Palestinian Pundit

By Ramzy Baroud

"......Saddam, in his eccentric ways, symbolized the last drive for pan-Arab nationalism. In many ways, he was unrivalled. He was one of very few who dared to stand up to what many people in the world see as a harsh and domineering United States. To many people living in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein was simply the "lesser of the two evils."

Arab nationalism, even under the shabby state of the former Iraqi leader, remained important, for it represented the only collective political identity Arabs aspired to attain. Politically fragmented and easy prey to outside interests, many Arabs, especially in poorer countries, held tight to the fading dream of unity.

But as the dream of unity was dying, irate alternatives were forcefully offered; the "Islamic option" had suddenly augmented from its minimal, symbolic presence to the only intellectual substitute to pan-Arabism. Both ideologies championed the recourse of revival, liberation even, from within, and a full-fledged unity as the only shield in the face of the self-seeking invaders from without.

As youths growing up under a brutal Israeli occupation, my peers and I inanely believed that a collective Arab determination was the only solution to oppression and humiliation. Often, I went to sleep, during an Israeli military curfew in my refugee camp in Gaza, finding comfort in the thought that an Arab army could cross at any minute to set us all free from this prison. It never came.

As I grew, I realised that things are not as simple and pure as once thought. Arab rulers were no Saladin, but in fact, they were just as guilty for their people’s plight as those foreign powers that see Arabs as faceless numbers, associated only with every negative stereotype one can envisage. Although I must admit that I was strongly moved by the last words Saddam proclaimed, calling on Iraqis to forgive, to strive to be driven by the love for freedom, rather than disdain for ones enemies. Of course these words also were disregarded by western mainstream media.......

In Gaza, my sorrow of losing countless friends and family members to the Israeli occupation forces was the shared destiny of well over one million refugees in Gaza’s camps. With each new innocent casualty, the desire for a collective Arab will became stronger. But time has passed, and the dream of a collective Arab will has yielded to collective Arab chaos.

Despite the uncertainty awaiting Arab nations, most Arabs were never so clear as to the source of their misfortune. They loathed the imperialism that finally culminated in an up-front invasion of the prized "jewel of Arab civilisation," Iraq. They protested "client regimes" and subsequently marched behind (irrationally, may I add) whomever disassociated himself from such a rule.

Maybe this explains the reason behind the love-hate relationship many Arabs had towards Saddam: He was a brutal dictator, and yet he defied the United States and its imperialist designs in the Arab world. It was not hard for me to fathom why many Iraqis celebrated when Saddam was executed, while others vowed to carry on with their attacks against US-led occupation forces. That same paradox struck me watching Saddam’s glum photo on my computer on that morning of uncertainty......"

"Abu Mazen’s trip to Damascus, ostensibly to see Syrian president Bashar Asad, connects with efforts by Palestinian intermediaries to arrange a meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. DEBKAfile’s sources disclose that a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer arrived in Damascus this week with requests for information about Abu Mazen’s talks in the Syrian capital.

The live wires behind them are Palestinian tycoon Muhammad Rashid and Fatah activist Nabil Amar, who is now working for Hamas. They are in Damascus pushing hard for an Abbas-Mashaal meeting and have drafted a “Document of Principles for the Establishment of a Palestinian government,” for them to sign.

So far, neither side has accepted the document’s wording or the make-up of the potential government of technocrats that is supposed to include Fatah and Hamas representatives.

The rancor between Abbas and Mashaal is so rooted that Rashid and Amar hope at best for a photo opportunity showing them together, signing the document with a handshake and going their separate ways without speaking to each other. This too has not yet been agreed.

Tehran’s emissary has asked Asad for an explanation on how Muhammad Rashid – seen by Iran as a broker of the reconciliation between Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and the US and Britain – came to be given a free hand in Damascus to mediate ties between Hamas and Washington through Abu Mazen.

When Rice was in Ramallah last Monday, she informed Abbas that the US was vehemently opposed to his trip to the Syrian capital. Later, Rashid and Abbas’ aide, the Gaza-based Muhammad Dahlan, called her several times to talk her round. They argued that the Fatah-Hamas crisis might be resolved if Abbas talked to Asad and Meshaal. The US secretary was not convinced.

The success of the Rashid mediation effort depends very much on the instructions the Iranian emissary brought from Iran to the hardline Hamas leader Meshaal and whether he will obey them.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran report that the Islami Republic is not happy with the Syrian government’s frequently published offers of friendlier relations with the US and the revival of peace talks with Israel. The Iranian emissary to Damascus asked Asad to describe how he perceives his strategic partnership with Iran in two or three years’ time.

This query was Iran’s way of checking to see if Asad intended to stick to their alliance in the foreseeable future or break away. The Iranians are also uneasy over Syria’s non-response to the Israeli demand to rein in the Hizballah. The Iranian high-up demanded an unambiguous statement from Asad that his attitude to the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group was unchanged. He asked for a pledge that Damascus would not restrict Iranian arms consignments transiting Syria to the Hizballah, or curb the Shiite militia’s activities in Lebanon. Asad reassured the Iranian official and promised him Tehran had nothing to fear about any change of policy.

Our Middle East sources note that this is the first time since the Iran-Syrian strategic alliance was forged seven years ago that Tehran is showing uncertainty and concern about the Syrian ruler’s commitment."

***

Please Also See The Next Post.

This Is Important News:
Syria Appears To Be Re-Aligning!
Is An Olmert-Assad Kiss Far Away?
This Is A Major Success For Condoleezza. The Syrian Regime Has Agreed to Play The Role Condoleezza Has Demanded All Along. Next, Syria Will Abandon Hizbullah and Hamas; You Just Wait And See.

Syria vows to arrest Iraq strife

"Syria has condemned attacks by fighters opposed to Iraq's US-backed army and security forces as "terrorism", marking a shift in Damascus' relation with its eastward neighbour.

A statement issued on Saturday at the end of a visit by Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, to Damascus, stated that Syria will aim to help arrest civil strife in Iraq.

A joint Syrian-Iraqi statement said: "The two sides affirmed the need to preserve Iraqi unity and condemned all forms of terrorism that target Iraqi civilians, infrastructure, places of worship, army and security."

"[Syrian] President Assad affirmed that Syria will exert all its efforts to help the process of national reconciliation and spread the suitable political and media climate to achieve this noble goal," the statement said.

Shift in approach

Syria's offer of assistance comes in spite of its opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq, which removed Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, from power in 2003 and ushered in sectarian conflict.

Talabani left Syria earlier on Saturday after a six-day visit aimed at securing increased backing for the Iraqi government and closer security and economic cooperation with Syria.

Syria has adopted a friendlier tone to the Shia-led government in Baghdad, after US pressure to stop what Washington describes as a flow of insurgents and weapons across Syria's border with Iraq.

Damascus has links to a number of political forces in Iraq, including former members of the Baath, Saddam's party prior to his removal from power.

Syria has stopped calling for an immediate US troop withdrawal from Iraq and signed an accord in November which accepted that US forces should stay as long as the Iraqi government needed them.

Foreign presence

Saturday's statement said Iraq had to rebuild its army and disband sectarian militia before the foreign military presence in the country could end.

"Syria's readiness to stand with the brothers in Iraq is driven by the conviction that the security situation in one country affects the other," the communique said.

Last month Iraq and Syria re-established diplomatic ties which ruptured during the 1980s when Syria sided with Iran during its 1980-88 war with Iraq.

Damascus has also strengthened its links with Shia-led Iran, which supports major figures in the Iraqi government."

By Kurt Nimmo

"It takes a “specialist” on “Persian Gulf affairs, with special emphasis on Iran and Iraq” to get at the real reason behind the impending neocon attack on Iran.

Kenneth Katzman, who analyzes U.S. policy and legislation on the Persian Gulf region for members of Congress and their staffs, assigned to the House International Relations Committee, talks the talk across the corporate media spectrum, i.e., he is a neocon propagandist. Katzman tells us “Iran’s ascendancy is not only manageable but reversible,” that is if one “understands the Islamic republic’s many vulnerabilities,” Reuters reports.

As should be obvious by now, the neocon plan to deal with Iran’s “ascendancy” has nothing to do with nukes. It has everything to do with the fact our rulers, in particular the neocon faction, believe Iran is too big for its britches and thus will be cut down to size.

As the Clean Break boys told us a decade ago, an “effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” In this context, we can define “strategic initiative” as back-to-back bombing runs, wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, and plenty of mass murder and prolonged misery, and not simply along Israel’s northern border.

According to Wayne White, former top Middle East analyst for the State Department’s bureau of intelligence and research, the neocon plan for mass destruction will not be limited to a “surgical strike” against phantom nuke facilities.

“I’ve seen some of the planning,” claims White. “You’re talking about a war against Iran” that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years. “We’re not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We’re talking about clearing a path to the targets” by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that would undoubtedly target “commerce” (i.e., oil tankers) or U.S. warships now parked in the Gulf, patiently waiting for a new Gulf of Tonkin incident to get the World War Four ball rolling. Mr. White, no longer attached to the State Department, is “much more worried about the consequences of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,” and rightfully so.....

“Iranian troops are reportedly gathering along the border with northern Iraq,” reports United Press International this morning. “An Iraqi Kurdish source told the Kuwait News Agency, KUNA, that Iran is massing troops stationed at its main border crossing with Iraq, in Pashmakh.” DPA adds: “The Iranian soldiers were positioned east of the northern Iraqi province of Suleimaniya at the Bashmakh border station, the most important crossing between Iran and the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq…. Iranians were witnessed yelling ‘Death to America,’” a quite natural response considering the United States kidnapped Iranian diplomats in Erbil, Iraq.....

“The United States has signaled to Gulf Arab allies that an attack on Iran could take place in 2007,” reports the Middle East Newsline. “Diplomatic sources said the Bush administration has raised the prospect of a U.S. strike on Iran over the next few months. The sources said the discussions with Gulf Cooperation Council states have also been conducted by U.S. Central Command as well as the U.S. intelligence community.”

In addition, as now appears obvious, Condi the Destroyer trekked to the Middle East under the cover of yet another Israeli-Palestinian “peace deal” nonstarter in order to hand-deliver the message “that the GCC must get ready for any contingency.”

Increasingly, with every passing day, it becomes more obvious that the neocon plan to attack Iran will indeed occur sometime this year, more likely sooner before later as the neocon marshaled armada of warships are now convened, with the USS Stennis not far behind, ready to unleash their murderous fury on the people of Iran. "

BY GILAD ATZMON
CounterPunch

"Zionism is no longer a young movement. It has been almost one hundred and ten years since the 1st Zionist Congress was held and nearly ninety years have passed since the Balfour Declaration (1917) was issued. It’s been just under six decades since the formation of the Jewish State and the mass ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of the indigenous Palestinian population took place. Not only isn’t Zionism young anymore, it is far from being a unified ideological movement. In fact, it is almost impossible to determine these very basic elements: where Zionism is aiming, where the Zionist headquarters are located; is it in Olmert’s office in Jerusalem or rather Wall Street NYC? Is there a linear ideological continuum between the Israeli vision of Middle East interests and the architects behind the New American Century project? Is there continuum between the crime carried out against the Palestinian people in Gaza in the name of the war on terror and the crime against the Iraqi people committed in the name of ‘liberation’?
In a previous paper of mine (The "third category" and the Palestine solidarity movement, Jewish identity, Zionism and Palestine), I suggested that it is quite possible to grasp the subject of Zionism in terms of a network operation in which each of its elements contributes towards the maintenance of the entire system. Within the Zionist network there is no need for a lucid system of hegemony. In such a network, each element is complying with its role. And indeed the success of Zionism is there to reveal that the whole happens to be far greater than its parts......."

Continue

Al-Manar

"The Lebanese opposition called Saturday for a one-day general strike, stepping up a protest campaign to bring down the Western-backed government that has paralyzed the nation's leadership for weeks. The stoppage called for Tuesday marked the first escalation by the opposition since its supporters began an open-ended sit-in around government offices in central Beirut on December 1 to demand a national unity cabinet.

"In the face of the obstinacy of the government barricaded behind the walls of the Grand Serail, the opposition calls on its supporters to step up their peaceful and democratic protests and on all Lebanese to observe a general strike on Tuesday," an opposition statement said. The action was announced the day after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed that the opposition would be taking more action to see that its demands are met. The immediate target of the industrial action, which was first announced by the trade union confederation, was an austerity package unveiled by the government earlier this month ahead of a major donors' conference in Paris on Thursday.

"In accordance with its peaceful plan of action against the reforms proposed by the prime minister, the General Conference of Workers of Lebanon is calling a general strike for Tuesday... to put an end to the savage cuts being put forward," a statement said.

But the opposition stressed that the strike was just one part of its campaign for a revision of Lebanon's electoral law and the holding of fresh parliamentary elections."

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- All 13 people aboard were killed Saturday when a U.S. military helicopter went down northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The victims were described as passengers and crew members. Their identities were "being withheld pending notification of next of kin," the military said in a statement.

It was not disclosed exactly where the craft went down, and the cause of the incident was not known.

"Emergency coalition forces responded and secured the scene," the military said in the statement.
"

by Jorge Hirsch

"President Bush is invoking his "commander in chief" authority to escalate the war in Iraq, and he will likely also invoke it to launch an aerial attack against Iran. Congress has long ago abdicated and delegated to the president its constitutional responsibility to initiate wars. Yet Congress still has one surefire way to influence events: it has the constitutional authority to make the "nuclear option" against Iran illegal. In so doing, it would stop the relentless drive to war against Iran dead in its tracks.....

.....If Congress doesn't legislate on the US use of nuclear weapons, and President Bush orders the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, he will be doing it in the name of each and every member of the 110th Congress.

The United States will have instantly offered the world 535 new defendants for future war crimes tribunals. Nuclear weapons are a million times more powerful than conventional weapons. If 535 million people die in ensuing nuclear conflicts, each member of the 110th Congress will have 1 million human lives on his/her own personal account.

Saddam Hussein and Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti went to the gallows for a mere 148."

***

Here is the way to go around it: Have Israel launch the nuclear attack. If and when Iran responds, Congress will authorize full U.S. military support for Israel and massive U.S. strikes on Iran. It is a simple strategy and has a 100% chance of succeeding.

The question is:

Do you agree with President Mubarak's warning that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a danger to Egypt?

With over 4,000 responding so far, here are the responses:

Yes........16%

No.........84%

Egypt cracks down on 'Islamists'

"Egypt has detained "73 Islamists" in the Nile Delta pending investigation into what ties, if any, they have with the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, security sources have said.

Mohamed Habib, the Brotherhood’s deputy leader denied his group - Egypt's largest opposition movement - had any connection to the men in detention on Saturday.

The security sources said the men, arrested in the province of Manoufiya mostly during the past few days, were members of salafist groups that follow a conservative purist brand of Sunni Islam.

The daily al-Masry al-Youm newspaper, said the detained salafists were accused of forming a group to support the Brotherhood, especially in elections due later this year for the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt's parliament.

It said the detentions of the salafists had started this month after the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday and accelerated alongside a crackdown against Brotherhood members, scores of whom have been detained.

Egyptian authorities launch regular crackdowns on the Muslim Brotherhood, which operates openly despite being officially banned in 1954.

But some analysts say the government is preparing a wider assault on the group after Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, said this month the Brotherhood posed a threat to Egypt's security.

University protests
The government was also angered by a protest march at al-Azhar University last month in which Islamist students wore militia-style uniforms and black balaclavas.

Egyptian state media said the march showed that the group was forming a militia. This accusation was dismissed by the Brotherhood.

Mubarak has proposed constitutional amendments that include a ban on forming political parties based on religion. The Brotherhood says it wants to establish a civil, democratic party that is not exclusive to Muslims.

Brotherhood members elected as independents hold 88 seats in the 454-member lower house of parliament, which is dominated by Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party.

Torture allegations

Ahead of the 2007 elections, the government has also cracked down on journalists, after Egyptian newspapers published several photographs of people reportedly being tortured by the security services.

Last week Howaida Taha, a documentary producers with Al Jazeera, was released on bail after being detained by security officials for investigating claims of torture inside Egyptian prisons.

Taha's film depicted actors dramatising scenes of people being tortured in Egyptian prisons.

"One of the charges was that I tarnished Egypt's reputation and harming Egyptian national interests, so I showed him all the videotapes," she said after her release."

By Robert Fisk
The Independent

".....I curl down deep in my bed, because the nights are strangely damp and read by the bedside light, Hans von Sponeck's gripping, painful account of his years as the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, A Different Kind of War, an analysis of the vicious, criminal sanctions regime levelled against the Iraqi people between 1990 and 2003. Here, for example, is what Sergei Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the UN wrote in March 2000: "...the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq is inexorably leading to the disintegration of the very fabric of civil society." It was "a situation where an entire generation of Iraqis has been physically and morally crippled". The French ambassador to the UN, Alain Dejammet, spoke similarly of "the very serious humanitarian crisis in Iraq", a crime that would eventually persuade von Sponeck to resign.

Another warning. I remember how von Sponeck said the very same words to me in Baghdad. So did Denis Halliday, his predecessor. But when Peter Hain - now so desperately anxious to distance himself from US policies in Iraq - was asked to comment, he said that von Sponeck and Halliday were "obviously not the right men for the job". James Rubin, then earning his keep as Madeleine Albright's spokesman, said that von Sponeck "is paid to work, not to speak".

Yet there are all the warnings. Did we really think that after we had impoverished them and destroyed so many of their children; after a generation of Iraqis had been "physically and morally crippled", they were going to welcome our "liberation"? From this wreckage of Iraq was bound to come the insurgencies and the hatreds now tearing its people apart and destroying the presidency of George W. Bush and the prime ministership of Tony Blair.

Yet what do they tell us? They still want us to be frightened. Terror, terror, terror. Now we have Doctor Death, our Home Secretary, telling us that the War on Terror could last as long as the Cold War. Recently, it was the Dowager of Fear in charge of our intelligence services who said that the War on Terror could last "a generation". So that's 30 years? Or 60 like Dr Death claimed? Bush claimed it might last "forever", surely an ambitious goal for an ex- governor-executioner....."

An Excellent, Long Article
(I recommend reading it in its entirety)
By Mike Whitney

"......Here's what we know: Less than 4 hours after the explosion, the Bush public relations team cobbled together a statement that the bombing was the work of Sunni extremists or al Qaida terrorists. But, how did they know? They didn’t have witnesses on the ground in Samarra and they’ve never produced a scintilla of evidence to support their claims. It may be that the administration simply saw the bombing as an opportunity to twist the facts to suit their own purposes?

After all, the incident has been a propaganda-bonanza for the Bush team. They’ve used it to support their theory that Iraq is "the central battle in the war on terror" and that "we must fight them there if we don’t want to fight them over here". It’s become one of the main justifications for the occupation; implying that the US military is needed as a referee to keep the warring factions from killing each other. It’s all just nonsense that’s designed to advance the administration’s political agenda......

The incident may well have been a "false flag" operation carried out by US intelligence agencies to provoke sectarian violence and, thus, reduce the number of attacks on American troops.......

In the first 30 hours after the blast, more than 1,500 articles appeared on Google News providing the government version of events without deviation and without any corroborating evidence; just fluff that reiterated the Pentagon’s account verbatim and without challenge. 1500! Now that’s a well-oiled propaganda system!......

The Golden Mosque; truth or psy-ops?

The Bush administration is very serious about controlling information. That’s why they launched the Pentagon’s Dept of Strategic Information. The military is now deeply engaged in "full spectrum dominance" of all information technologies. Consequently, "controlling the narrative" is more important than one might think. Propaganda is the cheapest and most effective way to control public behavior. The growth in public relations illustrates the importance that political leaders put on managing perception in a way that compels the masses to conform to an elite agenda. That’s why the administration has spent zillions on PR campaigns and inserted themselves into every area of human communication. They are forever looking for the right combination of patriotic and religious imagery that will get the public to march along in harmony.

The Bush administration has made some notable contributions to the traditional propaganda-paradigm. In fact, former Counselor at the State Dept, Philip Zelikow, (who was also executive director of the 9-11 Commission and author of the National Security Strategy NSS) is an expert in "the creation and maintenance of 'public myths’ or 'public presumptions’, which he defines as beliefs thought to be true although not necessarily known to be true with certainty, shared in common with the relevant political community (sounds like Rumsfeld)….He has taken a special interest in 'searing’ or 'molding’ events that take on 'transcendent’ importance and, therefore, retain there power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene". ("Thinking about Political History" Miller Center report; winter 1999) "Searing’ or 'molding’ events that take on 'transcendent’ importance"?!? Like 9-11, for example?.....

The same pattern of terrorizing the public through "the application of extreme violence" has reemerged in Iraq with many of the same US leaders supervising the covert operations. The plan was clearly designed to eliminate the need for more US troops to provide security and, instead, aimed at "pacifying" the resistance through a well-coordinated and fully-funded campaign of terror.

The (predominantly) Shiite militias operating out of the Interior Ministry were armed and trained by the CIA and were used to secretly to carry out assassinations and torture of suspected "Sunni insurgents." .....

The Pentagon’s counterinsurgency strategy was developed long before the mutilated bodies of Sunni men began showing up daily bobbing along the Euphrates River. It’s part of a broader plan to dominate the entire region through military force. The purpose is to extend the Bush Caliphate--the "new world order"-- throughout the entire Middle East.....

Zelikow’s theories have provided a master-plan for shaping public opinion around "searing" events. He is right to assume that people will accept all manner of absurdities if they are assembled in the context of a larger catastrophe. Clearly, the Bush administration is venturing into uncharted waters, proactively fabricating "historical events" to create their own reality and, thus, support the narrow objectives of an elite agenda.

The destruction of the Golden dome Mosque bears the same bloody fingerprints as do the victims of the occupation’s unrelenting violence. The guilty parties may have escaped accountability so far, but when the smoke clears, we’ll know whose bombs they really were. "

One Gone, Two More To Go!

Iraq Caught By Both Iran And The U.S. Occupation


By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

"BAGHDAD, Jan. 19 (IPS) - Violence is spreading further across Iraq, as Shia Arab tribes in the south begin to engage occupation forces in new armed resistance. Resistance in the southern parts of Iraq has been escalating over the last three months, leading to increased casualties among British and other occupation forces......

Attacks against occupation forces appear to stem more a growing nationalism.

"This is not about vengeance," a former Iraqi army officer from Kut, 200 km south of Baghdad told IPS in Baghdad. "People have lost hope in the U.S.-led occupation's promises, and they are thinking of saving the country from Iranian influence which has been supported, or at least allowed by the Multi-National Forces."

British and U.S. military leaders tend not to say who has been targeting their forces in the south. They simply call the resistance fighters "terrorists", or they point to the Mehdi Army led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as the only source of disturbance in the south.

While members of the Mehdi Army certainly carry out attacks against occupation forces in southern Iraq, other home-grown resistance seems to have taken root, fed also by earlier memories. "People here have always hated the U.S. and British occupation of Iraq, and remembered their grandfathers who fought the British troops with the simplest weapons," Jassim al-Assadi, a school headmaster from Kut told IPS on a recent visit to Baghdad.

