THE FOURTH WORLD WAR

2011-12-15T05:03:00.000-08:00

The Iraq War Is Over....For The Pentagon

The New York Times, the newspaper that helped start the War On Iraq, announces it has come to an end on its online front page :

There is no mention on the front page of the New York Times, at all, of the estimated half-million or more Iraqis who lost their lives during nine years of American Occupation.

That's got to please the Pentagon.

Considering the amount of coverage the Iraq War has been given here, on and off, over the years, I should have a lot to say about this historic day.

But I don't.

We saw what happened when a strand of the American war industry elite decided Iraq had to be destroyed, nothing could stop them, and nothing didn't. They got nine years of war and destruction and world-poverty lifting military budgets.

Do you think it will be any different next time?

Is it, when it comes to War On Iran?

Of course not.

They get the wars they want.

And it's always been this way.

2011-08-02T08:27:00.001-07:00

How Much Does It Cost To Kill Or Assassinate Every Alleged 'Terrorist' In The War On Terror?

Former Director of Nation Intelligence Dennis Blair has announced the War on Terror, including drone attacks in Pakistan, Waziristan and Afghanistan are not worth the expense involved. Most of the alleged 'terrorists' and 'senior terrorist leaders' are nobodies.

Blair said between the US intelligence community and its homeland security offshoots and sub-contractors, more than $80 billion a year is being spent.

He calculates a figure of America spending some $20 million to capture and kill every one of the 4000 or so members of Al Qaeda he believes are still alive in the world today.

More From Wired Here

But are there even 4000 die-hard, sucicide-bomb ready Al Qaeada anything left? Other intellience experts have put the total number of Al Qaeada who pose a threat to the United Sstates, or United States' expansive interests, at less than a few hundred, all of whom are rapidly losing support in the wake of mostly non-violent Arab Spring movement.

So maybe not $20 million being spent to catch each one of these terrorists.

Perhaps, $100 million each, or more.

Somebody's getting rich.

It ain't you, and it sure ain't 'Al Qaeda'.

2011-07-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

One Million Libyans Turn Out In Support Of Gadaffi

Not quite the reaction of Libyans the western war alliance were hoping for.

Video of spectacular march :

2011-06-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Take Em Out"

"Oh Dude!'

What happened in Fallujah in 2003-2005 remains one of the darkest secrets of BushCo.'s War On Iraq. Just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of acts of state terrorism unleashed on the civilians of that city :

2011-06-19T23:20:00.000-07:00

Is NATO The Real War Criminal In Libya?

NATO's War On Libya is not everything it seems, far from it.

Susan Lindauer at Intel Hub :

It’s a story CNN won’t report. Late at night there’s a pounding on the door in Misurata. Armed soldiers force young Libyan women out of their beds at gun-point.
Hustling the women and teenagers into trucks, the soldiers rush the women to gang bang parties for NATO rebels—or else rape them in front of their husbands or fathers. When NATO rebels finish their rape sport, the soldiers cut the women’s throats.

Rapes are now ongoing acts of war in rebel-held cities, like an organized military strategy, according to refugees. Joanna Moriarty, who’s part of a global fact-finding delegation visiting Tripoli this week, also reports that NATO rebels have gone house to house through Misurata, asking families if they support NATO. If the families say no, they are killed on the spot.

If families say they want to stay out of the fighting, NATO rebels take a different approach to scare other families. The doors of “neutral homes” are welded shut, Moriarty says, trapping families inside.

In Libyan homes, windows are typically barred. So when the doors to a family compound get welded shut, Libyans are entombed in their own houses, where NATO forces can be sure large families will slowly starve to death.

These are daily occurrences, not isolated events. And Gadhaffi’s soldiers are not responsible. In fact, pro-Gadhaffi and “neutral” families are targeted as the victims of the attacks.

The Full Story Is Here

2011-06-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

Robert Fisk On The Middle East "Deal Of The Century'

From the UK Independent :

Secret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal – the latter requiring a covert journey to Damascus with a detour round the rebellious city of Deraa – brought about the Palestinian unity which has so disturbed both Israelis and the American government. Fatah and Hamas ended four years of conflict in May with an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state.
A series of detailed letters, accepted by all sides, of which The Independent has copies, show just how complex the negotiations were; Hamas also sought – and received – the support of Syrian President Bachar al-Assad, the country’s vice president Farouk al-Sharaa and its foreign minister, Walid Moallem. Among the results was an agreement by Meshaal to end Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza – since resistance would be the right only of the state – and agreement that a future Palestinian state be based on Israel’s 1967 borders.

“Without the goodwill of all sides, the help of the Egyptians and the acceptance of the Syrians – and the desire of the Palestinians to unite after the start of the Arab Spring, we could not have done this,” one of the principal intermediaries, 75-year old Munib Masri, told me. It was Masri who helped to set up a ‘Palestinian Forum’ of independents after the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas originally split after Hamas won an extraordinary election victory in 2006. “I thought the divisions that had opened up could be a catastrophe and we went for four years back and forth between the various parties,” Masri said. “Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) asked me several times to mediate. We opened meetings in the West Bank. We had people from Gaza. Everyone participated. We had a lot of capability.”
In three years, members of the Palestinian Forum made more than 12 trips to Damascus, Cairo, Gaza and Europe and a lot of initiatives were rejected. Masri and his colleagues dealt directly with Hamas’ Prime Minister Hanniyeh in Gaza. They took up the so-called ‘prisoner swap initiative’ of Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader in an Israeli jail; then in the winds of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the youth of Palestine on 15 March demanded unity and an end to the rivalry of Fatah and Hamas. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had always refused to talk to Abbas on the grounds that the Palestinians were not united. On the 16th, he made a speech saying that he was “thinking of going to Gaza”. Masri, who was present, stood on a chair and clapped.
“I thought Hamas would answer in a positive way,” he recalls. “But in the first two or three days after Abbas’ speech, it gave a rather negative response. He had wanted an immediate election and no dialogue. Hamas did not appreciate this.” Abbas went off to Paris and Moscow – to sulk, in the eyes of some of his associates. But the Forum did not give up.

“We wrote a document – we said we would go to see the Egyptians, to congratulate them upon their revolution. So we had two meetings with the Egyptian head of intelligence, Khaled Orabi – Orabi’s father was an army general at the time of King Farouk – and we met Mohamed Ibrahim, an officer in the intelligence department.” Ibrahim’s father had won renown in the 1973 war when he captured the highest ranking Israeli officer in Sinai. The delegation also met Ibrahim’s deputies, Nadr Aser and Yassir Azawi.

Seven people from each part of Palestine were to represent the team in Cairo. These are the names which will be in future Palestinian history books. From the West Bank, came Dr Hanna Nasser (head of Bir Zeit University and of the Palestinian central election committee); Dr Mamdouh Aker (the head of the human rights society); Mahdi Abdul-Hadi (chairman of a political society in Jerusalem); Hanni Masri (a political analyst); Iyad Masrouji (businessman in pharmacuticals); Hazem Quasmeh (runs an NGO) and Munib Masri himself.

The Gaza ‘side’ were represented by Eyad Sarraj (who in the event could not go to Cairo because he was ill); Maamoun Abu Shahla (member of the board of Palestine Bank); Faysal Shawa (businessman and landowner); Mohsen Abu Ramadan (writer); Rajah Sourani (head of Arab human rights, who did not go to Cairo); ‘Abu Hassan’ (Islamic Jihad member who was sent by Sarraj); and Sharhabil Al-Zaim (a Gaza lawyer).

“These men spent time with the top brass of the Egyptian ‘mukhabarat’ intelligence service,” Masri recalls. “We met them on 10 April but we sent a document before we arrived in Cairo. This is what made it important. In Gaza, there were two different ‘sides’. So we talked about the micro-situation, about Gazans in the ‘jail’ of Gaza, we talked about human rights, the Egyptian blockade, about dignity. Shawa was saying ‘we feel we do not have dignity – and we feel it’s your fault.’ Nadr Asr of the intelligence department said: ‘We’re going to change all that.’

“At 7.0 pm, we came back and saw Khaled Orabi again. I told him: ‘Look, I need these things from you. Do you like the new initiative, a package that’s a win-win situation for everyone? Is the Palestinian file still ‘warm’ in Cairo? He said ‘It’s a bit long – but we like it. Can you pressure both Fatah and Hamas, to bring them in? But we will work with you. Go and see Fatah and Hamas – and treat this as confidential.’ We agreed, and went to see Amr Moussa (now a post-revolution Egyptian presidential candidate) at the Arab League. He was at first very cautious – but the next day, Amr Moussa’s team was very positive. We said: ‘Give it a chance – we said that the Arab League was created for Palestine, that the Arab League has a big role in Jerusalem’.”

The delegation went to see Nabil al-Arabi at the Egyptian foreign ministry. “Al-Arabi said: ‘Can I bring in the foreign minister of Turkey, who happens to be in Egypt?’ So we all talkled about the initiative together. We noticed the close relationship between the foreign ministry and the intelligence ministry. That’s how I found out that ‘new’ Egypt had a lot of confidence – they were talking in front of Turkey; they wanted (italics: wanted) to talk in front of Turkey. So we agreed we would all talk together and then I returned with the others to Amman at 9.0 pm.”

The team went to the West Bank to report – “we were happy, we never had this feeling before” – and tell Azzam Ahmed (Fatah’s head of reconciliation) that they intended to support Mahmoud Abbas’s initiative over Gaza. “We had seven big meetings in Palestine to put all the groups there and the independents in the picture. Abbas had already given us a presidential decree. I spoke to Khaled Meshaal (head of Hamas, living in Damascus) by phone. He said: ‘Does Abu Mazzen (Abbas) agree to this?’ I said that wasn’t the point. I went to Damascus next day with Hanna Nasser, Mahdi Abdul Hadi and Hanni Masri. Because of all the trouble in Syria, we had to make a detour around Deraa. I had a good rapport with Meshaal. He said he had read our document – and that it was worth looking at.”

It was a sign of the mutual distrust between Hamas and Abbas that they both seemed intent on knowing the other’s reaction to the initiative before making up their own minds. “Meshaal said to me: ‘What did Abu Mazzen (Abbas) say?’ I laughed and replied: ‘You always ask me this – but what do you (italics: you) want? We met with Meshaal’s colleagues, Abu Marzouk, Izzat Rishiq and Abu Abdu Rahman. We reviewed the document for six and a half hours. The only thing we didn’t get from Meshaal was that the government has to be by agreement. We told him the government has to be of natiuonal unity -- on the agreement that we would be able to carry out elections and lift the embargo on Gaza and reconstruct Gaza, that we have to abide by international law, by the UN Charter and UN resolutions. He asked for three or four days. He agreed that resistance must only be ‘in the national interest of the country’ – it would have to be ‘aqlaqi’ – ethical. There would be no more rocket attacks on civilians. In other words, no more rocket attacks from Gaza.”

The Full Story Is Here

2011-06-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Countries across the Middle East and North Africa are revolting against their royal rulers, occupying governments and West-backed dictators, but here's what happens when Syrians and Palestinians try to fight their freedom :

Palestinian protesters on the Syrian frontier on Sunday as they tried to breach the border for the second time in three weeks, reflecting a new mode of popular struggle and deadly confrontation fueled by turmoil in the Arab world and the vacuum of stalled peace talks.

Demonstrators attempted to evacuate a protester who was wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday.

Wave after wave of protesters, mainly Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria, approached the frontier with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers opened fire on those who crossed a new trench and tried to attack the border fence near the towns of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights and Quneitra in Syria.
By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.
Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.

2011-05-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

War, What Is It Good For?

Well, War Industry Profits. Mostly

If the United States cut their war industry budget by even 10 percent, hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, some towns would shut up for good, congressmen and congresswomen would lose their jobs.

War is American Industry. Now more than ever.

2011-05-26T19:16:00.001-07:00

Meanwhile in Tiblisi, Georgia, the American-backed government smashes protesters calling for President Saakashvili to resign :

From the Financial Times :

The violence underscores the political fragility of the country, which is a hub for strategic oil and gas pipelines carrying Caspian oil and gas to the west.
The protests, launched last Saturday were led by Nino Burdjanadze, a former speaker of parliament and one of the architects of the 2003 Rose Revolution that swept Mr Saakashvili to power.
Support for Mr Saakashvili has waned since he led Georgia into a disastrous war with Russia in 2008 that ended when Georgia lost control of two fifths of its territory.
Georgia’s fragmented opposition say Mr Saakashvili has monopolised power and repressed independent voices, breaking his promise to promote democracy in Georgia. Russia has kept up relentless pressure on the president to resign since the war, describing him as a madman unfit to rule.

2011-05-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

Every Friday, protesters pour into the streets of Yemen demanding the president step down. The violence increases week by week, as the president refuses to sign the agreement that committed to, to step down.

A civil war in Yemen seems a possibility now. Much to the horror of Saudi Arabia.

The revolutions in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe continue to spread.

2011-05-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

Were The CIA Told "Don't Kill Bin Laden"?

The UK Telegraph takes from an interview with Michael Scheur, the former head of the Bin Laden unit inside the CIA, that "he was repeatedly ordered not to stop the al-Qaeda chief".

The story is interesting, not only for its potted history of Osama Bin Laden, but for some fascinating revelations, besides the fact the CIA apparently did not want Bin Laden dead for most of the 2000s.

From the UK Telegraph :

In August 1998 al-Qaeda killed 12 Americans and 200 others in bombings at two American embassies in east Africa. President Clinton ordered the CIA to dismantle al-Qaeda and, in Scheuer’s words, “take care” of bin Laden. The Pentagon launched cruise missile attacks on bin Laden’s training camps, but he had left the compound hours earlier. Scheuer estimates they had at least eight further opportunities to assassinate bin Laden in the following months.

“I’m not saying it would have been simple to take care of the problem, but it got progressively harder when we didn’t take those opportunities. One 50 cent round could have put us all out of our agony.”

In June 1999, he sent off an angry memo to senior officers asking why his men were risking their lives on someone America apparently had no interest in stopping. “I don’t know what you are doing when you talk to the President but he will not get a better opportunity than this,” he told them.

Scheuer was dismissed from his job and spent the next two years running counter-heroin operations in Pakistan and the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, he was back at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Arriving home exhausted at 11.30pm, he took a shower and crawled into bed when his phone went. It was his successor at the bin Laden unit. “We need you back,” he said.

Three months later British and American special forces were at Tora Bora, bin Laden’s heavily defended cave complex in Afghanistan, when they heard his voice over a captured radio.

It was the last time they had a fix on him for nine years. The Afghans let bin Laden walk out of Tora Bora and head for Pakistan during a ceasefire.

Scheuer continued to act as an adviser to the bin Laden unit until 2004 when he resigned in disgust at the way in which the public was being lied to over the opportunities to capture the terrorist leader.

His books have pointed out the many failings of American policy in the Middle East, not least their inability to address the other causes of western unpopularity in the region while portraying a myopic image of bin Laden as a lunatic.

He retains a sneaking regard for the quarry he hunted in vain for so long. “I respect his piety, integrity and skills,” he says. And the next generation of al-Qaeda? “They will be even more cruel and bloody-minded.”

The Full Story Is Here

2011-05-25T20:52:00.001-07:00

Wikileaks Pushes Revolution In Europe

Wikileaks is now pumping the new reality of a European Revolution, promoting Twitter hashtags, locations for protests and dates of marches and gatherings on its heavy-traffic website :

2011-05-25 #Europeanrevolution ignites after #spanishrevolution leads the way: massive protests happening now in France, Italy and Greece

As the main camps in Puerta del Sol (Madrid) and Plaza Catalunya (Barcelona) prepare to pack their tents and leave on Sunday, organizers have started to spread their message to the rest of Europe. From the beginning the Internet was abuzz with proposals of a European revolution or a #globalcamp, and for that purpose thousands of blogs and independent websites have been opening, planting the roots of the protests happening now in over twenty cities in France and Italy. Greece has also taken the streets and an estimated 30 thousand people are protesting outside of Athen's Parliament...

Wikileaks is not just releasing classified files and government records once kept hidden anymore, or rattling the doors of the establishment with a war of information.

Now Julian Assange is positioning himself at the centre of a European Uprising, and is purposely creating a new reality where what happened during the Arab Spring unfolds in the capitals of Europe.

More on The European Revolution from the UK Guardian :

A youth-led rebellion is spreading across southern Europe as a new generation of protesters takes possession of squares and parks in cities around Spain, united by a rejection of mainstream politicians and fury over spending cuts.
Protests are also planned in Italy, where the tag #italianrevolution is a trend on Twitter. Plans have been announced for a piazza occupation in Florenceon Thursday night, and for further protests in Italian cities, including Rome and Milan, on Friday.
In Madrid demonstrators have refused to budge from the central Puerta del Sol despite a police charge that dislodged them temporarily on Tuesday night.
Now they have occupied a quarter of the square, covering it with tarpaulins and tents, setting up kitchens, tapping at laptops and settling down to sleep on sofas and armchairs.
Similar scenes were being played out in Barcelona, where protesters held a midday Argentinian-style pan-bashing protest in the Plaza de Catalunya, and in numerous other cities where protesters raised the banner of what they call "the Spanish revolution".
All age groups were present in the protests but the emerging leaders were mostly under 30, part of a generation suffering 45% unemployment. Protesters said they were inspired more by the protests that followed the recent banking crisis in Iceland than by those that have swept through north Africa.
"Spain is not a business. We are not slaves," read one of the hundreds of protest posters glued to the Pueta del Sol's metro station walls.

The Full Story Is Here

2011-05-25T08:01:00.001-07:00

What a four mile protest march from the Yemen Revolution looks like :

More On The Yemen Revolution At The Atlantic

The revolutions of the Arab Spring begin with the exchange of information, the defiance of authority and rocks :

2011-04-20T07:43:00.001-07:00

Libya = Pentagon Vs China

China's interests in Libya, which supplies 3-5% of its oil, also act as a gateway to its tens of billions of dollars worth of investments across Africa in mining, infrastructure development and oil & gas.

Asia Time's Pepe Escobar :

"The Muslim Brotherhood is a weaponised, ideological arm of Saudi Arabia."

"The problem is there are different Washington agendas, White House, national security agencies, the CIA, the Pentagon."

"The next domino to fall, if we follow the agenda established by the Pentagon is Syria....The Pentagon is basically the Africa agenda, they want to win the war in Libya, install a Africa base in Africa....then there are the dominoes, Libya, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Zimbawbe, Somalia. So these are the next dominoes to fall, according to the Africa Pentagon agenda. Then later on the big dominoes would the countries where China has substantial interests. Example, Angola, Algeria, Nigera, Equitorial Guinea...."

"China...their counter strategy, if they see they're foundering in Africa....they would renew their ties with South America and Central Asia..."

2011-04-04T08:25:00.001-07:00

War On Libya Propaganda Push Falls Apart On Live TV

"This Is Americans Killing Muslims Again, And It Looks Like It's For Oil"

A mainstream media guest goes off script on Libya, and look at the shock of the presenters, no doubt being yelled at in their ear pieces by producers to cut away for a commercial :

Blackwater's worst nightmare, journalist Jeremy Scahill cuts through the bullshit on the War On Libya :

2011-03-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

Pentagon, 2001 : "We're Gonna Take Out 7 Countries In 5 Years"

They're a bit behind schedule.

2011-03-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

Russia, China Square Up To West Over War On Libya

By Darryl Mason

Despite apparently being almost out of money, the United States, France and the UK have all found the necessary cash to launch a new war on Libya, under the guise of enforcing a UN-mandated No Fly Zone. For the United States alone, the cost of military action against Libya is estimated at more than $100 million per day.

The official American government/media narrative is that Libyan rebels are a rag-tag bunch of freedom fighters trying to take down one of the world's most evil & sadistic tyrants. Well, Gaddafi is now, again, anyway, an evil tyrant, after being feted and praised for planning to open up his country to more western oil deals and development in the past few years by a conga-line of world includes including Bush, Obama, Blair & Sarkozy.

But Libya is not Egypt, or Bahrain, or Tunisia. Libya is an energy, water & resources rich nation with tens of billions in trade, energy and development deals with Russia and China.

Russia's Putin could not speak anymore plainly about what he believes is the real motivation behind the War On Libya :

Russia is, in fact, warning that the attacks on Libya could lead to a wider, world war :

“Any bombing of Libyan territory could provoke a large-scale conflict between the so-called West and the so-called Arab world,” a Russian Parliament leader said commenting on French and British plans to carry out aerial attacks in Libya.
“Any foreign military intervention will give Libya legal grounds to defend itself. We should do our best to avoid this highly dangerous scenario,” said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned ground operations by foreign forces will lead them deeper into protracted war :

“You and I understand what ground operations mean: they probably mean the beginning of war, and not civil war but war involving international forces.”

Now China is getting involved :

China's most important political newspaper ratcheted up the country's criticism of Western airstrikes against Libya on Monday, comparing them to the U.S.-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Communist Party's flagship newspaper, The People's Daily, said in a commentary that the United States and its allies are violating international rules and that in places like Iraq "the unspeakable suffering of its people are a mirror and a warning."
"The military attacks on Libya are, following on from the Afghan and Iraq wars, the third time that some countries have launched armed action against sovereign countries," it said.
"No matter what pretext the military actions were under, they should not be at the cost of people's lives and properties. This is not only the moral standard, but also the appeal from the world's people," it continued.

"People have good reason to express misgivings about the consequences that this military action may precipitate," it said.

China is getting very, very involved :

Why is China getting involved?

China's deep involvement with the North African dictatorship has also exposed a vulnerability in the world's second-largest economy.
In Libya, the world's 12th-largest oil exporter, China has emerged as a major investor and financial partner of strongman Moammar Kadafi. China is now the third-largest buyer of Libyan crude behind Italy and France. European and American oil firms have worked in Libya for years, but their governments have long sought to punish Kadafi for terrorist ties. Meanwhile, China has stuck to a hands-off policy it has dubbed "non-interventionism."
Before the Libyan conflict erupted, about 75 Chinese firms reportedly were laboring on an estimated $18 billion worth of contracts there, including construction of rail lines, irrigation systems, and Internet and cellphone networks.
But China's primary interest is energy. State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. has partnered with Libya's national oil company to build hundreds of miles of pipeline and explore for oil and gas offshore.
The world's No. 2 petroleum user, China imports more than half of the 8.3 million barrels it consumes daily. It buys from nations including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Venezuela, which also supply the United States, the world's top oil consumer. Libyan oil accounts for only about 3% of China's imports, but it won't be easy to replace.

Paul McGeough :

Even if Gaddafi is eliminated from the equation - figuratively or literally - a daunting number of what-ifs will remain. What if the internal conflict in Libya is less a democracy uprising that unites the nation and more a tribal civil war? What if the Western intervention gives a leg-up to one side, the rebels, who in time could be no better and no worse that the Gaddafi loyalists - sans Gaddafi?

There is no evidence to support Gaddafi's claims that al-Qaeda and teen drug addicts have fomented the uprising. But there is historical evidence of tribal enmity in Libya that could support the colonel's claim that the revolt is a tribal war of those from the east against those in the west.

What if the country fell back to its pre-Gaddafi iteration of tribal distrust and infighting - and what if one side, in what could become a prolonged conflict, has been armed by the West? We could hardly be surprised if in such a stalemate , the underdog was drawn to or co-opted by al-Qaeda or its ilk.

The War On Libya has only just begun, is barely a few days old in fact, but already the 'coalition of support' is said to be crumbling,

AntiWar's Justin Raimondo :

Barely 24 hours after the first Allied air strikes, President Obama’s high-flying Libyan adventure is losing altitude. The smoke hadn’t cleared from the first air strikes when the head of the Arab League complained that “what happened differs from the no-fly zone objectives. What we want is civilians’ protection, not shelling more civilians.” Russia and China, who abstained at the Security Council, are already getting restless.

There’s trouble on the horizon.

2011-03-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Look How Fast The Global Uprising Spread

An excellent time-lapse of the outbreak and rapid spread of the Global Uprising across half of the world between December 18, 2010 and early March 2011.

2011-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

In Bahrain, protesters take on the increasingly violent police :

The Saudis decide to send in the troops to kill the protests by killing protesters.

2011-03-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

Google's Revolution Machine

A February 22 story that didn't get much attention in the media :

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
"Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.

Such strong comment from one of Putin's most trusted deputies is a clear signal of growing concern among Russian hardliners about the role of the Internet in the unrest which has swept across the Arab world.

Sechin gave no further details on his concerns. Google executive, Wael Ghonim, became an unlikely hero of the uprising in Egypt which led to Mubarak's deposition.
Russia has so far resisted placing restrictions on the Internet, but analysts say there are a group of hardliners close to Putin who would like to impose controls similar to China's.

2011-03-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

So Many Countries Under Revolution It's Hard To Keep up

Been very slack here keeping track of the Arab Uprisings that have unleashed so much chaos and so many joyous scenes in the past 3 months.

But Antiwar has an excellent round-up :

Morocco: Thousands take to the streets of Rabat and Casablanca demanding the king give up many of his powers.
Algeria: Several injured as police broke up protests in central Algiers.
Tunisia: Seeks the extradition of their former dictator to charge him with crimes related to the crackdown.
Libya: Seriously? Too much stuff to mention in a single blurb.
East Libya: Virtually a separate country at this point.
Albania: Still facing growing unrest.
Egypt: Strikes linger despite Mubarak’s ouster.
Syria: Struggling to buy off growing protests with cash payments.
Jordan: Eight injured as protests continue.
Iraq: Protests across the south and in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran: Major police presence, protests planned for later in the week.
Bahrain: Protesters are still there, despite government crackdowns.
Pakistan: Threats for revolution if govt releases Raymond Davis.
China: Govt censors foreign news. Small protest at Beijing McDonalds.

Antiwar is one of the better sites to keep track of these revolutions, and the wars, in some countries, that will result.

The Guardian also has a more detailed round-up here, from February 20.

