The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn

By Robert Fisk

".....But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin......

"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year......

To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate. And now we have the man who changed his mind on the legality of war – and did so on a single sheet of A4 paper – daring to suggest that we should test immigrants for British citizenship.......

Iraqi casualties allow an even closer comparison to the Second World War. Even if we accept the lowest of fatality statistics for civilian dead – they range from 350,000 up to a million – these long ago dwarfed the number of British civilian dead in the flying-bomb blitz on London in 1944-45 (6,000) and now far outnumber the total figure for civilians killed in bombing raids across the United Kingdom – 60,595 dead, 86,182 seriously wounded – from 1940 to 1945.

Indeed, the Iraqi civilian death toll since our invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.....

....We have dispatched our armies into the land of Islam. We have done so with the sole encouragement of Israel, whose own false intelligence over Iraq has been discreetly forgotten by our masters, while weeping crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

America's massive military prestige has been irreparably diminished. And if there are, as I now calculate, 22 times as many Western troops in the Muslim world as there were at the time of the 11th and 12th century Crusades, we must ask what we are doing. Are we there for oil? For democracy? For Israel? For fear of weapons of mass destruction? Or for fear of Islam?.....

And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right."

Hard Landing
By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Video: Hans Blix talks to Al Jazeera - Part 1 - 19 March 08

Zionazi Logic: Israeli plans to kill a senior Hamas figure prior to reaching calm, and War is Peace!

"OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Lebanese Akhbar newspaper quoted a "reliable" source in Hamas as saying that the Israeli occupation is planning the assassination of senior Hamas officials prior to the calm agreement which Egypt is working on in order to prompt the Movement to beg for truce.

The source told the newspaper on condition of anonymity that serious security information received by Hamas from a well informed source revealed that Israel is planning to liquidate a high-ranking Hamas leader in Gaza.

The source added that the information available to the Movement also says that the Israeli occupation focuses its eyes on four leading figures in the government and the armed wing.

The source explained that Israel procrastinates in responding positively to the truce agreement sponsored by Egypt, which received the approval of the movements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, until it finds the opportunity to carry out the assassination plot.

The source said that Hamas takes this information seriously especially when the Israeli government was severely criticized after the IOF troops' defeat in the operation called the "hot winter" in the Jabalia refugee camp......"

Dayton meets PA security commanders in Al-Khalil

"AL-KHALIL, (PIC)-- Gen. Keith Dayton, the American officer in charge of security coordination between the PA and Israeli security apparatuses, on Tuesday discussed with commanders of PA security commanders in Al-Khalil their efforts in implementing security campaign in the West Bank.

Palestinian sources said that the discussions focused on security efforts made in Al-Khalil city and its environs.

Dayton's efforts concentrate on stripping resistance fighters of their weapons or arresting its activists especially those affiliated with the Hamas Movement.

The commander of the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank also met with Hussein Al-Sheikh, the minister of civil affairs in the illegitimate government of Salam Fayyad, on Monday in the presence of 50 Palestinian employees and representatives of the civil administration.

The Hebrew TV 10th chancel said that the commander told Al-Sheikh that any economic progress in the West Bank was linked to the security situation. He also said that the Palestinians should fight Hamas in cooperation with the Hebrew state in its capacity as an issue of "mutual interest for both parties and in order to improve conditions in the PA", the commander was quoted as saying......"

Video: Baghdad: City of Walls Part 2

Contributed by sam b

Is the surge working? A short film courtesy of Guardian Films
Tuesday March 18th, 2008

"In the first of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad's extraordinary series of films to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, he investigates the claims that the US military surge is bringing stability to Iraq. By travelling through the heart of Baghdad he exposes how, by enclosing the Sunni and Shia populations behind 12ft walls, the surge has left the city more divided and desperate than ever."

Is the Pentagon Policy Shop Funding Likudist Fronts?

By Jim Lobe

"Remember the curious and intriguing interconnections between One Jerusalem, a Likud/settler group chaired by Natan Sharansky, and two U.S-led “NGOs” with overlapping or interchangeable directorates — the “Policy Forum on International Security Affairs (PF)” and the newly minted “Case for Freedom” — that we discovered in the participants list of the “Prague Democracy and Security” conference where George W. Bush appeared despite the concerns of his State Department last June? I wrote about the conference twice, once describing it as a “Neo-Conservative International” and a second time focusing on those very same connections under the title, “More on that Meeting in Prague.”

Well, there are some new developments that raise fresh questions about these groups, their provenance, and interrelationships....

What we’ve now found, however, is that onejerusalem.org, policyforumuk.com, and caseforfreedom.org are not only all hosted by the same Israel-based ISP, but they also share exactly the same IP address, 82.80.254.113 (along with carolineglick.com, the personal blog by the pro-settler editor of the Jerusalem Post by the same name). Theoretically, this could be a total coincidence, but experts I’ve spoken to insist that all of these sites are almost certainly managed, hosted and owned by the same organization or individual which, we believe, must be onejerusalem. (It was the first to register the domain, back in 2000.) One Jerusalem was the the only one of the three sites that listed an actual phone number on its registration, and, when we called it, the receptionist answered, “Allen Roth’s office,” presumably the same Allen Roth who last year was listed as One Jerusalem’s president nine months ago. This would add to the impression that we first gained last June: that the CFF and Cross’ PF work very closely with and may well be fronts for One Jerusalem.

Now, let us recall what One Jerusalem stands for and who its founders were, at least according to its website last June. It was founded during the Camp David negotiations in late 2000 to rally public opinion in Israel and in the United States, in particular, against any peace deal — indeed, any negotiation — that could conceivably result in ceding any part of Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, to the Palestinians. It is thus opposed to the official policies, at least in principle, of both the current Israeli and U.S. governments. Indeed, in the run-up to last November’s Annapolis summit hosted by Bush himself, One Jerusalem ran a well-financed (thanks to Netanyahu buddy, Ronald Lauder), public campaign designed to discredit and undermine it in advance. One Jerusalem’s founders included Sharansky, Netanyahu adviser Dore Gold, Feith (who even opposed the original Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt), David Horowitz (of Islamofascism Awareness Week); and David Steinmann, the former chairman of the ultra-hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), among other hardline Likudists.

So, you may ask, why is the Pentagon policy office awarding a no-bid contract to an organization whose institutional relationships and affiliations appear so opposed to official U.S. policy and which is so utterly lacking in transparency? And how is that such clearly pro-Likud individuals as Cross and Gedmin (not to mention the new Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, James Glassman who, like Gedmin, is an AEI alumnus) are put in charge of U.S. public-diplomacy efforts in Europe, let alone the Middle East? How does this happen? "

Contributed by Fatima


The Arab citizen praying to God to make the Arab rulers victorious......
God answers, "are you crazy!"