Al-Assadi was referring to the Shia resistance that eventually played a key role in expelling British forces from Iraq during the 1920's and 1930's.

Armed resistance against the occupation in the south was slow to begin with because religious clerics instructed their followers to give the occupation time to fulfil promises made by the Bush and Blair administrations, al-Assadi said. "But now they do not believe any cleric's promises any more. They have started fighting, and that is that."

A political analyst in Baghdad, who asked to be referred to as W. al-Tamimi, told IPS that he believes occupation forces have been working in tandem with death squads. "We have been observing American and British occupation forces supporting those death squads all over Iraq, but we were still hoping for reconciliation."

Al-Tamini said the sheikh of his tribe, which is both Shia and Sunni, was "under great pressure by the tribe's young men to let them join the resistance."

The force of the growing resistance in the south has become more and more evident. Late last August 1,200 British soldiers known as The Queen's Royal Hussars abruptly evacuated their three-year-old base after taking continuous mortar and missile fire from Shia resistance fighters......

In another significant event last August, Sheikh Faissal al-Khayoon, chief of the major Shia Arab tribe Beni Assad, was killed by death squads with suspected Iranian backing. The killers are believed by men from the tribe to have been working for the Iraqi Ministry of Interior in Basra.

Khayoon's tribe members reacted immediately. They took over the streets and government offices, and set fire to the Iranian consulate in Basra. The protests continued until clerics and Iraqi government officials promised them a full investigation. "It was another lie that some of us believed," a senior Beni Assad leader told IPS on condition of anonymity. "The Sheikh was killed by Iranian collaborators and we made a promise to his soul that his precious life will be avenged."

Beni Tamim is another tribe with both Sunni and Shia members. Members say their Sheikh, Hamid al-Suhail, was killed Jan. 1 this year by the Mehdi Army, which they believe has Iranian support. He died in the northern Baghdad Shia-dominated Shula Quarter.

"He was 70 years old, and brutally killed by Mehdi death squads by pushing him from a high building," one of the sheikh's nephews told IPS in Baghdad. "Iran is behind all this and we, Beni Tamim are well prepared to face their yellow winds that are blowing Iraq apart."

Leaders of the two tribes, among many other tribal chiefs in the south, are working to achieve unity between Sunni and Shia groups."

By Layla Anwar

"I have good news for you.
American "consumer sentiment has improved to a 3 years high, propelled by falling gasoline prices and a favorable view of personal finances and economic growth" says a survey. You must be happy. This means more savings for you so you can consume more, eat and spend some more. Go right ahead and anesthetize yourself.

Now what this survey won't show you, is that during those three comparative years, over 260'000 Iraqi children died since 2003 to make your life smoother over there, wherever you are . Now,Iraq has the highest mortality rate for children in the world.(read full article here).....

Add to that Abeer Janabi, the Haditha kids, Al Ramadi, Al Qaem,Tal Afar, other unreported children deaths in Baghdad and elsewhere , I will say around 500 and again am being very kind to you here.

So a quick summing up will give us a total of : 829'300 Iraqi children Dead. Again, I repeat this is a conservative estimate as the official figures lie and the UN figures are always "toning" issues down.
829'300 Iraqi Children DEAD.

The above figure does NOT include : the injured,the sold,the trafficked, the abandoned,the cancer ridden with your Depleted Uranium, the sick,the malnourished, the hungry, the destitute, the kidnapped, the raped children of Iraq......

So over 800'00 plus, little ones dead. Huh ? What have you got to say about that? Who are you going to blame now ? Saddam Hussein or the old regime? (just for your info, Iraq used to have the lowest mortality rate in the Middle East and the best health care service until you all screwed it up.)(see also here)

Do you understand what we are talking about here? We are talking about CHILDREN. Not adults you can blame , nor elderly you can dispense of , we are talking about CHILDREN.....

And since you are so caring, had there been 800'000 plus: dolphins, monkeys, donkeys, cats or dogs massacred, the western world would be on the brink of a revolution by now. The left would have armed and gone underground as guerillas freedom fighters, the democrats would have issued irreversible statements of condemnation, the liberals and progressives would have stood in pickets or gone on strike. We would have mass demonstrations and mass mobilization.

Had these 800'000 children be western children, we would be having a Third World War by now.......

As for the few honest voices left, let us commiserate together. Black sugarless coffee is on me, Arab hospitality oblige.

Meanwhile, my Iraqi little ones , die softly, make no noise, we don't want to disturb the slumbering consciences...Hush now, slip quietly, ever so quietly...into Death."

By Alexander Cockburn
The Nation

"Suppose the movers and shakers in the Israel lobby here--Abe Foxman, Alan Dershowitz and the rest of the crew--had simply decided to leave Jimmy Carter's Palestine Peace Not Apartheid alone. How long before the book would have been gathering dust on the remainder shelves? Suppose even that Dershowitz had rounded up his unacknowledged co-authors in all their tens of thousands and sallied forth to buy up every copy of Carter's book and toss each one into the Charles River . Would that have not been a more successful suppressor than the blitzkrieg strategy they did adopt?

Of course it would. For weeks now the lobby has hurled its legions into battle against Carter. He has been stigmatized as an anti-Semite, a Holocaust denier, a patron of former concentration camp killers, a Christian madman, a pawn of the Arabs who "flatly condones mass murder" of Israeli Jews. This last was from Murdoch's New York Post editorial, relayed to its mailing list by the Zionist Organization of America .....

But the assault on Carter is all to no avail. With each gust of abuse, Carter's book soars higher and higher on the bestseller lists, reaching number four on Amazon itself. This doesn't prove the lobby has no power. It proves the lobby can be dumb. Adroit lobbying consists in preventing unpleasing material from reaching the light of day. Lobbying thrives in furtive darkness: slipping language into a bill at the last moment, threatening to back a campaign opponent, making quiet phone calls to the Polish Embassy. Pressure is now being exerted on Farrar, Straus & Giroux to abandon its impending publication of Mearsheimer and Walt's attack on the lobby.....

The trouble with the lobby and the Christian zealots who act as its echo chamber is that they believe their own propaganda about Israel 's equitable social arrangements and immaculate political and legal record in its relations with the Palestinians. Use the word apartheid and they howl with indignation. The shock is about thirty years out of date. Israeli writers have used apartheid to describe arrangements in the occupied territories for years. Hundreds of prominent South African Jews issued a statement six years ago making the same link......

But if the lobby is fighting rear-guard and increasingly futile actions to suppress all discussion here of what Israel is doing to Palestinians, it continues to exercise very serious clout in such enclaves of timidity as the US Congress. Bush was not foolish in singling out Iran for threats in his January 10 address. The Democratic reaction to Bush's escalation against Iraq and Iran has mostly been confined to nervous talk of "symbolic votes." This emperate posture is surely not unconnected to the fact that the lobby's prime foreign policy task, joined by Israeli hawks like Bibi Netanyahu, has been to rally support for an assault on Iran.

What an irony! Desperate for an end to the war, the voters hand Congress to the Democrats. Barely more than two months later Bush is kidnapping Iranian diplomats from their consulate in Erbil , Iraq --a calculated provocation arousing scant tumult here. Bush is also deploying a larger naval force to the Persian Gulf, as Israel plants stories about its possible recourse to nuclear weapons. Some provocation, maybe a seizure by the United States of an Iranian tanker, is easy to imagine in early February. In Congress, there's barely a whimper out of the Democrats amid these terrifying prospects. It may have made a mess of its war against Carter's book, but as a ferryman across the Styx toward Armageddon the lobby is doing a competent job."

"Urban Outfitters, a popular American clothing store, on Thursday halted sales of a range of keffiyehs, the traditional Arab headdress, which it had been marketing this month as fashionable "anti-war woven scarves."

The firm's CEO, Dick Heyne, e-mailed a pro-Israel activist who had complained about the items earlier this week to stress that the company had not intended "to imply any sympathy for or support of terrorists or terrorism" in selling the keffiyehs and was pulling them.

The scarves, also sold on-line, were priced at $20 in several different color combinations as part of Urban Outfitters' Spring Fashion women's accessories range. "Due to the sensitive nature of this item, we will no longer offer it for sale," a notice on the Web site stated. "We apologize if we offended anyone, this was by no means our intention."

A manager at an Urban Outfitters on 6th Avenue in New York City close to the West Village, who wished to remain anonymous, said the item had been the "number one selling scarf."

The keffiyeh has bounced in and out of American and European fashion trends since roughly the 80s, when women draped them from their necks. But in the last few years the headdress, mostly associated by Americans with the Palestinians and especially the late Yasser Arafat, has reached a height of popularity. An article in the Los Angeles Times titled "'Terrorist Chic' and Beyond," published in April, 2006, featured the keffiyeh as the ultimate in fashionable military gear seen as chic in hip circles across America and Europe.

Many young Americans and Europeans, especially on college campuses, wear the headdress around their necks as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinians. Increasingly, too, it has become a symbol of resistance in general, invariably featuring at anti-war rallies. It is also widely worn in many cities.

"I just found it amusing that the keffiyeh as a fashion item has become so ubiquitous that it is being sold at a store known for producing the trendiest items," said Daniel 'Mobius' Sieradski, a contributor to Jewschool, a popular Jewish blog. "It's amusing because on one level the Palestinian cause has become very popular, but as it gains popularity it gets watered down."......."

Cover: New Yorker Magazine, January 22, 2007
(Art: Anita Kunz / The New Yorker)

This is Muqtada Sadr's spokesman, Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, who was arrested today by U.S. occupation forces. The news is that he is being interrogated by his captors. I wonder if electric drills, a specialty of Muqtada's Mahdi "army," might just speed up the interrogation. Just a thought.

Palestinian mourners carry the body of ten year old girl Abir Aramin near the Dome of the Rock Mosque, in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound during her funeral in Jerusalem's Old City, Friday, Jan. 19, 2007. Aramin was struck on the head by a rubber bullet fired at close range by Israeli security forces during a demonstration Tuesday against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank town of Anata, near Jerusalem, and suffered a fractured skull, her father said. She was taken off life support early Friday morning, hospital spokeswoman Yael Bossem-Levy said. (AP Photo)

UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs

"TWAIL ABU JARWAL, 18 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - In the Negev Desert village of Twail Abu Jarwal, a Bedouin boy is hammering away at the roof of a new tin shack in the setting sun. Around him are the twisted ruins of the Talalka tribe’s 22 homes and a few animal shacks.

The Israeli authorities on 9 January demolished them for the second time in just over a month because Twail Abu Jarwal is among 34 Bedouin villages that officially do not exist, according to the Israeli government. Israeli officials say all homes are illegal because they were built without a permit.

“They came at 5 a.m. with police, a helicopter and bulldozers and just demolished everything,” said village chief Aqil Talalka. “Now we are rebuilding because we have nowhere else to go.”

About 150,000 Bedouin Arabs live in the Negev Desert in southern Israel and face discrimination over the provision of essential services, local aid workers say. Their claims to land ownership have been turned down by successive Israeli governments and those who do not live in government-approved new towns face having their homes demolished.

Aqil said he had little hope that Israel’s attitude to the Bedouin’s land claim would change. “Israel will only recognise my ownership of the land if I agree to sell it to them. Then they are only too happy to recognise it. Otherwise, I have no rights,” he said.

“We believe the Bedouin should be treated as an indigenous people and should be given their rights,” said Yeela Ranaan of the Regional Council of Unrecognised Villages (RCUV).

“But the government is running a powerful campaign against them through the media, describing them as squatters and land-grabbers taking Jewish land. It’s easy because the Bedouin are Arabs and, therefore, in theory belong to Israel’s enemies,” said Ranaan.

Today’s Bedouin are descended from about 10,000 who remained in the Negev during the war of 1948; 80,000 fled to Jordan, refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank and mixed Israeli cities farther north such as Ramle or Lod, Ranaan said.

The remaining communities were moved into the Siyag or Enclosed Zone, in the northeast of the Negev, with much of the rest of the region being declared state land.

Successive Israeli governments have tried to get people such as the Talalkas to abandon claims to land ownership and settle in one of seven towns built to house them. They are offered cheap plots of land for a house and access to electricity, water, health and education.

“The idea was to get as many Arabs on as little land as possible,” said Ranaan.

Unrecognised villages

But despite Israel’s efforts, only about half the Bedouin have moved into the towns. The remaining 80,000 are still in unrecognised villages in the Siyag Zone, without access to water and electricity supplies and sewage facilities.

Under a government proposal in 1976, the 500-strong Talalka group had accepted and paid for land near the wealthy Beer Sheva suburb of Lagia, Aqil said. But after a 30-year wait, the land had still not been made available – so the Talalkas returned to the hillsides they say their tribe has lived on for centuries...."

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Muqtada said today that he thought he and his "army" are the target of the U.S. escalation plan (Dah!). Today, his information official (Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji) was arrested by U.S. occupation troops. However, the "great warrior" told his followers not to fight the occupation. Why? Because it is the month of Moharram, and "it is forbidden for Muslims to kill during this month!" Of course, it is only forbidden to kill U.S. occupation soldiers, but killing fellow Iraqis is O.K., according to Sayyed Muqtada.

"وقال مقتدى إن القرآن الكريم "ينهانا على القتل خلال شهر محرم"، مضيفا "فليقتلونا فتلك أفضل ميتة للمؤمنين الصادقين والجنة ستكون بانتظارهم". وتعهد بأن يقوم التيار الصدري بالرد بعد شهر محرم.

واعتبر أن الحملة على تياره تستهدف الإسلام "وما نحن إلا عتبة" وتعهد بعدم التخلي عن المقاومة."

Liars, Liars....!

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Britain's senior representative in Iraq said British forces will remain in Iraq through 2007 and perhaps into 2008 if the Baghdad government asks for continued help.

"Do I see ourselves being here throughout 2007? Yes," said Army Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, deputy commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq.

"Do I see that commitment being carried on to 2008? That will be for discussion among this sovereign government, my government, our part in the coalition and the like," he told reporters at the Pentagon in a teleconference from Iraq. "But if we're asked to stay here then I don't see any reason, although it's a political one, that we would not continue to remain committed to the Iraqis."

Lamb said Britain has about 6,200 troops in southern Iraq, mostly in Basra. That is slightly below the normal level of nearly 7,300, he said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair on January 10 said British operations aimed at preparing for the handover of security in Basra to Iraqi authorities could be completed in the next few weeks. The Daily Telegraph also has reported that Britain planned to cut troop levels in Iraq by almost 3,000 by the end of May."

An Excellent, Highly Recommended Segment

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"The Israeli government has effectively frozen visitation and re-entry of foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to the West Bank and Gaza. We go to Ramallah to speak with two coordinators of the “Campaign for the Right of Entry and Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” We’re also joined by a leading Israeli human rights attorney and a Palestinian-American filmmaker recently detained by Israeli officials and deported.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We begin in Ramallah where the Israeli government has effectively frozen visitation and re-entry of foreign nationals of Palestinian origin to the Occupied Territories. Activists and human rights advocates are claiming that since last year’s election of Hamas, thousands have been denied entry into the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli government initially denied that there had been a policy change. But on Tuesday, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories released a letter stating that the policy of denying foreign nationals entry had been reversed. The letter was dated December 28th and had been sent to the Palestinian Authority.
Yet - the organization “Campaign for the Right of Entry and Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory” maintains that they know of at least 14 foreign citizens who only last week were denied entrance to the Territories. They say that in addition to being discriminatory, this policy is tearing families apart, blocking students from finishing their education, and keeping people from their jobs and businesses. The Israeli human rights group B’tzelem wrote in a recent report that the crackdown is part of a broader policy to limit the growth of the Palestinian population by “preventing the entry of spouses and children of residents, and by stimulating emigration from the area.”

We go now to the Occupied Territories where Sam Bahour and Anita Abdullah are with us from Ramallah.

Sam Bahour. Palestinian-American businessman and one of the coordinators of the Campaign for Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Anita Abdullah. Anita is on the coordinating committee for the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. She is a researcher at Birzeit University, Institute of Community and Public Health.

Leah Tsemel. Israeli Human Rights Lawyer.

Suzy Salamy.Palestinian-American filmmaker recently denied entry by Israeli authorities."

Click Here To Watch, Listen or Read Transcript

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Daryl Cagle

by Jim Lobe

"......It is, rather, the hard-edged strategy first enunciated in PNAC's letter to Bush published just nine days after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. That document called for the administration to focus its "war on terrorism" on what it considered the main regional threats to the security of Israel, "America's staunchest ally against international terrorism."

Indeed, the Sep 20, 2001, letter, signed by some three dozen prominent, mostly neoconservative, hawks, suggested that Afghanistan and al-Qaeda should be treated as mere hors d'oeuvres in a six-course meal in which Saddam Hussein's Iraq was to be only the main course.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iran and Syria were also featured as part of the feast, a series of dishes which, with the notable replacement of the PA by Hamas as a result of last year's democratic elections, now appears to be, more than at any time since Washington's conquest of Iraq in 2003, back on the menu......."

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by Tom Engelhardt
Tom Dispatch

"......The religion of Force has proven itself a remarkably weak reed in our complex and difficult world, but that doesn't matter to them. Like many cultists, deeply imbued with their own way of looking at life, our president, our vice president, and their dwindling band of compatriots can still imagine no other solutions than force, whatever the presenting problems. Not only can't they think outside the box, but the box itself is narrowing around this presidency and vice presidency – and believe me, given their crusading record, that's dangerous indeed."

Read The Full Article

The state of Israel seems poised to impose its Zionist character using the force of the law. With this legislating of loyalty, it reveals its racism

Another Great Article
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

"When I published my book Blood and Religion last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I also offered a few suggestions about where Israel might head next.

Making predictions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be considered a particularly dangerous form of hubris, but I could hardly have guessed how soon my fears would be realised.

One of the main forecasts of my book was that Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line -- those who currently enjoy Israeli citizenship and those who live as oppressed subjects of Israel's occupation -- would soon find common cause as Israel tries to seal itself off from what it calls the Palestinian "demographic threat": that is, the moment when Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

I suggested that Israel's greatest fear was ruling over a majority of Palestinians and being compared to apartheid South Africa, a fate that has possibly befallen it faster than I expected with the recent publication of Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. To avoid such a comparison, I argued, Israel was creating a "Jewish fortress", separating -- at least demographically -- from Palestinians in the occupied territories by sealing off Gaza through a disengagement of its settler population and by building a 750 kilometre wall to annex large areas of the West Bank.

It was also closing off the last remaining avenue of a right of return for Palestinians by changing the law to make it all but impossible for Palestinians living in Israel to marry Palestinians in the occupied territories and thereby gain them citizenship.

The corollary of this Jewish fortress, I suggested, would be a sham Palestinian state, a series of disconnected ghettos that would prevent Palestinians from organising effective resistance, non-violent or otherwise, but which would give the Israeli army an excuse to attack or invade whenever they chose, claiming they were facing an "enemy state" in a conventional war.

Another benefit for Israel in imposing this arrangement would be that it could say that all Palestinians who identified themselves as such -- whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel -- must now exercise their rights in the Palestinian state and renounce any claim on the Jewish state. The apartheid threat would be nullified.

I sketched out possible routes by which Israel could achieve this end: by redrawing borders, using the wall, so that an area densely populated with Palestinian citizens of Israel known as the "little triangle", which hugs the northern West Bank, would be sealed into the new pseudo-state; by continuing the process of corralling the Negev's Bedouin farmers into urban reservations and then treating them as guest workers; by forcing Palestinian citizens living in the Galilee to pledge an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" or have their citizenship revoked; and by stripping Arab Knesset members of their right to stand for election.

When I made these forecasts, I suspected that many observers, even in the Palestinian solidarity movement, would find my ideas improbable. I could not have realised how fast events would overtake my projections.

The first sign came in October with the addition to the cabinet of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a party that espouses the ethnic cleansing not only of Palestinians in the occupied territories (an unremarkable platform for an Israeli party) but of Palestinian-Israeli citizens too, through land swaps that would exchange their areas for the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Lieberman is not just any cabinet minister; he has been appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for the "strategic threats" that face Israel. In that role, he will be able to determine what issues are to be considered threats and thereby shape the public agenda for the next few years. The "problem" of Israel's Palestinian citizens is certain to be high on his list.

Lieberman has been widely presented as a political maverick, akin to the notorious racist Rabbi Meir Kahane whose Kach Party was outlawed in the late 1980s. That is a gross misunderstanding: Lieberman is at the very heart of the country's right-wing establishment and will almost certainly be a candidate for prime minister in future elections, as Israelis drift ever further right.

Unlike Kahane, Lieberman has cleverly remained within the Israeli political mainstream while pushing its agenda to the very limits of what it is currently possible to say. Kadima and Labour urgently want unilateral separation from the Palestinians but are shy to spell out, both to their own domestic constituency and the international community, what separation will entail.

Lieberman has no such qualms. He is unequivocal: if Israel is separating from the Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, why not also separate from the 1.2 million Palestinians who through oversight rather than design ended up as citizens of a Jewish state in 1948? If Israel is to be a Jewish fortress, then, as he points out, it is illogical to leave Palestinians within its fortifications.

These arguments express the common mood among the Israeli public, one that has been cultivated since the eruption of the Intifada in 2000 by endless talk among Israel's political and military elites about "demographic separation". Regular opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Israelis support transfer, either voluntary or forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.

Recent polls also reveal how fashionable racism has become in Israel. A survey conducted last year showed that 68 per cent of Israeli Jews do not want to live next to a Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to, as segregation is largely enforced by present authorities), and 46 per cent would not want an Arab to visit their home.

A poll of students that was published last week suggests that racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilised and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa University, who conducted the survey more than two years ago, believes that responses would be even more extreme today.

Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism and pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow if it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices. He may speak his mind more than his cabinet colleagues, but they too share his vision of the future. That is why only one minister, the dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labour, resigned over Ehud Olmert's inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.

Contrast that response with the uproar caused by the Labour leader Amir Peretz's appointment of the first Arab cabinet minister in Israel's history. (A member of the small Druze community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif, was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon's first government).

Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labour party and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different circumstances, a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom), and yet his appointment has broken an Israeli taboo: Arabs are not supposed to get too close to the centres of power.

Peretz's decision was entirely cynical. He is under threat on all fronts -- from his coalition partners in Kadima and in Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party -- and desperately needs the backing of Labour's Arab party members. Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave him a cabinet post, even if a marginal one: minister of science, culture and sport.

But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele's inclusion in the cabinet. Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defence minister for making the appointment and demanded that Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Lieberman's party colleagues referred to the appointment as a "lethal blow to Zionism".

A few Labour and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as racist. But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his Kadima Party, as well as Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud, at Lieberman's outburst. The centre and right understand that Lieberman's views about Majadele, and Palestinian citizens more generally, mirror those of most Israeli Jews and that it would be foolhardy to criticise him for expressing it -- let alone sack him.

