The BibleSearchers Reflections
Reflections on the Time of the End
By Robert Mock MD
Gleanings on Global News at the
Time of the End
January 2005 Special Edition Issue
America and the World of Global Terror
Topics
The Second Inauguration of George W. Bush – January 20, 2005
On January 20, 2005,
George W. Bush, in a global, sweeping and lyrical inaugural address, sent a
message loud and clear, America’s mission and mandate over the next four years
will be to bring the torch of freedom to every corner of the globe, all under
the banner of democracy. Under the global call for peace, he stated, “The best
hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” Born
on the ‘day of fire”, the “force of human freedom” will carry the message
that “every man and woman on this Earth has rights, and dignity and matchless
value because they bear the image of the make of heaven and Earth.”
The foreign policy of the United States will carry the mandate “to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. This “Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by citizens and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities.” This “ideal of freedom” is also what has brought to the citizens of the United States the most obtrusive government in modern history. Lauded in this ‘ideal’ is the Homestead Act and the government “reforming great institutions” to serve the people’s of the world.
Before an estimated audience of 100,000 listening to the president on the National Mall, the beautiful rhetoric and the flowering panorama of verbal imagery by President Bush’s chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, unleashed the theme of democracy in the grand march to corral all the nations of the earth into the acceptance of a One World Order and usher in a era of world peace. Are we presumptuous to consider that what we are seeing unfolding before our eyes is truly what the prophets of old foretold in the sacred texts as the time of the end?
Here we see applauded to the world America's ideal of freedom suggesting that our citizens do find the dignity and security of their economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. Do we consider that we have dignity and security because God is on our side? Are we considering that we have a divine mandate to export democracy to the rest of the world even at the edge of the sword? Have we considered that the broad definition of ‘liberty’ has also motivated our government to provide for American’s the Homestead Act and all the personal freedoms that it takes away from our citizens. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time. These are the institutions owned and run by the “Golden Internationale”, or the Western Transnationists and the Internationalists who seek to control the economic sector of the New World Order (NWO).
In President Bush’s speech we see Bush portraying himself as the great liberator and asking the world in his own words, to accept that with his vision “we have lit a fire as well -- a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.” Is this the same freedom that God gives to all mankind who claim Him as the Sovereign of their lives? Whereas Bush condemned tyranny, he did not explain how we support and protect allies who do not allow such liberties to their own citizens while placing limits on the individual freedom of American citizens. This comes in contradiction with the ideals he defined. ‘Righteous indignation’ that leads to the death of anyone without just cause may lead us to being the participants of the evil which we denounce.
As the leader of the world’s lone superpower, it must be accepted that President George W. Bush firmly believes in his heart that he can liberate the world from tyranny, the tyranny that refuses to accept the mantle of democracy as the political force of the future and join all nations to live in peaceful co-existence. Even this is not the vision of the Bible he professes to serve. The word, democracy, does not exist in the Holy Writ and the forces of Hellenistic democracy as espoused by the Syrian Greek and Roman overlords of Judea were denounced as forces of evil. The only political governance that the prophets of Israel spoke as liberating the world from the oppression of evil would be the coming of the Messiah in the Great Day of the Lord.
George W. Bush has openly spoken of his faith, his love for God and the moments of time he spends in prayer. With his inaugural address, he invoked the name of God nine times with themes to link to his constituent evangelical Christian supporters. At the same time, the influence of his powerful advisors who believe that the United States in harmony with their ‘replacement theology’ as taken away the mantle of God’s sovereign blessing away from His own people, the Jews and the “Lost tribes of the House of Israel”. He believes as a Christian that “freedom” is a gift of God but denies the role of Yahshua (Jesus), the son of the Eternal One of Israel as the pathway to that freedom. The God that he evokes has no distinction between the God of Israel and Allah. The faith he espouses is “sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people.” Here is the leader of America who gave his Christmas message to all Americans but did not mention the name of Jesus and the his historical roots to his own people, the Jews. Here is the same president who in an interview with Barbara Walters in January that “we should never ascribe natural disasters or anything else to God.”
It is very sobering when I think of “my” America and the dramatic changes that have occurred in the past four years when George Bush arrived in the Oval Office. Would it have made any difference if Al Gore was the sitting president during these years? Probably not. If the Lord of hosts has a time table to accomplish His will upon this planet, who will stand in His way? If God claims sovereign control of all kings and rulers that have existed on this earth, does it not suggest that God truly is in control of the destiny of this planet?
Would America have not existed if George Washington was not alive and exerted his influence on the destiny of this nation? Is it part of the forces of international world domination that in this election, two candidates, from “The Skull and Bones”, a secret occultic society whose members are documented being a major force in the economic power centers of the Transnationalists and the Internationalists, were put as rivalries in America’s presidential arena? Is it not the sovereign will of God that the international forces of power, greed and control will have their day to exert their dominance over this planet and produce the best social culture that the forces of Satan can build, all in the name of peace, harmony, independence, good-will to all mankind and under the mantle of a universal ‘god’. The arrogance of man who considers that he is the ‘god’ of his own environment and the controller of his own destiny only must reconsider that the Eternal One of Israel still stands supreme over all.
Is it of no consequence that the United States was the antagonist against the European Union while the Russians were antagonists against the Chinese only to see that the “cold war” of the east against the west has only resurfaced with a different face? Is it of no consequence that the “Protest’ ant Christian Churches were antagonists against the Roman Catholic Church only to see a merging and blending of the two in the last days? Should we consider that it is impossible that fundamental radial Islam with the Wahhabism of the Saudis and the Taliban/al-Qaeda should be an antagonists against the traditional Islamic culture while the Sabbatean Labor Zionists are becoming antagonists against Orthodox Judaism. When the Lord of hosts says that He will divide the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares, that He will do and must we doubt His word? Must we also consider that the ‘sheep and the goats” will come out of each of these opposing politico-religious forces.
All around the world we have seen national political campaigns won by the narrowest of margins: Spain and Ukrainia. We have seen new political forces assume power and change the ‘obvious’ political pathway of their nation: Iran. We have seen nationalist cultures writhe in the agony of political dissent and teeter on the bring of civil war: Israel, Iraq and Ukrainia, all with intervention of international forces trying to force their own international agenda.
We have seen the Catholic Church transparently exposed with decades of pedophile corruption, the Anglican/Presbyterian Churches at the crossroads on the ordination of a ‘gay’ bishop, American’s evenly divided over Roe v. Wade and we wonder. We all have asked, are we really participating on a crusade of righteous indignation against global terrorism or a participant in the dividing of the nations? Are we truly the bearers of good will to all nations in the All-mighty Name of the Eternal One to bring the “torch of freedom”, economic independence, and liberty for all mankind yet fail to remember the words of the “Prince of Peace” who said,
Matthew 24:4-8 – “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquake in various places. All these things are the beginning of sorrows.”
Are we prepared to consider that our physical and material lives will not get better. Are we prepared that we are in the beginning an era of sorrows. Is it too much to consider that the time of trouble is a part of the ‘beginning of sorrows’ and when the Jewish rabbi, Yahshua ben Yosef was talking with his Jewish talmidim (disciples) he was actually talking about the Jewish people and their descendants at the time of the end.
Matthew 24:9 – “Then they will deliver you (the Jews) up to tribulation and kill you, and you (the Jews) will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.
When the Great Awakening was occurring in the eastern seaboard of the United States in the 1840s, a great awakening was also occurring to the Jewish people. The Jewish awakening was the first longing as a national people beginning to arise with the desire to return to their homeland in the great aliyah that would occur before the return of their Moshiach who is also our Messiah. That Day of Judgment had come.
The Second Inauguration of George W. Bush – January 20, 2005
Bush’s Second Inaugural Address: 'No justice without freedom' – January 20, 2005
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush delivered his second inaugural address Thursday after being sworn in for a second term. This is a transcript of his remarks:
Vice President Cheney,
Mr. Chief Justice, President Carter, President Bush, President Clinton, members
of the United States Congress, reverend clergy, distinguished guests, fellow
citizens: On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate
the durable wisdom of our Constitution and recall the deep commitments that
unite our country. I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the
consequential times in which we live and determined to fulfill the oath that I
have sworn and you have witnessed. At this second gathering, our duties are
defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a
half-century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant
borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years
of repose, years of sabbatical -- and then there came a day of fire.
We have seen our vulnerability, and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny -- prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder -- violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom. We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this Earth has rights, and dignity and matchless value because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and Earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security and the calling of our time.
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every
nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. This is not primarily
the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of
arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen and defended by
citizens 
and sustained by the
rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally
speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very
different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on
the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice,
attain their own freedom and make their own way. The great objective
of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of
the task is no excuse for avoiding it. America's influence is not unlimited,
but fortunately for the oppressed, America's influence is considerable, and we will
use it confidently in freedom's cause.
My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people from further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America's resolve and have found it firm. We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation -- the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies. We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity will guide our policies. Yet, rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators; they are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed. In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.
Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of liberty -- though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of freedom ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals. Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul. We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery. Liberty will come to those who love it.
Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The
United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors.
When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.
Democratic reformers facing repression, prison or exile can know: America sees you for who you are -- the future leaders of your free country. The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it." The leaders of governments with long habits of control need to know: To serve your people you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side. And all the allies of the United States can know: We honor your friendship, we rely on your counsel, and we depend on your help. Division among free nations is a primary goal of freedom's enemies. The concerted effort of free nations to promote democracy is a prelude to our enemies' defeat.
Today, I also speak anew to my fellow citizens: From
all of you, I have asked patience in the hard task of securing America, which you have granted in good measure. Our country has accepted obligations that
are difficult to fulfill and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we
have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions
have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find
it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well -- a fire in the minds of men.
It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and
one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our
world. A few Americans have accepted the hardest duties in this cause -- in
the quiet work of intelligence and diplomacy ... the idealistic work of
helping raise up free 
governments ... the
dangerous and necessary work of fighting our enemies. Some have shown their
devotion to our country in deaths that honored their whole lives, and we will
always honor their names and their sacrifice.
All Americans have witnessed this idealism and some for the first time. I ask our youngest citizens to believe the evidence of your eyes. You have seen duty and allegiance in the determined faces of our soldiers. You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs. Make the choice to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself, and in your days you will add not just to the wealth of our country but to its character. America has need of idealism and courage because we have essential work at home -- the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty. In America's ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence, instead of laboring on the edge of subsistence. This is the broader definition of liberty that motivated the Homestead Act, the Social Security Act and the GI Bill of Rights. And now we will extend this vision by reforming great institutions to serve the needs of our time.
To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will bring the highest standards to our schools and build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership of homes and businesses, retirement savings and health insurance -- preparing our people for the challenges of life in a free society. By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear and make our society more prosperous and just and equal.
In America's ideal of freedom, the
public interest depends on private character -- on integrity and tolerance
toward others and the rule of conscience in our own 
lives.
Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.
U.S. President George W. Bush is sworn in during the inauguration ceremony in Washington
That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before -- ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today and forever. In America's ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service and mercy and a heart for the weak. Liberty for all does not mean independence from one another. Our nation relies on men and women who look after a neighbor and surround the lost with love. Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth. And our country must abandon all the habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.
From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause? These questions that judge us also unite us, because Americans of every party and background, Americans by choice and by birth, are bound to one another in the cause of freedom. We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes -- and I will strive in good faith to heal them. Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack, and our response came like a single hand over a single heart. And we can feel that same unity and pride whenever America acts for good, and the victims of disaster are given hope, and the unjust encounter justice, and the captives are set free.
We go forward with complete confidence in the
eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability;
it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a
chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence 
because
freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the
longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when
soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens
marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" -- they
were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction set by liberty and the author of liberty.
When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, "It rang as if it meant something." In our time it means something still. America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength -- tested, but not weary -- we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom. May God bless you, and may he watch over the United States of America. (Article)
World press electrified by Bush vision – January 21, 2005
BBC News - "Hold on
to your hats, this may be the most ambitious presidency ever." That's the
message from one Israeli paper after President George W Bush's inauguration - a
message echoed across the world's press. For China's press his speech raises the
question whether Washington will head further down a "unilateral"
path in foreign relations. One Polish paper heralds the speech as the
dawn of a conservative revolution, while in Germany and Turkey there's a bleak forecast for the new Bush era
At precisely the moment when critics claim he is stymied, Bush, in his second inaugural address, has just set out to liberate the entire world. And our region is at Ground Zero, so to speak, of his new, revolutionary vision... In laying down his revolutionary gauntlet, Bush must know that he will be derided as a hypocrite and a reckless dreamer. No American can be against the ideal of spreading democracy, but to stake national security on it, that's another matter. In front of the Capitol on Thursday, Bush called not merely for a remaking of other nations' foreign policy, but that of his United States. 'Hold on to your hats, this may be the most ambitious second-term - or any term - presidency ever'.
Israel's Jerusalem Post
The democracy President Bush's administration is promising is a bloody one. It has, up to now, claimed the lives of 100,000 martyrs, with the same number being wounded. It has turned the country into a failed one, where chaos and booby-trapped cars prevail... As long as the US policies continue as they are at the moment, then all the American talk about democracy and liberties will remain ink on paper.
Pan-Arab Al-Quds Al-Arabi
Bush's speech focused on the 'power of freedom', saying that the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. On that, not many people will disagree. The differences are over what he understands by 'freedom' and how the benefits of democracy should be spread in the world - or indeed whether it is any country's business to export democracy to others... It is possible to have the freer world that Bush speaks of, but the idea that those who are strong and have a larger arsenal have an unchallenged right to impose their will on the weak, undermines democracy.
Kenya's Nation
Many challenges and knotty questions are waiting for him to solve... Whether to reverse the Iraqi situation will become the biggest test for Bush's second term of office... Even with the election proceeding smoothly, terrorist acts will not disappear... Various countries are expecting much of the new Bush term. Perhaps it is wishful thinking to see these expectations depend on whether Bush goes ahead with his unilateral road or is back to the multilateral road.
China's People's Daily
The main international issue to be faced during President Bush's second term in office will be an Iran war, the US' main attention will focus on West Asia. If the US can quite smoothly realize the goal of transforming Iran, then the US' main strategic direction will shift to East Asia in future, and China will face direct US pressure; if the US' war and political reform in Iraq is not smooth, then this shift will be delayed for a number of years.
Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po
The inauguration of President George W Bush for
his second term was merry and fanciful whereas the United States is afraid of
facing continued threats from terrorists and has concerns about the increasing
number of its troops killed in Iraq... In his campaigns on the significance of
the free world, Bush has deliberately grabbed the rights 
of the Iraqi people to live freely by sending his troops to invade
and occupy Iraq and at the same time forcefully imposing US-style democracy in
a foreign land.
Malaysia's Berita Harian
Make no mistake, Bush absolutely believes that America will not be safe and secure unless democracy takes root more broadly around the world, especially in the Middle East... Of course, Bush as a president cannot be compared in stature to his two mighty presidential forebears. He and those around him do such small-minded things that it detracts from the grandeur of his purpose, whether you regard that purpose as grand folly or grand mission... And we have the demeaning, disgusting innuendo constantly from the Bush administration that anyone who disagrees with their course, or opposes the severe restrictions on civil rights in the Patriot Act, is an appeaser, is disloyal, is un-American.
Sydney's The Australian
The United States will likely place the value of democracy and freedom as the basis for its diplomacy. That is also closely related to Washington's plan to "transform" the North Korean regime. Such a US doctrine and North Korea's possible reactions may escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula. We hope diplomatic principles will be applied wisely. During the first term of the Bush administration, South Korea-US relations have seen conflicts too serious to call the relationship an alliance. South Korea's dispatch of troops to Iraq mended the fissure significantly. During the next four years, the alliance must mature further.
South Korea's Chungang Ilbo
Bush's speech at his second inauguration and the theme of freedom in it is nothing new. Since 11 September this same freedom has been the main slogan of the war on terror the White House has declared... Bush's critics point out that in America itself there is now considerably less freedom. .. Who knows, perhaps Afghanistan really has become freer, and democracy may emerge in Iraq after the elections. But for the rest of the world the war on terror is turning increasingly into lack of freedom....
Russia's Vedomosti
Critics who were hoping that he would get mired in detail about Iraq were mistaken. Instead he went back to basics, reaching out to the belief of most Americans in the fundamental importance of freedom and using that to explain his policies at home and abroad. At times it sounded more like a sermon than a speech. Mr Bush may not be much of a speaker. But sometimes the message is more important than eloquence and what he had to say yesterday had the power of real conviction.
Ireland's Irish Independent
Things are now clearer than ever: We have the right to feel a chill down the spine. To describe Bush as a madman with a mission at the head of a state bristling with weapons does not really get us any further... and, although insulting, it is no longer even particularly original. And yet this US administration sends a chill down the spine of anyone unwilling to become accustomed to listening to this madness.
Germany's Die Tageszeitung
No-one should expect a weak president in spite of the fact that his immediate objectives were achieved in his first term as a world leader. The inauguration speech was again simple, concise and direct, as was the electoral message which gave him victory at the polls in November... For his enemies, there is a choice: liberty or oppression.
Spain's La Razon
In... George W Bush's inauguration speech, there seem not to have been any pithy sentences which will be engraved forever in our memories. There is the feeling of a man who treats the whole world as his parish.
Italy's La Repubblica
In a bid to be as determined as Franklin D. Roosevelt facing the Great Depression in 1933... and galvanize people like John F. Kennedy in 1961... the 43rd president of the United States opened up particularly ambitious prospects for the future which go well beyond the four years remaining to him in the White House.
France's Le Figaro
The question is how much he has learnt... and how much he has forgotten. Mr Bush will be the president of the USA for the next four years, and whatever he ruins, he will ruin it for us too. So it is worth keeping our fingers crossed for him, for mere selfishness if for no other reason.
Hungary's Nepszabadsag
The drawback of Bush's style is that he has never really racked his brains about how to convince somebody. Basically, he only explains reasons for his decisions. Why would he do anything else - he is right, is he not? He will hardly change in that respect, so we only have to hope that he is right as often as possible.
Czech Republic's Mlada fronta Dnes
An idealistic vision of the furtherance by America of freedom, democracy and human rights... Although in Bush's short inaugural speech words such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine were not used once, it is clear which countries he was referring to. He is planning such deep changes in internal policy that if they are carried through they will change America for good. He also spoke of these changes in his inaugural speech as being 'furtherance of freedom and justice'. If his plans are realised, then this will be a conservative revolution.
Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza
Under the label of a sick, religious-political doctrine they march against countries longing for their natural resources. Already, the United States is warning various countries by beginning the known method of repeated lies... The planet must be aware of this freedom the United States is talking about because it is leading to a one-way-road: to the 'freedom' of enslavement and submission to the United States.
Cyprus Kharavyi
As the strategy of toppling Saddam Hussein and 'democratising Iraq' has gradually turned into a nightmare scenario, the initiative of declaring new wars and attempts of widening the occupation increase the suspicions about Bush's second term... The government in Turkey should not fall into the trap of an attack against Iran. Possible demands for support must be refused in the parliament...
Turkey's Milliyet
Bush urged to 'pull a Reagan' at inauguration - Group wants president sworn in with Bible verse on repentance – December 23, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com
- Citing ongoing and mounting threats to the nation's security, a Christian
group wants to enlist 1 million Americans to appeal to President Bush to be
sworn in with his hand on a Bible opened to a verse that calls the nation to
repentance.
President Reagan placing his hand on a Bible as he takes the oath of office at his second inauguration in 1985 (Courtesy Reagan library)
The Jerusalem Prayer Team, founded by Mike Evans, says Bush should follow the example of President Reagan, who had his family Bible opened to II Chronicles 7:14 when he was inaugurated Jan. 20, 1981. "America needs God's blessing and protection more than ever," Evans said. "The truth is, we have a God-fearing President, but he cannot save this nation if God does not 'heal our land.' We elected George Bush for another term; now, we must appeal to him to lead our great nation into a 'Great Awakening' by seeking God's sovereign intervention."
The verse reads:
11 Chronicles 7:14 - "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
Evans has asked more than 300
national leaders, including James Dobson, T. D. Jakes and Tim LaHaye, to back a
petition asking Bush to declare
a II Chronicles 7:14 National Day of Prayer, Repentance, and Fasting. Evans
served with groups in the 1980s -- Washington for Jesus and the American
Coalition for Traditional Values -- that successfully appealed to Reagan to
highlight the verse at his first inauguration. "I don't think anyone can
say that communism fell without the firing of a shot because of the brilliance
of the State Department," Evans said. "God intervened then; He can
now. It is no coincidence that after 444 days of the Iran hostage crisis, the
captives were released as President Reagan placed his hand on II Chronicles
7:14."
