May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Former Reagan Secretary of State Shultz has an interesting piece, Sustaining Our Resolve, in the latest Policy Review. Some highlights:
On December 29, 2000, the Security Council strongly condemned “the continuing use of the areas of Afghanistan under the control of the Afghan faction known as Taliban . . . for the sheltering and training of terrorists and planning of terrorist acts. . . .” (Res. 1333) By the end of the 1990s, we had begun to glimpse the reality. And we were just beginning to understand that the threat was to far more than the Middle East. Looking back at all those terrorist attacks of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, we could see that our enemy targeted every aspect of the international system: tourism, commerce, air travel, world finance, the United Nations, embassies, the commitment to the principle of diplomatic immunity, and the sovereign and territorial integrity of states. This was Islamism — a radical, aberrational deviation from Islam — with an ideology that set itself violently against every element of the international state system, the centuries-old basis for a cooperative world order.
Nevertheless, in the first phase of this war, the terrorists had a completely free rein with no real effort made to carry the fight to them, let alone defend ourselves aggressively.
What can we learn from this experience? First, passivity does not lead to a cessation of attacks. On the contrary, passivity only encourages our adversaries to believe that they can do as they choose without consequences to themselves. The terrorists were getting a free ride from us even as their attacks grew greater in frequency and devastating power….
Iran, as does North Korea, now poses a great threat as it seeks to gain nuclear weapons capability. With U.S. help, the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency are actively engaged in the effort to turn Iran back from this course. All five UN Security Council permanent members voted in the IAEA to refer the Iran problem to the Security Council. Now the permanent five plus Germany have initiated inducements for change in Iran’s nuclear program with at least implied sanctions should Iran remain defiant. What further action will be taken is uncertain as of this writing. Just as France declares without qualification that Iran seeks a nuclear weapon and the IAEA reports on multiple Iranian deceptions, China is negotiating a further deal for Iranian oil.
Iran seems convinced that its actions, as in restarting its enrichment facilities, will have no adverse consequences. It sees no strength behind the diplomacy. We must be ready to summon the will — and persuade others to join us — to use economic and political strength — and ultimately force — to deal with this situation if multilateral diplomacy and collective security are to be credible….
Meanwhile, we now know from the huge number of captured documents produced by Saddam Hussein’s regime that in Iraq there were in existence three training centers for terrorists with apparently some 8,000 or so trainees. We must identify who the trainees are, learn the methods they have been trained to use and their connections to other countries, and, to the extent that these terrorists are operating in Iraq today, do everything possible to get them out of circulation before they go elsewhere….
… [W]e must not let up on the reality that we are at war and will continue to be so for a long time to come. Some commentators have noted that the length of time from 9/11 to today is longer than World War II. This is the wrong analogy; what we face is more akin to the decades-long struggle of the Cold War.
And being at war, we must retain the option and the will to use force — even as we pair that option with intensive diplomacy. Given the ongoing military task we face in Iraq and the political pressure against President Bush, it is being assumed by many around the world, friends and enemies alike, that the United States cannot undertake another major military operation, let alone see the effort in Iraq through to success. This is a dangerous perception, one that will only heighten the likelihood of further warfare unless it is dispelled.
At the end of President Bush’s first term it could be said, correctly, that now the United States could begin to make the transition from the first-term emphasis on strength to a second-term focus on diplomacy. In very large part we are doing that. But the option for military action on even a large scale, such as a sustained air campaign to cripple Iran’s nuclear weapons program, must remain alive as a last resort. The more alive it is in the minds of our adversaries, the more likely it is that we never will have to use that military option.
The American eagle on the Great Seal must continue to look toward the olive branch but, just as important, must keep a powerful cluster of arrows in its grasp.
(Fox guarding the hen house? From AP: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that Syria has pledged to step up border patrols and work with the Lebanese army to stop the flow of weapons to Hezbollah….According to Annan, Assad said at a meeting in Damascus that Syria will boost the number of its guards along the Lebanon-Syria border and establish joint patrols with the Lebanese army "where possible.")
It now appears that Damascus wasn't just the middleman in arming Hezbollah. Today’s Los Angeles Times reports that Syria directly armed the group:
New postwar intelligence indicates that the militant group Hezbollah had broader access to sophisticated weaponry than was publicly known — including large numbers of medium-range rockets made in Syria, said U.S. and Israeli government officials and military analysts.
The size of the Hezbollah arsenal and the direct role of Syria in supplying it will complicate the daunting task of keeping Hezbollah from rearming, the officials said….
The new weapons data indicating a broader Syrian role were gathered by Israel largely by examining debris left by shells that hit the country during the conflict. The examination uncovered the serial numbers and other defining characteristics of the weapons. Israel's postwar forensics have shown some of the rockets were manufactured by the Syrian munitions industry, military sources said….
Israel, backed by the Bush administration, would like to see international peacekeepers deployed along the Syria-Lebanon border — a step it says is needed to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah. Lebanon, backed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, has resisted that idea, as have the Syrians….
Experts said Hezbollah retained significant weaponry even after the monthlong Israeli bombardment. Israeli intelligence officials think they destroyed a large number of Hezbollah's longer-range missiles, but do not know how many remain. The number of medium-range rockets in Hezbollah's possession also is unclear.
In addition to the 3,700 to 3,800 rockets fired by Hezbollah, the Israeli military said it destroyed about 1,600. Together, that would account for fewer than half of the rockets that Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials think Hezbollah had at the start of the conflict.