In this game of "who is the truer Zionist", Lieberman can only grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima and Likud. Because he is free to speak his and their minds, while they must keep quiet for appearance's sake, he, not they, will win ever-greater respect from the Israeli public.

Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the current government will implement the policies being promoted by Lieberman, even if they are too timid to openly admit this is what they are doing.

Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety, such as the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the village of Al-Twail, in the northern Negev last week. It was the second time in a month that the village had been razed by Israeli security forces.

These kinds of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin -- who have been classified by the government as "squatters" on state lands -- are a regular occurrence, an attempt to force 70,000 Bedouin to leave their ancestral homes and relocate to deprived townships.

A more revealing development came this month, however, when it was reported in the Israeli media that the government is for the first time backing "loyalty" legislation that has been introduced privately by a Likud MK Gilad Erdan's bill that would revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in "an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state", the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs conditioning citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state, defined in all these schemes very narrowly as a "Jewish and democratic" state.

Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and demand instead that the country be reformed into a "state of all its citizens", or a liberal democracy, are typically denounced as traitors.

Lieberman himself suggested such a loyalty scheme for Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington. He told American Jewish leaders: "He who is not ready to recognise Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state cannot be a citizen in the country."

Erdan's bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include visiting an "enemy state" -- which, in practice, means just about any Arab state. Most observers believe that after the Justice Ministry has redrafted Erdan's bill it will be used primarily against the Arab MKs, who are looking increasingly beleaguered. Most have been repeatedly investigated by the attorney-general for comments in support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, or for visiting neighbouring Arab states. One, Azmi Bishara, has been put on trial twice for these offences.

Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed to make the most outrageous racist statements against Palestinian citizens, mostly unchallenged.

Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said back in September: "The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be deported... We will have to make an additional decision, banning Israeli Arabs from the political system... We have cultivated a fifth column, a group of traitors of the first degree." He was "warned" by the attorney-general over his comments (though he had expressed similar views several times before), but remained unrepentant, calling the warning an attempt to "silence" him.

The leader of the opposition and former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel according to polls, gave voice to equally racist sentiments this month when he stated that the child allowance cuts he imposed as finance minister in 2002 had had a "positive" demographic effect by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian citizens.

Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence when they speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting their kin, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who are suffering under Israel's illegal occupation. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week by Jewish political parties, including the most left-wing Meretz Party, when he called on Fatah to "continue the struggle" to establish a Palestinian state.

However, the campaign of intimidation by the government and Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence the Arab MKs, or stop them visiting neighbouring states, which is why the pressure is being ramped up. If Erdan's bill becomes law -- which seems possible with government backing -- Arab MKs and the minority they represent will either be cut off from the rest of the Arab world once again (as they were for the first two decades of Israel's existence, when a military government was imposed on them) or threatened with the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty (a move, it should be noted, that is illegal under international law).

It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation eventually being extended to cover other "breaches of loyalty", such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel or denying that a Jewish state is democratic. Technically, this is already the position as Israel's election law makes it illegal for political parties, including Arab ones, to promote a platform that denies Israel's existence as a "Jewish and democratic" state.

Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to having their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many currently do, for a state of all its citizens. That certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom Segev, who argued in the wake of the government's adoption of the bill: "In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality is liable to be interpreted as a 'breach of faith' and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship."

But it is unlikely to end there. I hesitate to make another prediction but, given the rapidity with which the others have been realised, it may be time yet again to hazard a guess about where Israel is headed.

The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus, one of several that are being converted by Israel into what look suspiciously like international border crossings, even though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.

I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being allowed to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities like Nablus to see relatives. (These familial connections are a legacy of the 1948 War, when separated Palestinian refugees ended up on different sides of the Green Line, and also of marriages that were possible after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, making social and business contacts possible again). But when Palestinian citizens try to leave these cities via the checkpoints they are invariably detained and issued letters by Israeli authorities warning them that they will be tried if caught again visiting "enemy" areas.

In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli government agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the West Bank, ministers discussed changing the classification of the Palestinian Authority from a "hostile entity" to the harsher category of an "enemy entity". The move was rejected at the time because, as one official told the Israeli media, "there are international legal implications in such a declaration, including closing off border crossings, that we don't want to do yet."

Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel has completed the West Bank wall and its "border" terminals, the Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens to relatives as "visiting an enemy state"? And will such visits be grounds for revoking citizenship, as they could be under Erdan's bill if Palestinian citizens visit relatives in Syria or Lebanon?

Lieberman doubtless knows the answer already."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Asia Times

"No doubt, we are now witnessing the dawn of a new great game over Iraq. A recent communique by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has stated its "collective desire to prevent Iraq from becoming a battleground for regional and international powers".

The irony, however, is that this communique is also signed by two "out of area" Arab states, Jordan and Egypt, whose inclusion in the security calculus of the Persian Gulf rattles Iran and fuels the growing rivalry between the Shi'ite power bloc and the Sunni Arabs led by Saudi Arabia.....

Shi'ites betrayed again?
Are they going to be betrayed again? This is a question increasingly on the mind of many Shi'ites in Iran, Iraq and elsewhere, who have a vivid memory of how then-US president George H W Bush betrayed Iraq's Shi'ites during the Gulf War in 1991 by first exhorting them to rebel against the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and, when they did in Basra, Najaf and Karbala, became complicit in their suppression....

From the vantage point of many Shi'ites in the region, the new accent on Iran in Iraq is a ruse for a change of heart in Washington toward the post-Saddam political process, and a prelude for a U-turn."The US wants to have its cake and eat it too," a Tehran political analyst told the author, adding, "Bush is now appeasing the Sunni bloc and squeezing the Shi'ites and still wants to claim a continuity of US policy in Iraq when it is abundantly clear that discontinuity is gaining the upper hand.".....

A shade of Bosnia
"There is a shade of Bosnia here," explained the analyst, referring to the US-Iran cooperation in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the early 1990s, which saved the beleaguered Bosnian Muslims from Serbian atrocities, notwithstanding a United Nations arms embargo......

As a result of such political pressures, the Clinton administration shifted its policy toward the Iranians in Bosnia: the Revolutionary Guards' offices in Bosnia were ordered closed and, in one case reminiscent of the Irbil incident, US forces took over one of those liaison offices and temporarily apprehended several Iranians whom they accused of subversive activities. Expelling the Iranians from Bosnia after they were no longer needed seemed like the right policy, and all the signs are that the US is inclined to repeat it in Iraq, irrespective of the stark differences relating to Iran's proximity to neighboring Iraq and the wealth of historical and religious ties.....

The facade of a self-imposed mission to "spread democracy" is wearing thinner by the hour, seeing how Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not bother to invoke the word "democracy" once in her latest trip to Cairo and Riyadh, focusing instead on "stability" and raising the specter that "the Iranians are coming" - this from a specialist in Russia and the Cold War who is at home with Cold War posturing.....

Spring of military action
Various US pundits have openly opined that the first half of 2007 is the best time for military action against Iran, with that country internationally isolated, the Arab tide against Tehran at its all-time highest, and Iran's own house divided among competing factions unable to reach consensus on important foreign-policy priorities.

Bulking up its military presence by dispatching a fresh aircraft-carrier task force to the Persian Gulf, as well as several nuclear-armed submarines, and sending Patriot missiles to the US-friendly states in the region, the Bush administration might actually gain in Iraq by subduing Iran militarily, ostensibly over the nuclear issue.

The problem with this rationale, however, is that it disregards the likelihood of Iranian retaliation in Iraq, regional "blowback", and the threats to the world economy posed by curtailed oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Concerning the last, the US has reportedly made contingency plans for the indefinite takeover of Iranian territory in Chah Bahar, which would deny Tehran its strategic leverage with Hormuz......

In a word, the long-term geopolitical ramifications for both China and Russia are too serious to ignore by their policymakers. Moscow and Beijing have joined the bandwagon over US-led efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, overlooking their own previously stated insight that such sanctions would be a "prelude to war".

Indeed, how little time Washington has lost in following up Security Council Resolution 1737 with ratcheted-up military threats against Iran. Looking far ahead, this, in turn, raises another vexing question: Is the US-Iran rivalry the outer ring of a broader, new Cold War between the US and the countervailing powers of China and Russia? "

By Kurt Nimmo

"It’s like a broken record played over the decades with the same worn refrain. “US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she heard strong encouragement from Israeli and Palestinian leaders and their neighbors for quick progress toward a Middle East peace agreement,” reports the Associated Press. “There is no doubt there could be a very important effect on the entire region if we are able to make progress on Middle East peace,” said Rice the Destroyer. “I did find the parties very desirous of making progress,” she droned. “I believe the whole region is looking for ways to make progress and drive toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Of course, the “establishment of a Palestinian state” is not on the agenda, or at least not the sort of state envisioned by the Palestinians. Instead, the Palestinians will receive more of the same terminating in a series of isolated Bantustans surrounded by Israeli checkpoints and military garrisons......

....Unfortunately, “a better fate” is not possible with the neocons in control, working closely with the Israelis. As Stephen J. Sniegoski explains, the “Likudniks have always sought to deal in a radical fashion with the Palestinian problem in the occupied territories—a problem that has gotten worse, from their standpoint, as a result of demographic changes. A U.S. war in the Middle East at the present time provides a window of opportunity to permanently solve that problem and augment Israel’s dominance in the region. The existing perilous situation, as Likud thinkers see it, would justify the taking of substantial risks.” One such “substantial risk,” now boiling with ugly determination in the foreground, is the possibility the neocons and the Israelis will attack Iran.

Rice is playing the role of a carnival sideshow barker as she cajoles easily flimflammed Arab leaders into “high-level yet informal” meetings. Meanwhile, in the background, the clock ticks toward the shock and awe campaign long ago sketched out for Iran. Rice “announced the Israeli-Palestinian talks as she began three days of meetings with Sunni Arab allies in the region—Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states—to rally support for President Bush’s new military and diplomatic strategy in Iraq,” according to the New York Times. In other words, Rice is calling together the most reactionary ruling elements in the region, urging them onboard the Good Ship Lollipop, another designed to fail “peace plan” intended to string the Palestinians along.

It is but another distraction, as the Israelis and their American counterparts are not interested in peace. In fact, they are interested in making life miserable for the Palestinians and punishing harshly all those who dare ask for a sincere and lasting peace. Soon enough, they will make life miserable for a whole lot of Iranians, as they have for Iraqis—a template based on years of work practiced with ghoulish determination on the Palestinians."

By Azmi Bishara

".....Iraq was smashed to pieces because various Arab powers colluded with American designs and the Arabs that opposed this war were effectively isolated by force of the same collusion. Iran rose to the vanguard of the most vocal opponents to the war as a result of the official Arab stance, particularly that of the Gulf states, which could barely conceal their glee at the fall of the Iraqi regime beneath relentless bombardment and at the subsequent capture of Saddam Hussein. But what a different tune they were singing then in contrast to their recent protests against the execution of Saddam on the first day of the Feast of Sacrifice. What has happened in the interval to cause this remarkable about-face? On the one hand, the Iraqi resistance has proven its efficacy and durability. On the other, the boundaries of regional axes have gelled, and the members of one of these are pounding their chests and protesting the insult to their honour, now that they've realised that Iran was the foremost beneficiary of the dissolution of the Iraqi army and anti-Baath Party law which they had once cheered so rowdily. Not that these Arab officials went so far as to actually denounce Saddam's execution. They were just upset that it had been carried out on the first day of the feast. Which is worse. What this implies is that they actually approved of the execution and hoped for the opportunity to exploit it, themselves, to stir sectarian passions against adversaries who had nothing to do with the fall of the Saddam regime or his execution, such as Hizbullah and the Palestinian resistance.

At various points along the way, most importantly when the constitution came out, certain parties called into question Iraq's Arab identity and scoffed at those who protested the refutation of this identity. Not a single voice from Arab officialdom, which is now wringing its hands over Iran's gains from the decimation of Iraq, was among the protestors. And, today, instead of responding to Iran's (and America's) sectarian tactics with calls for Arab unity, Arab officialdom is busily fuelling Sunni anti-Shia sentiments. Nothing could be further from the spirit and behaviour of the Sunnis who had once rallied and still rally behind the call to Arab nationalism and unity.

In none of the other trouble spots that flared up or that were ignited in the Arab world is there sufficient endemic cause for full-scale internecine conflict......

In Palestine, for example, a particular faction might contemplate changing the government in a manner that would guarantee it hold over such key authorities as the ministries of interior, foreign affairs and security. Add these to the presidency, recognised by the government, and access to various sources of money and it becomes possible to strike an agreement with Israel through secret negotiations. It's all a question of time. Afterwards, of course, the agreement can be put to general referendum, and the best way to ensure that this comes out in favour of an unjust settlement is to choke off the people's access to food, release the grip gradually to give them a taste, and then let the people use their imaginations to draw the comparison between times under economic blockade and the times to come after it is lifted......

States that had never stepped foot in Lebanon before are now gate crashing into the country through the torn off doors and windows of Lebanese domestic politics, because suddenly they discovered that the way to America's heart is to sign up with the anti-Iran axis. Lebanon is the place to be.....

Syria managed to sustain good relations with both Iran and with the Gulf countries and, therefore, was able to act as a pacifying mediator between them. But rather than capitalising on this role, the partners to coalition politics are contributing to the isolation of Syria. Iran, for its part, should reassure the Arabs -- by which I mean Arab public opinion -- that it recognises the Arab identity of Iraq. It should further relinquish its vindictive policies and its collusion with vindictive practices in Iraq, the most recent manifestation of which was the disgracefully bloodthirsty execution of the president of an Arab state, beneath the axe of the occupation -- a savage act recorded and broadcast with such disgusting felicity that even Arabs who hated Saddam could not help but to feel insulted and degraded. The only way to restrain Iran is to establish a relationship with it that keeps the channels of communication and understanding over Iraq open. To do so, Arab regimes must reassure Iran that they are not colluding with the US against it, as they colluded with the US during the build-up to the war against Iraq......"

"ندد الرجل الثاني في النظام العراقي السابق عزة إبراهيم الدوري بما اعتبره مؤامرة على حزب البعث العراقي المنحل، متهما سوريا باحتضان مؤتمر يهدف إلى اختيار قيادة جديدة للحزب.

وقال الدوري في بيان ذيل بتوقيع القيادة القومية لحزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي "إن معلومات وردت عن دعوة بعض المفصولين من الحزب إلى عقد مؤتمر قطري غير شرعي في دمشق"، مضيفا أن مجرد احتضان سوريا لهذه الدعوة يؤكد أنها جزء مما سماه مؤامرة الاحتلال الأميركي لتصفية رمز نضال العراق ضد الاحتلال وهو الحزب، ودمجه في الحكومة السورية الحليفة الطبيعية للحكومة الإيرانية.

وهاجم الدوري، وهو أكبر مسؤول في النظام العراقي السابق مازال فارا، "المفصول محمد يونس الأحمد" أحد الأعضاء السابقين في البعث العراقي، داعيا "جميع مناضلي الحزب خارج العراق إلى التصدي لهؤلاء المتآمرين مع الاحتلال والمخابرات السورية وعزلهم".

الطالباني يرجح
وفي السياق ذاته رجح الرئيس العراقي جلال الطالباني أن يكون الدوري موجودا في اليمن وليس في سوريا كما كان يعتقد، مشيرا إلى أن السلطات العراقية تتعقب تحركات الدوري ولم تبحث بعد المطالبة بتسليمه.

وفي بغداد تظاهر مئات العراقيين في حي الأعظمية ذي الغالبية السنية تأييدا لاختيار الدوري لرئاسة حزب البعث خلفا لرئيسه الراحل صدام حسين الذي أعدمته السلطات العراقية نهاية الشهر الماضي بعد إدانته في قضية الدجيل.

وكان الجيش الأميركي أعلن في نوفمبر/تشرين الثاني عام 2005 أنه يقدم مكافأة قيمتها عشرة ملايين دولار لمن يعطي معلومات تؤدي إلى اعتقال الدوري."

Last Chance!
The sign says "For Sale."
Bush says, "Trust me; jump on the opportunity!"
(Art: Pancho / Le Monde)

Eoin Murray writing from Gaza City, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 18 January 2007

"......And here comes the surprise. It's a good one.

For the past few months the biggest issue for people in Gaza has become the security situation caused by the the clashes between Hamas and some 'leading lights' in the decrepit Fateh party. People felt unsafe to leave their home. One friend lives near a hot spot -- her house has bullet holes through it. Her children are so afraid that even when no fighting is happening they are crawling from room to room. In the centre of Gaza City, in the square of the Unknown Soldier a movement has sprung up. Partially out of desperation, partially out of a desire to end the violent internal clashes and provide some protection for Palestinian civilians.

Ten people, six women and four men have decided to go on hunger strike. They are artists, doctors, human rights lawyers, poets and independent political activists. For the past eight days they have refused food and vowed to continue doing so until such time as a national unity government is formed and the internal clashes come to an end.

Civil society, the business community and people from all walks of life have gathered around to support them. They have been given tents, blankets, chairs, heaters (for Gaza at night is bitterly cold). Petitions are being circulated, the 'Oud is being played, national poems are being sung and recited through the night. Thousands of ordinary people have passed through in support.

Their slogan is simple: 'NO - to internal fighting.' We spend some time talking to Doctor Miriam who began organising the strike. She tells us, "This is the first step for fighting the occupation. We must be united as a people in order to achieve our rights and our dreams. Internal fighting can not bring us there. We have not hung any flags other then Palestinian flags here. We do not welcome guns into this area. We want real national unity to struggle for the human rights ofthe Palestinian people."

We move from the tent she shares with three other hunger strikers into the main tent. Over a hundred chairs are gathered around in a circle. A man is sitting, surrounded by his children, he is an ordinary man. He holds a microphone in his hands and talks about his desire that the clashes will end so his kids will be safer going to school. Over the course of hours the microphone passes through many hands -- anyone can speak and express their feelings, for as long as they need to. It is a truly open affair.

The microphone passes to one Palestinian woman. She is resplendent in her handwoven black, red and yellow dress. An elderly lady, with a lived-in face. Her name is Um Jaber Wishah. She begins to tell her own story. The story explains the lines on her face, and at times her eyes well with tears as she describes her journey in 1948 when she and her family were expelled from their village inside what is now the state of Israel. She talks about the pain of mothers who see their sons taken to prison, or killed. She reminds us that "the prisoners are calling for calm on the streets of Gaza and we must honour their desires. We must behave as Palestinians, with dignity and respect towards each other. Not to divide ourselves into Hamas or Fateh."

Her words are powerful and they move the crowd to applause and cheers. The evening in the tent reminds me of the words of Martin Luther King who, the night before he died, said, "You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together,that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity."

The work of these hunger strikers and their friends and fellow strugglers in human rights organisations such as those supported by Trocaire is for unity. They are doing it by creating real people power, by encouraging people to take back the streets and take back the responsibility for democracy and accountability themselves. This, indeed, is what democracy looks like.

I can only hope that they succeed."

Is Bush pushing for a second war or a Second Coming?

"Christian Zionists are dancing the hora in San Antonio. Armageddon appears to be at hand.

As George W. Bush sets his sights on Iran, even Republicans are wondering how to constitutionally contain the trigger-happy king. But for an influential group of Christian fundamentalists -- White House allies that garner not only feel-good meetings with the President's liaisons to the "faith-based" community but also serious discussions with Bush's national security staff -- an attack on Iran is just what God ordered......"

Continue

Resistance to the war and distrust of Bush have grown, a new Times/Bloomberg survey shows.

The Los Angeles Times

"WASHINGTON — A strong majority of Americans opposes President Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq, and about half of the country wants Congress to block the deployment, a Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

As he seeks to chart a new course in Iraq, Bush also faces pervasive resistance to and skepticism about the U.S. commitment — more than three-fifths of those surveyed said the war was not worth fighting, and only one-third approved of his handling of the conflict.

And in a striking measure of people's declining trust in Bush, half said they believed he deliberately misled the U.S. in making his case for invading Iraq.

This is Bush's weakest showing on these questions in a Times poll.

Asked about the president's recent announcement that he would dispatch an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, three-fifths said they opposed the move, whereas just over one-third backed it.

Even Bush's political base showed signs of cracking: About one-fourth of Republicans said they did not believe the war was worth fighting, and a roughly equal number opposed the troop increase....."

Don't tie Bush's hands on Iraq-Saudi envoy to U.S.

"WASHINGTON , Jan 18 (Reuters) - A vote by the U.S. Congress limiting the number of American troops that could be deployed in Iraq would send the wrong signal to the Middle East and make people wonder if President George W. Bush's authority has been weakened, Saudi Arabia's outgoing envoy to Washington said.

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former long-time Saudi intelligence chief who is about to retire after just over one year as envoy to Washington, also warned the United States against military action to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying the consequences would be "catastrophic."

Both the newly Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are planning symbolic, but politically important, resolutions rejecting Bush's plans to send about 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq to try to stabilize Baghdad and Anbar province.

With polls showing most Americans disapprove of the troop increase, the non-binding resolutions would force Republicans to reveal publicly where they stand on Bush's strategy and could further isolate the White House.

"I think it would send the wrong signal and make more people question whether the president has the authority," Turki told a dinner on Wednesday night hosted by the New America Foundation thinktank and the U.N. Foundation, a private group that supports the work of the United Nations.

"Already people (in the Middle East) are gauging the effects of the (November 2006) elections as eroding the president's authority in the United States and ... are waiting to see how that erosion is going to be manifested in what the president can or cannot do," he said.

Saudi Arabia this week joined other Arab allies in backing Bush's new plan to reverse the downward spiral of violence and chaos in Iraq...."

By Tony Sayegh

It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. This worked very well for the Scoundrel-in-Chief for a couple of years. He wrapped himself in the American flag and declared himself as the "war president" and the great defender of the American people from the "evildoers." He kept repeating 9/11 and Al-Qaeda in every speech and the American sheeple rallied behind him.

No more! It took more than 3 years for the Americans to wake up and see through the fog, the lies and the smoke and mirrors. They no longer believe the Liar-in-Chief. About 60% of Americans want a speedy withdrawal from Iraq; they have reached the tipping point.

Instead of listening to the people and winding down this catastrophe, the "war president" declares that he is expanding the war and escalating. This, of course, is to show that he is a tough leader, in the image of Churchill, making tough decisions. The country is in uproar against the declared escalation. Faced with public outrage, even Congress came to life. Some of the spineless Democrats are attempting to grow a spine. Even in his own party, a mini rebellion is developing against the Decider of doom.

So, where does the Scoundrel go to solicit support? From the puppet Arab regimes! They are the Scoundrel's last, last refuge. It was pathetic, when most Americans are opposing the insane military escalation of their president, to see Condoleezza lining up the obedient stooges from Egypt to Jordan, S.A., Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf kennel to declare support for the "surge!" What a sight!

It speaks volumes that a small scoundrel of a president found the only support and refuge among a handful of his own small puppets.