Evans said he is asking Bush to use his family Bible, opened to II Chronicles 7:14, because for his first inauguration in 2001, the president requested the use of George Washington's Masonic Bible. Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, had used the Washington Bible during his inauguration in 1989. But in 2001, due to a snowstorm, the Bible could not be delivered in time for the ceremony, and the 43rd president was sworn in with a closed family Bible.
Evans believes it's important Bush take this step and declare a day of repentance because of the challenges the U.S. faces. He cites Iran's development of nuclear weapons, an elusive Osama bin Laden with a stated aim to kill 4 million Americans, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the Iraq war and Syria's support of terrorism in that country. Evans is chairman of the Corrie ten Boom House in Holland, the Jerusalem Prayer Team.org, and author of two New York Times bestsellers, "Beyond Iraq: The Next Move," and "The American Prophecies." (Entire Article)
Gerson
Talks Religion - George W. Bush's chief speechwriter opens up about
faith, providence, and the 
presidency –
December 23, 2004
Weekly Standard
- MICHAEL GERSON deserves extra pay, or something, for agreeing to spend half a
day earlier this month discussing with journalists a subject of some
controversy--"Religion, Rhetoric, and the Presidency." If
anyone was qualified for such a task, it was Gerson. He is President Bush's
chief speechwriter, knows the president's mind better than anyone else in
the White House (save perhaps Karl Rove) and--no small thing--shares the
president's faith.
Presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson stands in front of the West Wing.
Gerson, the White House's resident intellectual, is a graduate of Wheaton College, where he majored in theology. He opened the discussion--part of a conference on religion and politics sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington--by pointing out actual instances in which Mr. Bush has used religious language. What they illustrate is a rhetoric that seeks to accommodate religious values, embraces religious pluralism and is quite aware of providence.
Accommodation. Bush has included religious language when comforting those who mourn. Thus, at the service at the National Cathedral shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the president said, "Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn." Bush has also alluded to religious sources in driving home a point. For example, in his inaugural address, while urging the nation to be compassionate to those in need, he recalled "that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho" and how we shouldn't "pass to the other side." The reference here was to Luke, to the famous story of the Good Samaritan.
Finally, the president has employed references to religion found in our own history. Here, Gerson said, the president aims to show how religion has contributed to social justice. Thus, in Senegal, speaking of the Africans enslaved and boarded there on ships bound for North America two centuries ago, Bush said that they "learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their hearts on a promised land of freedom."
Pluralism. Gerson said speeches on the administration's faith-based initiative have also provided occasions for the president to refer to religion. Of course, it would be impossible for him not to bring up religion in that context, since the point of the (accommodationist) initiative is to ensure that religious charities otherwise qualified to compete for social service grants aren't discriminated against. Yet what's striking about the president's faith-based rhetoric is that it is maximally pluralistic. That is, while recognizing the good that religious charities do, Bush routinely welcomes people of all religious faiths and none at all to fight poverty and other social ills. Bush uses similar, all-inclusive rhetoric in other contexts.
Providence. The notion that God is in charge of all things, including the course of America, is a theological doctrine and a long-standing tenet of the nation's "civil religion." Gerson emphasized that in Bush's mentions of providence, care is taken to avoid "the presumption" of "identifying the purposes of an individual or a nation with the purposes of God." Thus, in the 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said: "We [Americans] do not claim to know all the ways of providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life and all of history." Gerson's articulation of the president's rhetoric on religion won't satisfy those who think that pluralism requires silence on this subject. Nor those who think that only arguments grounded in secular ideas, and not religious ones, should have standing in the public square. Yet it's hard to maintain that Mr. Bush's rhetoric on religion constitutes either a departure from that of his predecessors or an affront to the values of a still religious people.
Meanwhile, even as we stipulate that we do not know all the ways of providence, we can make some decent guesses about Bush's second inaugural, on the calendar next month. Look for an allusion to the Bible or a hymn, a citing of a faith-based moment in American history, some maximal pluralism, and, last but not least, a nonpresumptuous invocation of providence. (Article)
A rabbi’s son with sense of balance nominated to head Homeland Security – January 11, 2005
WASHINGTON, Jan. 11
(JTA) — Michael Chertoff, the Jewish judge President Bush nominated this week
to head the vast Homeland Security bureaucracy, brings a rabbi’s son’s
sensibility to resolving the tensions between protecting Americans and
preserving civil liberties. Bush made clear in his announcement Tuesday that he
found Chertoff attractive because of his toughness and his sterling reputation.
But Jewish community leaders who know him say the judge would bring much more
than that to the position. “I can’t sing his praises high enough,” said
attorney Stephen Flatow, who says Chertoff was instrumental in drafting the
USA Patriot Act, which led to the U.S. indictment of a Florida-based alleged
leader of Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the 1995 murder
of Flatow’s daughter Alisa in a Gaza Strip terrorist attack.
President Bush presents Judge Michael Chertoff as his nominee to be the Secretary of Homeland Security in Washington on Jan. 11
Chertoff, 51, would be Bush’s second Cabinet-level Jewish appointment; Josh Bolten has run the Office of Management and Budget since 2003. Chertoff was the top criminal justice official at the Justice Department at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The controversial Patriot Act, which removed the wall between how domestic and U.S. foreign intelligence agencies gathered and shared information, accelerated the case against the Islamic Jihad leader, Sami al-Arian, who faces trial in Florida this summer. As a result of this legislation, “they were able to put together the case very quickly but thoroughly,” said Flatow, who is now chairman of the community relations committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest in New Jersey. Chertoff since has come to question what many consider some of the extremes of the Patriot Act — but that has also earned him Jewish praise. “To his credit, Judge Chertoff recognized himself that many of things done immediately after Sept. 11 were not things that should have been done,” said Paul Miller, the president of the American Jewish Congress, who has met frequently with Chertoff.
“He’s someone who understands the balance we need between protecting people on the one hand, and tools to protect our safety — and also not to destroy our American values.”
Chertoff himself emphasized the need for balance in his short speech accepting the nomination. “If confirmed, I pledge to devote all my energy to promoting our homeland security, and as important, to preserving our fundamental liberties,” he said. Chertoff has strong ties to the Jewish community. Born and raised in Elizabeth, N.J., Chertoff is the son of Rabbi Gershon Chertoff, his two children have attended Jewish day schools and his wife, Meryl, was a co-chairwoman of the regional Anti-Defamation League’s civil rights committee when he was the U.S. attorney in New Jersey in the mid 1990s. He lives in Bernardsville, N.J.
Beyond his Jewish ties, Chertoff has an impressive resume: Harvard Law School, U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, partner with the law firm of Latham & Watkins, U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorney general. He’s now a federal judge on the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals. But his biggest asset may be that he is not Bernard Kerik, the former top New York City cop who withdrew his own nomination for the job following sordid stories about favors he accepted and women he pursued — all of which had prompted criticism that the Bush White House did not do enough to vet nominees. “He’s been confirmed by the Senate three times!” Bush exclaimed with a smile at the outset of his introduction of Chertoff, a rake-thin, bearded and media-shy man who hesitantly approached the microphones to accept the nomination Tuesday.
Chertoff also represents a change of pace from Tom Ridge, the outgoing secretary, who is considered by many as a little too attached to symbolism and the media spotlight and not concerned enough with running the unwieldy bureaucracy created in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Chertoff has a reputation for toughness, and it is clear that Bush expects him to tame the Homeland Security beast. “When Mike is confirmed by the Senate, the Department of Homeland Security will be led by a practical organizer, a skilled manager and a brilliant thinker,” he said. More substantially, Jewish leaders say, Chertoff would bring a rare tendency to reach out to an administration with a reputation for insularity. Many Jewish groups have chafed at what they say is the Bush administration’s “with us or against us” ethos.
Chertoff, a moderate Republican, is well-liked on both sides of the aisle. “Judge Mike Chertoff has the resume to be an excellent Homeland Security Secretary, given his law enforcement background and understanding of New York’s and America’s neglected homeland security needs,” U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. Chertoff was the sole Republican U.S. Attorney who Bill Clinton kept in place after assuming the presidency in 1993, on the recommendation of then-Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, himself a liberal Democrat, and largely on the basis of his success in pursuing mob figures. Chertoff also was the lead figure in persuading Israel to send back to the United States “Crazy” Eddie Antar, the discount electronics mogul who had sought refuge in the Jewish state and was convicted of stock fraud. He went on to become a special counselor for the Whitewater committee from 1994 to 1996, and had a reputation for toughness, although he quit just before that investigation of the Clintons turned rancorous. Still, Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-N.Y.) was the sole dissenter in his most recent confirmation, for appeals court judge.
But Chertoff is not partisan in his toughness: His 2001 investigation into charges that New Jersey State Supreme Court Judge Peter Verniero had as attorney general suppressed evidence of racial profiling led Verniero to resign. Verniero had been a prince in the New Jersey Republican establishment. Chertoff is a classic Rockefeller Republican, a moderate who knows how to talk to all sides, said David Twersky, who was an editor of the New Jersey Jewish News in the 1990s when Chertoff was U.S. Attorney in the state. That political positioning makes Chertoff the right choice for running Homeland Security as the department has come under increasing criticism for heavy handedness, said Twersky, now the international affairs director for the American Jewish Congress. “On the one hand we have people who say, ‘Arrest everybody and throw away the key’; on the other you have those who say, ‘Don’t you ever profile Arabs,’ ” Twersky said. “The point is to find someone who reconciles these different imperatives. Chertoff is precisely the guy to pull this off.”
Stuart Deutsch, the dean of Rutgers Law School, said Chertoff exhibited sensitivity to both sides of the issue when he delivered the school’s 2003 lecture named for Miller, the AJCongress president who is also a Rutgers benefactor. “The lecture was a historical analysis of how we have swung back and forth between security and civil liberty situations,” Deutsch said. “He clearly felt that it was important to react to Sept. 11, 2001; on the other hand he certainly said we need to be worried about how far we go to the extent that we go too far on the side of security.” It is also seen as a plus that Chertoff, like Kerik, is from the region most immediately affected by the Sept. 11 attacks, and also the area with the highest Jewish concentration: the Northeast corridor. Residents of the area say they have been underfunded by the department.
“Someone who comes from New Jersey and from this region might appreciate the issues facing us in terms of the funding formula for Homeland Security dollars,” said Lori Price Abrams, the director of the community relations committee for the MetroWest federation. “The allocations do under-award us.” Jewish institutions must now compete for Homeland Security funds funneled through the states. At the same time, Congress has appropriated but not yet authorized a $25 million fund for security for nonprofit institutions. That federal money would be more immediately available to Jewish groups than the state funds have been. (Article)
Rumsfeld says 9-11
plane was 'shot down' in Pennsylvania - Defense secretary
contradicts official story – December 27, 2004
WASHINGTON
(World Net Daily) – Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been questions about
Flight 93, the ill-fated plane that crashed in the rural fields of Pennsylvania.
The official story has been that passengers on the United Airlines flight rushed the hijackers in an effort to prevent them from crashing the plane into a strategic target – possibly the U.S. Capitol. During his surprise Christmas Eve trip to Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the flight being shot down – long a suspicion because of the danger the flight posed to Washington landmarks and population centers. Was it a slip of the tongue? Was it an error? Or was it the truth, finally being dropped on the public more than three years after the tragedy of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000?
Here's what Rumsfeld said Friday: "I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten – indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."
Several eyewitnesses to the crash claim they saw a "military-type" plane flying around United Airlines Flight 93 when the hijacked passenger jet crashed – prompting the once-unthinkable question of whether the U.S. military shot down the plane. Although the onboard struggle between hijackers and passengers – immortalized by the courageous "Let's roll" call to action by Todd Beamer – became one of the enduring memories of that disastrous day, the actual cause of Flight 93's crash, of the four hijacked airliners, remains the most unclear.
Several residents in and around Shanksville, Pa., describing the crash as they saw it, claim to have seen a second plane – an unmarked military-style jet. Well-founded uncertainty as to just what happened to Flight 93 is nothing new. Just three days after the worst terrorist attack in American history, on Sept. 14, 2001, The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record newspaper reported that five eyewitnesses reported seeing a second plane at the Flight 93 crash site. That same day, reported the Record, FBI Special Agent William Crowley said investigators could not rule out that a second plane was nearby during the crash. He later said he had misspoken, dismissing rumors that a U.S. military jet had intercepted the plane before it could strike a target in Washington, D.C.
Although government officials insist there was never any pursuit of Flight 93, they were informed the flight was suspected of having been hijacked at 9:16 am, fully 50 minutes before the plane came down. On the Sept. 16, 2001, edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney, while not addressing Flight 93 specifically, spoke clearly to the administration's clear policy regarding shooting down hijacked jets. Vice President Cheney: "Well, the – I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft." NBC's Tim Russert: "And you decided?" Cheney: "We decided to do it. We'd, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city; F-16s with an AWACS, which is an airborne radar system, and tanker support so they could stay up a long time ...
"It doesn't do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don't give them instructions to act, if, in fact, they feel it's appropriate." Russert: "So if the United States government became aware that a hijacked commercial airline[r] was destined for the White House or the Capitol, we would take the plane down?" Cheney: "Yes. The president made the decision ... that if the plane would not divert ... as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out. Now, people say, you know, that's a horrendous decision to make. Well, it is. You've got an airplane full of American citizens, civilians, captured by ... terrorists, headed and are you going to, in fact, shoot it down, obviously, and kill all those Americans on board?
"... It's a presidential-level decision, and the president made, I think, exactly the right call in this case, to say, I wished we'd had combat air patrol up over New York.'" (Article)
Earlier stories by World Net Daily:
Was United Flight 93 shot down Sept. 11?
'Fighting knife' found in wreckage of Flight 93
The
Struggle for the Middle East – January 3, 2005
THE MIDDLE EAST HAS
DEFINED the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the administration's evolving pro-democracy Broader Middle East and North
Africa Initiative, and the downplaying of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation
have overturned America's traditional approach to the region. Our European
and Muslim allies in the Cold War, the transatlanticist foreign-policy
establishment in the United States, and the Near Eastern cadres within
the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have all been
dismayed--in the case of France, Germany, and certain quarters at Foggy
Bottom and Langley, appalled--by the post-9/11 actions of President Bush.
But what should be the administration's Middle East project for the next four years? Post-Saddam Iraq is not a failure--as long as roughly 80 percent of Iraq's population is moving towards democratic governance, we're not failing. But it is certainly an awful mess. Clerical Iran, the bête noire of every administration since 1979, is advancing its nuclear-weapons programs and playing a favorite Middle Eastern parlor game--divide-and-frustrate the Westerners (the Europeans have enthusiastically abetted Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the clerical regime's major-domo and its most accomplished realpolitician). And even though Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has so far failed to strike the United States again--a more severe visa policy towards Middle Eastern Muslim males has all by itself made tactical planning and operations inside the United States enormously difficult--Islamic holy-warriorism remains a ferocious menace. Muslim Americans have shown themselves highly resistant to violent Islamic extremism--if they had been as susceptible to bin Ladenism as European Muslims have been, we would likely have seen numerous attacks since 9/11 inside the United States. Young Muslim men could still, however, get infected by the ever-vibrant militancy coming from abroad. As long as bin Ladenism brews in the Middle East, the successful penetration of America's defenses remains an ever-terrifying possibility.
How is the administration going to deal with bin Ladenism in the Middle East? The Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, the Bush administration's attempt to shatter the nexus between autocracy and Islamic extremism, could easily die an early death if it becomes only a program administered by the Near East Bureau of the State Department. The bureau has never liked the idea, seeing it as an annoying project advanced by naive pro-democracy hands at the National Security Council. The further we are from 9/11, the easier it is for some to view bin Ladenism as a pre-9/11 tactical threat, one sufficiently dealt with by enhanced domestic security and closer liaison relationships with the European and Middle Eastern intelligence and security services. (The "realist" camp--think Brent Scowcroft on the right, Zbigniew Brzezinski on the left--has more or less held this view since September 12, 2001.) Just a year ago, in November 2003, the president declared war on the status quo in the Middle East by announcing his new "forward strategy of freedom." So how can his administration advance the initiative so that it isn't feckless?
And should the Bush administration now become more engaged in the
Israeli-Palestinian confrontation? The oldest, luckiest, and most
influential terrorist, Yasser Arafat, is at long last dead. Some of his
minions in the Palestine Liberation Organization seem in comparison more
moderate. The Europeans, who view the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio as the
epicenter of Islamic militancy in the Middle East and among Europe's millions
of Muslims, are desperate to see progress in the Holy Land. A sizable slice
of Washington's foreign-policy establishment, and Muslim reformers abroad,
share the European assessment of the global repercussions from
Israeli-Palestinian troubles. They would love to see the United States again more engaged. A resumption of the "peace process" would help our
embattled friend, British prime minister Tony Blair, America's staunchest
European ally, who is perpetually torn between America and his French and
German "partners." So should the Bush administration abandon its
restrained, wait-and-see approach to the evolution of Palestinian politics and
pressure Israel again to make concessions to nurture Palestinian moderates?
LET'S TAKE THE ABOVE ISSUES in order of importance. Iraq comes first. Senior officials, particularly within the Pentagon, ought now to be waking up each morning and telling themselves that the United States may well lose in Iraq in the next 6 to 12 months unless serious course corrections are made. And if the United States loses in Iraq, the repercussions will seriously weaken America everywhere. If we lose in Iraq, neoisolationism in both the Republican and Democratic parties--the disposition is actually stronger on the left than on the right--will in all probability skyrocket. And if such a retreat could be catastrophic for the West--bin Ladenism and other nefarious forces in the Middle East would be supercharged; Beijing might make a play to squash once and for all democratic Taiwan--then failure in Iraq could conceivably define the post-Cold War world, replacing 9/11 as the signal event of our era.
The Bush administration ought to admit to itself two obvious facts. First, we are losing the "war of the roads" in Iraq. If the Sunni insurgency controls the principal arteries in and out of Baghdad and can kill with ease on major thoroughfares elsewhere, there is no way the United States and its Iraqi allies can win a counterinsurgency campaign in the country's heartland.
The administration really should not use here the refrain, of which it is becoming ever more fond, that "only Iraqis can secure their country." Clearing the roads adequately, which means suppressing the occasional bombings, brigandage, and assassinations, really has nothing to do with "standing up" Iraqi security forces. If there is one kind of military operation that does not require much local knowledge, it's undertaking roadblocks, observation posts, and ground and air patrols. The military personnel required to perform this function 24/7 isn't small, but it is certainly within the capabilities of forces already present in Iraq if the Pentagon so chose to allocate these resources. It beggars the mind to believe that the U.S. military cannot deploy sufficient forces to secure the highway between Baghdad and the capital's international airport. Insurgents and brigands--it's very difficult often to tell the difference--now own this short stretch of highway, which regularly sees ordinary Iraqis robbed and shot, often in carefree, outrageous ways. What is worse, official Americans, authorized contractors, and the few lucky Iraqis who have the right friends can chopper overhead, traveling the same route in relative security. (That is, until the Iraqi insurgents and their foreign supporters, emboldened by their success and the failure of the Americans to counter them more aggressively, start using better ground-to-air weaponry.)
Anyone who has spent any time at all with Iraqis--be they Arab Sunni, Arab Shiite, Kurd, pro-or anti-American--knows that the vast majority of Iraqis have wanted to see many more U.S. military checkpoints and patrols on the highways. As the insurgency has warped into constant street crime and hostage-taking, a gut-level bitterness towards Americans, who seemed omnipotent after the downing of Saddam, has surged. It is a surreal experience to listen to the Iraqi Sunni elite, "vacationing" in Amman, Jordan, castigate the Americans for their failure to provide basic street security while simultaneously expressing the hope that their Sunni Arab brethren, both foreign and domestic, blow the Americans and their "Shiite sympathizers" out of Iraq.
It is certainly true that many Iraqis--many very pro-American Iraqis--are indignant about the careless use of American firepower when insurgents strike and Americans respond. The U.S. Army is a stunningly powerful machine, and the spooky nature of combat in Iraq--you never know when you will get hit, and combatants and noncombatants are often indistinguishable--naturally inclines U.S. soldiers to view all Iraqis with suspicion. The military brass and their civilian bosses deserve praise for understanding the risks of deploying too much power in this counterinsurgency. And the ethic of force protection--probably the strongest ethic in the U.S. military--is reflective of America's larger familial sensibilities.
But we have reached a point in Iraq where our first priority must be to guarantee Iraqis--not Americans--a minimum of security on the major highways. A greater American presence and firepower on the roads could kill more innocent Iraqis. The American death toll could climb. Yet it is an excellent bet that most Iraqis would be willing to absorb the losses provided they can see improvement in their daily security. If we do not do this, and do it fairly quickly, we are likely to damage irreparably moderate political forces in the country, especially within the Sunni heartlands, as we and our allies occupy ever smaller, disconnected, fortified oases surrounded by insurgents, their sympathizers, and a fearful population who know better than to cast their lot with men who only fly above them.
