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Clare Short, former Cabinet minister for international development in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet at the time Iraq was invaded in March 2003, testified before the Iraq inquiry today (February 2, 2010).

Short confirmed a picture of exclusion and secrecy in official deliberations prior to Britain’s decision to launch the invasion of Iraq with the United States and minor allies in what President George W Bush called the ‘coalition of the willing’. She was the second member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet to resign in May 2003, two months after ex-foreign secretary and then leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, walked out on the eve of the invasion.

Clare Short said that Blair and ‘his mates’ decided war was necessary and everything was done on ‘a wing and a prayer’. She accused Blair’s personal friend and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith of misleading the Cabinet. She said Cabinet was not a ‘decision-making body’ and called Parliament a ‘rubber stamp’.  

She said the Cabinet was not told that Goldsmith secretly asked Blair on March 14, 2003 to give a written confirmation that Saddam Hussein was in breach of previous UN resolutions.

Meanwhile, the senior legal adviser at the British Foreign Office, Sir Michael Wood, whose objections about the legality of going to war were vetoed by government, submitted a second written statement to the inquiry.  Entitled The Rights and Responsibilities of Occupying Powers, the statement made clear that, after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, the United States and Britain as occupying powers were legally responsible for maintaining public order and safety; and respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in Iraq.

These provisions are stipulated in the 1907 Hague Regulations and the Forth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Sir Michael said: “While some changes to the legislative and administrative structures may be permissible if they are necessary for public order and safety, more wide-ranging reforms of governmental and administrative structures are not lawful … The Forth Geneva Convention prohibits, subject to limited exceptions, any alteration in the status of public officials.”

The implications of actions by occupying powers in violation of these duties and responsibilities under international law are enormous. Regardless of them, Paul Bremer, the first administrator of Iraq, dissolved the country’s administrative structure, the armed forces and the police by Orders Number 1 and 2 in the wake of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Those actions, more than any other, created a vacuum in Iraq with disastrous consequences.

I watched British ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s six-hour testimony before the Iraq inquiry in London today (January 29, 2010). It was a stubborn performance in his own defense and that of his close friend and ally, former US President George W Bush. Here are ten points made by Blair that struck me particularly:

1. Blair said he had told Bush from the start that if the United States went to war in Iraq he would be with him.
2. He did what was right in joining the invasion and would do it again.  
3. George W Bush decided UN backing for the invasion was not necessary.
4. Russia and France, in Blair’s view, changed their position which prevented the second United Nations resolution authorizing force.
5. The British cabinet did not want to be part of the legal debate on the Iraq invasion – The inquiry panel thought it should have been.
6. Blair asserted that a humanitarian crisis after the invasion of Iraq was avoided – The evidence is contrary and overwhelming.
7. He claimed that Iran today posed a greater threat than in 2003. He indicated that a similar military action might now be necessary against Iran.
8. Claimed that extensive preparations had been made for the aftermath of the invasion, until al Qaeda and Iran began to play the role they did.
9. What became clear in time [in answering questions about multi-layered conflict, including civil war] was not a lack of resources but a lack of security.
10. At the end, the Iraq inquiry Chairman, Sir John Chilcot, asked Blair whether he had any regrets for the very high cost of invading Iraq, including deaths of British troops and Iraqi civilians. Blair had no regrets.

The inquiry chairman hinted that Blair might be called again before the panel. As the day’s proceedings ended, the former prime minister was booed from the public gallery and there were shouts of ‘come on’, ‘liar’ and ‘murderer’. Outside, there were demonstrations throughout the day.

There are those who feel Blair’s cross-examination should have been tougher. My view is that the panel’s questioning was pointed, persistent and tough.

It revealed the mindset that remains unaltered nearly seven years after he and George W Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, with disastrous consequences.

A day after the two most senior legal experts [Sir Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst] at the British Foreign Office told the Iraq inquiry their advice that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal was ignored by Tony Blair’s government, Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith faced the inquiry panel on Wednesday (January 27).  

The main points of Goldsmith’s evidence under close cross-examination:

• He admitted to changing his earlier opinion that an invasion without a specific United Nations resolution authorizing the use of force would be illegal, party due to American and British diplomatic accounts of private UN negotiations.  
• Until the first week of February 2003, about six weeks before Iraq was invaded, Goldsmith had repeatedly warned the Prime Minister’s Office that a second UN resolution was necessary.
• But after a visit to the United States, where he met officials including Secretary of States Condoleezza Rice, Goldsmith said he was convinced that experienced US lawyers would not have ‘stumbled into’ giving France a chance to veto a new resolution on military action.
• He had to decide which side he would prefer to be on.
• Goldsmith said it was ‘impossible’ for him at the time to ask the French what their legal interpretation [of going to war] was.
• One inquiry panel member, Roderick Lyne, challenged Goldsmith to explain the ‘gap’ between French and Russian public statements and ‘second-hand’ descriptions of their ‘private’ positions [as shown by American officials].
• It was pointed out on BBC Newsnight that exchanges on the question of legality remained confined to Lord Goldsmith and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office.

