Until Chilcot hears UN weapons inspectors’ testimony, the fiction of Britain honestly seeking a WMD smoking gun prevails

Scott Ritter, The Guardian/UK, Nov27, 2009

Remember Scott Ritter?  He was the guy who headed the UN inspection team who told George Bush that there were NO WMD’S IN IRAQ.  Which of course convinced Dubya beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were definitely WMD’s in Iraq.  Now Ritter is advising Barack Obama to get the hell out of Afghanistan before we end up the same way the Soviets did, defeated and headed for extinction.  Ritter is a pretty savvy guy, and he addresses all the tactical military poly-sci jargon talk (that my blog-mate so loves to quote) about trapping this faction or that in some region or another, and discounts it for the self-serving nonsense that it is.  He also convincingly lays out the close parallels between our war and the Soviet war of twenty years ago.  But what he does best is gut this testosterone overdosed General McChrystal who has done everything but publicly threaten a military coup if Obama doesn’t give him the cannon fodder he’s demanded.  McChrystal ought to be relieved of command post-haste, and the rest of our troops should rapidly follow his ass home on the first available plane.

BW

By: Debbie Menon

The Palestinian message on the ground is clear, but no one’s listening.
They won’t accept surrender for peace. They want nothing less than freedom and justice in their own unoccupied land.

One of the basic principles of war is that one must have a plan. One of the even more basic principles is that in order to win the war, one must know the enemy’s plan!

This is impossible, unless one has first identified the enemy and has taken whatever measures are necessary to know him as well as he can possibly be known. This leads to an old, probably Chinese, injunction; “To succeed, keep your friends close; but your enemies even closer!”

If you are going to fight for the Palestinian, the Lebanese, the Iraqi, the Iranian cause,
or any of the many causes of “the people” in the Middle east, or even understand the conflicts in the region, it is imperative that you not only know all about the enemy, and his plans, but first that you recognize and acknowledge exactly who the enemy actually is!

I am not sure this has been done, for I see little mention of him in the media which seems to be flowing out of the region. Many foot-soldiers and related but insignificant elements, more “the effects” of the conflicts than the causes, have been and are continuing to be cited as the “threat” or “the enemy”, such as nuclear threats, axis of evil,  petty local ambitions, local warlords, squabbles over petty fiefdoms, power grabs, etc, and,
of course, the Big Bugaboo of American and Western hegemony and Imperialism which, however true, does not describe the heart of the matter, nor identify the heart of the enemy — which should be the real target.

No one seems to want to address this major issue, which for years has been behind the Balkanization of so many countries in the region, and the establishment, installation, stabilization and solidification of one great foreign and aggravating element, Zionist Israel!

To know the enemy is half the victory. No victory or defense can be devised or pursued without knowing whom one is fighting. Since the “enemy” in this case is right there on the home grounds of the people he is invading and attacking, it should be obvious to anyone paying attention, who he is.

Apparently, a great many people, journalists, statesmen, information bearers and distributors of “information” either do not know this, are more likely cowed down by
the intimidation of, or are agents of these same “enemies”.

I ask, of the people who live in the region, the Press who write about it, and Muslim leaders particularly, what would the Prophet have done? What are you doing?

Read a rare and refreshingly clear voice of startling and exceptionally clear vision on this “unmentionable topic,” by an American.  He, and what he has to say on the matter, may be a good platform from which to search for the truth of the enemy, and get an ID on him.

Scott Ritter is not only a clear-sighted and perceptive visionary, he is a brave man who writes exceptionally well. Worth reading!

“Israel at present can have no friends, because Israel does not know how to be a friend. Driven by xenophobic paranoia and historical grievances, Israel is embarked on a path that can only lead to death and destruction. This is a path the US should not tread. I have always taken the position that Israel is a friend of the United States, and that friends should always stand up for one another, even in difficult times. I have also noted that, to quote a phrase well known in America, friends don’t let friends drive drunk, and that for some time now Israel has been drunk on arrogance and power.  As a friend, I have believed the best course of action for the United States to take would be that,  which helped remove the keys from the ignition of the policy vehicle Israel is steering toward the edge of the abyss. Now it seems our old friend is holding a pistol to our head, demanding that we stop interfering with the vehicle’s operation and preventing us from getting out of the car. This is not the action of a friend, and it can no longer be tolerated,” writes Ritter.

Whether it is not already too late to do much about it, we shall see.

But, first, and above all, someone is going to have to conduct a spinal implant in the US administration and the Congress!

America’s inability to resolve the question of Palestine is one of the gravest tragedies of our times. This is primarily because the US administration and the US Congress have succumbed to the demands of the Zionists, the Zionist regime and its various Lobbies, AIPAC (American–Israeli Policy Action Committee) and ADL  (Anti-Defamation League). There exists a coordinating agency called “The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations,” Their website (www.conferenceofpresidents.org/) is worth exploring (and AIPAC is just one of literally dozens of organizations under its umbrella). This is a lethal ailment that afflicts the United States.  The American politicians have fallen captive to this Zionist network.

Surely fair-minded Americans the likes of Scott Ritter prefer US-inspired policies to those perpetrated by the Zionists. Regrettably, little is being done to cure this fatal disease. So long as this situation persists, we will see tyranny and injustice in the region. The US government being the primary negotiator for peace and security between Zionists and Palestinians should bear the responsibility for the Zionist regime’s massacre of Palestinian women and children in their homes and territories. Peace and security will be realized only through the establishment of true justice. How can sustainable peace and security be reached by provoking and humiliating others?

The Annapolis Peace Conference during the Bush & Co. term,  was another patent and obvious farce, deliberate and practical. It had accomplished absolutely nothing more than a promise of $7.4 billion windfall in
Mahmoud Abbas’s lap!

Can we move beyond these choreographed and scripted in Tel Aviv charades and comic farces, for Chrissake?

The world community must force Israel to back off and world public opinion and people of conscience must demand that it does so. The inability of the world community and the United Nations to challenge Israel only frustrates hopes for a stable and peaceful world.

Instead, once again we witness the re-emergence of a system that produces nothing but tension and insecurity in the region. Gaza remains under siege, Palestinians in Gaza remain deprived of basic amenities, provoked and angered, the West Bank is also terrorized, settlements continue being built, Palestinian land keeps being taken, more innocent lives in the territories are being lost, suffering remains unbearable, and hope for the beleaguered people are dashed.  More Sanctions are being imposed on Israel’s
perceived  enemies, crippling their economies further.  Israel does all this without offending anybody!

The Palestinian message on the ground is clear, but no one’s listening. They won’t accept surrender for peace. They want nothing less than freedom and justice in their own unoccupied land. Israel won’t leave them in peace, so the struggle continues.

The United States is not being part of the solution, and appears as a great part of the problem.

I believe the only conclusions to the problem is for Americans to force their Government and Congress to stop supporting Israel diplomatically, militarily and financially.

Israel is no friend.

Also See:
Can Obama escape the dominating influence of AIPAC
Selected Interviews
Guilt by Association: How Deception And Self-Deceit Took America To War!
30/05/09-Dr. Alan Sabrosky and Hesham Tillawi on The Two States Solution.

Debbie Menon

About the author: Debbie Menon is an independent writer based in Dubai. She can be reached at debbiemenon@gmail.com.

Writing in the Guardian, Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, gives his opinion on the Iran nuclear confrontation:

It was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear program, underscoring the president’s conclusion that “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow”.

The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time.

But it wasn’t until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence “scoop” provided by the US, but rather Iran’s own voluntary declaration. Iran’s actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama’s hurried press conference.

Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama’s dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The “rules” Iran is accused of breaking are spelled out in clear terms in an agreement signed by Iran in December 2004. When Obama announced that “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow”, he is technically and legally wrong.

IAEA has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran’s nuclear material stockpile. The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.

Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama’s announcement concerning the Qom facility.

Read more

The U.S. secretary of defense and secretary of state talk tough on Iran’s non-operational facility for uranium low-enrichment near Qum (also spelled “Qom”) that will be open to the appropriate international weapons inspectors.

“The disclosure of a new nuclear enrichment site in Iran places the government ‘in a very bad spot’ and raises the prospect of ’severe additional sanctions,’ Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview broadcast Sunday,” Brian Knowlton at The New York Times reports. Paul Richter at the Chicago Tribune adds that Mr. Gates looks to exploit Iran’s “severe economic distress” with the “unemployment rate for Iran’s young people [at] 40%” and—didn’t display any proof of positive causation, but merely—”asserted that past economic sanctions ‘are having an impact’ ” (my emphasis).

Mr. Richter later remarks: “The threat of Israeli military strikes on Iran”—conditionally supported by Western diplomats—”hangs over the discussion of the nuclear program.”

What’s at issue is the construction of the plant near Qum without notifying the U.N. nuclear watchdogs at the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.) in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.)—the third pillar of which is ‘the right  to peaceful the use of nuclear energy’ from low-enriched uranium, monitored by the I.A.E.A. “Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said Saturday that the [I.A.E.A.] would be invited to visit the site near Qum,” Mr. Knowlton reports. “In Geneva, Iran will be told that to avoid sanctions, it must adhere to an agreement with the international atomic agency that would allow inspectors to go virtually anywhere in the country to follow suspicions of nuclear work, and to abide by agency rules requiring it to announce in advance any plans to build nuclear facilities,” adding that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “emphasized that Iran now faces a considerably heavier burden of proof”.

“Congress can’t have it both ways on taxpayer-funded sanctions and rewards,” Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, wrote June 28. “If gasoline imports indirectly support Iran’s nuclear ambitions, then $2.775 billion in cash for conventional U.S. weapons and military technology clearly allows Israel to focus on development and deployment of its illicit nuclear arsenal.”

“When Neo-Cons say ’sanctions’,” Ludwig von Mises Institute President Lew Rockwell, Jr. comments. “They actually mean impoverishment, sickness, starvation, and death. As an act of war intentionally directed at civilians (including women, children, old people, and non-combatant men), sanctions are war crimes—and those who implement them are war criminals. Those who propagandize for them are accessories to murder.”

Scott Ritter, a U.N. weapons inspector from 1991-98 and vocal critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, wrote at the London Guardian:

In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material….

[W]hen Obama announced that “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow”, he is technically and legally wrong.

There are many ways to interpret Iran’s decision of March 2007, especially in light of today’s revelations. It should be underscored that what the Qom facility Obama is referring to is not a nuclear weapons plant, but simply a nuclear enrichment plant similar to that found at the declared (and inspected) facility in Natanz.

The Qom plant, if current descriptions are accurate, cannot manufacture the basic feed-stock (uranium hexaflouride, or UF6) used in the centrifuge-based enrichment process. It is simply another plant in which the UF6 can be enriched.

Why is this distinction important? Because the I.A.E.A. has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran’s nuclear material stockpile. There has been no diversion of nuclear material to the Qom plant (since it is under construction). The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.

Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama’s announcement concerning the Qom facility….

Calls for “crippling” sanctions on Iran by Obama and Brown are certainly not the most productive policy options available to these two world leaders. Both have indicated a desire to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran’s action, in declaring the existence of the Qom facility, has created a window of opportunity for doing just that, and should be fully exploited within the framework of I.A.E.A. negotiations and inspections, and not more bluster and threats form the leaders of the western world.

Nuclear physicist and former nuclear policy adviser Gordon Prather—a go-to guy of mine on Iranian nuclear geopolitics—wrote this weekend at AntiWar.com:

In particular, Iran’s principal N.P.T. obligation is to not “manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons,” and to conclude a Safeguards Agreement with the [I.A.E.A.], covering certain N.P.T.-proscribed “nuclear materials” in Iran and all activities involving their chemical or physical transformation, “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons.”

As a result of exhaustive on-the-ground inspections and on-site monitoring of Iranian Safeguarded activities, I.A.E.A. Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei continues to “verify” the non-diversion of all Iranian N.P.T.-proscribed materials.

Furthermore, ElBaradei has – pursuant to requests made of him in several of the U.N. Security Council Resolutions cited in [Resolution 1887]—also conducted exhaustive inspections of Iran’s import records, going back several decades, as well as inspections of certain military and commercial sites, alleged to have been somehow connected to an attempt by Iran to “manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons.” As of this writing, ElBaradei has been unable to find any evidence of any such attempt….

Now, surely Obama is not as dumb as Dubya. Surely he realizes what we have been doing to Iran for the past twenty years because it insists on exercising its inalienable rights under the N.P.T. and the I.A.E.A. Statute and the U.N. Charter is not only illegal but immoral.

According to a Newsweek “Web Exclusive” report last week, “U.S. intelligence agencies” have just informed “the White House” that the status of the Iranian alleged program to develop a nuclear bomb has not changed since their formal National Intelligence Estimate of 2007. That N.I.E. stated—with “moderate confidence”—that Iran had made no attempt to resurrect it.