"MANAMA, Bahrain — Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with senior U.S. and coalition naval commanders Thursday to plan operations in the Persian Gulf, including the arrival next month of another U.S. aircraft carrier and more Patriot missiles meant in part as a warning to Iran. This tiny state in the northern Gulf is headquarters to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet and Central Command's naval staff.

Gates also flew to nearby Qatar for a private meeting and lunch with that nation's leader, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Later he was visiting an air base that hosts a high-tech war room that is the nerve center of all U.S. and coalition air operations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Under ground rules imposed by U.S. officials, reporters traveling with Gates were prohibited from identifying the base or the country in which it is located.

In Bahrain, a British Royal Navy officer who is the No. 2 commander for coalition naval forces in the Central Command area of responsibility told reporters that the exact role and missions of the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis, which is due to arrive in the Gulf area next month, have not yet been worked out.

British Commodore Keith Winstanley said the Stennis deployment should not be seen entirely as a move aimed at Iran, but he added, "I'm sure there's a message there for Iran.""

"Prime Minister Olmert initiates round of consultations on appointing new chief of staff, meets with Opposition Chairman Netanyahu. Netanyahu says, 'We need chief of staff who will prepare army for threats facing country, firstly the Iranian threat'"

By Ze'ev Schiff
HAARETZ

"To correctly choose the next Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, it is also necessary to consider who the next defense minister will be, since these two are supposed to complement each other.

A chief of staff with no strategic vision coupled with a defense minister with no security expertise is a recipe for disaster - especially if the prime minister is also not well-versed in strategic matters......

On the personal level, it is necessary to pick someone who has professional authority and outstanding leadership capabilities, is apolitical and independent, and who was not associated with major failures during the war, and can therefore apply the lessons that have been learned from it.

The choice should also be determined by the threats Israel faces. The new chief of staff must, of course, be able to lead the army in an asymmetric war. But the biggest threat is Iran. The worse-case scenario is that it will acquire nuclear weapons, but even without these, Iran has proven its ability to target Israel with missile launches and terror attacks carried out by organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC's Newsnight programme.

"Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.....

One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan - but was over-ruled.

"We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that," Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.

"But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President's office, the old mantra of 'We don't talk to evil'... reasserted itself."...."

Continue

What It Would Take to Stop It

A Very Good Analysis
By VIRGINIA TILLEY
CounterPunch

"From its inception, the US occupation was a lose-lose proposition. Simply rolling into Iraq -- a society of which the Bush neocons had so distorted a conception and US occupation commanders and foot soldiers had no grasp at all - was a formula for doom. But US policy in the Middle East has now advanced to a new stage and the risk to the rest of us has changed. For stopping an attack on Iran, which is the only way to avert final regional disaster, may require action in Washington that falls outside the parameters of what is normally politically possible.

For the first two years of the occupation, the US dilemma was plain to everyone. On the one hand, pulling out "prematurely" promised an internal Iraqi melee for power and the quick collapse of the feeble pro-US Iraqi government. On the other hand, the ongoing presence of American troops and the inevitable brutalities of occupation could only inspire more armed resistance, progressively wreck US legitimacy, and make things worse. As it staggered forward, wreaking tens of thousands of direct Iraqi casualties (and possibly hundreds of thousands in indirect ones), the US occupation fed an unprecedented surge of anti-US and anti-western militancy. As a result, three short years later, five decades of largely uncontested US hegemony in the Middle East are collapsing into the same clouds of dust now engulfing Iraq's national society -- the World Trade Center towers going down in slo-mo.

Yet in a sense, the occupation has already done its work on the support structure, as the US occupation has already combusted on social forces that its architects never comprehended even as they manipulated them. From the beginning, the Bush neocons viewed the region through an Orientalist lens, and therefore saw tribes everywhere, as mentors like Daniel Pipes encouraged them to do. Viewing the Middle East also through an Israeli lens, they saw ethnicity as the best way to break up national and pan-Arab solidarities. Their staggering ignorance of the region was perhaps best exposed by their early faith in the charlatan Ahmed Chalabi, who promised a pro-Israeli Shi'a-led Iraqi government. On such rampant idiocy were their enthusiasm and deceitful arguments for war fueled.

Predictably, their neocolonial efforts to foster and employ ethnic divides - e.g., creating Shi'a militias to attack Sunni neighborhoods to root out Baathi insurgents -- have resulted in blowback. The soaring death count (at this writing, some 100 Iraqis are dying daily) is grim testimony of the country's slide out of the US's hammy hands. Every day, old norms of Sunni-Shi'a ethnic coexistence are transforming further into mutual fears and murderous mutual hatreds. With every death, the Iraqis' own ability to reconcile this deepening ethnic bitterness dwindles. Every day the US stays in the country, the ethnic militias grow in size and legitimacy. The US capacity to contain them has withered to nothing. One might think the US military architects would grasp their fatal blunder and try to amend their ethnic machinations, but the latest US plan is to send Kurdish troops to patrol Baghdad, on the insane premise that a third ethnic force will somehow defuse the other two. (Kurdish naivety in collaborating in this fatal plan is equally impressive.)

The report of the Iraq Study Group gets several things wrong, but its appraisal of what must happen now is credible and widely accepted. The only way to salvage US standing in the region, they argue, is to withdraw as fast as possible, while obtaining essential Iranian and Syrian help in multi-lateral efforts toward forging a new national consensus in Iraq. From the Iraqis' perspective, too, the only hope is an immediate US withdrawal, which can allow them to begin tortuous negotiations toward national reconciliation. This effort cannot be started as long as the US is there, not only because the US still controls practically everything in the country, making genuine domestic politics impossible, but because the US presence itself will inevitably distort and discredit any new political process or leadership that tries to arise.

Still, in setting out its package of recommendations, the supremely pragmatic Iraq Study Group neglected one glaring political fact. It assumed that the package was a real possibility -- i.e., that the Bush administration could muster the necessary energy and faith to engage in the multilateral diplomacy essential to it. The Bush neocons have no talent or faith in multilateral politics and indeed openly deride them. And they are still in charge, whatever the changing political climate in Washington and mounting popular hostility to the Iraq war. The Great Decider is still the president. Mr. Cheney is still the Vice-President. All the old villains, like Douglas Feith and David Wurmser and the scary Michael Ledeen, are still in government or guiding events from Isengards like the American Enterprise Institute. They have exactly two years to complete the agenda they formulated in the 1990s: that is, reshape the entire Middle East, in the interest of Israel and their own construction, security, and oil companies, by taking out any regional rival to Israel's uncontested military hegemony.

Hence we have increasingly clear signals that, far from withdrawing troops, the US plans to take the next disastrous step in their program: bomb Iran's nuclear facilities and, they hope, change Iran's regime.

Long in the making, a US attack on Iran has been maturing over the past year. Most graphic, although not catching much public alarm until now, was the transfer last year of two US naval carrier groups to the Persian Gulf (each flanked by nuclear submarines and battleships, carrying fleets of attack jets, and holding special Marine landing forces). Now some staff changes in the US security and command staff are drawing worried comment. One change is the replacement of General Abizaid (who did not favor a troop increase) with the Pacific theatre's top naval commander, Admiral Fallon, hitherto in charge of those same carrier groups (which were posted in the Pacific). Another signal, less widely noted, is that Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who downplayed the nuclear threat from Iran, has been replaced by Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell, also a Navy man seen as much more compliant (having already facilitated the Bush administration's programs to monitor international financial transfers).

It is over-obvious that, while the Navy is a vital support to US operations throughout the Middle East, a massive carrier build-up in the Gulf cannot possibly assist the US occupation in Iraq. But it is absolutely pivotal to launching an attack on Iran and containing Iran's retaliation. In this context, even Bush's proposed troop "surge", otherwise puzzlingly meaningless, may be intended to support an attack on Iran, as the US will need more ground troops to consolidate its transportation lines in the event of Iranian or allied Iraqi-guerrilla reprisals. (That the "surge" itself can only prolong and worsen Iraq's suffering and further demolish US standing in the region is relatively unimportant.)

Bombing Iran will cast the Middle East into such a frenzy of violence, however, that desperate editorials denouncing it are starting to appear all over the world press. But the Bush neocons -- and, of course, Israel - also have utter contempt for world opinion and indeed any analysis outside their immediate crazed circle. Certainly the little question of international law, which makes a preemptive strike on Iran entirely illegal, does not figure for them in the slightest. (It did not stop them from raiding and seizing Iranian consular staff and archives in Arbil, which was also entirely illegal and has recklessly imperiled US consular relations globally.)

The only hope of stopping a US strike on Iran is therefore the Democrats, who now control the purse strings for US war-making and are already sending signals that the troop "surge" might be in trouble. Whether they have sufficient spine to stop the attack on Iran is universally questioned. But even if a US attack is somehow stalled by domestic action, Israel can always strike Iran instead. It is still not widely debated that, over the past few years, Israel has purchased a cluster of advanced German Dolphin submarines, which would allow sea-based missile launches on Iran from the Indian Ocean, as well as a new fleet of attack jets and thousands of "bunker-busting" bombs. Or that last year Israel was running test bombing runs on a mock-up site of the Natanz reactor, well ahead of its recently revealed long-distance bombing test flights to Gibraltar.

Why such a dangerous US-Israeli alliance in such a clearly crazed mission? The old necon strategy of A Clean Break is one obvious answer. But the goals may go further. A strike on Iran by Israel might be the magic bullet for the sinking US neocons and their stumbling military global mission. No Democrat now breathing is going to vote to withhold the US funds necessary to "defending Israel" from an Iranian counter-attack. Generating a direct threat to Israel may indeed now be their only way to ensure that war funding continues to flow lavishly.

If an Israeli attack is indeed pending, only something close to a coup in Washington can stop it. The real question now, therefore, is whether the same pragmatists who entered US politics unbidden to comprise the Iraq Study Group (led by Baker but representing the old Cold-War guard, including now-frightened Pentagon officers, desperate State Department experts, and even alarmed oil men) will conclude that the US national interest is indeed in such imminent peril that they must launch emergency political measures to preclude a US or Israeli attack. This effort could take several shapes, but the normal options are not promising. Hearings to expose White House malfeasance (lying, fraud, graft) in the Iraq war, leading even to an impeachment process, could fatally cripple the attack plan, but would take more time than we have and would not stop Israel in any case. Hearings to expose Israeli espionage and discredit Israel's role in US foreign policymaking could stymie an Israeli attack, but the AIPAC-saturated Congress would never countenance them. Normal Washington peer pressure, represented by the Iraq Study Group, has demonstrably failed. More urgent methods, that might be pursued in other countries facing such a crisis, are precluded in the US by very potent political and military cultures that preclude any open revolt against a sitting president or the civilian command. (Recall General Powell's quiet capitulation to lies, deceit, and foolery that he could not possibly support.) No one wants the US to operate otherwise.

The challenge to the US political system is therefore now extremely grave: somehow to retake rational control of US foreign policy, from people known to be lying criminals, within as little as two months, yet with no precedent for doing so. It should not be impossible. Insider Washington pressures must should now become ultimatums. But insider operations require political backing that can only be obtained through a pincer strategy: rapid public revelations of White House criminality by serving officials, with responsible headline coverage by the national press sufficient rapidly to cripple White House foreign policymaking. This political rebellion would require rare political will.

The US occupation of Iraq has appeared since its inception like a large and cumbersome truck driven into a swamp. We have been watching, in horrified fascination, as it slowly sinks. In recent months, we have been certain that even the drivers must soon surely abandon the truck, jump for shore, and try to preserve some shred of dignity as it goes down. Instead, we are seeing those drivers flinging out ropes around everything in sight and getting ready to haul, apparently in the hope of dragging the whole carcass back onto solid ground and rolling on to glory. That they can only strangle the rest of us, and bind everyone into the swamp with them, must finally inspire decisive collective action. Washington insiders and key players in the new Democratic Congress, with political backing from an alarmed electorate and frantic international allies, can still stop the neocons' rush to disaster. But it would require rare determination, initiative, transparency, and courage, and it would have to happen fast."

A Good Article
By William S. Lind

"One way to look at the situation in Iraq is to try to identify variables, elements that could change. Without change, the war is likely to end with troops having to fight their way out, if they can.

The military situation in Iraq is not a variable. All that can change is the speed of our defeat. Some actions might slow it, although the time for such actions, such as adopting an "ink blot" strategy instead of "capture or kill," passed long ago.

Other actions could speed our defeat, an attack on Iran chief among them. It now looks as if the Bush administration may have realized that an out-of-the-blue, Pearl Harbor-style air and missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is politically infeasible. Instead, the White House will order a series of small "border incidents," pinpricks similar to last week's raid on an Iranian mission in Kurdistan, intended to provoke Iranian retaliation. That retaliation will then be presented as an Iranian attack on forces, with the air raids on Iranian nuclear targets called "retaliation." Fabricated border incidents have a long history as casus belli; perhaps the Bushies can dress some German soldiers up in Polish uniforms.

As Bush made clear in last Wednesday's speech, his policies are not a variable. He will pursue the neocons' dreams all the way to Hell, where they originated.

That leaves the Congress, and it may well be the key variable in the equation. 2008 is not that far away, and electoral panic continues to spread among Hill Republicans. Senator Brownback is the first conservative Republican Senator to break with the administration, opposing the "surge." Conservatives have a central role to play here, because if they turn openly against the war, Bush will lose his base.

But the Democrats hold both Houses of Congress, so the main burden of ending a failed enterprise will fall on them. At present, they seem unwilling to go beyond symbolic but ineffectual measures, such as passing "non-binding resolutions." Why? It may be that they are paralyzed by a false understanding of the war, one stated by Vice President Cheney on "Fox New Sunday" when he said, "We have these meetings with members of Congress, and they agree we can't fail… "

In fact, we have already failed. The war in Iraq was lost long ago. In terms of the administration's objective of a "democratic Iraq," which Bush re-stated in his Wednesday speech, it was lost before the first bomb fell, because it was unattainable no matter what we did. Now, not even the minimal objective of restoring an Iraqi state is attainable, at least until Iraq's many-sided, Fourth Generation civil war sorts itself out, and probably not then. Events in Iraq are simply beyond our control; the forces our invasion and destruction of the Iraqi state unleashed far overpower any army we can deploy to Iraq, surge or no surge.

Once Democrats accept and announce that Congress cannot lose a war that is already lost, they will have the freedom of action they need to get us out. Polls suggest the public will go along; most Americans now realize the war is lost, regardless of what President Bush may say or do.

It is probably true, as Senator McCain constantly reminds us, that chaos will follow an American withdrawal. But that chaos became inevitable, not with America's withdrawal (it is already happening, even with troops present), but with its destruction of the Iraqi state. Again, the Democrats need to make this point to the American people, and make it often.

Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, put it best. According to the January 5 Washington Post, he said in an interview,

"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost. ... Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy – literally, not figuratively."

I believe Senator Biden is correct; I said the same thing in an earlier column. If the question the Democrats put to the American people is, should we allow thousands more American kids to get wounded or killed so the Bush administration can put our withdrawal off until it is out of office, the public's answer will be clear. Killing our kids for national objectives is one thing; doing so for political advantage is something else.

The key variable thus comes down to this: do the Democrats in Congress have the courage and the communication skills to level with the people about why the war in Iraq is continuing after we have lost it? If not, they will have proven themselves as unfit to govern as the Republican majorities they replaced. "

A Great Article
By John Pilger

"A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its bystanders. "Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of movement, no place to run, and no space to hide," wrote the senior UN relief official, Jan Egeland, and Jan Eliasson, then Swedish foreign minister, in Le Figaro. They described people "living in a cage," cut off by land, sea, and air, with no reliable power and little water, tortured by hunger, disease, and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.

Egeland and Eliasson wrote this four months ago as an attempt to break the silence in Europe, whose obedient alliance with the United States and Israel has sought to reverse the democratic result that brought Hamas to power in last year's Palestinian elections. The horror in Gaza has since been compounded; a family of 18 has died beneath a 500-pound American/Israeli bomb; unarmed women have been mown down at point-blank range. Dr. David Halpin, one of the few Britons to break what he calls "this medieval siege," reported the killing of 57 children by artillery, rockets, and small arms and was shown evidence that civilians are Israel's true targets, as in Lebanon last summer. A friend in Gaza, Dr. Mona El-Farra, e-mailed: "I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms [a collective punishment by the Israeli air force] and artillery on my 13-year-old daughter. At night, she shivers with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. I try to make her feel safe, but when the bombs sound I flinch and scream…"

When I was last in Gaza, Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, showed me the results of a remarkable survey. "The statistic I personally find unbearable," he said, "is that 99.4 percent of the children we studied suffer trauma. Once you look at the rates of exposure to trauma you see why: 99.2 percent of their homes were bombarded; 97.5 percent were exposed to tear gas; 96.6 percent witnessed shootings; 95.8 percent witnessed bombardment and funerals; almost a quarter saw family members injured or killed." Dr. Dahlan invited me to sit in on one of his clinics. There were 30 children, all of them traumatized. He gave each pencil and paper and asked them to draw. They drew pictures of grotesque acts of terror and of women streaming tears.

The excuse for the latest Israeli terror was the capture last June of an Israeli soldier, a member of an illegal occupation, by the Palestinian resistance. This was news. The kidnapping a few days earlier by Israel of two Palestinians – two of thousands taken over the years – was not news. A historian and two foreign journalists have reported the truth about Gaza. All three are Israelis. They are frequently called traitors. The historian Ilan Pappe has documented that "the genocidal policy [in Gaza] is not formulated in a vacuum" but part of Zionism's deliberate, historic ethnic cleansing. Gideon Levy and Amira Hass are reporters on the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. In November, Levy described how the people of Gaza were beginning to starve to death: "there are thousands of wounded, disabled, and shell-shocked people unable to receive any treatment… the shadows of human beings roam the ruins… they only know the [Israeli army] will return and what this will mean for them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions."

Amira Hass, who has lived in Gaza, describes it as a prison that shames her people. She recalls how her mother, Hannah, was being marched from a cattle-train to the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen on a summer's day in 1944. "[She] saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just looking," she wrote. "This image became very formative in my upbringing, this despicable 'looking from the side.'"

"Looking from the side" is what those of us do who are cowed into silence by the threat of being called anti-Semitic. Looking from the side is what too many Western Jews do, while those Jews who honor the humane traditions of Judaism and say, "Not in our name!" are abused as "self-despising." Looking from the side is what almost the entire U.S. Congress does, in thrall to or intimidated by a vicious Zionist "lobby." Looking from the side is what "evenhanded" journalists do as they excuse the lawlessness that is the source of Israeli atrocities and suppress the historic shifts in the Palestinian resistance, such as the implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas. The people of Gaza cry out for better."

The American Clinic To Rehabilitate The Arab People
The infirm Doctor: Son, give me a hand so that I could examine you and treat you!

(By Hamid Najib, Al-Ittihad)

Forget Vietnam, forget Korea. The best analogy for America's misadventure in Iraq is the Opium War of the 19th century, when a small British naval force (read Iraqi insurgents) humiliated the Middle Kingdom (read United States). And like China's defeat in the Opium War, the disaster in Iraq could lead the US into decline

An Interesting Perspective
By Dmitry Shlapentokh
Asia Times

"......Similarly to the Chinese of that era, most Americans believe that the US is the most efficient society and has the best of everything: economy, education, health service and military. This

new "Middle Kingdom" is the best of all possible societies, surrounded by "barbarian" Europeans, who have a bastardized, low-quality version of US culture and need to work hard to achieve the US level of perfection.

According to this view, Orientals such as the Chinese are truly barbarians, for they do not have democracy or human rights, use slave labor, and are totally unconcerned with "multiculturalism" and "sexism". Nothing good could come from this society, and if "barbarians" produce better and cheaper goods than do residents of the "Middle Kingdom", it is only because of "unfair practices".....

The army is part of US society, and has followed the same model of existence. The Iraq war soon revealed that there is nothing more important than to have numerous soldiers on the ground and a constant stream of willing recruits. Recruits should join the army not because they have no other option - as is the case with the majority of present-day soldiers - but because it is one of the best-paid jobs with the most enviable benefits.

Yet even the petty brokers on Wall Street make far more money than soldiers on the battlefield, who are sometimes even compelled to buy their own body armor. At the same time, trillions of dollars are spent on expensive military gadgets that are absolutely useless in the present war but enrich the companies that produce them.

These arrangements could be compared to the actions of the Dowager Empress Cixi, who requested money supposedly for building a Chinese navy but actually spent it on a marble pleasure boat for herself and her court. The Qing state had an extremely inefficient military machinery that was intimately connected with the entire arrangements of the state, a fact that explains why a few British vessels defeated what seemed to be a huge empire with enormous resources. And the same model can also explain why a few guerrillas are defeating what seems to be the biggest military machine in the world......

A victory in Iraq would secure US access to oil and, even more important, reaffirm its position as the global imperial power. Defeat would be similar to the Qing defeat in the Opium War. Far from being a minor episode, it became a crucial turning point in modern China's history, leading to the speedy decline of the Chinese state. The same could be expected from America's geopolitical default, or at least from a strong "correction" of the United States' geopolitical values, which would be immediately be taken into account from Tehran to Beijing......"

Continue

By W Joseph Stroupe
Asia Times

"The Bush administration's latest policy on Iraq aims to unite the country's fractious sectarian entities. They might well unite, but it will more likely be against the US. In a similar vein, any attack aimed at Iran to "restore regional balance" will probably tilt the balance further towards Tehran"

Continue

By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times

"It's all over the Iranian press: President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, self-described "street cleaner of the people", is in deep political trouble at home, subjected to crossfire from conservatives and reformers alike. All the more ironic considering the biblical tsunami of Washington spin portraying Ahmadinejad as the newest "new Hitler" (Saddam Hussein, after all, fell victim to a lynch mob)......

Well, he was consolidating what the White House already regards as the new "axis of evil" - the strategic relationship between Iran and Venezuela, sealed last September during Ahmadinejad's first visit to Caracas, right inside what the US historically considered its "back yard".....

In the lightning-quick Latin America tour that took him to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, meeting re-elected leftist stalwart Hugo Chavez, the recently elected former guerrillero Daniel Ortega, and US-educated economist Rafael Correa, the key Ahmadinejad stop was in Caracas. A joint Iran-Venezuela US$2 billion fund for myriad projects will also benefit other friendly developing countries in Latin America and Africa that, in Chavez' words, "are making efforts to liberate themselves from the imperialist yoke"......

To boost Washington's ire to stratospheric levels, Chavez once again stressed that the Bolivarian and the Islamic revolutions were "sisters" - a link impeccably translated by the official exchange of gifts: Ahmadinejad received a Persian translation of a book on Simon Bolivar, the great South American liberator, while Chavez received a Spanish translation of a book on ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution......

Khamenei and his supporters - the clerics' faction - believe that Ahmadinejad's explosive tirades have been used as firepower by the US to persuade the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran. In addition, Ahmadinejad's faction - via his mentor Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi - lost ground in last month's election to the Council of Experts, the only body that can hold the Supreme Leader to account. Victory went to perennial Machiavellian Hashemi Rafsanjani - who leads a moderate, semi-secular faction hostile to Ahmadinejad's......