2011-03-04T05:20:00.000-08:00

NATO Troops Fear Being Killed By Stoned Afghans They Trained

This story was published on February 22, but nothing's changed in the past few weeks. If anything, it sounds like the problems with Afghan soldiers gets worse by the day :

....German troops in (Afghanistan) are in a state of near revolt against their commanders.
The reason? The danger they face training Afghan soldiers who, in the words of one German trooper quoted by the magazine, "consider us to be infidels who don't belong in their country."
The reason for this angst is the attack last Friday by an Afghan soldier being trained by the Germans that killed three Bundeswehr soldiers and injured six others, some of them critically. The 26-year-old Afghan attacker, who Spiegel reported is believed to be a Taliban sympathizer, was killed in a hail of return fire from the Germans' comrades.
With German morale at "rock bottom," the publication said, many Germans soldiers are "now refusing to go on further patrols or missions with Afghan troops."

Afghan trainees that don't owe their true allegiance to the Taliban, the German soldiers also report, are as likely to be ripped to the eyelids on hashish. "Many of our Afghan comrades wander around here completely stoned," said another soldier quoted in the story. "It is impossible to tell if they are fit for duty or not."

Afghans know NATO troops won't be in there country forever, they know they just have to wait them out. In the meantime, they get trained & paid & housed, turn up for work stoned & don't even bother to suppress their resentment towards their invaders.

More On This From Speigel Online Here

2011-03-03T06:12:00.000-08:00

Libya, Get Ready To Be Fallujahed

A few days ago, EOTAD published a list of 14 Potential Justifications For An Invasion Of Libya By The US. Many of these are already getting a good work by US State Department officials and, interestingly, some of the same old NeoCons who chanted a reluctant America into War On Iraq eight years ago.

The List :

#1 "We Can't Stand Aside And Watch Gaddafi Kill His Own People"

#2 "It Would Just Be A Humanitarian Mission"

#3 "Libya Is Torturing Prisoners"

#4 "The Libyan Rebels Will Not Be Able To Take Down Gaddhafi With Our Help"

#5 "U.S. Interests Are Being Threatened"

#6 "Gaddafi Is Crazy"

#7 "Gaddafi Has Weapons Of Mass Destruction"

#8 "Gaddafi Will Use Chemical Weapons If We Don't Stop Him"

#9 "Gaddafi Has "1,000 Metric Tons Of Uranium Yellowcake"

#10 "European Energy Companies Are Deeply Invested In Libyan Oil And Gas Fields"

#11 "Millions of Dollars Worth Of Infrastructure Will Be Destroyed If We Don't Intervene"

#12 "The Crisis In Libya Is Bad For The Global Economy"

#13 "Someone Has To Protect The Oil"

#14 "We Have Got To Go Into Libya To Keep Al-Qaeda From Getting A Foothold"

If an invasion is on the immediate horizon, they'll have to work hard and fast. A recent poll claimed 67% of Americans wanted their military to stay the hell out of Libya.

The special forces of the US, the UK, Germany and others are already inside Libya, but my prediction is an (official) US/NATO invasion of Libya will begin March 11. All the big, long range world changing events seem to happen on the 11th of the month.

2011-02-22T20:31:00.001-08:00

Game Change : Iran Enters The Med

The world really is undergoing monumental change at this moment in time, a conga-line of political convulsions wrought of saying Fuck You to police state intimidation and violence, food shortages, unemployment, the poor finally rising up against its most priviledged, with repercussions spreading like cracks in ice across the most oil-rich lands in the world, only a few weeks after Wikileaks revealed Saudi Arabia may have overestimated their untapped oil wealth by a few hundred billion barrels.

Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia, Libya...a decade from now, once the old royals and dictators are all gone, these countries and former kingdoms could be united into an Arab Union. Nobody knows what happens next. Flux is the state of reality.

For today, the most monumental news is the passage of Iranian warships through the Suez canal, and into the Mediterranean for the first time in three decades, and there was nothing Israel or the United States could do to stop them.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tries to revamp Obama Changism for international consumption :

“Today, we witness that humanity is striving to realize the truth and the world is on the threshold of an enormous change.

“Achieving justice is rapidly turning into a global objective.

“While the global arrogance is hatching complex, satanic plots, the people are awaking and, God willing, the time has come for the extinction of the arrogant powers.

“When the oppressed people of the world rise for justice and monotheism, the grounds will be prepared for the righteous to rule the world.”

Meanwhile, in Tehran, the police state crackdown on youth protests continues....

2010-12-29T07:26:00.000-08:00

Victorious Iraq Resistance Fighters To US : 'Get Out'

So here we are almost eight years after the illegal War On Iraq began and the Iraqi government wants to make sure the United States under Obama will stick to its deal :

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.

A majority of Iraqis—and some Iraqi and U.S. officials—have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone.

And the man who helped deliver Maliki his new power to turf out US troops, if it is decided they will try and stay beyond 2011, is the very same man the Bush administration spent years trying to destroy :

"This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed." Mr. Maliki's new majority depends partly on followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

And the Iraqi resistance fighters, known in the Western media as terrorists and insurgents, are
now a solid part of the Maliki government's power base :

"The militias are now part of the government and have entered the political process," said Mr. Maliki. The Sadr contingent, he added, "is moving in a satisfactory direction of taking part in the government, renouncing violence and abandoning military activity, and that's why we welcome it."

And :

(Maliki) said full withdrawal of U.S. troops also will remove a prime motivator of insurgents—both the Shiite fighters tied to militia groups and Iran, and Sunnis linked to Mr. Hussein's ousted Baath party.

The Full Story Is Here

Iraqis resisted, primarily, United States and British forces for seven years, and it's hard not see that their resistance, in the end, resulted in a victory, voices in the government, real government power, the kind of victory President Bush promised would never be allowed to happen.

In the end, Iraq's resistance fighters beat back and beat down the most powerful military in the world, ground them down in fact, until the United States were forced to pay them tens of millions of dollars not to kill American soldiers, until the United States stepped back and allowed them to have a say in the democratic future of their country.

That, of course, is the truth of the end of the War On Iraq.

The United States lost.

Iraqis won.

The resistance, as brutal, deadly, inhuman as it was, worked.

2010-08-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

Deputy British PM : "The Iraq War Was Illegal"

By Darryl Mason

So here we are, seven years later, trillions of dollars gone, more than 5200 coalition soldiers dead, more than 300,000 wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or disabled.

From the UK Independent :

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg today restated his view that the Iraq War was illegal, saying: "I don't think the legality of that invasion has been proven."

Apart from questions over the legality of the conflict, Mr Clegg said the wisdom of the 2003 invasion "certainly hasn't been proven at all".
"You can turn it on its head - I don't think the legality of that invasion has been proven. The wisdom of it certainly hasn't been proven at all."

What will they say about this age of senseless war on some of the world's poorest people 300 years from now?

"In the second year of the 21st century, the dying meganation of the United States launched an illegal war on Iraq, in a desperate attempt to stop the Iraqi dictator Sadddam Hussein selling oil in Euros instead of US dollars. The war claimed more than one million American lives, in the warzone, and back home. The War On Iraq, and the decades of rehabilitation for the millions of Americans who were recruited by war corporations, finally bankrupted the United States, economically and spiritually, leading to its break up."

In early 2003, 10 million people around the world, at tens of thousands of protests, chanted that the Iraq War was illegal, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, that the war was wrong and would bring death and suffering to the people of Iraq.

And they were right.

But our leaders, at least in most Western nations, pretended they knew nothing of what the protesters shouted, and they did as they always do, and started another war against the will of the people.

That's it. No country will ever fight another Trillion Dollar War.

The next time they will probably just for nukes instead.

It's so much cheaper.

And quicker.

For now, the three biggest chearleaders of the War On Iraq - US President Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard - walk free, write books and refuse to deny the war was illegal, they say instead, in perfect imitation of each other, "it was the right thing to do."

But the truth is, in the end, the Iraq insurgency won. They fought the world's most powerful war machine to a standstill, with machine guns and improvised bombs. The insurgency only stopped killing dozens of soldiers a month when they were paid cash to lay down their arms.

The greatest lesson of the Iraq War was learned decades ago, but the myth of Military Victory has kept the truth hidden, behind million dollar recruitment ads, and hundred million dollar movies promoting the military and war. Insurgencies are hard to defeat. All but impossible to defeat in a city of millions, like Baghdad, unless you are willing to sacrifice vast numbers of your own troops.

Or, by 2020, vast numbers of your expensive war robots.

2010-06-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Beginning Of The End Of The War On Afghanistan

'Reformed' Taliban will include 'reformed' Al Qaeda, and whoever else has to paid off to stop killing NATO troops :

Backing Afghan President Hamid Karzai's efforts to 'reach out' to the Taliban through the peace jirga, President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke has said that Washington accepts that the final political solution in the war ravaged country could involve 'reformed' Taliban in the government if certain "red lines" are respected.

"The door is open...." he said.

"Let me be clear on one thing, everybody understands that this war will not end in a clear-cut military victory. It's not going to end on the deck of a battleship like World War II, or Dayton, Ohio, like the Bosnian war."

He also noted that while it was impossible to negotiate with Al-Qaeda, the case was different with the Taliban.

"It's going to have some different ending from that, some form of political settlements are necessary ... you can't have a settlement with Al Qaeda, you can't talk to them, you can't negotiate with them, it's out of the question. But it is possible to talk to the Taliban leaders," Holbrooke said.

Read The Full Story Here

2010-03-27T07:34:00.001-07:00

UAE & Saudi Navies In Sea Battle Over Disputed Waters

Two US allies come to blows in the Persian Gulf, shaking the confidence of diplomats :

The United Arab Emirates navy is thought to have opened fire on a small patrol vessel from Saudi Arabia after a dispute over water boundaries.

According to one report, two Saudi sailors were injured in the alleged bombardment.

The Saudi vessel was forced to surrender, and its sailors were delivered into custody in Abu Dhabi for several days, before being released and handed over to the Saudi embassy earlier this week.
The incident has shocked diplomats who hope the countries, both key American allies, will help implement the West's strategy to constrain Iran's nuclear and military ambitions.
The clash happened in disputed waters between the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and the peninsula on which the gas-rich state of Qatar sits.
....the UAE, despite its small size, is the fourth largest purchaser of weaponry on the international market in the world.
Western governments are exasperated that the two countries are unable to co-operate because of a series of long-running border disputes, largely influenced by oil reserves.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer, while Abu Dhabi, though ranking only number four in OPEC, is by some counts the richest city per head of population in the world.
The Gulf is the shipping route for 40 per cent of the world's oil trade.

2009-12-19T01:38:00.001-08:00

Rumsfeld Blamed For Bin Laden's Escape In Tora Bora

A US Senate report reveals that in late 2001, in the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden was cornered by US forces, who had "massive force" at their disposal.

The idiot US defence secretary apparently concluded that a show of force could trigger a 'backlash' and was not completely confident the intelligence was correct. This is the same guy who thought Osama Bin Laden was living inside a hollowed out mountain complex like something out of a James Bond movie.

In other words, Rumsfeld let Osama Bin Laden get away :

The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden in December 2001, three months after the September 11 attacks, has had lasting and disastrous consequences. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
In an introduction to the report, which will be published on Monday, Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, writes: "When we went to war less than a month after the attacks of September 11, the objective was to destroy Al Qaeda and kill or capture its leader, Osama bin Laden and other senior figures ... Our inability to finish the job in late 2001 has contributed to a conflict today that endangers not just our troops and those of our allies, but the stability of a volatile and vital region."

The report, entitled: "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today" will offer some support to President Obama as he prepares to announce this week that he is to send another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Senator Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has argued for some time that the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaeda leader and his top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding, mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after September 11. He commissioned the report as Mr Obama was trying to decide whether he should boost troop numbers in Afghanistan.

The report lays the blame for the state of Afghanistan and Pakistan today at the feet of the military leaders who served former President Bush, notably Donald Rumsfeld, the then Defence Secretary, and his most senior military commander General Tommy Franks.

"Removing the al-Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."

It states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the US had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops. A review of existing literature, unclassified Government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora" it adds.

"Cornered in some of the most fobidding terrain on earth, he and several hundred of his men endured relentless pounding by American aircraft, as many as 100 air strikes a day," it says. "Bin Laden expected to die," it claims. "His last will and testament, written on December 14, reflected his fatalism. He instructed his wives not to remarry and apologised to his children for devoting himself to jihad."

But the expected final attack never came. "Requests were turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan," it says. "The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army was kept on the sidelines."

Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 US commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalise on air strikes and track down their prey it says.

"On or around December 16, two days after writing his will, bin Laden and an entourage of bodyguards walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area. Most analysts say he is still there today.

"The decision not to deploy American fores to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks."

It stresses that there were more than enough US troops in Afghanistan to capture the terror leader and although the ensuing battle would be difficult and dangerous, "commanders on the scene and elsewhere in Afghanistan argued that the risks were worth the reward."

At the time, Mr Rumsfeld expressed concern that a large US troop presence might fuel a backlash and he and some others said the evidence was not conclusive about bin Laden's location.

2009-03-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

I'm going quiet here for the moment.

As always, all the latest Fourth World War related news can be found on these two excellent sites :

AntiWar

Information Clearing House

Good Luck, Iraq.

God Help Afghanistan.

2009-01-29T05:25:00.000-08:00

It's Official : Bring On The 'New World Order'

China, Russia Leaders Shred United States Over Economic Armageddon

There were more than a few so-called conspiracy websites and books in the mid-1990s that claimed the 'New World Order', where the US no longer called the shots, would not rise to reality as a result of war, but of a world economic collapse on a scale not seen since the days of the Great Depression. How right they were.

The leaders of China, Russia, and many other countries, are now demanding world economies and globalisation be restructured to reflect the 'New World Order', or 'New Global Order', that will be the long-term result of the economic armageddon staining and straining these days.

But few leaders have talked so openly about the who and the what and the why of this new order as the British prime minister, Gordon Brown :

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Monday the financial crisis must not be an excuse to retreat into protectionism and instead be viewed as the "difficult birth-pangs of a new global order".
Yesterday's data confirmed Friday that Britain is in recession. Days earlier, the government unveiled a new package of measures to help the flow of credit in the economy, but Brown has argued global action is needed for a quick recovery.

He will warn Monday that the crisis has given the world a choice: "We could allow this crisis to start a retreat from globalisation. As some want, we could close our markets -- for capital, financial services, trade and for labour -- and therefore reduce the risks of globalisation.

"But that would reduce global growth, deny us the benefits of global trade and confine millions to global poverty.

"Or we could view the threats and challenges we face today as the difficult birth-pangs of a new global order -- and our task now as nothing less than making the transition through a new internationalism to the benefits of an expanding global society."

Who are the 'some' that Brown talks of who want a retreat from globalisation? Is he talking about a country, or a union of nations, or is he talking about another entity, perhaps a coalition of banking interests who now feel they are under attack, and probably are?

The leaders of China and Russia know exactly which country is responsible for the still spreading financial chaos and destruction :

Chinese and Russian leaders Wen Jiabao and Vladimir Putin have blamed the United States for causing the global economic crisis on a gloomy first day of the Davos forum.

Both called for a new attitude by President Barack Obama, while deepening pessimism over the future of the global economy enshrouded the World Economic Forum.

Chinese Premier Wen said America's voracious appetite for debt and "blind pursuit of profit" had led to the worst recession since the Great Depression which has rocked the 2,500 strong political and business elite gathered in the Swiss mountain resort.

Prime Minister Putin said the disappearance of some Wall Street titans over the past six months testified to the errors committed.

Premier Wen blamed the crisis on "inappropriate macroeconomic policies of some economies" and "prolonged low savings and high consumption," in a lightly veiled attack on the United States.

He blasted the "excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit and the lack of self-discipline among financial institutions and ratings agencies" while the "failure" of regulators had allowed the spread of toxic derivatives.

Premier Wen said the crisis had posed "severe challenges" for China and that it needed 8.0 per cent growth in 2009 to maintain social stability while the International Monetary Fund predicted 6.7 per cent for this year.

The Chinese leader called for faster reform of international financial institutions and for a "new world order" for the economy.

The Russian Prime Minister followed him to the podium and said the crisis had been a "perfect storm".

He also took aim at US banks and the outgoing US administration.

"Although the crisis was simply hanging in the air, the majority strove to get their share of the pie, be it one dollar or one billion, and did not want to notice the rising wave," he said.

Prime Minister Putin insisted that he would not join critics of the United States, but added: "I just want to remind you that just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasised the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects."

Condoleezza Rice, when US secretary of state, gave a speech in Davos last year saying the US economy was safe.

"Today investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just 12 months they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years. This example alone reflects the real situation better than any criticism," said Prime Minister Putin.
"In meeting the international financial crisis, it is imperative for the two countries to enhance cooperation, that is my message to the US administration," Premier Wen said.

2009-01-26T05:25:00.000-08:00

Iran Hails Iraq As Part Of Powerful "Anti-Zionist Front"

Media in the Middle East often present a totally different version of the future of Iraq than we get in the newspapers and news breaks in Australia and the United States. Considering the Iraq we were promised by NeoCons would come into being, post-war, the reality of Iraq and Iran becoming powerful allies against the US and Israel is somewhat shocking, though not unexpected :

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that a “powerful” Iraq will dash the hopes of the enemies who seek to dominate the Middle East.

In a meeting with Iraq’s National Security Advisor Muwafaq al-Rubaie in Tehran on Thursday, Ahmadinejad also noted that a powerful Iraq will enable the Iraqi people to fulfill their “humanitarian and Islamic duties” in the region.

He hoped that Iraq would soon emerge as a progressive country, saying Iran will strongly support the neighboring country.

“We hope that the Iraqi government would soon take complete control (of its security),” Ahmadinejad said in a reference to Iran’s long-held position that U.S. forces must leave Iraq as soon as possible.

Although the U.S. power is “declining” and the regional countries including Iraq are getting stronger, those who control the U.S. policy behind the scenes seek to “completely dominate the Middle East”, the president pointed out.

Therefore it is essential to be aware of the enemies’ conspiracies, he added.

Ahmadinejad also stated that a powerful Iraq will strengthen the “anti-Zionist front in the region”.

Al-Rubaie thanked Iran for its efforts in helping rebuild Iraq and promoting security in the country.

He made a reference to Ahamadinejad’s trip to Iraq in March 2008, saying, “You (Ahmadinejad) were the first president in the region to visit Iraq” and this shows your “bravery and love” for the Iraqi people.

Excerpts from an editorial in the Tehran Times claim the dreams of freedom from the war machines of Israel and the US that so many in the region believe are worth dying for, are now edging closer to reality, after the civilian massacres in Gaza :

Zionism, an ideology of racial supremacy, extremism and hate, is a dying project, in retreat and failing to find new recruits. With enough pressure, and relatively quickly, Israelis too would likely produce their own de Klerk ready to negotiate a way out. Every new massacre makes it harder, but a de-zionized, decolonized, reintegrated Palestine affording equal rights to all who live in it, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and return for refugees is not a utopian dream.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Gaza will likely be seen as the turning point when Israeli propaganda lost its power to mystify, silence and intimidate as it has for so long. Even the Nazi Holocaust, long deployed by Zionists to silence Israel's critics, is becoming a liability; once unimaginable comparisons are now routinely heard. Jewish and Palestinian academics likened Israel's actions in Gaza to the Nazi massacre in the Warsaw Ghetto.

A Vatican cardinal referred to Gaza as a “giant concentration camp.” UK Member of Parliament Gerald Kaufman, once a staunch Zionist, told the House of Commons, “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow, (Poland). A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.” Kaufman continued, “my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.” He denounced the Israeli military spokesperson's justifications as the words “of a Nazi.”

It wasn't only such statements, but the enormous demonstrations, the nonviolent direct actions, and the unprecedented expressions of support for boycott, divestment and sanctions from major trade unions in Italy, Canada and New Zealand. An all-party group of city councilors in Birmingham, Europe's second largest municipal government, urged the UK government to follow suit.

Israel, its true nature as failed, brutal colonial project laid bare in Gaza, is extremely vulnerable to such a campaign. Little noticed amidst the carnage in Gaza, Israel took another momentous step towards formal apartheid when the Knesset elections committee voted to ban Arab parties from participating in upcoming elections.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The dehumanization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations -- in short everything that sustains civilized and orderly life -- and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.

Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist regime, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.

Israel's “war” was not about rockets -- they served the same role in its narrative as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction did as the pretext for the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Israel's real goals were to restore its “deterrence” fatally damaged after its 2006 defeat in Lebanon (translation: its ability to massacre and terrorize entire populations into submission) and to destroy any Palestinian resistance to total Israeli-Jewish control over historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

With Hamas and other resistance factions removed or fatally weakened, Israel hoped the way would be clear to sign a “peace” deal with chief Palestinian collaborator Mahmoud Abbas to manage Palestinians on Israel's behalf until they could be forced out once and for all.

The U.S.-backed “moderate” dictatorships and absolute monarchies led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia supported the Israeli plan hoping to demonstrate to their own people that resistance -- whether against Israel or their own bankrupt regimes -- was futile.

To win, Israel had to break Palestinian resistance. It failed. On the contrary, it galvanized and unified Palestinians like never before. All factions united and fought heroically for 23 days. According to well-informed and credible sources Israel did little harm to the modest but determined military capacity of the resistance. So instead Israel did what it does best: it massacred civilians in the hope that the population would turn against those fighting the occupier.

Israel not only unified the resistance factions in Gaza; its brutality rallied all Palestinians and Arabs.

If there was ever a moment when the peoples of the region would accept Israel as a Zionist state in their midst, that has passed forever.

Read The Full Story Here

2009-01-24T03:38:00.000-08:00

Obama Terrorises The Neocons' 'War On Terror'

US President Obama made a lot of promises during his 2008 campaign about the 'War on Terror' and how the United States would interrogate and detain those they viewed as enemies, if he were to win power.

Obama, obviously, has won just about all the power he needs to dismantle the NeoCons' 'War On Terror', and he appears to be getting straight down to some of the hardest work he will have to do in eventually removing the 'War On Terror' money siphon out of American taxapayers' pockets :

Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush's war on terror, shutting down the CIA's secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush's thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.
Obama's decision to permanently shut down the CIA's clandestine interrogation centres went far beyond the widely anticipated move to wind down the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year.
He cast his scrapping of the legal apparatus set up by Bush as a way for America to reclaim the moral high ground in the fight against al-Qaida.
"We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama said at the signing ceremony. "We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own terms."
In a sign of the sweeping rejection of the legal standards set by Bush, officials briefing reporters at the White House yesterday said the new administration would not be guided by any of the opinions on torture and detainees issued by the justice department after 11 September 2001.
Instead, Obama, in three executive orders, renewed the US commitment to the Geneva convention on the treatment of detainees. All detainees will be registered by the International Committee for the Red Cross, in another departure of past practice under the Bush administration.
A group of 16 retired admirals and generals, in a meeting organised by Human Rights First, said the move would restore America's moral authority in the world, and strengthen its national security. "President Obama has rejected the false choice between national security and our ideals," they said.
Another order directs the CIA to follow the US army field manual on interrogations, which bars such techniques as waterboarding.
Obama appears to be seeking a new direction of not allowing the US to be totally subservient to Israel in the Middle East. It has been announced that :
...his administration would put resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the top of his agenda, "actively and aggressively" seeking a comprehensive peace deal. As a sign of that intent, he confirmed that former senator George Mitchell, a veteran US mediator, would be his Middle East envoy.
Obama, who had been criticised for his silence during the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, set out a new position that, while still leaning towards Israel, was more even-handed than that under Bush. He called for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel, but also said that Israel must "complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza".

When Obama demands Israel open Gaza's borders for the kind of free market trade that American allies are supposed to be embrace and encourage, then it will be clearer just what sort of Change he has planned to bring to a close the endless bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel is, apparently, quite worried about the apointment of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy. Mitchell is credited as helping to end the war between the British government and the IRA, and believes "there is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. Conflicts are created and conducted by human beings. They can be ended by human beings."

In Israel, Mitchell is seen as too even-handed, and will not tolerate Israeli or Palestinian officials who only wish to the continue the fighting, and bombings, and infanticide.

There's a lot of very powerful, and still very rich, people on the Middle East Crisis War Cash Express, and they don't want to get off. More than $100 billion American dollars has flowed into the 'Middle East Crisis' since George W. Bush took office in 2000. Most of the money has gone to, and through, Israel, but billions have also gone to Fatah. The weapons sales alone that are only excusable by the never-ending "Crisis in the Middle East" has been good for the global war industry. The 'War On Terorr' and the 'Middle East Crisis' have been banner years for arms and weapons sales. And they won't take talk of it all coming to a very fast end under Obama as a sign of brighter futures for themselves.

You will know that George Mitchell and Obama are really taking apart the 'War on Terror' and ending the manufactured 'Middle East Crisis' when stories linking Mitchell to decades old porn-and-hookers fables start bombarding the tabloids. If the profiteers of the 'Middle East Crisis' are really upset, Mitchell's message about how he is changing the Middle East paradigm will be swamped with smutty allegations, beat-ups and scandals.

The Murdoch media will be the first, and the most prolific, of all the smearers.