“Officially, both the United States and Israel now agree that Iran is unlikely to be able to produce a bomb until about 2013 or 2014″—were Iran to, first, disallow I.A.E.A. inspections right now—”the same five-year window that was being predicted seventeen years ago in 1992,” Gary Sick, who served on the National Security Staff of the Ford, Carter and Reagan Administrations, wrote at The Daily Beast this week. “The perpetual plea for U.S. foreign policy to ‘do something’ needs to be changed; we would be better served by adopting the physicians creed: ‘First, do no harm.’ “

Mr. Gates stated a preference against militarized reaction. “While you don’t take options off the table, I think there’s still room left for diplomacy,” Mr. Gates said. “There is no military option that does anything more than buy time.”

In a post of mine on July 17—after the Times of London reported that “Western diplomats are offering support for an Israeli strike on Iran”—I wrote about what I called “doublethink diplomacy” regarding Iran:

President Obama campaigned that he would negotiate with Iran and acknowledges Iran’s “legitimate aspirations” toward its civilian nuclear energy program. The leaders of the G-8 released a statement after their summit in Italy last week stating: “We remain committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program… We recognize that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear programme, but that comes with the responsibility to restore confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear activities.”…

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is calling for countries to impose “even stricter sanctions on Iran to try to change the behavior of the regime”. Sanctions would hurt the Iranian people first, in an effort to starve, impoverish the people into overthrowing the regime — a violent act on the people of a foreign nation to change its politics. Never mind that this borders on “international terrorism”….

In March, former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski said that a method the U.S. could employ with Iran is to “design the negotiation to fail, and to make Iran appear to blame. This would be achieved by setting preconditions, threatening with sanctions and force, calling for regime change and labeling the Iranian government as a ‘terrorist entity’”[2] and that timetables for negotiations, as the one stated by the G-8 last week, “create a sense of urgency and pressure which (prevents) serious exploration of the issues.” Mr. Brzezinski implied in an interview this last May that the U.S. was currently employing this method.

As for “designing the negotiations to fail”, the “design” was drawn by the Obama Administration’s top adviser on Iran policy:

The AIPAC-funded Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) co-founder and Mrs. Clinton’s then-special advisor on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia Dennis Ross co-authored a book released June 11, Myths, Illusions, and Peace – Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, with David Makovsky. Mr. Ross and Mr. Makovsky—not only raised the possibility of military action against Iran, but—clearly state in this book that diplomacy by the Obama Administration would be nothing more than a dog-and-pony show to the American people and the international community to make military action “easier to sell”.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly was asked on June 15 whether or not Mrs. Clinton had “full confidence in Dennis Ross to continue in his present role”; to which Mr. Kelly replied, “Absolutely.”

“It’s a very good book, by the way…. It probably was inappropriate, but there it is. It’s out there,” Mr. Kelly added with an awkward grin on his face after continuing to be pressed on the topic. “He is a very close advisor of the Secretary on a number of issues related to Iran and the region. But he also came out of the academic community, and he’s entitled — he was entitled to his opinion. He wrote the book before he came on board here.”

On June 25, Mr. Ross was removed from his post as special advisor to Mrs. Clinton “on a number of issues related to Iran” in the State Department and was promoted to the White House by the anti-war [sic] U.S. president in what the AFP reported as: “a key job overseeing policy in a vast region encompassing the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia.”

The Newspeak from the poli-intellectual class is thick—to say the least. This weekend, constitutional lawyer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald writes in a post titled, “Should Any Iraq Lessons Be Applied to Iran?“:

With people like that at the center of American power—and with recent history demonstrating how literally crazed and bloodthirsty our political establishment is—nothing is more vital than aggressive media scrutiny and skepticism towards war-fueling accusations against our Enemy Du Jour, the latest Hitlers.  But we have the opposite.  Nothing excites them like the smell of aggressive American confrontation with the bad people.  As a result, all of the genuine questions raised by this latest Iran episode are completely obscured, and the most inflammatory and hysteria-generating assertions are assumed to be true and disseminated as such by our “journalists”.

Wrote this back in April 2008, originally just to do it, then for a Composition paper. The only thing I would really add would be that, if anything, the antiwar movement needed to become more radical and shed its ties with Democrats and the nonprofit industrial complex.

For this paper, I will be assessing the book Waging Peace: The Art of War For the Antiwar Movement by Scott Ritter.

Scott Ritter is an ex-marine and former chief U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He has been highly critical of United States foreign policy and states that Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction prior to the invasion in 2003. The CIA, later confirmed this.

Because of his disdain for the Bush administration and opposition to the Iraq war, he has been somewhat popular or noteworthy in the antiwar movement.

Although he says he admires the people within the movement, the way it is structured bothered him enough to write a book proposing an alternative.

Waging Peace is that book. In it, he basically reiterates an earlier essay with the same points. He believes the antiwar movement’s non-hierarchal, often leaderless quality is detrimental to its effectiveness. Imitating the military’s or FEMA’s vast bureaucracy is his solution.

There are a number of problems with this. The first glaring problem and obvious one would be that top down structures do not necessarily mean success. FEMA’s handling of the post-Katrina situation testifies to that.

He seems to fail to understand that many in the antiwar movement will not operate under authoritarian leadership. Indeed, many in the movement have quite anarchistic and libertarian attitudes on top-down control. These people will abandon a militaristic modeled movement.

It is a dangerous thing to imitate your opponent or enemy. How long before you are indistinguishable from them? Personally, becoming a mirror image of the military or government is not a goal of mine.

Ritter’s second biggest suggestion is basically to move to the center of the political spectrum. He advocates citing the constitution as a way of showing our patriotism and appealing to apolitical middle class America.

Never mind that many in the movement hold ideas of direct democracy and outlooks of property completely at odds with the old piece of paper. Forget that many of us reject nationalism and view it as a symptom of war itself. Without even knowing these two characteristics of the movement, one can see that he wants us to become center-left Democrats.

I’m sorry, Scott, center-left Democrats already exist and they supported or were mostly apathetic about the invasion. No need to increase their numbers.

When it comes down to it, it is apparent that Ritter is barely familiar with the many antiwar groups and organizations and he most defiantly does not understand them. He fails to make the connection between top-down leadership, nationalism and war. He neglects to acknowledge the millions of people in the streets pre-invasion or the media’s shameful participation in the buildup of lies and Propaganda.

In summary, his book is borderline useless, unless curiosity gets to you, and you want to briefly explore the mind of some who just doesn’t get it.

	Even with American combat forces ostensibly withdrawn, Baghdad remains one of the most militarized urban areas in the world.

Fireworks lit up the Baghdad sky on the evening of June 30th, signaling the advent of “National Sovereignty Day.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the new holiday to commemorate the withdrawal of American combat troops from the Iraqi capital and all other major urban centers, although thousands of “advisers” would remain in the cities, embedded with Iraqi forces. The celebration transpired inside a city that has been radically transformed over the past six years. Even with American combat forces ostensibly withdrawn, Baghdad remains one of the most militarized urban areas in the world. It wasn’t always so. When I was in Baghdad during the 1990s, I was struck by the lack of an overt military presence for a nation purported to be governed by one of the world’s worst militaristic dictatorships.

Of course, in the city areas housing Saddam Hussein, his family and inner circle, and the seat of government, one would see green-clad soldiers of the Special Republican Guard standing watch over the gates controlling access into and out of these islands of power and privilege. But in the rest of the city—the vast majority of the city—there was no military presence. Traffic police stood on little islands in the middle of busy intersections, keeping the bustle of a modern city moving along at a brisk pace. There were soldiers in uniform around, but they carried no weapons, being on leave from their duties in Iraq’s conscript military. Just like their fellow servicemen in other cities around the world, they would enjoy a day or two walking the streets and markets of Baghdad, taking in the sights and sounds, grabbing a glass of tea, a quick meal and the sight of pretty girls neatly attired in Western-style dress.

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URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/so-this-is-what-victory-looks-like/

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by PETER LEE

As AFP tells us, the Institute for Science and International Security just published a report on Pakistan’s nuclear program that seems designed to pour gasoline on the “the Pakistani nuclear program is outta control” story.

And, when you look at the story, there isn’t a whole lot of there there.

The commercial [satellite] images reveal a major expansion of a chemical plant complex near Dera Ghazi Kahn that produces uranium hexalfuoride and uranium metal, materials used to produce nuclear weapons.

Big whoop, I must say. The Pakistanis love their nuclear weapons, and it’s not surprising—as a sovereign state outside the NPT—they might decide to make some more.

The only conceivable takeaway from this report is muddled alarmism, which ISIS obligingly provides.

Given turmoil in Pakistan with the army waging war against Taliban militants in the northwest, the ISIS said the “security of its nuclear assets remains in question.”

“An expansion in nuclear weapons production capabilities needlessly complicates efforts to improve the security of Pakistan’s nuclear assets,” it said.

I don’t get it. How are things suddenly more complicated by an expansion in capacity?

Washington, apparently believing that it doesn’t have enough on its plate with al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban, is suddenly awash with dramatic plans to add a self-created problem to the mix: a quixotic effort to wrest Pakistan’s nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Army if the situation deteriorates.

And selling that idea seems to require fomenting an irrational panic concerning Pakistan’s nuclear program, as a metastasizing cancerous problem that’s getting BIGGER and BIGGER if we don’t DO SOMETHING.

You know what it smells like to me?

It smells like an effort by some to put a radical U.S. nuclear counterproliferation doctrine on the table now, so when it’s the end of the year and it’s time to deal with that other Muslim country with the destabilizing nuclear capability—you know, the one on the other side of Afghanistan, the one that the Israelis are so upset about—public opinion has been primed to accept the idea that some combination of air strikes, special ops, and insertion of U.S. forces is needed to save the world from an Islamic nuclear program that’s…outta control!

A crisis in Pakistan—and high-profile U.S. handwringing over those dangerous Muslim nukes—might be the best thing that happens to Benjamin Netanyahu this year.

We’ll see.

Anyway, I don’t think we have a Pakistan nukes problem.

We have a reckless and cynical fearmongering problem that should ring alarm bells for anybody who remembers the Iraq war.

In a small way, I think we also have a David Albright problem.

ISIS is run by David Albright.

Scott Ritter delivered a devastating rip job on Albright in Truthdig last year, entitled The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was.

He characterized Albright as a dilettante wannabe nuclear weapons guy, who has self-promoted himself, his honorary doctorate, and his institute using the flimsiest of pretexts.

More importantly, Ritter identifies Albright’s key credential as a willingness to offer up uninformed and tendentious alarmism when the situation demands it.

Ritter’s conclusion sums up his feelings about Albright’s role in the nuclear non-proliferation debate:

Albright, operating under the guise of his creation, ISIS, has a track record of inserting hype and speculation about matters of great sensitivity in a manner which skews the debate toward the worst-case scenario. Over time Albright often moderates his position, but the original sensationalism still remains, serving the purpose of imprinting a negative image in the psyche of public opinion. This must stop. It is high time the mainstream media began dealing with David Albright for what he is (a third-rate reporter and analyst), and what he isn’t (a former U.N. weapons inspector, doctor, nuclear physicist or nuclear expert). It is time for David Albright, the accidental inspector, to exit stage right. Issues pertaining to nuclear weapons and their potential proliferation are simply too serious to be handled by amateurs and dilettantes.

Amen to that.

Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs.

Source: Counterpunch

i’ve been reading the selected writings of eqbal ahmad this week. there are some excellent, insightful essays about palestinian politics and resistance strategies in this volume, which are especially interesting given ahmad’s history–as someone who lived in algeria and tunisia during the algerian revolution that kicked out the french colonists and although he was born in bihar, india his family had to move lahore after the 1947 partition of india and his family was split by the new border. so he has a particularly interesting take on things. but he also has an essay entitled “iran’s landmark revolution: fifteen years later.” the essay was published in 1994 and given the situation in iran right now and all the comparisons i see people making between the current situation in iran and previous events in iranian history i find the essay a useful read. ahmad starts by reminding us that it was “the first fully televised revolution in history” (81). He opens the essay by comparing the french and iranian revolutions in the sense that both marked a new era regionally. he says:

…the Iranian was like the French a unique and perhaps seminal revolution for the postcolonial era as the French had been for the industrial age. The uprising that began in January 1978 and ended successfully on February 11, 1979, was the first major break in the postcolonial world from the revolutionary model of protracted armed struggle experienced in China, Algeria, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Iran’s, by contrast, was a mass insurrection, by far the most popular, broad-based, and sustained agitation in recent history. During a single year–1978–some thirty thousand protestors were killed in Iran while its economic institutions and public services were intermittently shut down. The movement was quite unparalleled for its militant but nonviolent character and for its discipline and morale in the face of governmental violence. As such, it deserves to be studied for its lessons in mass mobilization and agitational politics.