Britain and the United States went to the UN Security Council a second time to get authorization for war. Russia and France would have vetoed it had it been put to vote; in the end, there was not even a majority of Security Council members for it.

As authorization could not be obtained, the conclusion must be that the Security Council did not give approval for military action in Iraq. Therefore, the invasion in March 2003 had no legal basis.

Seventy-two hours before Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair appears at the Iraq inquiry in London, pressure is piling up on Blair and his close advisers who took the decision to join President George W Bush in launching the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

On Tuesday (January 26, 2010) the senior government lawyer at the time, Sir Michal Wood, told the inquiry in a written statement that the invasion of Iraq had “no legal basis in international law”. Sir Michael was the highest-ranking legal adviser at the British Foreign Office when Iraq was invaded.

In his statement, he said he disagreed with the advice of the Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith.

Sir Michael considered the use of military force in March 2003 to be ‘contrary to international law’, but said that Jack Straw, then foreign secretary in Tony Blair’s government, rejected the advice. Instead, Mr Straw told the US Vice President Dick Cheney that Britain would ‘prefer’ a second UN resolution, but it would be ‘OK’ if they tried and failed [in getting the resolution passed in the Security Council].

Sir Michael disclosed: “He [foreign secretary] took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn’t used to people taking such a firm position. When he [Straw] had been at the Home Office, he had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts.”

Sir Michael told the Iraq inquiry that this was probably the first and only occasion that a minister rejected his legal advice in this way.

Sir Michael’s deputy at the Foreign Office was Elizabeth Wilmshurst. She followed him to the Iraq inquiry. She disclosed that the opinion of the entire legal team was unanimous that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal [without specific UN approval for the use of force]. She said the view among civil service officials was that an invasion without such legal basis would be a ‘nightmare scenario’.

Wilmshurst said that she regarded the invasion of Iraq illegal and therefore did not feel able to continue in her post. Wilmshurst decided to leave government. Explaining her decision, she said she would have been required to ‘support and maintain the Government’s position’ in international forums. The rules of international law on the use of force by States are at the heart of international law.

Wilmshurst said: “Collective security, as opposed to unilateral military action, was a central purpose of the Charter of the United Nations. Acting contrary to the Charter, as I perceived the Government to be doing, would have the consequence of damaging the United Kingdom’s reputation as a State committed to the rule of law in international relations and to the United Nations.”

The Iraq inquiry in the United Kingdom continues in the wake of the recent Dutch inquiry, which concluded that the Netherland’s political support for the 2003 invasion had no legal basis. That, and the weight of evidence emerging in London, would, in my view, make it very difficult for the UK inquiry to come out with a conclusion without an acknowledgement of that being the case.

The Iraq inquiry in Britain is to continue beyond May 2010, by when a general election is due. The consequences of the decision to go to war in Iraq will undoubtedly be a significant topic of the political debate in the run up to the election.

In Iraq itself, a suicide car bomber killed at least 18 people and injured around 80 others at a government forensics laboratory in Baghdad on Tuesday. The latest attack came as funerals were taking place of victims of the previous day’s bomb attacks, killing more than 35 people. The BBC correspondent in the Iraqi capital, Jim Muir, says these attacks are clearly coordinated and appear to be aimed at undermining security as Iraq prepares for a general election in March.

It has taken more then three weeks for a taped message purported to be from Osama bin Laden to emerge after the young Nigerian underwear bomber Omar Faroukh Abdulmuttallab tried to blow up a Delta Airlines plane as it prepared to land at Detroit. Several things are worth considering about the content, timing and motives of the latest audio message broadcast on Al Jazeera.

The message warns President Barack Obama of further attacks unless America finds a solution to the Palestinian crisis. In a soft, chilling manner that has become the trademark of Osama bin Laden, he warns: “The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Omar Farouk [Abdulmuttallab] reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you. America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly.

“Therefore, with God’s will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel.”

According to Al Jazeera, the message was thought to have been recorded just after the Christmas Day attempt of bombing, but released now. Why now? There are several explanations. Bin Laden is widely thought to be living somewhere in the north-west of Pakistan, heavily guarded and in conditions of great secrecy. He is a sick man and by various accounts needs kidney dialysis from time to time. Some even say he is dead. My suspicion is that it is unlikely he is no longer alive.

Recording a message and smuggling the tape out to Al-Jazeera takes time, especially when the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders is intense and American drone attacks are more frequent.

Equally important is the timing of this message. President Obama has suffered a number of major domestic and foreign policy setbacks in recent weeks. The enormity of his difficulties has become obvious in the last few days. The Democratic Party’s shock defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race has been a watershed in the young Obama administration.