By the late Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali

The Collapse of American Power

A Bankrupt Superpower

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power.

From their inception, America's 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets.......

The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.

When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.

I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt "superpower" will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned."

The Illusion of Democracy – If We Can Keep It

By Peter Chamberlin

"In the name of patriotism, we have participated in a planned deception to create a state of permanent war. In the name of profit, America has been sacrificed on the altar of the god of war, to create a global empire based on the mass-marketing of death....."

Video: Baghdad City of Walls

"Baghdad is more divided than ever - a short film courtesy of Guardian Films

Tuesday March 18th, 2008

For the fifth anniversary of the US/British-led invasion of Iraq, the Guardian's award-winning foreign correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad has teamed up with ITV News to bring us a series of extraordinary films for the ITV News and guardian.co.uk. In these unprecedented films he, as an Iraqi, goes where foreign journalists can no long go - to the heart of Baghdad's most dangerous sectarian zones. He uncovers Iraq's own killing field where only the "killers and the killed" can visit; and he reveals the desperate truth of the trafficked children of Iraq."

Nowhere To Run To

(Click on photos to enlarge)
"39 children were killed the same way like this during last week...."

IRAQ: Five Years, And Counting

Analysis by Dahr Jamail

"......With more than a million dead, more than four million displaced, and another four million in need of emergency aid, a third of Iraqis are displaced, in need of emergency aid -- or dead.

All this Cheney calls a "successful endeavour"[It depends on your definition of success. If it is defined as the destruction of Iraq as a modern state and society, then Cheney is right. From the USraeli perspective, it has been a success ]......

Baghdad has become the most dangerous city in the world, largely as a result of a U.S. policy of pitting various Iraqi ethnic and sectarian groups against one another [ and the fools are doing it with gusto ]. Today Baghdad is a city of walled-off Sunni and Shia ghettoes, divided by concrete walls erected by the U.S. military.

These areas even fly their own flags; Sunni areas fly the old Iraqi flag, Shias use the new version, and the Kurds have their own flag.

Ethnic and sectarian cleansing strategies, backed by occupation forces, have virtually eliminated all mixed areas of Baghdad.

Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain, also in Iraq, met with Iraqi leaders as part of a Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission. He, like Cheney, said he would support the Iraqi government and maintain a long-term military commitment in Iraq.

"The surge is working," McCain told reporters, referring to the troop build-up in Baghdad.

With "enduring" U.S. military bases established in Iraq, and an embassy in Baghdad the size of the Vatican City, there appears to be no end in sight for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. "

Surprise, Surprise! Nelson Barghouti is Running for "President" (with a little help from his Israeli friends)

Jailed Barghouti mulls running for Palestinian presidency

"Jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti said Monday that he is considering running for the Palestinian Authority presidency in the next elections that are expected to take place in 2009 or 2010.

"When the date of the elections is decided, I will make my decision," Barghouti said in a message he passed on to his attorney......"

Iraq War as War Crime (Part One)

By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry
March 18, 2008

"Editor’s Note: The Iraq War – now ending its fifth bloody year – represents not only a human tragedy of enormous consequence and possibly the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history but also a systemic failure of American political and journalistic institutions.

Instead of checking George W. Bush’s imperial impulse for the good of the Republic, the Congress – including Sen. Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats – and the national press corps tended to their careers and their political viability.

In recognition of this tragedy – and in honor of the thousands of American dead and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead – we are publishing the first of two excerpts from Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush:

Iraq’s “Day of Liberation” – as George W. Bush called it – was supposed to begin with a bombardment consisting of 3,000 U.S. missiles delivered over 48 hours, 10 times the number of bombs dropped during the first two days of the Persian Gulf War in 1991......

“Unwittingly, Bush may be applying all the wrong lessons from America’s worst military disasters of the past 40-plus years. He’s mixing risky military tactics with a heavy reliance on propaganda and a large dose of wishful thinking.

“Bush also has guessed wrong on the one crucial ingredient that would separate meaningful victory from the political defeat that is now looming. He completely miscalculated the reaction of the Iraqi people to an invasion.

“More and more, Bush appears to be heading toward that ultimate lesson of U.S. military futility. He’s committed himself – and the nation – to destroying Iraq in order to save it.”"

Israel, a Militaristic Society

By Hasan Afif El-Hasan
Palestine Chronicle

"Can the Zionist militaristic society, with a century old blue print plan of action to settle Jews in all of Palestine, make concessions and compromise for the sake of peace? No, especially if it is the region’s only super-power supported and defended by the world’s only super-power. The Zionists have been either fighting a war or preparing to fight a war in Palestine and across its borders long before the establishment of Israel. Israel has been a military camp where every Israeli adult, male or female, is a soldier trained to kill. War science and technology and the Israeli warriors have become big commercial commodities ready for export as consultants and advisors. Israel’s military experience is sought by many countries after every one of its unending wars. Israeli leaders never set fixed borders for their state since its establishment. They always considered the pre-1967 borders as temporary armistice demarcation lines and that the land of Israel is “wherever the boots of its soldiers tread”......

The Israeli leaders are talking about peace, but their actions in the occupied lands preclude any possibility of real peace. Peace for the Israelis means the surrender of every Palestinian in a military sense. In the struggle to have an independent state of their own in a small part of their ancestral land, the Palestinians can win the moral arguments. But in the absence of the will to enforce the UN resolutions and the international laws, their relations with the Israel is based only on the balance of power rather than on the morality of the their case.

Given the power asymmetry between Israel and the Arab states, which have been reduced to spectators or collaborators pretending that the present fiasco will lead to peace, it is hard to persuade the militaristic Israelis to make concessions and compromise for the sake of a just peace. "

Al-Jazeera Cartoon

The Geriatric Arab League

Dinner With Ahmed

By Scott Ritter

"As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I find myself thinking back on how we got ourselves into this predicament. Like many who played a direct role in the issues surrounding Iraq in the years leading up to the decision to invade, I have wrestled with the demons of history, wondering about the specific impact my actions (or inaction) may have had on the course of human affairs. I’ve also wondered whether or not I have been witness to any events that, if more fully reported, might enable others to have a better understanding of the events that shape our world today, for better or for worse. As I examine where we are today and contemplate our future and those who are positioning themselves to play a role in Iraq, it seems to me that there is at least one such incident, a dinner party I attended at the home of Ahmed Chalabi in June 1998 that is worthy of a more public illumination.......