Will Syria pay a price for all this? I doubt it. Consider this: Syria arms a group that’s supposed to be “disarmed” under UN Resolution 1559 (for that matter, Res. 1189, passed in the aftermath of the 1998 embassy bombings, states: “every Member State has the duty to refrain from organizing, instigating, assisting or participating in terrorist acts in another State or acquiescing in organized activities within its territory directed towards the commission of such acts….”), and the UN Secretary General sides with Assad on keeping troops away from the border used to arm Hezbollah in the first place. That ought to tell you something about the will of the UN to hold Damascus accountable for its actions.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
IDF troops discovered an underground tunnel earlier this week that had been dug by terror operatives on the outskirts of the Shajaiyeh neighborhood in Gaza City.
The opening of the 13-meter-deep, 150-meter-long tunnel was found inside a building at least one kilometer away from the Gaza security fence. It was believed that the target of the attack was the nearby Karni Crossing.
It was as yet unclear whether the tunnel - similar to the one used by Palestinians in June's attack on the IDF outpost at Kerem Shalom in which Cpl. Gilad Shalit was abducted - was intended as a means of infiltrating Israeli territory, or whether it was meant to be rigged with explosives.
Here’s the tunnel:
So Hezbollah lobs missiles over Israel's border, and Palestinian terrorists tunnel under it.
Despite objections from Britain, the Netherlands and a few other nations, the Bush administration is pushing to give China more voting weight at the International Monetary Fund to reflect its growing economic power and encourage Beijing to become a “stakeholder” in the international system. According to the New York Times:
In an effort to gain Chinese cooperation on international economic issues, the Bush administration is pushing for China and other developing nations to get more power in the global institution that has played a central role in easing myriad financial crises since the end of World War II….
“I would argue that by re-engineering the I.M.F. and giving China a bigger voice,” Mr. Adams [under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs] said, “China will have a greater sense of responsibility for the institution’s mission.”
China is a particular focus of American interests because of the Bush administration’s uneasy relationship with the Beijing government and its desire for China to become a “stakeholder” in the international system, as American officials put it.
A similar “stakeholder” argument was advanced during congressional debate on granting China permanent most-favored-nation trade status. Since that time, Beijing has been less than helpful on numerous fronts: Darfur, North Korea and Iran top the list. It may make perfect economic sense for a greater Chinese role at the IMF but shouldn’t the Bush administration request “a greater sense of responsibility” from the Chinese as a member of that other international institution, the UN Security Council, before falling over backwards for them at the IMF?
Last month, the Security Council offered Iran “incentives” to come clean on its nuclear program. It also gave Tehran a deadline of August 31 to stop enriching uranium. But it’s doubtful the regime will take the Security Council seriously until China and Russia stop coddling it. From today's Washington Post:
Iranian nuclear specialists have begun enriching a new batch of uranium in an apparent act of defiance just days ahead of a U.N. Security Council deadline for Tehran to stop such work or face the prospect of economic sanctions, officials in Washington and European capitals who have been monitoring Iran's efforts said yesterday.
Today, Secretary Rumsfeld resurrected a theme from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s famous 1984 "San Francisco Democrats" speech in which she took on the "blame America first” crowd. She said:
The American people know that it's dangerous to blame ourselves for terrible problems that we did not cause.
They understand just as the distinguished French writer, Jean Francois Revel, understands the dangers of endless self- criticism and self-denigration.
He wrote: "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
In his speech to the American Legion in Salt Lake City, Secretary Rumsfeld asked:
Can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America — not the enemy, but America — is the source of the world’s troubles?
The Lamont victory indicates that the road to the Democratic presidential nomination runs straight through the party’s anti-war base. John Kerry and John Edwards long ago abandoned their hawkish positions on Iraq. Others, like Hillary, hedged. But since Lieberman’s defeat, the New York senator has embraced Lamont probably much more than she wanted to. And yesterday, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner came out of his shell on Iraq a little bit more than he has in the past. He’s inched closer to the standard Democratic talking points on the war:
My sense is we've got to make clear that we're getting out of Iraq. We've got to start a redeployment of our troops.
When should they get out? He doesn’t say. Where should our troops redeploy? He doesn’t say. How will the combination of both achieve victory in Iraq or, at least, stave off defeat? He doesn’t say. As to what led to the current conditions in Iraq, Warner does offer an answer:
Again, we're seeing the price of the Bush administration's arrogance that they can remake Iraq in America's image without engaging Iraq's neighbors.
But Warner won’t answer how he’d have voted on the Iraq War resolution had he’d been in Congress at the time. Is he too arrogant to give voters an explanation? Also, I don’t remember Warner voicing opposition each time millions of Iraqis went to the polls. And what nations should we have engaged? Syria? Iran? What goodies should we have offered to these dictatorships? Perhaps the governor will fill us all in the next time he’s in Iowa or New Hampshire.
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reviews a forum, sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held yesterday at the National Press Club. As Milbank observes, the featured speakers, John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Harvard’s Stephen Walt, made a point to single out the Jews in the administration.
Walt singled out two Jews who worked at the Pentagon for their pro-Israel views. "People like Paul Wolfowitz or Doug Feith . . . advocate policies they think are good for Israel and the United States alike," he said. "We don't think there's anything wrong with that, but we also don't think there's anything wrong for others to point out that these individuals do have attachments that shape how they think about the Middle East."
