Distracting Congress from the Real War Plan: Iran

by Paul Craig Roberts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trying to Create a Next World War

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

By RON JACOBS
CounterPunch

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

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

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Different Set of Rules for Neolibs, Israel Firsters

By Kurt Nimmo

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

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

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

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

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Why U.S. Policy is Failing

Hierarchical and Relational Societies

By Col. DAN SMITH
CounterPunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brooding Prince’s Soliloquy

By Robert Scheer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

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

The perverse logic of Bush's war

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

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

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

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

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

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

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

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Negroponte and the escalation of death

By Dahr Jamail
Asia Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The superhawk behind the surge

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

A Very Informative Article
By Jim Lobe
Asia Times

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Double Or Nothing

By Joel Pett, USA Today

Like a deluded compulsive gambler, Bush is fuelling a new cold war

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

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday January 10, 2007
The Guardian

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bush “Surge” Speech Stitched of Neocon Whole Cloth

By Kurt Nimmo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Latuff: Tales Of Iraq War

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

Bush's Rush to Armageddon

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

An Important, Long Article
By Robert Parry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel's Purging of Palestinian Christians

On the Wrong Side of the Clash of Civilizations

An Excellent Article
By JONATHAN COOK
CounterPunch

Nazareth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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U.S. Launches Targeted Assassination Air Strikes in Somalia, Many Reported Killed

DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman

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

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

Poised To Surge
By Steve Bell, The Guardian

Launching the 2008 Presidential Campaign With Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq

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

By Tom Hayden

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

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

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

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

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

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Neocons Attack “al-Qaeda” in Somalia

By Kurt Nimmo

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

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

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

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

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Federalism: A Solution More for Israel than for Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Arab World Today

VIDEO: President Saddam Hussein was slaughtered after his death

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Tony Sayegh

Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush's New Iraq Team

by Dahr Jamail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most say no to Iraq buildup

By Susan Page, USA TODAY

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

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

POLL RESULTS: Bush approval | Feelings on Iraq

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

Among key findings:

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

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

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

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

Hamas: Fatah in league with Zionist conspiracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fatah compares Hamas with Iraqi Shiite leader

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

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

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

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

Hamas, Islamic Jihad tie the knot?

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

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

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

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

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

Some Advice for George Bush: A 'Surge' in US Troops in Iraq Will Not Bring about Peace

by Patrick Cockburn
The Independent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quagmire of the Vanities

by Paul Krugman
N.Y. Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norman Finkelstein vs. Gil Troy On Jimmy Carter's Controversial Book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"

DemocracyNow!
With Amy Goodman

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

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

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

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

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

Continue

Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel

This Road is for Jews Only

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

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

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

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

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

Humanitarian activists cannot transport Palestinians either.

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

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

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

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

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

Nuking Iran

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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