Ahmed Chalabi no longer directly controls Iraq’s oil. But at one time he did, and it will be interesting to see how he chose to distribute this largess to his friends and allies. Even more interesting will be how Chalabi leveraged his control of Iraq’s economic wealth to support his continuing claim to the ultimate position of power in Iraq. With the Shiite fundamentalists in Baghdad stumbling in their effort to form a stable government, and with the U.S. balking at Maliki’s theocratic tendencies, rest assured there are many in Washington who continue to look upon Chalabi as the go-to guy to bring secular stability to Iraq. Whether he can accomplish this task is questionable. But, in the meantime, Chalabi is in a position to write many checks, a factor that today makes him so attractive to so many, especially those in the neoconservative establishment with whom he has maintained a relationship over time. Just how attractive will be determined once there is a better understanding of when, and to whom, Chalabi writes his checks, or, more important, who is writing the checks on his behalf."

This is the PA Funded by the US and the EU: A Police State Without a State

Palestinian PSS storms Ramattan Press Agency in Ramallah

Report, PCHR, 17 March 2008

"PCHR is deeply concerned over storming the headquarters of Ramattan Press Agency in Ramallah by members of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service (PSS) and the arrest of a Palestinian journalist on Wednesday, 12 March 2008. PCHR believes that this attack constitutes an assault on press freedoms and the right to freedom of expression, and stresses that the rights to freedom of expression and to receive and impart information are ensured by the Palestinian Basic Law and international human rights instruments......

PCHR is deeply concerned over storming the headquarters of Ramattan Press Agency and arresting the journalist and forcing him to reveal his personal data, and:

* Stresses that this assault constitutes a violation of the Amended Basic Law whose article 32 prescribes: "Each aggression committed against any personal freedom, against private life of human being, or against any of rights or freedom, which have been guaranteed by the law or by this basic law, shall be considered as a crime. Criminal and civil case resultant from such infringement shall not be subject to any status of limitation."

* Expresses utmost concerns over the recurrence of assaults against the right to freedom of expression, and calls for providing protection to journalists and media institutions and take necessary measures to allow them to work freely.

* Asserts that the right to freedom of expression is ensured by the Palestinian Basic Law and international human rights instruments.

* Calls upon the Palestinian National Authority to arrest the perpetrators of this attack and bring them to justice."

Why is This Bastard Allowed to Continue "Negotiating" Away Palestinian Rights in Secret?
Hasn't He Made Enough Money Selling the Israelis Cement to Build the Apartheid Wall and the Colonies in the West Bank?
When Are the Palestinians Going to Say, ENOUGH!

1968, Forty Years Later: My Lai Massacre Remembered by Survivors, Victims’ Families and US War Vets

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"This weekend marked the fortieth anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, when US troops killed more than 500 men, women and children in Vietnam. We speak with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the killings and the cover-up.....

AMY GOODMAN: And your reflection now, as you hear an excerpt of Winter Soldier—we’ll be doing these hearings all week on this fifth anniversary—no corporate media coverage of this weekend, remarkable gathering of hundreds of active-duty soldiers, as well as veterans, describing their own experiences, echoing back to ’71? The Winter Soldier hearings of Detroit, Michigan almost got no coverage, as well, at the time.

SEYMOUR HERSH: You know, I’m somebody who works in the straight press. I worked for the New York Times for nine or ten years in Washington, been doing a lot of good stuff, and I’ll tell you—I’ve been reluctant to come to it, but I have to tell you—the Main Street press in this administration, they’ve missed—they’ve failed the First Amendment. Jefferson would be turning over in his grave. They missed the great moral story of our time, which was the inadequate facts on which the President went to the war, extended the war from Afghanistan into Iraq. They’ve missed this complete—this is a presidency that—you know, we have a president who uses words, that, you know, we do not—we don’t torture. The economy is going great......"

Rule, Not Reconciliation

By Dahr Jamail

".....Spring 2004 was perhaps the closest time in the occupation a unified Sunni-Shia front of resistance to the occupation existed. While the U.S. military assaulted the city of Fallujah in April of that year, Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was carrying out his first intifada against the occupiers across much of Baghdad and southern Iraq. I witnessed Shia and Sunni demonstrating together against the occupation in the Khadamiya and Adhamiya neighborhoods of Baghdad. When I was in Fallujah there were members of Sadrs’ militia, the Mehdi Army, as well. Later, during Sadr’s second intifada, Sunni mujahedin from Fallujah would cart weapons to Najaf to the Mehdi Army there.

Also during Spring 2004, the U.S. military had supply lines cut, and later admitted to losing control of swaths of Iraq it usually controlled. Thus, a new strategy was needed for the occupiers, because “only through the greatest vigilance and through policies designed to keep their enemies divided could they hope to remain in control of the situation.”

Nearly three years later, the fruits of this strategy are clear.......

The various U.S. military and political strategies in Iraq are the primary cause of the continuing sectarianism. The occupation forces and their methods are dividing Iraqi groups, and rather than promoting reconciliation, are encouraging increases in violence, power struggles, and strife. Thus, the military strategy is actually making the political process more difficult by failing to provide the actors the space needed for any progression towards reconciliation. The ultimate (and tragic) irony, is that this strategy also makes the possibility for a much larger civil war far more likely.

Perhaps this is the “success” and “progress” Bush and others refer to when they reference the so-called surge."

Egyptians Love Their Pharaoh

"This is a joke that Egyptians are spreading:

"واحد اتحشر في زحمة المرور فلقى واحد بيخبطّله على شباك السيارة
فتح الشباك و سأله: عايز ايه ؟
قاله : الرئيس حسني مبارك خطفوه و الفدية 5 مليون دولار و لو الفدية مااتدفعتش ..
الخاطفين هددوا يدلقوا عليه بنزين و يولعوا فيه..واحنا بنجمع تبرعات .. تحب تشارك ؟
الرجل سأل: و في المتوسط الناس بتتبرع بكام ؟
"الرجل الثاني : من 5 الى 10 لتر بنزين

Translation by Claire:

"A guy gets stuck in a traffic jam when a man knocks on his window.

He opened the window and asked:
What do you want?

He answered:
President Mubarak was kidnapped, and the ransom is 5 million dollars. If the kidnappers don't get the ransom, they threatened to douse him with gasoline and light him up. So we're out here taking donations. Would you like to participate?

The driver answered:
How much are people donating on average?

The man answered:
Between 5 and 10 liters of gas."

Current Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Online Poll

The question is:

After 5 years of the invasion, is Iraq now better or worse than before?