Keeping Ahmadinejad on a leash will be a crucial part of the nationalist theocracy's strategy of doing everything in its power not to incur further US wrath - as the Bush administration escalates its formidable array of acts of provocation. Ahmadinejad is now seen as too much of a loose cannon to be left to his own devices - especially when 45 centuries of accumulated Persian diplomacy can be effectively deployed.

Iran enjoys good political relations with the majority of countries around the world - especially in the South. The glaring exceptions are the US and Israel. Iran is not a backward, repressive regime like Saudi Arabia. The talk in Tehran is that the Supreme Leader and professional diplomats have concluded that the best course of action for Iran is to ride the tempest of provocations - sanctions, illegal raids on consulates, US intelligence infiltrating sensitive Khuzestan province, encirclement by nuclear-equipped aircraft carriers, propaganda over Iranian "networks" killing Americans in Iraq - while advancing Iran's interests in Lebanon, Central Asia, China, Russia and South America.

Washington might need to start manufacturing another "new Hitler".

By Steve Bell, The Guardian
(Bush delivered some of his bleakest remarks on the crisis, saying the Maliki government had "fumbled" the execution of Saddam Hussein)

"Gaza - PA Prime Minister Ismail Haneyya has warned Wednesday that the American and Israeli governments were planning to sow diverseness and civil war in the Palestinian arena with the aim to abort the entire Palestinian national project and national unity.

In a speech he delivered in Gaza city before Palestinian dignitaries and heads of clans in Gaza Strip, the premier revealed that the American-Israeli scheme was based on three pillars, first, to disallow the formation of Palestinian national unity government.

Second, he added, is to ignite national divisiveness and a civil war in the Palestinian arena that, according to him, was obvious during the latest visit of the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to the region.

The third pillar of the conspiracy, Haneyya explained, was to hit the entire Palestinian national project, elaborating, "That is why they (Israeli and American governments) were promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state with temporary borders in order to make the apartheid wall that Israel constructed in the West Bank as permanent borders in the future".

But he asserted that his government and Hamas Movement will not allow such a scheme to pass as they were very much concerned with preserving Palestinian national unity and national project.

"Our martyrs have entrusted the entire Palestinian people not to deviate from the right path and not to lose the compass along that path", Haneyya underlined, adding that the Palestinian people are naturally peace-loving people that know not the culture of hatred.

However, he underscored, a battle was forced on the Palestinian people against "an enemy that occupied their lands and denied them their legal rights".

In conclusion, the prime minister reaffirmed his government's commitment to forming a PA national unity government based on Palestinian agenda and in harmony with the Palestinian national interests."

Top Iraqi condemns US over Iran

One of Iraq's most powerful Shia politicians has condemned the arrest of Iranians by US forces in Iraq as an attack on the country's sovereignty.

"The comments by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, made in a BBC interview, are seen as the strongest expression yet of Iraq's concern about the US approach to Iran.

They follow two recent US raids in which Iranians were arrested.

The remarks are interesting as Mr Hakim is seen as close to President Bush, says the BBC's Andrew North in Baghdad.

Mr Hakim also has close links to Iran, after many years in exile there.

Late last year, US troops descended on Mr Hakim's residential compound in Baghdad and detained two Iranian officials.

They were later released, but last week, five more were detained at the Iranian liaison office in Irbil. They are still being held......

"Regardless of the Iranian position we consider these actions as incorrect," Mr Hakim said.

"They represent a kind of attack on Iraq's sovereignty and we hope such things are not repeated." ......"

By Mike Whitney

"Condoleezza Rice has used her trip through the Middle East to announce her intention to “accelerate the road map and move to the establishment of a Palestinian state”. (NY Times) She plans to convene a summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert so that “informal talks” can be held on the main issues related to a permanent settlement.

Why? Why this sudden interest on Rice’s part in Palestinian statehood?

As Rice said on Monday, “Before we say this is going to end in frustration, let’s be glad that after 6 years that the parties want to engage in an informal set of discussions about the future between them.”

“Be glad”?!?

The administration has shown no interest in resuming peace talks for 6 years, the entire length of the Bush presidency. The only reason Rice is calling for negotiations now is because the US needs the support of the regional (Sunni) allies for the Bush’s new strategy to quell the violence in Baghdad. That’s why Rice met with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the other Gulf states, to garner their support for the “New Way Forward”. (aka: “the surge”)

The administration has no interest in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It’s a cynical attempt to manipulate Arab public opinion. The administration helped to enforce the Israeli boycott of food, water and medical supplies to Gaza, and they have stopped other donor-states from providing humanitarian relief. They refused to endorse the UN resolutions which condemned the Israeli bombing of the main power station in Gaza (which cut off electrical power to over 1 million Palestinians), or the targeted assassinations which repeatedly kill innocent bystanders, or the wanton murder of 18 members of the same family who were asleep in their home in Beit Hanoun.

The administration has also refused to accept the results of the Palestinian elections--which overwhelmingly supported the new Hamas parliament--even though Bush has repeatedly stated that his primary goal is to bring “democracy” to the Middle East. Instead, Bush has given $18 million to training militants in Jordan (who are members of the rival Palestinian group, Fatah) so they can return to the occupied territories and initiate hostilities against the elected Hamas government. This is being conducted under the supervision of the US intelligence agencies and with the complete knowledge and cooperation of Israeli-puppet, Mahmoud Abbas.

The message is clear: If elections do not produce the results that please Washington and Tel Aviv; expect to face “regime change” through force.

While Palestinian children were being shot in the head by Israeli snipers in Gaza, Rice was crowing about “birth pangs” for “New Middle East”. And, when an entire family was blown to bits while picnicking on a beach in Gaza, Rice was proclaiming Israel’s “right to defend itself”.

And, now she wants peace?

Rice is no friend of the Palestinians nor is anyone in the Bush administration. It would be better to starve to death in the dark than to accept the peace of oppressors."

"The Israel Defense Forces has raised objections to U.S. plans to equip Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's forces with body armor and other battle gear, an Israeli security source and European diplomats said on Wednesday.

An $86 million U.S. program to strengthen Abbas's presidential guard will include funding for four-wheel-drive vehicles, new uniforms and military training, diplomats briefed on the program said.

"The IDF's objections in this case center on equipment, such as body armor, that is liable to wind up in the wrong hands and be used for terrorism," an Israeli security source said.

A U.S. diplomat based in the region said the United States would ensure the equipment does not end up with Fatah militants. "It's going to be done in a way that's monitored," he said.

Other diplomats said U.S. and Israeli political leaders were putting pressure on the army to set aside their reservations. The Israeli security source said the Defense Ministry would make the final decision."

DoD Identifies Army Casualties

"The Department of Defense announced today the death of four soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Jan 15 in Mosul, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle during combat operations. The soldiers were assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Bliss, Texas.

Killed were:

2nd Lt. Mark J. Daily, 23, of Irvine, Calif.

Sgt. Ian C. Anderson, 22, of Prairie Village, Kan.

Sgt. John E. Cooper, 29, of Ewing, Ky.

Spc. Matthew T. Grimm, 21, of Wisconsin Rapids, Wis."

The New U.S. Plan In Iraq

What's In It For Bush?

An Interesting Viewpoint
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"Initially, the Bush Regime denied that Bush’s escalation speech on January 10 signaled that the Regime intends to attack Iran. Now a number of Regime officials have made it clear that Iran, not Iraq, is the focus of the Regime’s war planning. Robert Gates, the new Defense Secretary and member of the Iraq Study Group, was supposedly brought into the Pentagon to de-escalate the war. Gates now says that Iran is the target of US military moves in the Persian Gulf.

Suddenly the media is full of Bush Regime propagandistic assertions designed to make the American public believe that Iran is the enemy that is fighting against our troops in Iraq. To facilitate this deception, the Bush Regime staged a propaganda event by invading an Iranian government liaison office in Northern Iraq, kidnapping the Iranian officials and declaring them to be involved in plans to kill US troops.

The Bush Regime’s latest big lie is that the US is not winning in Iraq because of Iran. “The Iranians are acting in a very negative way,” alleges the “moderate” Gates. Iraq, the target for the escalation in US troop levels, has dimmed in importance. In the few days since Bush’s “surge” speech, Bush, Cheney, Gates, Rice, and national security advisor Hadley have said far more about Iran than about Iraq. In 2003, the same technique was used by the Bush Regime to shift the public’s attention from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein. The technique succeeded to the extent that even today a significant percentage of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Clearly, the Bush Regime expects that it can again deceive the American public. There is no doubt that Iran will be attacked. The Israeli government and the neoconservatives have been demanding it.

The question is: why is Bush, who is confronted with failure in Iraq, willing to compound his problems by attacking a more powerful Muslim state that the US has no prospect of being able to occupy?

A former member of the National Security Council gave me a possible answer. Bush can bury his defeat in Iraq with a “victory” in Iran.

Here is the victory scenario: Bush and Cheney will claim that their air attack on Iran succeeded in destroying Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. The victory claimed by the Bush Regime and the propagandistic US media will “make America safe from nuclear attack.” This will restore Bush’s popularity and move the US back to a 50-50 political split in time for Karl Rove to steal the 2008 election with the fraudulent electronic voting machines built and programmed by Republican operatives.

The former national security official believes that Bush will be able to claim victory over Iran, because Iran will avoid responding militarily. Iran will not use its Russian missiles to sink our aircraft carriers, to shut down oil facilities throughout the Middle East, or to destroy US headquarters in the “green zone” in Baghdad. Instead, Iran will adopt the posture of another Muslim victim of US/Israeli aggression and let the anger seep throughout the Muslim world until no pro-US government is safe in the Middle East.

Bush needs a short-run victory, and Iran will let him have it in order to gain the long-run victory.

The consequences for the US, Israel, and the US puppet regimes in the Middle East will be catastrophic, but they will not occur in the short-run.

This explanation solves the dilemma of why Bush would get deeper into the quagmire for the sake of the Israel Lobby. A US attack on Iran allows Bush both to satisfy the powerful Israel Lobby and to claim to have destroyed Iran’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

Some patriotic Americans, who believe it is still possible to save America from war and a police state, see cause for hope in the upcoming trial of “Scooter” Libby, the former chief operative of VP Cheney. Libby is accused of lying about his role in leaking a covert CIA agent’s name to the press in an effort to discredit damaging evidence that Bush had lied about Iraq possessing WMD. The patriots believe that Libby’s trial will damage the Bush Regime and, thereby, reduce the Regime’s danger to freedom and democracy in America.

At this delicate point in time, the Bush Regime would not allow the Libby trial to go forward unless the Regime had arranged with the media shills it uses to control the explanation of the news (with insider leaks) to testify in a manner that lets Libby off the hook. If Libby is exonerated, expect Cheney and the neocon nazis to attack Joe Wilson as a terrorist sympathizer who tried to discredit Bush’s invasion of Iraq and war on terror. The attack on Wilson will lead into an all-out-assault on the antiwar movement.

If the Regime overcomes its defeat in Iraq with a “victory” in Iran, “you are with us or against us” will take on new life, and we will find out who are those intended for the Halliburton-built detention camps constructed in the US at great cost with our tax dollars."

It is now confirmed that what was posted here a couple of days ago was true. See:
Mahmoud Abbas calls off his appointments in Damascus with Syrian ruler Assad and Hamas leader Meshaal after a severe scolding by Rice.

At that time expectations were that an agreement on a unity government was imminent, that behind the scenes negotiations were making a great deal of progress and that Abbas would finalize an agreement with Khalid Mash'al in Damascus, this week.

Of course, that was before the midwife of death scolded him and told him to not even think of it or even think of going to Damascus. Being the puppet and spineless stooge that he is, he obeyed. Now Al-Jazeera has confirmed that there will be no negotiations with Mash'al, assuming Abbas even goes to Damascus. In addition, in order to inflame the internal Palestinian situation according to the witch's plan, Abbas asserted that he is sticking to early elections. See this in Al-Jazeera:

فشل جهود الوساطة لعقد لقاء بين عباس ومشعل بدمشق.

On another front, which involves the arming of the thugs of Abbas at the tune of $86 millions by Condoleezza. When the news came out and was persistent, Abbas originally denied it. He told the witch to keep the news quiet in order not to embarrass him. But the witch wants the news in the open to strengthen the axis of puppets in the region. Next Abbas said that this "aid" was part of the help from the "Quartet!" When that did not fly, he now says that he would accept military aid from anyone (!) to replace arms lost by his puppet forces in recent clashes!

Unbelievably brazen I should say. And there are Palestinians who still support this traitor? I am almost despairing about the Palestinian situation. I had higher hopes and expectations, but money buys everything, even Palestinians.

Tony Sayegh

By Robert Scheer

"Chuck Hagel for president! If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn’t the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can’t or won’t take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have.

Sen. Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who learned the crucial lessons of that Democrat-launched debacle of post-colonial imperialism. Even more important, he has the courage to challenge a president from his own party who so clearly didn’t.

“The speech given last night [Jan. 10] by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam,” Hagel said. “We are projecting ourselves further and deeper into a situation that we cannot win militarily.

“To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives to be put in the middle of a civil war is wrong. It’s, first of all, in my opinion, morally wrong. It’s tactically, strategically, militarily wrong,” he added......

Ever since President Ronald Reagan painted foreign policy as a simplistic war of good versus evil, the Republican Party has been in the thrall of neocon adventurers. Yet, the national emergence of Hagel reminds us that, two decades earlier, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a war hero and a Republican, who was the only president to clearly challenge the simplistic and jingoistic militarism that most Democrats embraced during the Cold War. It was Eisenhower, in fact, who refused to send troops to Vietnam, and his Democratic successors who opened the gates of war.

True conservatives, going back to George Washington, have always been wary of the “foreign entanglements” that our first general and president warned against in his farewell address. And it is in that spirit, recognizing the limits to U.S. military power, that Hagel spoke this past Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”....."

A Great Article (Arabic)

سامي لطيف

"قلت للمرجع الإسلامي الكبير آية الله العظمي محمد حسين فضل الله لماذا لا تطلبون من المراجع الدينية والسياسية لإخواننا الشيعة فــــي العراق، ان يقوموا بتحديد جدول زمني لانسحاب قوات الاحتلال الأمريكي، فان في ذلك إثبـــــاتا دامغا لموقفهم الذي تثار بشأنه التساؤلات من الاحــــتلال، كما ان فيه تطمينا لإخوانهم المقـــاومين ونزعـــا لإحدي فتائل الصراع المذهبي الذي بدأ ظلامه يلف العراق.
.......

من هنا اعتقد اننا في معرض تناولنا للأزمة المترتبة علي الاحتلال الأمريكي للعراق، وما تفرع عنها من كوارث وأزمات، ينبغي في الشق المتعلق بالعلاقة مع إيران وبحث الدور الإيراني في العراق، أن نتوقف عند ظاهرة التوافق علي تأييد عملية الاغتيال الهمجي المسمي إعداماً للرئيس الشهيد صدام حسين، بين كل من المراجع الدينية والقيادات السياسية الإيرانية والإدارة الأمريكية صاحبة قرار الإعدام، وأيضا المسؤولين الصهاينة، هذا التوافق الملفت علي المحاكمة المهزلة، ثم علي الإعدام يحفزنا إلي التساؤل المحق حول طبيعة الاستراتيجية الإيرانية في العراق، لا بل للتساؤل: كيف يفهم الإيرانيون الاستراتيجية؟
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إيران تعمل علي إطالة عمر الاحتلال الأمريكي للعراق بعدم دعمها للمقاومة ضده، والرموز الدينية المحسوبة علي الخط الصفوي ضمن الشيعة مثل آية الله السيستاني، تسرّع لمهادنة الاحتلال وتضمن التعامل مع الاحتلال ومنتجاته وتفريخاته الحزبية وازلامه في سلطة عميلة له وتخضع لسياساته.
ہ إيران تسعي إلي استبعاد وتقزيم وتهميش السنة في العراق، فهل يعبر ذلك كله عن مصالح إيران الاستراتيجية وهل يخدمها؟
إذا كان الأمر كذلك فكيف تفهم إيران الاستراتيجية؟
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تعالوا نبحث عن احد ما يقول لنا ماذا يعني الإمام بذلك، فأمريكا هي التي تسمي من يقاومونها في العراق بالإرهابيين، وأمريكا هي التي تتهم البعثيين السابقين في العراق بأنهم رأس الحربة في قوات المقاومة العراقية ضدها مع تنظيم القاعدة، أي ان إيران وبوضوح تام تتفق مع أمريكا ضد المقاومة العراقية وضد المقاومين للاحتلال في العراق، وان كانت هي تدعو أمريكا للرحيل، وهذان مفهومان متناقضان يعنيان شيئا واحداً في الاستراتيجية أو في الفهم الاستراتيجي، وهو ان إيران لا تريد نفوذاً امريكياً في العراق، لأنها تريد نفوذها هي، ولا تريد قرارا أمريكيا في العراق لأنها تريد أن يظل القرار لها وحدها.
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فالإسرائيليون لا ينقصهم الوضوح ولا تعوزهم الصراحة في تحديد أهدافهم وخطتهم الاستراتيجية في العراق، ولذلك فان انسجام الدور الإيراني مع تلك الأهداف وتناغم السياسات الإيرانية مع تلك الخطة يثيران عندنا من التوجس بقدر ما يثيران من الحنق، ويبدو ان أحدا في طهران قد أضاع البوصلة منذ فترة ليست بالقصيرة، فإيران لا تفعل في العراق سوي الخطة الاستراتيجية الإسرائيلية وسياساتها هي خدمات مجانية للاحتلال الأمريكي ولولاها لما تحمل البقاء ثلاثة اشهر وليس ثلاث سنوات.
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من حقنا إذن أن نسأل الإيرانيين بمنتهي القوة: لماذا يساعدون الإسرائيليين والأمريكيين ضد الأمة العربية وضد المسلمين؟
إننا دعاة وحدة عربية، ودعاة وحدة إسلامية، ونحن لا ننكر اننا قد استبد بنا الفرح لتفجر الثورة الإسلامية في إيران ضد الشاه، واننا قدرنا كثيرا وقفة الإمام الخميني التاريخية ضد أمريكا وضد الصهيونية والإجراءات التي اتخذتها الثورة غداة قيامها لصالح القضية العربية والإسلامية الأولي قضية فلسطين، ونحن كنا كعرب وكمسلمين ضد النظام الرسمي العربي في عدائه لإيران وفي انحيازه للغرب ضدها علي كل صعيد، بل إننا كنا قد عارضنا صدام حسين في حربه ضد إيران منذ بدايتها، لأننا علمنا ان هذه الحرب خدمة غير مباشرة لأعدائنا جميعا نحن والإيرانيين، وفي مقدمة هؤلاء الأعداء الكيان الصهيوني نفسه، عارضنا الرئيس صدام في حربه علي إيران واعتبرناها اضعافا غير مبرر لمنظومة الأمن القومي ـ الإسلامي وشذوذا عن خط استنهاض الأمة في مواجهة الصهيونية والإمبريالية الأمريكية، وعارضنا تلك الحرب منذ بدايتها لأننا شعرنا اننا كلنا بسببها خاسرون، وهي حرب تحتاج منا ومن الإيرانيين إلي إعادة قراءة لأسبابها ونتائجها كي لا تتكرر الكارثة وكي نجتهد معاً لمعالجة الأخطاء قبل استفحالها، حيث ان مؤشرات مستجدة علي وقوع مثل هذه الأخطاء تملأ الواقع السياسي اليومي الراهن.
ولعل لوقفتنا المعارضة لحرب صدام ضد إيران المنطلق ذاته الذي يحفزنا اليوم لمعارضة ما نراه تجاوزاً ايرانياً لمصالح الأمة العربية والمصالح الإسلامية المشتركة، كنا نرجو أن تراعيها طهران وتحرص عليها كما نحرص.
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ترتكب إيران خطيئة كبري بحق الأمتين العربية والإسلامية، ومن حقنا أن نطالبها بمراجعة سريعة بل وفورية لاستراتيجيتها في العراق، إن لم نطالبها بتعديل فهمها الخاص بالاستراتيجية فكل شيء واضح، بل وفي غاية الوضوح، وفي إيران ـ نحن نثق تماما ـ قوي ورموز عاقلة رشيدة حكيمة لديها الرغبة ونتمني أن تكون لديها القدرة علي تصحيح الأخطاء والتطهر من الخطايا.
علي إيران أن تدرك اننا قد نبدو ضعفاء مشتتين الآن كعرب، إلا أن عوامل النهوض فينا قوميا وإسلاميا لما تزل تقوي، وعوامل الضعف التي مردها النظام الرسمي العربي ليست أبدية ولا قاهرة.
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وعلي إيران أن تدرك ان الأمة العربية هي رصيدها التاريخي والشرعي، وانها إذا كانت اليوم مجزأة وتنهشها عوامل ضعــــف وتناقضات داخلية، فان إيران ذاتها لا تخلو من عوامل ضعف وتناقضات داخلية بدورها، ويوم تتعرض إيران ـ لا سمح الله ـ لضربة إسرائيلــــية أو غربية فان زخمها الأول وشارعها الأكبر هو الشارع العربي، الذي تستهين به الآن ولا تحسب له حساباً عبر سعيها الدؤوب مع العناصر العميلة لتفتيت العراق وإنهائه كدولة قوية مستقرة.
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The question is:

Do you believe that Iran is involved in the security deterioration in Iraq?

With over 1,500 responding so far, here are the responses:

Yes...............71%

No................29%

The New Iraqi Flag
By Nasser Jaafari

By Tony Sayegh

The price of crude oil could be one of the indicators as to the timing of the expansion of the war and an attack on Iran. As I write this, the price has dropped below $51 per barrel. People had expected that as evidence accumulates that an attack on Iran could be imminent, the price would rise instead. What gives? Enter Saudi Arabia and Dick Cheney.

Dick Cheney with his oil background was responsible for the oil price increase for the past year and a half. One factor was the increased demand to fill the strategic reserves in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China to capacity. Now these reserves are full to ensure adequate oil supplies after the loss of Iranian production. Dick Cheney knew that the biggest problem he would face when he expands the war is the U.S. taxpayer who is tapped out. However, due to the price increase the revenues of Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Arab puppets increased tremendously. Some of that windfall will finance the war on Iran. You can look at it this way: The U.S. taxpayer is still paying for it, but at the pump. That money is now sitting in Saudi banks waiting for Dick Cheney to use to finance the war on Iran.

A few days ago Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad called for OPEC to cut production to support falling prices; today Saudi Arabia said no. Actually Cheney’s plan is for Saudi Arabia to max out its production and to break the oil price, with a target price around $30 per barrel. This would make Americans happy with lower gasoline and heating oil prices, but more importantly it would reduce the income to Iran and Venezuela.