Its effects for his plans for health reform, restructuring of the economic and banking system and tackling the unemployment problem are very serious. The Democratic Party is in disarray; the rump Republican opposition left in the Senate and the House of Representatives after the November 2008 general election is on an obstructive path, showing a surprising degree of cohesion and spirit.

Obama’s ambitious foreign policy agenda is also in disarray. His efforts to restart the Israel-Palestinian peace process have quickly reached a dead end, largely because of the Israeli government’s refusal to cooperate with his wish to see the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories halted. The Palestinian leadership finds it extremely difficult to come to the negotiating table before it happens and the current Israeli right-wing government will not bend.

Obama’s Af-Pak policy that appeared to be a sensible approach at the start has caused more problems than its promise to find solutions. America’s desire to build an ever closer strategic alliance with India, aimed at expanding lucrative trade and finding a counter to China, has instead run counter to Washington’s relations with Pakistan. For the first time, Pakistan’s public opinion as well as its military and political establishment are openly hostile to Washington’s plans.

The mood of the Afghan parliament is increasingly rebellious. It has twice rejected President Karzai’s cabinet nominees. The refusal to approve a large number of nominees is not merely a snub to President Karzai, a US-installed leader in Kabul. It is a message to the occupying powers, primarily America, deploying nearly 40000 additional troops in Afghanistan. After the presidential election fiasco of 2009, there was a real possibility of greater fraud and disruption by violence in the parliamentary elections in May 2010. More Western soldiers would have died. And the new parliament may well have been even more rebellious.

These, and not the want of funds needed to hold elections, were more pressing reasons for the postponement of the parliamentary elections until September 2010. There must be doubt whether they will take place then. A lot depends on whether the additional troops manage to supress the growing rebellion across Afghanistan.

The underlying message of the ruling political-military elite of Pakistan is that if the United States chooses India as its senior partner in South Asia, there will be a price to pay in terms of lost cooperation with Pakistan. That prospect involves greater risk.

Osama bin Laden’s message is deliberately timed with all these unwelcome developments for the Obama presidency and days before the London conference on January 28. Bin Laden’s goal is to cause maximum confusion and panic when there already is great uncertainty. He has once again picked up the Palestinian issue, which is at the heart of the ‘web of crises’ afflicting the entire Muslim world and communities beyond. Right from its birth, the Palestinian crisis, and the presence of American troops on Muslim soil, have been the two most potent items on al Qaeda’s agenda.

The United States cannot afford to relax its efforts to make progress on the Palestinian problem without there being consequences. Similarly, Obama cannot afford to keep American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq indefinitely if he is to give the peace offer he made to Muslims in Cairo in June 2009 a chance.

(Claire Denis, 2009) At first glance, 35 Shots of Rum appears to exalt routine. Establishing takes linger on Paris’ suburban metro system, a Piet Mondrian transit-scape of oily black and streaking yellow. The rhythm of working-class urban life might have soothed us, but the lazy accordion strains overlaying these scenes are too weary. We’re comforted by these images—by subsequent images of characters returning home from a day’s work—but we’re also set on edge. Denis’ film evokes the mood of routine, then proceeds to demonstrate routine’s danger: our reliance on sameness constricts those around us. The story centers on widower Lionel (Alex Descas) and his grad-student daughter Joséphine (Mati Diop), but their lovely domesticity walls them off. Their intimacy is almost uncomfortably close, and Lionel’s reliance on Jo keeps her suitor (Grégoire Colin) at bay, and relegates his own devotee (Nicole Dogue) to neighborly status. In Denis’ world, familial routine is ground zero for a viral, existential loneliness, which is reified in the Sartrean figure of a subway conductor (Julieth Mars Toussaint) condemned to freedom upon retirement. “We all live such withdrawn lives,” sighs Jo’s aunt (Ingrid Caven), a sibyl character whose vocalization towards film’s end helps to disentangle the father/daughter dyad. In an early scene, Jo neglects a rice-cooker she bought in deference to one selected by her father; it takes the length of the film for Lionel to grasp the appliance’s symbolism, which the audience, for the most part, groks at once.

Denis renders the needy parent archetype in rich and dignified form. Relationship as a concept is at the heart of the film, not Lionel, who’s just one of several fascinating characters in a study of distance within the confines of expectation (familial, societal, global). Human barriers are expressed not just in Denis’ semiotics of glance and gesture, but in the production design itself. With the help of her longtime art director (Arnaud de Moleron) and cinematographer (Agnes Godard), Denis uses light and framing to emphasize the actual walls that background her players (her technique from I Can’t Sleep is perfected here). The lighting design may seem everyday, even accidental at first, but it frames, spotlights or bathes characters with remarkable deliberation. This is the film that confirms Denis’ acute sensitivity to color; she is the antithesis to Almodovar, using hues in such subtle gradations that we feel the shifting tones onscreen before we see them. Her dominant blues and blue-grays are fetching in their melancholy, and they’re challenged by the warmer palettes in the film’s centerpiece, a bar scene destined to be discussed for years. Using the structure of swapping dance partners to gauge relationship, Denis makes a cliché spank with novelty and allows relationships to modify with gorgeous subtlety over the course of a single evening out. Lionel, who could only pay lip service to Jo’s autonomy until now, begins to privilege sight over words, as Denis herself would hope of her audience. It’s an astonishing moment of acting for all involved, and an astonishing sequence of filmmaking absolutely among the best of all time. — Ranylt Richildis

(Originally published on In Review Online, as part of their Top 15 Films of the Year feature, on January 23, 2009.)

