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Friday, March 31, 2006
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| Good Work, Congress |
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From the Associated Press: Chertoff: U.S. would have been safer with Dubai company at ports ![]()
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| Ask Virginia's Failed Gubernatorial Candidate about Immigration |
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Jerry Kilgore lost his bid to succeed the prospective 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Mark Warner. Though as Election Day drew near, the Kilgore camp believed they had an issue that would put them over the top -- illegal immigration. It didn't work and may be a harbinger of things to come for Republicans if, as the Wall Street Journal editorializes today, the party of Reagan morphs into the party of Tom Tancredo. Just after Kilgore's defeat Fred Barnes noted in the Weekly Standard that Republicans had lost their grip on what had been two solidly Republican counties in Northern Virginia. From the governor's election in Virginia last week, there's a bit of evidence that the Republican grip on the exurbs may be loosening.... [T]he outcome in Loudoun and Prince William should be alarming to Republicans. Located west of Washington, Loudoun is the second fastest-growing county in the country. Kilgore lost Loudoun by 51 percent to 46 percent. A year earlier, Bush did 10 points better.... The numbers in Prince William, south of Washington, were slightly better. Kilgore was defeated by 50 percent to 48 percent, slipping five points below Bush.... President Bush opposes the House-passed immigration bill because it isn't "comprehensive" and has asked for everyone involved in the debate to keep it "civil." Of course, he was talking to House Republicans. Having successfully run STATEWIDE in Texas and twice NATIONALLY, the president may have a better grasp on how to maintain Republican majorities than those from overwhelmingly safe districts who appear to be the most vocal on the immigration issue. Also see "Social Conservatives, Sen. Sam Brownback and Immigration Reform."
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Thursday, March 30, 2006
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| A Message to President Ahmadinejad? |
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From AFP: US to test 700-tonne explosive
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| Want to Import France's Assimilation Problem? |
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Go ahead and make the house-passed immigration bill law, writes George Will in today's Washington Post: And conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society's crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux conservatives absurdly call this price tag on legal status "amnesty." Actually, it would prevent the emergence of a sullen, simmering subculture of the permanently marginalized, akin to the Arab ghettos in France. The House-passed bill, making it a felony to be in the country illegally, would make 11 million people permanently ineligible for legal status. To what end? The good news is that Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Boehner are coming around to Will's arguments.
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| Social Conservatives, Sen. Sam Brownback and Immigration Reform |
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Social conservatives couldn't have a better friend on Capitol Hill than the Senator from Kansas. On the cultural divide, he stands as far away from Sen. Kennedy as Pluto is from Mars. Yet, Brownback was instrumental in getting the immigration bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Upon passage, he noted the bill, which also tightens border security, isn't "amnesty," which some conservative critics have falsely claimed in much the same way liberals did in accusing Republicans of "cutting" programs when, in fact, they were just slowing the rate of spending growth. It's an effective rhetorical device but deeply misleading. Said Brownback: I am pleased that we were able to report out a bill that makes positive strides toward a guest-worker program and strong enforcement at the border and on the employer....Committee passage is a big step, but not the final step. Workable immigration reform is one of the biggest issues facing the country today and in the future, and we struck a good balance. We need to continue to work on this bill from the floor of the Senate to ensure that we don’t make the mistakes of the 1986 amnesty bill or the 1996 enforcement-only bill, which together led to an explosion of the illegal immigrant population. David Brooks in today's New York Times also argues (Times Select, unfortunately) that social conservatives should speak up in support of the Brownback-backed immigration bill and not let opponents claim the moral high ground. Some highlights: The facts show that the recent rise in immigration hasn't been accompanied by social breakdown, but by social repair. As immigration has surged, violent crime has fallen by 57 percent. Teen pregnancies and abortion rates have declined by a third. Teenagers are having fewer sexual partners and losing their virginity later. Teen suicide rates have dropped. The divorce rate for young people is on the way down. ![]()
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| The Paranoid Lobby |
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Here are two pieces worth reading on the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the "Israel Lobby" in the U.S. From Max Boot in the LA Times (reg. req'd): IN HIS CLASSIC 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality that it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed." As examples, he cited a 96-page pamphlet by Joseph McCarthy that contained "no less than 313 footnote references" and a book by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch that employed "one hundred pages of bibliography and notes" to show that President Eisenhower was a communist. And from Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe. Walt and Mearsheimer are not the first to wade into these swamps. In March 2003, US Representative James Moran inveighed against Jews at an antiwar rally: ''If it was not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq," the Virginian Democrat fumed, ''we would not be doing this." It was at about the same time that Professor Edward Said of Columbia University was writing, ''Wherever you look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who share . . . unbridled support for extremist Zionism." A year earlier it had been South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, lamenting that ''the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal" in the United States; no one dares oppose Israel ''because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful."
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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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| A Job Well Done, Mr. Secretary |
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The following is President Reagan's letter accepting the resignation of Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defense and thanking him for his great service to our nation: THE WHITE HOUSE Reagan's words -- "we live in a dangerous time when the survival and triumph of freedom are not self-evident. If freedom is to endure and expand, it will only be because we understand the lessons of history and the nature of the implacable enemy that confronts us globally" -- still ring true today.
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| Tehran Strikes Back at Bloggers, Beijing Style |
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From Wired.com: Dozens of Iranian bloggers have faced harassment by the government, been arrested for voicing opposing views, and fled the country in fear of prosecution over the past two years.
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| (Update) Did that NSA Surveillance Program Help Stop a Wave of Terror Attacks in Britain? |
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Posted on March 21, 2006: It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC: Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey has heard.
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| Smoking Gun Linking Damascus to Hariri Assassination? |
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From Asharq Al-Awsat: Beirut- Informed sources have revealed told Asharq al-Awsat that the international commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri received the transcript of a phone call conversation between a Lebanese official and his Syrian counterpart in which the former confirmed to the latter that the assassination had taken place.
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Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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| The Road to Nowhere? |
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I usually agree with the editors of the New York Post, but not this paragraph from today's editorial Forced repatriation, also under consideration, is a drastic - and politically explosive - option. But it needs to be part of the debate, if only to underscore the gravity of the current debate. Do Republicans really want to go down this road? This blogger makes some interesting points, while this one, I believe, is unfair and doesn't make much sense. Why would a potential GOP presidential candidate take such a position if it were just about "ambition"? And where in the Senator's quote does he exclude tougher border enforcement? He doesn't. Also, President Bush generally supports the bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee, so is he somehow weakening his credentials as a hawk "in the GWOT"? I don't think so. I do have a prediction, though. An immigration bill won't come out of conference until after the November election.
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| The Document Refuseniks |
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There is an effort afoot to discredit any material that may undermine the narrative that "Bush lied us into war" and that Saddam's connection to al Qaeda was tenuous at best. Consider this quote from an AP wire story today: [John] Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there." Prados knows "it's not there," even if he hasn't read all the documents -- the vast majority of which haven't been made public let alone translated. Of course, he has a book out saying Bush lied us into war, so there CAN'T be anything that contradicts the book he already wrote. The same holds for Peter Bergen, who informs us that only "Bush administration defenders, right-wing bloggers and neoconservative publications are crowing about Iraqi documents newly released by the Pentagon that, they say, prove that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were in league." We learn from Bergen that, "the 9/11 commission found no 'collaborative relationship' between the ultrafundamentalist Osama bin Laden and the secular Saddam Hussein...." Well, one of those 9/11 commissioners, former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, said recently that the documents are a "very significant set of facts" and "tie [Saddam] into a circle that meant to damage the United States." It's unclear what Republican box Bergen would put the onetime Democratic presidential candidate in. Like Prados, Bergen has invested a lot of time and effort in one particular Iraq war story line. "It's long been known that Iraqi officials were playing footsie with Al Qaeda in the mid-1990's," he writes, "but these desultory contacts never yielded any cooperation." And then there's the ubiquitous Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official who pops up in a silly and dismissive front-page piece on the documents in today's New York Times. He notes that "there's no quality control" when you just throw a bunch of documents out into the public domain. Another U.S. intelligence official is quoted anonymously as saying that "our view is there's nothing in here [the documents already released] that changes what we know today." There's no doubt that some documents may be fraudulent and that a few may wildly over interpret the meaning of some the documents. But to dismiss all of them -- leaving aside that fact the most haven't been reviewed -- is a bit rich and arrogant considering how clueless U.S. intelligence was on what was going on inside Iraq and al Qaeda. Consider these two congressional reports, the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (pp. 90, 91), and the Report on U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (pp. 322, 323, 351, 355): “The U.S. Intelligence Community was not able to penetrate al Qaeda’s inner circle successfully before September 11, despite the fact that human penetration of that organization was considered a priority.†Let's recap. The US intelligence consensus was that Saddam wouldn't invade Kuwait in 1990. They were totally unaware that Saddam was operating a "Manhattan Project"-sized nuclear weapons program until after the 1991 Gulf War. They were a bit off on the status of Saddam's wmd programs in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. Imagine if they also blew it on the extent of the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. All of the above pretty much encapsulates the current media view. Because they cannot even entertain the possibility that they may have been wrong, there isn't any new evidence that can possibly be produced. To be continued....
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Monday, March 27, 2006
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| What About "Patriotic Assimilation"? |
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This issue is not a subject of debate on Capitol Hill by either side in the immigration divide, but it should be. Nearly three years ago, John Fonte, the director of the Hudson Institute's Center for American Common Culture, wrote an interesting article on the "need for a patriotic assimilation policy" in the U.S. "It makes no sense to discuss immigration without talking about assimilation," Fonte wrote, "nor does it make sense to develop an immigration policy without an assimilation policy." But today on Capitol Hill [and in the White House for that matter] that is exactly what is happening. You hardly hear a peep about it. The House-passed immigration bill ignores the topic, while Senate Majority Leader Frist will likely sponsor a similar enforcement-only bill in the Senate. Sen. Specter's Judiciary Committee-passed bill will likely have nothing on "patriotic assimilation" and even Sen. McCain's "earned citizenship" bill says little on the issue. The same holds for the bill sponsored by Sens. Kyl and Cornyn. It's a fairly good bet that a bill will get through the Senate. What the final legislation will look like when [and IF] it emerges from the House-Senate conference committee is anyone's guess. Though, what is certain is that most immigrants will continue to come to the U.S. because of the opportunity our nation offers for a better life. Agree or disagree with him, Fonte makes some points worthy of debate and consideration by our elected representatives. From Fonte's May 14, 2004 piece, "We Need a Patriotic Assimilation Policy": For more than two hundred years, immigrants to America and their children have been successfully assimilated into what has been called the American way of life. This civic or patriotic assimilation of immigrants into the American constitutional regime did not happen naturally. Patriotic assimilation was the end result of a sometimes explicit (and other times implicit) long-range vision formulated by America’s leaders. From the days of George Washington continuing through the era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and supported in the past decade by such public figures as Barbara Jordan, this strategic vision has helped to define immigration-assimilation policy by articulating two interconnected ideas: (1) welcoming immigrants and (2) assimilating those immigrants into the mainstream of American civic life....