2009-01-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

Hamas : How Israel Lost Its Latest War

Just like during World War II, in the War On Terror you sometimes get to hear from the scheduled enemies in the mainstream media. Here's the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau :

Israel's objectives from the war on Gaza were set long before its launch: to remove the Hamas movement and government, achieve the reinstallation of the Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza, and end the armed resistance. Two other objectives were not announced. First, restore the Israeli public's wavering confidence in its armed forces after its defeat by Hezbollah in 2006. Second, boost the coalition government in the coming elections.
Accordingly, we declare that Israel lost, and lost decisively. What did it achieve? The killing of large numbers of civilians, children and women, and the destruction of homes, ministry buildings and other infrastructure with the most advanced US weapons and other internationally banned chemical and phosphorous elements. Almost 2,000 children were killed and injured in desperate pursuit of political goals. Many international organisations called these attacks war crimes, yet barely a word of denunciation was uttered by any western leader. What message does the EU mean to send Palestinians by its shameful silence on these crimes, when it speaks incessantly on human rights?
If anything, the last three weeks, and previous 18 months, have proved that the Palestinians can never be broken by either starvation, economic strangulation or brutal attack. European leaders have only one option: to recognise the outcome of a democratic process they had called for and supported.
The aggression failed to undermine or weaken the Hamas-led government, or turn Palestinians against Hamas. If anything, public support is stronger than ever in Palestine and worldwide. Hamas's military capabilities have not been hurt, either. This explains Israel scurrying to sign such a strange agreement with the US to stop arms reaching Hamas. It is doomed to fail. As the former Israeli chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon and Binyamin Netanyahu agreed, Israeli forces failed to achieve their objectives.
Why is Israel allowed a continuous flow of the most lethal arms, including banned weapons, while national resistance movements are denied the means of defence? International laws permit occupied nations to resist their occupiers, and that is a right we aim to utilise to the full.
Israel must accept the reality that it is incapable of breaking the Palestinian resistance. Similarly, Europe must accept that bringing back Abbas on an Israeli tank is not an option. Nor are attempts to win by "diplomacy" what the might of the Israeli military failed to secure by force. To state that all aid for Gaza reconstruction must go through the illegal government of Salam Fayyad suggests there is no end to some parties' exploitation of Palestinians. We will never cease to pursue national unity, but we will never allow it to be attained by compromising Palestinian rights.
And to President Obama we say: the wave of hope that met your election was heavily dampened by your silence on the Gaza massacre. This was compounded by your pre-election statement siding with the Israeli settlers of Sderot. You would do well to know the history of the places of which you speak. Sderot, which may be known to some as an Israeli town, lies on the ruins of Najd, a Palestinian village ransacked in May 1948 by Zionist terrorist gangs. Villagers were forced from their beds and homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, rendering them refugees for the next 61 years. That is the story of Sderot. It is never a good start to get your tyrant and victims mixed up, but there is still room for a revival of passionate optimism. Only if you decide to fairly address the issue of the 6 million Palestinian refugees and the ending of occupation of Palestinian lands, including Jerusalem, will you be able to start a new relationship with the Muslim world.

2009-01-21T18:23:00.000-08:00

Gaddafi : All We Are Sayiinnnng, Is Give Bin Laden A Chance

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi has decided he can help out US President Obama with some foreign policy ideas : give Osama Bin Laden the chance to reform and push for a 'one state solution' where Israel, Gaza and the West Bank are renamed 'Isratine'.

It's like something from the satirical newspaper The Onion :

Mr Gaddafi hailed what he called "positive signals" so far from the new Obama administration, including plans to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"Terrorism is a dwarf not a giant. Osama bin Laden is a person who can be given a chance to reform," Mr Gaddafi said through an interpreter.
In a speech outlining his views on how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr Gaddafi called for the creation of one state rather than two nations living side by side.

"We can call it Isratine," he said.

If Jews did not accept a one-state solution, he said they could move to Hawaii, Alaska or an island in the Pacific.

"They could live peacefully in an isolated setting," he said.

Then US Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice welcomed Lybia back from three decades of isolation in September, 2008 :

"We did talk about learning from the lessons of the past," Rice said. "We talked about the importance of moving forward. The United States, I've said many times, doesn't have any permanent enemies."

Gadaffi was a big, big fan of 'Leezza' Rice :

"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders. ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

2009-01-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

2009-01-19T13:28:00.000-08:00

"They Killed The Elders, The Women, The Children, The Animals, The Chickens"

The Destruction Of Gaza

The world view would seem to be that Israel is following Hamas' ceasefire demand to pull its forces out of Gaza within days. While the Israeli media mostly portrays the intense meetings between Israel and the US as 'negotiations', it's clear Israel has been told by the Americans that this time it has gone too far, as world outrage continues to mount over the scale of destruction, and the tide of civilian casualties and dead and maimed children in Gaza. War crimes investigations of Israel's Gaza carnage will be backed by the most previously steadfast of Israel's allies, including Australia and the United States.

But first, there is the destruction Israel has left behind, like something of out of World War 2's Europe :

It was a day of digging and bitter discovery. Houses had lost walls, and the dead, after three weeks of war, had lost their faces. Families identified them by their clothes.
As the people of Gaza emerged from hiding on Sunday, they confronted, for the first time, the full, sometimes breathtaking extent of the destruction around them wrought by the Israeli military. Bombs had pulverized the Parliament and cabinet buildings, the Ministry of Justice, the main university and the police station, paralyzing Gaza’s central nervous system and leaving residents in a state of shock.
In Twam to the north, thousands dragged belongings away from ruined houses; they were dazed refugees in their own city. In Zeitoun, families clawed at rubble and concrete, trying to dislodge the bodies of relatives who had died weeks before. The death toll kept climbing: 95 bodies were taken from the rubble.

More than 20 of them were from the Samouni family, whose younger members were digging with shovels and hands for relatives stuck in rooms inside. Faris Samouni, 59, sat alone, watching them. He had lost his wife, daughter-in-law, grandson and nephew, and he was heartbroken.

“Twenty-one are down there,” he said, starting to cry. “One is my wife. Her name is Rizka.”

The dead were badly decomposed, and families searched for familiar personal details that would identify them. One woman’s corpse was identified by her gold bracelets. Another by her earrings. And a third by the nightgown she wore. The smell of rotting flesh was suffocating, and as they got closer, the diggers donned masks.

At 10:55 a.m., the body of Rizka Samouni emerged as an Israeli fighter jet roared in the sky. Other corpses followed. Houda, 18. Faris, 14. Hamdi, 21. The smallest corpse that emerged, from a different family, was that of a 4-year-old.

“They killed the elders, the children, the women, the animals, the chickens,” said Subhi, 55, Rizka’s brother. “It’s a nightmare. I never thought I would lose all of them.”

Around noon, a worker from the Red Crescent ran up to the diggers. The Israelis had called, telling people to leave, he said. The families began to run, again.

“We have to go!” a woman shouted. “But where can we go? Where do we go?”

An Israeli military spokesman said the order had been issued because the Red Crescent had not coordinated its movement in advance. Later, permission was granted and the diggers returned to exhume the remaining bodies.

This is Israel deliberately fucking with people it has just destroyed. This is a ontinuation of the stated "cruel" war Israel had been training its troops to fight in Gaza for at least 18 months.

More scenes straight from a World War 2 newsreel :

Donkey carts lurched over torn-up roads, spilling pillows and bedding into the dirt. People dragged bed frames and mattresses out of bombed-out houses. Small boys carried bookshelves. Curtains tied in giant sacks held clothes. Decorative cloth flowers fluttered from a half-closed trunk.
It was almost dark and the Samounis were finally burying their dead. It took time to find a car big enough to carry them all. A man had to stand in the back to keep them from falling out.

At the cemetery, a battery-powered neon light cast an eerie glow over men digging the graves.
A final obstacle: There was not enough room to bury all the bodies. The family opened up an old grave to accommodate them.

A cousin, Khamis el-Sayess, observed bitterly, “Even our dead have no land.”

Even our dead have no land....

2009-01-18T21:53:00.001-08:00

Israel Agrees To Truce, Pullout Of Most Forces From Gaza In One Week, Hamas Declares Victory

They're still pulling the bodies of Palestinian women and children from the ruins of Gaza, more than 1300 killed, an estimated 5000 people wounded, more than a billion dollars worth of damage to apartment towers, hospitals, schools, streets, crops, parks. The devastation Israel has left behind has shocked the shit out of the war-hardened journalists Israel has kept locked out of Gaza for three weeks. Now they're starting to get access and are meeting the victims. The stories are like something out of World War 2.

The history books will record this horror as another failed war by Israel. Hamas has won international sympathy, on behalf of the Gazans, who will now likely back them in even stronger numbers than when they won elections in 2006.

Here's Hamas declaring victory :

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the Gaza war with Israel amounted to a "great victory" for the Palestinians, in a televised speech on Sunday.

"God has granted us a great victory, not for one faction, or party, or area, but for our entire people," said Haniya, the prime minister appointed by the Islamist movement Hamas in the impoverished territory.

"We have stopped the aggression and the enemy has failed to achieve any of its goals," he added, less than 24 hours after Israeli halted a massive offensive on Gaza that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.
"The groups of the resistance have decided to halt their fire in Gaza so that the enemy army can completely withdraw," he said.
"The decision proves that the resistance was correct and responsible, and works according to the interests of our people."

Israeli troops began withdrawing from Gaza after the ceasefire took effect at 2am on Sunday (1100 AEDT Sunday) but the Jewish state has said its military will return fire if attacked...

Hamas Claim They Only Lost 48 Fighters In War

Hamas Checkmates Israel

London Review Of Books Contributors On The Massacre Of Gaza

"No Really, God Told Me To Kill All Those Women And Children"

John J. Mearsheimer : Another War, Another Defeat

Insane New Yorkers Lust For Arab Blood

Israel Loses Propaganda War By Forcing Journalists To Watch Al Jazeera

It Is A Religious War : Most IDF Soldiers Dedicated Jewish Zionists

2009-01-15T16:29:00.000-08:00

Babies Born Premature As Israel Hits Gaza Hospital With Chemical Weapons, Patients Crawl From Their Beds To Escape

The volume of reports chronicling the gruesome, anti-humanity reality of what Israel is doing in Gaza is almost impossible to keep up with. Hundreds of children killed, thousands injured, women shot in the head as they exit their homes carrying white flags, UN hospitals and safe houses bombed, missiles used to "evacuate" civilian homes....

And now this :

Desperate patients tried to flee a hospital in Gaza City this morning as it became engulfed in flames after being earlier set on fire by an Israeli tank shell, medics and witnesses said.

In scenes of utter panic, patients who had been wounded in the ongoing war in the territory could be seen trying to struggle from their beds, an AFP photographer at the scene said.

At least three prematurely-born babies were being wheeled out of the hospital in their incubators along with three patients who had been on life-support machines.

The sound of Israeli gunfire could also be heard in the neighbourhood where Al-Quds hospital is situated.

Dozens of families had arrived there at dawn loaded down with babies, toddlers and children after scores of Israeli tanks had roared into the area, sparking furious battles with Palestinian fighters.
As the fighting grew more intense, dozens more families, clutching hurriedly packed bags, had arrived at the hospital and tried to find a spot wherever they could, not knowing the horrors that awaited them.
As the frightened civilians took refuge in the facility, part of the hospital caught fire after an Israeli strike. The blaze was brought under control in the medical area but not in the administrative building.

Officials at the hospital said the blaze had been caused by a phosphorus shell, hampering efforts to extinguish the flames.

The attack put about 500 patients and medical staff at risk, according to the international Red Cross, while a doctor inside said they were trapped.

"The Israelis are bombing and attacking all around the hospital. We can't get out. There's fire, and we're trapped inside. The water has been cut off," French doctor Regis Garrigue told AFP by telephone earlier in the day.

The hospital was hit after around 12 hours of "incessant" bombing, said Dr Garrigue, the president and founder of the French medical aid agency "Help Doctors," was trapped in the building.

The collapse of the entire wing of a building triggered a moment of panic among the sheltering patients and families and sparked the blaze.

"I can't even describe the horror of that moment," Dr Garrigue said.
Meanwhile, Bashar Murad, a doctor and the head of the ambulance services for the Red Crescent, waited helplessly.

"I have three dead bodies at 500 metres, but I can't get to them," he said. "I have numerous wounded less than a kilometre away, but I can't move without authorisation," Dr Murad said.

Before the ambulances can move anywhere, the International Committee of the Red Cross must call the Israeli army and receive a green light, he said.

When they tell Israel where they are, and what they're doing, they run the risk of becoming targets, as the UN has already learned.

Read The Full Story Here

2009-01-15T14:38:00.000-08:00

The Big 'War On Terror' Backdown Begins

Expect more Western-allied foreign ministers and foreign secretaries to bail out on not only the terminology but the Bush ideology of the 'War On Terror' in the coming weeks and months :

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good".
(he said) war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces.
British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.
In remarks that were also made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is "misleading and mistaken".
"Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good," Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west.
"The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common," Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. "We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is."
"Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology," he says.
He argues that "the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one - to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists". But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq "could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife".
Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the "idea of who we are and the values we share".
He goes on to say that "democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating."

This kind of hard talk and critique of Bush's War On Terror, that has led to the death of more than a million people, and displaced many millions more, all just seems far too many years too late, doesn't it?

2008-12-18T13:32:00.000-08:00

NeoCon's Psychotic Last Gasp : 4000 Americans "Had To Die" In Iraq

Frank Gaffney Jnr, one of the more repulsive of the New American Century neocons, who lied Americans into War On Iraq, finally gets told what a lying piece of shit he really is. But it all feels just a bit late. Six years too late...

2008-12-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

Iraq Rebuilding : The $100 Billion ClusterFuck

What a scam. Sorry, what an enormously profitable scam :

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed.

By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money.

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort.

¶When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority’s abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. “To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President,” wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. “His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt.” With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

¶In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency’s reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency’s plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

¶Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. “Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources,” said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. “ ‘You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.’ ”

A Cautionary Tale

The United States could soon have reason to consult this cautionary tale of deception, waste and poor planning, as troop levels and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan are likely to be stepped up under the new administration.

The incoming Obama administration’s rebuilding experts are expected to focus on smaller-scale projects and emphasize political and economic reform. Still, such programs do not address one of the history’s main contentions: that the reconstruction effort has failed because no single agency in the United States government has responsibility for the job.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.”

Titled “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general’s office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.

Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.

The manuscript is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600 audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen’s office has reported over the years. Laid out for the first time in a connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on the rebuilding program.

In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a searing critique of what he calls the “blinkered and disjointed prewar planning for Iraq’s reconstruction” and the botched expansion of the program from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

Mr. Bowen also swipes at the endless revisions and reversals of the program, which at various times gyrated from a focus on giant construction projects led by large Western contractors to modest community-based initiatives carried out by local Iraqis. While Mr. Bowen concedes that deteriorating security had a hand in spoiling the program’s hopes, he suggests, as he has in the past, that the program did not need much outside help to do itself in.

Despite years of studying the program, Mr. Bowen writes that he still has not found a good answer to the question of why the program was even pursued as soaring violence made it untenable. “Others will have to provide that answer,” Mr. Bowen writes.

“But beyond the security issue stands another compelling and unavoidable answer: the U.S. government was not adequately prepared to carry out the reconstruction mission it took on in mid-2003,” he concludes.

The history cites some projects as successes. The review praises community outreach efforts by the Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department’s plan to stabilize the Iraqi dinar after the invasion and a joint effort by the Departments of State and Defense to create local rebuilding teams.

But the portrait that emerges over all is one of a program’s officials operating by the seat of their pants in the middle of a critical enterprise abroad, where the reconstruction was supposed to convince the Iraqi citizenry of American good will and support the new democracy with lights that turned on and taps that flowed with clean water. Mostly, it is a portrait of a program that seemed to grow exponentially as even those involved from the inception of the effort watched in surprise.

Early Miscalculations

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

“What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said.

“My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment on the history, but a spokesman, Keith Urbahn, said that quotes attributed to Mr. Rumsfeld in the document “appear to be accurate.” Mr. Powell also declined to comment.

The secondary effects of the invasion and its aftermath were among the most important factors that radically changed the outlook. Tables in the history show that measures of things like the national production of electricity and oil, public access to potable water, mobile and landline telephone service and the presence of Iraqi security forces all plummeted by at least 70 percent, and in some cases all the way to zero, in the weeks after the invasion.

Subsequent tables in the history give a fast-forward view of what happened as the avalanche of money tumbled into Iraq over the next five years.

Dashed Expectations

By the time a sovereign Iraqi government took over from the Americans in June 2004, none of those services — with a single exception, mobile phones — had returned to prewar levels.

And by the time of the security improvements in 2007 and 2008, electricity output had, at best, a precarious 10 percent lead on its levels under Saddam Hussein; oil production was still below prewar levels; and access to potable water had increased by about 30 percent, although with Iraq’s ruined piping system it was unclear how much reached people’s homes uncontaminated.

Whether the rebuilding effort could have succeeded in a less violent setting will never be known. In April 2004, thousands of the Iraqi security forces that had been oversold by the Pentagon were overrun, abruptly mutinied or simply abandoned their posts as the insurgency broke out, sending Iraq down a violent path from which it has never completely recovered.
At the end of his narrative, Mr. Bowen chooses a line from “Great Expectations” by Dickens as the epitaph of the American-led attempt to rebuild Iraq: “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.”

2008-12-05T05:28:00.000-08:00

This site is on hiatus for a while. I recommend these two sites if you want to keep up with what's happening in these still early stages of the Fourth World War :

www.antiwar.com

www.informationclearinghouse.info

2008-09-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

US Vs Pakistan : Troops Exchange Fire On Border

Claim : American Forces Preparing To Set Up Base In Borderlands

Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and now Pakistan :

Pakistani and American ground troops exchanged fire along the border with Afghanistan on Thursday after the Pakistanis shot at two American helicopters, ratcheting up tensions as the United States increases its attacks against militants from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who are being sheltered in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.
The two American OH-58 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters were not damaged and no casualties were reported on either side from the ground fire. But American and Pakistani officials agreed on little else about what happened in the fleeting mid-afternoon clash between the allied troops.

American and NATO officials said that the two helicopters were flying about one mile inside Afghan air space to protect an American and Afghan patrol on the ground when the aircraft were fired on by small-caliber arms fire from a Pakistani military checkpoint near Tanai district in Khost Province.
In response, the American ground troops shot short bursts of warning fire, which hit well shy of the rocky, hilltop checkpoint, and the Pakistanis fired back, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a spokesman for the Central Command.
General Abbas, the Pakistani spokesman, said the clash had been reported to NATO headquarters in Kabul and was under investigation by both Pakistani and NATO officials.

Although it lasted just a few minutes, military officials and diplomats said the brief clash showed there was a risk of a much more serious, and lethal, misunderstanding along the border.
Pakistani civilian leaders have denounced an incursion by American Special Operations forces into Pakistan on Sept. 3, which was authorized under orders given by President Bush in July, and the Pakistani Army has vowed to defend its border “at all costs.”

“We will not tolerate any act against our sovereignty and integrity in the name of the war against terrorism,” Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, told reporters on Wednesday. “We are fighting extremism and terror not for any other country, but our own country.”

Pakistan has made it very clear to the Americans that they will not, at least publicly, tolerate American forces fighting the WoT on Pakistan territory. On this front, the Pakistan government and the Taliban are in total agreement.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, writing in the Asia Times :

Pakistan is now the declared battleground in this struggle by Islamic militants to strike first against American interests before the United States' war machine completes its preparations to storm the sanctuaries of al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Already, though, events had been set in motion to shape this new battlefield.

Approximately 20 kilometers from Islamabad lies Tarbella, the brigade headquarters of Pakistan's Special Operation Task Force (SOTF). Recently, 300 American officials landed at this facility, with the official designation as a "training advisory group", according to documents seen by Asia Times Online.

However, high-level contacts claim this is not as simple as a training program.

...the US has bought a huge plot of land at Tarbella, several square kilometers, according to sources directly handling the project. Recently, 20 large containers arrived at the facility. They were handled by the Americans, who did not allow any Pakistani officials to inspect them.

Given the size of the containers, it is believed they contain special arms and ammunition and even tanks and armored vehicles - and certainly have nothing to do with any training program.

There is little doubt in the minds of those familiar with the American activities at Tarbella that preparations are being made for an all-out offensive in North-West Frontier Province against sanctuaries belonging to the Taliban and al-Qaeda led by bin Laden. Pakistani security sources maintain more American troops will arrive in the coming days.

For both the militants and the United States, the gloves have come off.

Bajuar : 7 Soldiers, 25 Militants Killed In Fighting

Waziristan : 5 Clerics Hit In Attacks

2008-09-16T07:40:00.001-07:00

US, Al Qaeda Share Same Enemies

From Pepe Escobar, writing in Asia Times :

Seven years after bringing down steel buildings with jet fuel - using planes as missiles - and outwitting the most high-tech air force and the most protected airspace in the world for nearly two hours, the historic al-Qaeda leadership is "celebrating" 9/11 with an hour-and-a-half video special titled "Seven Years of Crusades".

Washington, meanwhile, is stepping up the revamped "war on terror" deep inside Pakistani territory, with special forces commandos targeting the tribal areas. While US corporate media are absolutely transfixed by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a new war in the shadows seems destined

to acquire its own irreversible momentum. Investigative military historian Gareth Porter (US warned over raids in Pakistan Asia Times Online, September 10, 2008) has already examined the deep disconnect between the George W Bush administration and the US intelligence community. On top of it, al-Qaeda in 2008 is a vastly different enemy from the al-Qaeda of 2001.

The new video, "hosted" by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, is a sort of who's who talk show on the state of jihad around the world - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Chechnya, Algeria, Palestine.

Qatar-based al-Jazeera got the video, showed only some short takes, and has been unusually quiet about it - as if it didn't want to shock US sensibilities. Same with Western corporate media. A version with German subtitles simply disappeared from YouTube. It's as if this whole business - Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri still at large, holed up in their mythical cave (with broadband and video equipment) - was a recurrent bad dream.

The key point in the video is that Zawahiri accuses Iran and the US of being partners in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Zawahiri also blasts Iraqi Shi'ites for not launching a jihad in Iraq against the "Crusader occupier". In his recent messages this is a recurrent theme: the "Persians" are the enemy of the Arabs and they're part of the occupation of Iraq.

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.

Seven years after 9/11, for all practical purposes, al-Qaeda remains the golden motive that justifies the Bush administration threatening, invading, bombing or occupying Muslim countries. But, in fact, al-Qaeda's top strategic enemy nowadays, in a battle to seduce Muslim hearts and minds, are Shi'ites - be it Tehran or Hezbollah - and not the US.

Similarities are eerie. Iran is part of Bush's "axis of evil" as well as al-Qaeda's "axis of evil". The US tries very hard to pit Sunnis against Shi'ites all over the Middle East while al-Qaeda also incites a war between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

What Zawahiri is basically saying is that al-Qaeda - fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabis - want a "long war" as much as the Bush administration and its extension, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Al-Qaeda's birth was midwifed by US intelligence in Peshawar in Pakistan in the early 1980s; by the mid-1980s, president Ronald Reagan was ecstatic with his mujahideen "freedom fighters". Fundamentalist al-Qaeda is as much against an independent, nationalist, Shi'ite Iranian regime as the fundamentalist Bush administration.

As for the "surge" in Iraq, it has now morphed into the surge in Afghanistan. Bush is withdrawing only 8,000 troops from Iraq by February 2009, while adding more to Afghanistan. So much for the so-called "success" of the Iraq "surge".

Top US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus told the Washington Post in Baghdad that Iraq remains the "central front" for al-Qaeda. Petraeus is the new head of Central Command starting this month. He will oversee Afghanistan and Pakistan - and also Iran. He believes al-Qaeda's historical leadership remains, in his words, "somewhere in the western border region of Pakistan".

Thus the recent attack by US special forces in the Pakistani tribal areas - killing women and children as well as alleged "terrorists", and alienating the tribals beyond any redemption.

We should expect more of the Petraeus method in Pakistan: high tech counter-insurgency plus widespread bribes in cash. That was his methodology during the "surge" in Iraq. The high-tech special ops - which killed a lot of Sunni guerrilla leaders - revolved around a program called Tagging, Tracking and Locating: in sum, a sophisticated assassination campaign. Robert Parry, writing at consortiumnews.com, was one of the very few in US media to pinpoint it.

That's essentially what Petraeus is already implementing in Pakistan, against the better judgement of the US intelligence community, with potentially devastating consequences. Westerners never learn: any war against the fierce Pashtun nation is essentially unwinnable.

The national security sweepstakes

Anyway, the Pentagon's "long War" - the remixed denomination of the "war on terror" - lives on. With a new chapter in Pakistan, the pressing possibility of an attack on Iran, a war for control of Eurasia, and a new cold war with Russia. Not to mention the militarization of American life, and smashing any form of dissent - as seen in the streets of St Paul, Minnesota, during the Republican convention.

Both the Barack Obama-Joe Biden and the McCain-Sarah Palin tickets avidly pose to see who is tougher on terror. Both pay lip-service to national security. Palin has been drafted by McCain with a key destination: to mobilize the rural and suburban so-called "national security moms", terrified of slimy, dangerous Muslims threatening their way of life.

But what if a Predator drone, under Petraeus orders, incinerated Zawahiri and bin Laden - seven years too late? Absolutely nothing would change. Dozens of new bin Ladens would rise from the ashes. Washington has done nothing to help the desperate Afghan population or suggest an alternative for the neo-Taliban - just as the billions of dollars showered on the Pakistani military have done noting to help dire living conditions in Pakistan.

The only "winners" in this "long war" are, and will continue to be, selected players in the gargantuan US military-industrial complex. That's the sorry legacy of 9/11, seven years on.

2008-09-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

Seven Years Later, Is 'The War' Being Won Against Al Qaeda?

Der Speigel asks seven terrorism experts their opinions on the progress of the
WoT :

Most of the world now has a new understanding of "security." Global terrorism of the sort practiced by al-Qaida finds targets that are not always easy to comprehend: a Danish embassy in Pakistan, nightclubs on Bali, trains in London and Madrid, wedding parties in Jordan, a synagogue in Tunisia, a British bank in Istanbul.

To protect themselves, Western as well as non-Western states have passed new laws, some of them draconian. The United States set up a prison at Guantánamo Bay which has yet to be dismantled.

The CIA has kidnapped and transported terror suspects all over the world, including people who weren't especially suspect and have long been proved innocent. Arab nations have signed dubious extradition treaties to move terrorist suspects back and forth. Russia and China use the "war on terror" for their own purposes -- to declare Chechens and Uighurs potential terrorists, for example. The debate over torture, once thought to be settled in civilized nations, has enjoyed an unexpected and in some ways ignoble renaissance.