With over 2,700 responding so far, 96% said Iraq is worse now.

My Lai probe hid policy that led to massacre

By Gareth Porter

Asia Times

"The My Lai massacre of as many as 400 Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968 has long been perceived as the rogue act of overzealous GIs and a clear violation of official policy on the treatment of non-combatants. But a newly obtained document suggests the responsibility for My Lai could be linked directly to the top US commander in Vietnam, General William C Westmoreland....."

هنية يطالب الزعماء العرب بقرارات عملية لرفع الحصار الخانق عن غزة

"غزة – المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

طالب رئيس الوزراء الفلسطيني إسماعيل هنية الزعماء العرب، المقرر أن يجتمعوا في نهاية الشهر الجاري (آذار/ مارس) بالعمل على كسر الحصار الخانق المفروض على قطاع غزة منذ عدة أشهر، مشدداً على أن الشعب الفلسطيني ينتظر قرارات عملية وجدية بهذا الخصوص.

جاء ذلك خلال اتصال هاتفي أجراه رئيس الوزراء هنية مساء الأحد (16/3) مع أمير دولة قطر حمد بن خليفة آل ثاني، حيث ناقشا الوضع على الساحة الفلسطينية والصعوبات التي يتعرض لها قطاع غزة جراء الحصار.

وقال بيان صادر عن مكتب رئيس الوزراء، وتلقى "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" نسخة منه في غزة إن هنية أكد لأمير قطر على "أهمية القمة العربية ودورها"، مضيفاً أن "الشعب الفلسطيني ينتظر قرارات عملية وجدية لكسر الحصار فورا وتخفيف معاناته وتقرير مصيره".

وعبر هنية عن شكره للمواقف "النبيلة" التي تميزت بها قطر "الشقيقة" من خلال "الوقوف إلى جانب شعبنا ومعاناته".

كما قدم هنية التهاني للأمير، بمناسبة "إعادة اللحمة والعلاقة الأخوية بين دولة قطر والمملكة العربية السعودية". ورأى في هذه الخطوة "عملاً عربياً إسلامياً يصب في مصلحة البلدين والمصلحة العربية والإسلامية".

من جهته؛ أكد الشيخ حمد آل ثاني خلال الاتصال الهاتفي على أن القضية الفلسطينية هي قضية قطر الأولى، وأن قطر ستحمل إلى جانب أشقائها العرب ملف الحصار في القمة القادمة. "

***

Sorry to spoil your joy, Mr. Prime Minister, about the reconciliation between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This means that Qatar has been brought under the Saudi tent; goodbye independent Al-Jazeera and more clout to Al-Sahyun (Saud).

Al-Jazeera Video: Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to worsen - 17 Mar 08

Coming to the "Rescue" of the Al-Aqsa Mosque......
With Another Big Declaration.
By Hamed Najeeb

14 Days of Hunger Strike, Dr. Sami Lost 25 Pounds

"Even after being transferred to a federal medical facility, Dr. Sami Al-Arian still has not received water or been offered an IV. A doctor who examined him Monday said he is suffering from dehydration and starvation......"

Real News Video: Why the US sees Iran as a threat

Aijaz Ahmad : The main reason is the geopolitics of the region and the global economy

Israel to Hold Largest-Ever Emergency Drill in April

Al-Manar

"17/03/2008 Israeli Failure during Second Lebanon War is still affecting the Zionist entity which is trying its utmost to learn lessons from it as much as it can. This failure along with Israeli concerns of a possible escalation with Syria and Iran's efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon, parts of occupied territories will shut down next month in what Israeli security officials say will be the largest emergency exercise in Israel's history.

The drill, which is being organized by the newly-established National Emergency Authority, will take place over five days starting on Sunday, April 6. But first, on Tuesday, a first-of-its-kind hospital emergency exercise will take place to see how Ashkelon's Barzilai Medical Center would cope with a Grad missile hitting a five-story hospitalization building and an outpatient clinic's laboratory filled with toxic chemicals and a fire breaking out, requiring patients to be lowered from the roof......."

Explosions Welcome Cheney in Baghdad Visit

Al-Manar

"17/03/2008 US Vice President Dick Cheney, an architect of the US-led invasion of Iraq, swept into Baghdad on an unannounced visit Monday, looking to highlight security gains and promote elusive political progress days before the war enters its sixth year.

Soon after he arrived, two explosions rocked Baghdad, following a roadside bombing that killed a policeman, underscoring the violence that still grips the nation almost five years after the US-led invasion. A security official said one of the blasts was caused by a mortar attack on the highly-fortified Green Zone, home of the US embassy and the seat of Iraqi government.

Cheney met the top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador Ryan Crocker, and was to hold talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other senior Iraqi political figures.

The unheralded visit, shrouded in secrecy and blanketed with security, came as Cheney opened a nine-day visit to the Middle East and beyond, with scheduled stops in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank, and Turkey......."

A gross failure that ignored history and ended with a humiliating retreat

By Patrick Cockburn

"The war in Iraq has been one of the most disastrous wars ever fought by Britain. It has been small but we achieved nothing. It will stand with Crimea and the Boer War as conflicts which could have been avoided and were demonstrations of incompetence from start to finish.

The British failure in the Iraq war has been even more gross because it has not ended with a costly military victory but a humiliating scuttle. The victors in Basra and southern Iraq have been the local Shia militias masquerading as government security forces......."

Rachel Corrie play opens in Haifa

Al-Jazeera

"An Arabic-language production of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play based on the writings of a young American woman killed by an Israeli bulldozer, premiered in Haifa, Israel on Sunday.

Corrie's parents attended the performance, which took place on the fifth anniversary of her death.

"I can't think of any more appropriate place to be... than with all of you. Even when we are back in the United States, our hearts are always very much here," Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, told the audience......"

Germany’s immoral policy toward the Palestinians

A Great Comment By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied E. Jerusalem

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Israel Sunday on a three-day visit during which she is expected to reassert Germany’s “solidarity” and “special relations” with the Zionist state. In her weekly video message broadcast last week, Merkel said she planned to stress Germany’s deep commitment to “defending” Israel when she addresses the Israeli Knesset or parliament on Tuesday. Well, I am not quite sure that Israel, which possesses more than 300 nuclear bombs and warheads, along with their delivery systems, and also tightly controls the politics and policies of its guardian-ally, the United States, needs a foreign power to defend her against any real or imagined aggressor.

Hence, Merkel’s statement should only be construed as another cheap expression of Germany’s humiliating subservience to Zionism.