At this late date before the January 30 elections, there is probably no more effective and essential campaign for the U.S. military than securing the roads. Start with the highway to the airport, and then go after the roads from the capital south to the Shiite heartlands. The Shiites need to see that we are serious about maintaining their security and the flow of pilgrims from the capital to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Everybody else--but most importantly neighboring Sunni Arab countries that may be ever more inclined to aid militarily their brethren who are fighting "American occupation" and Shiite (read "Iranian") domination--needs to see that the United States can protect one short airport highway that connects Iraq to the outside world.
Second obvious fact: The government of Ayad Allawi has failed. It is possible that Allawi and his list of candidates will do well enough in the January 30 elections to remain a force in Iraqi politics. The power of incumbency--the qa'id factor of Arab politics--is real, even in Iraq where the status quo isn't an electoral strength. The United States will, however, be enormously fortunate--even though many within the American government, particularly within the State Department and the Clandestine Service of the CIA, strenuously argue the opposite--if Allawi flames out in the elections, and the "Shiite list" backed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's preeminent divine, the rabble-rouser Moktada al-Sadr, and Ahmad Chalabi proves overwhelmingly triumphant.
A DIFFERENT APPROACH to the Sunni insurgency needs to be tried, and only an official realignment of Iraq's politics, where the majority actually has some official presence and power, is likely to encourage the Bush administration and the Allawi government. Interim Prime Minister Allawi came into office promising "outreach" to the Arab Sunnis who'd backed the Baath party and Saddam Hussein. He put forth an enormous gamble: You join me in building a new Iraq, and I will promise you a serious place within the new bureaucracy, especially within the army and the security services, the traditional levers of Sunni Arab power. Allawi did not betray the democratic objectives of a new Iraq, but he certainly intimated to the "exiled" Arab Sunnis that through him they would get a position in government that would be difficult for a democratically elected government to reverse.
Unfortunately for Allawi, and Iraq, the Sunni Arabs have not played according to this plan. What Allawi has in fact done is introduce into the fledgling Iraqi government Baathist and Sunni fundamentalist moles. We regularly hear the U.S military say that their sources of information on the insurgents are getting better. This may well be true. It certainly appears, however, that the insurgents' information, organization, and effectiveness are improving faster than our ability to neutralize them. One fears that the new Iraqi security and intelligence services are so thoroughly penetrated that it is questionable whether American cooperation with these organizations can ever be operationally secure. Allawi's bureaucratic gambit has had adverse repercussions beyond the tactics of counterinsurgency. Odds are it has emboldened the Sunni insurgents in the field. It has certainly emboldened the Sunni Arab elite one finds in Jordan (the case is no doubt similar in Syria), who have probably played an important, perhaps essential, role in developing the cohesion and effectiveness of the insurgency. One shudders contemplating the disaster we would have faced had the Coalition Provisional Authority actually maintained and incorporated more of the Sunni Arab military elite from Saddam's armed forces into the "new" Iraqi armed forces.
Though it is impossible to dissect precisely the Sunni Arab mentality that has fueled the insurgency, it's not too hard to see the two most influential mind-sets. One is that of the antidemocratic sectarian, who has used violence as a means of "negotiating" a future political position that a one man, one vote democracy would deny. These Sunni Arabs essentially want to create a pre-1970s Lebanon model in Iraq, where the Sunni community enjoys power, prestige, and wealth beyond what its numbers, accomplishments, and economic capacity warrant. These folks are the "pragmatists" among the Sunni Arab insurgents, since it is just possible to imagine them working out some deal with the Shiites and Kurds. Any workable deal would leave them vastly weaker than they were under Saddam, but this group just might compromise since their attachment to Iraq is sufficiently mundane--family, friends, property--that they would not want to risk losing it completely. Prime Minister Allawi gambled that these "pragmatists" were a decisive majority among the Arab Sunni elite and among the insurgents actually fighting.
The second mind-set is that of the Arab Sunni supremacist. These folks can be either Baathists or religious fundamentalists. They would rather be dead, or live permanently in exile, than accept an Iraqi state where Arab Shiites and Kurds rule. Rhetorically, if not financially, this group receives more support from the Sunni Arab world, which likes to depict these diehards as Iraq's finest patriots. Allawi gambled that the "pragmatists" would sell out the "supremacists."
None of the prime minister's bets has paid off because the lines between the "pragmatists" and the "supremacists" are often blurred, ideologically and familially. Also the itch to try violence as a means to win, not just draw or place, has been greater than what Allawi apparently expected. And once the violence starts, it's hard to stop. An emotional chain reaction sets in that further clouds the difference between "pragmatists" and "supremacists."
Where do we go from here? In all probability, we're stuck with Allawi's "deal" unless the January 30 elections can somehow change the dynamic and tactics. This could happen. A substantial Sunni vote in the January 30 elections would gut the legitimacy the insurgents are vying for inside Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. The Sunni Arab elite who have either sided with the insurgents or are sitting "neutral" on the sidelines would get a loud wake-up call that they have misjudged the flock. If the Sunni Arabs vote in the elections, or, more important, if they abstain en masse, Allawi may see the light (he no doubt will see it before the CIA does), and start intimidating, not negotiating with, the "pragmatists."
Allawi and the Americans ought to make it perfectly clear that the Shia are coming (after the elections, even the diehard Sunnis may begin to appreciate the writing on the wall) and the Arab Sunni elite has at most a year to join the new Iraq. In the meantime, he and the Americans (and if not he, then the Americans) should talk openly and regularly about how the new Iraqi army will be overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish since the Sunni Arabs have given them no choice. We have to ratchet up the pressure on the Arab Sunni community, especially on its elite, while prominent Iraqi Shiites--real ones, not the Allawi, ex-Baathist look-alikes--appeal to the Sunnis behind the scenes to join the new nation. The Sunni Arabs have to know--they have to feel it in their bones--that they are on the verge of losing everything in Iraq. Allawi's grand gambit has done the opposite: It has produced self-confident, smiling faces among men who are actually enjoying the war (often safely ensconced in fine hotels in neighboring Arab states).
In the end, the Sunnis will not win a civil war. Inevitably the Iraqi Shia, diehard nationalists who will not long tolerate Sunni terrorist bombing campaigns in the South, will militarily organize themselves to defeat the Sunnis on their own turf. But their victory would likely be ferocious. Latent Shiite anger over decades of brutal Sunni oppression would probably come to the fore, empowering the most radical and cold-hearted among the Shiites. The democratic experiment and its most influential proponent, the moderate Shiite religious establishment, would both likely collapse amid the violence. The creation of an Iranian-aided Iraqi Hezbollah would become a distinct possibility. If the most radical and dictatorial came to the fore among both Sunni and Shiite Arabs, the Kurds would sensibly conclude that any association with Arab Iraqis was unhealthy. The de facto separation of Kurdistan could become de jure. Jordan and Saudi Arabia, two staunchly Sunni anti-Shiite states, could start throwing weaponry and money at any Sunni group that can shoot. A very ugly outcome.
* * *
AND THEN THERE IS IRAN--as if Iraq weren't enough. The Islamic Republic's pursuit of atomic weapons--and only the deaf, dumb, blind, and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency officials (when speaking publicly) don't know that the clerical regime is energetically pursuing a nuclear-weapons program--is getting ever closer to the finish line. Whether you believe the prognostications of the Israelis or of the French foreign intelligence service, both of which think that a nuke is near, or those of the Americans, who generally guestimate a bomb in three to five years, a nuclear weapon under the control of Ali Khamenei, Iran's clerical head, and Hashemi Rafsanjani, the regime's number two and probably the cleric most intimately associated with Tehran's two-decade-old drive to produce fission weapons, is just over the horizon unless somebody in the West can delay it.
President Bush personally has described Iran's nuclear-weapons aspirations as "unacceptable" to the United States. He has thrown his administration behind the French-British-German effort to use diplomacy to convince Tehran to forsake its uranium enrichment efforts, even though the conduct of the Europeans has convinced an increasing number of American officials that this soft-power approach has no chance of succeeding with a regime that has been lying about its intentions for nearly 20 years. The Europeans have so far adamantly refused to consider serious economic sanctions against the mullahs. In particular, France, which has probably had the best intelligence collection against the Iranian nuclear target among the Europeans, has clearly signaled that it wants to expand, not curtail, trade. France's largest automotive company, Renault, in which the French government is an influential minority shareholder, has signed an agreement with Tehran to build factories in Iran for export to the entire Middle East and Central Asia.
And it is an open question, of course, whether any combination of sanctions, short of a blockade of Iranian oil, could convince the ruling mullahs to cease and desist since the nuclear program is one of the few things that the quarrelsome political clergy can agree on. It is also undoubtedly popular with many ordinary Iranians, who see the nuke as an expression of Iranian nationalism, not as an instrument of mass destruction in the hands of virulently anti-American clerics. The mullahs, who have alienated just about everyone in the country with their incompetence, corruption, and antidemocratic behavior, have accidentally discovered something that gives them prestige and nationalist credentials. (Secretive and mendacious, the ruling divines owe a thank you to the virulently anti-regime group the Mujahedeen Khalq for originally exposing the nuclear program's dimensions and progress to the Iranian public.)
Which brings us to the crucial question: What can the administration do? There are four options:
One. Admit defeat, play along with the Europeans, and learn to love the clerical nuclear weapon. Of course, President Bush and Vice President Cheney would have to eat their words about an Iranian nuclear menace, abandon preemption, the Axis of Evil doctrine, and the entire counterterrorist approach since 9/11. They would also have to cross their fingers that a regime addicted to both terrorism as statecraft and anti-Americanism wouldn't ever use its nuclear-weapons technology against the United States or an ally, directly or indirectly via surrogate Islamic radicals. In particular, the Bush administration would need to forget the disconcerting contacts--see the 9/11 Commission report--between members of al Qaeda and the clerical regime. Democratic senator Joseph Biden could be helpful as a model in this regard, as he always tries to refer to the members of al Qaeda in Iran as "in custody," which is exactly how the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes them.
Two. Try to force a vote on the U.N. Security Council finding Iran not in full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and thereby subject to sanctions. This tactic won't work since neither the Europeans, nor the Russians, nor the Chinese would likely go along. This maneuver might make sense as a preliminary to a preemptive military strike, allowing Washington to say that it tried. However, since the Europeans are never going to state publicly what they regularly say privately--that the Iranians are determined to acquire, at minimum, the means of quickly producing a nuclear weapon--the rhetorical and moral advantage of going to the U.N. seems nil.
Three. Tell the Europeans in crystal-clear language that the United States intends to strike preemptively clerical Iran's nuclear-related facilities unless they insist to the Iranians that Western inspectors must be allowed immediate free access to any challenged site in Iran. Tell the Europeans to tell the Iranians what Washington said to them. (U.S. surveillance satellites should be trained on Iran to watch for telltale movement and communications.) This approach might possibly work, but it's doubtful. Either the Europeans or the Iranians will probably refuse (the Iranians are vastly better than the French, Germans, and Brits at brinkmanship).
Four. Realize that the only option that passes the pinch test--that realistically offers a good chance of delaying Iran's nuclear-weapons production by years--is a preemptive military strike against all of the facilities that American, European, Israeli, and (in private) IAEA intelligence suspect are associated with weapons production. There are certainly many arguments to be made against a preemptive attack, though only one is really free from a pre-9/11 mindset that advances defense over offense in counterterrorism. The weak arguments--the Iranian nation will rise against us, the democratic movement in Iran will die, the Iranian clergy will retaliate in Iraq and globally--are not historically or psychologically particularly compelling. Iranians as a people may well rally around the flag, but so what? The Iranians rallied around the flag when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980. The invasion didn't prevent the spiritual collapse of the Islamic revolution and the growing popular animus towards the ruling clergy, which were both well underway by the mid-1980s.
Iranians are not nationalist automatons--they are among the most profound, cynical patriots imaginable. They have learned to hate the clerical regime for the most intimate, in-your-face reasons. This disgust will not be long buried by a rush of patriotic passion provoked by an American bombing run on nuclear facilities. Given the Iranian character, it's likely to dissipate at an astonishing speed.
And even if the Iranians were to prove themselves nationalist zealots--there is a first time for everything--history is littered with determined nationalists who lose in battles against stronger powers. And the current Iranian government has already stifled the democratic movement in the country. The democratic culture in Iran is certainly alive and growing. But it's absurdly American-centric to believe that Iranians are embracing democratic ideas because of a love of the United States. Iranians are increasingly democratic in spirit because of their own collision with various types of dictatorship over the last hundred years. Some of Iran's most determined and popular democratic dissidents already have a very jaundiced view of the United States. After a U.S. strike, they would just like us even less.
What a preemptive attack would certainly do is provoke another debate about the competence of a ruling clergy who led the nation into a head-on collision with the United States. Khamenei and Rafsanjani, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps behind them, would not look so clever or so unchallengeably strong the day after U.S. missiles and planes destroyed the nuclear facilities. The clerical regime might well try to retaliate against the United States clandestinely. It rose to power in large measure on deceit and a willingness to use intimidation, ruthless violence, and terrorism against its opponents (which is, of course, why you don't want them to have a nuke).
But the fear-of-terrorism argument takes us back to the pre-9/11 world, where we preempted ourselves because of our fear of our enemies' potential nastiness. This argument is similar in sentiment and ethics to those used by European states that gave laissez-passers to Palestinian terrorists so long as the Palestinians agreed not to kill Israelis and Jews on their soil. The logic of this argument will always cede the high ground to an enemy willing to use terrorism against us (and the mullahs have certainly proven over two decades that they are willing to use terrorism against us and others). The only responsible rejoinder here is to threaten your enemy with massive retaliation, aimed directly at the world he cherishes, and especially at the military and security-and-intelligence structures that guarantee his survival. If we want to stop Iran's terrorist-supporting clerics from getting nukes, we have to be prepared to stare them down.
And, yes, the Iranians could try also to strike us in Iraq, but they are on operationally weak ground in Mesopotamia. Iraqi Shiite interests differ starkly from clerical Iran's. The Iraqi Shia as a people and the major Shiite groups through which Iran has tried to work its influence have pledged themselves to creating a democracy. It is enormously unlikely that the Iraqi Shia will abandon a peaceful path to democracy and engage in terrorism against the United States for the sake of a Persian clerical regime that most Iraqi Arabs dislike and don't trust. And Iranians must have secure Iraqi operational partners: If they operate alone, they stand out and run the serious risk that their hand will be discovered. If discovered, the clerics' fear of massive American retaliation against the regime comes into play.
The stronger argument against attacking Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities is that we may not technically be able to do it. This point needs to be debated by military men, intelligence officers, and senior officials. Given how diligently Iran has tried to hide certain facilities and deny access to others, the evidence certainly suggests that the clerical regime's research and production may not allow for that much duplication and concealment. The American, European, and Israeli intelligence communities have a good deal of information on a wide variety of likely and possible sites. Quite unintentionally, the IAEA has also aided in what is becoming a targeting guide. And given the awful terrorist track record of the clerical regime toward us and others, it would be wise for the administration--assuming it wants to pass the pinch test and not continually punt to the Europeans--to posit that we can severely hurt the Iranian nuclear-weapons program until proven otherwise.
* * *
WHICH LEAVES US with al Qaeda, the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative, and the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. The first two are completely intertwined. The Middle East initiative is the Bush administration's attempt to get to the root causes behind al Qaeda: the nexus between Islamic extremism and tyranny. Building on the intellectual spadework done by such influential historians as Princeton University's Bernard Lewis and Johns Hopkins University's Fouad Ajami, President Bush has underscored American-supported Middle Eastern autocracy as the jet fuel behind Islamic holy-warriorism. The Broader Middle East Initiative is supposed to encourage the political opening of Middle Eastern societies. Yet as of now, the initiative contains no coercive measures for encouraging dictators and kings to loosen their grips on their societies. In the State Department's view, this evolution is all supposed to happen voluntarily.
There is no historical reason to believe that it will. The Middle East's unelected rulers have shown no inclination whatsoever to off themselves. On the contrary, they have shown repeatedly that they are willing to intimidate, jail, or eliminate serious regime-threatening dissident movements. Still, things are changing in the Muslim Middle East, particularly in the Arab world. In great part owing to President Bush's post-9/11 actions, reformers are trying to gain some public ground and even, in some countries, toeholds inside governments. These efforts reflect a general consensus in the Middle East, among both the man in the street and the elites, that the status quo is unsustainable, that something must give in the Middle East's politically dysfunctional societies. Travel the Middle East and it's easy to find people who feel that just maybe, for a variety of interlocking reasons, despotism in the region is now on shaky ground. Which is why if the Bush administration is serious about its own analysis and intentions it will start to pressure the only two governments over which it has any real leverage--Egypt and Jordan.
Egypt is the make-or-break country in the Arab world. If Egypt were to go democratic, the political impact on the Arab world would be even greater than the likely shockwave that will come from Iraq if the democratic experiment there can hold. Along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Egypt is the birthplace of the jihadist spirit of 9/11. Highly Westernized, urban, and urbane, Egypt is rich in wannabe political parties, particularly those of a religious stripe. If the president's counterterrorist democracy project makes sense in the Middle East--and it is certain that this president believes passionately that it does (a good example of a man who knows virtually nothing about the Middle East knowing more than many "realist" foreign-service and intelligence officials who've dedicated their lives to the region)--then his administration needs to prove that the Broader Middle East Initiative is more than just ideological window dressing. It should attach pro-democracy conditionalities to American aid.
For example, give Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, or whoever succeeds him (he is old and in spotty health), a three-year deadline to implement a real democratic transition. Link the billions in U.S. aid to political achievements. Marry the aid to regular public statements about the need for the people of Egypt to determine their own destiny. (To his credit, President Bush has already rocked the Egyptian dictator once by a speech that singled out Egypt as a dictatorship that needed to evolve.)
Will Mubarak or his eldest son, who may be his successor, go for it? Probably not. But the United States needs to align itself finally on the democratic side in the Muslim Middle East. In no small part, bin Ladenism arose because the United States was constantly aligning itself with oppressive dictators, an understandable by-product of the Cold War. We should be enormously wary of any claim made by the U.S. intelligence community that support for this dictator or that king is essential to the war on terrorism. Eventually, we have to stop putting the cart before the horse. There is no historical reason to believe that bin Ladenism will end until the Middle East's autocracies evolve--until liberals, Muslim moderates, and fundamentalists have a chance to make their case democratically.
And intelligence services love to say their liaison work is essential to national security. Upon review, one usually discovers that it isn't quite as essential as the intel officers said, and that the regime in question isn't giving information to us because they like us. Fear of common enemies or more powerful "friends," possible punishment and reward, have much more to do with the liaison relationships. We cannot win this war through police actions. As a bureaucratically astute National Security Council official recently remarked, we should use our intelligence and security-service relationships to encourage these foreign intelligence and security services to evolve. Middle Eastern security services will have to crack--their loyalties and esprit de corps must become more popularly based--to have democratic movements triumph, at least without bloodshed. In both Egypt and especially Jordan, many within the political elites say they want change, that they have to change, sooner not later. Put them to the test. Give them an incentive to get serious.
And democratic change in Jordan, where over half the citizenry identifies itself as Palestinian (the percentage is even higher if one counts long-term Palestinian "refugees"), could have an enormous positive impact upon the Palestinian community on the West Bank of the Jordan river. No one talks about what democracy would do among East Bank Palestinians. They should. The identities of the denizens of both banks may meld. They may further separate. They will definitely provoke each other, fueling a profound debate about what it means to be Palestinian. To the Bush administration's credit, it seems to understand well that the key to any successful Israeli-Palestinian dialogue is the democratic evolution of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza (it should add on the East Bank). The Palestinians must show that they have divorced themselves from decades of imbibing terrorism ("armed resistance") as the core of their national identity. This may be a long and painful process even in a democratic Palestinian society. Neither the Israeli Left nor Right wants to go back to the summer of 2000, when many Israelis, perhaps even a majority, had hoped that Israeli concessions were the key to producing a lasting peace. Suicide bombings have killed off that dream and transformed the Labor party into a vastly more skeptical enterprise.
Ariel Sharon is popular in Israel because the Palestinian national movement, led by the Palestine Liberation Organization, waged war on the Israeli liberal imagination. That imagination isn't dead, but it is circumscribed by the security barrier across the West Bank. The "Wall" has cut the Palestinian suicide-bombing success rate by 90 percent, and returned something close to normalcy to the Israeli psyche. A renewed "peace process" begins with that barrier: It ain't going anywhere. (Indeed, it can only grow in length and size.) And no American government post-9/11 is going to force the democratically elected government of Israel to move it, not before the Palestinian people have proven beyond doubt that they have gone cold-turkey on terrorism. It is in fact the "Wall," not Arafat's death, that is the real catalyst for change among West Bank Palestinians.