And al-Qaida?

Al-Qaida is not beaten. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are still at large. A number of high-ranking members of the organization have been killed or arrested, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and others. But terrorism hasn't stopped. Al-Qaida has retreated in Iraq, perhaps, but in Pakistan as well as North Africa, it has gained influence and space.

But there is no single, clear image of al-Qaida or its current status. It has changed from an organization of militias into something nobody recognizes. Is it more of a movement? Are al-Qaida's capabilities weaker than before, or is another 9/11 still possible? Are there fewer members of al-Qaida now, or more?

The Full Story Is Here

2008-09-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

Russia Draws Syria, Iran Closer, Against The West

President Bush and the NeoCons were instrumental in driving Russia to ramp up its ally building, but Putin has taken full advantage of the US/Israel backed attack in South Ossetia. China, of course, stands quietly behind Russia.

From Debka :

Moscow announced renovation had begun on the Syrian port of Tartus to provide Russia with its first long-term naval presence on the Mediterranean.
As the two naval chiefs talked in Moscow, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki in the Russian capital for talks on the completion of the Bushehr nuclear power plant by the end of the year.
Moscow has sharpened its tone in comments aimed at the West and the US in particular. President Dmitiry Medvedev said Friday that Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia was the equivalent for Russia of the 9/11 attack on America. Even if Georgia had become a NATO member, he said, he would not have thought twice about ordering the Russian army to go in.
Prime minister Vladimir Putin, after putting Moscow’s case on Georgia to the Western media, warned the US that stationing a missile defense shield near Russia’s borders would start an arms race in Europe. There was no basis for a new Cold War, he said.
In aligning with Tehran and Damascus, Moscow stands not only against America but also Israel. This volatile world region is undergoing cataclysmic changes at a time when Israel is virtually without a fully competent prime minister and key political and military decision-making by the rest of the government is at a standstill.

US Watches As Latin America Opens Up To Russia's Military

Putin : Bush Isn't In Charge Of America

Russia Keeps Promise, Withdraws Forces From Key Georgian Checkpoints

2008-09-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

US Tells Israel To Negotiate Flight Paths With Iraqis If They Want To Bomb Iranians

Is this the end, for now at least, of Israel's war plans for Iran?

The security aid package the United States has refused to give Israel for the past few months out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran included a large number of "bunker-buster" bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes.

Officials from both countries have been discussing the Israeli requests over the past few months. Their rejection would make it very difficult for Israel to attack Iran, if such a decision is made.

About a month ago, Haaretz reported that the Bush administration had turned down an Israeli request for certain security items that could upgrade Israel's capability to attack Iran. The U.S. administration reportedly saw the request as a sign preparations were moving ahead for an Israeli attack on Iran.

Diplomatic and security sources indicated to Haaretz that the list of components Israel included:
Bunker-buster GBU-28 bombs: In 2005, the U.S. said it was supplying these bombs to Israel. In August 2006, The New York Times reported that the U.S. had expedited the dispatch of additional bombs at the height of the Second Lebanon War. The bombs, which weigh 2.2 tons each, can penetrate six meters of reinforced concrete. Israel appears to have asked for a relatively large number of additional bunker-busters, and was turned down.

Air-space authorization: An attack on Iran would apparently require passage through Iraqi air space. For this to occur, an air corridor would be needed that Israeli fighter jets could cross without being targeted by American planes or anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans also turned down this request. According to one account, to avoid the issue, the Americans told the Israelis to ask Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for permission, along the lines of "If you want, coordinate with him."

2008-09-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

US-British Execution Squads Kill Thousands Of Iraqis

From Kurt Nimmo :

“More than 3,500 insurgents have been ‘taken off the streets of Baghdad’ by the elite British force in a series of audacious ‘Black Ops’ over the past two years,” reports Sean Rayment for the London Telegraph. “It is understood that while the majority of the terrorists were captured, several hundred, who were mainly members of the organization known as ‘al-Qa’eda in Iraq’ have been killed by the SAS.”

Recall the Washington Post, the CIA’s favorite newspaper, admitting that the putative leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq," the criminal retard Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was little more than a Pentagon PSYOP.

The assassination program in Iraq is a collaborative effort between the British SAS and the American Delta Force. It is called “Task Force Black.”

General Petraeus was so impressed with the assassination effort he remarked: “They have exceptional initiative, exceptional skill, exceptional courage and, I think, exceptional savvy. I can’t say enough about how impressive they are in thinking on their feet.”

Let’s rewind. Recall the Washington Post, the CIA’s favorite newspaper, admitting that the putative leader of “al-Qaeda in Iraq,” the criminal retard Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was little more than a Pentagon PSYOP. “The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,” wrote Thomas E. Ricks in a front page story for the newspaper on April 10, 2006. “For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi’s role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the ‘U.S. Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”

As Michel Chossudovsky notes, much of this fairy tale propaganda is delivered to the corporate media by “top feeders” at the Pentagon. “Disinformation and war propaganda are an integral part of military planning. What the Washington Post fails to mention, however, is its own role in sustaining the Zarqawi legend, along with network TV, most of the printed press, and of course CNN and Fox News, not to mention a significant portion of the alternative media,” writes Chossudovsky. As we know, the Washington Post was long ago compromised by the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, so this role is now reflexive. US military-intelligence has created it own terrorist organizations. In turn, it has developed a cohesive multibillion dollar counterterrorism program “to go after” these terrorist organizations. To reach its foreign policy objectives, the images of terrorism in the Iraqi war theater must remain vivid in the minds of the citizens, who are constantly reminded of the terrorist threat. The Iraqi resistance movement is described as terrorists led by Zarqawi. In other words, “al-Qaeda in Iraq” is a fabrication designed to discredit the Iraqi resistance.

Sean Rayment and the London Telegraph would have us believe the British SAS is only killing “al-Qaeda in Iraq” members. In fact, it appears they are targeting the leadership of the Iraqi resistance while capturing and imprisoning street level “terrorists,” that is to say fighters resisting occupation.

As for British involvement in creating terrorism in Iraq, recall the two SAS agents captured by the Iraqis attempting to stage terror attacks. “Iraqi security officials on [September 19, 2005] variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives,” the Washington Post reported.

As I wrote at the time, “the next time you read or hear about crazed ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq’ terrorists blowing up children or desperate job applicants, keep in mind, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry, the perpetrators may very well be British SAS goons who cut their teeth killing Irish citizens.”

The CIA ran likewise operations in Vietnam. As former CIA employee Ralph McGehee notes, the “U.S. and Saigon intel services maintained an active list of VC cadre marked for assassination” in the late 1960s. Dubbed Operation Phoenix, the assassination program “called for ‘neutralizing’ 1800 [alleged Viet Cong] a month.” Approximately one third of the Viet Cong targeted for arrest were summarily killed by so-called “security committees” in provincial interrogation centers outside of judicial control and funded by the CIA. More than 40,000 Vietnamese were killed under Operation Phoenix at an estimated cost of nearly $2 billion (see Ralph McGehee, CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam).

The collaborative effort between the British SAS and America’s Delta Force is obviously designed to take out the leadership of the Iraqi resistance, led by a disparate and not necessarily connected combination of former Ba’athists, nationalists, Sunni and Shi’a militias. It is intended to decimate the leadership — referred to as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” terrorists in the corporate media — as the United States prepares to downsize its presence in Iraq and shift emphasis under a new administration to Afghanistan.

2008-08-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Wounded Georgian Soldiers Confirm Heavy US-Israel Involvement In South Ossetia Attacks

Russia Boasts It Can "Annihilate" NATO/US Fleet In Black In "20 Minutes"

From RIA Novosti :

Russia's Black Sea Fleet is capable of destroying NATO's naval strike group currently deployed in the sea within 20 minutes, a former fleet commander said on Friday.
Russia's General Staff said on Tuesday there were 10 NATO ships in the Black Sea - three U.S. warships, the Polish frigate General Pulaski, the German frigate FGS Lubeck, and the Spanish guided missile frigate Admiral Juan de Borbon, as well as four Turkish vessels. Eight more warships are expected to join the group.

"Despite the apparent strength, the NATO naval group in the Black Sea is not battle-worthy," Admiral Eduard Baltin said. "If necessary, a single missile salvo from the Moskva missile cruiser and two or three missile boats would be enough to annihilate the entire group."

"Within 20 minutes the waters would be clear," he said, stressing that despite major reductions, still has a formidable missile arsenal.

However, Baltin said the chances of a military confrontation between NATO and Russia in the Black Sea are negligible.

"We will not strike first, and they do not look like people with suicidal tendencies," he said.

In addition to its flagship, the Moskva guided missile cruiser, Russia's Black Sea Fleet includes at least three destroyers, two guided missile frigates, four guided missile corvettes and six missile boats.

NATO announced its decision to deliver humanitarian aid to Georgia after the conclusion of hostilities between Tbilisi and Moscow over breakaway South Ossetia on August 12. Moscow recognized on Tuesday both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgia republic, despite being urged by Western leaders not to do so.

Russia's General Staff later said the alliance's naval deployment in the Black Sea "cannot fail to provoke concern", with unidentified sources in the Russian military saying a surface strike group was being gathered there.
According to Russian military intelligence sources, the NATO warships that have entered the Black Sea are between them carrying over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles and Harpoon anti-ship missiles

From the London Times :

Major Malkhaz Dumbatze was in a celebratory mood. His 14 Georgian tanks had just taken control of the rebel South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, and he was already looking forward to a trip to Israel to study new battle command systems. The jets flying over the city, where his men were mopping up Ossetian snipers, he took to be Georgian fighters.
Major Dumbatze is still going to Israel, but now it is to have reconstruction surgery on his legs. The aircraft he had spotted were in fact Russian, and one of them dropped two bombs on his armoured unit.
Speaking with difficulty because half his teeth had been blown out by shrapnel that exited through his throat, the battalion commander was undaunted about the future of his crushed army.
“I'm 100 per cent sure we'll recover from this,” he said, his wounded comrades on either side of his bed in a Tbilisi hospital.

Georgia's soldiers, trained by US and Israeli advisers, are gung-ho about returning to the fray, though some unanswered questions still hang in the air - such as the advisability of taking on their giant neighbour without adequate anti-air defences.
Major Dumbatze, 33, denied any knowledge of atrocities committed in Georgia's initial assault on Tskhinvali. His men were hunting down remaining militiamen and had left their armour in the open only because they thought they had won, bringing 17 years of secession to an end. “It was a dream for all Georgian soldiers,” he said. “I didn't expect the Russians. I thought it was politically sealed, the Russian and Georgian Governments made some kind of agreement.”
There was no deal, as he discovered to his cost. As a loyal officer he avoided criticising his Government during the crisis, but admitted that “if you thought the Russians would attack, you'd have to be mad” to launch such an operation. “But we never expected them to attack - if you see the bear coming, you either get under a rock or out of the way.”
Corporal Tristani Chinditze, 20, never even made it as far as the battlefield. His unit was on its way to the front line in lorries and Jeeps when they were ambushed by a much larger Russian force of tanks and infantry.
“Maybe without their planes we could have won. That's why I went - I thought we could win,” he said, just before doctors wheeled him out for an operation to save his legs. Both limbs were shredded by shrapnel from a tank shell. “There were three brigades, plenty of them were wounded. We were in trucks and we had no chance to open fire.”
He lay wounded on the battlefield for two days, surrounded by the dead bodies of his comrades. “Other injured soldiers could crawl and help themselves, but I couldn't move. I'm surprised I survived.” Eventually Georgian civilians came and took him to hospital, where he remains.
Sergeant Paata Veshaguri, 24, a stocky man who was admitted to hospital for concussion before returning to the front, was also upbeat about his army's performance against the numerically superior Russians. “We were smaller but better trained,” he said, praising his US and Israeli military teachers. “We not only held our lines but advanced. But the Government was thinking of how the Russians had threatened to bomb Tbilisi.” It ordered his men to pull back.
He said that he had not expected any Western countries to give Georgia military support, but suspected that the Government may have been counting on such aid. “Probably on a high level they expected this, because of all the training and equipment and foreign investment,” he said.
All the soldiers said they were ready to fight again once they had recovered and their forces had been re-equipped. “I will go everywhere for my country, any time and anywhere,” said Major Dumbatze. “If I can walk, I'll do my best for my country.”

2008-08-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

Russia Vs Europe Now?

US : Russia Is 'Weak'

China Backs Russia In Standoff With The West

The US is now spending more than $500 billion (official and black funding) a year on its military profit machine. Worldwide, arms spending reaches into the trillions each year. None of those involved want to give up such record-breaking revenue. So the wars of the world must continue.

China Backs Russia :

Russia today won support from China and Central Asian states in its standoff with the West over the Georgia conflict as the European Union said it was weighing sanctions against Moscow.
The West has strongly condemned Russia's military offensive in Georgia this month and Medvedev's decision to recognise the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan voiced support for Russia's "active role'' in resolving the conflict in Georgia...
Yesterday, the Group of Seven industrialised powers strongly condemned Russia's recognition of the two rebel regions.

"We deplore Russia's excessive use of military force in Georgia and its continued occupation of parts of Georgia,'' said the statement from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Former Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze warned meanwhile that Russia's recognition of the regions would boomerang on Moscow.

"They will live to regret it,'' Shevardnadze said in an interview in Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper, adding that the move would "encourage separatist movements within ethnically diverse Russia.''
Russia has lashed out at the West for ratcheting up tensions in the Black Sea and warned that attempts to isolate Moscow could lead to an economic backlash.

Officials said they were monitoring a growing NATO naval presence in the Black Sea...

The NeoCon propaganda flows from the usual outlets :

Russia's conflict with Georgia is the sign of a "weak" Russian nation, not a newly assertive one, and Moscow now has put its place in the world order at risk, the top U.S. diplomat for relations with the country said in an interview yesterday.
"There is a Russia narrative that 'we were weak in the '90s, but now we are back and we are not going to take it anymore.' But being angry and seeking revanchist victory is not the sign of a strong nation. It is the sign of a weak one," said Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.
"Russia is going to have to come to terms with the reality it can either integrate with the world or it can be a self-isolated bully. But it can't be both. And that's a choice Russia has to have," Fried said.
... in a speech yesterday in Kiev, Ukraine, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: "Today Russia is more isolated, less trusted and less respected than two weeks ago. It has made military gains in the short term. But over time, it will feel economic and political losses."
Miliband noted that Russia's foreign exchange reserves have fallen by $16 billion and risk premiums for investing in Russia have soared since the crisis began. By contrast, when the Soviet Union attacked Czechoslovakia in 1968, "no one asked what impact its actions had on the Russian stock market. There was no Russian stock market."
Vice President Cheney, speaking to an American Legion convention in Phoenix yesterday, condemned Russia's "unjustifiable assault" on Georgia. "The Georgian people won their freedom after years of tyranny, and they can count on the friendship of the United States," he said.

Britain Vs Russia :

Britain yesterday raised the stakes in the scramble to contain Russia, pledging support for Moscow's regional rival, Ukraine, and calling on the international community to stand up to Russia's campaign to redraw the map of Europe and make it pay a higher price for its actions in Georgia.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary tipped as a future Labour party leader and potential prime minister, went to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to deliver a speech aimed at flying the flag of western democracy on Russia's doorstep, while seeking to avert a new crisis boiling over on the Crimean peninsula, home to an ethnic Russian population and Moscow's Black Sea fleet.
The speech represented the strongest criticism of the Kremlin from a leading European government official in years, delivered in a country that is Russia's neighbour and which Russians view as the cradle of their civilisation.
Miliband declared a turning point had been reached in Europe's relations with Russia, ending a nearly two decade period of relative tranquility. He said Tuesday's decision by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, to recognise Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia represented a radical break and a moment of truth for the rest of Europe.
"[Medvedev's] unilateral attempt to redraw the map marks a moment of real significance," the foreign secretary said. "It is not just the end of the post cold war period of growing geopolitical calm in and around Europe. It is also the moment when countries are required to set out where they stand on the significant issues of nationhood and international law."
"The Georgia crisis has provided a rude awakening," the foreign secretary said. He responded to Medvedev's boast that he was not scared of a new cold war, saying: "We don't want a new cold war. He has a big responsibility not to start one."
"Europe needs to act as one when dealing with third parties like Russia," he said. To do that, the EU should invest in gas storage facilities, build up an internal market and negotiate as a single entity, rather than cutting separate deals.
Russia, Miliband said, "must not learn the wrong lessons from the Georgia crisis: there can be no going back on fundamental principles of territorial integrity, democratic governance and international law."

Medvedev explains why he had to recognise Russia's rebel regions :

"On Tuesday Russia recognised the independence of the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was not a step taken lightly, or without full consideration of the consequences. But all possible outcomes had to be weighed against a sober understanding of the situation - the histories of the Abkhaz and Ossetian peoples, their freely expressed desire for independence, the tragic events of the past weeks and international precedents for such a move.

"Not all of the world’s nations have their own statehood. Many exist happily within boundaries shared with other nations. The Russian Federation is an example of largely harmonious coexistence by many dozens of nations and nationalities. But some nations find it impossible to live under the tutelage of another.

"Relations between nations living “under one roof” need to be handled with the utmost sensitivity. After the collapse of communism, Russia reconciled itself to the “loss” of 14 former Soviet republics, which became states in their own right, even though some 25m Russians were left stranded in countries no longer their own. Some of those nations were unable to treat their own minorities with the respect they deserved. Georgia immediately stripped its “autonomous regions” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia of their autonomy.

"In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others. Seeing the warning signs, we persistently tried to persuade the Georgians to sign an agreement on the non-use of force with the Ossetians and Abkhazians. Mr Saakashvili refused. On the night of August 7-8 we found out why.

"Only a madman could have taken such a gamble. Did he believe Russia would stand idly by as he launched an all-out assault on the sleeping city of Tskhinvali, murdering hundreds of peaceful civilians, most of them Russian citizens?

"Did he believe Russia would stand by as his “peacekeeping” troops fired on Russian comrades with whom they were supposed to be preventing trouble in South Ossetia?

"Russia had no option but to crush the attack to save lives. This was not a war of our choice. We have no designs on Georgian territory. Our troops entered Georgia to destroy bases from which the attack was launched and then left.

"The presidents of the two republics appealed to Russia to recognise their independence. A heavy decision weighed on my shoulders. Taking into account the freely expressed views of the Ossetian and Abkhazian peoples, and based on the principles of the United Nations charter and other documents of international law, I signed a decree on the Russian Federation’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia."

The Great Game continues...

2008-08-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

The World's First Cyber War

It's already happened, and most of us didn't even notice. According to this story, the Russia Vs United States, Via Georgia war was, in fact, the world's first cyberwar :

Websites on both sides, especially the Georgian one, were knocked out by co-ordinated online attacks. Among them were the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs websites, the online English language dailies 'The Messenger', and 'Civil', and the personal website of the Georgian President, Mikheil Saakashvili.
Skirmishes have been conducted on websites before, notably as part of disputes that Russia had with Estonia in 2007 and Lithuania in July, but South Ossetia marked the first time they have been launched at the same time as ground troops and air strikes. They were even part of the softening-up process, with official Georgian sites coming under attack as far back as 21 July.
Dr David Betz, senior lecturer at the Department of War Studies of King's College, London, said: "We're still in the wooden biplane era of cyber-war. It will get more sophisticated, probably quite quickly. The US has already created units for cyber-defence, so too has China, no doubt Russia, and probably many others."
"A malicious hack can be conducted by an individual or small group," said Dr Betz. "It also provides a sneaky mechanism to states to attack and cause harm while avoiding retaliation because the identity of the attacker is obscured. For instance, if the Republican of Whatsistan launches a missile at you, you know with a certainty where it came from. Not so with cyber," he added.
Cyber-attacks are inexpensive, easy to mount and will be a significant feature of modern warfare that leaves no fingerprints.
Bill Woodcock, the research director of an American organisation that tracks internet traffic, told the New York Times: "It costs about 4 cents (2p) per machine. You could fund an entire cyber-warfare campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread."

2008-08-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

US Vs Russia, Via Georgia : It's A Video War

How the war began. Broadcast two days before Georgia attack the capital of South Ossetia, killing hundreds, if not thousands of civilians.

It's hard to have confidence in a president who picks a fight with Russia, and then eats his tie on the BBC :

Censorship is rarely this blatant, and clumsy. Or creepy :

"There are grey areas in war."

It's even creepier the second time around.

Now Russia can rightly accuse the US, and Murdoch, of faking a news reality for this war. They did it just as well with video as Pravda ever did with newspapers.

We in the West mostly got the Fox News version of how this new war began from the mainstream media.

And this 'accident' of using footage of a city laid to waste by Georgia with missiles fired into civilian populations and trying to pass it off as a Georgian city smashed by Russia was all over Australian TV news, and news channels, as well. It was everywhere, around the world.

2008-08-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

The $100 Billion Privatised War On Iraq

Incredible. The numbers are in and reveal that BushCo. has spent an extraordinary $100 billion since the 2003 invasion of Iraq on corporate soldiers, mercenaries and military contractors. The private American armies of Iraq now outnumber US Army numbers on the ground. Without the privitisation of the Iraq War, BushCo. would have had to unleash a draft on the American people.
More here :

The report, by the Congressional Budget Office, according to people with knowledge of its contents, will say that one out of every five dollars spent on the war in Iraq has gone to contractors for the United States military and other government agencies, in a war zone where employees of private contractors now outnumber American troops.

The Pentagon’s reliance on outside contractors in Iraq is proportionately far larger than in any previous conflict, and it has fueled charges that this outsourcing has led to overbilling, fraud and shoddy and unsafe work that has endangered and even killed American troops. The role of armed security contractors has also raised new legal and political questions about whether the United States has become too dependent on private armed forces on the 21st-century battlefield.

The budget office’s report found that from 2003 to 2007, the government awarded contracts in Iraq worth about $85 billion, and that the administration was now awarding contracts at a rate of $15 billion to $20 billion a year. At that pace, contracting costs will surge past the $100 billion mark before the end of the year. Through 2007, spending on outside contractors accounted for 20 percent of the total costs of the war, the budget office found, according to the people with knowledge of the report.

Several outside experts on contracting said the report’s numbers seemed to provide the first official price tag on contracting in Iraq and raised troubling questions about the degree to which the war had been privatized.

Contractors in Iraq now employ at least 180,000 people in the country, forming what amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view. The widespread use of these employees as bodyguards, translators, drivers, construction workers and cooks and bottle washers has allowed the administration to hold down the number of military personnel sent to Iraq, helping to avoid a draft.
Dina L. Rasor, an author and independent expert on contracting fraud, said she believed that the $100 billion cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office might be low, since there were virtually no reliable audits of or controls on spending during the first years of the war. “It is a shocking number, but I still don’t think it is the full cost,” Ms. Rasor said. “I don’t think there have been any credible cost numbers for the Iraq war. There was so much money spent at the beginning of the war, and nobody knows where it went.”

Iraq Government Demands "Very Clear Timeline" For When US Troops Will Go Home

Iraq Improves Regional Ties

US Accused Of Using Cash As A Weapon Of War In Iraq

Monday In Iraq : 16 Iraqis Killed, More Than 30 Wounded

Another Female Suicide Bomber Strikes In Iraq, Killing Four

2008-08-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

The Truth About Georgia Vs Russia

Historian Mark Almond supplies one of the clearest and most precise essays on how this new war in the Caucasus began, and what it means :

For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history.

The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia....has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain's widely unexpected military response with the comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev.
Back in the late 1980s, as the USSR waned, the red army withdrew from countries in eastern Europe which plainly resented its presence as the guarantor of unpopular communist regimes. That theme continued throughout the new republics of the deceased Soviet Union, and on into the premiership of Putin, under whom Russian forces were evacuated even from the country's bases in Georgia.
To many Russians this vast geopolitical retreat from places which were part of Russia long before the dawn of communist rule brought no bonus in relations with the west. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.
Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.
In 1992, the west backed Eduard Shevardnadze's attempts to reassert Georgia's control over these regions. The then Georgian president's war was a disaster for his nation. It left 300,000 or more refugees "cleansed" by the rebel regions, but for Ossetians and Abkhazians the brutal plundering of the Georgian troops is the most indelible memory.
Georgians have nursed their humiliation ever since. Although Mikheil Saakashvili has done little for the refugees since he came to power early in 2004 - apart from move them out of their hostels in central Tbilisi to make way for property development - he has spent 70% of the Georgian budget on his military. At the start of the week he decided to flex his muscles.
Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger's dictum: "Great powers don't commit suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let's hope not.
Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution, the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother's clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces - trained, equipped and subsidised by the west - thrashed the protesters. Lashing out at the Georgians' common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them around the president, at least in the short term.
Last September, President Saakashvili suddenly turned on his closest ally in the Rose revolution, defence minister Irakli Okruashvili. Each man accused his former blood brother of mafia links and profiting from contraband. Whatever the truth, the fact that the men seen by the west as the heroes of a post-Shevardnadze clean-up accused each other of vile crimes should warn us against picking a local hero in Caucasian politics.
Western geopolitical commentators stick to cold war simplicities about Russia bullying plucky little Georgia. However, anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured.
Worse still, western backing for "equip and train" programmes in Russia's backyard don't contribute to peace and stability if bombastic local leaders such as Saakashvili see them as a guarantee of support even in a crisis provoked by his own actions. He seems to have thought that the valuable oil pipeline passing through his territory, together with the Nato advisers intermingled with his troops, would prevent Russia reacting militarily to an incursion into South Ossetia. That calculation has proved disastrously wrong.
The question now is whether the conflict can be contained, or whether the west will be drawn in, raising the stakes to desperate levels. To date the west has operated radically different approaches to secession in the Balkans, where pro-western microstates get embassies, and the Caucasus, where the Caucasian boundaries drawn up by Stalin, are deemed sacrosanct.
In the Balkans, the west promoted the disintegration of multiethnic Yugoslavia, climaxing with their recognition of Kosovo's independence in February. If a mafia-dominated microstate like Montenegro can get western recognition, why shouldn't flawed, pro-Russian, unrecognised states aspire to independence, too?
Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics' right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western?
Other people's nationalisms are like other people's love affairs, or, indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don't get involved in. A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade - but then, how many wars are?