Besides, one really can’t understand why Merkel has chosen this time to show solidarity with Israel. Is Israel being attacked by a foreign power? Are foreign predators occupying Israeli land and building goy settlements on Israeli territories? Are hostile politicians and military commanders threatening Jews with a “greater holocaust”? Are Palestinian lawmakers warning Jewish lawmakers that “Soon, we will kick you out of this land.” Or, indeed, Is a hostile state blockading millions of Jews and denying them access to food, water and medicine?

Earlier this month, the Israeli army, using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death, swooped on the thoroughly starved and hermetically blockaded Gaza civilians, killing and maiming hundreds, including two dozen toddlers, babies and minors.

Interestingly, the pornographic bloodshed left no impact on Merkel’s heart, let alone her mind. Do Germans still have the same mentality, the same collective mindset, that their Nazi forefathers had seven decade ago? I am asking this question because it is amply clear that this whoring approach Germany is displaying vis-à-vis Israel stems not from a real moral feeling of guilt over the holocaust, but rather from a clearly immoral policy that Germany ought to appease Zionism to the saturation point and even beyond, regardless of any moral and human considerations. This explains Germany’s clarion silence toward Israeli crimes and genocidal terror against a people who are being killed and hounded and surrounded by the “Israeli Defense Forces” each day and every day very much as European Jewry were being killed and hounded and surrounded by the Wehrmacht and SS in Central and Eastern Europe during the Second World War........

The latest German proposal for holding a “security conference” in Berlin in June is another expression of this wanton hypocrisy. According to German officials, the conference, to which Israeli and PA officials have already been invited, is aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Police Forces. Well, strengthening the police forces against whom, and for what purpose? Does the German leadership really think that the real problem facing the Palestinian people under the Nazi-like Israeli occupation lie in the weakness of their police forces?.......

Indeed, how can one really relate candidly to “Palestinian police forces” when according to Israeli-PA security arrangements all Palestinian policemen and security cadres must immediately enter their “coops” the moment an Israeli soldier appears anywhere on the horizon? Besides, the Palestinian people don’t really need a big police force whose main function would be to persecute, torment and even torture their own people on Israel’s behalf as evident from the death-under-torture of a 43-year-old father of eight children in a Ramallah dungeon recently.

The Palestinians need someone to help them repulse the Nazi-like Israeli onslaught against them? They need a moral and powerful voice that would tell Israel to stop the ongoing theft of Palestinian land for Jewish-only settlement expansion. We need someone to tell Israel that it is wrong to turn Gaza, with its 1.5 million tormented human beings, into the Auschwitz of our time. Can Merkel tell Israeli leaders that Gazans are human beings too? Can she tell Olmert and Barak that settlement aggrandizement in occupied Arab East Jerusalem is scandalously inconsistent with all Israeli pretensions about peace with the Palestinians? Can she tell Barak that the continued existence of more than 600 Nazi-like roadblocks in the heart of the West Bank, despite all American and European calls to remove them, is an affront to civility and human decency?

This is the ultimate test for German and western seriousness about peace in Palestine, not another display of hypocrisy in Berlin."

‘KRISTALLNACHT’ IN JERUSALEM

Desert Peace

"What was a quiet day in Jerusalem turned into a nightmare by evening. I was on my way to a family celebration when I was confronted by hundreds of stone throwing Judeonazis, preventing me from getting where I was headed.

I had no idea what was going on until their ‘fuhrer’ Baruch Marzel stood directly in front of our car. The police escorted us away from the scene and we were able to return home where I found the following report on the Net…. it was definitely not a place for DesertPeace to be in the middle of….

Rightists hurl stones at Arab homes in Jerusalem

Hundreds of extreme right-wing activists break through police barriers, enter east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber in bid to destroy house of terrorist who killed eight yeshiva students in Jerusalem. Policeman lightly hurt in clashes; nine people arrested…

More than 100 extreme right-wing activists arrived Sunday afternoon at the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber and began hurling stones at houses. Large police forces were dispatched to the area and nine of the stone throwers were arrested. A policeman was lightly injured in the clashes.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered earlier at Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv promenade in order to march to the Arab neighborhood and destroy the house of the terrorist who killed eight students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva about 10 days ago

The rest can be read HERE"

Action of silence and peace for Gaza and Rachel Corrie

Silence On Gaza…Waiting For New Rachel!

"Gaza Strip, 16, March, 2008, (PCAS) Popular Committee Against Siege in the Gaza Strip has held a new action to lift siege. The action was pretty-unique in which a scene of siege was embodied on the ground. A commemoration of fifth anniversary of the American-Palestinian peace Martyr "Rachel Corrie" was done as well.

The siege scene has included many facets of Gazans sufferings. Disabled Medical instruments and machines, ambulances, electrical machines, travelers luggage in addition to many samples of siege were brought into the ground.

Barbed wire circulated the crossing of the Gaza down town where an atmosphere of silence, siege, sufferings spread overall the place for at least 2 hours.

Some school children held posters and slogans that call for peace and ending siege. The posters were also indicating all siege countenances, such as the lack of fuels, foods, medications, medical supplies and school books and stationary.

Rachel Corrie who was the American peace activist who sacrificed her soul in 2003 was on the scene.

She has occupied part of the action as participants sent in a 5-mintue-sielnce on the occasion of her 5th anniversary.

Rachel was killed by Israeli Bulldozer in Rafah town while defending some of poor refugees' homes.

A unique message was sent to the world, not through calling or appealing by words. Yet, a deaf child has sent a message through the deaf sign language in which she requested the UN, USA, EU to save the children of Gaza.

One of the corners was very bleak and expressed not only the suffering of people but also the suffering of the lovely flowers. Tens of dead-spoiled flowers that are being banned to be exported for Europe were threw in the ground!

Spokesman of PCAS, Mr. Ramy Abdu, asserted on the actions to end the siege." We are working according to new strategies to get the support of global mainstream. Our cause is a just one. We will use all civilized and peaceful means to free our beloved Gaza,"

It is remarkable the PCAS is launching by daily actions in the Gaza strip and abroad as well. An action was held yesterday in around 10 countries including Japan and South Korea for the first time.

The Action in Pics: "

St. Patrick's Day & Irish Resistance

This Post is Dedicated to Irish Eyes; Happy St. Patrick Day!

By Daniel Patrick Welch
March 16, 2008

"Editor’s Note: The celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day – like so many other holidays – has become an opportunity to get together with friends and to party, which is all well and good. But there is often a serious dimension to the events or the people behind the holidays.