One has to assume that Tony Blair, a pretty keen observer of the American scene, knows this. Yet American coercion of the Israelis is the sine qua non, as any European will tell you, of "progress" in the Holy Land. The British prime minister apparently believes that American coercion of Israelis might again be possible through an international conference on the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. It isn't. The repercussions of such a conference, where it is certain that the French and perhaps other Western Europeans would behave poorly, could not redound to the prime minister's advantage in Washington, Jerusalem, Paris, Berlin, or London. The Bush administration would do Prime Minister Blair an enormous favor by telling him so. A revolutionary among the organically conservative and timid French and Germans, Blair ought to push with President Bush for meaningful Palestinian democracy, where all Palestinians, not just the old guard of the PLO, have a real chance for power. And George Bush perhaps could remind Tony Blair, who could remind the French and Germans, that bin Ladenism went from infancy to adulthood during the presidency of Bill Clinton, who was addicted to advancing the nationalist and religious aspirations of the Palestinian people by negotiation. (Remember those halcyon years!) Of course, no discussion about any of the Middle East's problems between the president and the prime minister, Middle Eastern Muslims' two finest Western friends, is going to mean much unless the two gentlemen get it right in Iraq. If we lose there, it's all over. In our awful fall, even the French, smilingly, might pity us. (Article)
Anti-war leaders charge
Nazis rule White House - Movement rallies this weekend, insists attack grounds
for indictment of Bush – January 18, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com - "They
are criminal offenses, they are high crimes, they are indictable offenses, and
they are impeachable offenses."
This is how former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark described President George W. Bush's foreign policy at an Oct. 26 anti-war rally in Washington, D.C.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark
Now comes the encore. Americans who insist the Bush administration has not made an adequate case for an attack on Iraq are gearing up for more intense and dramatic protests. Joint planning among anti-war groups and well-known figures is quickly coalescing and reaching critical mass. In an interview this week with WorldNetDaily, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter echoed Clark.
"I would be in favor of the impeachment of President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors," Ritter told WND. "Murder is a high crime and misdemeanor, and I can't think of any better definition than murder when he talks about American service members and putting them in a war which is not only illegal but is based on a foundation of lies."
This weekend will see a massive street mobilization of protesters in both Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. The march, organized by Clark's International A.N.S.W.E.R group, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, carries the taglines "No War Against Iraq" and "Eliminate U.S. Weapons of Mass Destruction."
There will be a rally at 11 a.m. on the west side of the
Capitol building and a march on the Washington, D.C ., Navy yard. In
conjunction with the national march on Washington, D.C., tomorrow, there will
be a Youth and Student Rally & March, gathering at 11:00 a.m. at the 
Department of
"In-Justice" to protest "attacks against the Arab and Muslim
communities."
Former U.N.Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter
Meanwhile, today in Gaza, a senior member of the militant Islamic movement Hamas said that Muslims and Arabs will attack American targets everywhere if the United States goes to war against Iraq. The "youth rally" will be followed by a "March to the Presidential Palace," the White House, for a "Youth & Student Weapons Inspection. " On Monday, Black Voices for Peace will be organizing what leaders only term "an important activity in Washington, D.C." The organizers of the rally encourage people to bring banners and puppets, to dress as weapons inspectors, "to find as many creative methods to dramatize our demands in opposition to a war of aggression and in support of a reorganization of society's priorities that would put people's needs ahead of the Pentagon and the war profiteers in corporate America."
Protesters in San Francisco will assemble at 11 a.m. at the foot of Market Street at Embarcadero. They will rally, then march to Civic Center Plaza at Grove and Larkin, adjacent to City Hall, for a closing rally with speakers, entertainment and cultural performances.
Disarming the U.S.
According to the group organizing the protests, the International A.N.S.W.E.R. group, the real threat is America: “The world is being menaced by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a government that is openly threatening and planning to use nuclear weapons in pre-emptive wars of aggression against others, including non-nuclear countries." The group adds, " the real threat of nuclear war and the use of weapons of mass destruction arises within the U.S. administration."
The protesters say they plan to demand instead that
"these hundreds of billions of dollars be spent on jobs, education,
housing, health care 
and to meet human needs."
A "people's inspection team" will call for unfettered access and a full declaration of U.S. non-conventional weapons systems. A.N.S.W.E.R. says it believes that all weapons of mass destruction should be banished from the planet, but adds that the U.S. should be the first to do so: "This is impossible until the biggest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – the one at the disposal of trigger-happy George W. Bush and Co. – is eliminated. Any other call for disarmament will not be viewed as legitimate by the rest of the world."
A.N.S.W.E.R protesters
'High crimes and misdemeanors'? The rallies come on the heels of the release of a book by two anti-war leaders who accuse President Bush of planning "high crimes and misdemeanors" in his strategic theory of a pre-emptive military strike against Iraq. "Empire at home: George W. Bush and John Ashcroft v. the Bill of Rights" was written by civil rights attorneys Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carlo Messineo of the Partnership for Civil Justice.
Verheyden-Hilliard was the emcee at the October Washington, D.C., rally. Verheyden-Hillard told WorldNetDaily the book "breaks out the Patriot Act in simple matter-of-fact language" adding that "most of Congress didn't even read [the Patriot Act]." "I sought to demystify it in a book," Verheyden-Hillard said. "It's a legal analysis, written for the people of the U.S., so they can arm themselves with education and understanding so they can challenge the government." In the book, Verheyden-Hillard and Messineo seek to challenge what they call "the government's sweeping new legal authorities, including the Patriot Act and the war against civil rights and civil liberties being conducted by the Bush administration." The authors argue that "the war on civil rights at home is the domestic component of the Bush administration's larger program of conquest and empire." Verheyden-Hilliard told WND that there is a "formidable and potent anti-war movement" and that "there is enormous recognition by people in U.S. that there are two agendas at work in the White House: empire, and the global war drive that is pushing forward."
She argues that these are not tied to 9-11, but part of a pre-existing agenda of Bush administration
'The Bush Bastille'
Verheyden-Hilliard also contends that "one thing that holds back the opposition of people in the U.S. is this institution of repressive government authority versus people in the U.S.," citing a post-9-11 "immediate demonization of Arab-Americans." "So many were swept up off street, with no lawyers – no right to trial and no ability for others to ask questions," she said referring to this "right to jail" as the "Bush Bastille" Verheyden-Hilliard also is a lawyer for the International Action Center, or IAC, the parent group of A.N.S.W.E.R. Given the IAC's links to dictatorial regimes worldwide, WorldNetDaily asked Veryheyden-Hilliard if this wasn't a case of significant hypocrisy. "I'm not a member of the IAC," she answered, "but of an IAC-led coalition." She termed critical news coverage "heavy red-baiting" and added "they're not supporters of dictators." She added that many were raising questions about impeachment of President Bush, adding that "many more are seriously evaluating it and discussing what mechanisms are appropriate to it."
The author emphasizes that "all power is in the hands of the people to place restriction on government authority" and that "the people have the right to order and challenge and end government wrongdoing." Verheyden-Hillard says those protesting the war should take action on multiple fronts, "fighting, agitating, and causing progress – it's not about waiting for government," "We need to fight by being in the streets," she said, "by educating our neighbors, and taking appropriate legal action. We can't sit back and wait for government to do the right thing." Verheyden-Hilliard adds that she is "not reliant on the Democratic Party to carry forward a people's movement in the U.S. … Tom Daschle was out supporting Bush and the war drive."
WorldNetDaily also asked the author about Al Gore's prior use of anti-war lingo such as "empire" and "global domination" and whether this meant he was attempting to align himself, prior to backing out of the presidential race, with the anti-Bush momentum of the anti-war movement. "Oh, a principled stand on war from Al Gore? It seems quite unlikely. He's not aligning himself with the anti-war movement," she said.
Scott Ritter: Nazis in the White House?
"When you go to war you open up a Pandora's box, the results of which cannot be predicted," maintains former weapons inspector Scott Ritter. "Therefore, there better be a darned good reason to go to war. It's got to be worth the sacrifice that you're asking others to make." WorldNetDaily recently interviewed Ritter via telephone as he drove from his Albany, N.Y., home to appear on Fox News. Throughout the interview, he contended that media have consistently missed his primary concern regarding the proposed military strike against Iraq. Ritter said the issue is the abrogation of the rule of law, which he views as setting the U.S. up for a particularly nasty potential scenario – U.S. troops cornered in Iraq, subject to chemical attack, which then prompts the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. "The Bush administration has put forward a nuclear policy planning document which clearly states a scenario in which nuclear weapons can be used pre-emptively and that scenario is tens of thousands of troops in a hostile land, threatened by the potential of chemical and biological weapons," he said. "And clearly, Iraq could evolve into such a situation. "What's wrong with diplomacy, what's wrong with inspectors, what's wrong with the rule of law?" he asked.
WorldNetDaily asked Ritter whether he agreed with Mara Verheyden-Hilliard's thesis regarding Bush's foreign policy constituting a violation of the United Nations and Nuremberg charters. Ritter reiterated that the U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, which "stipulates that war is rejected as a means to resolve disputes and conflicts," although he allowed that there are exceptions, as "when the collective, the U.N. Security Council, finds a situation exists that threatens international peace. Then under chapter seven of the charter, it can be resolved by use of force." Still, Ritter does not find the current situation in Iraq to meet this criteria, and therefore views the idea of a pre-emptive strike as unconstitutional and a violation of American law. "It has no grounds in legality," he said.
"This is a constitutional issue," he continued. "I think there can be no doubt his policy is a violation of the Constitution, except that constitutional lawyers will say that judicial system will not get involved in matters of national security … There are interpretation issues – what are the limits of executive authority? … I think that it's not so much the legality of his actions. I view it as being unconstitutional … I'm sure many will say the president has these authorities regarding national security."
Ritter also said that impeachment and indictment were legitimate issues. "What I would find to be grounds of impeachment is the president lying to the American people," he said. "I believe the president has lied to the American people. I believe the vice president has lied to the American people. "And if we go to war where American service members are killed, I think the president should be held accountable for this judicially," Ritter stated. "I would be in favor of the impeachment of President Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors," said Ritter. "Murder is a high crime and misdemeanor, and I can't think of any better definition than murder when he talks about American service members and putting them in a war which is not only illegal but is based on a foundation of lies."
WND also asked Ritter about comments he made in an interview with William Pitt, appearing in the book "War on Iraq: What Team Bush doesn't want you to know."
In that interview, Ritter said that "Donald Rumsfeld was politically dead. No one thought of Donald Rumsfeld as having any potential. Paul Wolfowitz was seen as a raving lunatic of the far right. Richard Perle is not called 'The Prince of Darkness' without cause." Ritter characterized the leaders as "sniping from the fringes," and said "suddenly they're running the show," adding that for this reason, these are "extremely dangerous times."
WND asked Ritter whether he viewed these people as having taken this turn since taking office, or always having been that way. "Well, they were always this way," he said. "Wolfowitz was always a very dangerous man. He is a walking affront to the Constitution of the U.S. He is a walking affront to international law. The same with Richard Perle . He was openly boastful how President Bush has no other choice but go to war because he's committed too much political capital." Ritter concluded, "If Richard Perle thinks [that's] a reason to go to war then he might as well remove the American flag from outside his building and put on a swastika and call himself what he is, which is a Nazi. This is the rule of law, not about going to war for political convenience of any single individual."
WorldNetDaily then asked Ritter why, if these political figures were always this way, he voted them into power by voting for President Bush. The former U.N. inspector argued that he didn't vote for them, just for Bush, adding that Gore was a "known commodity – a liar," and that he had actually initially supported Sen. John McCain.
Prior to the presidential election, media already were commenting on one of Bush's top foreign policy advisers, Wolfowitz, noting he "advocates pulling out all stops to get rid of Saddam Hussein." Also publicly known were his other top advisers at that time, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Brent Scowcroft, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Cheney.
'Freepers' enter the fray
Kristinn Taylor, co-leader of the D.C. chapter of the grass-roots, web-based group Free Republic, commenting on Ritter's remarks, said "President Bush is engaging in diplomacy right now, and he is operating under the rule of law and is under the authority of Congress and the United Nations. Going to war with Iraq is not written in stone."
Taylor contends that "before President Bush started leading, nothing was getting done. You have to push against a recalcitrant regime like Saddam Hussein's, just as Reagan did with the Soviet Union before."
Referring to Ritter's comments about "murder" of military members, Taylor told WND, "That's a disgusting way to look at the value of the military. President Bush is not that kind of man." He added, "Who knows what else we're going to find? The administration is operating in the framework of the rule of law and international law."
Taylor has helped to organize a counter-demonstration to be held in D.C. organized by the D.C. Chapter of Free Republic (FReepers) and MOVE-OUT – Marines and Other Veterans Engaging Outrageous Un-American Traitors. "The Patriots Rally" will be held at Constitution Gardens on the Mall near 21st Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., today from 9 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. Afterward, they will move to the Marine barracks at 8th and I Streets, S.E., to stand on the sidewalk along the march route of the anti-war demonstrators and "exercise our right to offer our opinion of their public parade as it goes by us." Former U.S. Rep. Bob Dornan, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s will be among those who address the crowd. Taylor said the purpose of the counter-demonstration was to "show support for our men and women in uniform who are fighting the war on terror and preparing to defend America from outlaw regimes such as Iraq and North Korea."
Iraqi-Americans team up with vets
The FReepers and MOVE-OUT also will host Aziz Al-Taee of the Iraqi-American Council as speaker. "Theirs is a voice that isn't heard in the media," Taylor complains.
Aziz recently appeared on Greta van Susteren's Fox News show, Taylor said, and now he is starting to get a "few appearances." He adds that Aziz and his group publicly demean Osama bin Laden in very strong terms, something that isn't seen or heard – a very rare thing in the Islamic world." He added that the two groups agree on a very fundamental issue: a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Taylor thoroughly denounced anti-Semitism, saying "We're not racist, and we don't like people who are." The FReeper leader was referring to last April's "pro-Palestinian" march in D.C., organized also by A.N.S.W.E.R. He called it a "horrific rally," saying "I saw more swastikas there than in the films of the old Nuremberg rallies." Taylor has now reported that, unlike the October rally, "C-SPAN has informed me that they will not be covering 'The Patriots Rally for America,' but they will be broadcasting live tomorrow the 'anti-war' rally in D.C. put on by the communist front group IAC-ANSWER."
Regarding the veterans who will be protesting with Taylor, he explained "there were Vietnam vets who were really upset when at the October rally, next to the memorial wall, a spokesman said 'The men whose names are on that wall – if they were here today, they would say no to the war on Iraq.'" "The vets are coming to say they got it all wrong," he said. "They're proud to have served their country trying to prevent South Vietnam from becoming enslaved by communists, and as far as they're concerned, they left South Vietnam free, but were let down by politicians." One Vietnam vet, who wanted to go only by the name Sam, told WND, "They have every right under our Constitution to peacefully protest. It's one of the rights we fought for. However, they also need to realize that the men and women who protect their right to protest are not the enemy." "They can protest against the government policies they disagree with, but I wonder how many are 'anti-war' and not really 'anti-anything American.' I also believe, with all my heart that, in this case, they're dead wrong. This one is necessary."
'Reverse-McCarthyism'
Taylor is especially disdainful of the controversial roots and connections of some anti-war leaders who, he says, cultivate close ties to repressive communist regimes like Cuba, Iraq, China and Cuba. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, wrote that these "Marxists, who have now made common cause with Islamic and Palestinian groups and causes, are still dedicated to the destruction of our democracy and free enterprise system. They are skillful at manipulating front groups and the media to conceal their true aims. They brought between 70,000 and 100,000 people to Washington, D.C. on April 20, many of them Arabs and Muslims, making it the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in the U.S. ever."
Investigative reporter Kevin Coogan, author of a study on the postwar right, "Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International," told WorldNetDaily: "My only wish would be to make the point that the WWP [World Workers Party, parent group of the IAC and A.N.S.W.E.R.], like the Revolutionary Communist Party, isn't horrible simply because it is leftist or Marxist per se; it is horrible that both groups' raison d'être has been on cheerleading the worst Stalinist and human rights abusing governments in the world, from Pol Pot to Saddam, as long as they are feuding with America."
These groups, said Coogan, operate "under the pretext of being peaceful humanitarians concerned with human rights, poverty, and the suffering of innocent people. This is the real reason why the influence of both groups today is such a scandal."
Coogan's expose on the front groups driving and controlling the current anti-war movement has resulted in a "reverse-McCarthyism," knee-jerk reaction, he said noting that his reporting is usually labeled "red-baiting" and "an exercise in McCarthyism." "However, to me it just meant that I had hit a nerve, as none of the attacks raised any factual errors in my piece," he said.
Ironically, those making such accusations, seem ignorant of the fact that the investigative work exposing such groups was in many cases pioneered by leftist and communist journalists working for underground newspapers. Coogan cited the work done by Christopher Hitchens and two other reporters for the left-leaning Nation as other examples of pioneering work. Meanwhile, some anti-war protesters are wondering whether leadership will "stay on message" this weekend.
Regarding the October A.N.S.W.E.R.-led rally in San
Francisco, Anti-war.com's Justin Raimondo, a self-described 'warp-speed
Libertarian,' criticized leadership's lack of focus: "The Usual Suspects …
all mouthing the same tired old phrases and subjecting their captive audience
to every pathetic leftie cause under the sun: free Mumia Abu
Jamal (won't somebody free us from him?), 'money for jobs, not for war'
(hey, bud, you get a job, and then you get the money!), 'transgender rights'
(say what?), the whole kit-n'-kaboodle. Yikes! Indeed, at the end of it, I was
convinced that I had wandered into the wrong demonstration, because we didn't
hear much about the war, or why we ought to be against it, or what any of the
arguments for non-intervention in the affairs of other nations might be." (Article)
Through Arms to Syria, Putin Challenges US Middle East Game Rules – January 12, 2005
DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report - Disturbing reports were coming out of the Russian capital Wednesday, January 12, about Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plan to accede to Syria’s request for advanced weaponry during president Bashar Assad’s visit to Moscow on January 24. DEBKAfile’s US and Israeli security sources quickly contradicted reports that 18 Iskander-M or SS-X-26 surface-to-surface missiles were on the table. The items for sale, they revealed, are advanced SA-10 air defense systems of the type that protects Moscow and shoulder-held SA-18 anti-air missiles, whose transfer to the Hizballah and/or Iraqi guerrillas would move at least two sets of goal posts in the Middle East balance of strength. The SA-10 is an effective defense against Israeli warplanes and missiles, including cruise missiles. Its presence in Syria would therefore knock a serious hole in Israel’s deterrent ability against Assad and the Hizballah.
The Kremlin’s willingness to sell these items to Israel’s northern neighbor and backer of Iraqi insurgents is a rocket from the Putin to the White House in Washington, a declaration that he has had enough of sitting on the sidelines and watching US move the January 30 election pieces around the Iraq board and tilt the Palestinian ballot in favor of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as Yasser Arafat’s successor.
The Russian president’s exasperation boiled over when he saw Washington’s hand in the Ukraine presidential election stirring up the anti-Moscow Orange Revolution that brought opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to office, and, again, in the sale of the Russian oil concern Yukos. The Russian leader felt he had been made the target of a well- orchestrated campaign for undermining him personally and politically.
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is also put on notice that Washington’s backing alone does not lend him the status of unilateral player for disengagement in the Palestinian arena. The Russian leader has another large bone to pick with Sharon. He has complained often on the basis of intelligence received that Israel provides a backstairs rendezvous venue for Jewish Russian oligarchs conspiring against him, among them Berizovsky who lives in London, and Khodorovsky, founder of the oil giant YUKOS who sits in a Moscow jail. Each of those moneyed plotters, he charges, maintains a representative in Israel to look after the transfer of his wealth to Israeli banks. More than once, the Russian president asked Sharon to put a stop to this activity. When the Israeli prime minister informed him that the Law of Return forbids prosecution or extradition unless laws are broken, Putin was disbelieving. He later sneered to his aides that he had not known that the Law of Return applied to members of the Russian Christian Orthodox Church, a veiled reference to the Russian oligarchs’ hired personnel who relocated with them to Israel.
The Kremlin’s decision to supply advanced SA-10 and SA-18 missiles to Syria constitutes a direct threat to Israel. But it is also a shot across Washington’s bows. DEBKAfile’s Russian and Israeli military experts described the SA-10 (“Grumble”) as an advanced surface-to-air missiles system capable of seriously limiting Israel’s aerial activity over Syria and Lebanon. It can engage more than one target and counter low and high-flying aircraft, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. “Grumble” can outperform the US Patriot anti-missile missile system supplied to Israel and counter the aircraft and most of the missiles in the Israel Air Force’s arsenal, to the detriment of its deterrent capabilities The SA-18 “Grouse” is a highly effective shoulder-held missile. If it reaches Iraqi guerrillas it will constitute a direct threat to US troops. In Hizballah hands, it would add to US troubles in Lebanon. Now that the cat is out of the bag, Putin and his top strategists can sit back and see how Washington and Jerusalem react. (Article)
Will the U.S. Get Tougher on Russia? – December 27, 2004
An occasional
touch-and-go alliance between the United States and Russia since the end of the
Cold War appears to be moving toward a rough patch as Russian President
Vladimir Putin makes moves to turn the country in on itself.