The UN Mission in Afghanistan says that civilian deaths rose by 14 percent in the country in 2009. 

Its report said the ‘vast majority’ of the deaths were caused by Taliban attacks. The rise makes 2009 the worst year for Afghan civilians since the war began when the Taliban were overthrown in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

According to the report, there were 2412 civilians killed in 2009 compared with 2118 deaths in the preceding year. Civilian casualties are a sensitive subject in Afghanistan, with US forces frequently accused of killing non-combatants in air attacks. The UN report said that deaths attributed to allied forces dropped by nearly 30% in 2009 – something the United States will hope, will be welcomed by Afghans.

In recent months the Americans have given repeated assurances to the Afghan government the international forces will seek to reduce civilian casualties in an effort to gain support among the Afghan people. The United States and NATO are to send nearly 40000 additional troops to the country in 2010. There are concerns that casualties will further rise as the fighting escalates.

Predetor drone attacks have increased since President Obama took office a year ago. In June 2009, the Inter Press Service  reported that the American CIA’s refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the remote-controlled aircraft attacks in the northwestern tribal areas, combined with revelations that CIA operatives were paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, raised suspicions that the secrecy surrounding the attacks was used to hide abuses.

Dawn.com of Pakistan reported in early January that as many as 708 innocent civilians had been killed in 44 drone attacks in 2009. The number of key al Qaeda and Taliban figures killed was just five.  

According to Dawn, for each al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist by American drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis had to die. On average, 58 civilians were killed by drones every month, almost two people per day. Most of the attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence provided by Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen spying for the US-led alliance in Afghanistan.

Liar, liar, liar is starting to take shape, albeit slowly. I’ve had a break from drawing during the past week and that has refreshed me and my troublesome elbow is pain-free. I’m now taking fish oil capsules and hope that they will improve things for me. I don’t expect a miracle cure overnight, but hope that the capsules will start to make a difference in about 4 or 5 weeks’ time.

As you can see, some symbols have appeared with more to come. There is a lot of relevant detail to be added and I shall slowly develop this drawing over the next few weeks.

The foreground will contain a smorgasbord of images, both large and small. I am rather enjoying this work.

It is not intended to be a ‘pretty’ picture, more a conscience piece.

Richard

(Andrzej Wajda, 2007) In 1940, over 20,000 Polish men were executed by Soviet officials and dumped in burial pits in Katyn Forest. It was only a matter of time before Andrzej Wajda, Poland’s great nationalist filmmaker, represented an atrocity that directly or indirectly touched most Poles of a certain generation. Wajda imprints history onto the character of Andrzej (Artur Zmijewski), an officer in the Polish military who disappears, along with countless others, as the Nazi and Soviet armies press in. But he wisely gives more screen time to those left behind. Wives and mothers and sisters (and sometimes fathers and nephews) paint the kind of absence which the disappearances create in families and communities. We see Polish officers interned in freezing barracks, but we mainly see their relatives trying to make their way between cities in a land occupied by hostile armies, trying to erect unauthorized headstones on loved ones’ graves, and trying to find out what happened to their kin. The personal stories are woven in with moments of pure history: the reading of actual names of the disappeared in a town square; the use of file footage showing the discovery of the mass graves. But Wajda avoids recreating the maudlin epilogue of Schindler’s List, choosing instead to massage blunt history directly and elegantly into his narrative.

It’s harrowing subject matter rendered in monochromatic quiet rather than Spielbergian schmaltz, and though Katyn has weaknesses, its strengths prevail. The individual stories are what keep the film mostly honest in a typically dishonest genre. Maja Ostaszewska, as Andrzej’s wife, communicates the sorrow of an individual rather than a wronged national. Women chafe under the propaganda of the Soviets and find ways to undermine it, but their motives are personal as well as political, so idealism rarely saturates the screen. In larger terms, the arrest of an auditorium full of academics jars us with beautiful art direction and with the impact such mass killings must have on a culture. And if the film’s opening scene feels forced (Poles sandwiched on a bridge between two advancing armies), and if the message is ham-handed (his compatriots remain divided about the film’s effectiveness), Wajda makes up for it with his gut-wrenching conclusion – an unrelenting series of executions that captures victims’ faces as they register their fate. Those executions and the scenes that build up to them make Katyn a cathartic experience worth chasing. – Ranylt Richildis

(Originally published as part of In Review Online’s While We Were Sleeping in 09 feature, on December 30, 2009.)

