."
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Condoleezza Rice intends to revive the Quartet and the "Peace Process"
(Khalil Abu Arafeh, Alquds, 1/7/07)

Working Hand-in-Hand With Israel:
Palestinian security officers are seen during an operation to arrest Hamas militants in the West Bank town of Jenin, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007. Three Hamas militants were arrested Sunday by Fatah-loyalist security officers. (AP Photo)

Palestinian girls, supporters of Hamas, hold copies of the Quran, Islam's holy book, during a protest against the attack on Hamas offices by unknown gunmen on Saturday, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007. (AP Photo)

Palestinian Pinochet, The CIA Asset Dahlan, Stirring Up His Backers To Launch The Long-Awaited, Co