The two nations' relationship apparently had been strengthened by the cordiality between President Bush and Putin. But recent events, including Russia's decision to sell off the assets of its nation's oil firm and disagreements over the outcome of the invalidated Ukraine election, have put a strain on the alliance. Putin has also been accused of rolling back civil reforms established in the 1990s and eliminating press freedoms and political pluralism. For his part, Putin was edgy and defensive on Wednesday when asked at his end-of-year press conference about his views on democracy in Russia, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Putin has personally campaigned for pro-Moscow Ukrainian Foreign Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who won last month's nullified election after the country's Supreme Court validated charges of massive voter fraud. The new election was scheduled for Sunday. "I repeat, we are not going to annex anything," Putin told reporters of his intentions toward Ukraine. Instead, Russia's second democratically elected leader has repeatedly accused the West of interfering in the Ukranian election, and has lashed out at the United States indirectly, though he said Thursday that he does not think that U.S. policy is to marginalize or isolate the Russian Federation. He added that he considers Bush a decent and consistent man whom he trusts.
But Russia did test-launch this week an SS-18 missile, also known as the Satan rocket, which is able to carry multiple warheads, and Putin said controlling weapons and non-proliferation form the basis of the U.S.-Russian relationship. Back in the United States, some observers have said that the contested Ukrainian election has opened a door for the administration to be more vocal about its differences with Russia. "This story is tremendously important, perhaps the greatest story in the world right now, largely because it is about the space of freedom," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., an observer of the disputed election, told FOX News following the first vote. Lugar said the election was marred by "wholesale fraud and abuse." Lugar's comments were seemingly backed by outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, who refused to accept the election results and added that Russia may be defying an international treaty by failing to acquire host country agreement to the stationing of its forces in Moldova and Georgia, members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He added at a meeting of the 55-nation OSCE in early December that the United States remains "concerned about developments in Russia, most notably those affecting freedom of the press and the rule of law."
Trying to Maintain the Peace
Others urge Washington to tread carefully with its sensitive ally after Bush's election pledge to be more aggressive in securing loose nuclear materials. When Bush first met Putin, he declared he "was able to get a sense of his soul." On Monday, he repeated his commitment to his ally. "Vladimir Putin and I have got a good personal relationship, starting with our meeting in Slovenia," Bush said during his year-end news conference. "I intend to keep it that way."
Despite the close personal affinity, many Russia observers in the United States say the two nations have always had a somewhat tense relationship, and learning how to communicate differences has been an "enduring problem" for the two since the end of the Cold War. "President Bush can speak directly [to Putin], but only privately, on everything from the apparent crackdown on independent media to the spontaneous reorganization of the country's political life," Coit Blacker, director of the Stanford Institute of International Studies (search), told FOXNews.com. Blacker added that differences have been discussed largely behind the scenes, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when Putin was the first world leader to phone President Bush and express his support in fighting terrorism.
"The Bush administration has been careful about criticizing Russia's internal politics — they don't want to offend Putin," said Olga Oliker of the RAND Corporation think tank. "The U.S. fears if it's too critical, it'll be impossible to move forward on areas of cooperation."
But Kyle Parker, a Russia analyst at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the rising volume of reports on nuclear proliferation, the conflict in Chechnya, the bankruptcy of Russian oil giant Yukos and the Ukraine elections will make it harder to operate strictly behind closed doors. "It's increasingly difficult to ignore the authoritarian drift in Russia," Parker told FOXNews.com. "Americans who didn’t necessarily follow U.S.-Russian relations might be scratching their heads and wondering why we're so buddy-buddy with Putin."
A New Approach in the Works?
A State Department official told FOXNews.com that the department was "taking stock of achievements" and "identifying priorities for our bilateral agenda" with Russia. This comes as the diplomatic agency transitions from Powell to the next secretary of state, most likely to be current National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to win confirmation in the Senate following hearings next month. The official stressed the review is part of the normal process that occurs during a leadership transition and declined to say whether a more critical attitude is developing in the department toward Russia, as has been speculated in recent media reports. Rice, a former provost of Stanford University, is an expert on the former Soviet Union and served as the top security adviser on that nation to President George H.W. Bush. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration's critics were quick to pounce on Rice's Cold War background, charging that she did not have the goods to take on Islamic extremism. Now, however, her background may fit the occasion. Though as national security adviser, she has not openly criticized Moscow, she previously accused the Clinton administration of not being more stern with then President Boris Yeltsin, referring to its engagement with Moscow as "happy talk." "My understanding is she does see Russia through those Cold War lenses," said Andrew Jack, Moscow bureau chief at The Financial Times and author of "Inside Putin's Russia: Can There Be Reform Without Democracy?" "That means there's an instinctively more confrontational approach, an older approach to looking at relations," Jack told FOXNews.com.
But Rice remains a close friend and valued adviser to the president and is known for her loyalty to the administration and for running a tight-lipped ship. If she plans to depart from the company line at all, said Blacker, a friend and former Stanford colleague, she'll do so behind closed doors and not through press leaks. "If she disagrees [with the administration] she won't be the one doing the leaking," Blacker told FOXNews.com. "In their private counsel, she will be capable of articulating her point of view or argument. "One thing I expect is that Condi Rice is going to pay a lot of attention to the important bilateral relationships this county has, and that includes Russia," said Blacker, adding, "This administration has been more gentle with Putin than some of us would prefer."
Forcefulness will be required as Russia's security problems also stand to threaten America, warns John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. Pike said believes he Putin's tendency to view the War on Terror through a Cold War lens has led him to frame his country's security in terms of geography and military might, leaving a wealth of nuclear materials vulnerable. "Putin's definition of security is how many kilometers stand between him and NATO," Pike told FOXNews.com.
RAND's Olicker said more needs to be done to secure Russia's nuclear materials. She cited a Nuclear Threat Initiative report that found the amount of "loose nukes" material secured since the Sept. 11 attacks has actually dropped. Olicker also argued that political setbacks in Russia, such as a Putin-endorsed end to popular elections for local leaders, leave the country's security forces weak and disorganized. Russian security forces were also blamed for botching the rescue operation of 1,000 people taken hostage on the first day of school in the Russian town of Beslan in September. Chechen and foreign Muslim fighters killed hundreds of hostages, mostly children. Jack said he's not sure that the administration will say much about Russia's affairs, particularly since the Iraq war remains a divisive point in relations. "When you look at the foreign policy, the administration under Bush has shifted the goalposts a lot," he said. "I would say there's a pragmatic alliance between Bush and Putin about not interfering too far in foreign affairs." But Parker said Washington should not be afraid to take off the kid gloves. "Russians respect candor and power — they find weakness provocative and not to be respected. Russians had great respect for Reagan. They liked" his directness, Parker said. (Article)
US and Iraq All Set for Strike against Syria. Israel Is Braced for Hizballah Second Front – January 11, 2005
DEBKAfile
Special Military Report - Last Sunday,
January 2, US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage performed his last
major mission before
stepping down in favor of Robert B.
Zoellick, whom incoming secretary Condoleezza Rice has picked as her deputy.
(Zoellick, currently trade representative in charge US world trade, served as
deputy to secretary of state James Baker in the Reagan and Bush Sr.
administrations.
US warns Syria to keep its newly-purchased Kornet AT-14 anti-tank missile out of Iraq
This mission took Armitage to Damascus with nine American demands.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources published those demands for the first time in its last week’s issue:
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .
1. Start repealing Syria’s 40-years old emergency laws.
2. Free all political prisoners from jail.
3. Abolish media censorship.
4. Initiate democratic reform.
5. Speed up economic development
6. Cut down relations with Iran.
7. Announce publicly that the disputed Shebaa Farms at the base of Mt. Hermon are former Syrian territory. This would cut the ground from under the Lebanese terrorist Hizballah’s claim that the land is Lebanese and must be “liberated” from Israeli “occupation.”
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that the Iran-sponsored Hizballah’s attack on an Israeli convoy patrolling the disputed Shebaa Farms sector, killing an Israeli officer, on Palestinian election-day, Sunday, January 9, was addressed as much to President George W. Bush as to the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as a foretaste of what it has in store.
8. Hand over to US or Iraqi authorities 55 top officials and military officers of the former Saddam regime, who are confirmed by intelligence to be established in Syria and running the guerrilla war in Iraq out of their homes and offices.
(An address, telephone number and cell phone number were listed beside each name).
But the punchline was in the last demand.
9. Syria had better make sure that none of the Kornet AT-14 anti-tank missiles which it recently purchased in large quantities from East Europe turn up in Iraq. US intelligence has recorded their serial numbers to identify their source. DEBKAfile’s military sources add: Because he cannot afford to buy advanced fighter planes and tanks, Assad purchased massive quantities of the “third generation” Kornet AT-14 anti-tank weapons.
Just in case any are found in Iraq, General Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq has already received orders from the commander-in-chief in the White House to pursue military action inside Syria according to his best military judgment.
Number 9 therefore incorporates a tangible threat. The American general has the authority to launch military action against Syria as he sees fit and without delay if Damascus continues to meddle in Iraq’s affairs.
DEBKAfile adds:
The Syrian ruler protested to Armitage that he is doing everything he can to hold back the flow of guerrilla fighters and weapons into Iraq. As proof, he ordered Syria’s chief of staff General Ali Habib to establish a forward command center on the Syrian-Iraq border to oversee efforts to control border traffic on the spot. The fact is that General Habib is one of the few Syrian officers which the Americans have trusted. He commanded the Syrian units dispatched to Saudi Arabia in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq and made friends with the US commanders and officials conducting the war, including vice president Dick Cheney and the then head of joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell. However, even Habib’s old American buddies do not rule out the possibility that he was posted to the border not to restrain the traffic but to take command of Syrian units posted there and prepare them for the contingency of an American military offensive. Assad and General Habib are both aware, according to our sources, of the near carte blanche handed down to General Casey to pursue military action against Syria as and when indicated by US military requirements in Iraq.
In this regard, DEBKAfile’s military sources note four important points:
1. It will not take place before President Bush is sworn in for his second term on January 20 or Iraq’s general election ten days later.
2. The Americans will not start out with a large-scale, orderly military offensive, but rather short in-and-out forays; small US and Iraqi special forces units will cross the border and raid bases housing Iraqi guerrillas or buses carrying them to the border. If these brief raids are ineffective, the Americans will upscale the action.
3. The Allawi government will formally request the United States to consign joint Iraqi-US forces for action against Syrian targets, so placing the US operation under the Baghdad government’s aegis. In other words, Iraq will be at war with Syria without issuing a formal declaration.
4. It is fully appreciated in Washington, Baghdad and Jerusalem that intense American military warfare against Syria could provoke a Hizballah backlash against Israel. Damascus may well activate the Lebanese Shiite group to open a second front on Israel’s northern border. The Syrian ruler is expected will tolerate a certain level of American low-intensity, low-profile action. But, because of his reluctance to strike back directly at American or Iraqi targets, he will field the Hizballah – and not just for cross-border attacks but to galvanize the terrorist cells it controls and funds in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a stepped-up offensive against Israeli targets. These Palestinian cells have proliferated over the years, particularly in the Fatah and its branches, encouraged by Yasser Arafat’s cooperative pact with the Hizballah which remains in force after his death.
Therefore, the key Middle East happening in the coming weeks will be US military strikes against Syria. The election of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Authority chairman, his invitation to the White House, the formation of the Sharon-Peres government coalition - albeit on very shaky legs, and the talk of imminent Israel-Palestinian peace negotiations, will prove to be no more than sideshows of the main event. (Article)
A softer bin Laden: Is he less dangerous? - New tone raises questions on goals – December 22, 2004
London (International Herald Tribune) - What does Osama bin
Laden want?
An audiotape on which the Qaeda leader seems to be speaking was released last week; in it he apparently applauds the Dec. 6 attack against the U.S. Consulate in Jidda and urges that the Saudi royal family be toppled. The tape indicated that bin Laden had moved the fomenting of revolution in his Saudi homeland toward the top of his lengthy and ambitious wish list, which also includes the reversal of American foreign policy in the Middle East, the retreat of the American military from the Arabian Peninsula and the creation of a Palestinian homeland. Bin Laden has advocated these changes before. What intelligence officials and terrorism experts find remarkable in his recent pronouncements is a shift in style from the raw anger and dark imagery of the post-9/11 days.
A speaker appearing to be Osama bin Laden in a video aired earlier this year on Al-Jazeera.
They say he has subtly tempered his message, tone and even persona, presenting himself almost as an ambassador, as if he sees himself as an elder statesman for a borderless Muslim nation. Earlier this year, he offered a truce to European governments that withdraw their troops from Iraq. In a message released just before the presidential election in the United States, he gloated that the war in Iraq and the "war against terror" were primarily responsible for record American budget deficits. Instead of talking about exacting blood from his enemies, he soberly discussed the bleeding of the American economy.
Perhaps most striking is bin Laden's appearance of frustration. Like any politician on the stump, bin Laden craves the ability to deliver an unfiltered message to his audience. Speaking directly to Americans in the pre-election address, he complained that his rationale for waging a holy war against the United States had been mischaracterized repeatedly by President George W. Bush and consequently misunderstood by most Americans. To change this, bin Laden is testing what he apparently believes are more mainstream themes, while trying to dislodge the entrenched American view of him as a terrorist hell-bent on destroying America and all it stands for. In the pre-election address, bin Laden said Bush was wrong to "claim that we hate freedom." He added: "If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike, for example, Sweden."
That remark surprised some counterterrorism officials and terrorist experts, who said the Al Qaeda leader rarely injected sarcasm into his public pronouncements. They took it as a signal that he was trying to broaden his appeal, particularly to moderate Muslims. What they cannot say is whether the less strident approach means that he has changed his goals and is less of a danger or that he is just laying the groundwork to justify a new attack against the United States. But they are listening closely and debating an important question: Is bin Laden committed to destroying America, or has he become more pragmatic, trying to begin a rational foreign policy debate about its presence in the Middle East and even appealing to Americans' pocketbooks?
"Osama is not a man given to humor, but when he told this joke about Sweden, I think it showed his frustration that Americans are not listening to him," said Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA official who tracked bin Laden for years and is the author of "Imperial Hubris." "We are being told by the president and others that Al Qaeda attacked us because they despise who we are and what we think and how we live," Scheuer said. "But Osama's point is, it's not that at all. They don't like what we do."
The bin Laden messages are a historical rarity: a foreign leader speaking directly and frequently to his enemy. Bin Laden has spent 25 years honing his message, and he began to address an American audience in the mid-1990s. Since Sept. 11, 2001, he has delivered 17 messages, while his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has made 12. That amounts to a message from a Qaeda leader every six weeks. Bin Laden's call to drive the United States from the Muslim world is resonating among Muslims who believe the Qaeda leader eloquently expresses their anger over the foreign policies of the United States and Israel. But bin Laden also wants Americans and Europeans to heed his messages and to urge their leaders to change their Middle East policies. This has not happened and probably will not happen. "He is tuned out by most Americans and Europeans, and it's begun to really annoy him," said a senior counterterrorism official based in Europe.
In his pre-election address, bin Laden seemed irritated that interviews he gave to Western journalists in the 1990s had gone largely unheard by most Americans. He appeared to suggest that if American leaders had listened to his warnings that the United States must change its foreign policy in the Middle East or face the consequences, the Sept. 11 attacks could have been avoided. What stood out in the pre-election message was bin Laden's bid to reinvent himself. He traded his battle fatigues, his AK-47 and a rough-terrain backdrop for a sensible sheik's garb, an anchor desk and a script without a single phrase portending a clash of civilizations. He did not threaten another spectacular attack against America.
Instead, he said the United States could avoid another attack if it stopped threatening the security of Muslims. He spoke at length about what he sees as the true motive for the Iraq war - enrichment of American corporations with ties to the Bush administration. (He cited Halliburton.) And he spoke of bloodshed, but this time metaphorically, about the American economy.
He mocked the United States's budget and trade deficits, saying that Al Qaeda was committed "to continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." And he said that the 9/11 attacks, which cost Al Qaeda a total of $500,000, have cost the United States more than $500 billion, "according to the lowest estimate" by a research organization in London that he cited by name. "It all shows that the real loser is - you," he told Americans, according to a transcript by Al Jazeera, the satellite network.
Peter Bergen, a CNN analyst who had interviewed bin Laden in 1997, said, "The talk revealed bin Laden to be sort of a policy wonk, talking about supplemental emergency funding by Congress for the Afghan and Iraq wars, and how it was evidence that Al Qaeda's bleed-until-bankruptcy plan was working." Jessica Stern, a Harvard professor who lectures on terrorism, said she was most surprised by bin Laden's detailed comments about the American economy. "It seemed as if he was trying to appeal to more moderate Muslims, who might have found his 1998 fatwa to kill all Americans morally repulsive," said Stern, the author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill." "His message on this tape is not nearly as offensive. He talks about Americans' having a choice - it is up to us to decide whether we will support a foreign policy that he says is bad for our economy and bad for the Islamic world."
Does bin Laden's more moderate style mean there is less risk of a terrorist strike on American soil? Intelligence analysts are unsure. More than one analyst discerned an ominous warning embedded in his milder pre-election address. "In Islamic jurisprudence, the warning is important," Bergen said. "And if we don't respond, it's our problem and our fault. He's putting the ball back in our court. Maybe this is all rhetorical and they don't have the ability to launch another big attack. But he intended to tell us that if we choose to completely ignore him, which is a very viable option for us, then we are going to get hit again." (Article)
Bin
Laden tape calls for boycott –December 28, 2004
![Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, speaks in this 1998 file photo at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. In an audiotape broadcast Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 by Al-Jazeera satellite television, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott of next month's elections there. [AP/file]](januaryglobalterror_files/image023.jpg)
In an audiotape
broadcast Monday by Al-Jazeera satellite television, a man purported to be
Osama bin Laden endorsed Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called
for a boycott of next month's elections there. The new tape, together with one
that appeared online earlier this month, continues a new political slant
adopted by the al-Qaida leader, whose past proclamations have been more a call
to arms than a promotion of a cause. They appear to back up recent suggestions
by Middle East experts that bin Laden may be trying to become more of a
political leader than a terrorist.
The voice on the tape described al-Zarqawi as the "emir," or prince, of al-Qaida in Iraq and said Muslims there should "listen to him." The man speaking on the tape also referred to an October statement in which al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, declared allegiance to bin Laden and changed his group's name to al-Qaida in Iraq. The speaker called that "a great step on the path of unifying all the mujahedeen in establishing the state of righteousness and ending the state of injustice."
The voice on the tape broadcast Monday sounded like bin Laden's and the statement used language that appeared to conform with previous statements by the Saudi-born terror mastermind. However, there was no way to independently confirm the speaker's identity. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said it had not been determined whether the speaker was bin Laden but "it's a message from terrorists" and an attempt "by murderers to propagate their evil trade." Al-Jazeera broadcast excerpts of the tape while showing a still photo of the bearded bin Laden, wearing a white robe and head covering. An Al-Jazeera announcer said the speaker on the tape also called for attacking pipelines, planting mines and killing people who work for the occupation forces.
Al-Zarqawi's group is believed responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq. The United States has placed a $25 million bounty on both bin Laden and al-Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi is believed to have escaped from his headquarters in the insurgent-held stronghold of Fallujah during the massive U.S.-led assault in the Iraqi city last month. The speaker said al-Zarqawi and those with him are fighting "for God's sake." "We have been pleased that they responded to God's and his prophet's order for unity, and we in al-Qaida welcome their unity with us," the speaker said.
The speaker also said he was "pleased" with al-Zarqawi's "gallant operations" against the Americans and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's "apostate government."
Iraqis are scheduled to elect a 275-member National Assembly on Jan. 30, and those lawmakers will draft a new constitution. There have been calls to postpone the election because of the ongoing insurgency, but US President Bush has insisted the vote be held as scheduled. The speaker condemned those elections. "In the balance of Islam, this constitution is infidel and therefore everyone who participates in this election will be considered infidels," he said. "Beware of henchmen who speak in the name of Islamic parties and groups who urge people to participate in this blatant apostasy."