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| Tony Blair, America's Friend |
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Blair, in a speech to the Australian parliament: "But the strain of frankly anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in," he said.... Blair's right. And judging from the activity on Capitol Hill the last few months, he should be worried.
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| Don't Repeat the Mistake of April 2003 |
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These two editorials are worth a read. The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon, a centrist Democrat, argues in today's Washington Post that the best way to prevent a large-scale civil war is to not repeat what happened in Baghdad in April 2003. Back then, unchecked small-scale looting eventually spiraled out of control. Administration officials have been right in recent weeks to argue that there is no large-scale civil war underway in Iraq.... And in the current Weekly Standard, Frederick Kagan and William Kristol make a similar point. WITHIN HOURS OF THE BOMBING of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra on February 22, the media were filled with warnings that Iraq is sinking into civil war. Of course, almost any insurgency is, in a sense, a civil war, and sectarian violence has marked this insurgency from the very beginning. But the fact is that we are not facing a civil war in Iraq, with large-scale military formations fighting one another along ethnic and sectarian lines. Moreover, we can very likely prevent this outcome, and, even better, make real progress toward victory....
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Sunday, March 26, 2006
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| How to Become a Minority Party |
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Ignore this advice, "When we conduct this debate it must be done in a civil way," Mr. Bush said after meeting with groups that support legalizing illegal aliens. "It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another." and adopt rhetoric like this, Illegal immigrants are "a scourge that threatens the very future of our nation" [Rep. Tancredo (R-CO) says.
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Saturday, March 25, 2006
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| Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick... |
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From today's Los Angeles Times: Iran's Nuclear Steps Quicken, Diplomats Say Let's hope our intelligence on the status of Iran's nuclear program is better than we had on Saddam's in 1991. From a Worldwide Standard post, January 13, 2006: Saddam Came Close to Having a Nuke in '91; Today, Iran Follows Saddam's Nuclear Procurement Playbook It's easy to forget that the resolution authorizing force to kick Saddam out of Kuwait barely passed Congress. It's easy to forget that Iraq had passed frequent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections designed to ensure its compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or that its Manhattan Project-sized nuclear program went undetected by US intelligence. It's also easy to forget just how skilled Saddam became at deception post-Osirak. Some history -- Iraq ratified the NPT in 1969. Twelve year later, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. According to the June 22, 1981 Newsweek, [t]he Osirak reactor was theoretically only for research purposes—but Iraq twice refused a French offer to supply it with low-enriched uranium, insisting instead on weapons-grade, 93 per cent enriched fuel. Iraq was also operating an Italian-built “hot cell†lab for extracting plutonium, and had arranged to buy large quantities of uranium from Brazil, Portugal and Niger—all without any investment in a nuclear-energy program. In his 2002 book, The Threatening Storm, Clinton NSC official Kenneth Pollack wrote that Osirak “was the key to Saddam’s nuclear weapons program and ... was due to go online within a matter of weeks.†The bombing set Iraq’s “nuclear bomb program back by several years,†but it also “taught the Iraqis an important lesson. Thereafter, Saddam ordered a redoubling of the Iraqi program...camouflaged against detection.†(Pollack would subsequently note this regarding Saddam's nuclear program.) After the Osirak attack, Iraq would pursue a secret nuclear weapons program that had gone undetected by Western intelligence and the IAEA until after the 1991 Gulf War. As former U.N. inspector David Kay wrote in a 1995 Washington Quarterly piece, Iraq would pursue this program while maintaining “its status as a full member†of the NPT because it was “the desire of the military and security services not to attract any undue attention to Iraq’s developing nuclear program that would complicate procurement and development efforts.†The fact that Hussein was able to conceal his nuclear program was even more remarkable given that: 1) as the Washington Post noted in October 1991, the “scope and sophistication†of its program “resembled the Manhattan Project, the American effort that produced the first atomic bombâ€; and 2) Iraq had passed regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. On August 11, 1991, the Post reported that: International inspectors...unearthed one of the most important—and disturbing—finds of the post-Cold War era: a huge assembly line for the covert manufacture of equipment to make an Iraqi bomb. The Post also reported: Despite repeated warnings and Saddam’s own public statements, Western experts consistently underestimated Iraq’s scientific and technical capabilities. Inspection officials now believe Iraq was only 12 to 18 months from producing its first bomb, not five to 10 years as previously thought.Kay wrote that Iraq hid its program by keeping it “heavily compartmentalized†and employing a variety of deception techniques. For example, Iraq created a network of front companies to import nuclear-related materials “in quantities that were below the size that triggered controls.†Equipment was imported ostensibly for civilian purposes but was diverted to the nuclear program as well. (see here for UNMOVIC May 2003 report on Iraq's attempt to "conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks" for missiles, chems & bios) The Iraqis, Kay continued, had an “accurate understanding of the limitations of U.S. technical collection systems...†and exploited these vulnerabilities through various methods, including: construction of buildings within buildings... hiding power and water feeds to mislead as to facility use... diminishing value of a facility by apparent low security and lack of defenses... moving critical pieces of equipment at night.... Apparently, Iran has taken a page out of Saddam's nuclear weapons procurement book.
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| (Update) The Assassination Campaign Against Moderate Muslim Scholars in Somalia |
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(Though Somalia gets little media attention these days, it remains a battleground for radical Islamists. From Reuters: MOGADISHU - Heavy fighting between rival Somali militia linked to Islamic courts and a new "anti-terror" alliance has killed about 90 people in the last three days in the capital, Mogadishu, residents and local radio said on Friday. Posted on February 20, 2006: Since the early 1990s, al Qaeda has targeted Somalia. Back then, American forces and U.N peacekeepers were the target. Today, as in other regions of the world, they are also increasingly aiming their gun sights on moderate Muslims. From the BBC:
The fighting pits a new group, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, against the Islamic Courts' militia....
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Friday, March 24, 2006
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| (Update) In Putin We Trust? -- Part II |
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(From AP: "Russia had a military intelligence unit operating in Iraq up through the 2003 U.S. invasion and fall of Baghdad, a Russian analyst said Friday. A Pentagon report said Russia provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence on U.S. military movements and plans. The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources "inside the American Central Command" and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad."
From Stephen Hayes: A follow-up on Dan McKivergan’s post on Russia and Iran. Dan wrote of the worrisome prospect of the U.S. putting its trust in Putin on Iran: “We better have a Plan B if Moscow's recent past is prologue. “ The examples he and Mort Zuckerman provide are deeply disturbing. There are more. Russian intelligence services, for instance, trained Iraqi intelligence operatives as late as September 2002, even as Putin and his cronies spoke publicly of a “common goal†on Iraq between the U.S. and Russia. It’s September 2002. President Bush gives a speech to the UN making clear that his administration would hold Iraq to account for its defiance of UN resolutions. The Russian government, which for years had carried Iraq’s water on the UN Security Council, announced that it would not send troops in the event of war in Iraq and fought hard against U.S. and British efforts to confront Saddam Hussein. Nonetheless, Russia eventually endorsed UN Resolution 1441, which threatened “serious consequences†that would result from Iraq’s continued flouting of previous UN resolutions. Putin’s government spoke of its partnership with the U.S. on the war on terror. Putin spokesman Sergei Prikhodko declared: "Russia and the United States have a common goal regarding the Iraqi issue" – disarmament. And Russian Foreign Minister Boris Malakhov proclaimed that the U.S. and Russia “are partners in the anti-terror coalition.†Not quite. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Robert Collier wrote a series of articles in April 2003 on Russian double-dealing on Iraq. The articles provide a stark reminder of the perils in working with Putin’s Russia and of the need to expedite the exploitation of 2 million documents recovered in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan: A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show. The “Moscow-based organization,†it turns out, was the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Russian intelligence officials have confirmed that Iraqi spies received training in specialized counterintelligence techniques in Moscow last fall -- training that appears to violate the United Nations resolution barring military and security assistance to Iraq. The Chronicle article continues: However, it seems likely that the Iraqi agents who were trained at the Moscow center were using their skills for other purposes. Found in the same Mukhabarat office with their personnel files and graduation certificates were a host of other documents, including orders for wiretaps and for break-ins at such sites as the Iranian Embassy, the five-star al-Mansour Hotel and private doctors' offices. Ronald Reagan’s famous aphorism about dealing with the Soviets was “Trust but Verify.†Perhaps it needs updating. “Don’t Trust.â€
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| Does Secretary Madeleine Albright Regret Calling for Regime Change in Iraq? |
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Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offers some foreign policy advice, "Good versus evil isn't a strategy," for the White House in today's Los Angeles Times. It's very nice of her. The sophisticated Clintonites weaved a world of stability and hope. They were problem solvers, not ideologues, you see. They enticed Pyongyang to "end" its nuclear weapons program with lots of goodies. They brokered Israel-Palestinian negotiations that brought both sides closer to peace. They reacted quickly to events in Rwanda and in the Balkans. They sent a message of strength and resolve following attacks on our forces in Mogadishu and in Dhahran, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and on the USS Cole. And because they acted against the Taliban, thousands upon thousands were prevented from graduating from the extensive network of al Qaeda terror training camps in Afghanistan and setting up shop in nations across the globe. They handed Bush a stable world in January 2001 and then September 11 hit and the ideologues took over, as Sec. Albright informs us. She also has an interesting take on regime change in Iran: the Bush administration should disavow any plan for regime change in Iran — not because the regime should not be changed but because U.S. endorsement of that goal only makes it less likely. In today's warped political environment, nothing strengthens a radical government more than Washington's overt antagonism. It also is common sense to presume that Iran will be less willing to cooperate in Iraq and to compromise on nuclear issues if it is being threatened with destruction. The odd thing here is that Sec. Albright was, I believe, the first senior American official to call publicly for the ouster of Saddam Hussein. She even compared Saddam to Hitler, noting that the world has not "seen, except maybe since Hitler, somebody who is quite as evil as Saddam Hussein." One of the lessons of history, Albright also lectured, is that "if you don't stop a horrific dictator before he gets started too far--that he can do untold damage" and "if the world had been firmer with Hitler earlier, then chances are that we might not have needed to send Americans to Europe during the Second World War. So, my lesson out of all this is deal with the problem at the time that you can and don't step away from it thinking that it'll go away. I think that's the lesson here." But if "the Bush administration should disavow any plan for regime change in Iran — not because the regime should not be changed but because U.S. endorsement of that goal only makes it less likely," why did she champion regime change in Iraq? Why did President Clinton sign the Iraq Liberation Act, which specifically called for regime change in Iraq? Why did National Security Advisor Sandy Berger deliver a lengthy speech justifying the need for regime change in Iraq? Why did the Clinton administration call publicly for regime change in Iraq if doing so, according to Albright's own logic, not only made Saddam's ouster "less likely" but also strengthened his hold on power because of our "overt antagonism"? Would Secretary Albright now like to say that she regrets the Clinton administration's comments about Saddam Hussein and the need to get rid of him?