In this guest essay, Daniel Patrick Welch reminds us that the “wearing of the green” represented resistance to English repression:

Another Saint Patrick's Day is here, with its tacky kegs of green beer, leprechauns, lucky charms, fake plastic hats and all imaginable variety of gaudy faux-Irish...um..."charm."

But it needn't be so. The holiday offers up an incredible opportunity to expose children (and adults, of course) to the history of struggle of a courageous people -- England's first and last colony -- and, by extension, to shed light on the legacy of colonization and imperialism and the universal nature of popular resistance.
At the risk of using one of the thankfully less egregious cliches, the Irish have long been a musical and literate people, a country where, as the poet said, "All her wars are merry, and all her songs are sad."
Even the most cursory outline of Irish history yields a treasure trove of struggles, uprisings, and oppression -- the practice field on which the British Empire honed its techniques. Fortunately, for those whose task is to educate, the songs are beautiful, moving, and largely self-explanatory. While the diaspora revels in the Luck O' the Irish and sports "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons, we'll be singing "The wearing of the Green," a concise, if simplified explication of the tradition of wearing green.
Distilled by generations of mass marketing into Irish Pride, the practice was actually a passive form of resistance to British rule, symbolizing the culture, language, religion and traditions ruthlessly suppressed in the wake of the Wolfe Tone and other uprisings (two centuries ago).....

Many of them, like Pearse's Rebel, are "come of the seed of the people." It is hardly a stretch that, by the end, they share the Rebel's scorn for his tormentors and his warning to his people's masters:

"Beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people, who shall take what ye would not give. Did you think to conquer the people? Or that law is stronger than life, or than man's desire to be free?"

It's always an exhilarating moment, and a potent opportunity, to invest a holiday marketed as one more excuse to party with a bit more meaning and purpose -- and hope, so that one day the "tyrants, hypocrites, and liars" might tremble at The Thing That is Coming.

hear Danny's rendition of Padraig Pearse's The Rebel here and The Wearing of the Green here"

While the Losers Are Normalizing With Israel.....

Gulf Supermarkets Boycott Danish Products: Reports

"16/03/2008 Supermarkets in Gulf Arab states have stopped selling Danish products to protest against the new publication in Denmark of a controversial newspaper cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

The Times of Oman reported on Sunday that Al Jadeeda Stores had stopped selling products from Denmark in all six of its branches in the conservative Muslim sultanate.

The boycott will be maintained "as long as the insulting caricatures continue to be published", Mukhtar al-Lawati, the public relations chief of Al Jadeeda Stores, told the English-language daily.

Similar action was underway in the United Arab Emirates. On Saturday the daily Khaleej Times reported that the Union Cooperative Society, which operates a chain of seven hypermarkets across the oil-rich federation, had started a boycott of Danish products.

"We have been directed to remove the Danish goods, mostly consisting of dairy products from the shelves," in protest over the cartoons deemed offensive by Muslims, a store official told the newspaper......"

Run to the Bomb Shelters; Darth Vader is in the Region!

Cheney in Middle East to Discuss Regional Issues

Al-Manar

"16/03/2008 US Vice President Dick Cheney leaves for the Middle East Sunday, hoping to help revive the battered “peace process” and get Arab allies like Saudi Arabia to do more to curb what they call “Iran's influence” in Iraq.

With just ten months left in US President George W. Bush's term, Cheney is expected to seek support for confronting Tehran over its nuclear program and push Israel and the Palestinians to fulfill past promises for peace.

His 10-day trip comes as the US presidential race is heating up and the world prepares to mark the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, which falls March 19 in Washington and March 20 in Baghdad.

The political unrest in Lebanon, the situation in Syria, the violence in Gaza, and sky-high oil prices will all come up as Cheney visits Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, and Turkey, top aide John Hannah said Friday. "It's a very long list and rich agenda," said Hannah, the vice president's national security adviser. "He has quite deep relationships, and personal relationships, with a number of leaders in those countries."

Cheney was not expected to press Saudi King Abdullah too much to boost oil output, or push OPEC to do so, in the face of sky-high oil prices that have fueled a bitter debate ahead of the November 4 US elections. Instead, the US vice president will push that staunch US ally to step up formal ties with the fledgling government in Iraq, a step an unnamed US official directly tied to efforts to contain regional powerhouse Iran.

The vice president is due to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials and, separately, Palestiniann president Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to push both sides on the talks the two sides agreed to restart at a November conference in Annapolis, Maryland......"

When The Merkel Hits The Fanfare

Occupation and resistance: Haifa Zangana interview

By Ian Sinclair

"WHILE many of those people who opposed the 2003 US-British invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq have often been disingenuously smeared as apologists for Saddam Hussein, this certainly can not be said about the Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana.

Born in Baghdad in 1950, Zangana joined a faction of the Iraqi Communist Party that was committed to armed struggle against the ruling Ba'ath Party while she was a student at Baghdad University. "We were considered to be the terrorists of that age," she explains....

She is now heavily involved in the anti-war movement and, last year, published City of Widows - An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance, a refreshingly clear and concise book that counters many of the myths surrounding the occupation.....

For Zangana, it is the occupation itself, which she notes has led to over one million deaths and over four million refugees, that is fuelling the growing resistance. Although opposition to the occupation was limited early on, she argues that, "as time passed, the brutality of the occupation became clearer and clearer to people and started to touch many personally."

Referring to the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, Zangana points out in her book that "armed resistance against occupation is a right under international law." Rhetorically, she asks: "People have to resist. It is their land. It is our country. What else can you do?"

Furthermore, she is frustrated by how the mainstream media and occupation forces prefer to use the term "insurgency." "It's safe, because, when you say the word 'resistance,' it is associated here with the French resistance," which has positive, even heroic, associations, she comments.

Zangana is also keen to stress that the Iraqi resistance is largely home-grown. Citing the US government's own figures - something that she does repeatedly - she notes that foreign fighters comprise no more than 3 to 5 per cent of the resistance.

Before we can continue the interview, Zangana questions how the whole issue of "foreign fighters" is usually presented. "From my own personal point of view, I can't see why not foreign fighters. As an Iraqi, I used to fight with the Palestinians. It is very traditional in the Arab world. If there is an injustice somewhere, you go and help." ........

In many ways, she believes that the surge has actually been a failure for Iraqis. For example, she notes that the surge has led to the number of refugees increasing by 70 per cent, while the number of detainees has increased by 60 per cent.

With all this death and destruction, it is perhaps surprising to find that, in the last chapter of City of Widows, Zangana categorically states that "the exit of occupation troops from Iraq is imminent."