"Attachments" sounds much better than "dual loyalties." But why single out Wolfowitz and Feith and not their non-Jewish boss, Donald Rumsfeld? …Picking up on the "attachments" lingo, Mearsheimer did mention Bolton but cited two Jews, Elliott Abrams and David Wurmser, as "the two most influential advisers on Middle East affairs in the White House. Both, he said, are " fervent supporters of Israel." Never mind that others in the White House, such as national security adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Cheney and President Bush, have been just as fervent despite the lack of "attachments."
For more on the “scholarship” of Mearsheimer and Walt see here, here and here.
Once Clinton was in office, the first President Bush had enough class to travel the world without trashing the sitting Democratic president – and during Clinton’s presidency the elder Bush could have said a lot. I wish I could say the same for this failed one-term president who regularly attacks the Bush administration while overseas. And now Jimmy Carter is busy attacking a strong ally of the U.S as well. Pathetic.
Reuters reports:
Saudi Arabia has released over 700 suspected militants after clerics "corrected" their thinking in a special program aimed at stemming a three-year-old campaign of violence by al Qaeda, officials said.
"They are sympathizers. There are many of this kind of people, who are subject to the process of an advisory committee. Hundreds of them have gone through this and been released," Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said….
Turki said the men had believed in 'takfiri' ideology, which permits branding Muslim governments or ordinary Muslims as infidels because of policies, behavior or beliefs….
Sheikh Mohammed al-Fifi, a member of the committee leading the dialogue with suspects, said this week that those released, accounted for over 90 percent of all detainees whose thinking clerics had tried to "correct." He put the number of those freed at around 700.
"First we would deal with them in groups, then individually as they related their thoughts," he told the al-Madina newspaper in an interview published this week.
"They became like this through provocative religious edicts on the Internet or in books, or via preachers who stir up young people's passions in sermons and lectures," he added.
Fifi said he did not blame Saudi Arabia's controversial educational curriculum which foreign rights groups and Western governments have said promote extremism.
Here are just a few examples of “controversial” publications funded by the Saudi government.
Just after Lamont's primary victory, I noted that Hillary Clinton has
tried to keep some distance from the party’s noisy anti-war wing. Appearing with Lamont may endear [her] to the party’s base, but it would also tie [her] to a candidate, who, in the words of Joe Lieberman, holds views that are “dangerous for our troops, disastrous for the Middle East and really make America vulnerable to another terrorist attack like 9/11.” So can Hillary afford to stay away from the race? I doubt it. The liberal blogoshere will demand that all the ’08 candidates kiss the ring of Lamont, and given the muscle they’ve flexed in outing Joe, the Hillary folks will likely decide they have no choice but to submit.
Well, Hillary has jumped on the Lamont bandwagon, as today’s New York Post editorial explains:
It's nice finally to know where Hillary Clinton stands on something.
On Friday, Clinton hosted Connecticut Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont in her Chappaqua home. Also on hand was the senator's senior aide - and state Democratic Party spokesman - Howard Wolfson.
After the meeting, the left-wing Daily Kos site - one of Lamont's biggest online boosters - promptly announced that a Clinton campaign source promised that Sen. Clinton would do a fund-raiser for the Lamont campaign.
Plus, Wolfson has been tasked to serve in an "advisory role" for the Lamont campaign.
Sen. Clinton is, of course, entitled to do as she wishes in support of Democratic candidates.
Lamont is the official nominee of Connecticut Democrats after his defeat of incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman - who campaigns on as an independent.
But no one should mistake what's going on here as anything other than opportunistic politicking of the crassest kind.
Lamont won his nomination based on a single issue - full-throated opposition to the war in Iraq (and, by reasonable extension, the War on Terror itself) - and fueled by activist Web sites.
In contrast - until now - Clinton walked a very fine line on the central policy issue of the moment: She voted for the war and - despite some rhetorical wriggling here and there - has generally stood by her vote.
Until now.
For there can be no denying what she did in overtly embracing the Lamont campaign.
The nation is at war. And Hillary Clinton is giving aid and comfort to the anti-warriors.
Given the dynamics of New York state, this decision is unlikely to cause Clinton any political damage in her re-election campaign.
But this is a vivid reminder that the Democratic establishment can't be trusted on national security - and, now, neither can Hillary Clinton.
It's an old story. The Sudanese regime continues its brutal campaign in Darfur and tells the UN to take a hike. Actually, Khartoum tells those nations who care about stopping the killing to get lost. The regime pays no price for its defiance. Why? No, it’s not because George Bush invaded Iraq. For years, Moscow and Beijing have refused to support UN Security Council-imposed sanctions on Khartoum. They are heavy investors in Sudan’s energy industry, and the Chinese are also busy selling weapons to the butchers of Darfur. From Reuters:
Sudan snubbed an invitation to send high-level officials to a U.N. Security Council meeting in New York on Monday to discuss a U.S. and British sponsored draft resolution to deploy around 20,000 troops and police to Darfur….
"Eyewitnesses in el-Fasher in North Darfur are telling us that Sudanese government military flights are flying in troops and arms on a daily basis," said Kate Gilmore, Amnesty International's executive deputy secretary general….
Khartoum submitted a plan to the Security Council which would send 10,500 more government troops to Darfur to stop the violence instead of a U.N. force.
"Displaced people in Darfur are absolutely terrified that the same soldiers that expelled them from their homes and villages may now be sent supposedly to protect them," Gilmore said….
Around 7,000 African Union troops are struggling to monitor a shaky truce in Darfur, but short of cash and capabilities they have been unable to stem the violence which has only increased since an AU-brokered peace deal signed by the government and one rebel faction in May….