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| 9/11 Commissioner and Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey: Iraq-al Qaeda Docs "Tie [Saddam] into a Circle that Meant to Damage the United States" |
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From today's New York Sun: CAIRO, Egypt - A former Democratic senator and 9/11 commissioner says a recently declassified Iraqi account of a 1995 meeting between Osama bin Laden and a senior Iraqi envoy presents a "significant set of facts," and shows a more detailed collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The document may be found here.
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Thursday, March 23, 2006
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| Foreign Minister Claimed Saddam had Dispersed Chemical Weapons "Among Some of the Loyal Tribes" |
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The other day the Powerline guys noted that NBC News managed to bury a legitimate scoop "beneath a grotesquely misleading headline." They wrote: March 22, 2006 Today's Washington Post adds new information to the NBC News piece but not until paragraphs five and six. We learn that Sabri told the CIA that Saddam was lying, that biological weapons research was underway, and that Saddam had dispersed chemical weapons to loyal tribes. Publicly Sabri was insisting that Iraq had no prohibited weapons of mass destruction. Privately, the sources said, he provided information that the Iraqi dictator had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway. To recap, on March 18, 2003, the day before ground forces entered Iraq, the president confronted a broad range of concerns regarding Saddam's weapons programs, his connections to terrorist organizations (see here for latest revelations), his history of aggressive behavior, his use of poison gas, and his failure to comply with the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire agreement and subsequent U.N. resolutions. American intelligence (which had evidently factored in Sabri's claims into its analysis) and other foreign governments concluded at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq's "Unresolved Disarmament Issues." It stated that the "long list" of "unaccounted for" WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998--the month inspections ended in Iraq--and beyond were still "unaccounted for." The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been "weaponized"); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced "3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent." Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials (see more on Hans Blix and the "verifiable evidence" standard here). The same report noted "a surge of activity in the missile technology field in the past four years" and that while 817 of the 819 Scud missiles Iraq had imported had been accounted for, inspectors did not know the number of missiles Iraq had indigenously produced or still possessed. Similarly, while inspectors had accounted for 73 of Iraq's 75 declared "special" warheads, doubts remained that Iraqi officials were truthful about how many had actually been manufactured. It acknowledged that inspectors had found a handful of 122mm chemical rocket warheads but noted that this discovery may only be the "tip of the iceberg" since several thousand, in the inspectors' judgment, were still unaccounted for. It also stated that no underground chemical facilities had been found but added that such facilities may exist given the size of Iraq and that future inspections in this area would have to rely on "specific intelligence." Finally, the report declared that there appears to be no "choke points" to prevent Iraq from producing anthrax at the same level it did before 1991, that large-scale Iraqi production of botulinum toxin "could be rapidly commenced," and that given Iraq's history of concealment, "it cannot be excluded that it has retained some capability with regard to VX."
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| The Florida Recount, Iraq and Drudge's ABC News "Bush Makes Me Sick" Exclusive |
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A former ABC news employee I've known for many years, who worked in the same New York City headquarters as John Green, called to tell me that he's not surprised by Green's September 30, 2004 email. Bush had used the "mixed messages" line several times in attacking the Kerry's position on Iraq during their debate in Coral Gables, Florida. From Drudge: ABC NEWS EXEC: 'BUSH MAKES ME SICK'; E-MAIL REVEALED The former ABC employee told me that the anti-Republican attitude was pervasive in the news division. One time, in particular, during the 2000 Florida recount, this person overheard (and will "never forget") a vice president of the news desk tell another senior news desk member in the hallway that, "I hate the f**cking Republicans." I know. What a shock!
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| A Political Document Masquerading as a Serious Academic "Study" |
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New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes today on a "study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes ... at Harvard, that estimates the 'true costs' of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly even $2 trillion." Just so you know where the authors are coming from here's some material from the "study" that didn't make into Herbert's column: "Many aspects of the Iraq venture have turned out differently from what was purported before the war: there were no weapons of mass destruction, no clear link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, no imminent danger that would warrant a pre-emptive war. Whether Americans were greeted as liberators or not, there is evidence that they are now viewed as occupiers. Stability has not been established. Clearly, the benefits of the War have been markedly different from those claimed." "At the beginning of the War, there was a great deal of talk about winning the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East. Recent opinion polls reflecting public opinion in the Arab world show that exactly the opposite has happened. Some American businesses have even claimed that anti-Americanism spawned by the Iraq War has had an effect on their sales and profits. America’s credibility has been diminished: if some time in the future another American President were to claim that he had solid evidence based on intelligence that there was a threat, that evidence is more likely to be treated with skepticism. America has always prided itself in fighting for human rights; but America’s credentials have been tarnished by Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. These are among the many costs of the Iraq War that we do not attempt to quantify, but which should clearly be counted in any assessment of the Iraq War." "The bombings in Madrid and London have only exacerbated a growing sense of insecurity. Would matters have been even worse had there been no war? One of the stated objectives of the war was to enhance the sense of security (to make sure that the war on terrorism was fought there, not here.) It is conceivable that the Middle East would have been even more unstable than it is today. But especially on the basis of what we know today—Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and it did not have the capacities to develop them quickly – this seems unlikely, Contrary to the assertions before the War by the Administration, Iraq (with its highly secular regime) was not working with Al Qaeda, and was not a training ground for insurgency. Unfortunately, the disorder that has followed the war has provided a place where such training is going on today." "The price of oil is significantly higher today than it was before the War in Iraq. Even as the country went to war, it was recognized that it might have effects on the global oil market. Some of the remarks of those in the Administration seem to suggest that it may have even been a factor driving the country to war. Larry Lindsey is reported to have said, “the best way to keep oil prices in check is a short, successful war on Iraq…†The higher price of oil brings costs and benefits. Profits of the oil companies have increased enormously. It is the one group (besides certain defense contractors) that has clearly benefited from the war. (Though popular discussions of the still not-clear motives for going to war often focused on oil, there is so far no reason to suppose that these benefits to one of the President’s “constituencies†played an important motivation.)" "Economists also think about the value of information. In this situation, postponing war might have allowed us to gather better information with which to judge whether Iraq posed a real threat. This is not, as Americans say, Monday morning quarterbacking: there were already strong suspicions regarding our sources of intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. More time would have enabled the verification of this evidence. The value of this information would have been enormous. The possibility of war later on would have still been an option. Tens of thousands of lives would have been spared, and hundreds of billions of dollars saved." "All of this leads to economists’ constant urging that politicians undertake a cost benefit analysis before undertaking any project—especially one with as significant consequences as war." "In response to accusations about the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the connection with Al Qaeda, the Administration has been adamant that it did not intentional deceive the American people; it prefers charges of incompetence to those of malevolence." "We could have had a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, or the developing countries, that might actually have succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East." You get the picture. They would have left Saddam in power. They also urge politicians to "undertake a cost benefit analysis before undertaking any project—especially one with as significant consequences as war." Robert Kagan and Gerald Baker offer their own "cost benefit analysis" of following the advice of Stiglitz and Bilmes here and here. Of course, the authors can write whatever they want but to consider this a serious academic "study" is like calling Fahrenheit 9/11 a balanced documentary.
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| U.S. Ambassador to Nations that Give a Damn |
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Kosovar Albanians don't think much of the UN but they sure like the U.S. and NATO. This was abundantly clear when I was over there last August. They resented the fact that the UN Security Council sat on its hands while Milosevic's forces rampaged throughout the province. They were also well aware that it was American leadership that moved other nations to ignore the Security Council and act against the Serb forces. Of course, back then Russia and China blocked UN action. The Russians had a soft spot for Milosevic, while the folks who brought us Tiananmen Square believed the killings, torched villages and mass exodus of Kosovar Albanians were an "internal" matter. Today, as this Wall Street Journal editorial points out, it's more of the same: Today's leading authority on Darfur is the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who prophesied a world "nasty, brutish and short." At least 200,000 civilians have been killed in the past three years and two million more have become refugees. The source of the problem is the Arab rulers in Khartoum, who have pursued an ethnic cleansing campaign against black Muslims in western Sudan. They've equipped the Janjaweed Arab tribesmen to do the dirty work, and that militia is now attacking civilians across the border in Chad, creating 20,000 more refugees. And ABC News reported: The U.N. Security Council remained divided Monday on imposing punitive measures over the conflict in Darfur despite calls for sanctions against Sudanese allegedly blocking peace in the region. Perhaps we should create a new position in our diplomatic corps: Ambassador to Nations that Give a Damn about Atrocities.
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Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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| More Captured Iraqi Docs Released |
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Additional material (text, audio and video) has just been released by the US Army Foreign Military Studies Office. If you can translate any of it, please send it along. Here's a sample of the material with its accompanying synopsis: IISP-2003-00038100 ISGP-2003-00014647 ISGP-2003-10150276 ISGP-2003-10151538 ISGQ-2003-M0003871 ISGQ-2003-M0001292 ISGQ-2003-M0004444 ISGQ-2003-M0004667 ISGQ-2003-M0005544 ISGZ-2004-009247 ISGZ-2004-028947 ISGZ-2004-031613 IZSP-2003-00300856
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| (Update) The Associated Press or a DNC Press Release? |
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(Editor & Publisher has more on the Loven controversy here.) Posted on March 18, 2006 06:13 PM: The Associated Press or a DNC Press Release? This piece by Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press is a classic. The DNC couldn't have done a better job. Of course, Loven may want to do her own fact checking before trying to zing the president. For example, she writes: Last fall, the rhetorical tool became popular with Bush when the debate heated up over when troops would return from Iraq. ''Some say perhaps we ought to just pull out of Iraq,'' he told GOP supporters in October, echoing similar lines from other speeches. ''That is foolhardy policy.'' Oh really. In fact, John Murtha, the top House Democrat on defense issues, Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean all called for an immediate drawdown of troops. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA): "There's only two plans. One plan is the president's plan, and that's stay the course and hope. And there's a plan that I'm proposing which, which calls for immediate redeployment." "My plan says redeploy to the periphery, to Kuwait, to Okinawa. And if there's a terrorist activity that affects our allies, or affects the United States' national security, we can then go back in. I'm not talking about going back in to a civil war because we're in a civil war right now. We're caught in between a civil war right now." Rep. Pelosi (D-CA): "What I'm her to say is what Mr. Murtha's resolution does, and that resolution is to say that the strategic redeployment in the region, over the horizon, with a force to go in as necessary to protect us -- us, American, American people -- in case of acts of terrorism that could be a threat to us, or to threats to our neighbors in the region, is a better way to, is a better way to proceed." And Howard Dean told a radio audience that American forces can't "win the war in Iraq," that we need to "bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately," and that the remaining force should fight Zarqawi from a "neighboring country." Don't hold your breath for a correction.
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| The "Ashamed" Democrat |
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What America looks like in the eyes of a frequent Daily Kos blogger. Wonder if Senator Harry Reid, who will be attending the YearlyKos convention, and Sen. Kerry, an occasional Kos blogger, agree?