He apparently was referring to Shiite clerics, particularly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who have issued edicts saying participating in the election was a "religious duty." Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout refused to say how or when the station received the audiotape. This was the second tape purportedly made by bin Laden to surface this month. An audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site Dec. 16 had a man identified as bin Laden praising militants who attacked a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia earlier this month and calling on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West. In October, bin Laden, who is believed hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, reached out to his followers with a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera. In that statement, he for the first time clearly took responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and said America could avoid another strike if it stopped threatening the security of Muslims. (Article)
Saddam Hussein Speaks: I Prepared Current Guerrilla War Ahead of Invasion. Syria Is Next – January 2, 2005
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report -On December 16, the deposed
Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein was allowed to see his lawyer, Khalil Duleimi for
the first time. With no one else present and no time limit, 
Saddam
spoke his mind freely. Later, the lawyer went straight from Saddam’s cell to
Amman to confer with the rest of the legal team, which Ramsey Clark, Lyndon
Johnson’s attorney general, had meanwhile joined. Clark explained he felt
the need to defend the former Iraqi president’s rights. He declare the special
court set up by the interim Iraqi government to try Saddam was not legal and
that the United States should be tried instead for its assault on Fallujah,
abuse of Iraqi prisoners and responsibility for the death of thousands of
Iraqis in the course of the war.
After briefing the legal team, Duleimi granted an interview to the Lebanese journalist Shahbana Khalil, who had been very close to the Saddam when he was in power. He conferred on her a number of decorations and gave her exclusive stories on happenings in Iraq and the Arab world. DEBKAfile’s Exclusive Middle East sources reveal here the main contents of the Duleimi’s briefing to his fellow lawyers and the account of his conversation with Saddam to his journalist friend.
The ex-ruler is in good health, the lawyer reported, and says he is in even better shape physically than he was in March 2003 ahead of the war. Now and again he gets sharp twinges of pain in his left shin. Saddam is confined to a cell of five by three meters with no window. Sometimes he is let out to a 15 by 5 meter unroofed hall where he can see the sky. The food he says is good. The American warders do not talk to him but the Iraqi officers who accompany them address him as “Mr. President.”
The former Iraqi dictator is cut off from the outside world. Despite some reports, he has no access to newspapers, radio or television. He has received only two letters from his close family, the contents of which were mostly deleted or cut out by the censors. He spends most of his time writing but would not disclose his subjects, except to say that some of it is poetry. Duleimi quoted a line of Saddam’s “verse:” “If you can’t be the head, don’t be the backside because there is nothing there but a tail.”
He had two main gripes. One was that the Americans will not let him shave his beard despite his repeated requests. He even offered to let a US military barber shave him, but they refused. His theory is that the Americans want to make sure that whenever he appears in public, as he did on June 30, 2004 before an Iraqi investigating judge, he will look confused, unkempt and too low in spirits to bother to shave.
His second complaint was against the Red Cross workers. He wanted their visits stopped because he said they are neither polite nor respectful. Duleimi spent four hours talking to Saddam Hussein alone in his cell. The conversation was interrupted twice when the ex-ruler performed Muslim ablution rites and prayed. He said he had read the small Koran with him many times from beginning to end. He also asked the lawyer for news from the outside world. He did not know that Spain had pulled its troops out of Iraq after the March 2004 Madrid rail attack, but was pleased to hear it. He had not known of Yasser Arafat’s death last November but made no comment.
After hearing Duleimi out, Saddam asked to convey his regards to three people: the American lawyer Ramsey Clark for joining his defense, Malaysian ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohammed, and independent British party leader George Galloway (whom the London Telegraph had to pay $150,000 in damages for reporting he was bribed to support Saddam Hussein). He also asked to send his respects to the Egyptian journalist Mustafa Bakri who has a program on Arabic al Jazeera television. DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources reported in the past that, before the Saddam regime was overthrown, Bakri was in cahoots with Iraqi intelligence officials at Arab League headquarters in Cairo.
The next part of the conversation Saddam devoted to a long dissertation on the situation in Iraq, past and present. Recalling the Muslim adage advising believers to stick together and cling to Allah, he stressed that Sunnis and Shiites must not fight but join forces in order to muster strength to stand up to the American conqueror. “Baghdad,” he said “did not surrender nor was it conquered by the Americans but was their captive.” He claimed they had attempted to kill him in the Azamaya district of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, but failed.
Two days later, he called together the military commanders serving in the capital and its environs. They informed him they had run out of troops for conducting the war. It was then, Saddam said, “I ordered the transition to guerrilla warfare. I told the commanders: the Americans will stretch out full length across Iraq like a viper. That will be the moment to attack and lop off each section one by one.” The deposed president bragged: “All the insurgency and guerrilla operations in progress are the fruit of my decision and my pre-planning.” Saddam admitted that there had been treachery on the part of “a very small group of Iraqi military men and politicians.” However, those who needed to know did know that the real combat against the Americans would only begin after they entered Baghdad. “That is why I ordered all the office-holders of my regime to carry on with their duties, despite the difficulties.”
He went on to disclose that, during the six months leading up to the war, several offers came from Israeli and Western sources of a deal whereby sanctions against Iraq would be called off and diplomatic relations with Washington resumed if he extended recognition to Israel. But he claims to have refused, maintaining it was impossible and forbidden to relinquish holy land. When Duleimi informed him that five million Iranians infiltrated Iraq in advance of the January 30 elections to register as voters, Saddam retorted: “This is nothing new as far as the Persian traitors are concerned. We always knew they wanted to grab southern Iraq and that this was the objective of the Badr Brigades. Now the Americans are discovering this for themselves.”
But, he added, in any case, the Americans and Allawi will not succeed in bringing the elections off. They will fail, he declared. Finally, the former Iraqi president said: “I fear for Syria. I warned Bashar Assad that the Americans had not only targeted Iraq, but Syria too.” (Article)
'US-led troops damaging Babylon' – January 16, 2005
LONDON
(Times of India) - The British Museum says US-led coalition forces in Babylon
have crushed part of the ancient Iraqi city's 2,600-year-old brick paved
streets with their tanks and used soil containing archaeological fragments to
fill sand bags. The museum is concerned that US-led troops, including US
Marines and the Polish-led force who have occupied the ancient Mesopotamian
capital, had inflicted widespread damage to the ancient center of civilization,
according to a report released on Saturday.
"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great
Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," wrote the report's
author, John Curtis, the curator of the museum's Near East department. Images
of dragons on the molded brick foundations of the famous Ishtar Gate were
marred by cracks and gaps where someone had tried to remove them, the
report said. Trenches had been dug into ancient deposits and there were
archaeological fragments scattered across the site, including broken bricks
stamped by King Nebuchadnezzar, Curtis said.
Curtis, who was invited by the Iraqis to study the site, also found that
large quantities of sand mixed with archaeological fragments have been taken
from the site to fill military sandbags and metal mesh baskets. Lt. Col.
Artur Domanski, a Polish military spokesman in Iraq, said multinational troops
are cooperating with Iraqi authorities in efforts to protect the site. "We
are still interested at aiding and supporting the Iraqi archeological
services," he said in a telephone interview. "I have asked our
archeologists to prepare a specific answer to the accusations, but I have to
give them some time."
In
an interview Saturday with APTN, Iraq's Minister of Culture Mufeed al-Jazairee
said coalition troops in Babylon had used "armored vehicles and
helicopters that land and take off freely. In addition to that, the forces also
set up other facilities and changes." "I expect that the
archaeological city of Babylon has sustained damage but I don't know exactly
the size of such damage," he added. The remains of Babylon, one of
the world's most important archaeological sites, have been occupied since the
early days of the invasion by U.S. Marines and, more recently, by the
Polish-led contingent. Babylon is 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad.
The city's main sites - the Ishtar Gate, the ruins of Babylon and the Nebuchadnezzar Palace - are in a separate area on the camp's perimeter, run by Iraqi officials
as an archaeological park open to paying visitors. The US military says all earth moving has been halted and it is considering moving troops away
to protect the ruins. Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, told the Guardian newspaper that all engineering works were discussed with the
head of the Babylon museum. "An archaeologist examined every construction
initiative for its impact on historical ruins," he was quoted as saying.
In the report, Curtis acknowledged that at first the U.S. presence had helped
to protect the site from looters.
But subsequent work - including the decision to cover large areas of the
site with gravel brought in from elsewhere to provide car parks and helipads -
was damaging, he said. Curtis added that he had found evidence of fuel
leakage around fuel containers to the northwest of the site's Greek theater.
For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world's premier cities,
where Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The city declined and fell into ruin after it was conquered by
the Persians under Cyrus the Great around 538 B.C. (Article)
Babylon wrecked by war – US-led forces leave a trail of destruction and contamination in architectural site of world importance – Guardian News
Falluja Returnees Angry, 'City Unfit for Animals' - December 24, 2004
FALLUJA, Iraq (Yahoo) - Iraqis reacted with anger, frustration and resentment Friday after many returned to Falluja to discover their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following last month's U.S. offensive. "I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed," said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the mess. "My house is completely destroyed. There is nothing left for me to stay for," the teacher said, adding that he would rather live in the tented camp outside Falluja that has been his family's home for the past two months. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a surprise pre-Christmas visit to Iraq, visited troops at a base near Falluja Friday but made no mention of the city's rebuilding. Marine Lieutenant General John Sattler told Rumsfeld how intense the fighting had been in the city, where much of the combat was house-to-house and even hand-to-hand. "You come through the door and it's who wants it most, and it was us," Sattler said, praising the resolve of his men.
Conservative estimates say several hundred buildings were partly or completely destroyed by the U.S. assault, which began on Nov. 8 and involved bombardment by U.S. planes, tanks and artillery. Rebels also blew up many homes in booby-trap blasts. The offensive, designed to uproot insurgents from what had become a guerrilla bastion, was declared a success more than a month ago, but fighting continued in several districts. U.S. planes bombed a western neighborhood overnight, residents said. An Iraqi Health Ministry official said his greatest concern was the resentment Falluja's people were likely to feel when they saw how much damage had been done to their homes. That was certainly the case Friday. While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive. "Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can't live in?" said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home. "Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here," he said, crying. "What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase."
NO WATER, ELECTRICITY Aid workers said 200,000 people fled Falluja before the assault and have spent the past seven weeks living in nearby towns and villages or in tented refugee camps nearby. The city was estimated to have had a population of around 250,000 before the offensive. It is not clear how many people stayed behind during the fighting, although it is thought to have been around 50,000, mostly in outlying areas. Most central areas became a ghost town. The Iraqi interim government and the U.S. military this week announced that around 2,000 heads of household would be allowed to return to the Andalus district of Falluja, considered one of the more secure, from Thursday. Some 900 people, mostly men, made the journey, going through intense security checks before being allowed to enter, including fingerprinting and iris scanning of "suspicious military-age men" to ensure insurgents do not filter back in. The U.S. military said the program to return residents had gone well Thursday and it expected more people to flow back into the Andalus district in the days ahead. In the coming weeks, others will be allowed to return to their neighborhoods. But they will be without water and electricity as basic services and communications were knocked out in the assault. Iraq's government has said it will pay $2,000 compensation for partial damage to homes, $4,000 for substantial damage and $10,000 to those whose homes were completely destroyed -- far less than Iraqis say they would need to rebuild their homes. Shopkeepers will receive $1,500-$3,000 based on the size of their shop and what they sell. But that may not be enough to assuage the anger of many. Asked Satar: "Is this freedom and democracy that they brought to Falluja?" (Article)
Bloodiest
day for US as violence grows – January 27, 2005
The Guardian - The US yesterday suffered its worst day in Iraq since the war began when a marine helicopter crashed in
the western desert and insurgents launched a new wave of attacks, leaving a
total of 37 Americans dead. George Bush declared it "a sad
moment" but called for patience from Americans and courage from Iraqis at
Sunday's elections. He claimed he had "firmly planted the flag of
liberty" with his commitment to spread global democracy, and ruled out a
quick exit for US troops after the Iraqi vote. "We value life and we
weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life," the US president said at a White House press conference. "But it is the long-term
objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom."
Yesterday early reports suggested there had been no hostile fire at the helicopter crash site near the Jordanian border, and that desert fog may have contributed to the accident. A military inquiry was launched into the crash. The 30 marines and one sailor who died were carrying out security preparations for Sunday's voting, General John Abizaid, the head of the US central command, said. There were no reports of survivors on the three-engined CH-53E Super Stallion, the biggest US helicopter in military service. Four marines were killed in combat in the Anbar province in the heart of the Sunni triangle, a soldier was killed in north Baghdad, and another died in a roadside bombing in the capital. For US troops, the death toll was heavier than their bloodiest day of the 2003 invasion, March 23, when 31 were killed.
The run-up to the elections has shown itself to be even more dangerous than the first few chaotic days, and this time it appears the insurgents, not the Americans, have gained the initiative. Late yesterday 15 Iraqis were killed and at least 30 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a fuel tanker near the offices of the Kurdish Democratic party in the north-western town of Sinjar. The insurgent group led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it carried out the attack. In coordinated attacks, three suicide car bombers targeted an Iraqi army post, a police station and a road in the northern town of Riyadh, killing nine people and wounding at least 12, police said. A US patrol which went to the scene was ambushed by small-arms fire. In Baquba, north of Baghdad, one policeman died and at least eight people were wounded when gunfire raked the offices of three political parties. In Mosul a video filmed by insurgents showed three hostages, who were described as electoral commission officials. Insurgent groups kept up their threats warning Iraqis to stay away from the polls, or face retaliation for collaborating with the US-led occupation. "Oh people, be careful ... not to be near the centres of infidelity and vice, the polling centres. Don't blame us but blame yourselves," said a statement released on the internet.
President Bush urged Iraqis to vote and "defy these terrorists". He said: "They're afraid of a free society." Asked what turnout rate would be a success, he did not give a figure but said: "The fact that they're voting in itself is successful." He rejected claims that the vote would be a signal for the US to pull out, and would not give a timetable for withdrawal. "I think the Iraqi people are wondering whether or not this nation has the will necessary to stand with them as a democracy evolves. The enemy would like nothing more than the United States to precipitously pull out and withdraw before the Iraqis are prepared to defend themselves." Mr Bush portrayed the Iraq polls as a step towards the goal of defeating tyranny around the world as he pledged in his inaugural address last week. "I firmly planted the flag of liberty for all to see that the United States of America hears their concerns and believes in their aspirations," he said. "And I am excited by the challenge and am honoured to be able to lead our nation in the quest of this noble goal, which is freeing people in the name of peace." He reaffirmed the goal of spreading democracy elsewhere in the world.
Meanwhile, one of the architects of the Iraq invasion, Douglas Feith, announced his resignation yesterday, saying he would leave his job as chief policy adviser in the summer. He is the first neo-conservative to leave the administration, which has seen moderates leaving since Mr Bush's re-election. Pentagon critics blamed Mr Feith's office for passing on bogus intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. In Baghdad, the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, tried to calm the nervous population and project his authority. "I promise you I will build a strong Iraqi force, able to take full responsibility for Iraq's security and its citizens." (Article)
Iraqi Poll’s Winners and Losers - According to US Forecast – January 27, 2005
DEBKA-Net-Weekly - Wednesday
was the single most deadly day for US forces in Iraq ; 36 servicemen died – 31
in a helicopter crash and five in anti-insurgent operations at trouble spots.
At least 25 Iraqis were also killed in insurgent attacks on party offices and
police centers. In counter-strikes, US troops uncovered a round dozen bomb cars
In the northern city of Mosul rigged ready for detonation on election-day in
three days time. US troops also raided Hit in Anbar Province, where many
followers of al Qaeda’s Iraq commander, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, went to ground
in flight from Fallujah.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani will govern under the rule of Islamic Law but not as a theocracy
Despite the Iraqi Sunni boycott, al-Zarqawi’s imprecations against the general election, and the unprecedented level of bloodletting, an certain number of the 40,000 polling stations across the country will almost certainly open on time Sunday, January 30. That was one of the starting points on which Gregory Hooker, chief analyst of CENTCOM, the American command running the war in Iraq, presupposed his detailed forecast of election results. This forecast, commissioned by CENTOM commander General John Abizaid, was first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 190 on January 21.
The second premise was that orderly vote-counting would likewise take place notwithstanding threats of sabotage. The Hooker forecast is essentially a simulation exercise based on US and Iraqi intelligence data gathered in the last six months, together with estimates of opinion openly canvassed in towns up and down the country.
The level of participation and the results of this pivotal election will bear strongly on the Bush administration’s second term Iraq policy, the tasks facing US armed forces, the chances of the elected national assembly taking up its responsibilities, including the drafting of a new national constitution, and the prospects of an elected government exercising authority.
• Altogether 111 political entities – parties, individuals or coalitions – are running for the 275 National Assembly seats.
• A total of 7,785 candidates are registered on the national ballot
• Eligible voters in Iraq: 14.27 million
• Eligible voters outside Iraq: 1.2 – 2 million (only one-quarter of whom registered).
• More than 130 lists were submitted by the December 15, 2004 deadline for registration. Nine were multi-party coalition blocs while 102 were lists presented by single Iraqi parties.
• There are two major political blocs – Shiite and Kurdish:
The Shiite Unified Iraqi Alliance list submitted 228 candidates representing 16 Iraqi political groups including the dominant Shiite factions. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq – SCIRI, heads this list, followed by Ibrahim Al-Jafari, head of the al-Dawa Party.
• The two Kurdish parties headed by Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani decided to run together on the Kurdish list.
• Both the Iraqi interim prime minister Iyad Allawi and Iraqi president Ghazi al-Yawar submitted their own lists of candidates. Allawi’s party, the Iraqi National Accord – INC, submitted a 240-candidate coalition, while al-Yawar leads an 80-member slate representing the Iraqi Grouping.
Projected Results
For elections held now, Hooker projects the following figures:
The Shiite Unified Iraqi Alliance list – 43.8% = 120 national assembly seats.
The Kurdish list – a surprising 36.4% (more than twice their 16-18% proportion of the general population) = 100 seats.
The Iraqi National Accord – 8.1% = 22 seats. (A formula is being actively sought to retain him as premier even if his showing is low.)
The Iraqi Communist party (the best organized) – 1.6% = 5 seats.
All the Assyrian, Turkomen and Yazdi minorities together – 4 seats.
All the rest – 5 seats.
The first conclusion reached by our analysts is that, while the leading Shiite UIA bloc can expect to be the big winner of the election, the real victor will be the Shiite cleric who assembled and founded the alliance, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and his inner circle. The slate he drew up of candidates to the legislature reflects his political aspirations and cunning: of the 120 registered, the first 60 are independents with no parties behind them and will therefore be totally dependent on Sistani himself for support. Al-Hakim’s SCIRI will get no more than 14 assembly seats, while al-Jafari’s al Dawa must be content with 12. The former rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr’s following will match al Dawa with 12 places in the legislature. The slate he assembled also pushes pro-Tehran and Iran’s chosen men down to the unrealistic bottom. Sistani wants to see non-clerical ministers in the post-election government but will insist on incorporating Islamic law as the basis of the national constitution.
The Kurds owe their projected big win to three prime causes:
1. The union of the two principal lists, which will help them carry districts in which each faction is fragmentary, like Iraq’s second largest town of Mosul and certain quarters of Baghdad.
2. Major concessions by Sistani in Kirkuk, where he endorsed the transfer of tens of thousands of Kurdish voters into the city. Quietly underway at this moment is the largest demographic transformation in Iraq since the war began, an abrupt reversal of the population displacement conducted by Saddam Hussein. Sunni families are being pushed out of Kirkuk to the Sunni Triangle and replaced by incoming Kurds. Turkomen, Assyrians and Yazdis gnash their teeth but have not the power to interfere in the Kurdish takeover of the mixed city.
3. Another key Sistani concession was his consent to local elections taking place in Kurdish regions for a Kurdish national assembly at the same time as the general election. In return, the Kurdish leaders have granted Sistani a powerful tool of government, a promise to join his Unified Iraqi Bloc in a coalition administration.
The Shiite cleric has little to fear from this alliance. He knows the Kurds are only interested in expanding their own self-government and will therefore not muscle in on the central administration with power-sharing demands. Their backing, however, provides insurance for stable Shiite-dominated government in the long term. The Sunni Muslim minority can hardly be expected to sit still as the Shiites and Kurds split up the post-war spoils of power. (Article)
Report: U.S. Conducting Secret Missions Inside Iran – January 16, 2005
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reported Sunday. The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites. Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible. "One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."
The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "We obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about Iran," Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President Bush, told CNN's "Late Edition." Of The New Yorker report, he said: "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact." Bartlett said the administration "will continue to work through the diplomatic initiatives" to convince Iran -- which Bush once called part of an "axis of evil" -- not to pursue nuclear weapons. "No president, at any juncture in history, has ever taken military options off the table," Bartlett added. "But what President Bush has shown is that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are underway right now."