She argues: "They can't stay in Iraq. No way can they can stay there. "Occupations of countries never last forever," pointing to the British occupation of Iraqi in the early 20th century.

While she believes that the main reason for the withdrawal of the occupation troops will be the Iraqi resistance, she also believes that the political fallout from the war in the US is an important influence on the conflict........

Most of all, Zangana hopes that more British people will speak up against the occupation.

"The more you are silent about the crimes committed in your name, the more you are part of the occupation. You are as responsible as your rulers because you vote for them." "

Rules of Engagement "Thrown Out the Window"

By Dahr Jamail

"SILVER SPRING, Maryland, Mar 15 (IPS) - Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the Rules of Engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, "Much of this was thrown out the window," he says.....

The panel on the "Rules of Engagement" (ROE) during the first full day of the gathering, named "Winter Soldier" to honour a similar gathering 30 years ago of veterans of the Vietnam War, was held in front of a visibly moved audience of several hundred, including veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Winter soldiers, according to U.S. founding father Thomas Paine, are the people who stand up for the soul of their country, even in its darkest hours....

Jason Wayne Lemue is a Marine who served three tours in Iraq. "My commander told me, 'Kill those who need to be killed, and save those who need to be saved', that was our mission on our first tour," he said of his first deployment during the invasion nearly five years ago. Lemue continued, "After that the ROE changed, and carrying a shovel, or standing on a rooftop talking on a cell phone, or being out after curfew [meant the people] were to be killed. I can't tell you how many people died because of this. By my third tour, we were told to just shoot people, and the officers would take care of us.".......

Turner explained one reason why establishment media reporting about the occupation in the U.S. has been largely sanitised. "Anytime we had embedded reporters, our actions changed drastically," he explained. "We did everything by the books, and were very low key."

To conclude, an emotional Turner said, "I want to say I'm sorry for the hate and destruction that I and others have inflicted on innocent people. It is not okay, and this is happening, and until people hear what is going on this is going to continue. I am no longer the monster that I once was." "

Al-Jazeera Video: Iraq war veterans accuse US military of coverups - 16 Mar 08

Video: Has corporate media forgotten Iraq?

Winter Soldier: Phyllis Bennis on the loss of interest in the Iraq war

Sunday March 16th, 2008

Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power.

“March 14 Document is Tantamount to US Membership I.D”

Al-Manar

"16/03/2008 Hezbollah issued a statement on Saturday commenting on the document issued by the March 14 coalition in the commemoration of March 14, saying its latest declaration was tantamount to a U.S. membership I.D.

"The language that prevailed over the political declaration is tantamount to a membership in the American scheme in the region and blatantly consolidated its (ruling bloc’s) bias position under (the helm) of American options," Hezbollah said in its statement.

The statement cited talk about "two different views in the world, impaired memory …, calls for revenge …, calls for rebellion against Damascus …, and clear accusations that the resistance works for foreign interests, regarding Israel as a regional power rather than enemy and putting it in the same category as Iran."

Hezbollah’s comments came in response to March 14's "first political declaration" that was announced by the alliance on the third anniversary of the Cedar Revolution.

"We had hoped that the political declaration was positive and worked for extending a hand … rather than rejecting the other and claiming purity for themselves," said the statement. "He who extends a hand to the other (party) should believe in the other (party) so together we can work to build the state," Hezbollah said."

Robert "Dick" Fisk: Always Smelly but never so Slick

By Hanibaal

"In his March 15, 2008, opinion "Silenced by the Men in White Socks", Rober Fisk of the Independent proves himself, yet again, to be the true dick that he always was.....

Why, I ask, is Dick Fisk avoiding the stench coming from south of the Lebanese border? Perhaps out of shame for the atrocious and utterly hypocritical role played by his beloved Albion in the creation of the State of Israel, the partition of Palestine, the displacement of the Palestinian people, the dismantling of historic Palestine by the the British Mandate, the creation of the equally artificial Jordan, Israel and Iraq, the deprivation by the British Empire of the Kurdish people of a righteous place among the nations, in the hope of stuffing the British treasury with European Jewish funds, and building railroads through Turkey to the oil fields in the Gulf, maintaining British control over these oil fields and the route to India (not to mention the partition of India and the creation of the failure called Pakistan today, etc. All of this, in fact, much more recently than France's withdrawal from the region, since Kuwait and a bunch of the decadent and equally smelly pro-English Sunni Arab emirates south of the Peninsula were still British Protectorates well into the 1960s......"

A minister of war

By Gideon Levy

".....If there's a lull in Qassams fired, then Barak does everything he can to ensure their renewal to justify the "large-scale op" in Gaza he intends to make. IF Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is desperately trying to push forward talks, Barak eliminates any chance of bolstering his support. If Hamas suggests a cease-fire, Barak responds: "We will witness harsh scenes in Gaza before a calm is reached." If all's quiet on the northern front, then Israeli pyromania claims Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyah, according to allegations. The security establishment does as it pleases: Killing; destroying; barring; seizing funds; issuing orders to close stores and factories in the West Bank; allowing construction in West Bank settlements; utterly humiliating the Palestinian Authority. It is oblivious to negotiations, Israeli commitments or lofty talk of peace.....

....He has unleashed the Israel Defense Forces on the Palestinians and ordered shows of force, including the failed Gaza op which killed 120 people and produced zero results. Hamas had been talking about a cease-fire, and who rejected it? Israel, the peace objector.....

When the conflagration begins, very soon, because of Barak's policies, none of them will be free from blame. They will all be remembered as full participants in the terrible disgrace. Then we'll remember how there used to be hope, but that the Labor leader, of all people, did everything he could to sabotage it. And no one did a thing."

You Want to Laugh? Hear This From The Syrian Clown:

".....Moallem added that the heads of Arab states will be able to pull the Arab initiative toward peace with Israel if they so choose during the summit. He said that another possibility, for which they are preparing, is the declaration of war.
"A reasonable man prepares himself for any possibility, in the face of the crazy policies?I can't say whether or not there will be war," Moallem said....."

Here is another curious segment:

"Slain Hezbollah chief Imad Mughniyah used to enter Syria under assumed names, stay in residential apartments and didn't take any safety precautions, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anba on Sunday, providing the first details regarding the assassination......

Moallem added that killing continues to be investigated "night and day" by the Syrian authorities. "Crimes like this one happen in many capitals around the world. I can't call it an 'infiltration,'" he said......"