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and the Army Radio report a recent meeting between President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the Israeli consul in Los Angeles Jacob Dayan. Emanuel told Dayan the Obama administration was fed up with both Israel and the Palestinians. The American president is reported to be ‘sick of the Israelis who adopt suitable ideas months too late when they are no longer effective’. And he is also fed up with the ‘Palestinians who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity’. As can be expected, the Israeli diplomat promptly briefed his government about the American president’s thinking.

Emanuel warned that if there was no progress in the peace process, the Obama administration would reduce involvement in the conflict, because the United States had other matters to deal with.

These comments reveal the frustration building up in the White House as Obama faces growing criticisms on a number of issues. They also raise questions like –

1. If the United States president, less than a year in office, has already had enough of the two main parties in the conflict that is at the heart of the Middle East crisis, and a major hurdle to improving relations with Muslims all over the world, what does it tell about the future?
2. What ‘other matters’ has he got to deal with?
3. If the president is even half serious, what does it tell us about his long-term commitment to the world’s most intractable problem and what can the peoples in the Middle East and beyond expect?
4. Washington’s aid for Israel is almost automatic every year and the huge support in Congress ensures its passage. Could the Israeli government not interpret Emanuel’s remarks as giving the green light to continue pursuing the same policy?
5. Might this revelation not lead to further hopelessness in the Palestinian population, reinforcing the militancy among Palestinians, and in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere?

There will be those thinking if only President Obama was fed up with the Afghan ‘surge’ and moved on to other matters …

It has now emerged that the suicide bomber who blew up the CIA base in Khost, eastern Afghanistan, last week was Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old Jordanian doctor. The BBC says he was arrested by Jordanian intelligence a year ago and was said to have been ‘recruited’ by the Jordanians and the CIA, who thought they had successfully turned him to act as their agent. The Taliban had earlier claimed that the suicide bomber was one of their own.

Two former US government officials were quoted as saying that al-Balawi lured the CIA officers into a meeting with a promise of new information on al Qaeda’s top leadership. The bomber’s specific mission was said to be tracking Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Seven CIA agents and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed in the attack, making it the worst against American intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.

The CIA base in Khost came with an airfield, reportedly used for drone attacks inside Pakistan.

Khost is the traditional stronghold of Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of America’s favorite mujahideen commanders during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviet military withdrawal, Haqqani’s forces besieged Khost for months. The town’s fall in spring 1991 triggered a domino effect that finally brought down Afghanistan’s last Communist leader, Najibullah.

After the collapse of the Communist regime, Haqqani was named justice minister in the first mujahideen government formed in 1992. But he switched to the Taliban just before they seized the capital in September 1996. He helped the Taliban secure control of Nangarhar Province in the same year. At the time, Bin Laden was living as a guest and friend of Haqqani, who apparently was in possession of at least 70 American Stinger missiles. Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, were believed to have fled to the Waziristan tribal area inside Pakistan following the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Kabul in late 2001.

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The United States Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, is making waves in South Asia. Gates speculated in India yesterday (January 20) that al Qaeda could spark another Indo-Pakistan war and appeared to encourage the Indians by declaring that next time there was a terrorist attack in India, her patience would be limited.

The defense secretary is in Pakistan today. As he arrived in Islamabad, news was out that he planned to tell the Pakistanis to broaden their military operations against the militants. The Pakistani military’s response was ‘No’. Pakistan’s army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas told the BBC that the country’s armed forces were already stretched and there would be no more operations in 2010.

Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government followed the army’s lead. Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Gailani told the Senate the military option was not the only solution to extremism and terrorism as 90 percent success was possible through economic development.

The scenario at the center of Defense Secretary Gates’s speculation potentially involves the following:

• Militant groups may well want an India-Pakistan confrontation in the east. It would release pressure on them in the north-western frontier region. Pakistan’s army has already launched a number of operations in 2009, causing a serious problem of internally displaced people.
• The warning Gates issued in Delhi that next time India’s patience would be limited was bound to be viewed as provocative in Pakistan. Surely, it is for the Indian leadership to decide, not for the United States’s.
• In case of a confrontation visualized by the American defense secretary, the situation has the nasty potential that the fingers of both countries’ leaders could be near the nuclear button. India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons.
• Aside from the threat of a nuclear showdown, the Taliban and their affiliates would be fighting together with Pakistani troops against India in the event of an Indo-Pakistan conflict.  
• So what is Gates up to?  

In one of the biggest electoral upsets of all time in the United States, and a huge shock to President Obama, Republican Scott Brown has won the Massachusetts Senate seat held by Edward Kennedy for 47 years until his death last year and his brother John Kennedy from 1953 until he became president after his 1960 victory.

Brown secured 51.9 percent of the vote against 47.1 percent for Democrat Martha Coakley. Given the context, this is a substantial margin.