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Tuesday, March 21, 2006
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| Did that NSA Surveillance Program Help Stop a Wave of Terror Attacks in Britain? |
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It would be interesting to know whether the NSA program helped snag Babar and his buddies across the Atlantic. From the BBC: Seven British citizens had acquired "most of the necessary components" to launch a bombing campaign in the UK, the Old Bailey has heard.
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| Ever Hear of A Place Called Saudi Arabia? |
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Lee Smith's hilarious and devastating response to Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's "The Israel Lobby" is a must read.
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| Tal Afar Was Also A Lesson in Not Deploying Enough Troops |
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Yesterday, the president rightly praised the work of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Tal Afar. Commanded by Col. H.R. McMaster, the 3rd Cav regained control of a city that had been taken over again by al Qaeda. The president stated: [B]y September 2004, the terrorists and insurgents had basically seized control of Tal Afar. We recognized the situation was unacceptable. So we launched a military operation against them. After three days of heavy fighting, the terrorists and the insurgents fled the city. Our strategy at the time was to stay after the terrorists and keep them on the run. So coalition forces kept moving, kept pursuing the enemy and routing out the terrorists in other parts of Iraq. But Col. McMaster has also pointed out that it's "clear" we didn't put enough troops on the Syrian border to stem the terrorist flow into Tal Afar. His regiment has been reporting on the lack of troops for some time. Nearly two years ago, for example, the New York Times wrote that, After the battle here in September [2004] the military left behind fewer than 500 troops to patrol a region twice the size of Connecticut. With so few troops and the local police force in shambles, insurgents came back and turned Tal Afar, a dusty, agrarian city of about 200,000 people, into a way station for the trafficking of arms and insurgent fighters from nearby Syria -- and a ghost town of terrorized residents afraid to open their stores, walk the streets or send their children to school. The lack of troops aided al Qaeda efforts to infiltrate back into Tal Afar. And once back in, al Qaeda terrorized the local population, killed those who had collaborated with the Americans in 2004, and turned the city into an operational base to launch attacks around Iraq. While McMaster's "clear and hold" strategy (in which, the colonel explains, the population is "secure[d] so that political development [and] economic development can proceed") has been successful in Tal Afar, success elsewhere, which will require many well-trained troops, may well be enhanced if Secretary Rumsfeld followed the advice of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, who supported Saddam's removal from power and, unlike others, still does, recently explained why the Pentagon's "linear" thinking on the training of Iraqi forces "runs the risk of confirming the adage that guerrillas win if they do not lose." He argues that as Iraqi troops are stood up, they should be added to US forces, not a replacement for them. This policy, Kissinger believes, would "remedy the shortage of ground forces, which has slowed anti-guerrilla operations throughout the occupation." Whatever one's view of the decision to undertake the Iraq war, the method by which it was entered, or the strategy by which it was conducted – and I supported the original decision – one must be clear about the consequences of failure. If, when we go, we leave nothing behind but a failed state and chaos, the consequences will be disastrous for the region and for America's position in the world.... Sec. Rumsfeld is expected to make a recommendation on whether to keep or lower the current troop level in the next few weeks.
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| Iran and al Qaeda |
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From today's Los Angeles Times: Some U.S. Officials Fear Iran Is Helping Al Qaeda
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Monday, March 20, 2006
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| Tens of Thousands Might Have Been Killed |
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The History Channel notes that today is the anniversary of the March 20, 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo -- an attack that might have killed tens of thousands if the gas had been more effectively disbursed. At the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, Japan, five two-man terrorist teams from the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, riding on separate subway trains, converge at the Kasumigaseki station and secretly release lethal sarin gas into the air. The terrorists then took a sarin antidote and escaped while the commuters, blinded and gasping for air, rushed to the exits. Twelve people died, and 5,500 were treated in hospitals, some in a comatose state. Most of the survivors recovered, but some victims suffered permanent damage to their eyes, lungs, and digestive systems. A United States Senate subcommittee later estimated that if the sarin gas had been disseminated more effectively at Kasumigaseki station, a hub of the Tokyo subway system, tens of thousands might have been killed. And here's some more history. Following that attack, the Clinton administration would cite the incident in explaining why Saddam Hussein must be disarmed. According to Time magazine, officials were deeply worried that Saddam might transfer wmd material to "radical Islamist groups." On November 15, 1997, President Clinton told an audience that Americans should not view the current crisis with Iraq [the administration was preparing the nation for possible military action] as a “replay†of the Gulf War in 1991. Instead, he told people to “think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms.†I wonder if the former president recollects any of this?
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| New York Times Editors Fail Kerry's "Global Test" on Sudan |
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The Beltway Blitz explains it all here.
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| ''Eliminate Your Rulers If They Stand in Your Way'' |
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I wonder what his position is on the cartoons. From the Associated Press: COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- A radical Islamic group spokesman has been charged with threatening the government for distributing a leaflet urging Muslims to ''eliminate'' rulers that prevent them from joining the Iraq insurgency, a Danish prosecutor said Monday.
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| Force Size and Stability Operations |
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James T. Quinlivan, a military analyst at RAND, evaluated the effectiveness of recent stability deployments where the "objective is not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority of their own." Here's what he found. Col. McMaster probably agrees, and perhaps many others (see Gordon, Trainor book) going back to 2003. From the current US News: Fifteen years ago, Pentagon doctrine suggested there was a strict division between combat operations and peacekeeping, or stability, missions. The Army's experience in Kosovo, Bosnia, and, especially, Somalia, Ancker says, proved that during humanitarian operations designed to stabilize a country, there was still a need for military muscle. But Ancker argues that the Iraq invasion showed that the Army did not grasp the flip side of the Bosnia lesson, that during combat operations there was a need for peacekeeping-style activities. "We did not have that down nearly as well as we thought we had," he says. The next operations field manual will tell commanders that even when engaged in combat operations they need to immediately focus on making the civilian population physically safe, establishing some sort of governance to allow society to function, and restoring essential services.
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Sunday, March 19, 2006
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| Sen. Kennedy's "The Last Man I'd Go To...[on] How We Should Conduct U.S. National Security Policy" |
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Vice President Cheney pulled no punches today on Face the Nation: Q Let me read to you what Senator Kennedy, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, and a long-time opponent of the war said on the third anniversary. Here's part of his statement. He said:
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Saturday, March 18, 2006
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| The Associated Press or a DNC Press Release? |
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This piece by Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press is a classic. The DNC couldn't have done a better job. Of course, Loven may want to do her own fact checking before trying to zing the president. For example, she writes: Last fall, the rhetorical tool became popular with Bush when the debate heated up over when troops would return from Iraq. ''Some say perhaps we ought to just pull out of Iraq,'' he told GOP supporters in October, echoing similar lines from other speeches. ''That is foolhardy policy.'' Oh really. In fact, John Murtha, the top House Democrat on defense issues, Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, and DNC Chairman Howard Dean all called for an immediate drawdown of troops. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA): "There's only two plans. One plan is the president's plan, and that's stay the course and hope. And there's a plan that I'm proposing which, which calls for immediate redeployment." "My plan says redeploy to the periphery, to Kuwait, to Okinawa. And if there's a terrorist activity that affects our allies, or affects the United States' national security, we can then go back in. I'm not talking about going back in to a civil war because we're in a civil war right now. We're caught in between a civil war right now." Rep. Pelosi (D-CA): "What I'm her to say is what Mr. Murtha's resolution does, and that resolution is to say that the strategic redeployment in the region, over the horizon, with a force to go in as necessary to protect us -- us, American, American people -- in case of acts of terrorism that could be a threat to us, or to threats to our neighbors in the region, is a better way to, is a better way to proceed." And Howard Dean told a radio audience that American forces can't "win the war in Iraq," that we need to "bring the 80,000 National Guard and Reserve troops home immediately," and that the remaining force should fight Zarqawi from a "neighboring country." Don't hold your breath for a correction.
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Friday, March 17, 2006
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| "The Rightness of Overthrowing a Dangerous Tyrant" |
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This piece by John Lloyd in the New Statesman is worth a read. The repeated invasions of contiguous states; the massacres of Kurds and southern Shia; the license given to torturers, rapists and murderers wearing the uniforms of secret police; the complete arbitrariness of Saddam's kleptocratic rule; the development of chemical and biological weapons and the attempt to develop a nuclear weapon - all of these made Iraq an internal hell and an external danger which, sooner or later, would have to be faced down.
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| Wars, Leadership and Our Friends in Canada |
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Leadership matters. Tuesday's Globe and Mail has some interesting poll results on the Canadian troop deployment to Afghanistan. Canadians' views have shifted sharply in support of the Afghan military mission even as troop casualties have mounted over the past three weeks, a new poll suggests. The poll results "suggest that a concerted public campaign in defence of the mission by senior military officers, as well as political figures from both the Conservative government and Liberal Opposition, has had an impact." This change in public attitude doesn't surprise me. A while back, the German Marshall Fund released a poll that found increased European disapproval of President Bush's foreign policy but with an interesting twist. One exception was in Britain (I should note that Poland’s approval numbers mirrored those in the U.S.), “where there was a slight upturn in approval.†I doubt it was a coincidence that this “upturn†occurred in a nation where the national government most vigorously made the case for getting rid of Saddam and for promoting democracy in the region. Bush’s lowest ratings were in countries, namely France and Germany, whose leaders adamantly and very publicly opposed Bush's policies. Even so, Germany's Gerhard Schröder ran on an explicitly anti-American platform and lost to an opponent who forcefully countered his demagoguery. Canada's Stephen Harper did the same against the anti-U.S. rhetoric of Paul Martin. And, of course, Australia's John Howard won a fourth term, while Tony Blair was elected to an unprecedented third. Is there a message here?
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| The Future of France? |
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If you believe France's current economy is sclerotic, imagine what it will be years from now if millions of French youth possess the same attitude and driving ambition of Maud Pottier. From today's Washington Post: PARIS, March 16 -- An estimated 250,000 students took to the streets of Paris and major cities across France on Thursday, escalating a political rebellion by the country's younger generation against a government that is floundering in its attempts to restructure a moribund economy....
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Thursday, March 16, 2006
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| (Update) "Martyrdom" Operations Against Western Targets |
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(This document would certainly be consistent with the type of operations described below.) From March 14, 2006 post: The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains excerpts from a recently declassified report, produced by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, on the inner workings of Saddam's regime. This paragraph, in particular, hasn't received much attention in the media: The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion. What were the targets? What kind of "preparations...were well under way" by March 2003? Who were to carryout the "martyrdom" operations? It's also worth noting that on April 8, 1991, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 687, the first post-Gulf War disarmament resolution, which declared, among other things, that Iraq "not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism." Eleven years later, on November 8, 2002, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441, which declared that the "Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism...."