In an ominous development Sudanese Islamist leaders have said they will take up arms to expel any U.N. forces in Darfur and even turn against the government if it accepts international troops.
Those statements echo comments by Osama bin Laden, hosted by Sudan in the 1990s, who has said al Qaeda would fight in Darfur if U.N. troops were deployed….
And we’re expecting the Russians and the Chinese to get tough with Iran at some point. Don’t hold your breath.
Four percent of the world's trade passes through the Panama Canal, making it a tempting terror target.
Lt. Col. Stephen Coonen has an interesting piece in the US Army War College journal Parameters on the widening military capabilities gap between American and European forces. He argues:
The improbability of many European states committing more of their treasuries toward defense suggests that capabilities will continue to diverge. While this is certainly not a desirable condition, it is far from being the apocalyptic end of the alliance. The capabilities gap, while growing, has not led to a dysfunctional alliance. Rather, Europe’s and America’s leaders continue to acknowledge the enormous value and importance of the transatlantic partnership in advancing their shared values and facing their common threats. Despite recent strains in European-American relations, NATO continues to serve as a valuable organization that binds the allies together, providing the vehicle for continued cooperation. In this light, the military capabilities gap between the United States and Europe, as it exists today, is not as significant as many observers state or imply.
Still, NATO is a military alliance that has been engaged in the Balkans and is now much more active in Afghanistan. There’s a remote possibility it could be operating in Darfur in the coming months. And other crises may erupt at any moment (think southern Lebanon) where a robust NATO/European force may be needed –- which is why it’s hard to imagine that NATO will remain a healthy alliance in the long run with European governments devoting so little to their defense capabilities.
From today's New York Times:
The consensus of the intelligence agencies is that Iran is still years away from building a nuclear weapon. Such an assessment angers some in Washington, who say that it ignores the prospect that Iran could be aided by current nuclear powers like North Korea. “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?” said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
Let’s hope our intelligence agencies have a better grip on Iran’s nuclear program than they did on Saddam’s before the first Gulf War. From the Washington Post, August 11, 1991:
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 location of the sophisticated, secret factory for manufacturing hundreds of uranium gas centrifuges was unknown to any foreign intelligence agency despite intense scrutiny and untouched by five weeks of severe aerial bombardment during the Gulf War that supposedly eviscerated the Iraqi nuclear project. As such, it is a monument to the world’s ignorance about what a determined bomb-builder such as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein can do.
The factory was a key component in Iraq’s elaborate highly redundant and largely secret network of physics, chemistry and metallurgical laboratories, industrial mines, metalworking factories, electrical power generators, nuclear research reactors and radioactive waste processing sites—all aimed at swiftly putting a nuclear weapon in the hands of one of the world’s most ruthless leaders.
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.
I'm not sure what to make of this, though Jerusalem must be enjoying it. Speaking of Damascus, what’s the status of the UN investigation into the role Syria may have played in the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister? Has it been swept under the rug as part of the recent cease-fire agreement or as part of a broader effort by some to engage the dictatorship?
Tony Blankley of the Washington Times looks at what the world would look like if the president adopted the policies of his critics for the remainder of his term. You can add to Blankley's list the huge shot in the arm all this would give to al Qaeda. And a few months back, Gerard Baker speculated on “the consequences of what might have happened” had Saddam not been deposed.
Today's USA Today/Gallup poll shows an up tick in the president’s approval rating. It’s now 42 percent, “suggesting that more positive evaluations of Bush could be tied to his handling of terrorism.” Other polls also show a GOP advantage on security-related issues. An AP poll conducted well before the news of the latest terror bomb plot found:
One bright spot for the GOP is that Republicans hold an advantage over Democrats on issues such as foreign policy and fighting terrorism _ 43 percent to 33 percent _ and a smaller edge on handling Iraq _ 36 percent to 32 percent.
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted after the divisive Democratic debate in the Senate over setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. Potential voters were paying attention to the GOP complaint that Democrats want to "cut and run."
"It seems like the Democrats want to pull out or start to pull out, and I don't think that's the correct thing to do," said Eric Bean, 24, a college minister in Fort Worth, Texas. "I'd much rather see a Congress that would support our president. I think George Bush is doing the best he can. I think Republicans will support him."
As I have noted before, if Democrats were hitting Republicans from the right on national security, the GOP would be in far deeper trouble. But naturally they’re not, which gives Republicans an opening to schedule as many security-related votes (with lots of debate) as possible before November 7. Also, Ned Lamont will likely say a lot of things before election day that will help make the GOP's case against the Democrats. Republicans should nationalize his comments as much as possible and note all the major Democrats who are actively campaigning for Lamont against the hawkish Lieberman. Americans aren't going to buy the Frank Rich line (see Sunday's New York Times) that the Lamont Democrats really are tough as nails on the terror front.
(The latest poll has Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega leading the presidential race by 10 points. Venezuela's Chavez, who's been lobbying for a seat on the UN Security Council, has been just as busy trying to put Ortega in office. A Chavez win on both counts would obviously not be good news for the U.S.)
Posted on July 23, 2006:
Once again, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has become an issue in a presidential campaign. This time in Nicaragua, where Chavez has been showering gifts upon Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega. Today’s Washington Post reports:
Ortega, 60, whose armed revolution made him the Reagan administration's chief antagonist in the hemisphere during the 1980s, is also getting a boost this time from Washington's current bête noir in Latin America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Among other shows of support, Chávez recently bypassed Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños and negotiated a deal directly with Ortega to sell oil to Nicaragua under a long-term credit scheme intended to free more government funds for social spending…. In addition to the oil deal, Chávez has arranged to distribute fertilizer at cut-rate prices to Nicaraguan farmers through an association allied with the Sandinistas….