The Iranian Revolution pointed toward a shift in the focus of revolutionary struggle in the so-called Third World from the rural to the urban sector. Until 1978, almost all Third World revolution had been primarily peasant revolutions, centered in rural areas and involving guerrilla warfare. Even in those countries (e.g., Algeria and Cuba) where support of the urban population held great importance in revolutionary strategy, the rural population was from the outset viewed as being central to the revolutionaries’ success.

The Iranian Revolution represented the first significant departure from this pattern. It was predominantly urban in composition and entirely so in its origin and initiation. Its cadres came from the middle, low middle, and working classes. Its following was swelled by the lumpenproletariat, mostly rural migrants driven to the cities by the shah’s “modernization” of agriculture. The capital-intensive commercial farm strategy of economic development which the shah initiated in the 1960s–and which Ms. Bhutto’s “agricultural task force” has now recommended for Pakistan–led to rapid urbanization, cultural dislocation, and grossly augmented and visible inequality. These conditions created the mass base for the uprising, and increasingly they are appearing in other Third World countries, especially in those which are seeking links with the commercial market as uncritically as they once sought to imitate socialism.

Iran yielded a textbook example of the general strike as a primary weapon in revolutionary seizure of power. The strike, which lasted nearly six months in Iran, was one of the longest and by far the most effective in history. The turning point in the struggle against the shah came during September and October 1978, when the oil workers in Abadan and Ahvaz proved the weapon of the general strike to be powerful beyond the dreams of the nineteenth-century Marxists and syndicalists, who had viewed it as the lynchpin of revolutionary strategy. Subsequently, events in South Korea, South Africa, Nicaragua, and Brazil, among others, suggested that what we witnessed in Iran was a trend….

The fall of the shah revealed that, in the Third World, deployment of advanced weapons promotes internal contradictions and subjects the state apparatus to unbearable strains. When confronted by a sustained popular uprising, Iran’s 450,000 strong, superequipped military establishment disintegrated. Significantly, the noncommissioned officers and technicians, whose numbers had swelled since 1972 as a result of large infusions of sophisticated arms, were the first to defect en masse; their defection proved crucial in the disintegration of Iran’s armed forces. The military’s open and mass defections, which began in December 1978, were spearheaded by technicians and cadets of the air force and armoured divisions. They sealed the Pahlavis’ fate.

Herein lies an extraordinary irony. In terms of intensity, scope, and the social forces which were involved in it, the Iranian was by far the most modern and objectively advanced revolution in the Third World. Yet revolutionary power in Iran was seized by a clerical leadership of theocratic outlook, medieval culture, and millenarian style. Most scholars have attributed this remarkable phenomenon to the shah’s repression (only in the mosque one found the freedom of association and speech…) and to Iran’s Shia traditions (of martyrdom and clerical power). (81-84)

the events of 1979 is, of course, one of the flashpoints being used as a point of comparison right now. so is the 1953 american coup which led to the overthrow of mohammed mossadgh, and the installment of the shah as the american puppet in iran, which of course led to the 1979 events that ahmad discusses above. here is chris hedges reminding of the american coup in 1953:

Iranians do not need or want us to teach them about liberty and representative government. They have long embodied this struggle. It is we who need to be taught. It was Washington that orchestrated the 1953 coup to topple Iran’s democratically elected government, the first in the Middle East, and install the compliant shah in power. It was Washington that forced Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a man who cared as much for his country as he did for the rule of law and democracy, to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. We gave to the Iranian people the corrupt regime of the shah and his savage secret police and the primitive clerics that rose out of the swamp of the dictator’s Iran. Iranians know they once had a democracy until we took it away.

in all of the news going on in iran i have been thinking about one of the most insightful statements i read on as’ad abukhalil’s blog early on in relation to a statement barack obama made:

You need to read Obama’s statements on Iran carefully. There is one particular statement in which he said that the US (for historical reasons) can’t “appear to be meddling”. The statement does not say that the US is not meddling, but that it does not want to appear to be meddling. Similarly, the US in 1953 meddled but it did not appear to be meddling.

here is obama’s original quote from the los angeles times by paul richter:

“It’s not productive, given the history of the U.S.-Iranian relationship, to be seen as meddling,” Obama said Tuesday.

the image above is a screenshot i took of the white house website. if you click on the link you can watch a video of obama’s press conference and read a transcript in english, farsi, and arabic. if obama did not want to seem to be meddling last week, this week he is blatantly meddling. what i find most hypocritical about his remarks are on the subject of justice:

The Iranian people can speak for themselves. That’s precisely what’s happened in the last few days. In 2009, no iron fist is strong enough to shut off the world from bearing witness to peaceful protests [sic] of justice. Despite the Iranian government’s efforts to expel journalists and isolate itself, powerful images and poignant words have made their way to us through cell phones and computers, and so we’ve watched what the Iranian people are doing.

This is what we’ve witnessed. We’ve seen the timeless dignity of tens of thousands of Iranians marching in silence. We’ve seen people of all ages risk everything to insist that their votes are counted and that their voices are heard. Above all, we’ve seen courageous women stand up to the brutality and threats, and we’ve experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death on the streets. While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful, we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.

part of what has been unnerving about the situation in iran is the zionist entity’s press over the protests. they seem to be foaming at the mouth over the post-election protests. indeed, the majority of the articles in ha’aretz and ynet have been on iran, which is unusual. there have also been many rumors spread on the internet which are difficult to verify at this point with respect to zionists meddling in iran. in the guardian rory mccarthy, martin chulov, hugh macleod, and ian black report precisely why the zionist entity is up in arms about the protests:

In private, Israeli officials appeared to be hoping for an ­Ahmadinejad victory even before the polls opened, despite his vitriolic ­criticism of Israel, his denial of the ­Holocaust and his apparent eagerness for a nuclear weapons programme.

but there does appear to be evidence of the united states meddling in iran as jeremy scahill reported today:

As violence continues on the streets of Tehran, RebelReports has learned that former US National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft has confirmed that the US government has spies on the ground in Iran. Scowcroft made the assertion in an interview to be broadcast on the Al Jazeera program “Fault Lines.” When asked by journalist Avi Lewis if the US has “intelligence operatives on the ground in Iran,” Scowcroft replied, “Of course we do.”

While it is hardly surprising that the US has its operatives in Iran, it is unusual to see a figure in a position to know state this on the record. New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh and Former Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter both have claimed for years that the US has regularly engaged in covert operations inside of Iran aimed at destabilizing the government. In July 2008, Hersh reported, “the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded.”

In the Al Jazeera interview, Scowcroft defended President Obama’s position on Iran, which has been roundly criticized by Republicans as weak and ineffective with some characterizing Obama as a “de facto ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.”

Scowcroft tells Al Jazeera: “We don’t control Iran. We don’t control the government obviously. There is little we can do to change the situation domestically in Iran right now and I think an attempt to change it is more likely to be turned against us and against the people who are demonstrating for more freedom and, therefore, I think we need to look at what we can do best, which is to try to influence Iranian behavior in the region, and with nuclear weapons.”

the video footage of the interview can be seen here (though it is josh rushing and not avi lewis doing the interview as scahill claimed):

and why exactly might the u.s. be meddling? to what end? here is abukhalil’s “abcs of iranian developments”:

Let me explain the ABC of Iranian developments to you. Rafsanjani (the wealthiest and most corrupt man in Iran) represents reform, and Moussavi (who led one of the most repressive eras in the Iranian revolutionary era and who sponsored Hizbullah in its most horrific phases) represents democracy. Did you get that? Write that down NOW.

but it is not just the meddling that is disturbing. it is also the hypocrisy. obama goes off about people fighting for justice being on the right side of history. the palestinians have been doing this for over 61 years and yet where is obama when it comes to speaking about their rights and justice here? abukhalil’s takes this a step further with some important observations:

The hypocrite in speech is invoking an argument that he himself so blatantly ignores and will continue to ignore to the last day of his presidency. Does he really believe in that right for peoples? Yes, but only in countries where governments are not clients of the US. Will he invoke that argument, say, in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Morocco or Tunisia or Libya or Jordan or Oman, etc? Of course not. This is only an attempt to justify US imperial policies. And even in Iran, the Empire is nervous because it can’t predict the outcome. But make no mistake about it: his earlier statement to the effect that the US can’t for historical reasons “appear to be meddling” sets the difference between the Bush and the Obama administration. The Bush administration meddled blatantly and crudely and visibly, while the Obama administration meddles more discreetly and not-so-visibly. Tens of thousands of pens equipped with cameras have been smuggled into Iran: I only wish that the American regime would dare to smuggle them into Saudi Arabia so that the entire world can watch the ritual of public executions around the country.

my friend matthew cassel also commented on the western media coverage of the protests in iran in electronic intifada today as compared to other parts of the world this week–namely georgia and peru–as well as to palestine to unveil this american hypocrisy:

However, Iran is different than both Georgia and Peru. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has probably overtaken Osama Bin Laden as the most hated individual in the US. Over the past several years, many officials in Washington have called for more aggressive actions to be taken against Iran. More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave US President Barack Obama an ultimatum that the US president better take care of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, or else Israel would. It’s no coincidence then that the protests in Iran are receiving around-the-clock media coverage and are also one of the only examples in recent years where US government officials have showed support for demonstrators like Obama did when he called on Iran to “stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.” They are certainly not the only protests that have been met with violent government repression.

For years, Palestinians have organized weekly nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s wall in the West Bank. Each week protestors face the heavily-armed Israeli military and are beaten and shot at with rubber-coated steel bullets and tear-gas canisters, sometimes fatally. Yet, during his recent speech in Cairo to the Muslim world, Obama made no reference to these protests and instead called on Palestinians to “abandon violence” and adopt nonviolent means. Days after the speech a Palestinian was killed and a teenager wounded during the weekly protest, yet there has been no call by the US administration for Israel to “stop all violent and unjust actions” against the Palestinian people. And the media has followed and remained silent, even though covering the demonstrations would be as easy as a 30-minute drive from most Jerusalem-based news bureaus on any given Friday.

and here is another important moment of hypocrisy that abukhalil pointed out on his blog:

“(Editors’ note: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.)” Did Reuters use that disclaimer when reporting on the Israeli massacres in Gaza?

i do not claim to be an expert on iran. but post-1979 revolution i found my home town of los angeles suddenly populated with iranians. these iranians, many of whom i went to school with and some of whom i was friends with, were decidedly pro-shah. this community gave me a very distorted view of iran growing up. but as i got older and met other iranians in the u.s., and the later around the world, and then began reading more i started to understand more. in the u.s. i hear about media reports on the mainstream news that feature the shah’s family members as abukhalil noted:

The media coverage went from crazy to insane this week. Now, they are–KID YOU NOT–reporting on the reactions of the Shah’s family. Some of them at CNN in fact think that the Iranian people are demonstrating to restore the Shah’s son to power. I heard that the Shah’s widow–taking time from enjoying the wealth of the Iranian people which was embezzled with full American cooperation and complicity–was tearing up on national TV. The plight of the Shah’s family will be similar to that of the descendants of the Iraqi Hashemites after the overthrow of Saddam. The royal dude went back to London when he discovered–against Amerian neo-con assurances–that he has no chance on earth.

aside from this american media distortion machine there are a number of bloggers and scholars speaking about iran from a variety of perspectives. there are some good tweeters out there who are reporting responsibly, but the fact that new media is one of the vehicles for getting information out about iran means that there is all sorts of noise one must filter out. maximillian forte has a great long post on the use of twitter that is worth reading. forte offers some important analysis including on the subject of tweeters from the zionist entity:

It may be wrong to single out Americans here, since there is every likelihood, given the current geopolitical context, that Israeli Twitter users (among the heaviest Twitter users one can find) have a vested interest in manipulating the discussion to serve the ends of the Israeli state, as do many Americans. One thing to do is to try to foment a division between Iran and Hezbollah, thus one posted: “large number of armed forces are lebanese/arab hired to beat down the brave iranians” — completely without substance. Another Twitter user I spoke to chose to quote the Talmud to the Iranian protesters. Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post was immediately “aware” of three “Iranian” bloggers (who post only in English), almost as soon as they joined, claiming without support that their Twitter feeds were from Iran (see here and here).