Leading article: Iraq: doomed from the start

The Independent

".....The Independent on Sunday has been steadfast in its view that the invasion of Iraq was a reckless misjudgement that would mean death and destruction for Iraqis and make the world less safe. Some of our rivals have adjusted their uncritical acceptance of Mr Blair's beguiling optimism of five years ago. Others have seized on the reduction of civilian casualties since the "surge" of US troops a year ago as evidence that the situation is being turned round. Welcome as that reduction is, the sober reporting of our correspondent, Patrick Cockburn, puts it in its bleak perspective.

So, among the guilty people that we would name as responsible for the disaster of Iraq, we would include journalists collectively, in Britain and America. In our assessment of the winners and losers from the war we include the media among the latter. Partly, this was because journalists and opponents of the war focused too much on the distraction and legal device of weapons of mass destruction, on which, before the war, little could be proved.

Instead, we should have been asking much more searching questions about what would happen after the invasion. Five years on, it has become much clearer that the answer to Mr Miliband's question is that it would have been incredibly difficult to depose Saddam Hussein without unleashing the forces that led to such massive loss of life. Of course, if the Pentagon had looked ahead and realised that it should keep Saddam's army and the Baathist party structure, some of the bloodletting might have been avoided.

But, even if many more troops had been deployed, it is not certain that they could have secured order. Even if they had treated the human rights of every Iraqi with rigorous respect and fixed the electricity, it would have been hard to avoid the collapse of civil society into sectarianism.

The invasion of Iraq was a doomed enterprise from the start, and we were right to say so."

Five years on, the hard lessons that we must learn from Iraq

A LOUSY LEADER FROM THE OBSERVER

"......The consequences are grave, and not just for Iraq. It will colour the decision that future leaders take when they contemplate using military power for any purpose other than self-defence. It is a blow to the idea of 'liberal intervention'. But does that blow have to be fatal?

An optimistic account of what has happened in Iraq is still possible. It starts with the view that the country is no longer ruled by Saddam Hussein, a despot with a proven record of genocide. It is a democracy, at least in so far as ordinary people have chosen their own government. They defied suicide bombers to vote for a better future.......

We must tread carefully. Whatever the tragic consequences of the Iraq war, we must learn from them, and when the circumstances are right, not flinch from using all the power at our disposal. We can be sure in the knowledge that there will be causes worth fighting for in the future."

Militant's death unites Bethlehem

Stalled peace process fuels support for Hizbollah

Toni O'Loughlin in Bethlehem
The Observer, Sunday March 16 2008

"Outside Betlehem's Nativity Church, Christians yesterday queued not to celebrate the birth they believe happened here but to mourn a death - that of a Palestinian militant with close links to neighbouring Lebanon's Islamic militia, Hizbollah.

Mohammed Shehadeh was one of four Palestinians shot in an Israeli undercover ambush here last week, killings that have fuelled support for Hizbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among Christians and Muslims alike.

School principals, teachers and students from the Bethlehem School, the Catholic School and the Greek Orthodox School paraded to the mourning tent outside the church chanting and waving placards praising the Palestinian 'martyr'.

'People admired Shehadeh's ability to stand up to the Israelis,' said Sami Awad, Christian executive director of the Holy Land Trust, dedicated to promoting non-violent action against Israel's occupation. 'There's a lot of admiration for the charisma that Nasrallah has and the way he speaks and presents his views in public.' ........

Shehadeh, 45, met Nasrallah and his Shia brand of Islam in 1992 in southern Lebanon, where he fled after Israel exiled him for his militant activities in the West Bank.

It is unclear whether Shehadeh converted from Sunni Islam, the main form of Islamic belief in the West Bank and Gaza, to Shia. But he was open to rival theological thought as he always carried a card with a Koranic verse on one side and a picture of the Virgin Mary and Jesus on the other.

Yet it was mostly his crusading against corruption in the Palestinian Authority and Fatah as well as his support for locals that won Christian support. Shehadeh was the leader of Islamic Jihad, a militant group funded by Iran and perceived as being aligned with Hizbollah.

'The reason he was popular was because he presented a symbol of those individuals who were engaging in resistance,' Awad said. 'People are seeing that Hizbollah has done what others have failed to do either by military operations or negotiations. If Fatah had been able to achieve real steps through negotiations, people would be following that [process] and be feeling more proud of it and more supportive of it,' he added.......

On Friday, 40,000 to 50,000 mourners attended the militants' funerals. 'The killings mean killing the peace process. Blood bleeds blood,' said the town's former mayor, Hanna Nasser."

Islamic Resistance in Iraq by Carlos Latuff

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)

Mideast Players Differ On Approach to Hamas

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 16, 2008

"During a trip to the Middle East this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served as an informal go-between for Hamas and its sworn enemy, the government of Israel, helping to arrange a tentative truce, according to U.S., Israeli and Arab officials......

Throughout her trip, Rice never publicly uttered the term "cease-fire." But at the request of Egypt, Rice privately asked Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to issue a public statement that Israel would halt attacks if Hamas stopped firing crude rockets at Israeli towns and cities. One day later, Egyptian officials could point to the statement in talks with Hamas, and the daily barrage suddenly stopped.

Rice's actions underscore the nuanced series of signals that are typical of Middle East diplomacy, but they also highlight the central role today of Hamas, formally called the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now some experts -- and even Israelis -- are questioning whether the isolation of Hamas continues to make sense.......

Even the State Department acknowledged that the question is in the air when the department's official blog this month posed its question of the week: "Should the U.S. engage Hamas in the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians?" The question generated many long and emotional answers -- and State's spokesman was compelled to deny that the posting indicated that a change in policy was under consideration.

In Israel, a former head of the Mossad spy agency, Efraim Halevy, has argued for talks, saying it is impossible to defeat Hamas politically. His position was once a lonely one in Israel, but a poll last month in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, found that 64 percent of Israelis favor direct talks with Hamas......

Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch, Rice's point man on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, acknowledged to Congress last week that Hamas's control of Gaza had greatly complicated the choices for the United States, "presenting us with very difficult policy issues and choices and presenting Israel with a set of bad alternatives as well."......

However, none of the players -- including Israel's Arab neighbors -- wants a solution that appears to grant Hamas any sort of victory, diplomats said. "No one can ignore Hamas. They are a reality," said an Arab diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic sensitivities. "It's all about how much of a dividend to give them."

Arab and U.S. officials said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has objected to a deal on Shalit because he fears Hamas would gain credit for the release of Palestinian prisoners. "Any agreement to be achieved has to be complemented with a success" for Abbas, the Arab diplomat said.......

Malley said that the administration's effort to empower Abbas is doomed to failure if he does not reach some sort of accommodation with Hamas. "A dangerous Hamas is a Hamas that has nothing to lose," he said."