But there are signs that Chávez's assistance could backfire. In a recent poll commissioned by the Nicaraguan weekly Confidencial, 49 percent of Nicaraguans said they thought Venezuela was interfering. And there are rumors that Chávez is directly financing Ortega's campaign -- fueled by the abundance of enormous posters of Ortega's smiling face across not merely the capital but also in the countryside.
Aside from delivering a political black eye to the U.S., Chavez may have other things in mind with his oil charity and in pushing for an Ortega victory. He may hope that a President Ortega returns the favor by derailing Managua’s current plan to allow for more extensive oil exploration off its coast. The prospect of tapping these potentially large oil deposits is something that I’m sure doesn’t sit well with the oil-rich Chavez. Stay tuned ...
Saddam's second trial begins today. This time for genocide (see here for info. on Camp Slayer), as the New York Times reports:
Mr. Hussein sat stone-faced in a courtroom in the fortified Green Zone of Baghdad, listening as prosecutors gave a detailed account of how Mr. Hussein and six co-defendants embarked on an eight-stage military campaign in 1988 to eliminate the Kurds from swaths of their mountainous homeland in northern Iraq. Prosecutors said the campaign, called Anfal, killed at least 50,000 Kurds and resulted in the destruction of 2,000 villages.
Recently, Time magazine published an interview with a senior leader in charge of the forces that doused Halabja and other villages with chemicals in 1988 during the Anfal campaign. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri also claims that he and other Saddam loyalists are behind much of the insurgency. During the first Gulf War, he warned Kurds to stay out of the fight or face another chemical attack: "If you have forgotten Halabja, we are ready to repeat the operation." Saddam and his senior Baathist leadership targeted Kurdish villages with a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agent. Here’s a reminder of the result:
(source: http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil)
And here’s what the Iraq Survey Group concluded on Saddam’s wmd production capability:
[T]here is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD production after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD production as soon as sanctions were lifted.
The ISG continued:
Based on an investigation of facilities, materials, and production outputs, ISG also judges that Iraq had a break-out capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard CW agent, but not nerve agents....
Iraq retained the necessary basic chemicals to produce sulfur mustard on a large-scale, but probably did not have key precursors for nerve agent production. With the importation of key phosphorus based precursors, Iraq could have produced limited quantities of nerve agent as well. Mustard production could have started within days if the necessary precursor chemicals were co-located in a suitable production facility; otherwise production could have started within weeks. Nerve agent production would have taken much longer.
After losing power, I'm sure al-Douri would like to "repeat the operation" in Halabja if given the opportunity.
Call me a skeptic. From this weekend's Wall Street Journal:
A senior State Department official contends that 'Hezbollah has been boxed in militarily.’
Today’s Journal editorial explains that given the facts on the ground in Lebanon it may be the U.S. that has been “boxed in."
Resolution 1701 also calls for an arms embargo on Hezbollah, although it specifies no penalties for those who break it. Anyone who has visited the remote, unguarded and unmarked hinterland between Syria and Lebanon must know that such an embargo will be very hard to enforce.
All of this explains Israel's increasing frustration with the cease-fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought into the agreement based on what now appear to have been insincere pledges that European troops would dominate the U.N. force. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is displaying his trademark even-handedness by denouncing Israel for trying to enforce the arms embargo while staying silent on the failure of everyone else to enforce it.
Israel can and will defend itself. The person who should really be furious here is Secretary of State Rice. She midwifed this cease-fire in the name of Lebanese democracy and as a way to use diplomacy, and the U.N., to tame Hezbollah and frustrate its patrons. She also believed French promises, so it'd be good to know if she now feels she was lied to. If this U.N. exercise turns out to be as feckless as it increasingly appears, U.S. credibility will also be a loser.
Likud member Yuval Steinitz has an interesting piece in Haaretz. He argues:
In recent years, a concept of ''victory from the air'' developed, negating the need for ground maneuvers or improved firepower on ground or in sea. In the case of Lebanon, a specific concept of repelling Katyusha rockets and missile fire in the air was developed -- hence, the belief that it was possible to conduct a broad confrontation with Hezbollah with no action on the ground.
As a result, infantry, tank, and artillery forces were neglected. One factor that made neglect in the military power structure more severe was the self-persuasion of senior security force members who believed that conventional warfare had seen its final days. A total of 23 years without frontal conflict between the I.D.F. and Arab armies allowed ministers of defense, chiefs of staff and other experts to develop a military version of the ''end of history'' theory.
It was expressed in the belief that the conventional military threat to Israel had been permanently replaced by the threat of unconventional weapons, on one hand, and terror, on the other. This concept remained intact even though we witnessed a conventional clash between the United States and Iraq, a clash which included broad ground maneuvers alongside the battle in the air.
(This reaction to the cease-fire is not good news, and now Iran's Ahmadinejad is calling for the US to "disarmed.")
Posted on August 7, 2006:
This report out of Damascus is why Hezbollah must be routed in southern Lebanon. Key quotes:
In the last few weeks alone [Damascus shop owner] Ali says he has sold thousands of posters ranging from close-ups of a serene-looking Nasrallah to Hizbollah fighters stepping over skulls of Israeli soldiers.