That the U.S. government has an active interest in the unfolding of the “Twitter revolution” for Iran, is an established fact. The U.S. State Department intervened to ask Twitter to delay a scheduled maintenance break so as to not interrupt tweets about Iran — “Ian Kelly, a state department spokesman, told reporters at a briefing that he had recognized over the weekend the importance of social media ‘as a vital tool for citizens’ empowerment and as a way for people to get their messages out’. He said: ‘It was very clear to me that these kinds of social media played a very important role in democracy – spreading the word about what was going on’” (see “US urges Twitter to delay service break,” by Chris Nuttall and Daniel Dombey, Financial Times, 17 June 2009, and “U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran,” Reuters, 16 June 2009). What the U.S. State Department is also doing, of course, is reinforcing the unproven claim that this is important to Iran, while careful not to specify whose citizens are being empowered, whose word is being spread, and “out” from where. At the same time, the Obama regime claims that it is not meddling in Iranian affairs.

forte also has a really important blog entry on the necessity of sharing accurate sources when using social media that i think is necessary reading for anyone active on the internet in general, not only in relation to iran. blogger mo-ha-med has a different take on the subject of sourcing that is equally important and interesting in the current climate.

scahill has been particularly annoyed by the discourse of the so-called “twitter revolution” that even al jazeera has used. here is his entertaining rant on the subject:

I’m really sick of people in the US talking about the “twitter revolution” in Iran. I especially hate when it’s US liberals who would NEVER get off their asses and away from their computers to protest anything in their own country. They’d never face down tear gas or baton-wielding thugs at home. Some of these liberals (you know who you are) were poo-pooing activists protesting at the Republican and Democratic Conventions and scorn activism in general. This whole commentary about the “twitter revolution” when it comes from these lizards is narcissistic crap.

but even more importantly, i love scahill’s short post on this phenomenon i’ve seen on facebook and twitter with people turning their avatar green to support iran:

Seeing some of these people online turning their profile pictures green “for Iran” makes me want to create a Facebook and Twitter application that turns profile pictures blood red, in solidarity with all of the Afghans and Iraqis and Pakistanis being killed by US wars today; wars that people in the US failed to stop and whose representatives continue to fund to the tune of $100s of billions.

the is the essential thing about bloggers: they point out the points that most journalists cannot or will not point out–the hypocrisies, the context (of course scahill is an exception to the rule). m. monalisa gharavi’s blog south/south has had a number of important observations and posts on post-election iran, including with the help of journalist alireza doostdar, a full breakdown of the iranian elections by the numbers. on the protests gharavi has this to say:

It is becoming clear that the events in Iran are no longer about actual behind-the-scenes political machinations but about manifestations of built-up (and real) public grievance and emotion, a Carnival in the best and most political use of that word. When I use the word ‘Carnival’ I am not talking about the naked, topless women in the Sambodramo, but about the Portuguese verb ‘desabafar’ for the venting of political anger about social and economic grievances that people exercise in sequins and costumes for three days a year. It is an affirmation, not a dismissal, of grievances.

On a personal angle, that the perception of fraud has become much more important than the actual existence of fraud has revealed some major complexities about solidarity. Now as ever I’m with the people of Iran: not only with cousins, friends, and fellow Tehranis facing enormous consequences to their protests and arrests, but also the people who voted for the incumbent, people who cannot butter their bread and face even graver livelihood injustices in other regions of Iran.

How could anyone dismiss the protests, especially in the past few days when there have been deaths? Who is not revolted by riot cops? (The majority of the violence against unarmed protesters–and many of them women, who are leading so many of the protests–are by the armed and plain-clothes Basiji militiamen.) The right of assembly got suspended (and again, the dance: reinstated) many times and in reactive and preventative fashion. I am extremely glad people are openly disobeying permit orders: they should be disobeyed anywhere in the world where they are illegitimate.

But in the U.S. almost every protest large and small requires a permit, and in my own participation at anti-capitalist demos like the World Economic Forum in New York or the FTAA meeting in Miami, military riot gear/tear gas/tanks/undercover officers were unleashed on ‘permitted’ protests to zero accountability. The Republican National Convention in New York in 2004, where I shot video for Steve Stasso’s film Situation Room #2, saw almost 2000 people arrested, beaten, and jailed (the highest number at a political convention to date) with the near-total silence of the favorite ‘non-governmental’ liberal newspaper, the New York Times.

on the monthly review zine website there is another interesting take on the protests by arshin adib-moghaddam which picks up where the ahmad bit i quoted at the beginning of this post left off:

Iran’s civil society is fighting; it is giving blood for a just cause. It is displaying its power, the power of the people. Today, Iran must be considered one of the most vibrant democracies in the world because it is the people who are speaking. The role of the supporters of the status quo has been reduced to reaction, which is why they are lashing out violently at those who question their legitimacy.

In all of this, the current civil unrest in Iran is historic, not only because it has already elicited compromises by the state, but also because it provides yet more evidence of the way societies can empower themselves against all odds. These brave men and women on the streets of Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, and other cities are moved by the same utopia that inspired their fathers and mothers three decades ago: the utopia of justice. They believe that change is possible, that protest is not futile. Confronting the arrogance of the establishment has been one of the main ideological planks of the Islamic revolution in 1979. It is now coming back to haunt those who have invented such slogans without necessarily adhering to them in the first place.

And yet the current situation in Iran is profoundly different from the situation in 1978 and 1979. First, the Islamic Republic has proven to be rather responsive to societal demands and rather flexible ideologically. I don’t mean to argue that the Iranian state is entirely reflective of the will of the people. I am saying that is it is not a totalitarian monolith that is pitted against a politically unified society. The fissures of Iranian politics run through all levers of power in the country, which is why the whole situation appears scattered to us. Whereas in 1979 the bad guy (the Shah) was easily identifiable to all revolutionaries, in today’s Iran such immediate identification is not entirely possible. Who is the villain in the unfolding drama? Ahmadinejad? Those who demonstrated in support of him would beg to differ. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? I would argue that he commands even stronger loyalties within the country and beyond. The Revolutionary Guard or the Basij? Mohsen Rezai, one of the presidential candidates and an opponent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is contesting the election results, used to be the head of the former institution.

The picture becomes even more complicated when we take into consideration that some institutions of the state such as the parliament — via its speaker, Ali Larijani — have called for a thorough investigation of the violence perpetrated by members of the Basij and the police forces in a raid of student dormitories of Tehran University earlier this week. “What does it mean that in the middle of the night students are attacked in their dormitory?” Larijani asked. The fact that he said that “the interior ministry . . . should answer for it” and that he stated that the “parliament is seriously following the issue” indicate that the good-vs-bad verdict in today’s Iran is more blurred than in 1979.

There is a second major difference to 1979. Today, the opposition to Ahmadinejad is fighting the establishment with the establishment. Mir Hossein Mousavi himself was the prime minister of Iran during the first decade of the revolution, during a period when the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was president. Mohammad Khatami, one of the main supporters of Mousavi, was president between 1997 and 2005. Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, another political ally, is the head of the Assembly of Experts and another former president. They are the engineers of the Islamic revolution and would never devour their project. When some commentators say that what we are witnessing is a revolution they are at best naive and at worst following their own destructive agenda. The dispute is about the future path of the Islamic Republic and the meaning of the revolution — not about overthrowing the whole system. It is a game of politics and the people who are putting their lives at risk seem to be aware of that. They are aware, in other words, that they are the most important force in the hands of those who want to gain or retain power.

Thus far the Iranian establishment has shown itself to be cunningly adaptable to crisis situations. Those who have staged a revolution know how to sustain themselves. And this is exactly what is happening in Iran. The state is rescuing its political power through a mixture of incentives and pressure, compromise and detention, due process and systematic violence. Moreover, when push comes to shove, the oppositional leaders around Mousavi would never question the system they have built up. As Mousavi himself said in his fifth and most recent letter to the Iranian people: “We are not against our sacred regime and its legal structures; this structure guards our independence, freedom, and Islamic Republic.”

and an iranian reader of abukhalil’s blog had this to say about the reactions to the elections early on, which is also revealing on a number of levels:

Alexander sent me this (I cite with his permission): “As an Iranian and avid reader of your blog, I wanted to share my thoughts on your “Iranian developments” post with you. First of all, your point about Western coverage of Iranian democracy vis-a-vis other countries in the region is spot-on. I think you are right to criticize the impact of Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric on Palestine, and I would like to explain a little about that. In the past, Palestinian liberation was a cause championed by the Iranian secular left, but nowadays it is strongly associated with the religious right. This is not due only to Ahmadinejad (every Iranian leader since Khomeini has expressed the idea that Palestine is a “Muslim issue” that Iranians should be concerned about) but it has gotten worse under Ahmadinejad. It’s not just the statements he makes in international settings, but more importantly the way the issue is used domestically in order to distract people from their own issues. People are told not to protest economic stagnation, repressive government, etc. because they shouldn’t complain when Palestinians have it so much worse. “Pray for Gaza” is shoved down their throats in the same breath as “fix your hijab.” In addition, many people resent the fact that the Iranian state spends so much money on Palestinian and Lebanese affairs when there is such poverty and underdevelopment at home. Incidentally, one of the popular (and hyperbolic) chants at the protests that are going on right now is “mardom chera neshastin, Iran shode Felestin!” (People, why are you sitting down? Iran has become Palestine!”).

Finally, I am glad that you are defending neither Ahmadinejad nor Mousavi. It is frustrating that everyone I talk to from Pakistan to Egypt loves Ahmadinejad and is shocked to hear that many Iranians think he is ineffective and embarrassing. Meanwhile every Westerner seems to think that Mousavi is a great reformist or revolutionary, and some kind of saintly figure beloved by all. He’s an opportunist crook. That being said, I support the students and protesters in Iran, even the ones chanting Mousavi’s name. I believe they are putting their lives on the line to fight for greater freedom, accountability, and democracy within the Islamic Republic, and they have to couch that in the language of Islam and presidential politics in order to avoid even greater repression than that which they already face. A friend who is in Iran right now confirms: “half the kids throwing rocks at the police didn’t even vote.” To me, that means that they are not fighting for a Mousavi presidency, but for more freedom, which they must hide under a green Mousavi banner in order to have legitimacy in the eyes of the state.”

on democracy now! today amy goodman spoke with professor hamid dabashi about his take on the situation in iran, which he frames in a civil rights context:

It’s based on my reading of what I believe is happening in Iran. This, in my judgment, is a post-ideological generation. My generation was divided into third world socialists, anti-colonial nationalists and militant Islamists. These are the three dominant ideologies with which we grew up. But if you look at the composition of Iranian society today, 70 percent of it is under the age of thirty—namely, born after the Islamic Revolution. They no longer are divided along those ideological lines.

And if you read their newspapers, if you watch their movies, if you listen to the lyrics of their underground music, to their contemporary arts, etc., which we have been doing over the past thirty years, this, to me, is a civil rights movement. They are operating within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. They don’t want to topple the regime. If you look—come outside, from the right of the right, in the US Senate to the left, is waiting for yet another revolution to happen. I don’t think this is another revolution. This is a civil rights movement. They’re demanding their civil rights that are being denied, even within the Constitution of the Islamic Republic. From their chants that they are doing in the streets to their newspapers, to their magazines, to their websites, to their Facebook, to their Twitters, everywhere that you look, this is a demand for civil liberties and not—

There are, of course, underlying economic factors, statistically. The unemployment in the age cohort of fifteen to twenty-nine is 70 percent. So this is not a class warfare. In other words, people that we see in the streets, 70 percent of them, that a majority of them are young—70 percent of them do not even have a job. They can’t even rent a room, let alone marry, let alone have a family. So the assumption that this is a upper-middle-class or middle-class, bourgeois, Gucci revolutionaries on the side of Mousavi and poor on the side of Ahmadinejad is completely false.

finally one of the most brilliant posts i’ve seen online over the last week or so comes from mo-ha-med’s blog in which he responds directly to meddlers who become “experts” overnight and begin to write about iran entitled “to you, the new iran expert”:

Yes, you.

Who, until this morning, thought that ‘Shiraz’ was just the name of a wine

Who’s beaming with pride you can now write ‘Ahmadinejad’ without copy-and-pasting it from a news website

Who only heard of Evin prison when Roxana Saberi was there (Roxana who?)

Who changed your Facebook profile picture to a green rectangle saying “Where’s my vote?” even though you don’t actually vote in Iran

Who actually thinks that Mir-Hossein Mousavi is a secular
And that his election means that Iran will give up its nuclear claims
And allow you to visit Tehran for Christmas

Who joyfully makes Azadi/Tiananmen square comparisons
Who first heard of Azadi square last Sunday

Who’s quick to link to articles you haven’t read, debunking other articles you’ve barely heard of

Who has just discovered that Iran has a (quasi-)democracy, and elections, and the like

Who blinked in disbelief at the images of women – oh, they have women! and they’re not in burkas! – demonstrating

Who has never heard of Rezai or Karroubi before (hint: they ran for election in a Middle-Eastern country last Friday)

Who staunchly believes that the elections have been stolen – either by ballot box stuffing, (14 million of them!) or by burning some ballots, or both (somehow?), regardless of the absence of any proof (yet)

… But who nevertheless

Has been tweeting, and re-tweeting, and polluting cyberspace with what is essentially hearsay, rumours, and unconfirmed truncated reports or falsification coming from people who actually know about the realities of Iran’s political world and have an agenda:

You know nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing about what happened, or is happening across Iran at the very moment. Most of us don’t, actually. What we see is a tiny slice of reality, mind you, what is happening on the main squares in the big cities, under camera lenses.