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| (Update) Counterattacking Democrats on National Security |
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(Update II: The ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee applauds Sen. Feingold's censure efforts. Sens. Boxer and Harkin have also jumped on the censure bandwagon. And the good news continues. According to the Hotline, "Senate Republicans will force a floor vote on Sen. Feingold's censure resolution after Congress returns from its next recess." No word on a House vote. Hopefully, Sen. Feingold and Company will demand another vote in October.) (Update: Feingold flops. Apparently, the Democratic leadership would like to gain seats in November. Republicans shouldn't let them off the hook so easily. From the Associated Press: "Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's effort to censure President Bush over domestic spying, maneuvering to prevent a vote that could alienate voters. Republicans dared Democrats to vote for the proposal.") From March 12, 2006 post: Just when Democrats are gaining ground against the GOP on national security over the port debacle, they suggest something like this. Time to turn the tables, I'd say.
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| Clinton, Iraq and the 1995 Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack |
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The sarin gas attack that killed 12 and injured thousands in a Tokyo subway in 1995 is back in the news. "The Tokyo High Court has upheld the death sentence against Tomomitsu Niimi," reports Singapore's TODAY, "a key member of the Aum doomsday cult who was convicted of attacks including the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway." Following that attack, the Clinton administration would cite the incident in explaining why Saddam Hussein must be disarmed. On November 15, 1997, for example, President Clinton told an audience that Americans should not view the current crisis with Iraq [the administration was preparing the nation for possible military action] as a “replay†of the Gulf War in 1991. Instead, he told people to “think about it in terms of the innocent Japanese people that died in the subway when the sarin gas was released [by the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo in 1995]; and how important it is for every responsible government in the world to do everything that can possibly be done not to let big stores of chemical or biological weapons fall into the wrong hands, not to let irresponsible people develop the capacity to put them in warheads on missiles or put them in briefcases that could be exploded in small rooms. And I say this not to frighten you.†Nowadays, the Clinton folks (and many in the media) have historical amnesia on all this stuff.
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| Sen. Schumer, Dubai Ports and "Skinheads" |
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From today's New York Observer: “Let’s say skinheads had bought a company to take over our port,†[Sen. Chuck Schumer] said. “I think the outcry would have been the same.†What exactly is Schumer saying here?
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Wednesday, March 15, 2006
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| Sorry About the Massacres, It's Just Business |
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From a Fortune magazine piece on Beijing's activities in Africa: ...African governments view China as a more cooperative partner than the West. China has refused to back regular Western rebukes of African corruption and human-rights abuses and last year used its permanent seat on the UN Security Council to block genocide charges against Sudan--source of about 7% of China's oil--for the massacres in Darfur. "The U.S. will talk to you about governance, about efficiency, about security, about the environment," says Mustafa Bello, head of the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, who has visited China seven times. "The Chinese just ask, 'How do we procure this license?'" I'm sure Beijing will be more helpful on the other pressing issues facing the Security Council.
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| Getting a Nuke in Peace & Quiet |
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Here's a brief translation of this New York Times piece, In Iran, Dissenting Voices Rise on Its Leaders' Nuclear Strategy: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad needs to shut-up so we can move forward on our nuke program without getting overly hassled by the EU, the US and the UN.
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| Sen. Rockefeller Follows the Script |
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Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee want more scrutiny of the Bush administration. No surprise here. Sen. Jay Rockefeller is just following the script outlined in a Democratic staffer's 2003 memo on how to use the Intelligence Committee to attack the White House. Perhaps this Democratic staffer should just sit in the ranking member's chair to make things easier.
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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| Genocide & the Khmer Rouge |
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Milosevic's trial for war crimes committed in the 1990s began in 2002 at The Hague. Yet, Khmer Rouge leaders are still awaiting trial on charges of genocide for the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians from 1975-78 under the regime of Pol Pot. Many Cambodians are worried that these aging leaders will die before they face trial for crimes such as those described in the book, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung. While the Khmer Rouge leaders await trial, the forensic investigation of the mass murders committed during the Saddam Hussein regime continues.
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| "Martyrdom" Operations Against Western Targets |
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The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains excerpts from a recently declassified report, produced by the U.S. Joint Forces Command, on the inner workings of Saddam's regime. This paragraph, in particular, hasn't received much attention in the media: The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion. What were the targets? What kind of "preparations...were well under way" by March 2003? Who were to carryout the "martyrdom" operations? It's also worth noting that on April 8, 1991, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 687, the first post-Gulf War disarmament resolution, which declared, among other things, that Iraq "not commit or support any act of international terrorism or allow any organization directed towards commission of such acts to operate within its territory and to condemn unequivocally and renounce all acts, methods and practices of terrorism." Eleven years later, on November 8, 2002, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441, which declared that the "Government of Iraq has failed to comply with its commitments pursuant to resolution 687 (1991) with regard to terrorism...."
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Monday, March 13, 2006
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| Col. McMaster's "Clear and Hold" Strategy |
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If you didn't catch it last night, 60 Minutes profiled the operations of the 3rd Armored Cavalry, commanded by Col. H.R. McMaster, in Tal Afar -- a city that had literally been taken over again by al Qaeda before the 3rd moved in. The transcript may be found here. McMaster points out that it's "clear" we didn't put enough troops on the Syrian border to stem the terrorist flow into Tal Afar. This aided al Qaeda efforts to infiltrate the city (U.S. forces had kicked them out in 2004 but then effectively withdrew). Once retaken, al Qaeda terrorized the local population, killed those who had collaborated with the Americans in 2004, and turned the city into an operational base to launch attacks around Iraq. While McMaster's "clear and hold" strategy (in which, the colonel explains, the population is "secure[d] so that political development [and] economic development can proceed") has been successful in Tal Afar, his unit will soon rotate out of Iraq.
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| (Update) The Anti-Chavez and Popular American Ally |
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(Update II: Uribe supporters won big in yesterday's congressional elections, paving the way for passage of the U.S-Colombia free trade deal. With strong support in Congress and probable reelection in May, Uribe's offensive against the FARC will likely intensify. All of this is pretty remarkable given that just a few years ago the FARC greeted the newly elected president by firing mortars at the presidential palace while he took the oath of office inside. The attack, which killed dozens, led many analysts to offer grim assessments on Colombia's future. Uribe, who came to office after the fail of several "peace initiatives," has proven them wrong.) (Update: FARC terrorists continue their killing spree in their effort to destabilize Colombia's democracy. This time, AP reports, they gunned down eight unarmed town officials while they ate lunch.) Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gets lots of media attention with his anti-American rants. But in bordering Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe is a friend of America and an anti-terror ally. In a nation where tens of thousands have been killed and many more scarred physically and emotionally from decades of violence and terror, things are looking a bit brighter these days. Killings and kidnappings are down. Drug production has been cut. Foreign investment is rising; the economy has stabilized; and for the first time in almost a decade Standard & Poor’s boosted its rating for Colombian debt. Not bad for a man derided as a “hardliner†by his political opponents whose election, they warned voters, would be a disaster for Colombia. Right now, Uribe is on track to score another impressive election victory in May and that doesn't sit well with Colombia's FARC terrorists who on Saturday, the Associated Press reports, ambushed a civilian bus with gunfire, killing nine. "We don't understand how they can attack the unarmed civilian population in this way," Mendoza [Col. Jose Angel Mendoza, police chief of Caqueta state] said in an interview with RCN Radio.... Uribe's prospective reelection follows in the footsteps of other friends of America. Australia's John Howard won a fourth term, while Tony Blair was elected to an unprecedented third. German and Canadian voters fo
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Sunday, March 12, 2006
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| (Update) Counterattacking Democrats on National Security |
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(Update: Feingold flops. Apparently, the Democratic leadership would like to gain seats in November. Republicans shouldn't let them off the hook so easily. From the Associated Press: "Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold's effort to censure President Bush over domestic spying, maneuvering to prevent a vote that could alienate voters. Republicans dared Democrats to vote for the proposal.") Just when Democrats are gaining ground against the GOP on national security over the port debacle, they suggest something like
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| The Military and the "Poor Recruit" Myth |
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Politicians like New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel have claimed that the military relies disproportionately on the poor to fill its ranks. Since the Iraq invasion, in particular, it has become a standard anti-war talking point. The problem is it isn't true. From today's New York Times: The American military does not depend on poor recruits to sustain itself, argues Tim Cavanaugh in ''Middle-Class Warfare: Military Recruits and Poverty'' in Reason magazine.