"My customers are from every sect and religion. Nasrallah is the only Arab leader alive who has actually achieved something. He liberated south Lebanon from Israel," Ali said.
"You see pictures of Arab leaders in Cairo, Amman and elsewhere, but what have they done? Here in Syria we are still living off our achievements in the 1973 war with Israel and that wasn't even a victory," he said.
Back in 2000, Hezbollah claimed victory following the Israeli withdrawal. The subsequent failure of the Security Council to enforce its own disarmament resolutions and to hold Syria and Iran accountable for arming Hezbollah allowed the group to consolidate its power in the south. This time, when the current fighting ends, there should be little doubt that Hezbollah’s policy of creating a terror state within a state to attack Israel has failed.
Two Iraq War veterans, Wade Zirkle and Connecticut native Josh Clark, make the case for Joe Lieberman in today’s Wall Street Journal. They write:
Joseph Lieberman's primary loss might be a satisfying victory for the partisan extremes, but it is a sharp blow to bipartisan efforts to prevail in a global war that may span generations.
The political gamesmanship is heard by the troops on the front lines. Many in the media tend to portray our warriors as mindless pawns who are unaffected by debates on the home front. This misperception is largely a result of troops unwilling to openly talk politics with the press. But as American servicemen who together served three tours in Iraq, we can attest to the discouragement those in battle endure in the face of a domestic politics that has a seemingly singular focus on controversy and negativism.
Our troops are witness to the 24-hour news cycles, as American television is beamed into the "chow halls." Military base Internet portals also provide access to sound-bites from Washington in real time -- a phenomenon that did not exist in earlier wars. Our troops are watching and they need tempered, constructive leadership on how we will proceed. Ultimately, the wartime politics of partisan destruction is corrosive to troop morale.
Sen. Lieberman made it clear that a nation cannot effectively fight a war by looking in the rearview mirror. Too often it appears we are fighting a war among ourselves instead of against the enemy.
This is all the more reason why Joe Lieberman is needed now as an independent voice to represent America's troops and their interests abroad in the war on terror. This is not to suggest that our troops do not welcome healthy debate about the direction of the war, or serious accountability of our leaders. But supporting our troops, understanding the stakes of the mission, and still constructively questioning military and civilian leadership is a difficult balance to strike -- and one on which Joe Lieberman has repeatedly risen to the occasion. This should be the model. Our national security agenda must never be borne out of divisive domestic campaigns that champion partisan vindictiveness. Semper Fi.
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In his book Fiasco and in this interview with Hugh Hewitt, Tom Ricks points to the 1998 Desert Fox campaign against suspected wmd sites in Iraq as evidence that containment worked. But Clinton himself had no idea how much wmd was destroyed in that campaign. He told Larry King on July 27, 2003: “When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for. That is, at the end of the first Gulf War, we knew what he had. We knew what was destroyed in all the inspection processes and that was a lot. And then we bombed with the British for four days in 1998. We might have gotten it all; we might have gotten half of it; we might have gotten none of it. But we didn't know.” Even after the invasion, in April 2003, his defense secretary, William Cohen, still believed we'd find wmd. What's more, the inspection process was not about running around the country searching for stuff. Iraq was obligated to provide "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its wmd stocks and wmd-related material. As Cohen explained in 1998: "[Inspectors] have to find documents, computer disks, production points, ammunition areas in an area that size [California]. Hussein has said, 'we have no program now.' We're saying, 'prove it.' He says he has destroyed all his nerve agent. [W]e're asking 'where, when and how?'"
By mid-March 2003, regardless one's postion on the inspection process, UN inspection reports still showed that Saddam had not complied with numerous disarmament resolutions. Post-invasion, Charles Duelfer noted that inspectors had discovered “clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD production as soon as sanctions were lifted." And UNMOVIC's May 30, 2003 report detailed Iraq's attempt "to conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks. "
Iraq was required to declare the import of dual-use items and supply UNMOVIC with details as to their origin. However, Iraq’s recent semi-annual monitoring declarations, starting with the “backlog” of declarations since 1998 supplied to UNMOVIC in October 2002, showed a trend of withholding pertinent information....The biological imports were of a slightly more significant kind, and included the import of a dozen autoclaves, half a dozen centrifuges and a number of laminar flow cabinets.
Missile imports, however, were more substantial and could have contributed significantly to any missile development programme. One example was the importation of 380 Volga engines that Iraq planned to use in the production of the Al Samoud 2 missile, a missile system UNMOVIC later determined to be prohibited since its range exceeded 150 km. In its declaration of 7 December 2002, Iraq declared that it had imported 131 such engines but failed to supply any information about their origin (suppliers, exporting countries) until inspectors observed 231 such engines at an Al Samoud production facility.
A trend that was especially pronounced in the missile area (but to a lesser extent also present in the biological and chemical fields) was the use of the term “local market” to classify the import of some very sophisticated pieces of equipment....UNMOVIC came to understand that Iraq used the term “local market” when an Iraqi import company imported a commodity and then sold or transferred it to a government facility, which suggested that Iraq was trying to conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks.”
On a separate note, the current bomb plot reminded me of two photos (scroll down to figures 1 and 2) in the Duelfer report on alleged unsuccessful attempts by Saddam’s intelligence service (IIS) to weaponized perfume bottles.
It failed. From the Duelfer report (p. 43):
A former IIS officer claimed that M16 directorate had a plan to produce and weaponized nitrogen mustard in rifle grenades, and a plan to bottle Sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine sprayers which they would ship to the United States and Europe. The source claimed that they could not implement the plan because chemicals to produce the CW agents were unavailable.