If the U.S., through the deployment of Patriot missiles and the U.S. Navy, can protect the Saudi oil facilities and keep the Strait of Hormuz open, oil prices instead of zooming to $200 a barrel, might fall to $30. As they say expect the unexpected.

A Great Speech By Bill Moyers, Don't Miss It!

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"The veteran broadcast journalist Bill Moyers spoke on Friday before 3,500 at the opening of the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. He announced his return to the airwaves and outlined his vision of media reform. "As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people."

Thirty five hundred activists, journalists and concerned citizens gathered in Memphis, Tennessee this weekend for the third National Conference on Media Reform. Speakers called for the preservation of a free and open Internet, the end of media consolidation and a more democratic and diverse media system.
Among those who spoke were Helen Thomas, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Phil Donahue and Jane Fonda, to name a few.

But it was veteran journalist Bill Moyers who opened the conference on Friday with a stirring address. Today we spend the hour playing his remarks. A longtime journalist, Bill Moyers has produced many groundbreaking series on public television over the years. He is the winner of more than 30 Emmy Awards and the author three best-selling books."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Dwayne Powell

عبد الباري عطوان

16/01/2007

تلتقي السيدة كوندوليزا رايس وزيرة الخارجية الامريكية اليوم في الكويت وزراء خارجية ثماني" دول عربية، هي دول الخليج الست علاوة علي مصر والاردن، لتأمين الدعم العربي لخطة الرئيس الامريكي جورج بوش الجديدة في العراق، وخاصة الشق المتعلق منها بالتصدي للنفوذين الايراني والسوري، والاستعداد للمواجهة الاكبر ضد طهران.
جولة السيدة رايس في المنطقة قد تكون الاخطر، لان ادارة الرئيس بوش تحاول في العامين المتبقيين من رئاستها انقاذ ماء وجهها، وتحقيق انتصار ما في العراق تستند اليه لشن حربها المقبلة ضد ايران لتدمير برامجها النووية.
فالعد التنازلي للهجوم علي ايران قد بدأ، والخطوات العملية لتنفيذه تسير علي قدم وساق، ومن غير المستبعد ان تبدأ اسرائيل بشن غارات جوية بأسلحة نووية تكتيكية، ثم تبادر واشنطن للدفاع عنها في حال تعرضها لأي رد ايراني انتقامي. فالبوارج الحربية الامريكية تتدفق الي مياه الخليج الدافئة، واسعار الذهب في ارتفاع، واسعار اسهم بورصات دول الخليج في انهيار متواصل، وتكفي الاشارة الي ان اسهم البورصة السعودية خسرت اكثر من خمسين في المئة من قيمتها في العام الماضي، وهذه مؤشرات علي ان الحرب باتت شبه حتمية .
السيدة رايس ضمنت موافقة الحكومة المصرية علي استراتيجية بوش الجديدة، وما التحفظات التي ابداها وزير خارجيتها السيد احمد ابو الغيط في المؤتمر الصحافي الذي عقده امس في ختام المباحثات الا من قبيل ذر الرماد في العيون. لان مثل هذه التحفظات وابرزها ادخال تعديلات علي الدستور العراقي تلبي مطالب السنة العرب في دخول العملية السلمية، وانهاء العنف الطائفي، وحل الميليشيات، وردت في خطاب بوش.
ولا نعتقد ان دول الخليج والاردن ستجرؤ علي معارضة الاستراتيجية الامريكية، وستجد في موافقة الدولة العربية الاكبر الغطاء الذي تريده لتمويل اي تحرك امريكي ضد ايران في العراق او في ايران نفسها، وفتح قواعدها العسكرية ومياهها الاقليمية لانطلاق القوات والقاذفات والغواصات نحو اهدافها في العمقين الايراني والعراقي.
فلم يكن من قبيل الصدفة ان تبدأ السيدة رايس جولتها بزيارة فلسطين المحتلة، ولقاء السيد محمود عباس رئيس السلطة وايهود اولمرت رئيس وزراء الدولة العبرية، والاعلان عن قمة ثلاثية بين الرجلين برعايتها في الايام القليلة المقبلة لإحياء عملية السلام واستئناف المفاوضات لتطبيق خارطة الطريق والوصول الي الدولة الفلسطينية المستقلة مثلما اعلنت في القاهرة.
فهذا التحرك الامريكي جاء لارضاء الدول الثماني التي باتت تشكل الاساس في تحالف المعتدلين الجديد الذي تعمل الادارة الامريكية علي تأسيسه ليكون نواة حلف بغداد الجديد في المنطقة، فقد طالب وزراء خارجية هذه الدول السيدة رايس في اجتماعهم الاول معها في القاهرة ان تفعل شيئاً علي صعيد ملف القضية الفلسطينية، لانه سيكون من الصعب عليهم، امام شعوبهم، مساندة حرب امريكية جديدة ضد ايران والدولة العبرية تتمتع بضوء اخضر امريكي، لقتل ما شاءت من الفلسطينيين، وتوسيع المستوطنات، وبناء السور العنصري.
اللافت ان السيد عباس يتصرف كما لو انه يتزعم حزب الاغلبية في فلسطين، او كما لو انه ما زال في تونس او حتي الفاكهاني، يعرض فتح قنوات تفاوض خلفية، ويقبل مقترحات امريكية واخري مصرية، وينسي ان الظروف تغيرت، وان هناك حكومة منتخبة، وفصيلا فلسطينيا آخر يملك اغلبية المقاعد في المجلس التشريعي، ويحظي بمساندة فصائل اخري تتمتع بنصيب لا بأس به من كعكة الرأي العام الفلسطيني داخل الارض المحتلة وخارجها.
ايهود اولمرت حرص علي اصطحاب وزيرة خارجيته تسيبي ليفني ووزير دفاعه، وعدد من الوزراء في حكومته، اثناء مباحثاته مع السيدة رايس، بينما لم نشاهد وزيرا فلسطينيا واحدا في صحبة السيد عباس، ولا حتي شخصية فلسطينية مستقلة، وانما مدير مكتبه وبعض الوزراء السابقين الذين خسروا الانتخابات الاخيرة، مع ان الطبخة التي تطبخها السيدة رايس هي الاخطر من نوعها، وستؤثر نتائجها، اذا ما نجحت، علي مستقبل الشعب الفلسطيني بأسره.
ويصعب علينا ان نفهم ادمان السيد عباس علي القنوات التفاوضية السرية الخلفية، والعمل في الظلام، وتوسل الاسرائيليين للقبول بها، والامريكان لاعتمادها، فلماذا لا يتحرك في العلن، وهو الذي لا يتورع عن زيارة اولمرت في بيته ومعانقته وامتداح مهارة زوجته في اعداد الطعام؟
ثم من فوض الرئيس عباس واعضاء مكتبه للتفاوض في السر او في العلن، وأعطاه صلاحيات اختيار فريق المفاوضين، فهل رجع الي المجلس التشريعي او المجلس الوطني وأخذ موافقتهما، وهل استفتي الفصائل الفلسطينية والكتل النيابية قبل الموافقة علي مقترحات رايس، وحضور القمة الثلاثية، واستئناف المفاوضات؟
ما تعرضه السيدة رايس، وتريد التوصل اليه عبر المفاوضات لاحقا، هو قيام دولة فلسطينية بحدود مؤقتة، اي اعادة احياء الحكم الذاتي وتغيير اسمه فقط، بحيث يتحول الي دولة، بينما تبقي المستوطنات وتتوسع، وتبقي حواجز الإذلال، واكثر من عشرة آلاف اسير في السجون الاسرائيلية.
دول محور المعتدلين التي ستجتمع بوزراء خارجيتها السيدة رايس اليوم تقف علي ابواب كارثة استراتيجية اخري، بتأييدها الاعمي لاستراتيجية بوش الجديدة، تماما مثل كارثة مساندتها للاستراتيجية الامريكية القديمة التي اطاحت بالنظام العراقي، ودمرت العراق ومزقته وسلمته لقمة سائغة للنفوذ الايراني الذي تعمل حاليا لوضع حد له.
تكاليف مساندة الاستراتيجية الامريكية القديمة الفاشلة كانت باهظة جدا، ولكن مساندة الاستراتيجية الجديدة، وما تخطط له من مواجهات عسكرية قد تتضمن حروبا نووية، ستــــكون مضاعفة، لان هـــذه الدول هي التي ستتضرر، خاصة اذا وجدت نفسها في حلف جــديد جنــبا الي جنب مع الدولة العبرية.
الغالبية الساحقة من الحكومات الغربية، ومعظم اعضاء الكونغرس، بمن فيهم الجمهوريون، توقعوا فشل استراتيجية الرئيس بوش، واعتبروها وصفه للدمار، وطالبوه بالاعتراف بالهزيمة في العراق، الا الزعماء العرب، والمعتدلين منهم خاصة، فقد كان رأيهم غير ذلك، وها هم يتسابقون لفرش السجاد الاحمر للسيدة رايس، وتقبيل يديها، والبصم علي مطالبها، وهذا ما يفسر انهيار الأمة العربية، وصعود الامم الاخري، وخاصة الأمة الايرانية.
صحافية مصرية شابة لخصت احوال قيادة بلادها، والعرب جميعا، بسؤال وجهته الي السيد ابو الغيط والسيدة رايس في المؤتمر الصحافي نفسه، عندما قالت: لماذا لا يستجيب الرئيس بوش لطلبات الرئيس مبارك وآخرها بعدم اعدام صدام حسين يوم العيد، بينما لا يتردد الرئيس المصري بقبول كل مطالب الرئيس الامريكي؟ السؤال لا يحتاج الي اجابة."

By The Associated Press

"Turkey and Israel have tentatively agreed on building a network of pipelines to ship oil, natural gas and water from Turkey to Israel,
the The Turkish Energy Ministry said Tuesday.

Under the project, a pipeline already carrying Russian natural gas to Turkey will be extended to deliver supplies to Israel, the ministry said. The deal was reached earlier this month during a visit to Israel by Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, the ministry said.

It was not clear when the deal would be finalized or when construction would begin.

Turkey and Russia have agreed to hold talks on extending a pipeline from the Black Sea port of Samsun to Turkey's Ceyhan oil terminal on the Mediterranean and then to Israel, the ministry said.

The oil shipments to Israel would be delivered through an extension of either an existing Iraqi oil pipeline to Ceyhan or one that Turkey is planning to build from Samsun to Ceyhan to export Caspian oil, the ministry said.

Turkey would also build a new fresh water pipeline to carry Turkish water from the Mediterranean region to Israel.

Turkey and Israel have been discussing fresh water supplies to Israel for several years. However, Turkish plans to transfer oil and gas outside Turkey is a sign of the country's desire to become a regional energy hub for routes bypassing Iran.

Turkey also plans to transfer natural gas to Lebanon, but it was not clear whether those shipments would be made through the same pipeline network that would supply Israel."

"U.S. Navy nuclear submarines maintaining vigil off the coast of Iran indicate that the Pentagon’s military plans include not only control over navigation in the Persian Gulf but also strikes against Iranian targets, a former commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Eduard Baltin has told the Interfax news agency.

“The presence of U.S. nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf region means that the Pentagon has not abandoned plans for surprise strikes against nuclear targets in Iran. With this aim a group of multi-purpose submarines ready to accomplish the task is located in the area,” Admiral Baltin said.

He made the comments after reports that a U.S. submarine collided with a Japanese tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.

“American patience is not unlimited,” he said. “The submarine commanders go up to the periscope depth and forget about navigation rules and safety measures,” the admiral said.

Currently there is a group of up to four submarines in the Persian Gulf area, he said. So far they only control navigation in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and in the Arabian Sea, he said. They might receive different orders in future: to block off the Gulf of Oman, that is the Iranian coast, and, if need be, launch missile strikes against
ground targets in Iran, he said."

The Witch Is Lining Up All The Stooges:
The Saudi Royals Will Bankroll The Attack On Iran.

USS Stennis

"A second U.S. aircraft carrier will arrive in the Middle East in about a month, a U.S. Navy official said Tuesday, the first time since the U.S.-led Iraq invasion in 2003 that the United States will have two carrier battle groups in the region.

The increase in U.S. forces is a show of strength by Washington in the face of Iran's growing regional assertiveness and a perception among U.S. adversaries that the United States is vulnerable in Iraq, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday.

The USS John C. Stennis is scheduled to sail Tuesday from its homeport of Bremerton, Washington. The Nimitz-class carrier, with approximately 3,200 sailors, will stop off in San Diego to pick an air wing of more than 80 planes, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet fighter-bomber

After a monthlong voyage across the Pacific and Indian oceans, the Stennis will join the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is already tasked to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, based in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, said Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the Fifth Fleet.

Once in Middle East waters, the second aircraft carrier will significantly boost U.S. air power in the region and serve as a reminder of U.S. firepower to Iran. Its arrival will give the Pentagon two U.S. carriers in the region for the first time since 2003, Aandahl said.

This demonstrates our resolve to do what we can to bring security and
stability to the region," Aandahl said. "That's obviously to dissuade others from acting counter to our national interest."

Washington will maintain two carriers in the Middle East "as long as the
situation demands it," Aandahl said. A typical carrier deployment lasts six months."

"The fuel for a fire is in place".

by Colonel Sam Gardiner
Global Research, January 16, 2007

"Editorial Note

The World is at a Critical Cross-roads. The following text by Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Retired) confirms our worst fears. The US is in an advanced state of readiness to wage war on Iran.

To reverse the tide requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a US sponsored war, which contemplates the use of nuclear weapons. The message should be loud and clear: It is not Iran which is a threat to global security but the United States of America and Israel. Even without the use of nukes, the proposed aerial bombardments could result in escalation, ultimately leading us into a broader war in the Middle East.

Debate and discussion must also take place within the Military and Intelligence community, particularly with regard to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, within the corridors of the US Congress, in municipalities and at all levels of government. Ultimately, the legitimacy of the political and military actors in high office must be challenged.

The corporate media also bears a heavy responsibility for the cover-up of US sponsored war crimes. It must also be forcefully challenged for its biased coverage of the Middle East war.

What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State.

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 16 January 2006 "

"The pieces are moving. They’ll be in place by the end of February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.

The second carrier strike group leaves the U.S. west coast on Tuesday. It will be joined by naval mine clearing assets from both the United States and the UK. Patriot missile defense systems have also been ordered to deploy to the Gulf.

Maybe as a guard against North Korea seeing operations focused on Iran as a chance to be aggressive, a squadron of F-117 stealth fighters has just been deployed to Korea.

This has to be called escalation. We have to remind ourselves, just as Iran is supporting groups inside Iraq, the United States is supporting groups inside Iran. Just as Iran has special operations troops operating inside Iraq, we’ve read the United States has special operations troops operating inside Iran.

Just as Iran is supporting Hamas, two weeks ago we found out the United States is supporting arms for Abbas. Just as Iran and Syria are supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon we’re now learning the White House has approved a finding to allow the CIA to support opposition groups inside Lebanon. Just as Iran is supporting Syria, we’ve learned recently that the United States is going to fund Syrian opposition groups.

We learned this week the President authorized an attack on the Iranian liaison office in Irbil.

The White House keeps saying there are no plans to attack Iran. Obviously, the facts suggest otherwise. Equally as clear, the Iranians will read what the Administrations is doing not what it is saying.

It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we’ll see a few more steps unfold.

First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff.

The Patriot missiles going to the GCC states are only part of the missile defense assets. I would expect to see the deployment of some of the European-based missile defense assets to Israel, just as they were before Gulf II.

I would expect deployment of additional USAF fighters into the bases in Iraq, maybe some into Afghanistan.

I think we will read about the deployment of some of the newly arriving Army brigades going into Iraq being deployed to the border with Iran. Their mission will be to guard against any Iranian movements into Iraq.

As one of the last steps before a strike, we’ll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we’ll only be days away from a strike.

The White House could be telling the truth. Maybe there are no plans to take Iran to the next level. The fuel for a fire is in place, however. All we need is a spark. The danger is that we have created conditions that could lead to a Greater Middle East War."

The US-controlled Iraqi government is preparing to remove the country's most precious resource from national control

Kamil Mahdi
Tuesday January 16, 2007
The Guardian

"Today Iraq remains under occupation, and the gulf between those who profess to rule and those who are ruled is filled with blood. The government is beholden to the occupation forces that are responsible for a humanitarian catastrophe and a political impasse. While defenceless citizens are killed at will, the government carries on with its business of protecting itself, collecting oil revenues, dispensing favours, justifying the occupation, and presiding over collapsing security, economic wellbeing, essential services and public administration. Above all, the rule of law has all but disappeared, replaced by sectarian demarcations under a parliamentary facade. Sectarianism promoted by the occupation is tearing apart civil society, local communities and public institutions, and it is placing people at the mercy of self appointed communal leaders, without any legal protection.

The Iraqi government is failing to properly discharge its duties and responsibilities. It therefore seems incongruous that the government, with the help of USAid, the World Bank and the UN, is pushing through a comprehensive oil law to be promulgated close to an IMF deadline for the end of last year. Once again, an externally imposed timetable takes precedence over Iraq's interests. Before embarking on controversial measures such as this law favouring foreign oil firms, the Iraqi parliament and government must prove that they are capable of protecting the country's sovereignty and the people's rights and interests. A government that is failing to protect the lives of its citizens must not embark on controversial legislation that ties the hands of future Iraqi leaders, and which threatens to squander the Iraqis' precious, exhaustible resource in an orgy of waste, corruption and theft.

Government officials, including the deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, have announced that the draft oil law is ready to be presented to the cabinet for approval. Salih was an enthusiast for the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the Kurdish militia-led administration he represents has signed illegal oil agreements that it is now seeking to legalise. Given that parliament has not been meeting regularly, it is likely that legislation will be rushed through after a deal brokered under the auspices of the US occupation.

Iraq's oil industry is in a parlous state as a result of sanctions, wars and occupation. The government, through the ministry of oil's inspector general, has issued damning reports of large-scale corruption and theft across the oil sector. Many competent senior technical officials have been sacked or demoted, and the state oil-marketing organisation has had several directors. Ministries and public organisations are increasingly operating as party fiefdoms, and private, sectarian and ethnic perspectives prevail over the national outlook. This state of affairs has negative results for all except those who are corrupt and unscrupulous, and the voracious foreign oil corporations. The official version of the draft law has not been published, but there is no doubt that it will be designed to hand most of the oil resources to foreign corporations under long-term exploration- and production-sharing agreements.

The oil law is likely to open the door to these corporations at a time when Iraq's capacity to regulate and control their activities will be highly circumscribed. It would therefore place the responsibility for protecting the country's vital national interest on the shoulders of a few vulnerable technocrats in an environment where blood and oil flow together in abundance. Common sense, fairness and Iraq's national interest dictate that this draft law must not be allowed to pass during these abnormal times, and that long-term contracts of 10, 15 or 20 years must not be signed before peace and stability return, and before Iraqis can ensure that their interests are protected.

This law has been discussed behind closed doors for much of the past year. Secret drafts have been viewed and commented on by the US government, but have not been released to the Iraqi public - and not even to all members of parliament. If the law is pushed through in these circumstances, the political process will be further discredited even further. Talk of a moderate cross-sectarian front appears designed to ease the passage of the law and the sellout to oil corporations.

The US, the IMF and their allies are using fear to pursue their agenda of privatising and selling off Iraq's oil resources. The effect of this law will be to marginalise Iraq's oil industry and undermine the nationalisation measures undertaken between 1972 and 1975. It is designed as a reversal of Law Number 80 of December 1961 that recovered most of Iraq's oil from a foreign cartel. Iraq paid dearly for that courageous move: the then prime minister, General Qasim, was murdered 13 months later in a Ba'athist-led coup that was supported by many of those who are part of the current ruling alliance - the US included. Nevertheless, the national oil policy was not reversed then, and its reversal under US occupation will never be accepted by Iraqis."

· Kamil Mahdi is an Iraqi academic and senior lecturer in Middle East economics at the University of Exeter

A TRUE BELIEVER IS NOT BITTEN FROM THE SAME DEN TWICE
(An Arabic expression)


Reposts About The Witch's Frequent M.E. Visits

Bank sees February or March timeline if Israel strikes

Raw Story

"Warning that investors might be "in for a shock," a major investment bank has told the financial community that a preemptive strike by Israel with American backing could hit Iran's nuclear program, RAW STORY has learned.

The banking division of ING Group released a memo on Jan. 9 entitled "Attacking Iran: The market impact of a surprise Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities."

ING is a global financial services company of Dutch origin that includes banking, insurance, and other divisions. The report was authored by Charles Robinson, the Chief Economist for Emerging Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He also authored an update in ING's daily update, Prophet, that further underscored the bank's perception of the risks of an attack.

ING's Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not an option for such a geographically small country....So if Israel is convinced Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, it must presumably act at some point."

Sketching out the time line for an attack, Robertson says that "we can be fairly sure that if Israel is going to act, it will be keen to do so while Bush and Cheney are in the White House."

Robertson suggests a February-March 2007 timeframe for several reasons. First, there is a comparable situation to Israel's strike on Iraq's nuclear program in 1981, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political troubles within Israel. Second, late February will see Iran's deadline to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1737, and Israel could use a failure of Iran and the UN to follow through as justification for a strike. Finally, greater US military presence in the region at that time could be seen by Israel as the protection from retaliation that it needs.

In his Jan. 15 update, Robertson points to a political reason that could make the assault more likely – personnel changes in the Bush administration may have sidelined opponents of attacking Iran.

Preisdent Bush recently removed General John Abizaid as commander of US forces in the Middle East and John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence, both of whom have said attacking Iran is not a priority or the right move at this time. The deployment of Patriot missile batteries, highlighted in President Bush's recent White House speech on America's Iraq policy, also pointed to a need to defend against Iranian missiles.

The ING memo was first sent to RAW STORY as an anonymous tip and confirmed Monday by staff in the bank's emerging markets office, who passed along the Jan. 15 update. The full PDF documents can be downloaded at this link for the Jan. 9 report, and this link for the Jan. 15 update."

A temporary Palestinian state

(Saba'aneh, Alhayat Aljadeeda, 1/15/06).

Hundreds of nuclear warheads under the control of Israel's defense establishment

By Michael Carmichael
Global Research, January 15, 2007

".......The state of Israel has consistently blocked Mr. Vanunu’s taking up his academic post as a Lecturer in history at the University of Glasgow. The Israeli government prohibits Mr. Vanunu from traveling beyond their borders apparently for fear that he will hold press briefings about their now well-known arsenal of nuclear weapons. Expert opinions vary but some now rank Israel third or fourth behind only the USA, Russia and possibly France in holding the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

In addition to the nuclear devices themselves, Israel has a formidable arsenal of delivery systems. Israel’s Shavit rocket has been used to launch satellites into orbit, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the Shavit could be converted to an ICBM with a range of 7,000 miles allowing an Israeli nuclear strike anywhere in the Middle East as well as eastern and western Europe and Central Asia. Additionally, Israel now has a fleet of Dolphin class submarines armed with cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that Israel may have developed nuclear artillery shells as well as nuclear land-mines that could be deployed in the Golan Heights to discourage Syrian designs on the region......