I hear your objection though:

Yes, you are entitled to an opinion, to formulating it, to blog it, and to discuss it. I do that too. (this my blog after all).

But do everyone, and you first and foremost, a favour.
Learn from the people who know a thing or two about the issue at hand.
Be selective about you read, listen to, and watch. A simple way is to follow an Iranian friend’s updates and the links they put up.

(Even the State Dept is reading tweets from Iranians.)

Ask questions more than you volunteer answers.

And when you get a tweet that says UNCONF or ‘can anyone confirm?’, for Pete’s sake, that says “This is potentially bullshit”. Don’t spread nonsense. Don’t spread unconfirmed or unsourced information.

And rather that getting all excited following live some current events taking place in a country you probably cannot place on a map, read analysis of what it means, what the candidates actually stand for, and what the result will mean for the Iranians and the world.

Then, I would be delighted, truly, to read what you have to say.
Until then, please, pretty please – SHUT UP.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

As for what I think? I don’t know. I think the results could be fake – and they also could be real. We probably will never know.

And I don’t think we’re watching a Ukraine ‘04 redux or a ‘Green revolution’.
And I think that the people on the street will tire of getting beaten up by a government that is currently revoking foreign media licenses and will forfeit. We’re – well, Iran is – likely stuck with Ahmadinejad for four more years.

And while the troubles on the street are unlikely to lead to a change of government, they’d have had the benefit of showing the Iranian people in a new light – they’re normal people, only with more courage than most of us have.

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1st President:   George Washington

3rd President:  Thomas Jefferson

16th President:  Abraham Lincoln

40th President:  Ronald W. Regan

43rd President:  George W. Bush

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Biggest Cowards in U.S. History

Benedict Arnold

Joseph McCarthy

Aldrich Ames

Robert Hanssen

Jon Stewart from the Daily Show

The Editorial Board of the New York Times

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If The Bush Administration Lied About WMD, So Did These People — Version 3.0

by John Hawkins

http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/demsonwmds.php

Since we haven’t found WMD in Iraq, a lot of the anti-war/anti-Bush crowd is saying that the Bush administration lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Well, if they’re going to claim that the Bush administration lied, then there sure are a lot of other people, including quite a few prominent Democrats, who have told the same “lies” since the inspectors pulled out of Iraq in 1998. Here are just a few examples that prove that the Bush administration didn’t lie about weapons of mass destruction…

“[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” — From a letter signed by Joe Lieberman, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara A. Milulski, Tom Daschle, & John Kerry among others on October 9, 1998

“This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer- range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.” — From a December 6, 2001 letter signed by Bob Graham, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford, & Tom Lantos among others

“Whereas Iraq has consistently breached its cease-fire agreement between Iraq and the United States, entered into on March 3, 1991, by failing to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program, and refusing to permit monitoring and verification by United Nations inspections; Whereas Iraq has developed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological capabilities, and has made positive progress toward developing nuclear weapons capabilities” — From a joint resolution submitted by Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter on July 18, 2002

“Saddam’s goal … is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed.” — Madeline Albright, 1998

“(Saddam) will rebuild his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and some day, some way, I am certain he will use that arsenal again, as he has 10 times since 1983″ — National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Feb 18, 1998

“Iraq made commitments after the Gulf War to completely dismantle all weapons of mass destruction, and unfortunately, Iraq has not lived up to its agreement.” — Barbara Boxer, November 8, 2002

“The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability.” — Robert Byrd, October 2002

“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat… Yes, he has chemical and biological weapons. He’s had those for a long time. But the United States right now is on a very much different defensive posture than we were before September 11th of 2001… He is, as far as we know, actively pursuing nuclear capabilities, though he doesn’t have nuclear warheads yet. If he were to acquire nuclear weapons, I think our friends in the region would face greatly increased risks as would we.” — Wesley Clark on September 26, 2002

“What is at stake is how to answer the potential threat Iraq represents with the risk of proliferation of WMD. Baghdad’s regime did use such weapons in the past. Today, a number of evidences may lead to think that, over the past four years, in the absence of international inspectors, this country has continued armament programs.” — Jacques Chirac, October 16, 2002

“The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” — Bill Clinton in 1998

“In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.” — Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

“I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons…I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out.” — Clinton’s Secretary of Defense William Cohen in April of 2003

“Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.” — Tom Daschle in 1998

“Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.” — John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

“The debate over Iraq is not about politics. It is about national security. It should be clear that our national security requires Congress to send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” — John Edwards, Oct 10, 2002

“I share the administration’s goals in dealing with Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction.” — Dick Gephardt in September of 2002

“Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” — Al Gore, 2002

“We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.” — Bob Graham, December 2002

“Saddam Hussein is not the only deranged dictator who is willing to deprive his people in order to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” — Jim Jeffords, October 8, 2002

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” — Ted Kennedy, September 27, 2002

“There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.” — Ted Kennedy, Sept 27, 2002

“I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force – if necessary – to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” — John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

“The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation.” — John Kerry, October 9, 2002

“(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. …And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War.” — John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003

“We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.” — Carl Levin, Sept 19, 2002

“Every day Saddam remains in power with chemical weapons, biological weapons, and the development of nuclear weapons is a day of danger for the United States.” — Joe Lieberman, August, 2002

“Over the years, Iraq has worked to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. During 1991 – 1994, despite Iraq’s denials, U.N. inspectors discovered and dismantled a large network of nuclear facilities that Iraq was using to develop nuclear weapons. Various reports indicate that Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability. There is no reason to think otherwise. Beyond nuclear weapons, Iraq has actively pursued biological and chemical weapons.U.N. inspectors have said that Iraq’s claims about biological weapons is neither credible nor verifiable. In 1986, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, and later, against its own Kurdish population. While weapons inspections have been successful in the past, there have been no inspections since the end of 1998. There can be no doubt that Iraq has continued to pursue its goal of obtaining weapons of mass destruction.” — Patty Murray, October 9, 2002

“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.” — Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

“Even today, Iraq is not nearly disarmed. Based on highly credible intelligence, UNSCOM [the U.N. weapons inspectors] suspects that Iraq still has biological agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, and clostridium perfringens in sufficient quantity to fill several dozen bombs and ballistic missile warheads, as well as the means to continue manufacturing these deadly agents. Iraq probably retains several tons of the highly toxic VX substance, as well as sarin nerve gas and mustard gas. This agent is stored in artillery shells, bombs, and ballistic missile warheads. And Iraq retains significant dual-use industrial infrastructure that can be used to rapidly reconstitute large-scale chemical weapons production.” — Ex-Un Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter in 1998

“There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources — something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.” — John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

“Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.” — John Rockefeller, Oct 10, 2002

“Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Administration’s policy towards Iraq, I don’t think there can be any question about Saddam’s conduct. He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do. He lies and cheats; he snubs the mandate and authority of international weapons inspectors; and he games the system to keep buying time against enforcement of the just and legitimate demands of the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States and our allies. Those are simply the facts.” — Henry Waxman, Oct 10, 2002

Commonly Ignored Observations on the Iraq war

(Wikipedia) In 2001 Saddam stated that “we are not at all seeking to build up weapons or look for the most harmful weapons . . . however, we will never hesitate to possess the weapons to defend Iraq and the Arab nation”

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(Wikipedia) Iraqi co-operation with UN weapons inspection teams was intermittent throughout the 1990s. It now appears more likely that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with, than that Iraq was hiding significant stockpiles of prohibited materials.[citation needed]

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(CBS)  Feb. 24, 2003 Dan Rather Interview:

“In his first interview with an American journalist in a decade, Hussein talked for more than three hours about the looming war and his efforts to head it off. Saddam indicated he will not destroy — as ordered by the U.N. — his arsenal of controversial al Samoud missiles.”

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(Foreign Affairs) May/June 2006

Saddam’s Delusions: The View From the Inside

Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray

Summary –

A special, double-length article from the upcoming May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, presenting key excerpts from the recently declassified book-length report of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.

Kevin Woods is a defense analyst in Washington, D.C. James Lacey is a military analyst for the U.S. Joint Forces Command. Williamson Murray is Class of 1957 Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. Along with Mark Stout and Michael Pease, they were the principal participants in the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The fall of Baghdad in April 2003 opened one of the most secretive and brutal governments in history to outside scrutiny. For the first time since the end of World War II, American analysts did not have to guess what had happened on the other side of a conflict but could actually read the defeated enemy’s documents and interrogate its leading figures. To make the most of this unique opportunity, the U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) commissioned a comprehensive study of the inner workings and behavior of Saddam Hussein’s regime based on previously inaccessible primary sources. Drawing on interviews with dozens of captured senior Iraqi military and political leaders and hundreds of thousands of official Iraqi documents (hundreds of them fully translated), this two-year project has changed our understanding of the war from the ground up. The study was partially declassified in late February; its key findings are presented here.

New on March 24, 2006: Today the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) released the 230-page report of the Iraq Perspective Project (IPP) on which “Saddam’s Delusions” is based. Essay authors Woods, Lacey, and Williamson were the principal authors of the IPP report. You may download the full IPP report from the Foreign Affairs Website as an Adobe Acrobat file (.pdf, 7.2 MB).

STRATEGIC CALCULUS

Throughout the years of relative external peace for Iraq after Operation Desert Storm, in 1991, Saddam Hussein continued to receive and give credence to optimistic assessments of his regime’s prospects dished up by his top military officers. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz described the dictator as having been “very confident” that the United States would not dare to attack Iraq, and that if it did, it would be defeated. What was the source of Saddam’s confidence?

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The National Security Archive

The George Washington University

Subsequent to George W. Bush’s assumption of the presidency in January 2001, the U.S. made it clear that it would not accept what had become the status quo with respect to Iraq – a country ruled by Saddam Hussein and free to attempt to reconstitute its assorted weapons of mass destruction programs. As part of their campaign against the status quo, which included the clear threat of the eventual use of military force against the Iraqi regime, the U.S. and Britain published documents and provided briefings detailing their conclusions concerning Iraq’s WMD programs and its attempts to deceive other nations about those programs.

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Remembering the Causes of the Iraq War

http://thismodernage.wordpress.com/category/iraq-war/

President Bill Clinton December 16, 1998:

Saddam has used WMDs against Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the Kurds

“The international community has little doubt then that left unchecked Saddam Hussein will use these weapons again.”

General Wesley Clark Sept. 26, 2002:

“[Saddam Hussein] retains chemical and biological warfare capabilities and is actively pursuing nuclear capabilities…  Saddam has been actively pursuing nuclear weapons for over twenty years.”

David Kay rightly admits that somehow we made some decisions based on bad intelligence.  But it was Saddam Hussein who put forth a great effort to make our bad intelligence on WMDs look good.  UNSCOM was blocked from inspecting sites that they wanted access to in Iraq.  Iraqi escorts forbid UNSCOM from taking any photographs during inspections.  Various Iraqi personnel were not allowed to answer UNSCOM’s questions.  And worst yet, UNSCOM inspectors would be forced to wait outside of building, sometimes for up to twenty-four hours, while trucks would leave filled with who-knows-what.  When they would finally be allowed in the buildings would be empty; no furniture or documents.  Obviously weapons inspectors were never intended to find any evidence of WMDs.  Most of this information is from the testimony of Charles Duelfer, the former vice-chair of UNSCOM.  David Kay filled in this odd gap of “We can’t find weapons” – “Saddam doesn’t seem to have any, yet he acted like he did.”  God Bless him, Saddam thought he had WMDs.  He was paying big money for materials and scientists and he was getting robbed blind.  This means he had every intention of developing these weapons but only through his own dumb fault it didn’t work out.  That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard happen to a tyrant since the seventy straight years of “bad weather” that prevented the Soviet Union from growing any food and being the workers’ paradise it should have been.  Meanwhile, during his testimony Kay made an observation that should have caught everyone’s attention.  Kay believes, “this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought.  [When] we have the complete record, you’re going to discover that after 1998 it became a regime that was totally corrupt.  Individuals were out for their own protection.  And in a world where we know others are seeking WMD, the likelihood… of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated…  We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq.  And we now know that there was little control over Iraq’s weapons capabilities. … Iraq was a very dangerous place.”