Former Clinton administration official Richard Holbrooke and Newt Gingrich pen dueling op-eds, here and here. This is not the first time Holbrooke has got in a tussle of over foreign policy with a Republican. Last October, in a New Yorker piece on Brent Scowcroft and the so-called "realist" camp, Holbrooke argued that Democratic foreign policy should "marry idealism and realism, effective American leadership and, if necessary, the use of force." He also told the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg: "Support for American values is part of our national-security interests, and it is realistic to support humanitarian and human-rights interventions."
Sen. Joe Lieberman today (via Hotline on Call):
If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out [of Iraq] by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England…. It will strengthen them and they will strike again….
“I’m worried that too many people, both in politics and out, don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat to American security and the evil of the enemy that faces us — more evil, or as evil, as Nazism and probably more dangerous than the Soviet Communists we fought during the long Cold War
[T]hese terrorists certainly don’t distinguish based on our party affiliation? They want to kill any and all of us.
I’m sure Harry Reid and all the rest who have heartily endorsed “Bring Them Home” Lamont won’t be happy with Lieberman. Good for Joe.
From the Senate minority leader:
I commend British authorities for defusing this terror plot and apprehending the suspects. Their actions protected the lives of innocent civilians, including many American citizens. Today’s events are an important reminder that we need to renew our focus on the war on terror and to continue to work with our allies to protect Americans from terrorism.
Terrorism remains the greatest threat to our security. As the five year anniversary of the September 11th attacks approaches, we should take this opportunity not just to remember, but to take stock of what progress has been made to protect Americans and what steps remain unfulfilled. As a result of mismanagement and the wrong funding priorities, we are not as safe as we should be and we still have not implemented the bipartisan 9-11 Commission’s recommendations to secure our ports, airports, and chemical plants. The Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists. This latest plot demonstrates the need for the Bush administration and the Congress to change course in Iraq and ensure that we are taking all the steps necessary to protect Americans at home and across the world.
So Democrats like Harry Reid vote for the Iraq War resolution (which passed 77-23) and now want to cut and run, handing a victory to al Qaeda. Remember al-Zawahiri’s first priority in Iraq? It’s to “expel the Americans.” Bin Ladin used the American withdrawal from Somalia and other events to rally jihadists. America was “a weak horse,” he told his followers in the '90s. Al Qaeda, he said, was the "the strong horse. " It worked -- see here. Evidently, Reid’s unaware of all this. Are we supposed to believe that al Qaeda will react differently to the Lamont-Kerry-Pelosi-Murtha withdrawal plan? Joe Lieberman certainly doesn't believe so.
As to the lesson of the latest terror plot, Reid should listen to Sen. McConnell:
This is yet another reminder, if anyone needed one, that the war on terror is not over. And it is a reminder that our military, law enforcement and intelligence forces are working around the clock and around the world to prevent attacks here at home.
That's why we need more tools, not less, to fight terrorists. It is clear to anyone paying attention that our law enforcement and intelligence forces need every legal means at their disposal to be able connect the dots and prevent and disrupt al Qaeda’s attacks. Tools such as the terrorist surveillance program and others allow us to prevent the attacks before they happen, not just to respond when it’s too late. We must continue to arm our forces, so that they can disarm terrorists.
A short time ago, the British government released two reports -- here and here -- on the July 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London, which killed 52 and injured over 800. The reports suggest that more interrogations and more wiretaps may have thwarted the attack, as Gary Schmitt explained in the Weekly Standard:
If there is any smoking gun when it comes to the failure of British intelligence and the July 2005 bombings, it's the fact that there appears to have been knowledge of [subway bomber Mohammad Sidique] Khan's role as a possible al Qaeda fellow traveler among the post-9/11 detainees in both Pakistan and Guantanamo. What is known for sure is that Khan had traveled to Pakistan in 2003 and late 2004. And while he was only one of several hundred thousand U.K. residents who visited Pakistan for a month or longer in 2004, at least one detainee, and perhaps a second, subsequently recognized Khan and knew about his efforts to reach out to Muslim extremists while there.
In addition, the government's report takes note of the fact that in the run-up to the bombings themselves, the terrorists appeared to be in relatively constant phone contact with an individual or individuals in Pakistan. Although "it is not known who this was or the content of the contacts," according to the report, "the methods used, designed to make it difficult to identify the individual, make the contacts look suspicious."
Of course, it is impossible to know whether, if these "leads" had been followed up, the bombings would have been prevented. Nevertheless, the irony here is what would have been required to crack the case--information gained from detainee interrogations and from listening in on calls made to terrorist suspects abroad. Both are practices pushed by the Bush White House and roundly reviled by London's elite.
Based on the reports’ findings, it’s a good bet the British used more aggressive intelligence gathering techniques to help unravel the current bomb plot. And the British (and the U.S. for that matter) need all the help they can get if this report is accurate.
Securitywatchtower.com has a good roundup of news (with multiple links) on the terrorist bomb plot here (scroll up a bit). At the Counterterrorism blog, Evan Kohlman comments:
Though for some, news of a reported Al-Qaida plot to down multiple commercial airliners with liquid explosives may sound exotic and unusual, in fact, U.S. authorities have been aware of such a threat from Al-Qaida affiliates for over a decade.