Marking the first anniversary of President Obama in office, the race became the focus of national attention. The result will be viewed as a sharp rebuke to him. Obama had staked his personal reputation by going to Massachusetts to campaign for Coakley just two days before.

Scott Brown’s victory restores filibuster power to the Republican opposition with 41 votes in the Senate, preventing Obama’s healthcare plan from moving forward. Edward M Kennedy had described health care as ‘the cause of my life’.

Even before the result came in, Democrats had begun to ponder what to do about health reform. The Washington Post warned that the upset could lead to the collapse of a plan that looked close to becoming law only a few weeks ago.

The Massachusetts defeat has far-reaching implications for the Democratic Party. Unemployment in the United States is a source of increasing frustration and resentment. With mid-term elections for the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate due in November, the Massachusetts victory has emboldened the Republican Party. Obama faces even greater challenges for his plans on a range of domestic issues.

On foreign policy, Obama’s June 2009 offer of improvement in relations with the Muslim world has hit a dead end. Relations with Iran have deteriorated sharply. A lot of the goodwill across the Middle East has been squandered because of the administration’s ceaseless emphasis on war and its failure to make any progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The president is uncharacteristically quiet while his secretaries of state and defense, and senior military commanders, continue the talk of war on a number of fronts, with Obama’s occasional reminder that he is the commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest power. And Guantanamo has not been closed despite Obama’s pledge to close it at the end of his first year in the White House.

As if that was not enough. On January 20, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting India, indulged himself in quite irresponsible speculation that al Qaeda could try to provoke a new war between Pakistan and India. His remarks are unlikely to please his Indian hosts.

Democrats, after sweeping victories in the presidential and Congressional elections in November 2008, have no one else to blame but their own disunity and lack of real purpose. In her concession speech, an emotional Coakley said anybody on the campaign trail would have seen that folks ‘are angry and concerned about health-care issue and they are angry about our two wars’.

Happy Martin Luther King Junior Day to those of you in the United States. The topic of todays blog is fish oil. It seems that there is a fish oil manufacturer on every corner these days and it can be so confusing as to which fish oil is right for you and your family. Although we don’t have time within the confines of this blog to get into all the scientific comparisons behind many brands I wanted to tell you about one brand that we believe is doing it right and our customers are affirming this with their orders.

Innate Choice carries a line of fish oil they call Omega Sufficiency. What’s truly great about their line of fish oil is the amount of both EPA and DHA (you want both) and the fact that there is no artificial chemicals meaning they aren’t using a bunch of chemicals in their harvesting or manufacturing processes. (See our complete line of Innate Choice)

Innate Choice Omega Sufficiency Lemon Liquid - 500ml

Who says there aren’t incentives to reading this blog. =)  For the rest of the month of January we’re offering an additional 5% off all Innate Choice Omega Sufficiency Products. This is in addition to our already low prices. We guarantee you won’t find a lower price on Innate Choice products on the internet. Use coupon code ICOMEGA when checking out.

Here’s some further details on the product line:

Omega Sufficiency™ is the purest, most natural fish oil available with natural EPA:DHA ratios and NO Artificial Chemical Concentration. Because of this Omega Sufficiency™ is aligned with the human genetic requirements for Omega 3 consumption and thus provides the maximal health and prevention benefits.

Omega Sufficiency™ is the world’s premier EPA/DHA omega 3 fish oil. Each teaspoon or 4 capsules provides 720-825 mg of EPA and 480-550 mg of DHA omega 3 essential fatty acids which have been scientifically shown to be a crucial requirement for health and important in the prevention of illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, ADD, depression, stroke, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, osteoporosis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, eczema, learning and cognitive development problems, and Alzheimer’s.

Omega Sufficiency™ is extracted in a licensed pharmaceutical grade facility from cold water anchovies, herring and sardines that are the purest source of omega 3 fish oil. Our oil is purified in a non-chemical molecular distillation process that removes all trace amounts of heavy metals, PCBs, organochlorides, and organophosphate pesticides resulting in the safest, purest source of EPA/DHA fish oil possible. As the oil is purified it isimmediately infused with our natural, proprietary antioxidant blend consisting of rosemary extract, ascorbyl palmitate and natural mixed tocopherols. This process ensures the greatest oxidation protection possible. There simply is not a better, purer source of EPA/DHA omega 3 fatty acids in the world as our third party testing results indicate.

Our extraction process keeps the fish oil in its most natural form possible, this is crucial because human beings are genetically designed to ingest, digest, and absorb EPA and DHA essential fatty acids in the form they are found in nature, not in any concentrated form produced by chemical processing. If science and experience has taught us anything it is that we cannot improve upon nature.

Omega Sufficiency™ is flavored with 100% natural lemon extract – it actually tastes good! Because of the high quality and purity of our oil there is no fishy taste, no fishy smell, and no fishy aftertaste. Even kids like it! For those who do not like the consistency of the oil we recommend adding the oil to juice, a smoothie, or to salad dressings or other food

Afghan security forces have locked down the centre of Kabul after Taliban fighters launched a series of attacks on key government targets in the Afghan capital.