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Site document terrorist activities of Saddam Hussein

http://regimeofterror.com/

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Miscellaneous:

According to liberal lion, Ted Kennedy in an interview on October 6, 2002…….”Saddam Hussein is a dangerous figure. He’s got dangerous weapons”

The liberal Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd stated around the same time” The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked upon on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities”

During the democratic Clinton administration liberal leader, Nancy Pelosi said ” Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of WMD technology which is a threat to countries in the region and has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process”.

On December 16, 1998 high liberal lord Al Gore said, “If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons”.

President Bill Clinton said on February 4, 1998, “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line”

Before his campaign for the presidency of the United States was official, the last liberal standard bearer of today’s liberal Democrat party, John Kerry said, ” Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime…..He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction….So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real”

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A message from AntiWar.com: Act now to keep the voice of peace alive.

When Antiwar Radio started in 2007, we didn’t know what to expect. Sure, we had veteran radio personality Scott Horton at the helm, but would big-shot reporters, pundits, academics, and government officials make time for an upstart Internet radio program?

They certainly have. Rep. Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, John Cusack, Juan Cole, Frida Berrigan, Chris Floyd, Lew Rockwell, Patrick Cockburn, Andrew Bacevich, Russell Means, Scott Ritter, Philip Weiss, Lawrence Wilkerson, James Bamford, Sibel Edmonds, Robert Pape, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kathy Kelly… the hits keep coming.

Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback trilogy, says that

“Antiwar Radio has been one of the few media in which power considerations and domestic U.S. politics have not had their pull on the programming and the commentator. … Scott Horton has established a very high standard for truly original points of view on American foreign policy and critical analysis of the failures of the American establishment.”

Journalist James Bovard calls Horton “one of the best-read, hardest-hitting hosts in the biz.” As the Austin Chronicle put it when giving us their award for “Best Iraq War Insight and Play-by-Play“:

“Antiwar Radio offers high-caliber commentary and guest interviews on the ongoing Mideast misadventure. Host Scott Horton, armed to the teeth with little-reported news and info, jettisons the pleasantries and PC radio lingo and tells listeners how it really is. As an added bonus, Horton often verbally lays waste to those seeking to prolong the billion-dollar bloodbath.”

But for all its acclaim and promise, Antiwar Radio could end. If we can’t pay the bills, then we’ll have to start downsizing our already overworked staff.

We can’t make it another quarter without your help, and we believe we’ve earned it. Are you willing to give up Antiwar Radio — and perhaps even more? If not, then don’t delay.

Charles Freeman

The neocons have struck again, and this time it’s Ambassador Charles “Chas” Freeman for not passing the Israel loyalty test.  His fault? Having a balanced view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.  Of course, in this skewed reality, in neocon eyes, having a balanced view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is considered a clear sign of “anti-semitism.”  As such, they were out in full force, firing from the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and other pro-Israel foxholes to back door lobbying of Congress to stop his appointment even though no Congressional approval was required for the position.  The US government lost someone with a life-time of experience dedicated to the US government and knowledge of what is most important to Muslims worldwide.  This experience and knowledge would have been a unique asset for the country were he allowed to head the National Intelligence Council.

Who is Amb. Charles Freeman?
Freeman had joined the US Foreign Service in 1965 and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.  He as was the principal American interpretor for Nixon on his visit to China in 1972.  He is also fluent in French, Spanish and conversational Arabic.  He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981 and served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d’Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984).  He was also the ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992 during the first George Bush’s term in office.

His loss is America’s loss,  and Americans are less secure because of it.  Freeman is not the first to be taken out by the Israel-first crowd, but the latest in a long string of dedicated people who stood against the neocon agenda and put America’s interest first.

The following are just a few professionals who’s objective analysis of issues failed the neocon Israel-first test and became a road-block to making their Clean Break.

Scott Ritter

Scott Ritter

After having served for 12 years as a U.S. Marine, Ritter headed the UN weapons inspection team charged with disarming Iraq after the first Gulf War.  He was in charge of the UNSCOM team for disarming Iraq’s biological, chemical and nuclear weapons program from 1991 until 1998 when Saddam kicked out the inspectors because of CIA espionage of Iraqi communications outside of the program’s mandate.

But, in the lead up to the war, Ritter was extremely vocal against the charges the neocons and the Bush administration were making against Iraq.  He had first-hand knowledge of Iraq’s capabilities, knew them to be untrue and voiced strong opposition to going to war at the time.

His reward for warning the country from marching into disaster?  A neocon smear campaign that Ritter was on Saddam’s payroll and portrayed him as misguided, disloyal, or a traitor.

General Eric Shinseki

General Shinseki made the unfortunate mistake of actually giving a truthful answer regarding the military commitment needed for the Iraq invasion.  This however contradicted with the neocon drive to sell this war to the American people.  His assessment ran against the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith-Bolton rosy story that the invasion would be a “cakewalk” and that we would be “greeted as liberators”.  Gen. Shinseki, like Ritter, was right.  While Ritter argued against the basic reasons for going to war, Gen. Shinseki argued against the fundamental battleground tactics of that illegal war.  Had we listened to him, it may have avoided the development of an insurgency and prevented Al Qaeda from finding an opening into Iraq, a place they did not have any presence or influence before the war.

What was Gen. Shinseki’s reward for sounding the alarm of a doomed strategy?  He was roundly mocked by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz during subsequent press conferences.  Other neocon minions did their part in the morning news talk shows and in the op-ed pages of newspapers to discredit him.  Shinseki was locked out from decision process for the war and was subsequently forced to retire from the service.  Shinseki’s grounded and object view simply did not fit into the “plan” as detailed in the neocon manifesto titled “The Clean Break”.  Shinseki’s views were problematic in removing Saddam, one of the central objectives of this plan for the Israeli government.  As such, he had to go.

Video of his testimony before Congress and reaction by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz is viewable here and here.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame

Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame

Once the war had started, it quickly became clear to the general public that a lot of the reasons for going to war were quickly unraveling.  One of those was the argument that Saddam had been seeking to import “yellow cake uranium”.  When Ambassaor Joseph Wilson went to investigate the charges, he discovered that the documents were forged, signed by “officials” who were not in office at the time the documents were dated along with many other discrepancies.  Basically there was no basis for the charges.  He informed the country about this in an op-ed piece to show that the main reason for going to Iraq, the idea that the “smoking cloud could come in the form of a mushroom cloud” were utter lies.

Ambassador Wilson had stepped on a raw nerve with this one.  The neocons were furious as this revelation posed a serious threat to their credibility and their ultimate objective.  Wilson had to be stopped and punished.  But since they could not attack him directly, Cheney, Libby and others decided to go after his wife, Valerie Plame.  The neocon cabal leaked information to the media that Plame was behind his mission to Niger.  The case was made that she had something against the Bush administration, and that she had used her position as a CIA agent in the WMD division to send her husband on the mission to discredit the Administration.

Valerie Plame, was of course a deep undercover CIA agent, working to uncover trading in the nuclear black market.  The company she was listed under as an employee was a covert operation to identify nuclear traffickers and had helped in bringing down the Pakistani A.Q. Khan’s network.  Her efforts were essential in making sure countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea were not secretly getting help in developing a nuclear weapons program.

What this means is that the neocons were willing to sacrifice a program of this magnitude to stop one man from effecting their agenda.  The neocons were willing to blow the cover of a secret program to monitor WMD traffic, the very reason we invaded Iraq, for their political needs.  They not only destroyed Plame’s career in the CIA, but jeopardized all her contacts worldwide in the process.  These were people she may have cultivated to provide information or infiltrate the smuggling rings.  Anyone who came in contact with Amb. Wilson and Ms. Plame were under severe danger and the neocons were willing to do this to send a warning to anyone else who had dedicated their lives in serving the U.S. whether in the military, civil service or elected office from speaking out against their plans.  They were willing to weaken this country’s safety in order to achieve their goals for Israel.

President Jimmy Carter

President Carter

While Scott Ritter argued against the reasons for going to war, Gen. Shinseki argued against how to conduct that war, and Amb. Wilson tried to unmask the neocons after the disaster had occurred, President Carter exposed the moral dilemma that exists at the heart of the neocon plan.  It is basically that while they talk of bring “peace and democracy” everywhere else in the Middle East, usually at the point of a gun, their real goal is to create a level of internal disorganization, chaos and disorder among their neighbors such that there are no countries in the region that are capable of responding to what is about to happen to the Palestinian people in the coming years.

President Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, focused the world attention on the issue that while Israel was talking of peace, the reality on the ground was working in the exact opposite.  Carter’s book highlights the fact that instead of seeking peace, the current Israeli course, the one championed by the neocons in think tanks, op-ed pages, and the halls of government, was one that strangles the hopes of a Palestinian state and at the same time denies them equal rights within the Israeli government.  It is one that relegates the Palestinians into an apartheid state like the bantustans in apartheid South Africa.  This is basically the results of the ever increasing settlements in the West Bank with it’s accompanying security force, separation wall, and segregated roads.  At the same time, Gaza is basically an open air prison where even the most basic food items such as sugar are blockaded from entering the area.  Gaza has also become the bunching bag for the IDF after the bruising they received in the 2006 Lebanon invasion.

Because of this book, the neocons launched a barrage of attacks against Carter.  Our old friend Alan Dershowitz and Clinton era “peace envoy” Dennis Ross spearheaded the charges against Carter while the Israel-first crowd now views Carter as having  no credibility on the Israel-Palestine issue despite the fact that Carter was the only one to have brokered a peace treaty between Israel and one of its hostile neighbors which had lasted for almost 30 years.

These are just some of the most prominent examples but the attitude is pervasive in that whatever is good for Israel must be good for the US.  That attitude reached it pinnacle in Freeman’s case, where a man who had dedicated his life for the best of America was taken-out by a man who worked against the US for the best interest of Israel.

Friends or Enemies?

Steven J. Rosen

When it came to Freeman, the man who lead the charge against him is one who is currently indicted for spying passing on classified information to the Israeli government.  Steven Rosen was one of two contact persons for Larry Franklin, who was working under Douglas Feith and a member of the Office of Special Plans that stove-piped cherry picked raw intelligence to support the case against Saddam.  Larry Franklin was convicted of passing top secret information to AIPAC officials to pass on to the Israeli government which included information on Iran, Lebanon, and Palestinians.  Steven Rosen, then the second highest official at AIPAC was part of a sophisticated espionage program run by the Israeli government to spy on US government institutions.  These operations, while beneficial for Israel, weakened our capabilities in controlling how and when we act with other states in the Middle East.  Israel basically had an early warning system on top secret policy decisions vis a vis Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian issue and could influence conditions which would benefit Israel’s security but may or may not be beneficial for US influence in the region.  Steven Rosen and AIPAC were at the center of this operation to weaken US position while strengthening Israel’s.  Given these facts, it is especially ironic that Congressional members such as Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and other members from both parties would be in lock-step with an Israeli spy and against a career diplomat dedicated to American interests first.

The lesson for all these, the neocons consider facts to be their enemy.  It was the case with Scott Ritter, Gen. Shinseki, Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame, and President Carter.  And, it also became a problem with Charles Freeman.  Unfortunately, our officials are too scared of the Israel-first lobby or too embedded with the neocon ideology to act in what is in America’s best interest.

A few other articles on the subject:

BBC

Huffinton Post

The Daily Dish

Salon.com

Genuine? Hard to say, but I really hope so.

Scott Ritter has given some great lecturers about what it means to be a USan patriot too. Sadly a lot of ‘Ritter videos’ and audio {Scott at RCSI in Dublin Ireland, was excellent} are no longer there and some remaining have been sliced.

Here’s a few:

Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern on the Occupation of Iraq.mpg

The Struggle “Scott Ritter on Iran”

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As a further comment on this fallacy (described below), the Weekly Standard helpfully provides a classic example this morning.

As a mouthpiece for the the Republican Party and the neoconservative community, this publication, though sophisticated and representing the upper end of rightwing media intellectual activity, pretty commonly utilizes logical fallacies to forward particular political narratives.  They do so this morning as part of their attack on Chaz Freeman and on those who are now speaking out in support of him, one of whom is Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector.  There’s more than one ad hominem in this piece but we’ll look at the biggy.

Again, the function of an ad hominem (“against the person”) is to attempt to discount the truth or reasonableness of the claim or argument being made by making a personal attack on the person making the argument or claim.  Obviously, the suggestion being advanced in this piece above is that we ought to ignore anything and everything this person says, quite regardless of relevant matters such as knowledge, experiencce, familiarity etc because he was alleged to have committed a sexual crime.

People who use logical fallacies in this manner are properly understood as either fools or as propagandists.  The first category is merely a bit stupid.  The second category wishes to make you that way.