In the reports linked below, The Sunday Times have now revealed new evidence that Israel is currently planning to launch a nuclear attack against Iran. Aimed at destroying the embryonic Iranian nuclear industry, the Israeli missiles armed with nuclear warheads will be delivered via conventional jet fighters. The Sunday Times reported that Israeli jet pilots are already undergoing advanced training to fire the nuclear warheads at targets in Iran - – in a tactical replay of their attack that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1982.

In The Sunday Times coverage, no reference was made to the possibility of a nuclear strike from Israeli submarines that have been equipped with cruise missiles that could be armed with nuclear warheads. Military experts have been reporting the presence of Israel’s Dolphin class submarines in the Persian Gulf for the past two years ostensibly to support US naval operations in case Iran attempts to close the Straits of Hormuz.....

From a lengthening series of reports, it is now clear that the Bush-Cheney administration has been severely weakened by the recent midterm elections, and they apparently no longer feel capable of launching a direct nuclear strike against Iran using American forces, American weapons and America’s formidable nuclear arsenal. In negotiations that took place in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George Bush - as well as in the highly publicized negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia - it would now appear that the joint planning to strike Iran has altered only slightly from the grandiose schemes originally designed by Donald Rumsfeld prior to his abrupt retirement on the day after the midterm elections last year.

According to The Sunday Times, there has been a slight re-calibration of the plans for the war against Iran. Rather than a direct American nuclear strike against Iran’s hard targets, Israel has been given the assignment of launching a coordinated cluster of nuclear strikes aimed at targets that are the nuclear installations in the Iranian cities: Natanz, Isfahan and Arak.....

Mr. Gates was right. The reality is stark. If Israel attacks Iran, she will be playing Russian roulette on a grand scale. The retaliation from a broad spectrum of nations and multinational militias in the Middle East could bring about a concerted series of devastating hard power attacks against both Israeli and American forces arrayed in a dense cluster from Iraq to Kuwait, Qatar and the Persian Gulf.

During his recent appearance at the Oxford Union, Avi Shlaim, one of the premiere historians of Israel, said,

“There was never any special relationship between America and Britain. Whenever Bush was confronted with the choice of pleasing Blair or Sharon, he always sided with Sharon. The real special relationship is between America and Israel.”

There is an old adage in politics: It’s never your enemies who get you into trouble: it’s your friends."

Continue

Rima Merriman, The Electronic Intifada, 15 January 2007
(Rima Merriman is a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank)

"Today, Palestinian refugees outside the occupied territories and Palestinian exiles feel completely excluded from the body politic and national debate currently taking place in the occupied territories. They listen to the feuding emanating from the territories in helpless dismay. They watch those on the inside who are caught up in a carefully engineered web of power struggles and passionate rifts that seem incomprehensible in their intensity and misdirection.

This fragmentation in the Palestinian political process has long been in the making. The Palestinian National Authority, courtesy of the Oslo negotiations, is designed to represent only Palestinians living in the occupied territories and to function as no more than Israel's administrative arm.

The advent of Hamas on the Palestinian political scene has forcefully brought to the fore the question of adequate forms of representation for the Palestinian people. Far from enhancing democracy and representation, the elections of the Palestinian Legislative Council exclude Palestinians outside the territories. As it turned out, these last elections were also deemed by the international community as irrelevant.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian people as recognized by the United Nations and the Arab League in 1974, is now separated functionally and structurally from the Palestinian diaspora. Its links with the outside were weakened and marginalized when the core elite of the PLO moved to the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the Oslo negotiations in 1994.

What all this means is that the vast majority of Palestinians are disenfranchised. The number of Palestinians worldwide as of the end of 2006 was estimated by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics to be 10.1 million. Of these, only 39.2 percent (or 3.95 million) live in the occupied territories.......

.....What's on the table currently by way of a "peace plan" is an Israeli unilateral plan that has US backing for a putative Palestinian state. This plan means the Israeli annexation of a further 15 percent of the West Bank and the vast majority of its water aquifers, a plan whose essential features are already "facts on the ground". On the Palestinian side, there is a proposal based on a referendum drafted by the leaders of Palestinian prisoners of various factions in Israeli prisons. This plan drops Palestinian territorial claims beyond the 1967 borders and promises full Arab recognition of Israel. It is a proposal that has only partial legitimacy, because it does not include consensus from Palestinians living outside the occupied territories in the far-flung diaspora. Needless to say, neither the Israeli side, nor the Palestinian side, even in its partially-formed and troubled current consensus, accepts the plan of the other.

But continuing to give precedence to the concerns of West Bank and Gaza residents over those of non-resident Palestinians means the planting of a time bomb in the heart of the peace process. Their inclusion guarantees that the historical roots of the conflict, something that Israel has spent its monstrous state apparatus denying for decades, will be taken into consideration, as it is the right of every Palestinian that they should be. Israel must understand that Palestinians will never forget these roots. Here is what one CIVITAS participant in a public meeting in Toronto, Canada has to say: "Young Palestinians should go and visit their towns just like the Zionists do through their Birth Right program; after all, there are a lot of Palestinians in the world with foreign citizenship. So why not plan visits to Yafa in an organized way and sponsor the youth to go back to their homeland?"

Palestinians must start building political infrastructures that go all the way to the top for Palestinians now outside the West Bank and Gaza who have never relinquished their right of return. These Palestinians must have active and constructive involvement in the decision making process."

"Al-Manar special report – Manar Sabbagh – Translated/

Hezbollah sources dismissed as baseless, reports about a tripartite gathering last Saturday between Speaker Nabih Berri, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah's political aid Hussein Khalil on the one hand and Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Abdul Aziz Khojah on the other. The source added that contrary to what some sides are trying to circulate, all political corridors are entirely closed and there is no foreseeable solution to the political crisis in Lebanon. The source also said that the recent positions of Speaker Berri, Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, MP Michel Aoun of the Free Patriotic Movement, former Prime Minister Omar Karameh and many other leading opposition figures suggest that a large scale escalation by the opposition is very likely. According to information made available to Al-Manar channel, the popular bases of the opposition have started to prepare for the next step, which cannot be reversed. Sources close to Berri dismissed as inaccurate reports about a Saudi initiative, since the Kingdom is still in the stage of offering advice and ideas."

Join U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; Bishop Thomas Gumbleton; Harold Pinter; historian Howard Zinn; George Galloway MP; former UN Assistant Secretary-General Dennis Halliday; Tony Benn, and 20,000 more signers to say No War on Iran!

"The growing threat of military action against Iran was made very clear last week as President Bush used his prime time "surge" speech to issue threats against the people of Iran. This speech was immediately followed by a U.S. attack on the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and the arrest of Iranian consular personnel.

As this time, the U.S. has deployed two full carrier groups to the Persian Gulf. Each carrier carries more than 80 combat aircraft including F/A-18 Hornets, F-14 Tomcats, SH-60 Seahawks, S-3B Vikings, E-2C Hawkeyes and EA-6B Prowlers, capable of flying more than 150 strikes a day. In addition, each carrier group includes guided missile cruisers, fast frigates, guided missile destroyers, and submarines, all equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles.

We know from reports last year that the Pentagon's Central Command and Strategic Command planners are already identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an attack and that the planned strikes could kill thousands of Iranian people. We must mobilize now to against the threat of a new war. Over the next few days and weeks, Stop War On Iran will be organizing meetings, rallies, and protests across the country to build a movement to stop another disastrous war.

So far, we've gotten more than 20,000 signatures on the Stop War On Iran petition, and we've sent nearly half a million petitions to Bush, Cheney, Congress, and Halliburton. But we must do more--the threat of an imminent attack is growing. We need your help. We cannot count on politicians (of either major party) to stop the war--we must build a grassroots movement to stop another brutal war."

Click Here To Sign Petition

"الدولة المؤقتة وتسليح حرس الرئاسة يمثلان معالمها"

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

حذّر إسماعيل هنية رئيس الوزراء الفلسطيني، مساء اليوم الاثنين (15/1)، من خطورة زيارة وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية غونداليزا رايس للمنطقة العربية على القضية الفلسطينية، لما تحمله من خطط لحماية المصالح الصهيونية.

وقال هنية: "إن هذه الزيارة تهدف إلى تأمين المصالح الصهيونية، من خلال رؤية سياسية قائمة على فكرة الدولة المؤقتة، التي يمكن إنجازها أو وضع لبناتها فيما تبقى من عمر ادارة بوش الحالية"، مشدداً على أن تحرك رايس يهدف إلى تأمين الدعم لهذه الفكرة.

واعتبر في تصريح صحفي، تلقى "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" نسخة منه، أن الفترة المتبقية لإدارة جورج بوش لا تتجاوز السنتين، وهي تسعى إلى فعل شيء ما خلال هذه الفترة.

وأضاف رئيس الوزراء: "من الواضح أن الموقف الأمريكي لإدارة بوش لن يمارس أي ضغوط على الكيان الصهيوني لتقديم تنازلات جوهرية لشعبنا الفلسطيني، ولكن سيدفع في اتجاه تخدير الوضع الفلسطيني".

وأوضح أن هذا التخدير سيكون بتقدم بعض التسهيلات للتخفيف من معاناة الشعب الفلسطيني على الحواجز، والإفراج عن بعض الأموال المحتجزة لدى سلطات الاحتلال ووضعها في يد الرئاسة، وتقديم بعض الإنجازات لمن تسميهم رايس بالمعتدلين على الساحة الفلسطينية، لتعزيز قدراتها على الساحة، انتظاراً لأمل أن يكون المستقبل، في ظل إجراء انتخابات قادمة أو مبكرة فرصة لهم من جديد، لكي تعيد إمساك الحالة الفلسطينية، وبالتالي تسهيل التوصل إلى تسوية ترضى عنها أمريكا والصهاينة".

ومضى يقول: "إننا ننظر بخطورة إلى ما تحمله رايس من طبخة سياسية وأمنية بشأن لوضع الفلسطيني، وليس صحيحاً أنه لا يوجد في جعبتها شيء، بل نرى أنها تحمل رؤية خطرة على الجميع، وإن الحديث عن الدولة المؤقتة والتسليح لأجهزة أمن الرئاسة يمثلان معالم الطبخة السياسية والأمنية القادمة"، داعياً أبناء الشعب الفلسطيني لأن يتحلى بالمسؤولية والحذر من آثار ما يجري من نتائج لهذه الزيارة. "

By Tony Karon

"You can be sure that Dr. Martin Luther King’s politics will be scrubbed clean of most of its content when President George W. Bush celebrates the public holiday named in his honor on Monday. In order to honor Dr. King’s legacy, Rootless Cosmopolitan invites readers to revisit his April 4, 1967 speech on the Vietnam war. It’s well worth reading and considering in light of contemporary realities.

"And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries." --- MLK........."

Continue

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, January 15, 2007

"When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?

Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s "surge" speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.

The "surge" gives Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran.

Suddenly, we are hearing Bush regime propaganda that there are Iranian networks operating within Iraq that are working with the Iraqi insurgency and killing US troops. This assertion is a lie and preposterous on its face. Iranian Shi’ites are not going to arm Iraqi Sunnis, who are more focused on killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran than on killing US troops. If the Iranians wanted to cause the US trouble in Iraq, they would encourage Iraqi Shi’ites to join the insurgency against US forces. An insurgency drawn from 80% of the Iraqi population would overwhelm the US forces.

CBS reports that the news organization has been told by US officials "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." To manufacture evidence in behalf of this lie to feed to the gullible American public, US forces invaded an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and kidnapped 5 consulate officials, claiming the Iranians were part of plans "to kill Americans." In typical Orwellian fashion, Secretary of State Condi Rice described Bush’s aggression against Iran as designed to confront Tehran’s aggression......

If Bush is unable to orchestrate war with Iran directly, he will orchestrate war indirectly by having US troops attack Iraqi Shi’ite militias. Bush has already given orders for US troops to attack the Iraqi Shi’ite militias, who oppose the Sunnis and have not been part of the insurgency. Obviously, once Bush can get US troops in open warfare with Iraqi Shi’ites, the situation for US troops in Iraq will quickly go down hill. Bush will be able to blame Iranian Shi’ites for arming Iraqi Shi’ites that he can say are killing US troops.......

In 2003 the Moorer Commission [see here [PDF] and here], headed by Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, concluded:

"That in attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States."

"That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty."

"…the Captain and surviving crew members were later threatened with court-martial, imprisonment or worse if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government."

"That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people."

"That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests.".......

Admiral Moorer says, "What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course, is that they [Israel] could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry."

The US invasion of Iraq and the looming US attack on Iran are proof that Israel has even more power over the White House today......

Bush has made the US into a colony of Israel. The US is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights.

That is what the "war on terror" is about."

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Washington wants war…

By Justin Raimondo

"As American troops storm what is, or was, an Iranian consulate – at least that's what the Iraqi government calls it, in spite of American denials – and the president accuses Tehran of arming and aiding Iraqi insurgents, the answer to the question "Why are we in Iraq?" should begin to dawn on even the dullest. The answer: Iran. We're in Iraq so we can go after the mullahs in Tehran, and, perhaps, those other Ba'athists in Syria.

All indications point to a strike at the Iranians before Bush leaves office. The appointment of a Navy guy, Adm. William J. "Fox" Fallon, at present head of the U.S. Pacific Command, to oversee U.S. operations in the Middle East, is widely seen as a sign that war with Iran is on the table, if not yet a sure thing. A U.S. attack on Iran would be a naval and air operation, and Fallon, a former deputy director for operations with Joint Task Force Southwest Asia in Riyadh, is surely qualified for the job. As Pat Buchanan put it, "What Fallon does not know about securing streets, he does know about taking out targets from the air and keeping sea lanes open in a time of war.".....

In this context, at least, the "surge" begins to make some sense – especially if, as can be expected, it is a "long surge" carried out by an administration that likes to push the envelope (and meets little resistance in doing so). An attack on Iran will be centered around the Persian Gulf, but is bound to have reverberations on the ground in Iraq. A "surge" – 20,000 U.S. troops, and possibly more – would buttress American redoubts for the inevitable backlash and reinforce our defenses against a flanking counterattack.

The "antiwar" Democrats are way behind the times: they are still screaming about Iraq, when Iran is the real issue – and it's one they are just as bad on, if not worse, than the Republicans. Which means that the long-suffering American people are not about to find relief from this endless war anytime soon – unless, of course, it is in the form of some as yet undiscovered political maverick who will rise out of the miasma of American politics and save us from both wings of the War Party. "

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By Chris Hedges

"I have spent most of my adult life as a reporter covering insurgencies, from the five years I covered the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala to seven years in the Middle East and nearby regions, where I covered the two Palestinian uprisings and the civil wars in Algeria and Sudan, and finally to the three years I reported on the wars in the Balkans, including the rebellion in the Serbian province of Kosovo by the Kosovo Liberation Army......

The plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq will be accompanied by a subtle, but disastrous, change in the way the war is fought—a change that will almost assuredly increase the monthly tallies of American dead and wounded. The president warned that “deadly acts of violence will continue, and we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties.” In his version of the war, these losses will allow us to climb from the sinkhole we have dug for ourselves to the sunlight of victory. Unfortunately, for Iraqis and for us, what the president proposes is a mistake of catastrophic proportions. It defies basic counterinsurgency doctrine and will leave American troops more vulnerable, more exposed and in greater danger in this war of shadows......

American forces, because they control the country’s infrastructure, must often remain in fixed, static positions. And troops in static positions are easily targeted by small, mobile rebel bands. During the war in El Salvador new guerrilla recruits, for their first kill, were often sent at night to attack one of the many small bridges held by government troops. The immobile targets were so vulnerable, the newly minted rebel soldiers were almost always assured of success......

The insurgents—Shiite and Sunni—have done what we failed to do. They have built a vast and effective support network within their communities, communities we were never able to reach from Humvees or the fortified walls of the Green Zone. Most of the insurgents are Iraqi. They speak Arabic. They worship in the mosques. They buy vegetables in the local markets. They love their country. And many have paid a terrible price for their patriotism and their faith. These neighborhoods are secure. They are just not secure for us. They will never be. And sending in new batches of Americans from Texas or Ohio or New York to patrol these streets will not make Iraq or America safer. It will ensure that even more mothers and fathers, American and Iraqi, will be ushered by George W. Bush into the long night of bitterness and grief."

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(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Bendib

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent

"As George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney inveighed against their Democratic critics, the White House tried to prevent a Republican mutiny on Capitol Hill from engulfing the President's bitterly contested decision to send more than 20,000 extra US troops to Iraq.

The moves came as public opposition to Mr Bush's new policy seemed, if anything, to harden, while Congress geared up for what is shaping up as the fiercest constitutional battle over the war-waging powers of a President since the Vietnam war......"

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All the signs are that Bush is planning for a neocon-inspired military assault on Iran

Dan Plesch
Monday January 15, 2007
The Guardian

"The evidence is building up that President Bush plans to add war on Iran to his triumphs in Iraq and Afghanistan - and there is every sign, to judge by his extraordinary warmongering speech in Plymouth on Friday, that Tony Blair would be keen to join him if he were still in a position to commit British forces to the field.

"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," said NBC TV's Tim Russert after meeting the president. This is borne out by the fact that Bush has sent forces to the Gulf that are irrelevant to fighting the Iraqi insurgents. These include Patriot anti-missile missiles, an aircraft carrier, and cruise-missile-firing ships.

Many military analysts see these deployments as signals of impending war with Iran. The Patriot missiles are intended to shoot down Iranian missiles. The naval forces, including British ships, train to pre-empt Iranian interference with oil shipments through the straits of Hormuz.

Having been given so much advice on what to do in Iraq - most notably by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group - the president went with the recommendations of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). So much for the idea that the Iraq debacle marginalised the neocons.

The political context as seen from inside the White House and Downing Street is that we are in a war as serious as the second world war. John Bolton exemplified this outlook when he compared US problems in Iraq with the fighting with Japan after Pearl Harbour.

Donald Rumsfeld and the AEI have developed a strategy for regime change in Iran that does not involve a ground invasion. Weapons of mass destruction will provide the rationale for military action, though it won't be limited to attacks on a few weapons factories. It will include limiting Iranian retaliatory capability, using bombers to destroy up to 10,000 targets in the first day of any war, and special forces flying in to destroy anything that's left.

In the aftermath, the US will support regime change, hoping to replace the ayatollahs with an Iran of the regions. The US and British governments now support a coalition of groups seeking a federal Iran. This may be another neocon delusion, but that may not be the point. Making Tehran concentrate on internal problems leaves it unable to act elsewhere.

Bush has said he will destroy the Syrian and Iranian networks in Iraq. These may include Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, but are also likely to target the Iranian-created Badr brigades, now wearing Iraqi police uniforms. In the south, the withdrawal of British troops to Basra airport looks more like a preparation to avoid a Shia backlash than a handover to the government of Iraq.

The US director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, explained that the threat to launch Hizbullah against Israel was the main deterrent to a US attack on Iran. Although politically Hizbullah scored a major victory in holding off the Israeli army last summer, in fact it was badly damaged.

The Iranian regime seems prepared for confrontation, perhaps confident Washington is bluffing. Next month Iran celebrates its completion of the nuclear-fuel cycle, in defiance of UN sanctions. Expect Bush and Blair to ask what the world will do to prevent a new Holocaust against the Jews. In his Plymouth speech, Blair told us that we could not pick and choose our wars. He may have been telling us more than we realised."

Sea-launched attack to hit oil, N-sites

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah
Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

"01/14/07 "Arab Times" -- - KUWAIT CITY: Washington will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, say sources. The attack will be launched from the sea and Patriot missiles will guard all oil-producing countries in the region, they add. Recent statements emanating from the United States indicate the Bush administration’s new strategy for Iraq doesn’t include any proposal to make a compromise or negotiate with Syria or Iran. A reliable source said President Bush recently held a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice and other assistants in the White House where they discussed the plan to attack Iran in minute detail.

According to the source, Vice President Dick Cheney highlighted the threat posed by Iran to not only Saudi Arabia but the whole region. “Tehran is not playing politics. Iranian leaders are using their country’s religious influence to support the aggressive regime’s ambition to expand,” the source quoted Dick Cheney as saying. Indicating participants of the meeting agreed to impose restrictions on the ambitions of Iranian regime before April 2007 without exposing other countries in the region to any danger, the source said “they have chosen April as British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it will be the last month in office for him. The United States has to take action against Iran and Syria before April 2007.”

Claiming the attack will be launched from the sea and not from any country in the region, he said “the US and its allies will target the oil installations and nuclear facilities of Iran ensuring there is no environmental catastrophe or after effects.” “Already the US has started sending its warships to the Gulf and the build-up will continue until Washington has the required number by the end of this month,” the source said. “US forces in Iraq and other countries in the region will be protected against any Iranian missile attack by an advanced Patriot missile system.”

He went on to say “although US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice suggested postponing the attack, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney insisted on attacking Tehran without any negotiations based on the lesson they learnt in Iraq recently.” The Bush administration believes attacking Iran will create a new power balance in the region, calm down the situation in Iraq and pave the way for their democratic project, which had to be suspended due to the interference of Tehran and Damascus in Iraq, he continued. The attack on Iran will weaken the Syrian regime, which will eventually fade away, the source said."

"Abu Mazen had planned those meetings in Damascus Tuesday. DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report that when they met in Ramallah Sunday, Jan 14, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice informed the Palestinian leader that Washington is determined to derail any collaboration deals he and his Fatah might conclude with Hamas’ leaders in the Gaza Strip or Damascus. The Bush administration likewise strongly opposes a non-political Palestinian government of technocrats or any administration based on Fatah-Hamas parity. Rice argued that Hamas is under great strain and an Abbas turn to Damascus would ease its distress. The US official said Saudi rulers now regret their past support for terrorist elements like al Qaeda, and Abu Mazen would be ill-advised to make their mistake.

Rice and Abu Mazen were clearly at odds in their statements after their conversation. While The US secretary of state reiterated the deep American commitment to progress on the roadmap toward a two-state solution - without skipping any of its stages, Abbas flatly rejected interim arrangements or provisional borders (part of the road map) and demandeda diplomatic track that led directly to“a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”

For the moment, Rice managed to deter Abu Mazen from taking his first step into the Iran-backed Syrian fold or a reconciliation with Hamas - a signal feat in the first lap of her Middle East tour. His change of heart paves the way for the secretary to demand immediate Israeli concessions to the Palestinians when she meets Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem Monday.

Our sources report that Rice will want such concessions confined to the West Bank and exclude the Gaza Strip. First, she will ask him to transfer to the Palestinian leader $100 m of the revenues held back from the Palestinian Authority as he promised Abu Mazen when they met last month. Next, she will ask Israel to ease access and movement by reducing the roadblocks inhibiting Palestinian traffic.