COMMANDO TASK FORCE
Bush has warned Iran in recent weeks against meddling in Iraqi elections. The former intelligence official told Hersh that an American commando task force in South Asia is working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts. The New Yorker reports that this task force, aided by information from Pakistan, has been penetrating into eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear-weapons installations. In exchange for this cooperation, the official told Hersh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received assurances that his government will not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Hersh reported that Bush has already "signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia." Defining these as military rather than intelligence operations, Hersh reported, will enable the Bush administration to evade legal restrictions imposed on the CIA's covert activities overseas. (Article)
U.S. Military Warplanes Flying over Iranian Air Space - January 4, 2005
Lekerev Report - U.S.
military warplanes flew over Iranian air space, raising Tehran's concerns that
preparations are being made to knock out its nuclear facilities, according to
Iranian news media reports. The U.S. jets reportedly flew out of bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, as recently as this past Saturday. Other reports of overflights cited intrusions
by F-16 and F-18 fighters over the southwestern province of Khuzestan, which borders southern Iraq. Papers said the planes appeared to be spying on
nuclear sites. The U.S. military was silent on the veracity of the reports.
However, one source said he would not be surprised if the reports were
accurate, given the building international tensions over the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program. (Newsletter)
Target Iran - Air Strikes
One potential military option that would be available to the United States includes the use of air strikes on Iranian weapons of mass destruction and missile facilities.
In all, there are perhaps two dozen suspected nuclear facilities in Iran. The 1000-megawatt nuclear plant Bushehr would likely be the target of such strikes. According to the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, the spent fuel from this facility would be capable of producing 50 to 75 bombs. Also, the suspected nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak will likely be targets of an air attack.
American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq. Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States, possibly supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters staging from al Udeid in Qatar or some other location in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would be targeted.
Military planners could tailor their target list to reflect the preferences of the Administration by having limited air strikes that would target only the most crucial facilities in an effort to delay or obstruct the Iranian program or the United States could opt for a far more comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against US forces in Iraq.
Israeli Capabilities
In May 2003, Ephraim Asculai, a former Israeli Atomic Energy Comission official, in an article written for the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, wrote that "nuclear verification is clearly failing in Iran, when (the IAEA) let Iran proceed with its ambitious program. In any case, it would be unable to deter or stop its development of nuclear weapons. The verification mechanisms will fail by not being able to prove anything, since intentions, particularly when based on legal actions, are unverifiable."
The annual intelligence assessment presented to Israel's Knesset on 21 July 2004 noted that Iran's nuclear program is the biggest threat facing Israel, "Maariv" and "Yediot Aharonot" reported on 22 July 2004. Some Likud and Labor Knesset members subsequently called for a preemptive strike against the Iranian nuclear facility. Former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh (Labor) said, "If the international community's helplessness in the face of the Iranian threat persists, Israel will have to weigh its steps -- and soon." Ehud Yatom (Likud) said, "The Iranian nuclear facilities must be destroyed, just as we did the Iraqi reactor. We must strive to attain the ability to damage and destroy any nuclear capability that might be directed against Israel." On 08 September 2004 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the international community has not done enough to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and warns that Israel will take its own measures to defend itself. He also said Iranian officials have made it clear they seek the destruction of the Jewish state. Israeli Air Force pilots have been practicing attacks on a scale model of the Bushehr reactor in the Negev Desert.
In October 2004 Ephraim Kam, the deputy head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said that "It would be a complicated operation. In order to undermine or disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, you would have to strike at least three or four sites ... Otherwise the damage would be too limited, and it would not postpone the program by more than a year or two, and this could in the end be worse than doing nothing." Shai Feldman, also at the Jaffee Center, said "There is a logic to operating against Iran even if the location of every facility is not known, because just taking out the facilities that are known, especially if they include the enrichment and heavy water plants, would in itself create a serious degradation of the Iranian potential."
The Israeli Air Force received the
first two of 25 F-15I [I for Israel, no Iran] Ra’am (Thunder) aircraft, the
Israeli version of the F-15E Strike Eagle, in January 1998, and as of early
2004 had an inventory of 25 aircraft. According to the Israeli Air Force, this
aircraft has a range
of 4,450 km, which equates to a combat radius of 2,225 km. Deliveries
of the F-16I Sufa (Storm) began in early 2004. This heavily modified aircraft,
with massive conformal fuel tanks, has a reported combat
radius of 2,100 km. Probable strike targets such as Bushehr and Esfahan
lie about 1,500 km from Israel.
The 2,060-km strike on the Palestine Liberation Organization's headquarters in Tunis in October 1985, in retaliation for the murder of three Israelis on a yacht in Cyprus, was the IAF's furthest attack from home to date. The F-16s which bombed the Iraqi reactor in 1981 were not refueled and returned home on their last drops of fuel.
On 21 September 2004 Israel acknowledged that it was buying 500 BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs, which could be used to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. The bombs, which can penetrate more than 7 feet of reinforced concrete, are part of a $319 million package of air-launched bombs being sold to Israel under America's military aid program.
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported in October 2004 that Israel had completed plans for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Der Spiegel reported that a special unit of the Mossad had received order in July 2004 to prepare a detailed plan, which had been delivered to the Israeli Air Force. The source for the report, an IAF pilot, said the plan to take out Iran's nuclear sites was "complex, yet manageable." Israel's plan assumes that Iran has six nuclear sites, all of which would be attacked simultaneously.
It would be difficult for Israel to strike at Iran without American knowledge, since the mission would have to be flown through American [formerly Iraqi] air space. Even if the United States did not actively participate with operations inside Iranian air space, the US would be a passive participant by virtue of allowing Israeli aircraft unhindered passage. In the eyes of the world, it would generally appear to be a joint US-Israeli enterprise, any denials notwithstanding. Indeed, it is quite probable that Iran would not be able to readily determine the ultimate origins of the strike, given Iran's relatively modest air defense capabilities. Thus, even if the strike were entirely of American origin, Israel would be implicated. When asked in August 2004 about Israeli threats to attack Iran, Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, declined to say whether the United States would support such action by Israel.
In an 08 September 2004 interview in the "Jerusalem Post" newspaper, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the international community has not done enough to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and warns that Israel will take its own measures to defend itself. Sharon said there was no doubt that Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons and is doing so by "deception and subterfuge." He said international efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions had not been sufficient. Sharon calls for increased pressure and supervision of Iran's nuclear program and said the issue should be brought before the UN Security Council for sanctions to be levied against Tehran. Sharon said Israel would take steps to defend itself against the Iranian threat. He did not elaborate.
Even though the uranium facility at Natanz has been buried underground, it remains vulnerable. As Lieutenant Colonel Eric M. Sepp noted, "The "cut-and-cover" facilities are constructed by digging a hole, inserting a facility, and then covering it up with dirt and rocks. These cut-and-cover facilities can be just below the surface of the ground or may reach a depth of perhaps 100 feet, and represent the vast majority of underground facilities today. In the case of contemporary cut-and-cover facilities, there is no question that conventional munitions can defeat them."
The air strikes option does have the same problems that one would face in North Korea, namely that Iran has a rather significant air defense capability which could complicate use plans. However, unlike North Korea, Iran is not in a position to hold US soldiers or allied civilian populations (Iraq) hostage. A full-scale Iranian military retaliation, though possible, is highly unlikely, especially with the significant US force presence in Iraq. It is possible that Iran could use its ballistic missiles to strike US or allied targets throughout the Persian Gulf region, and in fact Iranian officials have explicitly promised to do just that.
Uncertainties
One major uncertainty concerning the probability of disarming preventive strike against Iran's nuclear infrastructure is the question of American and Israeli assessments of their confidence in their assessments of the completeness of their understanding of Iran's nuclear infrastructure. It will be recalled that when the US contemplated striking China's nuclear infrastructure in mid-1964, prior to China's first nuclear test, their were doubts about the completeness of US intelligence. In fact, the US was surprised when China detonated a uranium bomb, since the US had overestimated the progress of China's plutonium program, and seriously underestimated the progress of China's uranium enrichment program.
Iran's partners -- North Korea and Pakistan -- present contrasting studies in clandestine facilities. It appears that US intelligence has incomplete intelligence concerning some aspects of North Korea's plutonium program [mainly relating to whether there are undetected reprocessing facilities], and almost complete ignorance of the whereabouts of the DPRK's uranium program. The missing facilities are presumably at hidden underground locations. It is generally believed that Pakistan's major nuclear material production facilities are above ground and reasonably well characterized.
Iran appears to have a complete copy of Pakistan's fissile material production complex -- uranium conversion, uranium enrichment, heavy water production, and a heavy water plutonium production reactor. Elements of these facilities have been hardened against attack, notably the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, which has been buried under a thick layer of earth. All of these facilities are heavily defended by anti-aircraft missiles and guns.
One cannot exclude the possibility, however, that some or all of the visible nuclear weapons complex is simply a decoy, designed to draw attention. It is possible that Iran, like North Korea and unlike Pakistan, has buried nuclear weapons production capabilities that have escaped detection, and would continue in operation even if the visible facilities were destroyed. There are persistent rumors of such hidden facilities, but little in the way of circumstantial evidence to give credence to these rumors.
Amrom Katz, a shrewd arms control analyst at Rand Corporation many years ago, said, "We have never found anything that the Soviets have successfully hidden" [ Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception, W.C. Potter, Ed. (Westview, Boulder, CO, 1980), p 212). The issue for attack planners is how many undetected facilities have been successfully hidden in Iran.
Assessing the probability of the existence of a parallel clandestine program must take into account probable Iranian strategies for successful completion of their weapons acquisition effort. There has been essentially no detectable discussion of this question in the open literature, which is something of a puzzle in itself. That is to say, is everything unfolding as they had foreseen, or have things gone badly off track?
· Iran may have [naively] assumed that the massive underground facilities at Natanz would escape detection, as would the other above ground facilities, and that there would be no need to declare their various other facilities to the international community. Under this scenario, now that these facilities have been detected, the rather thin cover stories for their various facilities would be proven inadequate, and one might hope that sweet reason might convince Iran to reconsider its commitment to nuclear weapons.
· Iran may have understood very clearly from the outset that its above ground facilities would be detected not too long after construction began. Indeed, the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan is at a site that was selected for such a capacity at the outset of the Shah's nuclear program in the 1970s, a fact that must have rendered this piece of real estate a suspect site long before actual construction began. The construction activity at Natanz and Arak would be visible even in 10-meter resolution wide-area imagery, so there could have been no realistic hope that these facilities would escape notice by the obscurity of their location. Although it is possible that the Iranians completely miscalculated the detective powers of the US and Israel, this does not seem plausible. Thus one must assume that Iran foresaw the crisis that would arise when their plans became clear, and planned accordingly.
1. Iran may have assumed that the US and Israel would lack the political resolve to strike at even a highly visible program, and that some combination of diplomatic pressure from Europe and the fear of Iranian retaliation would stay the hands of the Americans and Israelis. Iran may have assumed that other countries would be prepared to live with a "nearly nuclear" Iran, with a fissile material production complex under international supervision, though one which could be quickly converted to weapons production if the need arose. As of late 2004 Iran's leaders appeared to believe the gap between the US and Europe created a "security margin" for Tehran that would prevent any serious action against the Islamic Republic, whether in the form of Security Council sanctions or direct military action.
2. Iran may have believed from the outset that some combination of the United States and Israel would almost certainly develop and implement a high confidence disarming strike. In this case, there would have been compelling reasons to "dig tunnels deep", and bury their program from prying eyes. Under these circumstances, however, it is difficult to understand why Iran would have gone to the trouble of building the above ground facilities, knowing that they would create a host of problems.
3. Iran may have been unable to resolve this matter, and may have elected to build parallel above ground and underground programs. In the best case, this would augment their ultimate capabilities, and in the worst case it would provide them with a nuclear weapons capability even in the face of attempts at disarming military strikes. The above ground program would provide convincing evidence of Iran's ability to undertake the industrial scale production needed to develop a credible stockpile of dozens of weapons. Even if the overt infrastructure were destroyed, the fact of the existence of the residual underground facilities at an undisclosed location, could be credibly communicated to the outside world.
A September 2004 analysis by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center concluded that, "As for eliminating Iran’s nuclear capabilities militarily, the U.S. and Israel lack sufficient targeting intelligence to do this. In fact, Iran has long had considerable success in concealing its nuclear activities from U.S. intelligence analysts and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors (the latter recently warned against assuming the agency could find all of Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment activities). As it is, Iran could have already hidden all it needs to reconstitute a bomb program assuming its known declared nuclear plants are hit."
But the preponderance of evidence and reasoning leads to the assumption that there is no underground nuclear infrastructure, and that the above ground infrastructure constitutes Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Timing
As some of the facilities are still under construction and not yet active the United States may have a window of opportunity that would allow it to destroy those locations without causing the environmental problems associated with the destruction of an active nuclear reactor.
The window of opportunity for disarming strikes against Iran will begin to close in 2005. It appears that the Uranium conversion facility in Esfahan will begin operation some time in 2005, as will the heavy water production plant at Arak. Barring further delays, the fuel for the reactor at Bushehr is also slated to be delivered in 2005, with reactor operations commencing some months after delivery. Significant Uranium enrichment could begin at Natanz in 2006, and plutonium production could begin at Arak by 2010.
Israeli Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) announced on TV Channel 1 in mid-August 2003: "We think that next summer, if Iran is not stopped, it will reach self-sufficiency and this is the point of no return. After this self-capability, it will take them some two years to make a nuclear bomb," When asked about reports of a preemptive attack, Ze'evi responded: "I don' t think that it is correct to speak of military capabilities at this TV studio."
Israel’s defence minister Shaul Mofaz delivered a warning of "unprecedented severity" during a November 2003 visit to the United States. Mofaz stated that "under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession". He said that in the course of the next year Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons would "reach the point of no return". Meir Dagan, the head of Israel’s secret services, Mossad, stated that nuclear weapons in Iran represented the greatest threat Israel had faced since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. Addressing Israel’s foreign affairs and defence committee, he added that Iran's nuclear capabilities would threaten not only Israel but Europe as well.
Some sources suggest that Iran could complete development of its first nuclear weapon in 2005. US Undersecretary of State John Bolton has said Teheran told Britain, France and Germany that Iran could enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon within a year. "If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late," Bolton told the Hudson Institute on 17 August 2004. "Iran will have nuclear weapons."
An annual Israeli intelligence assessment delivered to the government officials on 21 July 2004 estimated that Iran could have a nuclear bomb by 2008, Ma'ariv" reported on 22 July 2004. According to this report, the assessment concluded that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons represented the greatest threat to Israel. This press report claimed that the assessment contended that international nuclear inspections in Iran had stalled the progress of Tehran's uranium-enrichment program by two or three years. This report claimed that enrichment has a long maturation process and, once halted, must be started again from scratch. Israeli Defense Force intelligence had previously claimed that Iran could have a nuclear capability by 2005.
On 13 January 2005 the Jerusalem Post reported that the head of army intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash), told an audience at the University of Haifa that Iran will be capable of producing its own enriched uranium within six months, and would be able to produce its first nuclear bomb in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe.
Available US Forces
Many aircraft are still in the region supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The United States had aircraft at multiple locations throughout the Persian Gulf, including Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Diego Garcia. While the number of aircraft in the region has declined significantly since the end of major hostilities in Iraq, the United States continues to have some number of F-15Es, F-16s, naval aircraft, and some unidentified number of heavy bombers in the region.
Information regarding how many aircraft are actually in the Persian Gulf region is scant as units are returning to the United States and it is not clear if units are being sent as replacements. By mid-June 2003 there were no longer any AWACs in region and stealth aircraft had long since departed for the United States. Insufficient information regarding available aircraft makes it impossible to predict how many Joint Direct Attack Munition capable aircraft were available for strikes and how many potential aim points this would provide to mission planners.
Redeploying US forces to the region would take a small amount of time, but the absence of significant numbers of stealth aircraft, early warning aircraft, and other assets by September 2004 was a possible indicator that the United States was not actively considering the air strike option. The US had postured a number of strike aircraft to attack North Korea during the first half of 2003, and might make similar preparations in anticipation of a strike against Iran. Alternately, the US might wish to retain the element of surprise, and use heavy bomber forces staging directly from the United States.
Since the end of major hostilities in Iraq the United States has typically kept one aircraft carrier strike group in the Persian Gulf region in support of Iraqi Freedom. Tomahawk cruise missiles deployed on cruisers, destroyers, and submarines could also be used to strike fixed locations. A Carrier Strike Group would typically have about 500 verticle launch system cells, which could mean that roughly 250 Tomahawks would be available for tasking.
Recent Developments
On 1 June 2004, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress of a possible Foreign Military Sale to Israel of Joint Direct Attack Munitions as well as associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $319 million.
On 15 July 2004 William S. Lind suggested that "an American-Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Such an attack may very well be on the agenda as the "October Surprise," the distraction President George W. Bush desperately needs if the debacle in Iraq is not to lead to his defeat in November."
On 18 July 2004, the Sunday Times of London reported that the Israeli Air Force had completed preparations for striking the Bushehr reactor, and would do so if Russia supplied Iran with the fuel for the facility. An Israeli defense source, who claimed that mission rehearsals had taken place, was quoted as saying, "Israel will on no account permit the Iranian reactors — especially the one being built in Bushehr with Russian help — to go critical. ... If the worst comes to the worst and international efforts fail, we are very confident we'll be able to demolish the ayatollah's nuclear aspirations in one go."
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, warned that any aggression against Iranian "scientific" establishments would prompt the Islamic Republic to strike at the "enemy's" interests around the globe.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said in the northeastern city of Gorgan on 25 July 2004 that there is a "weak" possibility that archfoe Israel will attack Iran, Fars News Agency reported the same day. "Still, Iran has thought of the measures needed to repulse all attacks," he said. Separately, the head of the Iranian regular army's land forces, Brigadier General Nasir Mohammadifar, said in Mashhad in northeastern Iran on 25 July, "America would have attacked Iran by now if it were sure it could defeat us." Mohammadifar told a gathering of army inspectors that the United States is "intensely aware" of its "absolute" inability to attack Iran. Also on 25 July 2004, Seyed Masood Jazayeri, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, warned that if Israel attacks, "it will be wiped off the face of the earth."
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, the deputy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a statement issued 17 August 2004, "If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it produces and stockpiles nuclear weapons." The head of the Revolutionary Guards' political bureau, Yadollah Javani, said said in a separate statement that "All the territory under the control of the Zionist regime, including its nuclear facilities, are within the range of Iran's advanced missiles." With Israel now covered by the Shihab missile, he said, "neither the Zionist regime nor America will carry out its threats."
Iranian presidential adviser Hojatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-Pur commented on events in Al-Najaf in a 19 August 2004 interview with Al-Jazeera television. "We consider this a war between infidelity and Islam. The United States is the spearhead of infidelity. Naturally, we condemn this escalation by the Americans.... We condemn this big massacre against Muslims in Iraq." A day earlier he addressed this topic in an interview with ISNA. He said, "America, its supporters, and international Zionism" will target other Islamic countries if they succeed in Iraq and Palestine, and he accused them of pursuing an anti-Islamic "vendetta."
Iran might launch pre-emptive strikes to protect its nuclear facilities if they are threatened, Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said in remarks broadcast on 20 August 2004 . "We won't sit with our hands tied and wait until someone does something to us," Shamkhani told Arabic channel Al Jazeera when asked what Iran would do if the United States or Israel attacked its atomic facilities. "Some military leaders in Iran are convinced that the pre-emptive measures that America is talking about are not their right alone," he added in Persian. "Any strike on our nuclear facilities will be regarded as a strike on Iran and we will respond with all our might."
Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said "Where Israel is concerned, we have no doubt that it is an evil entity, and it will not be able to launch any military operation without an American green light. You cannot separate the two. ... The US military presence (in Iraq) will not become an element of strength (for Washington) at our expense. The opposite is true, because their forces would turn into a hostage" in Iranian hands in the event of an attack.
"The statements of the defence minister have not been reported accurately — to some extent they have been altered," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reze Asefi was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. But Asefi said there had been "misinterpretations", adding, "Mr Shamkhani said that we would defend our territory and national interests and would allow no one to attack the Islamic republic.
"We think that next summer, if Iran is not stopped, it will reach self-sufficiency and this is the point of no return. After this self-capability, it will take them some two years to make a nuclear bomb," Israeli Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) announced on TV Channel 1 two in August 2004.
Israel's chief of staff, General Moshe Ya'alon, said that Iran's nuclear development must be halted before it proceeds much further. He told the Israeli daily "Yediot Ahronot" that "Iran is striving for nuclear capability and I suggest that in this matter [Israel] not rely on others." "If Iran has nuclear capability," said Gen. Ya'alon, "it would be a different Middle East. Moderate states would become more extreme."
Israel's "Yediot Aharonot" newspaper reported on 23 August 2004 that Israeli officials are skeptical about Iranian claims that the completion of the Bushehr nuclear reactor will be delayed by one year. According to the Israeli daily, Israeli and US satellite imagery shows that the water pipes needed to cool the reactor were installed in 2002, and "according to Israeli experts, that is proof that the reactor has reached the point where it is being prepared for operation." An anonymous "Israeli expert" claimed that the "Iranians are conducting a massive cover-up about the reactor."