2008-08-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

Georgia Slaughters 1600 Civilians With Missile Barrage On Russia's Border

Proxy War Between US/Israel And Russia Breaks Out Over South Ossetia

Reports Claim Georgian, Russian Jets Shot Down, Pilots Captured, Georgian Tanks Burning In SO Capital, Israel & American Advisors Guide Georgia Military, Another Caspian Pipeline War Begins

UPDATE : A quick summary of news from the Interfax news agency, 8pm Sydney time :

* 1600 are now believed to have been killed in the South Ossetia capital under a missile barrage by Georgia, purposely targeting civilians.

* 50 Georgian soldiers have been killed in South Ossetia, more than 400 wounded.

* Georgian soldiers are now surrendering in the SO capital Tskhinvali

* Martial law is expected to be enacted in Georgia.

* Russia claims it is not waging war on Georgia, but a "peacekeeping mission."

* South Ossetia forces claim to have shot down two Georgian jet fighters.

* Georgia claims it has shot down 10 Russian jets, and is interrogating a captured pilot.

* 15 Russian peacekeeping troops are believed to have been killed in the Georgian attack on Tskhinvali.

Georgia is pulling more than 2000 troops out of Iraq, and Russian is mobilising thousands of Cossacks as full-blown war looks set to erupt between Russia and the Georgian dictatorship over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.

Georgian military, backed by Israeli and American trainers and advisors, reportedly killed more than 1400 people in devastating attacks on the capital city of South Ossetia. Russia is now said to be blowing Georgian planes out of the sky and massing on its border.

Georgia has been intensely stockpiling weapons, tanks, helicopters from the Ukraine and the West for the past two years. American and Israel advisors have been training Georgian troops for months, while Russia warned Georgia, and the US, to leave the breakaway territory of South Ossetia alone. Georgia still regards South Ossetia as territory of Georgia, if only because it aims to increase control over the gas pipelines running through the region. Israel and the United States are deeply involved in the conflict, and are fully backing the brutal Georgian dictatorship.

On August 6, the worst fighting in more than four years erupted between Georgia and South Ossetia. The leaders agreed to talks, which quickly broke down.

On August 7, Georgian military (still aided by US and Israel trainers and advisors) began shelling villages across the border in South Ossetia. South Ossetia claimed to have killed at least two dozen Georgian military, though the Georgian dictatorship refused to confirm or deny the numbers.

On August 8, Georgian jet fighters began bombing villages in South Ossetia. The SO president, Eduard Kokoity claimed more than 1400 people were killed in the attacks :

Tensions over Georgia's rebel territory of South Ossetia exploded on Friday when Georgia tried to assert control over the region with tanks and rockets, and Russia sent forces to repel the assault.

On Friday, the United States called on Russia to halt aircraft and missile attacks in South Ossetia.

"The United States calls for an immediate ceasefire to the armed conflict in Georgia's region of South Ossetia," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. "We call on Russia to cease attacks on Georgia by aircraft and missiles, respect Georgia's territorial integrity, and withdraw its ground combat forces from Georgian soil."

Fight between Georgian forces and Russian-backed separatists raged in and around Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, after Tbilisi sent troops to take back the territory, which broke away in the 1990s.

A senior Georgian security official said Russian jets had bombed the Vaziani military airbase outside the Georgian capital Tbilisi, and President Mikheil Saakashvili said 150 Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles had entered South Ossetia from neighboring Russia. He also said Georgian forces had downed two Russian jets.

From DEBKA :

Georgian tanks and infantry, aided by Israeli military advisers, captured the capital of breakaway South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, early Friday, Aug. 8, bringing the Georgian-Russian conflict over the province to a military climax.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin threatened a “military response.”
Former Soviet Georgia called up its military reserves after Russian warplanes bombed its new positions in the renegade province.
In Moscow’s first response to the fall of Tskhinvali, president Dimitry Medvedev ordered the Russian army to prepare for a national emergency after calling the UN Security Council into emergency session early Friday.
Reinforcements were rushed to the Russian “peacekeeping force” present in the region to support the separatists.
Georgian tanks entered the capital after heavy overnight heavy aerial strikes, in which dozens of people were killed.
...the Russians are backing the separatists of S. Ossetia and neighboring Abkhazia as payback for the strengthening of American influence in tiny Georgia and its 4.5 million inhabitants. However, more immediately, the conflict has been sparked by the race for control over the pipelines carrying oil and gas out of the Caspian region.
The Russians may just bear with the pro-US Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili’s ambition to bring his country into NATO. But they draw a heavy line against his plans and those of Western oil companies, including Israeli firms, to route the oil routes from Azerbaijan and the gas lines from Turkmenistan, which transit Georgia, through Turkey instead of hooking them up to Russian pipelines.
Jerusalem owns a strong interest in Caspian oil and gas pipelines reach the Turkish terminal port of Ceyhan, rather than the Russian network. Intense negotiations are afoot between Israel Turkey, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Azarbaijan for pipelines to reach Turkey and thence to Israel’s oil terminal at Ashkelon and on to its Red Sea port of Eilat. From there, supertankers can carry the gas and oil to the Far East through the Indian Ocean.
Last year, the Georgian president commissioned from private Israeli security firms several hundred military advisers, estimated at up to 1,000, to train the Georgian armed forces in commando, air, sea, armored and artillery combat tactics. They also offer instruction on military intelligence and security for the central regime. Tbilisi also purchased weapons, intelligence and electronic warfare systems from Israel.
These advisers were undoubtedly deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to conquer the South Ossetian capital Friday.
In recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that Jerusalem halt its military assistance to Georgia, finally threatening a crisis in bilateral relations. Israel responded by saying that the only assistance rendered Tbilisi was “defensive.”

Back and forth accusations of ethnic cleansing by Georgia and Russia dominated heated talks at the United Nations Security Council emergency meetings :

Russia and Georgia accused each other of "ethnic cleansing" as the UN Security Council met in two tense emergency sessions Friday to head off all-out war between Russia, Georgia and the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.
The last-ditch negotiations came just 12 hours apart in response to Georgian troops launching a major military offensive to regain control of separatist South Ossetia. The first meeting lasted three hours, ending at 2 a.m. Friday in New York, and the second session broke off in a stalemate Friday night.
Just hours after Russia called that first meeting and failed to win backing for its proposed council statement that Georgia and South Ossetia should "renounce the use of force," Russian tanks rumbled into Georgia in a furious response.
..."there are reports about ethnic cleansing in villages of South Ossetia. The population is panicking, and the number of refugees is increasing... a humanitarian catastrophe is in the offing. And here Tbilisi is using the tactic of scorched earth."
Russia dispatched an armored column into South Ossetia on Friday after Georgia, a staunch US ally, launched a surprise offensive to crush separatists. Witnesses said hundreds of civilians were killed.
The fighting, which devastated the capital of Tskhinvali, threatened to ignite a wider war between Georgia and Russia, and escalate tensions between Moscow and Washington. Georgia said it was forced to launch the assault because of rebel attacks; the separatists alleged Georgia violated a cease-fire.
The fighting broke out as much of the world's attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and US President George W. Bush, were in Beijing.
The timing suggested Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may have been counting on surprise to fulfill his longtime pledge to wrest back control of South Ossetia - a key to his hold on power. The rebels seek to unite with North Ossetia, which is part of Russia.
Georgia, which borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the breakup of the Soviet Union. Georgia has angered Russia by seeking NATO membership - a bid Moscow regards as part of a Western effort to weaken its influence in the region.

A timeline from the UK Telegraph :

November 1989 - South Ossetia declares its autonomy from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, triggering three months of fighting.

December 1990 - Georgia and South Ossetia begin a new armed conflict which lasts until 1992.

June 1992 - Russian, Georgian and South Ossetian leaders meet in Sochi, sign an armistice and agree the creation of a tripartite peacekeeping force of 500 soldiers from each entity.

November 1993 - South Ossetia drafts its own constitution.

November 1996 - South Ossetia elects its first president.

December 2000 - Russia and Georgia sign an intergovernment agreement to re-establish the economy in the conflict zone.

December 2001 - South Ossetia elects Eduard Kokoity as president, in 2002 he asks Moscow to recognise the republic's independence and absorb it into Russia.

January 2005 - Russia gives guarded approval to Georgia's plan to grant broad autonomy to South Ossetia in exchange for dropping its bid for independence.

November 2006 - South Ossetia overwhelmingly endorses its split with Tbilisi in a referendum. Georgia's prime minister says this is part of a Russian campaign to stoke a war.

April 2007 - Georgia's parliament approves a law to create a temporary administration in South Ossetia, raising tension with Russia.

June 2007 - South Ossetian separatists say Georgia attacked Tskhinvali with mortar and sniper fire. Tbilisi denies this.

October 2007 - Talks hosted by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe between Georgia and South Ossetia break down.

March 2008 - South Ossetia asks the world to recognise its independence from Georgia, following the West's support for Kosovo's secession from Serbia.

March 2008 - Georgia's bid to join NATO, though unsuccessful, prompts Russia's parliament to urge the Kremlin to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

April 2008 - South Ossetia rejects a Georgian power-sharing deal, insists on full independence.
August 2008 - Fighting breaks out between Georgian and separatist South Ossetian forces. Georgia says its forces have "freed" the greater part of the Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

US Tells Russia To Withdraw Forces From Georgian Border

Georgia To Pull Out 2000 Troops From Iraq To Fight Russia

July, 2008 : US Troops Train Georgian Military As Tensions In Caucuses Increase

Georgian Troops Kill Russian Peacekeepers, Russia Vows Revenge

10 Russian Troops Killed In South Ossetia

"Impossible To Count Bodies" In South Ossetia Capital After Georgian Attack

2008-07-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

BushCo. Demands Iraq Accept Bases And The Forever Occupation

How can there ever be peace in Iraq when the US occupation will never end, at least as far as BushCo., the NeoCons and no doubt plenty of Democrats, are concerned? They spent more than half a trillion invading, occupying and slaughtering the opposition, so they will stay until they see a return on the investment. Welcome to the free market, Iraq :

For five years the Bush administration has played wack-a-mole with the American people as to why we are in Iraq, with a new justification quickly spawning after the hollow core of the prior position was exposed. WMD's was followed by fighting Al Qaeda and ultimately bringing democracy to the Middle East. Last week the proverbial mole may have met his maker and exposed the true reason over a million Americans have been put in harm's way.

In May 2004, President Bush explained that our mission in Iraq was "to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations." A week into his second term, Bush said he would "absolutely" honor any request for withdrawal of U.S. troops by a sovereign Iraqi government, only to then ignore multiple request over the next three years and polls showing near unanimous support among Iraqi's for a timeline for withdrawal.

All this was laid bare this month as the Iraqi government went on the offensive in its call for U.S. withdrawal by 2010. Far from embracing the desires of a sovereign Iraq, the White House instead feebly attempted to claim Prime Minister Maliki's statement was mistranslated, while the McCain camp argued that Iraqi's really want the U.S. to stay until 2020. Apparently their view of a "free Iraq" is an Iraq that is free to do what we tell them to do.

The Iraqi demand for a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. troops comes in the context of ongoing negotiations with the U.S. over a Status of Forces (SoF) Agreement in which the White House is seeking to define its legacy through (i) an indefinite occupation; (ii) more than 50 permanent bases (including five mega-bases); (iii) the unlimited ability to pursue the "war on terror" in Iraq (including ability to arrest Iraqis without consulting government); (iv) control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000 feet; (v) supervision of Iraq's defense, interior and national security ministries for ten years; and (vi) immunity for U.S. forces and contractors. In addition, the U.S. wants the right to unilaterally determine whether an act by another country (i.e., Iran) constitutes a "threat" to Iraq and respond as it deems fit in order to "protect" Iraq.

The Iraqi's have rejected this invitation to be an American colony as "arrogant" and an affront to their sovereignty, but the White House is playing hardball and recently cost the Iraqi's $5 billion by blocking the transfer of certain Iraqi currency reserves out of the declining dollar.

From the start of the occupation, the Bush administration has shown little regard for Iraqi sovereignty and international legal prohibitions against making significant changes to the legal and political institutions of an occupied country. Instead, the administration pursued what, former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz characterized as "an even more radical form of shock therapy than pursued in the former Soviet world," as it completely reshaped Iraq's legal and economic regime to turn it into a Club Med for corporate interests.

The shock therapy was administered by Paul Bremer, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority, through 100 separate Orders which suspended all tariffs and import fees (Order 12); immunized foreign contractors (Order 17); calls for the sale of 200 state owned enterprises through 40-year ownership licenses (Order 39); allowed foreign corporations to fully own Iraqi businesses and remove profits tax free (Order 39); cut corporate income taxes by two-thirds through a 15 percent flat tax (Order 49) and even restricts Iraqi farmers from using certain seeds without paying a license fee to seed suppliers such as Monsanto (Order 81).

The Bush administration also has ignored Congressional restrictions on the use of government funds "to exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq," as the State Department recently assisted the Big 5 oil companies in winning rights to develop some of Iraq's largest oilfields. Soon they will join Halliburton and others who have made billions off the war while protected by our troops.

The current spat over the SoF Agreement once again raises the question of why we fought this war to begin with. After five years of war at a cost of approximately $539 billion, 90,000 Iraqi lives, over 35,000 American soldiers wounded or killed, we now know what we suspected all along -- that Operation Iraqi Freedom was never about liberating the people of Iraq but instead about liberating its assets for foreign exploitation. Naomi Klein was right four years ago when she described the Bush mission as "pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia."

That is why with or without the SoF Agreement, Bush's legacy is secure. The hollow echo of Operation Iraqi Freedom reminds us that while other presidents may have failed the American people in one way or another, no president has failed, deceived or betrayed the American people like George W. Bush.

2008-07-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Al Qaeda's New Strategies In Its 'War On Infidels'

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times :

Al-Qaeda is back - with a vengeance of sorts. Listen to Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed - a senior al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, in a very rare interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, shot in Khost, in eastern Afghanistan.

"At this stage this is our understanding - that there is no difference between the American people and the American government itself. If we see this through sharia [Islamic] law, American people and the government itself are infidels and are fighting against Islam. We have to rely on suicide attacks which are absolutely correct according to Islamic law. We have adopted this way of war because there is a huge difference between our material resources and our enemy's, and this is the only option to attack our enemy."

The interview is not only about defensive jihad. Yazeed delves into classic al-Qaeda strategy - inciting a cross-border Taliban jihad against the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces and blasting a state, in this case the government of Pakistan. According to him, "Sadly, it is the government of Pakistan which has most damaged our cause. President [Pervez] Musharraf violated the trust of Muslims and contributed to the destruction of the Islamic government of Afghanistan ... Musharraf and his government have made big mistakes, there is no such example in other Islamic states."

Yazeed also said al-Qaeda was responsible for the suicide car bombing on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad in early June, when six people were killed.

So why is al-Qaeda feeling so emboldened to have one of its top commanders on camera - and on a foreign TV network to boot, not as-Sahab, al-Qaeda's media arm?

Jihadis now assess that the new Afghan jihad - against the "infidel" US and NATO troops combined - is more important at the moment than Iraq. So in this sense, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has got it right - Afghanistan, and not Iraq, is "the central front in the war on terror".

But it's much more complicated than that. The central front is actually in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda basically wants a pan-Islamic caliphate. The neo-Taliban, based in Pakistan, are not that ambitious. They already have their Islamic Emirate - it is in the Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. What they want most of all is to expand it. They also know they would never stand a chance of taking over the whole of Pakistan. A Pakistani expert on the tribal areas, currently in Washington, describes it as "a class struggle - almost like an evolving peasant revolution. Baitullah Mehsud [the neo-Pakistani Taliban leader] is but a peasant from a poor family."

What is startling is that the neo-Taliban are now practically in control of North-West Frontier Province on the border with Afghanistan - whose capital is fabled Peshawar. They already control several Peshawar suburbs.

The Pakistani state has virtually no power in these areas. The Taliban enforce strict sharia law. If local security people refuse to obey, they are simply killed. No wonder the neo-Taliban now have subdued scores of middle- and low-ranking Pakistani officials. They even issued a deadline to the new secular and relatively progressive regional government to release all Taliban prisoners - or else. As for the government, the only thing it can do is to organize some sort of neighborhood watch to prevent total Taliban supremacy. This state of affairs also reveals how the Pakistani army seems to be powerless - or unwilling - to fight the Taliban.

Across the border, in Kunar and Nuristan provinces in Afghanistan, the Taliban now control almost all security checkpoints. No wonder Yazeed - speaking for al-Qaeda, envisions a war without borders. He said, in his Geo TV interview, "Yes, we cannot separate the tribal area people from Afghanistan which are part of Pakistan and the Pakistani people. Yes, we are getting support from tribal people in Pakistan, and in fact it is obligatory for them to render this help and it is a responsibility that is imposed by religion. It is not only obligatory for residents of the tribal regions but all of Pakistan."

In a recent high-profile al-Qaeda meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan, the al-Qaeda leadership made it clear it not only expects - it wants the new Afghan war/jihad to spill over to the tribal areas in Pakistan.

And this is what al-Qaeda will get - according to what Obama told CBS News' Lara Logan, "... what I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value al-Qaeda targets and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go after those targets, then we should."

The Pentagon for its part is preparing the battlefield - it has already sent Predator drones, repeatedly, over the tribal areas. An air war is in the works - not to mention scores of Pentagon covert special ops.

Al-Qaeda's strategy is to suck in the US military - this is classic Osama bin Laden ideology, according to which the US should be dragged to fight in Muslim lands. Al-Qaeda is reasoning that an attack on the tribal areas, in fact a real third front in the "war on terror" (so dreaded by chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen) will have Pakistani public opinion so outraged that the Pakistani army would be powerless to follow the US track. And al-Qaeda, in the end, would be left with an even freer hand.

Read The Full Story Here

2008-07-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

Is The Iraq War Really Coming To An End?

It's not the first time signs of a real end to the War On Iraq have hit the headlines this year, only to fade quickly as new clashes between the various ranks of Iraqi and western forces, and Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents have broken out.

For the people of Iraq, and the families of all Western forces who are fighting in Iraq, you can only hope the following story from Associated Press is true, and the start of more good news to come :

The United States is now winning the war that two years ago seemed lost. Limited, sometimes sharp fighting and periodic terrorist bombings in Iraq are likely to continue, possibly for years. But the Iraqi government and the U.S. now are able to shift focus from mainly combat to mainly building the fragile beginnings of peace - a transition that many found almost unthinkable as recently as one year ago.
Despite the occasional bursts of violence, Iraq has reached the point where the insurgents, who once controlled whole cities, no longer have the clout to threaten the viability of the central government.

That does not mean the war has ended or that U.S. troops have no role in Iraq. It means the combat phase finally is ending, years past the time when President Bush optimistically declared it had. The new phase focuses on training the Iraqi army and police, restraining the flow of illicit weaponry from Iran, supporting closer links between Baghdad and local governments, pushing the integration of former insurgents into legitimate government jobs and assisting in rebuilding the economy.

Scattered battles go on, especially against al-Qaida holdouts north of Baghdad. But organized resistance, with the steady drumbeat of bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and ambushes that once rocked the capital daily, has all but ceased.

This amounts to more than a lull in the violence. It reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook for the Sunni minority, which held power under Saddam Hussein. They launched the insurgency five years ago. They now are either sidelined or have switched sides to cooperate with the Americans in return for money and political support.
Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have lost their power bases in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities. An important step was the routing of Shiite extremists in the Sadr City slums of eastern Baghdad this spring - now a quiet though not fully secure district.

Al-Sadr and top lieutenants are now in Iran. Still talking of a comeback, they are facing major obstacles, including a loss of support among a Shiite population weary of war and no longer as terrified of Sunni extremists as they were two years ago.
The premature declaration by the Bush administration of "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003 convinced commanders that the best public relations strategy is to promise little, and couple all good news with the warning that "security is fragile" and that the improvements, while encouraging, are "not irreversible."

Iraq still faces a mountain of problems: sectarian rivalries, power struggles within the Sunni and Shiite communities, Kurdish-Arab tensions, corruption. Any one of those could rekindle widespread fighting.

But the underlying dynamics in Iraqi society that blew up the U.S. military's hopes for an early exit, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, have changed in important ways in recent months.

Systematic sectarian killings have all but ended in the capital, in large part because of tight security and a strategy of walling off neighborhoods purged of minorities in 2006.
Statistics show violence at a four-year low. The monthly American death toll appears to be at its lowest of the war - four killed in action so far this month as of Friday, compared with 66 in July a year ago. From a daily average of 160 insurgent attacks in July 2007, the average has plummeted to about two dozen a day this month. On Wednesday the nationwide total was 13.
The questions facing both Americans and Iraqis are: What kinds of help will the country need from the U.S. military, and for how long? The questions will take on greater importance as the U.S. presidential election nears, with one candidate pledging a troop withdrawal and the other insisting on staying.
Although Sunni and Shiite extremists are still around, they have surrendered the initiative and have lost the support of many ordinary Iraqis. That can be traced to an altered U.S. approach to countering the insurgency - a Petraeus-driven move to take more U.S. troops off their big bases and put them in Baghdad neighborhoods where they mixed with ordinary Iraqis and built a new level of trust.
It's not the end of fighting. It looks like the beginning of a perilous peace.

Of course, all this good news will be rendered all but obsolete should the US and Israel go to War On Iran.

Iraqi Suicide Bombers Kill 50, Wound 250

2008-07-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Hizbullah's Historic And Repeated Victories Over Israel

The western corporate media has repeatedly failed to tell the truth about the decades long war between Hizbullah and Israel, and pretty well covered up the fact that Hizbullah comprehensively won the most recent outbreak of war with Israel. Which is why it is so shocking to read an opinion piece like this one from the UK Guardian :

Lebanon celebrated with lavish festivities the return of the last prisoners held in Israeli jails, and clamoured to be the only Arab country to have done so, and to have done so by imposing its demand on a reluctant Israel.

Hizbullah fulfilled yet another pledge, and successfully ended another chapter in its longstanding battle with Israel.

Lebanese dignitaries from across the political and religious spectrum, Muslims and Christians alike, were lined up to welcome the freed prisoners, in a display of unity not seen since the earlier prisoner exchange of 2004.

Hizbullah's success can be added to its already long list of achievements, and reminds Arab and Muslim audiences worldwide of the effectiveness of a steadfast resistance.

In an Arab world used to humiliations and defeats, the list of achievements claimed by Hizbullah in the past decade is indeed noteworthy.

The resistance movement was able to liberate most of Lebanon's territory from a two decade-long Israeli occupation, conducted a successful prisoner exchange in 2004, broke the invulnerability myth of the Israeli Defence Forces in the 2006 war, and managed to return all Lebanese prisoners held in Israel this past week. Hizbullah's charismatic leader has argued that his movement has never capitulated to Israeli demands, and thus never been defeated in its 25-year history – "the era of [Arab] defeats is over".

This is in stark contrast to what "Arab moderates" could show for in the same decade they spent negotiating with the Israeli state. The much-publicised and now barren "peace process" keeps edging "forward" through road maps, countless summits, visits, and vague "visions" of a Palestinian state that fails to materialise, and which remains as elusive as it did 60 years ago.

Expanding Israeli settlements keep shrinking the space of a Palestinian state, and Israeli checkpoints still pepper the West Bank. Half the population are refugees scattered around the globe, and the other half live in confinement behind a segregation wall. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's repeated pleas for the release of some (if any) of the 11,500 Palestinians held prisoner keep falling on Israeli deaf ears.

Only armed resistance seemed able to edge Israeli settlements and checkpoints out of the Gaza strip, and only Hamas seems able to force Israel into negotiating a prisoner release.

Israel seems more likely to yield to the demands of resistance movements (Hamas, Hizbullah) than to friendly pleas and peace offers. This is a strong message that further undermines the US's Arab allies. The difference between the two approaches cannot be stronger and echoes dramatically in Arab public opinion polls.

It is no surprise that the Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah comes on top of the popularity contest in all surveyed Arab countries (including Saudi Arabia and Egypt), and by a large margin.

The battle for hearts and minds was indisputably won by those who offered to resist the "US-Israeli axis of evil".

The festivities in Lebanon brought the flags of resistance movements from across the political divide: the "party of God" and the Communist party joined within the same crowd, highlighting the common denominator that binds all.

This was also made clear by the diversity of nationalities and creeds associated with the 199 bodies Israel returned to Lebanon this day. Current western support for Arab dictators and the associated labelling of resistance movements as terrorist organisations may not be to its best interest.

Striking mutually beneficial deals with those that more closely represent Arab populations rather than with the corrupt dictators that rule them may have better long-term pay-offs. Perhaps the election of a new US president will usher a more peaceful era for the war-weary Middle East.

2008-07-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan : 'Sons Of The Soil' Rise Up As Western Casualties Reach Peaks Not Seen Since 2001

For now at least, the War On Iraq appears to be slowing, as American troop and Iraqi civilian casualties fall. As Iraqi militias and insurgents are routed from key cities, or at least have gone underground for the time being, as they've done before, Afghanistan grows only more violent.

Syed Saleem Shahzad explains what the Taliban may have in store for Western forces in the months ahead, in the Asia Times :

KARACHI - The resilient Taliban have proved unshakeable across Afghanistan over the past few months, making the chances of a coalition military victory against the popular tide of the insurgency in the majority Pashtun belt increasingly slim.

The alternative, though, of negotiating with radical Taliban leaders is not acceptable to the Western political leadership.

This stalemate suits Pakistan perfectly as it gives Islamabad the opportunity to once again step in to take a leading role in shaping the course of events in its neighboring country.