Rice’s first mission on her tour was finding a handle on the Israeli -Palestinian conflict in order to ease her bid for backing from Arab rulers for the US drive in Iraq. Her first obstacle was the decision by Mahmoud Abbas to explore the advantages available should he decide to ditch US sponsorship and accept Syria backing for a Palestinian unity government and a rapprochement with Hamas

Ahead of her visit to Ramallah, she and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni joined in supporting all stages of the Middle East roadmap. From Cairo, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak reported he had sent President George W. Bush details of a new Egyptian peace proposal as an alternative to the road map, which he said had failed.

Rice also spoke with defense minister Amir Peretz and minister for strategic threats Avigdor Lieberman. The latter informed her that Israel’s reoccupation of the Gaza Strip to halt the stream of missiles against Israel was inevitable and suggested that NATO dispatch 30,000 troops to hold and secure the Palestinian territory thereafter. "

Time

"After meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made no effort to hide his grim expression from his staff. From the Palestinian perspective, the talks hadn't gone well. Abbas had complained to Rice that an earlier chat and a bear hug with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, at the Secretary of State's behest, had only landed him in trouble with his fellow Palestinians. According to a presidential aide, he told Rice that "Olmert embarrassed me by not implementing a single Israeli promise."

Olmert had vowed to release $100 million in Palestinian funds frozen by Israel after Hamas became the government last March. Olmert also promised to remove some of the more than 400 roadblocks inside the Palestinian territories. Israel has so far failed to deliver on either promise, according to Palestinian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Abbas was also miffed at the public discussion in the U.S. of Bush Administration plans to secure $86 million from U.S. Congress to arm forces loyal to Abbas for a looming battle with Hamas. According to one insider, Abbas had wanted this kept secret. "This has put us in more trouble with Hamas," griped one Abbas aide.

After Rice and her phalanx of bodyguards and advisers left Abbas's office in Ramallah, one Palestinian source close to the Palestinian president reported gloomily that "She didn't bring anything new." He added: "The American 'Road Map' is a dead body, and implementing the plan will enable Israelis to swallow more of the West Bank." The reasoning, say Abbas supporters, is that Abbas cannot comply with Rice's demands that he disarm Hamas militants, and Abbas failure to do this will embolden the Israelis to erect more Jewish settlements inside the Palestinian territories. "What she's asking — this is a joke," said one Abbas aide.

Rice also warned Abbas that the Bush Administration took a dim view of the Palestinian leader's proposed trip to Damascus for a meeting with Hamas' exiled leader Khaled Mashaal in a bid to pacify the near-civil war that has erupted in recent months between militants of Fatah and Hamas. Rice made it clear to Abbas, said one Palestinian source, that "she's worried Hamas will impose its conditions on Abbas."

The meeting simply reiterated Abbas's dilemma: "On one hand, Abbas knows it's important to keep U.S. support, but if he does, it will lead him into deeper conflict with Hamas," said one Palestinian source.

Even before this meeting, relations between Abbas and Rice were frosty. A senior Palestine Liberation Organization official, who sat in on meetings between the two says: "She acts like a school headmistress, telling her student in a commanding tone to do this, or don 't do that."

Diana Buttu, a political consultant and former legal adviser to the PLO, adds: “They're not interested in solving the conflict in any meaningful way — just uttering nice slogans, that's it."

The view of Rice as being detached from the realities on the ground is underscored by a Palestinian professor who had previously dealt with Rice: "She thinks of big issues as small ones,” he says. "She believed that Israelis could wipe out Hizballah, and she believes — mistakenly — that Abbas can wipe out Hamas from Gaza and the West Bank."

Moreover, Palestinian officials say, their dim view of Rice's efforts is shared by other Arabs. One official spoke of a rift between the Bush Administration and the Saudis that has become so intense that "Abbas was advised by a Saudi official not to believe what Rice says or follow her instructions." Indeed, despite U.S. efforts to persuade Arab regimes to shun and isolate Hamas, the Saudis invited Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh to join the Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, giving him royal treatment all the way, including use of a private jet that flew him from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Abbas aides say that in private conversations, the Saudis complain that Rice "doesn't understand the chemistry of the Middle East."

But if Arab officials are frustrated by Rice, their Israeli counterparts enjoy working with her: One Israeli official speaking off the record said: "She's an amazing, eloquent and elegant lady, but she can be as tough as nails. She knows what she wants when she goes into a meeting. She's decided beforehand what's possible and what isn't." Daniel Ayalon, ex-Israeli ambassador to Washington, who has been friends with Rice for 10 years, adds, "She has gravitas. She's grown into this job in a magnificent way. She has toughness and grit."

Still, for all those plaudits, Secretary Rice may discover, once again, in the course of her Middle East tour aimed at restarting peace efforts and building support for Iraq and against Iran, that enjoying the confidence of one side is not enough."

A Good, Long Report
By Stan Goff

Editor’s note: In this piece, a retired U.S. Special Forces soldier takes an oil-filtered look at Bush’s “surge” plan for Iraq.

"......The reason I lead into a discussion of the Bush administration’s military “surge” plan for Iraq by talking about fossil fuels is that neither the government nor the media seem inclined to talk about it. The desperation of the coming escalation of criminal lunacy is based not on some fantasy but on a real and coming competition between the U.S. and basically everyone else for these energy stores, even as most honest experts agree that world production of oil has now peaked and will begin an inexorable and irreversible decline. The reason for attempting to implant permanent U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf area and install compliant governments (the real reason for the war from the very beginning) has everything to do with securing control over the region......

Before any assessment of the balance of forces in Iraq can be undertaken from a purely military perspective (never possible, since military success is always measured against political objectives), it is essential to survey the major Iraqi military and political actors on where they stand with regard to the proposed Iraqi “oil law.” If the top priority is to salvage U.S. access to future hydrocarbon mining in Iraq, then the fundamental requirement is a comparatively “stable” Iraqi government that supports this access. The fundamental show-stopper is any leader or set of leaders who reject this plan.

The catch for the U.S. is that, as we shall see, the Iraqi leaders who support the hydrocarbon law have no legitimacy upon which to establish stability, and the leaders who have the popular legitimacy to establish stability support neither the occupation nor the hydrocarbon law.

When the situation is looked at in this way, we can bypass all the chatter from government and media mystigogues about regional stability for the sake of the people, democracy, terrorism, et cetera. These rhetorical smoke screens are concealing two inescapable facts: (1) The U.S. has lost the Iraq war and (2) the best retrenchment position possible now is to salvage the draft hydrocarbon law.

Hakim, after all, is practically an Iranian citizen. Why would the Bush administration court the most pro-Iranian leader among the diverse Shiite factions as successor in the event that Maliki fails to live up to U.S. expectations? Hakim has been a consistent and strong supporter of the hydrocarbon law.

The Shiite leader who has most vehemently opposed this law, and the U.S. occupation, has been Muqtada al-Sadr. The press has frequently portrayed Sadr as pro-Iranian, and nothing could be further from the truth. The SCIRI has been most aggressive in the demand to divide Iraq into a very loose federation and transform southeastern Iraq into an Iranian rump state. Sadr has called for Iraqi unification, left the door open to Sunnis for an anti-occupation alliance, denounced the hydrocarbon law, and modeled his political and military leadership on Hezbollah.

Here is where we come to the nub of The Surge, and why it is probably the political death knell of Nouri al-Maliki. The principle aim of The Surge is to break the power of Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr not only has the seats in the Potemkin parliament of Iraq that put Maliki (a leader in a relatively small Shiite party, the Dawa) into power against the SCIRI (the largest parliamentary faction); he commands the ferocious loyalty of two and a half million people and has an 80,000-strong militia concentrated a stone’s throw from the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad. Baghdad has about 6 million people; New York City has 8 million, just by way of comparison. The population of Sadr City, the “neighborhood” under the leadership of Sadr, is approximately that of Brooklyn.

To realize this helps in understanding the considerations that go into planning a military operation. We need some kind of comparative scale to really comprehend the dangerous lunacy of The Surge.....

That Baghdad has become the concentrated focus of most U.S. military efforts in Iraq now is material evidence of the scale of the U.S. defeat there; it is also an indication of exactly how desperate the surge notion really is.....

In Fallujah, a mass evacuation was organized before the general assault on the city. The mandatory mass evacuation went through checkpoints in the American cordon sanitaire. While women and children and very old people were allowed out, all “military-aged males” were turned back into the city, which, once the assault started, became a free-fire zone, and those men were dealt with like the Jews of Warsaw. Thousands of people refused to evacuate for a variety of reasons. They were subsequently caught up in the general slaughter. This is the likely operational template for Sadr City......

On Aug. 25, 1944, crushed between the Red Army smashing across the Danube and the Free French, American and Senegalese troops marching through the Champs Elysee, Hitler knew the end of the Third Reich was approaching. He had given the order to Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, the German “governor” of Paris, to destroy Paris rather than let it fall into the hands of the Allies. As word of the Allied entry into Paris reached Hitler, he is reputed to have called his chief of staff, Gen. Alfred Jodl, and demanded: “Jodl! Is Paris burning?”

I can almost hear the echo now from Cheney’s office, the curtains pulled, the malignant presence glowering in the dark, “Petraeus! Is Baghdad burning?” "

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A Great Comment
By Khalid Amayreh

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is once again visiting the Middle East, this time with the hope of enlisting support for President Bush's "new strategy" in Iraq and also in order to expedite the moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, given America's notorious inability and/or unwillingness to pressure Israel to give up our stolen land, it would be difficult to give Rice the benefit of the doubt. On the contrary, it is most likely that Rice will just ruminate the same cud about President Bush's vision of a viable Palestinian state living in peace side by side with Israel.

And as in the past, Rice will ignore the fact that Israel has been consistently undermining this vision of viable Palestinian statehood by stealing more Palestinian land and building more Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, which makes the implementation of the two-state solution utterly unrealistic if not outright impossible.

As Palestinians, we should be thoroughly disillusioned with Rice's excessive talk about a peace process that only has the smell of prevarication, deception and ill-will, a process with a form but without a substance. We know too well that the lot of our people is exacerbating like never before, thanks mainly to America's conspiratorial designs against our people and our cause.

The draconian blockade imposed on our people because of our democratic choice is still in intact; Israel is still, for the second consecutive year, barring the bulk of our people from accessing food and work; and 11,000 Palestinian political and resistance activists are languishing in Israeli jails and detention camps, many without charge or trial.

And, at the top of this, the Israeli occupation army continues to narrow our horizons by erecting in the midst of our population centers hundreds of evil roadblocks and checkpoints, manned by trigger-happy soldiers who draw wide satisfaction from beating, tormenting and humiliating Palestinian civilians.

And now this woman will have the audacity to tell us that Israel is not our real enemy and that the real problem is not between us and the occupiers of our land and oppressors of our people, but rather between Fatah and Hamas and between the coalition of moderates and the axis of evil!!

Having utterly failed to get successive Israeli governments to stop the tremendous theft of our land, under the false pretext of building the Separation Wall, and having been unable to get Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz to remove even a single roadblock from the West Bank, Rice will want to be remembered as the one who triggered the flames of civil war in Palestine.

She wants to give us money and weapons, not in order to get closer to realizing our goals of freedom and delivery from the claws of the sinister Israeli occupation, but rather to kill each other so that Israel would be able to liquidate our cause. In short, Rice would like to turn the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into another Iraq, another Somalia and another Afghanistan a la her nefarious doctrine of "creative anarchy."

We must never allow her to achieve these manifestly criminal goals.

Yes, we realize the US is the only superpower in this world. But this should never ever make us lose our free will and become willing slaves to America's evangelical imperialism.

More to the point, it is likely that Rice will try to cajole President Abbas to accept a temporary state with temporary borders. We must say a clarion "NO" to this ploy as President Abbas himself said in his speech in Ramallah on Thursday.

Furthermore, Rice might seek to blackmail the Palestinian leadership by conditioning American financial and other assistance to the PA on effecting a bloody confrontation with Hamas. Here, too, we must tell Rice that Palestinian civil war is a red line and that the Americans could take their money and shove it if the expected price is more Palestinian blood, shed by Palestinian hands.

Certainly, nobody is suggesting that we declare war on America. However, it is paramount that we forcefully reassert our national constants in the face of this uncharitable lady lest she gets the impression that we would be willing to compromise our inalienable rights. We must tell her that the Palestinian people and their leadership will not accept anything less than total Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including first and foremost East Jerusalem.

And we must also stress to her the inviolability of the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homes and villages when Israel was created in 1948. These enduring victims of ethnic cleansing must be granted the right to repatriation and indemnification pursuant to UN resolution 194.

Finally, we must remind the former Kremlinologist, whose knowledge of the vicissitudes of the Palestinian plight is superficial at best, that true and durable peace must be based on international law and human rights, not on military hegemony and coercion.

Needless to say, this means that Rice ought to be told in unmistakable and straightforward language that the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip are "occupied" not "disputed territories" and that Israel will have to remove 100% of its hateful colonies from our homeland. Otherwise, there would be no peace, not after another hundred years. "

رفض واسع للزيارة وتوجس من انعكاساتها

"رام الله/ غزة – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

حذّرت قوى وقيادات فلسطينية من الزيارة التي قامت بها وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كونداليزا رايس إلى فلسطين، خاصة لجهة انعكاسها على مساعي الوفاق الوطني الفلسطيني، وسعيها لخدمة المصالح الصهيونية والأمريكية.

فقد وصف وزير الأشغال العامة والإسكان الفلسطيني المهندس عبد الرحمن زيدان، زيارة وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كونداليزا رايس، للأراضي الفلسطينية، بأنها مشؤومة، وتهدف إلى تخريب الوفاق الوطني الفلسطيني.

زيدان: أزمة داخلية فلسطينية بعد كل زيارة لرايس

وقال الوزير زيدان "إنه بعد كل زيارة، تقوم بها رايس للمناطق الفلسطينية، كانت تخلق أزمة داخلية"، مشيراً إلى أنّ رايس قامت بثلاث زيارات للضفة الغربية منذ تولي الحكومة الفلسطينية بقيادة حركة حماس، الحكم في فلسطين.

واعتبر وزير الأشغال العامة، في تصريحات أدلى بها لوكالة "قدس برس"؛ أنّ التحرك الأمريكي، على الصعيد الفلسطيني، محاولة من جانب واشنطن للتغطية على أزمتها وفشلها في العراق، على حساب القضية الفلسطينية، وقال "لذلك لا تريد أمريكا، أن ينجح الوفاق الوطني الفلسطيني، لأنها تعتبر هذا الوفاق يتناقض مع المصالح الأمريكية".

ومضى المهندس زيدان إلى القول إنه بعد فشل السياسة الأمريكية في العراق، "تحاول أمريكا أن تثبت نجاح سياستها في فلسطين، من خلال الانقلاب السياسي والانقلاب العسكري، فبموازاة ديمقراطية الفتنة الطائفية في العراق، تعمل أمريكا في فلسطين على نشر ديمقراطية الفتنة الفصائلية"، كما ذكر.

برهوم: رايس لم تأتِ بجديد

ومن جانبه؛ قال فوزي برهوم، المتحدث باسم حركة "حماس", في حديث خاص لـ "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" اليوم الأحد (14/1)، "نحن لا نعوِّل كثيرا على زيارة وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية، فهي من الأصل لم تأت بجديد, بل جاءت لتعزز خارطة الطريق التي لا تحفظ حقوق الشعب الفلسطيني وثوابته", مضيفاً أنّ هذه الزيارة جاءت بعد زيارة للكيان الصهيوني و"جاءت فقط للمجاملات والوعود الكاذبة التي تعطيها للرئيس عباس".

ووصف برهوم اجتماع رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس بوزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كونداليزا رايس؛ بأنه جاء ليخدم الأمن الصهيوني ويعزز من قوة الدعم للتيار المواجه لحماس, مؤكداً أنّ حركة "حماس" ترفض سياسة التصنيف بين أبناء الشعب الواحد بين "متطرف" و"معتدل".

شهاب: زيارة لخدمة الأهداف الصهيو - أمريكية

كما اعتبرت حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين، أنّ الجولة التي تقوم بها وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كوندوليزا رايس في المنطقة؛ تأتى في سياق سعي الإدارة الأمريكية للتدخل في الشؤون الداخلية للدول العربية، ورسم خطوط لعلاقات وسياسات الحكومات بما يخدم المصالح الصهيو - أمريكية.

وقال داود شهاب، المتحدث باسم حركة الجهاد، في غزة، في تصريح له بهذا الشأن، "إننا في حركة الجهاد الإسلامي في فلسطين، نعتبر هذه الجولة غير مرحب بها فلسطينياً وعربياً، وإن راهنت رايس ومن خلفها إدارة (الرئيس الأمريكي جورج) بوش على استغلال الظرف الداخلي الراهن لدفعنا نحو تنازل جديد أو فرض حلول سياسية وتسويق لوهم الدولة؛ فهذا رهان خاطئ، وإنّ شعبنا وقواه الحية سترد على هذه المحاولات بالوحدة والحوار والتلاحم".

ووصف المتحدث، خطاب رايس الذي ادعت فيه "حرص" الإدارة الأمريكية على مصالح الشعب الفلسطيني؛ بأنه "محض كذب وافتراء"، مؤكداً أنّ الشعب الفلسطيني يعي أنّ الولايات المتحدة "هي أكبر جهة تمعن في حصاره، وتضع العراقيل في وجهة أي محاولة لرفع هذا الحصار الظالم عنه"، كما قال.

وعبّر شهاب، عن استغرابه من الحديث عن دعم أجهزة الأمن الفلسطينية وتسليحها وتدريبها، وتساءل "عن مغزى وتوقيت هذا الدعم، وكيف يمكن أن يشكل مصلحة للشعب الفلسطيني في ظل تجويع وحصار الشعب الفلسطيني؟!"، وفق تساؤله.

مهنا: زيارة لدعم توجهات وتيارات تلتزم بالموقف الأمريكي

أما الدكتور رباح مهنا، عضو المكتب السياسي للجبهة الشعبية لتحرير فلسطين، فأكد أنّ زيارة وزيرة الخارجية الأمريكية كونداليزا رايس للأراضي الفلسطينية، جاءت لتدعم توجهات وتيارات تلتزم بالموقف الأمريكي, محذراً من أنّ هذه الزيارة لا تأتي بخير للقضية الفلسطينية والشعب الفلسطيني.

وقال مهنا في تصريح صحفي له، "إنّ أمريكا في موقفها المعادي للشعوب العربية والشعب الفلسطيني على وجه الخصوص لا تأتي لها بالخير", مؤكدا أنّ "أي تحرّك لها يكون ضد مصلحة هذه الشعوب".

وأوضح مهنا أنّ رايس لم تأت إلاّ بالشرّ للشعب الفلسطيني ولقضيته, معرباً عن أمله أن يكون رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية محمود عباس واضحاً في موقفه تجاه السياسة الأمريكية. "

The Three Stooges Were In The News Today:

Sen. Clinton meets with Karzai, troops

Midwife of death and her sock puppet

Talabani in Syria

By Maureen Dowd
The New York Times

"I feel good about the new war with Iran.

How can you not have confidence in the crackerjack team that brought you Operation Iraqi Freedom, which foundered and led to Operation Together Forward, which stumbled and led to Operation Together Forward II, which collapsed and was replaced by The New Way Forward, the Surge now being launched even though nobody's together and everything's going backward?

I say, bring it on. If a pre-emptive war in Iraq doesn't work, why not try a pre-emptive war on Iran in Iraq?

Although Tony Snow dismissed the idea of war with Iran as an "urban legend" yesterday, Condi Rice revealed to New York Times reporters that President Bush acted months ago to parry Iran's ambitions, issuing orders for a military campaign against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces sneaking into Iraq. Using diplomatic passports, the agents have been smuggling in sophisticated bomb-making components and infrared trigger devices, which could be used to blow up American soldiers.

The move against Iran allows the president and Dick Cheney - who was, natch, militating for the Surge - to blow off, once more, the Iraq Study Group and Congress, to push back rather than make up.

James Baker and Lee Hamilton had recommended playing nice with the mad mullahs, which even they acknowledged was a long shot, given that the Bush administration can offer them little except acquiescence in their nuclear weapons program, which is not going to happen.

Joe Biden, the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Condi on Thursday that Mr. Bush did not have the authority to pursue the networks over the border into Iran or Syria. On Friday, Bob Gates assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Iranians they target won't be in Iran.

We're trying to stanch a self-inflicted wound: our failed occupation gave Iran the opening in Iraq we're now trying to shut down.

The White House had to admit this week what has been obvious to everybody else for eons, including a list of lame assumptions they embraced during the first few years of the occupation: "Majority of Iraqis will support the coalition and Iraqi efforts to build a democratic state" has now been supplanted by "Iraqis increasingly disillusioned with coalition efforts."

It's a remarkable moment, W. standing nearly alone, deserted by more and more Republicans, generals and Americans, risking it all on a weak reed like Prime Minister Maliki.

It's impossible to know what W. was really thinking as he stiffly delivered his fantasy scheme in the White House library. The whole capital was fraught, but the president may simply have been musing to himself: "I'm hungry ... I wonder what time the game starts on ESPN? ... Has anybody read all these books?"

W. always acts like he's upping the ante in a board game where you roll the dice and bet your plastic army divisions on the outcome. This doesn't surprise some of his old classmates at Yale, who remember Junior as the riskiest Risk player of them all, known for dropping by the rooms of friends, especially when they were trying to study for exams, for extended bouts of "The Game of Global Domination."

Junior was known as an extremely aggressive player in the venerable Parker Brothers board game, a brutal contest that requires bluster and bluffing as you invade countries, all the while betraying alliances. Notably, it's almost impossible to win Risk and conquer the world if you start the game in the Middle East, because you're surrounded by enemies.

His gamesmanship extended to sports - he loved going into overtime and demanding that points be played over because he wasn't quite ready.

As Graydon Carter recollects in the new Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy wrote an article for the magazine about W. that made this point: "Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him."

W.'s best friend when he was a teenager in Houston, Doug Hannah, told Ms. Sheehy: "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15."

Even if it was clear who was winning, W. wanted to go further to see what would happen. It was a technique that worked well in Tallahassee in 2000, but not so well in Tikrit.

Word is that even as they Surge, the Bush team is already working on Plan C, or as they will no doubt call it, The New, New Way Forward II."

"Gaza - The Hamas Movement on Sunday charged that the goal of the meeting between PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and visiting American secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in Ramallah earlier today was to serve "Zionist security".

Fawzi Barhum, the Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, told the PIC that the meeting was also meant to boost the internal trend against Hamas, affirming that his Movement refused categorizing Palestinians into moderates and fanatics.

He said that Rice did not bring anything new with her nor did she want to preserve the Palestinian people's rights.

Asked on the unity government, he reiterated Hamas' readiness to return to dialogue without any conditions attached, appreciating the Arab and Islamic mediation efforts in this regard.

Hamas would not impede formation of a unity government based on the national concord document that was approved by all factions."