To read the full piece (and more from this publication on the Freeman appointment, go here

By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet. Posted January 30, 2009.

Most of Obama’s key foreign policy appointments seem more committed to military dominance than international law.

In disc golf, there’s a shot known as “an Obama” — it’s a drive that you expect to veer to the left but keeps hooking right.

In no other area has this metaphor been truer than Barack Obama’s foreign policy and national security appointments. For a man who was elected in part on the promise to not just end the war in Iraq but to “end the mindset that got us into war in the first place,” it’s profoundly disappointing that a majority of his key appointments — Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Dennis Blair, Janet Napolitano, Richard Holbrooke and Jim Jones, among others — have been among those who represent that very mindset.

As president, Obama is ultimately the one in charge, so judgment should not be based upon his appointments alone. Indeed, some of his early decisions regarding foreign policy and national security – such as ordering the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, initiating the necessary steps for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, and ending the “global gag rule” on funding for international family-planning programs – have been quite positive.

But it’s still significant that the majority of people appointed to key foreign policy positions, like those in comparable positions in the Bush administration, appear to be more committed to U.S. hegemony than the right of self-determination, human rights and international law.

Supporters of Wars of Conquest

Though far from the only issue of concern, it is the fact that the majority of Obama’s appointees to these key positions were supporters of the invasion of Iraq that is perhaps the most alarming.

Obama’s defenders claim that what is most important in these appointments is not their positions on a particular issue, but their overall competence. Unfortunately, this argument ignores the reality that anybody who actually believed that invading Iraq was a good idea amply demonstrated that they’re unqualified to hold any post dealing with foreign and military policy.

It was not simply a matter of misjudgment. Those who supported the war demonstrated a dismissive attitude toward fundamental principles of international law, and disdain for the United Nations Charter and international treaties which prohibit aggressive war. They demonstrated a willingness to either fabricate a non-existent threat or naively believe transparently false and manipulated intelligence claiming such a threat existed, ignoring a plethora of evidence from weapons inspectors and independent arms control analysts who said that Iraq had already achieved at least qualitative disarmament. Perhaps worst of all, they demonstrated an incredible level of hubris and stupidity in imagining that the United States could get away with an indefinite occupation of a heavily populated Arab country with a strong history of nationalism and resistance to foreign domination.

Nor does it appear that they were simply fooled by the Bush administration’s manufactured claims of an Iraqi threat. For example, Napolitano, after acknowledging that there were not really WMDs in Iraq as she had claimed prior to the invasion, argued that “In my view, there were lots of reasons for taking out Saddam Hussein.” Similarly, Clinton insisted months after the Bush administration acknowledged the absence of WMDs that her vote in favor of the resolution authorizing the invasion “was the right vote” and was one that, she said, “I stand by.”

Clearly, then, despite their much-touted “experience,” these nominees have demonstrated, through their support for the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, a profound ignorance of the reality of the Middle East and an arrogant assumption that peace, stability and democratic governance can be created through the application of U.S. military force.

Given that the majority of Democrats in Congress, a larger majority of registered Democrats nationally, and an even larger percentage of those who voted for Obama opposed the decision to invade Iraq, it is particularly disappointing that Obama would choose his vice-president, chief of staff, secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Homeland Security and special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq from the right-wing minority who supported the war.

But the Iraq War isn’t the only foreign policy issue where these Obama nominees have demonstrated hawkish proclivities. In previous articles, I have raised concerns regarding the positions of Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Below is a list of some additional foreign policy appointees who are troubling …

A Friend of Death Squads Heading Intelligence

One of the most problematic Obama appointees is Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence. Blair served as the head of the U.S. Pacific Command from February 1999 to May 2002 as East Timor was finally freeing itself from a quarter century of brutal Indonesian occupation. As the highest ranking U.S. military official in the region, he worked to undermine the Clinton administration’s belated efforts to end the repression, promote human rights and support the territory’s right to self-determination. He also fought against Congressional efforts to condition support for the Indonesian military on improving their poor human rights record.

In April 1999, two days after a well-publicized massacre in which dozens of East Timorese civilians seeking refuge in a Catholic church in Liquica were hacked to death by Indonesian-backed death squads, Blair met in Jakarta with General Wiranto, the Indonesian Defense minister and military commander. Instead of pressuring Wiranto to end his support for the death squads, he pledged additional U.S. military assistance, which, according to The Nation magazine, the Indonesian military “took as a green light to proceed with the militia operation.” Two weeks later, and one day after another massacre, Blair phoned Wiranto and, rather than condemn the killings he “told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region.”

Blair’s role in all this is well-known. The Washington Post, for example, reported several months later that “Blair and other U.S. military officials took a forgiving view of the violence surrounding the referendum in East Timor.” I was interviewed on NBC Nightly News at the time and spoke directly to Blair’s meetings earlier that year.

Combined with Obama’s selection of supporters of Morocco’s occupation and repression in Western Sahara and Israel’s occupation and repression in Palestine to other key foreign policy and national security posts, perhaps it is not surprising that he would pick someone who supported Indonesia’s occupation and repression in East Timor. That his pick for DNI would have acquiesced to massacres facilitated by U.S.-backed forces, however, is particularly disturbing.

A Super Hawk at the Pentagon

Obama’s decision to Bush appointee Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense was a shock and a betrayal to his supporters who believed that there would be a change in the Pentagon under an Obama administration.

Gates’ record of militarism and deceit includes his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, where he apparently took part in the cover-up of the Reagan administration’s crimes. Special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh expressed frustration that Gates – well-known for his “eidetic memory” – curiously could not recall information his subordinates, under oath, had sworn they had told him. The special prosecutor’s final report noted, “The statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid.” Indeed, the best the final report could say was that “a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.”

In addition, Howard Teicher, who served on the National Security Council staff during the Reagan administration, submitted a sworn affidavit that Gates engaged in secret arms transfers to Saddam Hussein’s regime during the 1980s in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. During this same period, according to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who served as Gates’ branch chief, Gates was personally involved in the apparent manipulation of intelligence regarding Iran and the Soviet Union in order to back up questionable policies of the Reagan administration.

The quintessential hawk, Gates advocated a U.S. bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984, according to the Los Angeles Times, in order to “bring down” that country’s leftist government, arguing that “the only way that we can prevent disaster in Central America” is for the United States to “do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out.” Given there are today a number of Latin American countries under leftist governments more strategically significant than the tiny impoverished Nicaragua with which Gates was once so obsessed, one wonders how, as Obama’s Secretary of Defense, he will advise the new president to deal with these countries.

As he has for most of his career, Gates has been far to the right not only of the American public, but even that of the foreign policy establishment, most of which recognized that Nicaragua under the Sandinistas was of no threat to U.S. national security and that a bombing campaign would be a blatant violation of international law.

Unable to convince his superiors to bomb Nicaragua, Gates became a major supporter of the illegal supplying of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, a notorious terrorist group responsible for the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguan civilians. In choosing Gates to head the Defense Department, Obama appears to be giving a signal that his opposition to international terrorism is limited to those who target Americans and their allies, not to terrorism overall.

Another Super-Hawk at NSC

Recently-retired Marine General Jim Jones -– who, like Gates, is a Republican and was a supporter of Senator John McCain in the November election –– has been named as Obama’s National Security Advisor. A pragmatic leader who reportedly opposed the decision to invade Iraq and has questioned the unconditional U.S. support for some of Israel’s more aggressive policies, Jones’ appointment is nonetheless troubling.

As NATO commander earlier this decade, Jones pushed for an expanded NATO role in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Perhaps not coincidentally, he joined the board of directors of Chevron soon after his retirement from the military as well becoming president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, which has called on the U.S. government to engage NATO “on energy security challenges and encourage member countries to support the expansion of its mandate to address energy security.”

Jones opposed any deadline for a withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, which sits on top of the second largest oil reserves in the world, declaring that “I think deadlines can work against us, And I think a deadline of this magnitude would be against our national interest.” A passionate supporter of the Vietnam War who apparently supported a U.S. invasion of Laos and Cambodia as well, Jones considered the war’s opponents to essentially be traitors. More recently, he has used rhetoric remarkably similar to that of defenders of that war to call for a dramatic escalation of the war in Afghanistan on the grounds that American “credibility” would be at stake if the United States withdrew.

The Nation’s contributing editor Robert Dreyfus, who refers to Jones as Obama’s “most hawkish advisor,” quotes a prominent Washington military analyst noting that “He’s not a strategic thinker,” but he will certainly join other Obama appointees in pushing the administration’s foreign policy to the right.

A Dangerous Pick for Special Envoy

Obama’s choice for special envoy to perhaps the most critical area of U.S. foreign policy – Afghanistan and Pakistan – has gone to a man with perhaps the most sordid history of any of the largely disappointing set of foreign policy and national security appointments.

Richard Holbrooke got his start in the Foreign Service during the 1960s in the notorious pacification programs in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam. In the late 1970s, Holbrooke served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. In this position, he played a major role in formulating the Carter administration’s support for Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor and the bloody counter-insurgency campaign responsible for the deaths of up to a quarter million civilians. In a particularly notorious episode while heading the State Department’s East Asia division, Holbrooke convinced Carter to release South Korean troops under U.S. command in order to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the city of Kwangju against the Chun dictatorship, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians. He also convinced President Jimmy Carter to continue its military and economic support for the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

In the former Yugoslavia, he epitomized the failed U.S. policy toward autocratic rulers that swings between the extremes of appeasement and war. He brokered a peace agreement in Bosnia which allowed the Serbs to hold on to virtually all of the land they had seized and ethnically cleansed in the course of that bloody conflict and imposed a political system based upon sectarian divisions over secular national citizenship. During the 1996 pro-democracy uprising in Serbia, Holbrooke successfully argued that the Clinton administration should back the Milosevic regime in suppressing the movement so to not risk the instability that might result from a victory by Serb democrats. In response to increased Serbian oppression in Kosovo just a couple years later, however, Holbrooke became a vociferous advocate of the 1999 U.S.-led bombing campaign, creating a nationalist reaction that set back the reconstituted pro-democracy movement once again. The young leaders of the pro-democracy movement, which finally succeeded in the nonviolent overthrow of the regime, remain bitterly angry at Holbrooke to this day.

Scott Ritter, the former chief UNSCOM inspector who correctly predicted the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a disastrous outcome for the U.S. invasion, observes that “not only has he demonstrated a lack of comprehension when it comes to the complex reality of Afghanistan (not to mention Pakistan), Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy.” Noting how the Dayton Accords were built on the assumption of a major and indefinite NATO military presence, which would obviously be far more problematic in Afghanistan and Pakistan than in Europe, Ritter adds, “This does not bode well for the Obama administration.”

The Mixed Record of Susan Rice

The post of U.S. representative to the United Nations, which is being treated as a cabinet-level post in the Obama administration, is now held by Susan Rice, a protégé of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Perhaps the most impressive intellectual on Obama’s foreign policy team, she was a Rhodes Scholar who studied under Oxford professors Adam Roberts and Benedict Kingsbury at Oxford, strong supporters of international law and the United Nations.

Serving under President Clinton in the National Security Council and later as assistant Secretary of State for Africa, she helped reverse the decades-old policy of support for Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, she received praise from civil society groups in Africa for her support for human rights but also criticism for her strident support for economic liberalization and free trade initiatives.

Though seen by many as one of the most moderate of Obama’s foreign policy team, she – like some of the more hawkish Obama appointees – is also handicapped by her tendency to allow her ideological preconceptions to interfere with her analysis.

Though, unlike most of Obama’s other top foreign policy appointees, she has serious reservations about invading Iraq, she naively bought into many of the myths used to justify it. For example, back in 2002 – years after Iraq had disarmed itself of its chemical and biological weapons and eliminated its nuclear program – she declared, “It’s clear that Iraq poses a major threat” and, despite the success of the UN’s disarmament program, she insisted “It’s clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that’s the path we’re on.”

In February 2003, Colin Powell testified before the United Nations that Iraq had somehow reconstituted its biological and chemical weapons arsenal and its nuclear weapons program and had somehow hidden all this from the hundreds of United Nations inspectors then in Iraq engaged in unfettered inspections. None of this was true and his transparently false claims were immediately challenged by UN officials, arms control specialists, and much of the press and political leadership in Europe and elsewhere. (See my article written in response to his testimony: Mr. Powell, You’re No Adlai Stevenson.)

Rice, however, insisted that Powell had “proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them and I don’t think many informed people doubted that.” In light of such widespread and public skepticism from knowledgeable sources, Rice’s dismissal of all the well-founded criticism was positively Orwellian: those who blindly accepted Powell’s transparently false claims were “well-informed,” while the UN officials, arms control specialists, and others knowledgeable of the reality of the situation were presumably otherwise.