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Saturday, March 11, 2006
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| The Legacy of Milosevic |
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On trial at The Hague since 2002 for war crimes, former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was "found dead in his prison cell" Saturday morning. His legacy is one of death, destruction and deep ethnic hatred. Last August, I traveled throughout Kosovo and found a place still very much haunted by the Milosevic regime. Today, Kosovo isn't in the news much even though the U.S. has a significant national security interest at stake there. I'll write more on the critical need of getting Kosovo right and the lesson of Milosevic later. For now, here's a piece I wrote for the Weekly Standard last August: Miles To Go Kosovo In the late 1980s, Milosevic consolidated power on a platform of extreme nationalism. His efforts to centralize power in Belgrade put the Balkans on a path to war in which over 200,000 people would eventually be killed. In 1989, he forced amendments to the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution which eliminated the autonomy of Kosovo "inaugurating an era of spiraling human rights abuses against the Kosovar Albanian population," as detailed in war crimes documents at The Hague. All this led to the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1997 and fierce fighting between the KLA and Serb forces operating in Kosovo before NATO intervened in March 1999. Since 1999, when the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1244 making Kosovo a U.N. protectorate, the goal has been to establish a stable, multi-ethnic democracy. Under 1244, UNMIK--the U.N. Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo--supervises domestic affairs while KFOR--the 18,000-strong NATO-led Kosovo Protection Force--is tasked with creating a "secure environment" for the transition to full civilian administration of Kosovo. Soon, the United Nations and members of the Kosovo Contact Group (the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Russia, and Italy) are expected to announce that Kosovo has made enough progress--four elections have been held, a constitutional framework drafted, and provisional government institutions erected--to warrant the start of "final status" talks. The outcome of these talks will determine if Kosovo becomes an independent nation, as the Kosovar Albanians demand and expect, or attains the status of "more than autonomy, less than independence," as Serbian President Boris Tadic frequently advocates in public appearances. OFFICIALS IN BELGRADE have also been floating the idea of a partitioned Kosovo because, they say, full independence would provoke a nationalist reaction and suffocate Serbia's nascent democracy. Belgrade would absorb the Serb-dominated land north of the Ibar river (the majority of Serbs are also scattered in central and southern Kosovo) while the rest would become an independent state governed by Pristina. According to several Western diplomats, Belgrade has discouraged Kosovar Serb participation in elections and institutions in Pristina to bolster their case for partition. Even so, partition won't happen. The United States opposes any partition, as does the European Union, on the grounds that a partition would spark even greater regional instability and reward the aggression of Milosevic. Furthermore, the State Department's Nicholas Burns testified to Congress that a partition would undermine the basic principle of a Kosovo "based on multi-ethnicity with full respect for human rights including the right of all refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes in safety." Odds are that Kosovo will gain a sort of probationary independence. Full sovereignty--say within a few years--would be conditioned on, among other things, the return of Serbs who fled Kosovo since 1999 (the State Department estimates over 100,000 fled mainly due to Kosovar Albanian retribution while the United Nations believes about 13,000 have returned) and a demonstrated ability of local government officials to ensure freedom of movement throughout Kosovo. Any transition would also involve a continued international security presence for some time. BUT MEETING THESE CONDITIONS WON'T BE EASY. Along with an unemployment rate of over 60 percent, ensuring freedom of movement in Kosovo remains the biggest failure of UNMIK and KFOR for the last six years. A recent report, written by UNMIK chief Soren Jessen-Peterson of Denmark, cited the lack of freedom of movement as a major obstacle to further progress in Kosovo--a conclusion echoed by other international officials and one that is obvious to anyone traveling around Kosovo. If a Kosovar Albanian and Serb want to socialize, they generally do so out of public view. As many stated privately, talks in public raises the risk of being targeted by extremists who are not interested in multiethnic dialogue. On a Wednesday in Lipljan, where about 450 Kosovar Albanians and 210 Serbs live, five Serb men sat down in a Serb home to talk about life there. "The economy doesn't exist for us," said one, who blamed the international community for their plight. Another revealed that "he talks with his Albanian neighbor in his backyard" but not on the street "where others can see"--that's too dangerous, he said. Asked if all Lipljan's Albanians were hostile, they collectively gestured no. One added that perhaps 1 in 10 Albanians are "hostile to us." Toward the end of the discussion, a Kosovar Albanian, a geography teacher who lives nearby, joined in. He agreed that ethnic relations are bad and blamed "Albanian politicians for not doing enough" to challenge the extremists who want the remaining Serbs to leave Kosovo. A short distance from the Macedonian border is Prizren, a town where, at least on that day, you could spot children wearing clothing emblazoned with the letters "USA" (I should note that many Kosovar Albanians expressed pro-American sentiment in discussions with them). Outside a small coffee shop a middle-aged Serb said that the "majority of Albanians don't have ill will toward us. The problem is the radicals--the 10 percent who control politics." Later, speaking in the living room of her small home nearby, a Serb woman in her eighties said ethnic relations "were better" before Milosevic came to power and that "Albanians suffered quite a bit under Milosevic." Muzafri, a Kosovar Albanian who now works at a cafe in the center of Prizren, told the story of Serb forces entering his village in 1999 and giving everyone two hours to flee their homes. They joined the hundreds of thousands of other Kosovar Albanians ejected by Milosevic's forces. Asked if he would like the Serbs who still live in town to stay, he responded, "Sure, we should all live together." ABOUT 60 KILOMETERS NORTHWEST of Prizren is Orahovac, which witnessed heavy fighting between Milosevic's forces and the KLA in 1998 and 1999. At the top of a narrow, sloping street that leads into the town's center is a crowded enclave of about 500 Serbs. They are protected by barbed wire and a handful of KFOR troops. At the lower end live Kosovo Albanians, who vastly outnumber the Serbs. In between is the so-called "buffer zone," which is lined with crumbling, burnt-out buildings. Just outside Orahovac is another Serb enclave of Velika Hoca, which has a fixed military checkpoint on the only road leading into it and is regularly patrolled by KFOR. Many gravestones line the main road leading into the town of Decan, northwest of Orahovac, along the Albanian border. A May 2005 International Crisis Group report described Decan as a "tinderbox, full of angry armed groups, and isolated from the rest of Kosovo." According to the Louis Segnini, the local UNMIK head, Decan is the home of many "hardcore [KLA] fighters" from the 1990s who today are the town's "political hardliners." They "intimidate other Albanians" from socializing with Serbs, who live in enclaves on the edge of town. For example, every so often Segnini hosts a "sugar meeting" at the local UNMIK headquarters between local Serbs and Albanians to facilitate better relations. But when he suggests that they all go out to a restaurant down the street the Albanians get "very nervous" and decline. In Mitrovica, a gritty, bustling town northeast of Pristina, the bridge spanning the Ibar acts as the "buffer zone" with a heavy U.N. and KFOR presence at both ends. In March 2004, Mitrovica was also the town which sparked two days of violence throughout Kosovo which left 19 dead, hundreds injured, hundreds of Serb houses burned, and 30 Orthodox churches destroyed along with 72 U.N. vehicles. KFOR was caught by surprise and did little to stop it. The United Nations believes Kosovar Albanian extremists orchestrated the violence to "destroy any ethnic integration," and officials in Belgrade point to the violence to discredit Kosovo's bid for independence. "The more I looked at what happened [in March 2004], the bigger the impact" the violence really had on our efforts, lamented UNMIK's Soren Jessen-Peterson. The International Crisis Group report concludes that "Both Kosovo Albanian extremists seeking to eject UNMIK, and those in Serbia who would prefer Kosovo to discredit itself . . . share an interest in provocation." Whatever the outcome of the "final status" talks, the United States, the European Union, and NATO must remain engaged in Kosovo and not let the extremist minority win a victory over simple human decency.
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| "Oh, You Are Still Alive?" |
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Here's an interesting piece from today's New York Times on a Syrian-American doctor's efforts to counter radical Islam: Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
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Friday, March 10, 2006
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| Cartoon Intimidation Continues |
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From Reuters: An official apology "is absolutely necessary ... because your government has not dealt with them (Muslims) respectfully," Islamic scholar Tareq al-Suweidan told a conference hosted by the [Danish] government in an attempt to ease tension over the drawings. From the BBC: In a sign of the uncertain mood in Denmark, the state railway company barred a billboard advertising a new book about Islam by a Danish professor. No word on whether Jeddah will host the next conference to dialogue on freedom of religion and freedom of the press.
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| Smoking Out Dubai Port Opponents |
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Some may buy Sen. Hillary Clinton's line that she opposed the deal because it would have endangered "our nation’s security." Perhaps a few more may buy into Speaker Hastert's line that his opposition was based on concern for the "safety of our children." Others may believe that it's all about politics. Hillary wants to be president-elect in 2008, while Hastert doesn't want to wake up on November 8 to headlines of Speaker-elect Pelosi. So who is right? Well, in the coming weeks, here are some things to look for to separate the phony opponents from those genuinely concerned about national security. Each year millions of containers are off-loaded at US ports. But a port's vulnerability doesn't begin at docking. It's just as vulnerable as soon as a ship enters its harbor. Hundreds of containers are on a ship, so a weaponized one buried deep inside isn't likely to be detected before detonation. That's why the Bush administration created the Container Security Initiative to monitor US-bound cargo as it's loaded onto a ship at a foreign port. DP World's takeover of the British firm, P & O, will add about two-dozen foreign ports to their current operations, which span the globe. Following the logic of Clinton & Hastert, DP World's management of these ports will add security risk to U.S. ports. Shouldn't opponents of the deal now raise hell in Congress for a separate security regime for all ships entering US ports that have docked at a DP World foreign port beforehand? And if congressional opponents are so concerned about port security, will they end their pork barrel spending that leads to ridiculous results, such as the one described in this 60 Minutes episode in July 2005? KROFT: The 9/11 commission recommended that homeland security money be allocated to protect the most vulnerable strategic targets from attacks that would cause the most casualties or economic damage. Don't count on it.
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| What about the NYSE? |
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Reader Kevin French emails: Dubai Ports World is returning the six US Ports to American control and this heads off a political showdown between the White House and the folks up on Capitol Hill but who will be next? I notice the NYSE company has just been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. I just wonder what would happen if a foreign company tried to take a controlling stake in this American financial icon? Anyway, I think any foreign company thinking of purchasing a large American firm from now until the 08 vote might reconsider it because the Democrats and Republicans will jump on it for political advantage. The question now is which American companies do not pose a threat to national security, so they maybe acquired by a non-US company?
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Thursday, March 09, 2006
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| John "Won't Go Wobbly" Edwards? |
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Yesterday, on The Charlie Rose Show, John Kerry's running mate was tough as nails on denying Tehran a nuclear weapon. CHARLIE ROSE: What did you make of what the vice president said, that the United States will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons? Of course, Edwards has been running away from his Iraq war vote for many months, so one shouldn't put much stock that he will hold the same position on Iran if the enriched uranium ever hits the fan.
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| Sharia Law & Moderate Indonesian Muslims |
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A word of warning from the archipelago: A fierce debate over sweeping anti-pornography and morality laws that are backed by Islamic parties in the parliament have infuriated the vast majority of moderate Indonesian Muslims....
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| Yahoo's Jerry Yang Feels "Horrible" for Helping Throw People in Jail |
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From CNET News: Yahoo and the other top U.S.-based search engines have come under fire for their practice of cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring information online. Yahoo has been accused of providing evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese Internet users, including a journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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Wednesday, March 08, 2006
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| Britain's Blair Represents "An Earlier Anti-Totalitarian Left" |
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This cover piece, Freedom Fighter, in the latest issue of Progress, a journal published by British Labour Party members, is sure to get the attention of the anti-Bush folks on the island. Oliver Kamm, author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-wing Case for a Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy, argues that Blair's policies are consistent with "the principles of an earlier anti-totalitarian left." What's more, Kamm contends, "in pursuing regime change, Bush has adopted Blairism, not the other way round." And, he further argues, Blair's policies represent "a shrewd strategic judgment" that understands the need "to transform a region that has acted as an incubator for religious fanaticism by failing to provide an outlet for any other kind of dissidence." Kamm writes: "The overthrow of theocratic despotism in Afghanistan and Ba’athist tyranny in Iraq is central to Blair’s record. It is part of a distinctive approach that has marked his premiership. That stance represents continuity with the principles of an earlier anti-totalitarian left, and a shrewd strategic judgment of where Britain’s security interests lie in the early 21st century. It is, moreover, sharply at odds with the philosophy and practice of John Major’s government.... The foreign policy of Blair is more than Iraq, but Iraq is how history will judge him, and supporters of the prime minister need to make the case for regime change. Let us start with what was genuinely the biggest blunder in British foreign policy since Suez. This was Britain’s failure, under a Tory government, to prevent Serb aggression against Bosnia in the early 1990s. Policy at that time consisted of what the historian Brendan Simms has termed a conservative pessimism about the limits to the effective exercise of power in the international order.... You cannot understand Blair’s policies in Iraq without that background. Long before 9/11, he took a fundamentally different approach from Major, Rifkind and Douglas Hurd, and not only in declaratory policy. In Kosovo, he confronted Serb aggression rather than acquiesced in it. He also sent British troops to preserve Sierra Leone from hand-lopping rebels, aware both of the demands of liberal internationalism and of the potential for a failed state to become far more than a regional problem. He argued his case long before President Bush came to see the urgency of promoting democracy overseas.... Of course, there were grievous failures of intelligence over WMD, and the maladministration of post-Ba’athist Iraq has been a scandalous dereliction of duty. But there should be no questioning of the immense benefits to Iraq and to ourselves of overthrowing a gangster regime. Saddam was not responsible for 9/11, but he welcomed it and sought a WMD capability in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. Ba’athist Iraq did not have stockpiles of WMD, but it did possess dual-use facilities that, according to Charles Duelfer of the Iraq Survey Group, could have produced chemical and biological weapons on a rapid turnaround. Saddam was a sponsor of terrorism, and the most likely conduit for Islamist groups to obtain WMD. There were clear grounds for expecting Saddam to be a regional menace, and few for expecting him to be containable in the way that the Soviet Union was during the cold war. Soviet leaders were brutal and expansionist, but they were rational and calculating political agents. Saddam launched three wars in 17 years (against Iran in 1974, Iran again in 1980, and Kuwait in 1990) that almost destroyed his regime. But there is a wider issue in the case for regime change. What marked British policy under Major, and was the principal weakness of US foreign policy in the cold war, was a ‘realism’ that took an impossibly narrow view of western strategic interests. In the Balkans in the 1990s, British policymakers allowed a nation to be dismembered by aggressive and genocidal nationalism. In the cold war, American administrations were prone to ally with authoritarian regimes as a bulwark against communism. Both approaches were far from serving the purposes that realism set itself. What overcame communist totalitarianism in Eastern Europe was partly collective security involving alliances and military preparedness. But, at root, it was the power of an idea: the appeal of an open and liberal society, as opposed to a closed and sclerotic one. The task of western governments against a new totalitarian threat – though a very old, atavistic totalitarian idea, in Islamist fanaticism – is similarly to implant the notion of freedom.... In the cold war, the nuclear stand off that had dominated world affairs for two generations was finally robbed of its terror by a transformation in the underlying political relations between states. Totalitarianism gave way to the promise of constitutionalism. Our most urgent task today is to transform a region that has acted as an incubator for religious fanaticism by failing to provide an outlet for any other kind of dissidence. Making the spread of democracy the cornerstone of foreign policy extends progressive values and at the same time protects our security. It is a principle that the overthrow of Saddam has served. Regime change in states that have committed atrocities against captive peoples ought to be the thing of which Labour supporters are proudest."