More from Al Jazeera.

Today’s assault in Kabul fits in with the pattern of insurgent attacks becoming increasingly audacious as international forces in Afghanistan reinforce in their efforts to suppress the resistance. The attack began just after 9 in the morning when all government offices would have been open in the capital.

The insurgent operation appeared to have been extremely well coordinated and extensive. STRATFOR said the Presidential Palace and the ministries of defense, justice, mines, finance and education – all were hit; so was the Central Bank headquarters, Afghan Telecom and shopping centers.

Press TV reported that the insurgents detonated bombs inside several buildings. Al Jazeera, at one stage, said at least 12 people had been killed, including several attackers and members of the Afghan security forces. The figure is certain to be higher, with the fighting continuing as I write.

The task of dealing with the attackers fell upon Afghan security forces. American and NATO troops were reported to have been playing a ‘supportive’ role. Gunfire, rocket fire and suicide bombings were all part of the insurgent operation.

The assault came on the day President Hamid Karzai’s truncated cabinet – what was left after the Afghan Parliament twice rejected a large number of presidential nominees –  was to be sworn in. It also comes prior to the arrival of tens of thousands of American and allied troops in Afghanistan.

The Taliban were quick to claim responsibility for today’s assault. But almost certainly others opposed to the occupation forces were involved.

As the Western powers continue to struggle to get agreement on the Iran sanctions issue, news of what is happening on the ground.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran sign a joint declaration in Islamabad that calls for a regional – rather than a ‘foreign’ solution to the Afghan conflict – reports the Pakistan Observer.

The significance is in that such a meeting took place and what the joint declaration says.

President Barack Obama is visiting Massachusetts in an attempt to prevent the unthinkable prospect of the Democratic Party candidate Martha Coakley losing the Senate seat of Edward Kennedy.

Polls show that the little-known republican candidate Scott Brown is running neck-and-neck with, or ahead of, his Democratic opponent, state attorney general Coakley, who looked like a certain winner a few days ago.

An unexpectedly strong performance by the Republican candidate in one of the safest Democratic seats in the Senate would be viewed as a serious setback for Obama, who is staking his personal reputation in visiting Massachusetts.

A victory would not only give the Republicans their 41st seat in the Senate – enough to block the healthcare bill. It would be a sign of things to come in the mid-term elections for the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate in November 2010. President Obama’s legislative program would face strong challenges and the Massachusetts defeat could prove to be a fatal blow against his own re-election hopes in 2012.

Deepak Tripathi
(State of Nature, Winter 2010 Issue)

The inaugural decade of the new century will be remembered for two phenomena above all: the savagery of human nature, and the United States, the world’s sole hegemon, going rogue, and taking other nations with it. As we were about to leave the twentieth century, and many in the West were enjoying unprecedented prosperity, the prospect of a clash of ideologies was becoming a reality. Instead of the ‘menace’ of communism, the neoconservatives and the religious Right in the United States had found another enemy in radical Islam. It was one of the supreme ironies that the confrontation would be between President George W Bush and the ideology that his father George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan had promoted in their fight against Soviet communism when they were in the White House during the last phase of the Cold War.

Having seen off the ‘Soviet threat’, the hegemon that emerged victorious had a fatal belief in its own destructive power. In refusing to learn lessons from the past, it invited worse. The new confrontation was not going to be between two equals, aware of the certainty of mutual destruction in the event of an all-out war. The primary characteristic of the new confrontation would be its lack of symmetry, making it more brutal. For when combatants are not equals and mutual destruction is not certain, the dominant side becomes vulnerable in other ways.

Overwhelming power leads to impudence and disregard for law and reason. Institutions that are there to protect the innocent and the weak begin to lose their meaning. In a world without restraint, the underdog is often depicted as evil and brutality becomes the norm. With too much power comes the belief that it is easy to crush the ‘enemy’. But the underdog has strength in numbers, paving the way to atrocities on all sides. All of this has been witnessed in the savage first decade of the new century.

To view al Qaeda and the many nationalist movements in the Islamic world as one ‘enemy’ during the ‘war on terror’ has been an historic miscalculation. The project under the presidency of George W Bush to crush nationalism in the Middle East has exacted a high price from the West. But countries in the region have paid a price even greater. Al Qaeda’s terrorist violence has been answered by the terror of American military power. The lives of millions of people have been destroyed or blighted. In 2010, a year after Barack Obama’s ascent to the presidency, the initial euphoria has evaporated and gloom has set in.

Unlike the Cold War that ended in the 1980s, the United States has no superpower rival in the new century, and the balance of threat of mutual annihilation is absent. Instead, one side in the new conflict has overwhelming destructive power and has become insolent. The underdog is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – in acts of suicide attacks. Fear has lost its deterrent quality. Death is no longer an unwelcome prospect for a growing number of people living without hope. And for an alarming number, the rationality in martyrdom has replaced the rationality in survival. Humans are at their most dangerous when they no longer fear death.