What this means is that Rice will have a serious credibility problem at the United Nations, whose remarkable success at disarming Iraq she summarily dismissed. When Rice speaks out in important debates about international peace and security in the UN Security Council, including possible genuine threats, there will inevitably be some questions as to whether she should be believed. This raises the questions as to why Obama would choose someone with a potentially serious credibility in such a sensitive position just as the United States is trying to restore its influence in the world body.

Some Bright Spots?

There have been some somewhat hopeful appointments as well. One is that of Leon Panetta, former Congressman and the first chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, to direct the CIA. He has been praised for his principled opposition to the abuse of detainees under the Bush administration and his forced resignation from the Nixon Justice Department for opposing the administration’s opposition to school desegregation.

The major concern is that Panetta – a former Republican known as a centrist who tends to seek compromise more than he is one to shake things up – will likely find himself as simply another part of the center-right national team Obama is putting together, especially since he will be serving under DNI director Blair. As The Nation’s Dreyfus put it, “He’s no match for the hardheaded spooks who run the place, and he’s no match for the military brass who are elbowing their way to more and more control of intelligence spending and priorities.”

On the one hand, when the best that can be said of a nominee for an important national security position is that he opposes school segregation and believes that the U.S. government should not be engaging in torture, it is indicative of just how for down the bar has been lowered. At the same time, Panetta’s appointment is a clear signal that the Obama administration will not tolerate the kind of abuses that occurred under its predecessor.

Another potentially positive appointment is that of George Mitchell as special Middle East envoy. Though a hawkish supporter of right-wing Israeli governments during his days in the Senate, the report of his 2000-2001 commission on Israeli-Palestinian violence was surprisingly balanced and reasonable. Its failures rested in the limitations imposed upon it by the Clinton Administration and the failure of the Bush administration to follow through on its recommendations. The question now is whether Mitchell and President Obama will be willing to effectively challenge Israel’s refusal to withdraw the bulk of its illegal settlements from the occupied West Bank to make a viable Palestinian state possible. (See my article: Is Mitchell Up to the Task?)

Obama as Commander-in-Chief

Even though many of Obama’s key foreign policy appointments are not that different than previous administration, it is important to remember that Barack Obama will be a very different commander-in-chief than George W. Bush.

For one thing, unlike the outgoing president, Obama is non-ideological, very knowledgeable and highly-intelligent. He was quite prescient about the irrationality of invading Iraq, even speaking at an anti-war rally at a time when most Americans supported going to war and – prior to becoming a national figure – he espoused a number of progressive positions ranging on issues ranging from human rights to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In other words, even if Gates does call for bombing Venezuela, Obama is not going to do that. Even if Napolitano comes to him claiming that invading Iran is necessary to defend the homeland, Obama will recognize the folly of such a recommendation. Even if Clinton renews her attacks on the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, Obama is unlikely to go along with them. Even if Jones argues for sending in the Marines to capture Saudi oil fields, Obama will not take such a recommendation seriously.

It is also quite possible that all this is a shrewd political move on Obama’s part of placing center-right appointees is visible positions to better enable him to pursue a more progressive foreign policy, not unlike Bush using the moderate Colin Powell to sell the Iraq war. Had George McGovern won the 1972 presidential election, he would have likely appointed a number of prominent figures from the hawkish Democratic foreign policy establishment to key positions to assuage skeptics as well, but that does not mean he would have abandoned the core principles which had been the basis of his campaign and his entire political career.

Another reason that an Obama administration will not likely be as far to the right as these appointments may imply is that his electoral base – energized by popular opposition to the Iraq War – is perhaps the most progressive in history when it comes to foreign policy. It is also the most engaged and organized base the party has ever seen. Once the relief of Bush’s departure and the glow of Obama’s inauguration has worn off, he will have to face the millions of people responsible for his election who will expect him to keep his word regarding “change you can believe in.”

Indeed, with a few conscientious exceptions, Democratic officials have rarely led in terms of a more progressive foreign policy. They have generally abandoned hawkish policies only after being forced to do so by popular mobilizations. From Vietnam to Central America to the nuclear arms race to South Africa to Iraq, Democratic leaders initially allied with the Republicans until they recognized their political futures were at stake unless they listened to the rank-and-file Democrats for whom they were dependent for their re-election. Then, and only then, were they willing to change course.

As a result, what may be most important will not be the people that Obama appoints, but the choices we give them.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.

Posted on Jan 23, 2009, www.truthout.com

AP Photo/Mike Wintroath

By Scott Ritter

It was early in October 2001, and I had been invited to New York City on behalf of The History Channel for a show in which I was to discuss the situation in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. I was pitted against a seasoned American diplomat who had made his reputation negotiating peace accords in difficult corners of the world. I felt a little out of place, since my area of expertise was arms control and disarmament, and specifically how arms control was being implemented in Iraq. I had written a few scholarly articles about Afghan-Soviet relations, with a focus on the ethnic and tribal aspects of Afghan politics, and in the mid-1980s I had been an analyst with the Marine Corps component of the rapid deployment force, following very closely the Soviet war against the Afghan mujahedeen, so I wasn’t totally out of my element.

I fully expected to play second fiddle to the veteran diplomat, and appreciated the opportunity to hear his insights into what clearly was a very difficult situation facing the Bush administration. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization had used their status as guests of the Taliban government of Afghanistan to formulate and implement their terrorist attacks against the United States. The question confronting the Bush administration was how best to respond. I had spent some time thinking over the problem and came down firmly against the idea of direct military intervention. History had shown that, since the time of Alexander the Great through the Soviet invasion and occupation, outside forces had fared poorly when they tried to impose their will on the diverse grouping of tribes and ethnic groups that made up Afghanistan.

Our fight, in any case, wasn’t against the people of Afghanistan. To a certain extent, it wasn’t even against the Taliban, since it was al-Qaida, not the Taliban, that had attacked us. Some, including leaders of the Bush administration, were making the case that the Taliban was directly implicated in the attacks since it had provided al-Qaida with a safe haven to plan the events of 9/11. It had yet to be proved that the Taliban was a witting host, however. As a student of the region, I believed that the United States would do well to use tribal concepts of honor to isolate and disenfranchise bin Laden and his Arab outsiders from their Taliban host. If the United States, working through the offices of the Pakistani intelligence services, could convince the Taliban that its hospitality had been abused by al-Qaida—in that the murder of innocents had been committed while under its protection—then Afghan tribal custom and honor and, even more important to the fundamentalist Taliban, Islamic law, dictated that the Taliban revoke the protections and privileges afforded bin Laden and al-Qaida.

I did not believe that the Taliban would impose justice itself, but rather could be convinced, through a combination of logic and economic incentive, to disperse al-Qaida and turn bin Laden and his senior leadership over to a third party, presumably an Islamic nation such as Pakistan or the United Arab Emirates. If a direct approach failed, then covert action, using proxy forces in Pakistan and Iran, would make contact with moderate elements of the Taliban, personified by its foreign minister, to remove the conservative Mullah Omar from power and achieve a more direct result against bin Laden and his cohorts. A new, moderate Taliban leadership would be more than capable of assembling the religious clerics necessary to convene a sharia, or Islamic, court, which would find the actions of al-Qaida to be violations of Islamic law. Also, a loya jirga, or tribal gathering, would revoke the protected status of “guest” enjoyed by bin Laden and his fellow terrorists. The least productive option America could pursue was that of direct military intervention, and I anticipated that the veteran diplomat would concur with that point of view.

What happened, however, was the exact opposite. The diplomat rejected out of hand any sort of diplomacy, arguing that there were only extremists within the ranks of the Taliban. There was, in his opinion, no such thing as a moderate Taliban, and as such the United States had no choice but to lump the Taliban and al-Qaida into a singular target set, and initiate direct military action designed to remove the Taliban from power and destroy al-Qaida in Afghanistan. I responded by noting that it would not be an easy thing to separate the Taliban from Afghan society, since the Taliban was a product of Afghan society, and that any military action against the Taliban would only strengthen the bonds between it and al-Qaida, which was of course the last result the United States should be seeking. The diplomat rejected my argument as simplistic and unrealistic. He argued for a military solution, and, of course, that was the result the Bush administration delivered. The diplomat’s name? Richard Holbrooke.

The new secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has appointed Holbrooke as the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. With his extensive experience in peacemaking, including negotiating the Dayton Accords, which brought an end to the horrific fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina,  Holbrooke seems an ideal candidate for the complexities represented by the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, as well as by the related unrest in neighboring Pakistan. The presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan also plays to Holbrooke’s perceived strengths, given the role played by NATO in bringing an end to the fighting in the former Yugoslavia. However, at a time when NATO itself questions the viability of the mission in Afghanistan, pushing for a solution emphasizing social and economic stability over military action, the selection of a hawk like Holbrooke is ill-advised. Not only has he demonstrated a lack of comprehension when it comes to the complex reality of Afghanistan (not to mention Pakistan), Holbrooke has a history of choosing the military solution over the finesse of diplomacy. The Dayton Accords, after all, were built on the back of a NATO military presence. This does not bode well for the Obama administration.

It is highly doubtful that Holbrooke will bring anything more to the table than cheerleading. President Obama’s stated intention to increase the size of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and to more forcefully assert U.S.-imposed “security” through continued military action in the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan is a dangerous scheme, one Holbrooke will enthusiastically support. Reinforcing failure is never a sound solution. Take it from the veteran British military officers who have served in Afghanistan and now advise that there is no military solution to the Afghan problem. Listening to advice like that would go a long way toward developing stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan and neutralizing al-Qaida’s ability to organize and operate in those nations. The British recognize that the Taliban is not the problem, but rather part of the solution to what ails Afghanistan.

There will be no peace without a negotiated settlement that includes the Taliban. To accomplish this, leadership is required which recognizes the Taliban as a force of moderation, and not extremism. Holbrooke does not have a record which indicates he would be willing to consider direct negotiations with the Taliban. He tends to seek military solutions to difficult ethnic-based problems, and he is likely to argue for the deployment of even more U.S. troops to that war-ravaged nation. That would be a historic mistake.

Instability within Afghanistan continues to bleed over into Pakistan. As the United States pushes for a more effective military solution, there will be even greater pressures placed on U.S. leadership to become directly involved in Pakistan. The recent events in Mumbai, where Pakistani-based terrorists killed scores of innocent civilians, only underscore the inherent instability of Pakistan, which is fighting its own internal struggle against the forces of Islamic fundamentalism. Increased American military operations against Taliban and al-Qaida forces operating inside Pakistan will be a direct result of any increased U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. Such military operations will only increase the influence of Islamic fundamentalists inside Pakistan, while doing little to halt the efforts of the Taliban inside Afghanistan.

The radicalization of Pakistan has potentially disastrous implications for Pakistani-Indian relations. There is already increased talk about the possibility of war between these two nuclear-armed regional powers. Any conflict between India and Pakistan, nuclear or not, brings with it the likelihood of a breakdown of central authority within Pakistan, and would even further empower radical Islamic fundamentalists. That would bring the possibility that sensitive nuclear material, up to and including a nuclear device, would fall into their control. Such an outcome is the stuff of nightmares.

The cause-and-effect relationship between what the United States does inside Afghanistan and what occurs inside Pakistan cannot be ignored by American policymakers. As such, the goal of any U.S. special envoy to the region should be to stabilize the internal Afghan situation and de-emphasize cross-border military operations into Pakistan. Any effort which embraces the Taliban as part of a new Afghan reality would, by extension, eliminate the need to strike Taliban strongholds inside Pakistan. With the Taliban co-opted as a part of the central Afghan government, the forces of al-Qaida would lose their effectiveness, as any effort to continue to fight in Afghanistan would invariably pit them against their former allies. Reduction of hostilities in Afghanistan would create a similar reduction in hostilities in the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan. This in turn would result in a reduction of events which could be used by fundamentalists to justify radical behavior. And a reduction in radical Islamic fundamentalism would in turn allow for a more stable, moderate Pakistani government operating in a manner not only conducive to peace in Afghanistan but also peace with India and the entire region.

To embrace such a policy, the United States needs to contract the services of a U.S. special envoy capable of visionary thinking, one who possesses the political courage to stand up to a president and a secretary of state and argue against bad policy. I do not believe Holbrooke is such a man. As a result, I fear that the Obama administration will find the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan continuing to deteriorate to the detriment of American national security, and will increasingly waste time and energy in a period of so many problems at home and abroad. Afghanistan does not need to be one of these problems, but the selection of Richard Holbrooke as U.S. special envoy bodes ill for the prospect of lasting peace and security in a volatile region.

Scott Ritter, a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, is the author of “Waging Peace” (Nation Books, 2007).