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| (Update) Darfur Intimidation |
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(From Reuters: But after a government-led media campaign against U.N. intervention, nationalist sentiment in Sudan is running high. The pro-government al-Intibaha newspaper has announced the formation of two new Islamist movements threatening to target foreign interests in Darfur, called the Darfur Jihad Organization and the Blood Brigades. The protestors handed a statement to U.N. offices demanding the immediate eviction of the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk. Sudanese women bearing kalashnikovs joined the march, declaring their readiness to fight foreign troops. The atrocities in Darfur continue. But thanks to Moscow and Beijing the government in Khartoum doesn't have to worry about UN-imposed sanctions. From ABC News: The U.N. Security Council remained divided Monday on imposing punitive measures over the conflict in Darfur despite calls for sanctions against Sudanese allegedly blocking peace in the region. With sanctions off the table, Khartoum is now more brazen in its threats against the deployment of an effective peacekeeping force in Darfur. And, al Qaeda has reportedly made its own threats against such a force. From the Los Angeles Times: Envoy to Sudan Reports Threats U.N.'s Jan Pronk says Al Qaeda has warned him and non-African troops who might go to Darfur. "Nothing rips more at the common fabric of humanity than genocide -- and the only way to assert our own humanity is to stand up to it," wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who won't let the world forget about the suffering in Darfur. He continued: President Bush is doing more about Darfur than most other leaders, but that's not saying much. The French are being particularly unhelpful, while other Europeans (including, alas, Tony Blair) seem to wonder whether it's really worth the expense to save people from genocide. Muslim countries are silent about the slaughter of Darfur's Muslims, while China disgraces itself by protecting Sudan in the United Nations and underwriting the genocide with trade. Still, even Mr. Bush is taking only baby steps. As with Rwanda and the Balkans for many years, we have, thus far, failed "to assert our own humanity" in Darfur.
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| A Texas-sized Thumping of the Berkeley Left |
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While most Americans haven't been following Democratic primary politics in the 28th congressional district of Texas, the Left has been immersed in it. A freshman conservative Democrat (yes, there are a few of them around), Rep. Henry Cuellar, faced a primary challenge from an anti-war liberal, Ciro Rodriquez, who lost to Cuellar in a close vote in 2004. Moveon.org and others on the Left rallied around Rodriquez, who attacked Cuellar for his support of free trade and the president's national security policies. Well, as things stand today, Cuellar won yesterday's primary by a comfortable margin, 53 percent to 41 percent, with 99 percent of the precincts reporting. Guess the people of Laredo see things a bit differently than Kos & Company, who are now busy blaming the defeat on everything else except their candidate's message.
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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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| "What the Hell has Happened to the News Media" |
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The March/April 2006 Columbia Journalism Review has a revealing profile of Walter Pincus, the Washington Post's leading national security correspondent. There's no link to the piece ("The Optimist" by David Glenn), so these excerpts will have to do: On the Role of the News Media Pincus himself plans on writing a book that will be part memoir, part exploration of "what the hell has happened to the news media." He says, however, that he has no urge to retire soon, and is eager to plug away at the Pentagon-surveillance story: "My view is, you do it in chunks. You just keep going back until it sinks in." Sinks in not only to the public consciousness, but also the Washington bunker. Pincus is not at all shy about saying that he hopes his coverage will change the Pentagon's behavior. "That's what papers are about," he insists. "That's why you own a paper, that's why you write for a paper." On Pre-War Iraq Intelligence One great advantage that Pincus had during this period was his longstanding friendship with Hans Blix, then the United Nations' chief weapons inspector.... Consequently, Pincus and [Karen] DeYoung were able to offer a tremendous amount of detail about the tug-of-war between the UN weapons inspectors and the various arms of the Bush administration. On Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame Pincus never wrote about Valerie Plame -- in part, he says, because he already knew a fair amount about the origins of Wilson's trip from various sources, including some in the C.I.A. He did not think it was true that Plame had arranged the trip; and even if that were so, he thought, it had little bearing on the merits or lack thereof of Wilson's report. After Novak's column ran, he says, "I talked to the agency people, and they said it wasn't true."
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| Cheney: "We Will Not Allow Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon" |
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VP Cheney's remark may be the most categorical yet from a senior Bush administration official on stopping an Iranian nuke. From the AP: March 7, 2006
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| Richard Cohen on Markey's Malarkey |
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Rep. Edward Markey, the Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, isn't happy with the nuclear deal President Bush agreed to with the government of India. The deal "has blown a hole in the nuclear rules that the entire world has been playing by, " said Markey, and "empowers the hawks in every rogue nation to put their nuclear weapons plans on steroids now that they can no longer be isolated as non-signers of an agreement that has been shredded." The Washington Post's Richard Cohen, who's no friend of the Bush administration, responds to this line of thinking by noting that it's the nature of the regime that really matters. In the case of the nuclear agreement, we are somehow supposed to believe that by favoring India, Bush has made it much harder to put pressure on Iran to abandon its apparent weapons program and become a "good guy" nation. This overlooks the fact that Iran is governed by a zealot who has pledged to eradicate Israel and who firmly believes in the inherent evil of the United States of America. As Bush once said about himself, the Iranians do not do nuance.
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| An Inside Job? |
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When it comes to Iraq's national army, infiltration and loyalty may be a bigger concern than the total number of troops trained and deployed -- which is why this is not particularly good news if accurate.
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Monday, March 06, 2006
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| (Update) Slow Talking Us into Another North Korea? |
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(The AP reports that "the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said he was hopeful Monday about reaching an international agreement to defuse concerns about Iran's nuclear activities and make U.N. Security Council action unnecessary.") Iran's talks with Moscow and now Beijing appear to be moving forward with Tehran "sounding more receptive to an enrichment joint venture with Russia...." But is any deal better than no deal? Back in 1994, Sen. McCain was a vocal opponent of the deal President Clinton struck with North Korea. He told PBS's Robert MacNeil that the US would come to "regret [the deal] very, very much" because Pyongyang gets to keep the handful of nuclear weapons it had already likely produced but also much more. McCain continued that even though North Korea has "violated the nonproliferation treaty egregiously time and time again, ... we are now rewarding them.... And not only are we saying it's okay to Korea, but we'll be saying that it's okay to Iran and other countries who will demand a similar deal." Today the Russians are doing the primary negotiating, but in the end Washington and Europe will have to make a judgment on whether to sign on to any deal struck. To this end, Gary Milhollin and Valerie Lincy of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control have offered some useful yardsticks in which to judge any "breakthrough" agreement.
...There is little doubt what this cooling-off period is intended for: further negotiations on a proposal that would have Iran shift its large-scale, energy-related uranium enrichment work to Russia.
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| A Unanimous Supreme Court Thumping |
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"Ending a decade-long battle in favor of the Defense Department," the New York Times reports, "the court [8 to 0] rejected the argument of law school faculty members that being forced to associate with military recruiters violated their First Amendment rights to free speech and association. At issue in the case of Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, or FAIR, No. 04-1152, is the Solomon Amendment, which withholds federal grants from universities that do not open their doors to military recruiters 'in a manner at least equal in quality and scope' to the access offered civilian recruiters." In December, the Weekly Standard's David Tell explained the "mindbogglingly illogical argument" put forth by the law schools involved in the case.
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| The Paul Bunyan of Iran |
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According to the Telegraph, Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant....
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| More Clashes Between Sunnis and al Qaeda |
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"Faced with attacks against their sheikhs and clan members, a number of Sunni tribes from Hawijah -- a rebel bastion in northern Iraq -- have declared war on Al-Qaeda's frontman in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," reports Agence France Presse.
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Sunday, March 05, 2006
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| (Update) Democracy & Suicide Bombers |
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(The editors of the Washington Post make their Case for Democracy. They write: Yes, we might welcome the benign dictator who would nurture the "rule of law" until his nation was "ready" for democracy -- and then would give way gracefully to his matured people. But for the same reason that we wish for civil society as a precursor, most dictators do everything they can to squelch it. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak gives space to the Muslim Brotherhood while persecuting his secular liberal opposition, because he wants to be the only acceptable alternative; he doesn't want a civil society. In much of the autocratic world -- Central Asia, Russia, Burma -- the picture is the same. "What the alternative to promoting freedom in the Middle East?" ask the editors of the Wall Street Journal today. They also point out that the years before September 11 coincided with the rise of al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole, the outbreak of the terrorist intifada in Israel, and September 11. Mr. Fukuyama may or may not be right that promoting democracy does not resolve the problem of terrorism in the short-term. What we know for sure is that tolerating dictatorship not only doesn't resolve the terrorist problem but actively nurtures it.... Indeed, Princeton economist Alan Krueger analyzed terrorism data collected by the U.S. State Department over the years. Here's what he found: Once a country's degree of civil liberties is taken into account ... income per capita bears no relation to involvement in terrorism. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, which have spawned relatively many terrorists, are economically well off yet lacking in civil liberties. Poor countries with a tradition of protecting civil liberties are unlikely to spawn terrorists. Evidently, the freedom to assemble and protest peacefully without interference from the government goes a long way to providing an alternative to terrorism. Tossing the president's democracy agenda overboard, as some critics advocate, would be a huge strategic blunder.