In mid-Sepetmber 2004 Military Chief of General Staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, told an international symposium organized by the International Policy Institute for Counter Terrorism, in Herzliya, "The challenge is not just Israel's. ... We have the international community to deal with it either politically (or) economically (to) convince Iran to give up its project. ... If not we'll have to do again our assessment."
The military's deputy chief of general staff, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz, said in an interview with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper on 14 September 2004 that Israel will wait for the international community to stop Iran's nuclear program "until we reach the point in which we shall have to rely on ourselves. ... In terms of (its) technological capability, Iran will have such a capability within one to three years, depends whom you ask ... If you add this to their ideology which says that Israel must be wiped off (the face) of the earth, a nuclear capability should worry (us)."
"If the state decides that a military solution is required, then the military has to provide a solution," said Israel's new Air Force chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, in a newspaper interview in mid-Sepetmber 2004. "For obvious reasons," he added, "we aren't going to speak of specifics."
The Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported on Sept. 21, 2004, that the United States was planning on selling $319 million's worth of munitions to Israel. The sale would call for the delivery of nearly 5,000 smart bombs, and would include reportedly 2,500 1-ton bombs, 500 250lbs. bombs 850 JDAM kits, as well as 500 JDAM-guided BLU-109 "bunker busters". These munitions would be adequate to address the full range of Iranian targets, with the possible exception of the buried facility at Natanz. This might require the BLU-113 bunker busters. This penetrator can through 20 feet of concrete and when dropped onto hard ground, can penetrate down to 100 feet.
During the First Presidential Debate on 30 September 2004, John Kerry said "Iran and North Korea are now more dangerous. Now, whether preemption is ultimately what has to happen, I don't know yet."
Iran's negotiations with Europe opened on 20 December 2004. They are focused on an offer by Britain, Germany, and France to give Iran trade advantages and technical assistance in exchange for Tehran permanently giving up its uranium-enrichment activities. A similar suspension deal between European powers and Iran in late 2003 fell apart amid disagreements over the terms.
In January 2005 President Bush reiterated Washington's desire to see the nuclear disputes with both Iran and North Korea resolved through talks. "Diplomacy must be the first choice and always the first choice of an administration trying to solve an issue of, in this case, nuclear armament, and we'll continue to press on diplomacy," Bush said.
If the European initiative leads to good-faith negotiations with Iran. the United States would have to consider whether to join the talks to reach a "grand bargain" to end the nuclear crisis. Iran's vision of a grand bargain would involve significant engagement by the US, along with clear guarantees about Iran's security. But it is difficult to imagine any US administration making such guarantees to the Iranian regime.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-strikes.htm
Tehran Accuses Israel after FBI Catches Iranian Surveillance Teams Red-handed – December 19, 2004
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman announced Sunday
December 19 that intelligence minister Ali Younessi would “soon” report to the
government on an eight-member 
spy ring that gathered information for Israel. No further information was offered about the identities of the “spies,” the nature
of the “information” they had gathered or when. Iranian Intelligence and
Security Ministry ordered surveillance of Israeli diplomatic missions
DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources classify this vague, unverifiable charge as a typical Iranian exercise to cover up a fiasco. (Only recently they claimed to have put unnamed al Qaeda terrorists on trial.) It came two days after DEBKA-Net-Weekly broke the story that Iranian and Iran-sponsored surveillance teams has been discovered hanging about outside Israel’s diplomatic missions in the United States, South America, West Europe and the Middle East. Team members rounded up by the American FBI and Egyptian intelligence in the last ten days admitted under interrogation that they were collecting information for Iranian intelligence.
Here is an excerpt from the DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusive:
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak gave Israel’s trade and industry minister Ehud Olmert some disturbing news on Tuesday, December 14, when the two countries signed an accord that grants certain Egyptian exports duty-free status in the United States. The day before the Israeli minister’s arrival in Cairo, Egyptian security services arrested a group of Egyptian Islamic fundamentalists carrying out surveillance of the Israeli embassy in Cairo and monitoring the movements of Israeli diplomats and their families in the city. They told their interrogators they were working for Iran.
Jerusalem was not bowled over by this friendly tip from the Egyptian president.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources report that foreign intelligence services have been telling Israel since late November that Iranian spy teams have been spotted outside Israeli missions in various parts of the world, including one nabbed by the FBI watching Israeli consulates in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston. It was made up of Iranian Americans, Arab and Pakistani students - some of them US citizens, and all activists belonging to Muslim fundamentalist groups. They were perfectly aware that the data sent to Iranian intelligence was intended for use in hostage taking and bombing attacks against Israeli missions. The notion of Tehran-instigated terrorist strikes in the middle of America’s main cities struck alarm in US intelligence agencies and Homeland Security department. Clearly, operations of this magnitude could not have been planned without top-level sanction from spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or without the presence in America of an operational network. Although assigned with striking Israeli consulates, there is nothing to stop this network from expanding its mission to American strategic targets as well.
Of particular concern are the close ties evolving between Iranian intelligence and al Qaeda cells based inside the Islamic republic. US intelligence sources have learned that Khamenei in person has created a new clandestine umbrella organization for bringing together as an arm of his bureau all the al Qaeda-linked groups and likeminded movements. US intelligence experts are certain that data gathered for Tehran by the captured Iranian surveillance team may well have reached al Qaeda, some of it passed deliberately. Osama bin Laden’s organization is believed to be plotting a major attack in the United States. The Islamic Republic is in the habit of using proxies for its terror campaigns, like the Lebanese Hizballah against Israeli targets. That Al Qaeda operatives are harbored in Iran and run cells in many countries make it a natural partner-in-terror. In the wake of the round-up of Iranian teams, al Qaeda cells were also picked up in Brussels, Amsterdam, Madrid and the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. Hizballah surveillance teams were rounded up in parts of West Europe.
The US interrogation of the Iranian surveillance team and sightings of other watchers have led Israeli intelligence and security chiefs to conclude that Tehran was plotting simultaneous terrorist strikes across America and other parts of the world, blowing up Israeli missions and Jewish centers and taking hostages in several places at once. The captured team may even have been feeding deeply buried terrorist cells set up to carry out this string of assaults and still at large.
Israel has accordingly put all its embassies, consulates and other missions, as well as airlines, shipping companies and overseas company offices on high terror alert. Security has also been stepped up at overseas Jewish institutions and schools. (Article)
How Iran will fight back - December 24, 2004
Tehran (Asia Times) - The United States and Israel may be contemplating military operations against Iran, as per recent media reports, yet Iran is not wasting any time in preparing its own counter-operations in the event an attack
materializes. A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just
concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing
foreign observers, who have described as "spectacular" the
massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment
forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as
hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using
live munition.
Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed
up at newly established draft centers for "suicide attacks" against
any potential intruders in what is commonly termed "asymmetrical
warfare". Behind the strategy vis-a-vis a hypothetical US invasion, Iran is likely to recycle the Iraq war's scenario of overwhelming force, particularly
by the US Air Force, aimed at quick victory over and against a much weaker
power. Learning from both the 2003 Iraq war and Iran's own precious experiences
of the 1980-88 war with Iraq and the 1987-88 confrontation with US forces in
the Persian Gulf, Iranians have focused on the merits of a fluid and complex
defensive strategy that seeks to take advantage of certain weaknesses in the US
military superpower while maximizing the precious few areas where they may have the upper
hand, eg, numerical superiority in ground forces, guerrilla tactics, terrain,
etc.
According to a
much-publicized article on the "Iran war game" in the US-based Atlantic Monthly, the estimated cost of an assault on Iran is a paltry few tens of
millions of dollars. This figure is based on a one-time "surgical
strike" combining missile attacks, air-to-surface bombardments, and covert
operations, without bothering to factor in Iran's strategy, which aims
precisely to "extend the theater of operations" in order to exact
heavier and heavier costs on the invading enemy, including by targeting
America's military command structure in the Persian Gulf. After this Iranian version of "follow-on"
counter-strategy, the US intention of localized warfare seeking to cripple
Iran's command system as a prelude to a systematic assault on key military
targets would be thwarted by "taking the war to them", in the words of an Iranian
military strategist who emphasized America's soft command structure in the
southern tips of the Persian Gulf. (Over the past few months, US jet fighters
have repeatedly violated Iran's air space over Khuzestan province, testing Iran's air defense system, according to Iranian military officials.)
Iran's proliferation of a highly
sophisticated and mobile ballistic-missile system plays a crucial role in its
strategy, again relying on lessons learned from the Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003:
in the earlier war over Kuwait, Iraq's missiles played an important role in
extending the warfare to Israel, notwithstanding the failure of America's Patriot missiles to deflect most of Iraq's incoming
missiles raining in on Israel and, to a lesser extent, on the US forces in
Saudi Arabia. Also, per the admission of the top US commander in the Kuwait conflict, General Norman Schwarzkopf, the hunt for Iraq's mobile Scud missiles consumed a
bulk of the coalition's air strategy and was as difficult as searching for
"needles in a haystack". Today, in the evolution of Iran's military doctrine, the country relies on
increasingly precise long-range missiles, eg, Shahab-3 and Fateh-110, that can
"hit targets in Tel Aviv", to echo Iranian Foreign Minister
Kemal Kharrazi. Chronologically speaking, Iran produced the 50-kilometer-range
Oghab artillery rocket in 1985, and developed the 120km- and 160km-range Mushak
artillery rockets in 1986-87 and 1988 respectively. Iran began assembling
Scud-Bs in 1988, and North Korean technical advisers in Iran converted a missile maintenance facility for missile manufacture in 1991. It does not
seem, however, that Iran has embarked on Scud production. Instead, Iran has sought to build Shahab-3 and Shahab-4, having ranges of 1,300km with a 1,600-pound warhead,
and 200km with a 220-pound warhead, respectively; the Shahab-3 was test-launched in July 1998 and may soon
be upgraded to more than 2,000km, thus capable of reaching the middle of Europe.
Thanks to excess revenue from high oil prices, which constitute
more than 80% of the government's annual budget, Iran is not experiencing the
budget constraints of the early and mid-1990s, when its military expenditure was
outdone nearly one to 10 by its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf who are
members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council; almost all the Arab states possess one or another kind of
advanced missile system, eg, Saudi Arabia's CSS-2/DF, Yemen's SS-21, Scud-B,
Iraq's Frog-7. There are several advantages to a ballistic arsenal as far as Iran is concerned: first, it is relatively cheap and manufactured domestically without much external
dependency and the related pressure of "missile export control" exerted by the US. Second, the missiles are mobile and can
be concealed from the enemy, and third, there are advantages to fighter jets requiring fixed air bases. Fourth, missiles are presumed effective weapons that can be
launched without much advance notice by the recipient targets, particularly the
"solid fuel" Fatah-110 missiles that require only a few short minutes
for installation prior to being fired. Fifth, missiles are weapons of confusion and a unique strike capability
that can torpedo the best military plans, recalling how the Iraqi missile
attacks in March 2003 at the US military formations assembled at the
Iraq-Kuwait border forced a change of plan on the United States' part, thereby
forfeiting the initial plan of sustained aerial strikes before engaging the
ground forces, as was the case in the Kuwait war, when the latter entered the
theater after some 21 days of heavy air strikes inside Iraq as well as Kuwait.
Henceforth, any US attack on Iran will likely be met first and
foremost by missile counter-attacks engulfing the southern Persian Gulf states
playing host to US forces, as well as any other country, eg, Azerbaijan, Iraq or Turkey,
allowing their territory or airspace to be used against Iran. The rationale for this strategy is precisely to pre-warn Iran's neighbors of the dire
consequences, with potential debilitating impacts on their economies for a long
time, should they become accomplices of foreign invaders of Iran. Another key element of Iran's
strategy is to "increase the arch of crisis" in places such as
Afghanistan and Iraq, where it has considerable influence, to undermine the United States' foothold in the region, hoping to
create a counter-domino effect wherein instead of gaining inside Iran, the US would actually lose
territory partly as a result of thinning its forces and military
"overstretch". Still another component of Iran's strategy is
psychological warfare, an area of considerable attention by the country's
military planners nowadays, focusing on the "lessons from Iraq" and how the pre-invasion psychological warfare by the US succeeded in causing a major
rift between the top echelons of the Ba'athist army as well as between the
regime and the people. The United States' psychological warfare in Iraq also had a political dimension, seeing how the US rallied the United Nations Security Council
members and others behind the anti-Iraq measures in the guise of countering
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Iran's counter-psychological warfare,
on the other hand, seeks to take advantage of the "death-fearing"
American soldiers who typically lack a strong motivation to fight wars not
necessarily in defense of the homeland. A war with Iran would definitely require establishing
the draft in the US, without which it could not possibly protect its flanks in
Afghanistan and Iraq; imposing the draft would mean enlisting many dissatisfied
young soldiers amenable to be influenced by Iran's own psychological warfare
focusing on the lack of motivation and "cognitive dissonance" of soldiers
ill-doctrinated to President George W Bush's "doctrine of
preemption", not to mention a proxy war for the sake of Israel. This aside, already, Iranians
today consider themselves subjected to the machinations of similar
psychological warfare, whereby, to give an example, the US cleverly seeks to capitalize on the discontent of
the (unemployed) youth by officially shedding crocodile tears, as discerned
from a recent interview of the outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell. Systematic disinformation
typically plays a key role in psychological warfare, and the US has now tripled
its radio programs beamed to Iran and, per recent reports from the US Congress,
substantially increased its financial support of the various anti-regime TV and
Internet programs, this while openly trumpeting the cause of "human
intelligence" in a future scenario of conflict with Iran based in part on
covert operations.
Consequently, there
is a sense of a
national-security siege in Iran these days, in light of a tightening
"security belt" by the US benefiting from military bases in Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan,
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman and the island-turned-garrison of Diego Garcia. From Iran's vantage point, the US, having won the Cold War, has turned into a
"leviathan unhinged" capable of manipulating and subverting the rules
of international law and the United Nations with impunity, thus requiring a sophisticated
Iranian strategy of deterrence that, in the words of certain Iranian media
pundits, would even include the use of nuclear weapons. But such voices are
definitely in a minority in Iran today, and by and large there is an elite
consensus against the manufacturing of nuclear weapons, partly out of the
conviction that short of creating a "second-strike capability" there
would be no nuclear deterrence against an overwhelming US power possessing thousands of "tactical nuclear weapons". Still, looking at nuclear asymmetry between India and Pakistan, the latter's first-strike capability has proved a deterrence against the much superior
nuclear India, a precious lesson not lost on Iran. Consequently, while Iran has
fully submitted its nuclear program to international inspection and suspended
its uranium-enrichment program per a recent Iran-European Union agreement inked
in Paris in November, there is nonetheless a nagging concern that Iran may have undermined its deterrence strategy
vis-a-vis the US, which has not endorsed the Paris Agreement, reserving the
right to dispatch Iran's nuclear issue to the Security Council while
occasionally resorting to tough saber-rattling against Tehran.
At times,
notwithstanding a media campaign in the US, particularly by the New York Times,
through news articles carrying such provocative titles as "US versus a
nuclear Iran", the US continues its hard-power pre-campaign against Iran
unabated, in turn fueling the national security concern of those groups of
Iranians contemplating "nuclear deterrence" as a national survival
strategy. Concerning the latter, there is a growing sentiment in Iran that no matter
how compliant Iran is with the demands of the UN's International Atomic Energy
Agency , much like Iraq in 2002-03, the US, which has lumped Iran into a
self-declared "axis of evil", is cleverly sowing the seeds of its
next Middle East war, in part by leveling old accusations of terrorism and
Iran's complicity in the 1996 Ghobar bombing in Saudi Arabia, irrespective of
the Saudi officials' rejection of such allegations totally overlooked in a
recent book on Iran, The Persian Puzzle by Kenneth M Pollack (see Asia
Times Online, The
Persian puzzle, or the CIA's?, December 3.) Thus there is an emerging "proto-nuclear deterrence"
according to which Iran's mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle would make it
"nuclear weapon capable" in a relatively short time, as a sort of
pre-weapon "threshold capability" that must be taken into account by
Iran's enemies contemplating attacks on its nuclear installations. Such attacks would be met by
stiff resistance, born of Iran's historic sense of nationalism and patriotism,
as well as by a counter-weaponization based on quick conversation of the nuclear
technology. Hence the
longer the US, and Israel, keep up the military threat, the more powerful and
appealing the Iranian yearning for a "proto-nuclear deterrence" will
grow.
In fact, the military threat against Iran has proved poison for
the Iranian economy, chasing away foreign investment and causing considerable
capital flight, an intolerable situation prompting some Iranian economists even
to call for filing complaints against the US in international tribunals seeking
financial remedies. This is a little far-fetched, no doubt, and the Iranians
would have to set a new legal precedent to win their cause in the eyes of
international law. Iran cannot possibly allow the poor investment climate
caused by the military threats to continue indefinitely, and reciprocating with
an extended deterrence strategy that raises the risk value of US allies in the
region is meant to offset this rather unhappy situation. Ironically, to open a
parenthesis here, some friends
of Israel in the US, such as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, an avid supporter of "torturing the
terrorists", has recently inked a column on a pro-Israel website
calling for the revision
of international law allowing an Israeli, and US, military assault against Iran. Dershowitz has clearly taken
flight of the rule of law, making a mockery of the esteemed institution that is
considered a beacon on the hill in the United States; the same Ivy League
university is home to the hate discourse of "clashing civilizations",
another ornament for its cherished history. Even Harvard's Kennedy School dean, Joseph Nye, a relative dove, has replicated the US obsession with power by churning out books and
articles on "soft power" that reifies every facet of American life,
including its neutral culture or entertainment industry, into an appendage or
"complement" of US "hard power", as if power reification of
what Jurgen Habermas calls "lifeworld" (Lebenswelt) is the conditio
sine qua non of Pax Americana.
The ruse of power, however, is that it
is often blind to the opposite momentum that it generates, as has been the case of the
Cuban people's half a century of heroics vis-a-vis a ruthless regime of
economic blockade, Algerian
nationalists fighting against French colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, and, at present, the Iranian people finding themselves in the unenviable
situation of contemplating how to survive against the coming avalanche of a US
power led entirely by hawkish politicians donning the costumes of
multilateralism on Iran's nuclear program. Yet few inside Iran actually believe that this is more than pseudo-multilateralism geared to satisfy the United States' unilateralist militarism down the road. One hopes that the road will not
wind down any time soon, but just in case, the "Third World" Iranians
are doing what they can to prepare for the nightmare scenario. The whole
situation calls for prudent
crisis management and security confidence-building by both sides, and,
hopefully, the ugly
experience of repeated warfare in the oil-rich region can itself act as a
deterrent. (Article)
Official: Iran missiles pose threat to U.S. interests in Iraq - December 24, 2004
World Tribune - A senior U.S. official said Iran and Syria have developed ballistic missiles that can destroy U.S. targets in Iraq as well as in nations aligned with Washington. "Iran and Syria can currently reach the territory of U.S. friends and allies with their ballistic missiles," Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said. "Ballistic missiles from Iran can already reach some parts of Europe, and, of course, Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles threaten our coalition forces deployed in the Middle East," he said. The United States has also been examining the deployment of ground-based interceptor launchers and forward-based radars in states adjacent to the Middle East, according to a report by Middle East Newsline. Rademaker told a missile defense conference by the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council that both countries have received significant assistance from North Korea, which has sought to sell complete missile systems to the Middle East. Iran is developing space launch vehicles as a building block for an intercontinental ballistic missile which could be completed within a few years, he said on Dec. 17. "These systems could be ready for flight-testing in the middle to latter-part of the decade," Rademaker said.
Rademaker said North Korea was achieving self-sufficiency in developing and producing ballistic missiles and sought to sell such missiles to the Middle East. He said the missile threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East could grow significantly if Pyongyang sells what he termed longer-range ballistic missiles. "If North Korea chooses to sell its longer-range ballistic missiles to customers in the Middle East – as it has done with its shorter-range systems – the risk to our friends and allies could grow exponentially," Rademaker said. "And it is important to recognize that the limited accuracy and targeting capabilities of emerging ballistic missile threats suggests that hostile states possessing such missiles likely would target the population and territory of our friends and allies rather than their military forces and facilities." North Korea has sold No Dong missiles to Iran and has developed the Taepo Dong-1 and -2 intermediate-range missiles.
Officials said the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a several hundred kilogram payload up to 15,000 kilometers. Rademaker said the United States was engaged in missile cooperation with 18 countries, including those in the Middle East. U.S. cooperation with Israel include the Arrow System Improvement Program, which seeks to provide the Arrow-2 with greater capability against Iranian intermediate-range missiles. Rademaker cited U.S. help for Israel to procure a third Arrow-2 missile defense battery, coproduction of the interceptor and flight tests in the United States. "As part of the cooperative joint testing project, this past summer Israel conducted two flight tests of the Arrow from Point Magu, California," Rademaker said. "Unlike the Israeli test range, with its range safety restrictions, Point Magu permits testing against a real world Scud." (Article)
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