Pakistan's General Headquarters in Rawalpindi are thrilled the Taliban's sweeping military successes which have reduced President Hamid Karzai's American-backed government to a figurehead decorating the presidential palace of Kabul; he and his functionaries dare not even cross the street to take evening tea at the Serena Hotel.

June (28 US combat deaths) was the deadliest month for coalition troops since they invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and fatalities have increased steadily since 2004, when 58 soldiers were killed that year. The total more than doubled to 130 killed in 2005, 191 in 2006 and 232 in 2007. One hundred and twenty-seven have died so far this year.

Pakistan's planners now see their objective as isolating radicals within the Taliban and cultivating tribal, rustic, even simplistic, "Taliban boys" - just as they did in the mid-1990s in the leadup to the Taliban taking control of the country in 1996. It is envisaged that this new "acceptable" tribal-inspired Taliban leadership will displace Taliban and al-Qaeda radicalism.

This process has already begun in Pakistan's tribal areas.

A leading Pakistani Taliban leader, Haji Nazeer from South Waziristan, who runs the largest Pakistani Taliban network against coalition troops in Afghanistan, recently convened a large meeting at which it was resolved to once again drive out radical Uzbeks from South Waziristan. This happened once before, early last year.

In particular, Nazeer will take action against the Uzbeks' main backer, Pakistani Taliban hardliner Baitullah Mehsud, if he tries to intervene. Nazeer openly shows his loyalty towards the Pakistani security forces and has reached out to other powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, including Moulvi Faqir from Bajaur Agency, Shah Khalid from Mohmand Agency and Haji Namdar in Khyber Agency. Nazeer also announced the appointment of the powerful commander of North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, as the head of the Pakistani Taliban for all Pakistan.

The bulk of the Pakistani Taliban has always been pro-Pakistan and opposed to radical forces like Baitullah Mehsud and his foreign allies, but this is the first time they have set up a formal organization and appointed an amir (chief) as a direct challenge to the radicals.

At the core of their beliefs is a stress on traditional tribal values and following the tribal agenda of supporting the Afghan resistance against Western troops, rather than any global agenda such as attacks on Europe or the United States.

Soon after the announcement of the amir, two prominent Afghan Taliban commanders from eastern Afghanistan gave their support to the new Pakistani Taliban network. They are Moulvi Abdul Kabeer, a former Taliban governor in the province of Nangarhar before the US invasion in 2001, and commander Sadr-uddin. To date, the most important Afghan commander in the eastern region, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, has remained neutral, perhaps because of his close ties with Pakistan and also with the radical camp.

Earlier, the Hezb-e-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, another pro-Pakistan commander in Afghanistan, claimed several successful operations in the northeastern Kapisa and Wardak provinces - just a few score kilometers from Kabul. This is another significant development as it gives a boost to that segment of the insurgency which is more local than global.

This is the new picture emerging in eastern Afghanistan. If these groups, with Pakistan's support, can join hands with the Kandahari clans of the Taliban from the southwest, which already form a non-radical tribal resistance, it would give Islamabad the opportunity to make a proposal to Washington.

That is, the process of jirgas (tribal councils) should be restarted, this time only with the sons-of the-soil Taliban, to get them to lay down their arms and negotiate a new political role before the Afghan presidential elections next year.

2008-06-24T00:45:00.000-07:00

US Army Creating Its Own Air Attack Wings In Iraq And Afghanistan

Clashes Between US Army And Air Force

The US Army has decided that the US Air Force aren't pulling their weight, or bombing enough people from the sky. They've got a plan, apparently, already underway, that remarkably enough seems to be pitting the Army against the Air Force. Or so this New York Times story would lead to believe :

Ever since the Army lost its warplanes to a newly independent Air Force after World War II, soldiers have depended on the sister service for help from the sky, from bombing and strafing to transport and surveillance.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have frayed the relationship, with Army officers making increasingly vocal complaints that the Air Force is not pulling its weight.
In Afghanistan, Army officers have complained about bombing missions gone awry that have killed innocent civilians. In Iraq, Army officers say the Air Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents.

The Air Force responds that it has only a limited number of those remotely piloted Predators and other advanced surveillance aircraft, so priorities for assigning them must be set by senior commanders at the headquarters in Baghdad working with counterparts at the Air Force’s regional command in Qatar. There are more than 14,000 airmen performing tasks on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Air Force civil engineers replacing Army construction engineers.

But now in Iraq, the Army has quietly decided to try going it alone for the important surveillance mission, organizing an all-Army surveillance unit that represents a new move by the service toward self-sufficiency, and away from joint operations.

Senior aides to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates say that he has shown keen interest in the Army initiative — much to the frustration of embattled Air Force leaders — as a potential way to improve battlefield surveillance.
The work of the new aviation battalion was initially kept secret, but Army officials involved in its planning say it has been exceptionally active, using remotely piloted surveillance aircraft to call in Apache helicopter strikes with missiles and heavy machine gun fire that have killed more than 3,000 adversaries in the last year and led to the capture of almost 150 insurgent leaders.

The Army aviation task force became fully operational last July with headquarters at Camp Speicher, in the north-central city of Tikrit, and focuses its efforts on insurgents planting roadside bombs. But it also has located and attacked insurgents in battles with American and Iraqi troops, and has supported missions of the top-secret Special Operations units assigned to capture or kill the most high-value targets in Iraq.

The battalion is called Task Force Odin — the name is that of the chief god of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry.

The Army cobbled together small civilian aircraft, including the Beech C-12, and placed advanced reconnaissance sensors on board. Also assigned to the task force are small, medium and larger remotely piloted Army surveillance vehicles, including the Warrior and Shadow, with infrared cameras for night operations and full-motion video cameras.

All are linked by radio to Apache attack helicopters, with Hellfire missiles and 30-millimeter guns, and to infantry units in armored vehicles.

Civilian casualties are always a risk in air raids, particularly those attacking bomb-placing teams that operate in cities and villages. Army officials declined to say whether they believed the casualties from the new Army raids included innocent civilians, but they sought to pre-empt some criticism by screening an aerial surveillance video that they said showed the precise nature of the raids.

The video showed an insurgent who had escaped attack and hid in a courtyard a few feet from a grazing mule. It then showed Apache helicopter fire killing the insurgent, while the mule was left grazing beside the corpse.

In contrast to Predators, which are assigned by the top headquarters for missions all across Iraq, Task Force Odin is on call for commanders at the level of brigade and below, an effort by the Army to be responsive to the needs of smaller combat units in direct contact with adversaries — and a clear sign of rivaling concepts with the Air Force.

Task Force Odin was created on orders of Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s outgoing vice chief of staff, as a way to improve the detection of roadside bombs before they explode, and to strike more adversaries more safely, from a distance. Thus far, not a single helicopter or piloted surveillance airplane has been lost in the unit’s missions.

“Task Force Odin provides a current example in Iraq that reveals how reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition improves survivability,” General Cody said in a statement.

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Mr. Gates “wants to make sure that we are looking at not just top-down solutions, but ground-up solutions. We need to pay attention to anything that works.”

Strains between the services have surfaced in the years since the military undertook the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Army and Marine Corps officers in Afghanistan have complained that Air Force pilots flying attack missions in support of ground operations do not come in as low as their Navy and Marine counterparts. Instances of civilian casualties from bombing and missile attacks have increased tensions among local populations, which have to be eased by ground commanders, adding to their burden of winning hearts and minds in the counterinsurgency efforts.

“We are supporting the Army as best we can,” Michael W. Wynne, the departing Air Force secretary, said Friday. He said that as the Army and Marine Corps increased ground forces in Iraq as part of the so-called troop surge over the past year, the Air Force quadrupled its number of sorties and increased its bombing tenfold. The number of surveillance flights by Predators and the larger Reaper vehicles over Iraq and Afghanistan has doubled since January of 2007.

Army officers who are promoting the new concept have shown senior Pentagon officials classified video clips intended to advertise the service’s increasing go-it-alone ability. One clip from a remotely piloted vehicle shows an insurgent using palm fronds to smooth dirt over a bomb he had buried late at night along a major convoy route. Moments later, he disappeared in 30-millimeter fire from an Apache that was alerted by the remotely piloted Army surveillance craft overhead.

The Army is asking for money to create a similar unit in Afghanistan within the next six months.

2008-06-22T00:36:00.000-07:00

The Giants Of Oil Return To Iraq

Some forty years after being kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, four Western oil giants are plotting their return :

By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.

The deals are for repair and technical support in some of the country's largest oilfields, the Oil Ministry in Baghdad said yesterday. The return of "Big Oil" will add to the suspicions of those in the Middle East who claimed that the overthrow of Saddam was secretly driven by the West's desire to gain control of Iraq's oil. It will also be greeted with dismay by many Iraqis who fear losing control of their vast oil reserves.
Iraq's reserves are believed to be second only to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, but their exploitation has long been hampered by UN sanctions, imposed on Iraq after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
The major oil companies have been eager to go back to Iraq, but are concerned about their own security and the long-term stability of the country. The two-year no-bid agreements are service agreements that should add another 500,000 barrels of crude a day of output to Iraq's present production of 2.5 million barrels a day (b/d).
The companies have the option of being paid in cash or crude oil for the deals, each of which will reportedly be worth $500m (£250m). For Iraq, the agreements are a way of accessing foreign expertise immediately, before the Iraqi parliament passes a controversial new hydrocarbons law.
But they mean that the four oil companies, which originally formed the Iraq Petroleum Company to exploit Iraqi oil from the 1920s until the industry's nationalisation in 1972, will be well-placed to bid for contracts for the long-term development of these fields. The oilfields affected are some of the largest in Iraq, from Kirkuk in the north to Rumaila, on the border with Kuwait. Although there is oil in northern Iraq, most of the reserves are close to Basra, in the far south.
Since the US invasion, Iraqis have been wary of foreign involvement in their oil industry. Many are convinced that the hidden purpose of the US invasion was to take over Iraqi oil, but the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hussein Shahristani, has said that Iraq will hold on to its natural resources. "If Iraq needs help from international oil companies, they will be invited to co-operate with the Iraqi National Oil Company [Inoc], on terms and conditions acceptable to Iraq, to generate the highest revenue for Iraq".
For the four oil giants, the new agreements will bring them back to a country where they have a long history. BP, Exxon Mobil, Total and Shell were co-owners of a British, American and French consortium that kept Iraq's oil reserves in foreign control for more than 40 years.
The Iraq Petroleum Company (once the Turkish Petroleum Company) was formed in 1912 by oil companies eager to grab the resources in parts of the Ottoman Empire.
The company was formalised in 1928 and each of the four shareholders had a 23.75 per cent share of all the oil produced. The final 5 per cent went to Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian businessman.
In 1931, an agreement was signed with Iraq, giving the company complete control over the oi fields of Mosul in return for annual royalties. After Saddam's coup in 1958, nationalisation came in 1972.

More from the IHT :

The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.

There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq's Oil Ministry.

Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.

For an industry being frozen out of new ventures in the world's dominant oil-producing countries, from Russia to Venezuela, Iraq offers a rare and prized opportunity.

While enriched by $140 per barrel oil, the oil majors are also struggling to replace their reserves as ever more of the world's oil patch becomes off limits. Governments in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela are nationalizing their oil industries or seeking a larger share of the record profits for their national budgets. Russia and Kazakhstan have forced the major companies to renegotiate contracts.

The Iraqi government's stated goal in inviting back the major companies is to increase oil production by half a million barrels per day by attracting modern technology and expertise to oil fields now desperately short of both. The revenue would be used for reconstruction, although the Iraqi government has had trouble spending the oil revenues it now has, in part because of bureaucratic inefficiency.

For the American government, increasing output in Iraq, as elsewhere, serves the foreign policy goal of increasing oil production globally to alleviate the exceptionally tight supply that is a cause of soaring prices.
The first oil contracts for the majors in Iraq are exceptional for the oil industry.

They include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today's prices: the ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.

2008-06-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

NeoCon Predicts US War With Russia, China

When you're pimping for the world's largest war industry, you've got to learn to look beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. You've got to see the bigger picture, a clash of nations that has the potential to be more devastating than even World War II.

Robert Kagan, one of the most insidious NeoCon propagandists for the War On Iraq is flogging his new book, laying out a new NeoCon agenda for their golden child, John McCain, and the UK Observer has a review :

The potential challenge posed by the emergence of China as a great power, the rise of India, the hardening of Iranian anti-Westernism and the rise of Islamicist fundamentalism tend to be seen in Britain as discrete and disconnected dramas. How they might relate to the European Union or Latin America, say, is almost never asked. The overriding British default position in foreign policy - that any proposal for co-operation or collaborative action that comes from the EU is necessarily bad and anti-British - only makes discussion even more cramped.
Americans think differently. Rather as Britain did when it had an empire, the global scale of American commitments and interests forces American thinking on a grander, more joined-up scale. And Kagan, arch neoconservative, adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and influence on Barack Obama, certainly thinks grandly. He sees the 21st century as a battleground between liberal democracies and authoritarian states seeking to avenge injustices and reassert their nationalism. The West has no option but to join battle.
Thus his call to create a league of democracies that would promote 'political liberalisation, support human rights, including the empowerment of women, and use its influence to support a free press and repeated elections that will, if nothing else, continually shift power from the few to the many'. We should never forget that the liberties and international order we enjoy today had to be won by struggle. So it will be again. In a global era, democracy is stronger the more widely it is entrenched and, in any case, our interests, whether combating climate change or fighting Islamicist terror, require more democracy and accountability, not less. Nation states that host terror cells or those that pollute the planet need to know that they risk legitimate intervention from others.
It is controversial stuff. The objections are obvious. The United Nations would be devalued and, whatever its weaknesses, it is surely better to have the great powers as members of one global organisation than dividing into two opposing camps. One, centred on the Shanghai Co-operation Council, would be the authoritarian states of China, Russia and others; the second, under US leadership, would be the European and American democracies, Australasia, Japan and India. Instead of struggling for unachievable UN resolutions blocked by the authoritarians, the democracies would be free to go head to head in ideological and political competition.
The book's description of the strong nationalist forces emerging in China, Russia and Iran, with their visceral desire to avenge injustices together with their governing classes' stranglehold on power, is sobering. And those who would defend today's UN at all costs need to be able to show how Japan, Germany, India and Brazil - all great democracies - are ever going to become members of the security council in the face of the implacable opposition of authoritarian China and Russia.
There is a battle going on. Authoritarianism is on the rise and it is dangerous. Putting some well-judged edge behind the democracies' defence of their principles and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a stupid proposal. Kagan would have made his argument even stronger had he shown how democracy contributes to economic and social strength and thus been more sceptical about the sustainability of Chinese and Russian economic growth without it. But that would have implied that the European approach is more right than American thirst for pitched battles, and there is still something of the neocon night about Kagan's thinking.

2008-06-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

"Our Middle East Dementia Continue..."

Robert Fisk provides an informative rant on the state of the Middle East today :

...Israelis deserve security. But so do Palestinians. So do Iraqis and Lebanese and the people of the wider Muslim world. Now even Condoleezza Rice admits – and she was also talking to Aipac, of course – that there won't be a Palestinian state by the end of the year. That promise of George Bush – which no-one believed anyway – has gone. In Rice's pathetic words, "The goal itself will endure beyond the current US leadership."
Of course it will. And the siege of Gaza will endure beyond the current US leadership. And the Israeli wall. And the illegal Israeli settlement building. And deaths in Iraq will endure beyond "the current US leadership" – though "leadership" is pushing the definition of the word a bit when the gutless Bush is involved – and deaths in Afghanistan and, I fear, deaths in Lebanon too.
It's amazing how far self-delusion travels. The Bush boys and girls still think they're supporting the "American-backed government" of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. But Siniora can't even form a caretaker government to implement a new set of rules which allows Hizbollah and other opposition groups to hold veto powers over cabinet decisions.
Thus there will be no disarming of Hizbollah and thus – again, I fear this – there will be another Hizbollah-Israeli proxy war to take up the slack of America's long-standing hatred of Iran. No wonder President Bashar Assad of Syria is now threatening a triumphal trip to Lebanon. He's won. And wasn't there supposed to be a UN tribunal to try those responsible for the murder of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005? This must be the longest police enquiry in the history of the world. And I suspect it's never going to achieve its goal (or at least not under the "current US leadership").
There are gun battles in Beirut at night; there are dark-uniformed Lebanese interior ministry troops in equally dark armoured vehicles patrolling the night-time Corniche outside my home.
....Bush and his cohorts go on saying that they will never speak to "terrorists". And what has happened meanwhile? Why, their Israeli friends – Mr Baracka's Israeli friends – are doing just that. They are talking to Hamas via Egypt and are negotiating with Syria via Turkey and have just finished negotiating with Hizbollah via Germany and have just handed back one of Hizbollah's top spies in Israel in return for body parts of Israelis killed in the 2006 war.
And so our dementia continues.

Go Here To Read It All

2008-06-08T07:44:00.001-07:00

Iraq Vows To Never Allow US To Attack Iran From Inside Its Borders

The Iraq government is now stalling on a verbal agreement given to BushCo. in late 2007 that they will sign on to allowing US forces to be based inside the country beyond 2008. More than 70% of Iraqis are now reported to be in favour of the rest of the 'Coalition of the Willing' removing its troops, sooner rather than later. Later being 2009, or 2010.

In fact, there is something of a quiet, very democratic revolution boiling in Iraq's halls of power, as Iraq not only faces a future where US troops are no longer roaming free on their cities' streets, but now rumbles to get foreign forces out of the country as soon as possible. BushCo. has made it very clear they have no intention of leaving, having just completed the world's largest embassy complex in Baghdad, which will be permanently manned by hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops. But Iraq's politicians are clear in their intent :

A majority of the Iraqi parliament has written to Congress rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that U.S. forces leave, a U.S. lawmaker said on Wednesday.
The proposed pact has become increasingly controversial in Iraq, where there have been protests against it. It has also drawn criticism from Democrats on the presidential election campaign trail in the United States, who say President George W. Bush is trying to dictate war policy after he leaves office.

"The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq," the letter to the leaders of Congress said.
"What are the threats that require U.S. forces to be there?" asked Nadeem Al-Jaberi, a co-founder of the al-Fadhila Shi'ite political party, speaking through a translator.

"I would like to inform you, there are no threats on Iraq. We are capable of solving our own problems," he declared. He favored a quick pullout of U.S. forces, which invaded the country in 2003 and currently number around 155,000.

A Sunni Iraqi lawmaker, Khalaf Al-Ulayyan, founder of the National Dialogue Council, said bilateral talks on a long-term security deal should be shelved until American troops leave -- and until there is a new government in Washington.

"We prefer to delay until there is a new administration in the United States," he said.

Meanwhile, Iraq is now actively reassuring Iran that it will not let BushCo. populate the country with more bases, or more troops. Iraqis are making it clear that withdrawal comes before long-term security negotiations, a stand that Iran no doubt backs.

Can't imagine the reaction inside the White House to this exercise in self-determination by the newest democracy in the Middle East is pleasant.

If Iraq refuses to agree to the sadistic American deal detailed below, it's easy to imagine a coup attempt by plotters that will never be brought to justice, along with an upsurge of extreme violence :

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has tried to reassure Iran over a planned security pact with the US, vowing Iraq would never allow use of its territory to "harm" the Islamic republic.

"We will not allow Iraq to become a platform for harming the security of Iran and neighbours," Mr Maliki said after a late-night meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran.

Mr Maliki's comments come amid Iranian alarm over US pressure on Baghdad to sign an agreement that would keep US soldiers in the country beyond 2008. Iran has always called for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

US President George W Bush and Mr Maliki agreed in principle last November to sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) by the end of July. But Iraq has now said it has a "different vision" from the United States on the issue.

Iran's concern about the deal comes amid renewed tensions over its nuclear program, which the United States fears is aimed at making atomic weapons, a charge vehemently rejected by Tehran.

The United States has never ruled out a military attack to punish Tehran's defiance while Israel has also been warning there may be no alternative to a strike against Iran.

Mr Maliki, quoted by Iran's state news agency IRNA, said "Iraq's stability and security can have a great impact on the region ... We see the implementation of peace and security in Iraq and Iran as what both countries want."

Iraqi Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh had said Mr Maliki would be using the visit to assure Iranian leaders that Iraq "will not serve as a base or staging ground to launch attacks against neighbouring countries."

The Shiite Premier - on his third visit to Tehran since taking office two years ago - was due to also hold talks with other top officials including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr Mottaki, meanwhile, vowed that relations would expand further, saying the Iraqi delegation would "find good ground for creating new strategies in deepening the two countries' ties," according to IRNA.

US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker stressed in Washington on Thursday that Iran and Iraq were neighbours and had to conduct a relationship. "The question is: what kind of relationship is it going to be?" he said.

It's hard to imagine that air strikes on Iran by the United States and Israel will be welcomed by the Iraqi government, who now host more than 160,000 American soldiers and more than 100,000 American private security guards and support services personnel.

Hitting Iran before the nuclear threat is resolved will make many Iraqis fresh enemies of Americans, and Iran may already have extensive special forces personnel inside Iraq. No doubt they have plenty of intelligence on how to conduct the most punishing retaliatory strikes on Americans inside Iraq. Attacking Iran would further unite Iran and Iraq, with Russia and China backing them both against the United States. EU state leaders may support the US and Israel if they hit Iran, but there would be little support amongst most Europeans, who now view the United States as probably the most dangerous threat to world peace in the world today.

2008-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Of Course BushCo. Lied Its Way Into War On Iraq

A US Senate report provides further proof that not only did the Bush White House purposely exaggerate the the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq through 2002, but the administration's officials, including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, ignored intelligence assessments that told them truths they didn't want to hear.

The New York Times is as complicit as most mainstream media in allowing BushCo. to lie the United States into a stunningly expensive and utterly deadly war, but even as they shred the Bush White House for fabrication the publication still pretends as though it has no case to answer for.

And why does the mainstream media continue to portray the Bush White House, at worst, as getting a few things wrong about Iraqi WMDs instead of stating the undeniable truth that Bush and Cheney were planning War On Iraq from the earliest days of the administration?

They did not accidentally spread misinformation about the threat from Saddam Hussein in 2002, they lied, again and again, and they did not care. War On Iraq was a possibility in 2000, the 9/11 attacks gave the Bush White House the excuse they needed to smash the country into pieces.

Here's the New York Times lead editorial from yesterday :

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.

It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.

The report shows clearly that President Bush should have known that important claims he made about Iraq did not conform with intelligence reports. In other cases, he could have learned the truth if he had asked better questions or encouraged more honest answers.
The report shows that there was no intelligence to support the two most frightening claims Mr. Bush and his vice president used to sell the war: that Iraq was actively developing nuclear weapons and had longstanding ties to terrorist groups. It seems clear that the president and his team knew that that was not true, or should have known it — if they had not ignored dissenting views and telegraphed what answers they were looking for.

Over all, the report makes it clear that top officials, especially Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, knew they were not giving a full and honest account of their justifications for going to war.
The report documents how time and again Mr. Bush and his team took vague and dubious intelligence reports on Iraq’s weapons programs and made them sound like hard and incontrovertible fact.

“They continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 26, 2002, adding that “we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.”

On Oct. 7, 2002, Mr. Bush told an audience in Cincinnati that Iraq “is seeking nuclear weapons” and that “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.” Saddam Hussein, he said, “is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.”

Later, both men talked about Iraq trying to buy uranium in Africa and about the purchase of aluminum tubes that they said could only be used for a nuclear weapons program. They talked about Iraq having such a weapon in five years, then in three years, then in one.

If they had wanted to give an honest accounting of the intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear weapons, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would have said it indicated that Mr. Hussein’s nuclear weapons program had been destroyed years earlier by American military strikes.

As for Iraq’s supposed efforts to “reconstitute” that program, they would have had to say that reports about the uranium shopping and the aluminum tubes were the extent of the evidence — and those claims were already in serious doubt when Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney told the public about them. That would not have been nearly as persuasive, of course, as Mr. Bush’s infamous “mushroom cloud” warning.
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us,” Mr. Cheney said on Aug. 29, 2002.

Actually, there was plenty of doubt — at the time — about that second point. According to the Senate report, there was no evidence that Mr. Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, and the intelligence community never said there was.
...Mr. Bush declare that “Saddam Hussein would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind.”
...he said: “Each passing day could be the one on which the Iraqi regime gives anthrax or VX nerve gas or someday a nuclear weapon to a terrorist ally.”

The Senate report shows that the intelligence Mr. Bush had did not support those statements — or Mr. Rumsfeld’s that “every month that goes by, his W.M.D. programs are progressing, and he moves closer to his goal of possessing the capability to strike our population, and our allies, and hold them hostage to blackmail.”

Claims by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld that Iraq had longstanding ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups also were false, and the Senate committee’s report shows that the two men knew it, or should have.

We cannot say with certainty whether Mr. Bush lied about Iraq. But when the president withholds vital information from the public — or leads them to believe things that he knows are not true — to justify the invasion of another country, that is bad enough.

Of course the New York Times can say "with certainty" that Bush lied about Iraq. The question is why they won't.

2008-05-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

'Fate Of World Peace, Order Lies In Future Of China-Russia Ties'

This will probably prove to be one of the most important news stories of the decade, but most of the world's media barely noticed.

From the Daily Times :

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev praised on Saturday recent close ties between Moscow and Beijing as a key to global stability and said the two countries wanted to strengthen their strategic partnership.

In remarks that sounded like a veiled reference to the United States, Medvedev rejected what he said was opposition to Russian-Chinese cooperation. “Some don’t like such strategic cooperation between our countries, but we understand that this cooperation serves the interests of our people, and we will strengthen it, regardless of whether others like it or not,” he said, speaking at a university a day after he and Chinese President Hu Jintao criticized US missile defense plans.