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| Has Beijing Been Anymore Helpful than Moscow? |
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Today's Washington Post reports on a bipartisan report released by The Council on Foreign Relations on U.S.-Russia relations. The report makes some good points. The Bush administration should stop pretending Russia is a genuine strategic partner and adopt a new policy of "selective cooperation" and "selective opposition" to the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin, a bipartisan task force has concluded.... China's leaders haven't acted much better. They have refused, so far, to put the screws on North Korea; they have cut energy deals with Khartoum and Tehran; and they have opposed any real action in the UN Security Council to end the atrocities in Darfur or pressure Iran to come clean on its nuclear program. UN Ambassador John Bolton isn't a threat to an effective Security Council. His critics should spend a little more time spotlighting the obstructionism of Moscow and Beijing.
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| A "Nice" Guy Who Tortured a French Jew |
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The tip of the anti-Semetic iceberg? From today's New York Times: Two strips of red-and-white police tape bar the entrance to the low-ceilinged pump room where a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, spent the last weeks of his life, tormented and tortured by his captors and eventually splashed with acid in an attempt to erase any traces of their DNA....
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Saturday, March 04, 2006
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| (Update) An Anti-Corruption Offensive the Left and the Right Should Embrace |
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(The corrupt strike back. From yesterday's Christian Science Monitor: Masked, armed police Thursday stormed the offices of a leading Kenyan media company in a raid seen as punishment for reports criticizing the government's dismal record on corruption. It was odd that one of the biggest barriers to lifting nations out of chronic poverty -- rampant government and business corruption -- didn't appear on the radar screen at the World Economic Forum at Davos a few weeks back. There wasn't a single panel discussion on a problem that some say costs poorer nations up to twenty-five percent of their national income. Nonetheless, instigated by people tired of empty promises, horrible living conditions, and out-right thievery an anti-corruption wave, has gathered some momentum. The BBC reported on this campaign over the weekend. While today's Washington Post reports on anti-corruption efforts in Kenya -- "'We're a thirsty land of empty promises. Other countries have droughts and you never see their people dying,' Ciira said in this town 50 miles northwest of Nairobi. As she spoke, people gathered around her, some waving copies of one of Kenya's daily newspapers, the Nation, with a three-page spread detailing the largest scandals." -- and at the World Bank under the leadership of Paul Wolfowitz. The bank has frozen lending to Chad, whose government had reneged on a promise to spend its oil revenue on poverty reduction. Although Chad is a small country, the frozen loans were high-profile: They were an attempt to defy the "curse of oil" and make petrodollars serve development. It took some courage to admit that the curse of oil remained unbroken.
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Friday, March 03, 2006
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| U.S. Neglecting Asia-Pacific Region? |
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Former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage has some tough words for the new boss of Foggy Bottom. Of course, I bet Secretary Rice has racked up more international travel miles than her predecessor at this point in his term. But Armitage does have a point. Australia has been a great ally in Iraq and the War on Terror. Why has the post of US Ambassador to Australia been vacant for more than year now?
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| (Update) Protecting Mosques |
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(The latest from Peters.) New York Post columnist Ralph Peters continues his daily observations from Iraq. His columns have been totally at odds with some other stuff I have read -- notably William Buckley's piece. Today, he notes: After the terrorists blew up that shrine in Samarra last week, you heard plenty about the violent confrontations between Sunni and Shia. But you didn't hear about the performance of the Iraqi army's 6th Division, the 506th's partner unit in eastern Baghdad. Largely composed of Shias, the 6th Division deployed its combat vehicles to protect Sunni mosques. Even in Sadr City, the violence never spun out of control. Casualties, yes, Armageddon, no. His other columns are here, here and here. Time will tell if his conclusions hold up.
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| Darfur Intimidation |
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The atrocities in Darfur continue. But thanks to Moscow and Beijing the government in Khartoum doesn't have to worry about UN-imposed sanctions. From ABC News: The U.N. Security Council remained divided Monday on imposing punitive measures over the conflict in Darfur despite calls for sanctions against Sudanese allegedly blocking peace in the region. With sanctions off the table, Khartoum is now more brazen in its threats against the deployment of an effective peacekeeping force in Darfur. And, al Qaeda reportedly makes its own threats against such a force. From the Los Angeles Times: Envoy to Sudan Reports Threats U.N.'s Jan Pronk says Al Qaeda has warned him and non-African troops who might go to Darfur. "Nothing rips more at the common fabric of humanity than genocide -- and the only way to assert our own humanity is to stand up to it," wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who won't let the world forget about the suffering in Darfur. He continued: President Bush is doing more about Darfur than most other leaders, but that's not saying much. The French are being particularly unhelpful, while other Europeans (including, alas, Tony Blair) seem to wonder whether it's really worth the expense to save people from genocide. Muslim countries are silent about the slaughter of Darfur's Muslims, while China disgraces itself by protecting Sudan in the United Nations and underwriting the genocide with trade. Still, even Mr. Bush is taking only baby steps. As with Rwanda and the Balkans for many years, we have, thus far, failed "to assert our own humanity" in Darfur.
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Thursday, March 02, 2006
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| Democratic Leadership Council's Wittmann Hits "Anti-War Democrats" Hard on Iraq |
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From Marshall Wittmann's Bull Moose blog: Some opponents of the war are smugly chortling that "we told you so." Perhaps. But, these opponents do not necessarily occupy the strategic nor moral high ground. Do they really think that any post-9/11 President would allow Saddam to continue to taunt the West with the possibility of WMD? Do they believe that the realist notion of stability in the Middle East is a solution?
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| (Update) Parsing Howard Dean's Iran "Nuclear Power" Remark |
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(Update II: Matthew Yglesias has responded to my updated post. I disagree with his assessment for many reasons but nonetheless thought it only fair to post his response here (scroll down to the March 3 posts). Be sure to also read the comments section for some interesting debate.) (Update: Some now claim (I'll leave aside the ridiculous remark related to Sen. McCain's Castro comment) that North Korea absolutely didn't have nukes during the Clinton administration. This must come as news to the Clinton folks and just about every other official involved in the North Korean nuke debate in the 1990s. Here's what Amb. Robert Gallucci had to say at a May 2003 Senate hearing. In 1994, the intelligence community, our intelligence community assessed that North Korea more likely than not had wanted two nuclear weapons. That was based on an assessment that they had reprocessed or could have reprocessed as much as eight or 10 so kilograms of plutonium, in that range in any case and so, we had that assessment and we didn't in the agreed framework provide for the immediate inspections that would help us determine how much plutonium they actually had. In addition, Sen. McCain, in October 1994, stated, "the accounting for the plutonium that was diverted, that could have, and in the view of the CIA, did result in the construction of two nuclear weapons." On October 20, 2002, the New York Times reported: "Several years ago the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that North Korea already had reprocessed enough plutonium at Yongbyon to make one or 2 nuclear weapons, and that the fuel in storage could be fabricated into 5 or 10 more." There are many other similar examples. About those fuel rods "in storage" that were supposed to be transferred out of North Korea during the Clinton years under the agreement, Pyongyang never gave them up. And, yes, these would be the same rods that the North has likely extracted plutonium from during the Bush years. Oh, at least since 1996 North Korea was also running a secret uranium enrichment program while getting lots of free oil under the deal. Finally, I'm still waiting to hear if Howard Dean wants a North Korean-style "Framework Agreement" for Iran. Given the Bush administration's lack of progress and incoherence on North Korea, you would think at least one heavyweight Democrat would make the case for such an agreement to the American people.)
During a speech today accusing President Bush of being weak on defense, Dean stated that, under no circumstances will a Democratic Administration ever allow Iran to become a nuclear power. What is Dean exactly saying here? Why use the phrase "nuclear power"? Is this a "no tolerance" policy that Democrats would not allow Iran to acquire a single nuclear weapon? Or, is Dean saying Democrats would allow Iran to build nuclear weapons so as it didn't build enough of them to qualify as a "nuclear power"? Also, let's remember that it was the Clinton administration that rewarded North Korea -- see here -- by letting that government keeps its nuclear weapons and cheat on the "Framework" it signed. Republicans should ask Dean if he has something similar in mind for Iran.
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| Does Sen. Clinton Believe Her Husband was Undermining National Security? |
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Consider... In a letter, dated February 21, to Senator Frist, Sen. Clinton wrote: This sale will create an unacceptable risk to the security of our ports. We therefore request that emergency legislation we are introducing to ban foreign governments from controlling operations at our ports be slated for immediate consideration when the Senate convenes on February 27.... But President Clinton apparently believed, at one point, that the sale didn't "create an unacceptable risk." Because if he did believe it was a risk, why would he [and former EPA head and current principal at the [Madeleine] Albright Group] then turn around and push the U.A.E. to hire a former staffer as a lobbyist to drive the deal through? According to columnist Robert Novak, While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World.
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Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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| Afghanistan at a Crossroads |
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The latest issue of Parameters has an interesting piece, The Future of Afghanistan, by Ali A. Jalali, the nation's interior minister from January 2003 to September 2005. He gives a comprehensive review of what's going on the ground and also warns that the progress made in Afghanistan could vanish if the international community loses interest in the nation. At the end of the Bonn Process, Afghanistan finds itself at a crossroads. Continued international security and economic assistance, for at least ten more years, and sustained domestic leadership for reform will enable the country to build on achievements made during the past four years, and enable it to become a success story in the region. The other option is for the country to slide back into the difficult past of instability and tension. Given the potentially devastating impact of a failed Afghan state in a globalizing world, leaving Afghanistan can no longer be an option.
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| "Britain's Neoconservative Moment" |
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This piece by Daniel Johnson in Commentary magazine ought to drive the British Left crazy. The British are proud of their independence; they follow American fashions, whether from Hollywood or Washington, only if they can make them their own. Fortunately, Tony Blair made foreign-policy neoconservatism his own before most Britons had even heard of it, so both it and the domestic-policy variety may well have a future in Britain beyond the temporal horizon of the Blair era. From an ideological point of view, certainly, it is the only antidote to the viruses of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and Islamo-fascism, all of which are now coursing through the bloodstream of the British body politic.
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| Will India Overtake China? |
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Frequent Weekly Standard contributor Dan Twining emailed his thoughts on one of the most underreported economic stories out there. While China gets most of the attention on the business pages, India has quietly positioned itself to be a dominant player in the 21st century world economy. In fact, MIT's Yasheng Huang argues that India "might be more competitive than China" in the years ahead. Twining observes:
China's rise is changing the economic and strategic landscapes in Asia and beyond. But the rise of India is an equally compelling story, and one that promises to have similarly tectonic effects on the world economy and the global security order. In this piece, MIT professor Yasheng Huang picks apart some of the "China myths" prevalent among Western and Asian analysts -- myths that have obscured India's emerging dynamism and potential to outperform China in the long run. He even twists on its head the conventional wisdom that India should model its economic reforms on China's. Instead, he urges the Chinese government to take a close look on India's emphasis on education, transparency, and governance. "Unless China embarks on bold institutional reforms," he writes, "India may very well outperform it in the next 20 years."
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