Iraq Hubris

In the wake of the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation wrote a commentary titled ‘The Long War Against Terrorism’. A retired lieutenant-colonel in the US Army, and a leading neoconservative ideologue, Carafano began with these words: “Two years down the war on terror. How many more to go? We don’t know.” Boastfully, he argued that America’s ‘long war’ against terror was similar in scope and duration to the Cold War. The military establishment, delighted with the enlargement of the Pentagon budget following the return of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary in the Bush administration, jumped at the term. It gained currency in the war lexicon within a few months. In 2006, Rumsfeld invented a phrase of his own, describing it as ‘a generational conflict akin to the Cold War’, likely to go on for decades.

These assertions were based on flawed thinking, and comparisons with the Cold War were not relevant. America’s victory over the Soviet Union was achieved not by bombing the Soviet state out of existence, but by draining the Soviet economy and resolve through an arms race and regional proxy wars. America’s ‘enemy’ in the new century is a ghost army of guerrillas, with little else to lose except their lives. And they are only too willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. The hegemon, in possession of the most sophisticated war technology, decided to confront this loose army of guerrillas equipped with little more than light weapons, explosives and simple timing devices, able to move at will across frontiers.

In The Art of War, believed to have been written in the sixth century BC and still regarded as one of the most influential works about war strategy and tactics, the Chinese general and military theorist, Sun Tzu, said:

Warfare is the way of deception. Therefore, if able, appear unable.
If active, appear not active.
If near, appear far.
If far, appear near.
If they have advantage, entice them.
If they are confused, take them.
If they are substantial, prepare for them.
If they are strong, avoid them.

‘Shock and Awe’, the post-Cold War doctrine written at the United States National Defense University in 1996, was designed to paralyze the enemy and achieve rapid dominance by overwhelming force in battle. The truth is rather different. Provided the enemy removes himself and recovers from the effects of high-altitude bombing and missile attacks, in time he will improvise tactics to fight an effective guerrilla war that a conventional army will find difficult to sustain. A great military power wants rapid victory. The underdog prefers a long war. This, and not merely the use of overwhelming power and lightning speed, is the essence of Sun’s doctrine of warfare. Read the complete essay

As we await the appearance of Britain’s ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair before the Iraq Inquiry, recent witnesses have revealed more about the manner in which he made the decision to join President George W Bush to invade Iraq in March 2003.

Former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull, Britain’s most senior civil servant between 2002 and 2005, told the inquiry that those cabinet members who had concerns about invading Iraq were given almost no time to discuss the issue. Lord Turnbull said Prime Minister Blair surrounded himself with those who would not disagree with him. With the exception of Leader of the House of Commons Robin Cook, who resigned after the decision to invade Iraq, “none of [the Cabinet] suggested a serious change of direction … They were all conditioned to buy the intelligence presentations.” Blair had been a ‘regime changer’ from the outset, but felt ‘obliged’ to seek UN permission for the invasion.

The British government’s senior law officer, Lord Goldsmith, had given advice to the Cabinet that was different to the version he gave Prime Minister Blair. All along, Blair has argued that the brief statement Goldsmith subsequently gave the cabinet on the eve of the invasion was a ‘fair summary’ of the attorney general’s latest legal advice. However, it is now known that the only official legal opinion Goldsmith drew up was the one which contained serious caveats about the lawfulness of an invasion.  

Earlier, Blair’s former communications director Alastair Campbell revealed to the inquiry that:  

• Blair told President George W Bush: If [disarming of Iraq] cannot be done diplomatically, and it has to be done militarily, Britain will be there.
• The message was contained in letters written by Mr Blair personally and kept “pretty private” among a small group of aides and ministers, and not made part of the normal Whitehall system of document-keeping.
• Clare Short, the international development secretary, was excluded from key meetings on Iraq, because she could not be trusted to keep sensitive information secret. She did not fully support the government’s position on Iraq.
• Campbell said the claim that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45-minute was not very significant. “In the discussions [producing the dossier], it wasn’t that big a deal.”
• The current prime minister Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer in Tony Blair’s cabinet, was closely involved in discussions on Iraq in the run-up to the war.

These revelations reinforce the following questions -

1 What about the constitutional requirement of collective decision-making and responsibility in cabinet government and legality of a decision reached without an informed and full discussion among all cabinet members?  

2. Did Blair mislead the British Paliament and his Cabinet when they went along with his recommendation to join the US-led invasion of Iraq?

3. If the Iraq invasion was illegal, then should war reparations to the injured parties be paid and by whom?

Meanwhile, an investigation into the Dutch government’s political support for the invasion of Iraq has found that the invasion violated international law. The Dutch inquiry was chaired by former Supreme Court judge Willibrord Davids.