“Russian-Chinese relations are one of the most important factors of maintaining stability in modern conditions,” he said. The former Cold War rivals have forged close political, military and commercial ties since the Soviet collapse, trying to counter what they see as US global dominance. On Friday, Medvedev and Hu said they wanted to see the peaceful use of space and rejected the deployment of weapons there, a reference to US plans for an orbiting missile-defence system.

In Saturday’s appearance at elite Tsinghua University, Hu’s alma mater, Medvedev never mentioned the United States by name and said the Russian-Chinese alliance “is not directed against any other nation. “It is aimed at maintaining a global balance,” he said. Medvedev said Russia and China support international law and a “decisive role” for the United Nations. Moscow has accused Washington and other Western governments of abusing international law in Iraq and Kosovo.

Russia also strengthened its role as a supplier to China’s booming nuclear power industry Friday, signing a US$1 billion deal to build a fuel enrichment facility and supply uranium. The joint Russian-Chinese criticism of US missile defence plans appeared to raise the stakes for Washington, which has been trying to persuade Beijing and especially Moscow not to see them as a threat. The diplomatic cooperation masks Russian unease at China’s growing power, and differences over military and energy sales. The White House said Friday it was disappointed that Medvedev had not changed the opposition expressed by his predecessor, Vladimir Putin. “We’re going to work with them to work through these concerns, and we think we can resolve any concerns that anyone has about this and the true nature of the programme,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

After a slow warming in the 1990s, Beijing and Moscow have in recent years joined together in opposing Kovoso’s independence and on Iran’s nuclear crisis. The two have held joint military manoeuvres on each other’s turf and created a regional security grouping, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to keep the West out of energy-rich Central Asia.

2008-05-26T09:10:00.001-07:00

United States' Influence Fades As Oil Demand Realigns World Powers

Decades from now, the invasion and occupation of Iraq may be remembered as 'The Last Oil War'. Or at least, the last War For Oil by the United States.

The following story from Le Monde looks at how world power has shifted, as western control over Middle East oil supplies have faded, and why more wars for oil in the Middle East are unlikely :

In the beginning of the 1970s, when a barrel of black gold cost less than $2, no one imagined that one day an American president would be reduced to begging the king of Saudi Arabia for an increase in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' (OPEC's) production to bring down prices. Yet the West has reached that point. After an initial rebuff in mid-January, George W. Bush was at it again on Friday, May 16, during his meeting with King Abdullah in Riyadh. With no more success than the first time, unless one counts a limited and temporary increase.
The time is long gone when Standard Oil of New Jersey, Anglo-Persian, Gulf Oil and their four other "sisters" dominated the world market. When President Roosevelt got King Ibn Saud to open Saudi wells to foreign companies in exchange for American military protection (1945). When Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh - guilty of nationalizing hydrocarbons - could be overthrown with impunity (1953). When one could pretend to believe that oil is an inexhaustible cornucopia.
Market power has changed sides. It has slipped away from consuming countries and from Big Oil (Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP ...). The development of the price per barrel ($128), is being determined behind the scenes in the Kremlin and in the meanders of the Iranian government, in Nigerian mangroves and on the banks of the Venezuelan Orinoco, in OPEC's Viennese corridors and in the halls of the New York Mercantile Exchange. And, above all, in Saudi palaces.
The world is experiencing a third oil shock - slower than those of 1973 and 1980. The barrel, the price of which has increased six times in as many years, is more expensive in constant dollars than it was in the beginning of 1981. Its price may ebb by some $10 or $20 in coming months, but nothing is less certain. Analysts as respected as those of investment bank Goldman Sachs see the price going to an average of $141 in the second half of 2008 and to $148 in 2009. OPEC no longer rules out $200.
The Wahabite kingdom, the only country able to put a million additional barrels on the market, balks at that idea. It even stiffened its tone recently, when it announced that between 2009 and 2020 it would limit daily production to 12.5 million barrels a day to preserve its reserves and the interests of future generations along with them. "Every time there are new discoveries, leave them in the ground, for our children will need them," the king has resolved.
Nothing induces the Saudis to open the spigots. They consider the market to be well-supplied and stocks of crude and gas to be at good levels. They are especially worried about the United States' energy policy, which aims to reduce US "dependency" on Middle Eastern oil - a watchword launched by Mr. Bush and re-echoed in a single voice by presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama. All that's necessary to understand the stakes is to hear the Saudi energy minister's denunciations of the bio-carburants being developed on the other side of the Atlantic. On top of that, comes certain American congresspeople's desire to submit the oil market to the anti-cartel rules of international trade, even to suspend arms sales if Riyadh doesn't increase its oil production. These initiatives worry and exasperate OPEC. The strategy of the Vienna cartel - which has given up setting a price range since 2003 - seems simple: supply the market to avoid any break, reduce the "security cushion" to a minimum (2 million barrels a day) and thus maintain the highest prices possible without compromising economic growth. With three-quarters of global reserves, the thirteen OPEC member states have the means to enforce their policy.
Consumer countries' dependence is linked to the fragility of the multinational companies. Oil states and their national public companies share 85 percent of the world's reserves. The majors no longer hold more than 15 percent and are having trouble reconstituting that percentage to the extent they draw those reserves down. What weight does "giant" ExxonMobil - the biggest listed company in the world - carry compared to Gazprom or Saudi Aramco? The great Western companies' access to oil fields - closed in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Mexico, ever more difficult in Russia, Venezuela and Algeria - would involve "returning to the period before the 1970s' nationalizations," believes Nicolas Sarkis, director of the "Arab Oil and Gas Review."
Will it be necessary to make war for the precious liquid? Unimaginable, even if the thirst for oil was one motive for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, as acknowledged by former Fed boss Alan Greenspan. What was the payoff? By increasing tensions in the Middle East and reducing supply, the war contributed to the spike in prices. Taking possession of these reserves by force would be a "rear-guard battle," with the oil-producing countries in "a position of strength" today, Mr. Sarkis notes. "They can sell their enormous dollar reserves and deprive the warmongers of oil by offering it to more pacific countries. To China, rather than America!
A number of industrialized countries learned their lesson from the 1973 and 1980 crises and reduced their dependence. They need less oil to create the same amount of wealth. In the United States, successive administrations have resolved the issue the same way: "the American way of life is not negotiable." A policy that has led to US dependence on imported oil moving from 60 percent to 80 percent.
In the immediate future, the problem is geopolitical: access to the resource is contracting. Longer term, the problem is geological. One trillion two hundred billion barrels of oil remain, or forty years' worth of consumption at the current rate of extraction. The most optimistic multiply that number by three, adding in the so-called "unconventional" crudes (heavy oils, bituminous shales). Unfortunately, they are very costly to extract. Fields are diminishing in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Mexico, Indonesia ...
The only answer resides in a reduction in consumption.

2008-05-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

Japan Strips Itself Of Pacifist Nation Status As It Looks To The Skies

The Space Wars Begin

Many nations are planning for war in space. Long term military strategies for all the world's powers naturally include launching satellites and other platforms into space to increase spying capabilities, and to eventually lock weapons into orbit that can take out people, vehicles, towns and cities on earth, along with enemy satellites and weapons platforms.

China, Russia, the United States, all have their eyes on dominating near space in the decades to come, at least directly over their own territories, and allies, and while China has been vocal in its opposition to the weaponisation of space, it too, like the United States, is planning for the day when armies are obsolete, and destruction can be wrought on the enemy from 20 miles above the planet. They're all planning, and testing, but none want to be the first to officially announce that space is the new frontier for war-fighting.

But now Japan has decided it's time to get serious about increasing its military capability into space, and has given an official start to what presumably will become known as the 'Space Wars', should the world's nations history of violence and confrontation continue in this new domain, as it has on the lands below.

Japan passed a law on Wednesday allowing military use of space, ending a decades-old pacifist policy as it casts a wary eye on North Korea's nuclear ambitions and China's rising spending on its armed forces.
The law, which allows the military to launch its own satellites for spying and warn of missile launches but rules out offensive weapons in space, was approved by parliament's opposition-controlled upper house, a sign of rare consensus in Japan's divided political arena.

Japan's space scientists and industry have long complained that the separation of space development from the military since 1969 hampers technological process in the sector.

Japan's powerful Keidanren business lobby had pushed for the law along with a relaxation of the country's ban on arms exports in order to help the nation's defence industry compete globally.

"The key point is that rather than just focusing on research and development like before, this new law will balance R&D, the industry, and security," Satoshi Tsuzukibashi, a director at one of Keidanren's industrial affairs bureau, said.

"In the future, there will be more satellites and rockets used for space security, so that is a positive factor for the space industry," he added.

The legislation mandates the creation of a new cabinet level post to oversee Japan's space security, a move that could help pry more funding out of tight-fisted finance bureaucrats worried about the nation's bulging public debt.

Space security. The US will soon follow in announcing its own new 'Space Security' military plans, which will be in sync with Japan. Presumably, Russia and China will then make clear that they, too, are working on joint space defense systems to ensure their own 'Space Security.'

2008-05-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Blackwater Has Iraq Contracts Renewed By US Government

It's the corporate military team that slaughtered 17 people at a Baghdad intersection, but they've just had their security-providing services renewed for another few hundred million dollars. Why? US officials say they have no choice :

Guards for the security company were involved in a shooting in September that left at least 17 Iraqis dead at a Baghdad intersection. Outrage over the killings prompted the Iraqi government to demand Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and led to a criminal investigation by the F.B.I., a series of internal investigations by the State Department and the Pentagon, and high-profile Congressional hearings.
But after an intense public and private lobbying campaign, Blackwater appears to be back to business as usual.

The State Department has just renewed its contract to provide security for American diplomats in Iraq for at least another year. Threats by the Iraqi government to strip Western contractors of their immunity from Iraqi law have gone nowhere. No charges have been brought in the United States against any Blackwater guard in the September shooting, either, and the F.B.I. agents in Baghdad charged with investigating whether Blackwater guards have committed any crimes under United States law are sometimes protected as they travel through Baghdad by Blackwater guards.

The chief reason for the company’s survival? State Department officials said Friday that they did not believe they had any alternative to Blackwater, which supplies about 800 guards to the department to provide security for diplomats in Baghdad. Officials say only three companies in the world meet their requirements for protective services in Iraq, and the other two do not have the capability to take on Blackwater’s role in Baghdad. After the shooting in September, the State Department did not even open talks with the other two companies, DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, to see if they could take over from Blackwater, which is based in North Carolina.

“We cannot operate without private security firms in Iraq,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. “If the contractors were removed, we would have to leave Iraq.”

And they're not planning on doing that, any time soon.

It's Blackwater, or a draft.

2008-05-07T04:01:00.001-07:00

1 In 5 American 'War On Terror' Veterans Come Home With PTSD, Depression

Suicides May Outnumber War Zone Deaths

The survival rate for American soldiers shot, bombed and blown up, in Iraq and Afghanistan is the best of any American war. But the cloud of suicide hangs over hundreds of thousands of American veterans, and unlike WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam, governments in the future will not be able to pretend the 'suicidal-veteran' problem does not exist :

Suicides and "psychological mortality" among US soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan could exceed battlefield deaths if their mental scars are left untreated, the head of the US Institute of Mental Health warned Monday.

Of the 1.6 million US soldiers who have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, 18-20 percent -- or around 300,000 -- show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression or both, said Thomas Insel, head of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Left untreated, PTSD and depression can lead to substance abuse, alcoholism or other life-threatening behaviors.

"It's a gathering storm for the civilian and public health care sectors," Insel said.

The true cost of the War On Iraq for the US is now starting to come into focus.

Many Americans, thanks to Pentagon controlled and customised reporting on the war by much of the mainstream media, have no real understanding of the horrors witnessed by young soldiers, or how much paying for the care of the mentally wounded will cost the treasury in decades to come.

2008-05-05T08:01:00.000-07:00

New York Times Pimps NeoCons War On Iran

Lebanon Terror Masters In Iran Training Iraqi Insurgents : The Story Sourced From An Anonymous "Official" Based On Reports Media Is Not Allowed To See

The New York Times is proud to declare itself thoroughly against the War On Iraq, even as it helps set the scene for a War On Iran. A headline from today :

Hezbollah Trains Iraqis in Iran, Officials Say

This 'news' story is very reminiscent of pieces in the Washington Post and the New York Times back in late 2002, blithely producing reams of headlines, op-eds and stories light on hard facts but heavy on big claims made by "officials".

The journalist admits that he is quoting from a set of interrogation reports he hasn't seen, and is simply taking the word of the "official" that they are exactly what they are claimed to be :

The "official' summed up the information from the interrogation reports but did not make them available. He declined to be identified because the information had not been released publicly.

If the interrogation reports are so solid on evidence, why wouldn't the "official" put their name to claims of Iranian interference that work in the White House's favour as it tries to undermine Iran? Alarm bells once rang in journalists' heads when any "official" from the government tried to feed them stories based on reports the journalists are not allowed to see.

Not now.

Militants from the Lebanese group Hezbollah have been training Iraqi militia fighters at a camp near Tehran, according to American interrogation reports that the United States has supplied to the Iraqi government.
An American official said the account of Hezbollah’s role was provided by four Shiite militia members who were captured in Iraq late last year and questioned separately.
The United States has long charged that the Iranians were training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran, which Iran has consistently denied, and there have been previous reports about Hezbollah operatives in Iraq.
Material from the interrogations was given to the Iraqi government, along with other data about captured Iranian arms, before it sent a delegation to Tehran last week to discuss allegations of Iranian aid to militia groups.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government announced Sunday that it would conduct its own inquiry into accusations of Iranian intervention in Iraq and document any interference.
“We have experienced in the past that Iran interfered and has special groups in Iraq, but Iran also had evidence that they were participating in positive ways in security,” Ali al-Dabbagh, a senior Iraqi government spokesman, said in an interview.

“We would like the Iranians to keep their commitment, the commitments they made in meetings with the prime minister and with other groups that have visited them,” he said. “They had made the promise that Iran would be playing a supportive role.”

Iran's clearly not going to leave, or let go, of Iraq. The Iraq government and most Shiites don't want Iran to leave Iraq. They want the United States to leave Iraq.

There has been debate among experts about the extent to which Iran is responsible for instability in Iraq. But President Bush and other American officials, in public castigations of Iran, have said that Iran has been consistently meddlesome in Iraq and that the Iranians have long sought to arm and train Iraqi militias, which the American military has called “special groups.”

In a possible effort to be less obtrusive, it appears that Iran is now bringing small groups of Iraqi Shiite militants to camps in Iran, where they are taught how to do their own training, American officials say.

The militants then return to Iraq to teach comrades how to fire rockets and mortars, fight as snipers or assemble explosively formed penetrators, a particularly lethal type of roadside bomb made of Iranian components, according to American officials. The officials describe this approach as “training the trainers.”

According to their interrogation reports, the militiamen believed that militants from other countries were also being trained at the camp, an impression based on hearing snippets of conversations in other dialects and languages.

They think they might have heard other prisoners talking about such things, in other languages.

“We don’t want to be at war with Iran, and we will not allow anyone to settle their scores with Iran on Iraqi soil,” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser to Mr. Maliki, said Saturday in an interview. “But at the same time, we don’t want Iran to settle their scores with the United States on Iraqi soil.”
Jalaluddin al-Sagheer, a prominent member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite political party, asserted that the Iraqi Shiite politicians would be loath to take any position that would alienate Iran.

“Iran is not an easy country for us,” he said. “We have a long border with them; we have a long history of relations with them; we have strong commercial ties with them and we cannot hurt that because of copies of documents.”

Key Iraqi politicians obviously think the information within the interrogation reports is utter crap, and they don't want to embarrass themselves with the Iranians by having anything to do with what may or may not turn out to be pure propaganda from Israel and the US.

2008-05-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

CBS News : Prepare For War On Iran

One of the more lurid examples of how the American corporate media is preparing Americans for an inevitable 'War On Iran'. The reasons for war are established, the threat posed is made intolerable, the capacity to strike from the air and sea is boasted, and promoted. It is not about proof or reason only the creation of a 'War On Iran' reality :

A second American aircraft carrier steamed into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday as the Pentagon ordered military commanders to develop new options for attacking Iran.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the planning is being driven by what one officer called the "increasingly hostile role" Iran is playing in Iraq - smuggling weapons into Iraq for use against American troops.

"What the Iranians are doing is killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

U.S. officials are also concerned by Iranian harassment of U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf as well as Iran's still growing nuclear program. New pictures of Iran's uranium enrichment plant show the country's defense minister in the background, as if deliberately mocking a recent finding by U.S. intelligence that Iran had ceased work on a nuclear weapon.

"I have reserve capability, in particular our Navy and our Air Force so it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability," Mullen said.

Targets would include everything from the plants where weapons are made to the headquarters of the organization known as the Quds Force which directs operations in I.raq. Later this week Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is expected to confront the Iranians with evidence of their meddling and demand a halt.

If that doesn't produce results, the State Department has begun drafting an ultimatum that would tell the Iranians to knock it off - or else.

It's a replay of 2002, and how the corporate media that reaches almost every US TV, radio or newspaper helped Americans to believe that War On Iraq was not only inevitable, but that it was warranted, necessary, and already way overdue.

2008-04-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Iran, Pakistan, India Invoke US Fury Over Joint Deal On "Peace Pipeline"

India, Pakistan Refuse To Follow US Demands To Cut Ties With Iran

There are still plenty of intelligence analysts and military experts who believe that the action taken against Afghanistan shortly after the 9/11 attacks was already on the Pentagon's drawing board, and the invasion had more to do with the future route of energy pipelines than it did with destroying Al Qaeda, or winding back the Taliban.

If the routes of Asian energy pipelines were cause for war against Afghanistan in 2001, what will be the end result of this remarkable news?

A multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project linking Iran, Pakistan and India that is bitterly opposed by Washington is set to go ahead after Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a historic first visit to meet leaders of the new coalition government in Islamabad.
Mr Ahmadinejad's arrival to finalise the ambitious Iran-Pakistan-India project, known as the "Peace Pipeline", came just days after India's Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora affirmed New Delhi's support for the pipeline during a visit to Pakistan.

Indian participation in the IPI project is seen as a major snub to Washington and a measure of New Delhi's and Islamabad's unwillingness to allow the US todictate the terms of relations with Iran.

Pakistan, both under the former dictatorship of President Pervez Musharraf and its new democratic Government, has made plain that it intends to maintain close relations with Tehran.
The Government in New Delhi, battling what appears to be insuperable opposition from the country's powerful Leftists over its nuclear deal with the US, reacted angrily last week after a State Department official in Washington demanded it take a tough line in talks with Mr Ahmadinejad when he visits the country.

The IPI pipeline is the centrepiece of Iranian ties with South Asia that are rapidly expanding despite US attempts to isolate it over the country's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Ahmadinejad arrived in Islamabad from Sri Lanka, which is also developing strong ties with Tehran.
Welcoming Iran's help, the country's Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona was quoted yesterday as saying: "In Asia we don't go around preaching to our neighbours and friends."
The pipeline, estimated to cost $7.8 billion and to be completed by 2011, is to traverse 2775km stretching from Iran to Pakistan and then into India.
To the chagrin of the US, Mr Ahmadinejad was being feted on his arrival in Islamabad yesterday as one of the new Pakistan Government's best friends. He was also assured Pakistan would not allow its territory to be used in an attack on Iran.

The world is moving on, without the United States.

Go Here For The Full Story

From the Fourth World War blog, this time last year :

...the rapidly growing economic centres of the world - China, Russia, India - are leaving the United States behind, as they push forward in setting the scene for how much of the world's key energy supplies - natural gas and oil - will be transported across the globe in the coming decades.

China, India, Iran, Russia, no longer appear to wilt before US economic and trade threats, or promises of denial of key energy technologies or arms sales, if they don't comply with the wishes of the fading superpower.

Pakistan will access some of the gas, and will be paid by India for 'hosting' the pipeline. This deal, long in the making, pleases China and Russia. They view the rise of India as a future superpower as a major positive, and they see few negatives in growing ties between Iran and Pakistan. The only truly long face in the international arena over this new pipeline is that of the United States'.

2008-03-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

The Costs Of War : Billions And Trillions

A Nobel prize winning economist has crunched the numbers on the Iraq War, and comes up with a total war cost bill to future generations of Americans of more than $3 trillion.

But that $3 trillion figure is just the cost of the Iraq War to Americans. For the rest of the world, the final tally is likely to be even higher (excerpts from this story) :

Next month America will have been in Iraq for five years - longer than it spent in either world war. Daily military operations (not counting, for example, future care of wounded) have already cost more than 12 years in Vietnam, and twice as much as the Korean war. America is spending $16bn a month on running costs alone (ie on top of the regular expenses of the Department of Defence) in Iraq and Afghanistan; that is the entire annual budget of the UN. Large amounts of cash go missing - the well-publicised $8.8bn Development Fund for Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, for example; and the less-publicised millions that fall between the cracks at the Department of Defence, which has failed every official audit of the past 10 years.

Whatever the much argued reasons for bombing Baghdad, cheap oil has not been the result. In fact, the price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 in the past five years - great for oil companies, and oil-producing countries, who, along with the contractors, are the only beneficiaries of this war, but not for anyone else. After calculations based on futures markets, Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude that a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the disruptions and instabilities caused by Iraq. This price rise alone has cost the US, which imports about 5bn barrels a year, an extra $25bn per year; projecting to 2015 brings that number to an extra $1.6 trillion on oil alone (against which the recent $125bn stimulus package is simply, as Stiglitz puts it, "a drop in the bucket").

Economist Stiglitz also puts to death the long persuasive myth that the United States going to war is good news for its economy :

....in specific cases, such as world war two, one that has seemed to be true - but in 1939, America and Europe were in a depression; there was all sorts of possible supply in the market, but people didn't have the cash to buy anything. Making armaments meant jobs, more people with more disposable income, and so on - but peacetime western economies these days operate near full employment. As Stiglitz and Bilmes put it, "Money spent on armaments is money poured down the drain"; far better to invest in education, infrastructure, research, health, and reap the rewards in the long term.

Perhaps worst of all, the United States isn't even paying for its War On Iraq :

...the borrowed trillions have to come from somewhere. Because "the saving rate [in America] is zero," says Stiglitz, "that means that you have to finance [the war] by borrowing abroad. So China is financing America's war." The US is now operating at such a deficit, in fact, that it doesn't have the money to bail out its own banks. "When Merrill Lynch and Citibank had a problem, it was sovereign funds from abroad that bailed them out. And we had to give up a lot of shares of our ownership. So the largest shareowners in Citibank now are in the Middle East. It should be called the MidEast bank, not the Citibank." This creates a precedent of dependence, "and whether we become dependent on Middle East oil money, or Chinese reserves - it's that dependency that people ought to worry about. That is a big change. The amount of borrowing in the last eight years, on top of the borrowing that began with Reagan - that has all changed the US's economic position in the world."

The full story is here, but here's some of the numbers :

$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices.

The NeoCons are fire-selling, through further borrowing, what remains of America's assets and businesses to China, and other Asian lenders, to keep fighting a war they cannot win.

The NeoCons officially have the world's most expensive egos.

2008-03-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

How Iran Won The American-Led War On Iraq

The Asia Times' formidable Pepe Escobar floats the theory, first raised by Iranian conservatives, that Iran has already proved itself to be the ultimate victor in the US/UK/Australian-led War On Iraq :

Hanif Ghaffari, writing in the Farsi-language, conservative Iranian daily Resalat, has pointed out how the recent, very successful Ahmadinejad trip to Iraq had to be considered in the context of "Iran after the Iraq war" and "Iraq after occupation by America". The message could not be more graphic. When Bush went to Iraq he saw an ultra-fortified military base, and that was it. Ahmadinejad went everywhere in broad daylight, welcomed like a brother.

This is how Tehran sees itself - as the ultimate victor of the US war on Iraq. And no "surge" or spin - not to mention Israeli paranoia - can or will make it go away.

The rest of Escobar's very interesting report can be read here.

2008-03-08T07:44:00.001-08:00

I've neglected this blog in the past couple of months. Too distracted by novel writing, maintaining other blogs and real world commitments. Outside of news reporting of the attacks and battles of our new world war, there seems little new that can be said about the key war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 'War on Terror' in general.

There'll be more essays and stories here in the future, but if you've found your way here, and want the latest news, the best daily news aggregation services for the events of the Fourth World War would be these two :

AntiWar

Information Clearing House

Though if you read both daily, you'll probably become like me after a while, and be no longer able to soak up the horrors without it affecting your other work. It's good to be informed, but there can be limits on war-related information overload.

Taking a break from the daily news feeds sometimes to remember what was, and has always been, important in your life and remembering to enjoy yourself is also essential.

Two other blogs I write are getting daily, or near daily updates, some of which are related to the events of the Fourth World War. Those two blogs are :

The Orstrahyun

Your New Reality

The novel I've been writing online for the past few months is here :

ED Day : Dead Sydney

2008-02-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

OPEC Prepares To Dump US Dollar As Primary Oil Pricing Currency

Iranian Oil Bourse Set To Trade In Euros

Saddam Hussein decided the Euro was a better currency than the US Dollar for selling Iraq's oil, but then Iraq was invaded. Within three months of the start of the War On Iraq, in March, 2003, Iraq was back selling its oil in American dollars.

If OPEC backs the move by Iran and Venezuela to do away with the US Dollar, it will be grim news indeed for the American economy, and will add to the momentum that is already peeling away the remaining value of the US Dollar as a stable world currency.

From PressTV :

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries plans to discuss a proposal by Iran and Venezuela to price oil in non-dollar currencies.

Finance minister of the group, which supplies 40 percent of the global crude demand, will meet to study the proposal, the organization's President Chakib Khelil said.

Khalil, however, did not say when the ministers are scheduled to discuss the proposal amid the ongoing depreciation of the dollar.

The idea floated by Tehran and Caracas since the dwindling dollar fallen 16.2 percent against a basket of major currencies since two years ago.