In 1995, when U.S. and Philippine security services uncovered a plot by 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and his uncle 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to bomb over a dozen U.S. airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean, they quickly moved in and arrested their co-conspirators. One of the detained men, trained commercial pilot Abdel Hakim Murad, described Ramzi Yousef's plans in detail -- including his intention to travel to "France, Egypt, and Algeria after the activities here in the Philippines. The purpose was to train those Muslim brothers thereat, on using a Casio watch as a timing device, chemical mixtures to compound bombs, and to share his expertise in eluding detection on an airport's x-ray machine, and eventually smuggling [onboard] this liquid chemical bombs. Furthermore, France has a lot of Algerians staying and that these Egyptians and Algerians ha[ve] no experience on making these bombs and [do] not know the basics of smuggling liquid bombs through the airport."
Eleven years later, we once again return to the same threat to commercial aviation posed by liquid explosives. Only now, it would appear that the fabrication of such high-tech terrorist weapons by Al-Qaida operatives inside Western Europe is no longer an insurmountable challenge.
Senate reaction to the plot:
BOWLING GREEN, KY— U.S. Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell made the following statement Thursday regarding the disruption of a major terrorist plot centered in the United Kingdom, and the need for continued anti-terror efforts in the United States:
“This is yet another reminder, if anyone needed one, that the war on terror is not over. And it is a reminder that our military, law enforcement and intelligence forces are working around the clock and around the world to prevent attacks here at home.
“That's why we need more tools, not less, to fight terrorists. It is clear to anyone paying attention that our law enforcement and intelligence forces need every legal means at their disposal to be able connect the dots and prevent and disrupt al Qaeda’s attacks. Tools such as the terrorist surveillance program and others allow us to prevent the attacks before they happen, not just to respond when it’s too late. We must continue to arm our forces, so that they can disarm terrorists.”
This fall the UN will vote to replace the current non-permanent members of the Security Council with new nations. Though little reported in the media, for many weeks Hugo Chavez has been traveling the globe trolling for enough votes from regimes opposed to the U.S. to get on the Council. He’s been offering cut-rate oil deals and has signed agreements to buy weapons. His latest campaign swing brought him to Tehran, where he lavished praise on the regime for standing up to the Americans. Now, he’s taken up the cause of Hezbollah and has accused Israel of perpetrating a “new Holocaust” in Lebanon. On Monday, Israel withdrew its ambassador to Venezuela. Earlier, Chavez recalled Venezuela’s charge d’affaires to Israel. In a recent televised speech, the BBC reports, Chavez said that he had
no interest in maintaining diplomatic relations, or offices, or businesses, or anything with a state like Israel….
Israel has gone mad. It's attacking, doing the same thing to the Palestinian and Lebanese people that they have criticised - and with reason - the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust.
At least one very senior Republican I know of believes the Bush administration must make denying Chavez a seat on the Council a top priority. Specifically, all U.S. ambassadors should let their host country know that the U.S. government would view a vote for Chavez as an unfriendly act. The administration should also encourage a friendlier nation in Latin America to seek a Security Council seat.
One thing is for sure: If Chavez succeeds, it would be very bad news for the U.S.
Now that Ned Lamont has won, some Democratic presidential candidates will be in a bind. Do they actively campaign for Lamont? Do they appear with him at campaign rallies with the crowd chanting, “Bring Them Home, Bring Them Home” as they did last night during his victory speech?
It’s no accident that John Edwards made sure he was the first to congratulate Lamont on his primary win. He knows this race will get national attention, and he has already repudiated his past support for the war. You can bet that Edwards, Kerry and the other anti-war candidates will want to shine in the national spotlight by actively campaigning for Lamont. But what about Mark Warner, Evan Bayh and Hillary Clinton?
In varying degrees, they have all tried to keep some distance from the party’s noisy anti-war wing. Appearing with Lamont may endear them to the party’s base, but it would also tie them to a candidate, who, in the words of Joe Lieberman, holds views that are “dangerous for our troops, disastrous for the Middle East and really make America vulnerable to another terrorist attack like 9/11.” So can Hillary afford to stay away from the race? I doubt it. The liberal blogoshere will demand that all the ’08 candidates kiss the ring of Lamont, and given the muscle they’ve flexed in outing Joe, the Hillary folks will likely decide they have no choice but to submit.
Here's what Sen. Lieberman had to say this morning on the Today show about his opponent – the same one all the ’08 Democratic presidential candidates are cutting checks for and offering congratulations:
My opponent says let's get all our troops out by a deadline. I saw that will be dangerous for our troops, disastrous for the Middle East and really make America vulnerable to another terrorist attack like 9/11.
AFP reports:
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan -- Pro-Taliban militants beheaded a pro-government tribal elder in Pakistan's restive tribal region bordering
Afghanistan, officials said.
The body of Loi Khan was found dumped on a road in Garhiyoum, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan region, a local official said on Monday.
The man was abducted last week from adjoining South Waziristan, the official said, requesting anonymity.
A note found on the body said the man had been killed as punishment for working as an "informer."
"Anyone found indulging in espionage will meet the same fate," the note said.
Several tribal elders have been shot dead or beheaded this year…
First, Fidel goes missing and now another dictator hasn’t been seen publicly for some time.
From Israel to Lebanon to Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been fomenting war (see here for more on this) in a bid to intimidate the US and other nations against taking a tougher line on its nuclear enrichment activities:
TIKRIT, Iraq -- The U.S. ambassador to Iraq accused Iran on Tuesday of having forces in Iraq and said Tehran could use the war between Hizbollah militants and Israel in Lebanon to try and further destabilize the country.
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