Iran, the OPEC's second largest exporter, has already cut all of its ties with the greenback with respect to oil transactions.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani had also said earlier that amid concerns about the weakness of the US dollar in recent months, the oil-rich Persian Gulf littoral state would shift Qatari riyal from the US currency over the next six months.

"The dollar lost a lot of value and energy worldwide is priced in the dollar, so all the producers are affected by the development on the dollar. This is a cycle so we have to live with it," Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah said.

The UAE is also likely to follow the lead, as Kuwait did last May.

From the Associated Press :

Iran has already registered for another oil bourse, in which it has said it hopes to trade oil in Euros instead of dollars, to reduce any American influence over the Islamic Republic's economy. A bourse official, Mahdi Karbasian, told the IRNA official news agency that such an oil market would begin operating within the next year.

While most oil markets are traded in U.S. dollars, Iran first floated the idea of trading oil in Euros in the early 2000s during the tenure of reformist president Mohammad Khatami.
It gained new life after the nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005.

As the fourth largest oil producer in the world, Iran has a measure of influence over international oil markets. The country ranks second for output among OPEC Countries, and controls about 5 percent of the global oil supply.

Tehran also partially controls the Persian Gulf's Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil supply must pass. Iran has sought to wield its oil resources as a bargaining tool in its ongoing standoff with the West over its nuclear program.

Expect BushCo. to retaliate.

2008-02-05T19:28:00.000-08:00

Iraq Oil Flows, Western Energy Corps Lick Their Lips

News that Iraq's oil is now beginning to flow again at pre-war levels is good news for Iraqis. Whether or not it is really good news depends on how much of the profits from a new boom in Iraqi oil stay within Iraq and are poured into rebuilding the country and the economy :

Buried beneath the surface are the pipelines that carry Iraq’s liquid gold – crude oil – from Kirkuk’s giant oil-fields 50 miles (80km) down to Baiji, and then up to Turkey for export to the energy-hungry West.
The US Army Corps of Engineers began building this $30 million (£15 million) Pipeline Exclusion Zone (PEZ) between Kirkuk and Baiji last July, and will finish it next month. It has already reduced dramatically the number of attacks by those Sunni insurgents who have been waging a second, less-noticed war over the past four years – not against US troops or Shias but against the oil industry on which Iraq’s entire economy depends.
As a result, that industry is displaying unmistakable signs of recovery for the first time since the US invasion of 2003. Exports have risen almost to prewar levels, and with Iraq sitting on 113 billion barrels of proven reserves – the third largest in the world – that is welcome news not just for Baghdad but for a world reeling from record oil prices.
The PEZ is only one measure taken by the US and Iraqi authorities to secure the Kirkuk to Baiji pipelines. They have also replaced Sunni and Shia soldiers with more aggressive, trustworthy Kurds such as Private Mustafa, and removed the 3rd Strategic Infantry Battalion which was, say US army officers, “deeply corrupt”. Its locally recruited members were almost certainly working with the insurgents – telling them when the oil was flowing, helping them to steal it, even staging fake assaults on their own positions to conceal their duplicity.
The huge 46-inch wide pipeline that carries the crude 180 miles north from Baiji to the Turkish border is too long for a PEZ and a little less secure – 14 guards have been killed since September. But even there attacks have been greatly reduced, largely through coopting local tribes by giving their young men jobs in the Oil Police, the revamped, 31,000-strong mini-army that protects Iraq’s oil infrastructure.
The results of this improved security are startling. The pipeline to Turkey was operational just 17 days in the first seven months of last year, and every day but five in the last quarter. Two-thirds of the 48 million barrels of oil exported from Kirkuk last year were exported in those last three months alone. A second $100 million PEZ will be constructed this year to protect the 130-mile line from Baiji to Baghdad.
Kirkuk accounts for roughly a third of Iraq’s oil production. Fuelled by its recovery, Iraq is producing an average of 2.4 million barrels a day – just below its prewar level of 2.6 million – with the Oil Ministry confidently predicting an output of 3.5 million by next year. That would match the level Iraq last achieved in 1979, just before the Iran-Iraq War. “It’s an ambitious goal, but it’s possible,” said a US official closely involved with the industry.
Thanks to rising oil production, the International Monetary Fund believes that Iraq’s battered economy will grow 7 per cent this year. And with oil prices near record highs, the US Special Inspector for Iraq this week forecast a $15 billion windfall for a country whose $48 billion budget for 2008 was calculated when oil, which accounts for 90 per cent of its revenues, fetched a mere $55 a barrel.
US officials say the Iraqi Government now has far more money than it has the capacity to spend. In 2006, for example, the Oil Ministry spent just 3 per cent of the $3.5 billion it was allocated for oil reconstruction projects.
The tragedy is that the recovery has taken so long. At the time of the US invasion, Vice-President Dick Cheney and other senior US officials boldly predicted that production would exceed three million barrels a day within eight months, generating more than enough money to rebuild Iraq.
The Bush Administration also failed to foresee the virulence of the insurgency. The website Iraq Pipeline Watch records 466 attacks on oil infrastructure or employees since 2003, and that is probably a fraction of the real total. US officials reckon as many as half the industry’s most skilled workers fled Iraq, or were killed, as Iraq descended into mayhem. The insurgents have used the oil that was supposed to finance the country’s reconstruction to fund their efforts to destroy it.

Stats from the London Times on Iraq's oil :

113bn Barrels of proven oil reserves in Iraq, the third highest after Saudi Arabia and Iran. Experts say the real figure may be nearly double that as so little of the country has been properly explored
2.4m Barrels of oil a day now being produced, below the record of 3.5 million in 1979, the year before the Iran-Iraq war began, but nearly back to the 2.6 million before the US invasion of 2003
$39bn Amount earned by Iraq’s oil exports last year, up 31 per cent. The daily average exported was 1.6 million barrels, up 9 per cent
90% Oil accounts for 90 per cent of the country’s revenues
60% Despite its sea of oil, Iraq imports nearly 60 per cent of its petrol and other oil products because its refineries cannot produce enough

2008-02-03T16:37:00.001-08:00

The Three Wars Of Iraq

US Loses Sight Of 'Enemy' As Confusion Reigns About Alliances And Tribal Loyalties

Patrick Cockburn provides yet another insightful, detailed portrait of Baghdad almost five years after the US occupation of Iraq began :

Iraq is less violent than a year ago, but the country is still the most dangerous in the world. So it was no surprise to anyone in Baghdad, where people have long dreaded a renewal of al-Qa'ida's savage bombing campaign directed at Shia civilians, that there should be suicide attacks on two bird markets, killing 92 people on Friday.

For all President George Bush's claims of progress, cited in his final State of the Union address last week, Baghdad looks like a city out of the Middle Ages, divided into hostile townships. Districts have been turned into fortresses, encircled by walls made out of concrete slabs. Police and soldiers check all identities at the entrances and exits.
"People say things are better than they were," says Zainab Jafar, a well-educated Shia woman, "but what they mean is that they are better than the bloodbath of 2006. The situation is still terrible."
There are checkpoints everywhere. I counted 27 on the road from central Baghdad to Fallujah, 30 miles west of the capital. These guard posts provide protection, but they are also a threat because there are so many of them that it is easy for kidnappers, criminals and militiamen to set up their own checkpoints in order to select likely victims.

Meanwhile, US troops are trying to cope with widespread confusion about which Iraqis, and Iraqi police and army personnel, are their allies and which are their enemies. Some of this confusion is due to American recruitment of Sunni insurgents to their side, where they are paid, armed and trained to not only patrol their neighbourhoods and keep track of who comes and goes, but also how to fight Al Qaeda. Many former Sunni insurgents have allied themselves to the Americans because of the brutality and horror of Al Qaeda attacks on civilians, and growing fears that the Shiites have taken almost total control of the Iraq government and parliament.

From the Washington Post :

Three separate but related wars are being waged in this country now, and the third one, against Shiite extremists, is the most worrisome, according to the commander and senior staff of the U.S. Army division patrolling Baghdad.
The first, against al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group that U.S. officials believe is foreign-led, is going well despite occasional spikes in violence, such as Friday's dual bombings of Baghdad marketplaces. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is "frustrated" but "not defeated," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W. Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview last week.
The second fight, against the domestic Sunni insurgency, has become dormant in many places in the past year, as about 80,000 armed men, many of them former insurgents, switched sides and came onto the U.S. payroll with groups that officers here call "Concerned Local Citizens."
The third conflict, and perhaps the most vexing for U.S. commanders, is with Shiite extremist militias. More than two-thirds of U.S. casualties are caused by roadside bombs, particularly by high-tech anti-armor devices, planted by those groups.
Overall, senior U.S. officers find the state of the wars unexpectedly good, and are allowing themselves to begin speaking optimistically. "A year ago, I didn't see any way it was going to work out to our advantage," said Col. James Rainey, the 4th Infantry Division's director of operations, who is on his third tour of duty in Iraq. The difference now, he said, is "remarkable."
A major reason for the change, he said, is the increased effectiveness of the Iraqi army and police, to which the U.S. military refers collectively as Iraqi security forces, or ISF. "The ISF, when I was over here last time, couldn't do anything," Rainey said. Now, he continued, they frequently show tactical competence. That's crucial for future security here, because as U.S. troop numbers drop by about 25,000 between now and midsummer, to roughly 130,000, Iraqi forces will be handed a greater share of the burden.
At the same time, the officers are conscious that the fighting here has morphed several times over the past five years, as adversaries have adjusted to changes in U.S. tactics. Some officers worry that various factions, taken aback by how effective U.S. operations proved in the past year after several years of frequent counterproductive effect, are lying low as they try to devise new ways to attack.
For example, as measures such as checkpoints outside marketplaces have made car bombs less effective in inflicting mass casualties, said Maj. Jeff Jones, the division's deputy chief of intelligence, al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to turn more to suicide bombers.
Lately, Jones said, al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to attack local armed groups who are cooperating with U.S. forces. The majority of those groups are Sunni, and the attacks now mean that al-Qaeda in Iraq is "the single largest killer of Sunnis in Iraq," he said.
The most challenging part of the war in early 2008 appears to be roadside bombs planted by Shiite extremist groups.
The U.S. military calls those organizations "special groups," to distinguish them from other Islamic fighters under the sway of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. U.S. officials hope Sadr will give up violence as a political tool altogether, rather than declare a six-month cease-fire, as he did in August.

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2008-02-03T16:35:00.001-08:00

Afghanistan : Taliban Turn Back From Pakistan To Fight NATO

Preparing For New Spring Offensive

According to this story from the Asia Times, the Taliban are preparing for their spring offensive against NATO troops in Afghanistan, following months of heavy conflict against Pakistan security forces the tribal regions of Pakistan :

...Taliban leader Mullah Omar has put his foot down and reset the goals for the Taliban: their primary task is the struggle in Afghanistan, not against the Pakistan state.

Mullah Omar has sacked his own appointed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, the main architect of the fight against Pakistani security forces, and urged all Taliba commanders to turn their venom against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, highly placed contacts in the Taliban told Asia Times Online.

This major development occurred at a time when Pakistan was reaching out with an olive branch to the Pakistani Taliban. Main commanders, including Hafiz Gul Bahadur and the main Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan, Sirajuddin Haqqani, signed peace agreements. But al-Qaeda elements, including Tahir Yuldashev, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, undermined this initiative.

"We refused any peace agreement with the Pakistani security forces and urged the mujahideen fight for complete victory," Yuldashev said in a jihadi video message seen by Asia Times Online. Yuldashev's closest aide and disciple, Mehsud, last week carried out an attack on a Pakistani security post and then seized two forts in the South Waziristan tribal area.

As a result, Pakistan bombed South Waziristan and sent in heavy artillery and tanks for a major operation against Mehsud. Other important commanders are now in North Waziristan and they support the peace agreements with the Pakistani security forces.

Pakistan's strategic quarters maintain the planned operation in South Waziristan is aimed particularly at eliminating Mehsud.

According to Taliban quarters in Afghanistan that Asia Times Online spoke to recently, the Taliban have well-established pockets around Logar, Wardak and Ghazni, which are all gateways to the capital Kabul.

Many important districts in the southwestern provinces, including Zabul, Helmand, Urzgan and Kandahar, are also under the control of the Taliban. Similarly, districts in the northwestern, including Nimroz, Farah and Ghor, have fallen to the Taliban.

Certainly, the Taliban will be keen to advance from these positions, but they will also concentrate on destroying NATO's supply lines from Pakistan into Afghanistan. The Taliban launched their first attack in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province on Monday, destroying a convoy of oil tankers destined for NATO's Kandahar air field.

"If NATO's supply lines are shut down from Pakistan, NATO will sweat in Afghanistan," a member of a leading humanitarian organization in Kabul told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. "The only substitute would be air operations, but then NATO costs would sky-rocket."

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NATO Allies Divided On How To Tackle Growing Afghanistan Crisis

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2008-01-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

Iraqis Unite, On Demands For Americans To Go Home

Asia Times' reporter Pepe Escobar can usually be relied on to supply a brutally honest portrait of the state of Iraq as a nation, and the Iraqis as a people. His reporting throughout the Iraq War has been revelatory, and his predictions of what was to come (the rise of the resistance movement through 2004, for example) have been stunningly accurate, though it took mainstream news organs like the New York Times and the London Times three to six months to report what Escobar detailed in the Asia Times.

Escobar now supplies an overall portrait of Iraq as the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion and occupation approaches. It's not pretty :

The George W Bush-sponsored Iraqi "surge" is now one year old. The US$11 billion-a-month (and counting) Iraqi/Afghan joint quagmire keeps adding to the US government's staggering over $9 trillion debt (it was "only" $5.6 trillion when Bush took power iearly 2001).

On the ground in Iraq, the state of the union - Bush's legacy - translates into a completely shattered nation with up to 70% unemployment, a 70% inflation rate, less than six hours of electricity a day and virtually no reconstruction, although White House-connected multinationals have bagged more than $50 billion in competition-free contracts so far. The gleaming reconstruction success stories of course are the Vatican-sized US Embassy in Baghdad - the largest in the world - and the scores of US military bases.

Facts on the ground also attest the "surge" achieved no "political reconciliation" whatsoever in Iraq - regardless of a relentless US corporate media propaganda drive, fed by the Pentagon, to proclaim it a success. The new law to reverse de-Ba'athification - approved by a half-empty Parliament and immediately condemned by Sunni and secular parties as well as former Ba'athists themselves - will only exacerbate sectarian hatred.

What the "surge" has facilitated instead is the total balkanization of Baghdad – as well as the whole of Iraq. There are now at least 5 million Iraqis among refugees and the internally displaced - apart from competing statistics numbering what certainly amounts to hundreds of thousands of dead civilians. So of course there is less violence; there's hardly any people left to be ethnically cleansed.

Everywhere in Iraq there are myriad signs of balkanization - not only in blast wall/partitioned Baghdad. In the Shi'ite south, the big prize is Basra, disputed by at least three militias. The Sadrists - the voice of the streets - are against regional autonomy; the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC)- which controls security - wants Basra as the key node of a southern Shi'iteistan; and the Fadhila party - which control the governorate - wants an autonomous Basra.

In the north, the big prize is oil-rich Kirkuk province, disputed by Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen; the referendum on Kirkuk has been postponed indefinitely, as everyone knows it will unleash a bloodbath. In al-Anbar province, Sunni Arab tribes bide their time collaborating with the US and controlling the exits to Syria and Jordan while preparing for the inevitable settling of scores with Shi'ites in Baghdad.

...what really matters is what Iraqis themselves think. According to Asia Times Online sources in Baghdad, apart from the three provinces in Iraqi Kurdistan, more than 75% of Sunnis and Shi'ites alike are certain Washington wants to set up permanent military bases; this roughly equals the bulk of the population in favor of continued attacks against US troops.

Furthermore, Sunni Arabs as a whole as well as the Sadrists are united in infinite suspicion of the key Bush-mandated "benchmark": the eventual approval by the Iraqi Parliament of a new oil law which would in fact de-nationalize the Iraqi oil industry and open it to Big Oil. Iraqi public opinion as a whole is also suspicious of what the Bush administration wants to extract from the cornered, battered Nuri al-Maliki government: full immunity from Iraqi law not only for US troops but for US civilian contractors as well. The empire seems to be oblivious to history: that was exactly one of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's most popular reasons to dethrone the Shah of Iran in 1979.

It's impossible to overestimate the widespread anger in Baghdad, among Sunnis and Shi'ites alike, for what has essentially been the balkanization of the city as negotiated by US commanders with a rash of militias; the occupiers after all are only one more militia among many, although better equipped. Now there are insistent rumors - again - in Baghdad that the occupation, allied with the government-sanctioned Badr Organization - is preparing an anti-Sadrist blitzkrieg in oil-rich Basra.

The daily horror in Iraq has all but been erased from US corporate media narrative. But in Baghdad, now virtually a Shi'ite city like Shiraz, Salafi-jihadi suicide bombers continue to attack Shi'ite markets or funerals - especially in mixed neighborhoods, even those only across the Tigris from the Green Zone. Sectarian militias - although theoretical allies of the occupation, paid in US dollars in cash - continue to pursue their own ethnic cleansing agenda. And the "surge" continues to privilege air strikes which inevitably produce scores of civilian "collateral damage".

The Sunni Arab resistance continues to be the "fish" offered protection by the "sea" of the civilian population. All during the "surge", the Sunni Arab guerrillas always kept moving - from west Baghdad to Diyala, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces and even to the northern part of Babil province. After the collapse of fuel imports from Turkey used to drive the Iraqi power grid, Baghdad and other Iraqi major cities are most of the time mired in darkness. Fuel shortages are the norm. In addition, the Sunni Arab resistance makes sure sabotage of electricity towers and stations remains endemic.

Contrary to Iraqi government propaganda, only very few among the at least 1 million Iraqis exiled in Syria since the beginning of the "surge" - mostly white-collar middle class - have come back. They are Sunni and Shi'ite alike. People - mostly Sunni - are still fleeing the country. The Shi'ite urban middle class fears there will inevitably be a push by the Sunni Arab resistance - supported and financed by the ultra-wealthy Sunni Gulf monarchies - to "recapture" Baghdad. This includes of course the hundreds of thousands of Baghdad Sunnis forced to abandon their city because of the "surge".

As for the Sadrists, they are convinced the 80,000-strong Sunni Arab "Awakening Councils" - al-Sahwah, in Arabic - gathered in Anbar province are de facto militias biding their time and practicing for the big push. It's fair to assume thousands still keep tight connections with the Salafi-jihadis (including most of all al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers) they are now supposedly fighting.

Considering the sectarian record of the US-backed Maliki government - which, as well as the Sadrists, considers the Awakening Councils as US-financed Sunni militias - there's no chance they will be incorporated into the Iraqi army or police.

As the occupation/quagmire slouches towards its fifth year, it's obvious the US cannot possibly "win" the Iraqi war - either on a military or political level - as Republican presidential pre-candidate John McCain insists. Sources in Baghdad tell Asia Times Online if not in 2008, by 2009 the post-"surge" Sunni Arab resistance is set to unleash a new national, anti-sectarian, anti-religion-linked-to-politics offensive bound to seal what an overwhelming majority of Iraqis consider the "ideological and cultural" US defeat.

Already now a crucial Sunni-Shi'ite nationalist 12-party coalition is emerging - oblivious to US designs and divorced from the US-backed parties in power (the Shi'ite SIIC and Da'wa and the two main Kurdish parties - the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party ). They have already established a consensus in three key themes: no privatization of the Iraqi oil industry, either via the new oil law or via dodgy deals signed by the Kurds; no breakup of Iraq via a Kurdish state (which implies no Kurdish takeover of Kirkuk); and an end to the civil war.

The ultimate success of this coalition in great measure should be attributed to negotiations led by Muqtada al-Sadr. The Sadrists are betting on parliamentary elections in 2009, when they sense they may reach a non-sectarian, nationalist-based majority to form a government. This would definitely bury Iraq's Defense Minister Abdul Qader Mohammed Jassim's recent estimate that a "significant" number of US troops would have to remain in Iraq at least for another 10 years, until 2018.

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2008-01-30T15:52:00.000-08:00

Now It's Official : Israel Lost The Second Lebanon War

The Winograd commission's final report, examining who is responsible for Israel's humiliating failure to win the Second Lebanon War, turns out to be, to no great surprise, something of a whitewash and refuses to lay blame at the feet of Israel prime minister Ehud Olmert.

The report makes one thing very clear, however. Israel lost the war against Hezbollah, and the UN resolution that brought an end to the fighting saved Lebanon's civilians and the Israeli Defence Force from further appalling losses :

The commission did not pull punches in describing the failures of Olmert's government during the 34-day conflict that, according to official figures from both sides, killed between 1,035 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians and combatants, in addition to 119 Israeli soldiers and 40 civilians.
Winograd told a packed news conference in Jerusalem that Israel did not win the war and the army did not provide an effective response to a sustained, deadly barrage of rocket fire from Hezbollah guerrillas.
Despite a heavy Israeli aerial campaign, the guerrilla group rained nearly 4,000 rockets on northern Israel. Israeli reservists returning from the battlefield complained of poor training and a lack of ammunition and key supplies.
"The overall image of the war was a result of a mixture of flawed conduct of the political and military leadership ... of flawed performance by the military, especially the ground forces, and of deficient Israeli preparedness," the 81-year-old Winograd said. "We found serious failings and flaws in the lack of strategic thinking and planning."
Winograd said the committee had decided not to assign personal blame for the war's shortcomings, preferring to search for ways to prevent similar mistakes in the future. "It should be stressed that the fact we refrained from imposing personal responsibility does not imply that no such responsibility exists," he said.
A large section of the report was devoted to the last-minute offensive that stirred controversy because it was ordered just as the U.N. truce was about to take effect. More than 30 Israeli soldiers were killed in that fighting.
Winograd said the 11th-hour offensive "failed" in its mission, did not improve Israel's position and that the army was not prepared for it.
However, he said the operation's goals were legitimate. "There was no failure in that decision in itself, despite its limited achievements and its painful costs." Winograd said both Olmert and his then-defense minister, Amir Peretz, acted in "what they thought at the time was Israel's interest."

2008-01-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

Russia Sees NATO Closing In From All Sides

From RIA Novosti :

Russia is concerned over NATO's expansion, which is aimed at building up its military potential around Russian borders rather than strengthening European security, the foreign minister said on Wednesday.
Russia has been unnerved by NATO's eastward expansion and recent U.S. plans to deploy missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic.

"We are certain that the geographical expansion of NATO cannot be justified by security concerns," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow.

"But it is clear that NATO is building up its military potential around our borders and its new members continue to increase their defense budgets," he said.

Lavrov said NATO's "open-door" policy has been inherited from the Cold War and can only antagonize relations with Russia.

"This policy cannot resolve any security problems," the minister said.

NATO has signaled its backing for the recent bids by Russia's former Soviet allies, Georgia and Ukraine, to join the alliance, a move that has infuriated Moscow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that the country would have to take "appropriate measures" if Ukraine were to join NATO.

An additional problem overshadowing cooperation between Russia and NATO is the bloc's refusal to ratify an updated version of the Soviet-era Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), aimed at regulating the deployment of non-nuclear weapons on the continent.

Russia imposed in December last year a unilateral moratorium on the arms reductions treaty, which the West regards as a cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security, and said it would resume its participation in the treaty only after NATO countries ratify the document.

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2008-01-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

NATO To East : Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strikes Are On The Table

It's not often we get to see the contents of the numerous reports about nuclear weapons and the politics, and policies, of pre-emptive nuclear strikes that the world's war leaders spend hundreds of hours each year discussing and debating.

And when we do get a peak, it's downright horrific :

The West must be prepared to carry out pre-emptive nuclear strikes to halt the spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, a radical new manifesto argues.

The document - written by five of the West's most senior military officers and strategists - has been presented to the Pentagon and NATO's secretary-general.

They argue there is a need for urgent and comprehensive reform of NATO, The Guardian reports.

A new pact - involving the United States, NATO and the European Union - was also essential to face the challenges ahead, they said.

The manifesto is likely to be discussed at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, in April, the paper said.

The authors include some of the top defence minds in the West, including General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and NATO's ex-supreme commander in Europe.

The others are General Klaus Naumann, Germany's former top soldier and ex-chairman of NATO's military committee; General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff; Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff; and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the United Kingdom.

The former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" as there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world", The Guardian reports.

It said the manifesto had been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom were unable or unwilling to publicly air their views.

"The risk of further (nuclear) proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible," the authors wrote, according to The Guardian.

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

It identified a number of key threats to the West's values and way of life, including international terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

It also cited the weakening of organisations such as the United Nations, NATO and the EU.

To prevail, they said, NATO's decision-taking methods must be overhauled, moving to a majority rather than a consensus model, putting an end to national vetoes.

A new "directorate" of US, European and NATO leaders must also be established to respond rapidly to crises.

The five also proposed the use of force without UN security council authorisation when "immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings," The Guardian reported.

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund thinktank in Brussels and a former senior US state department official, described the manifesto as "a wake-up call".

"This report means that the core of the NATO establishment is saying we're in trouble, that the West is adrift and not facing up to the challenges," he told the paper.

Gen Naumann admitted the plan's retention of the nuclear first strike option was "controversial" even among the five authors.

But he said proliferation was spreading, and NATO needed to show "there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option".

Lord Inge argued that "to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence."

The logic of using weapons of mass destruction pre-emptively to try and stop the possible building of weapons of mass destruction is pure Dr Strangelove.

Is there any connection between this report being made public at exactly the same time stock markets around the world are seeing hundreds of billions of dollars wiped from their values?

And is there any connnection between the release of this report and the show of force by the Russians in the Atlantic?

Well, of course there is. A pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran would cause chaos on world markets. The chaos has already begun, so there can only be so much market fallout if US and Israel move forward with their pre-emptive nuclear Iran strikes in the coming weeks or months.

It certainly does appear that the ground has been well and truly laid now for such strikes.

Whether Iran is hit or not, it will be years before we learn most of the details of the economic world war now being waged.