Grim. Read the story here.

Some have made much of the fact that, when offered a chance to go to War, Bush did everything in his (and his father’s) power to escape combat duty—and didn’t even complete his Texas Air National Guard sinecure. That may be—well, it is, in fact—but he’s nevertheless a bloodthirsty warrior if others are doing the fighting. From Michael Abramowitz’s article this morning in the Washington Post:

{From] the new autobiography of retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, who is scathing in his assessment that the Bush administration “led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions.”

Among the anecdotes in Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president.

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a “confused” pep talk:

“Kick ass!” he quotes the president as saying. “If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can’t send that message. It’s an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal.”

“There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

A White House spokesman had no comment.

Two columns well worth reading have a detailed set of reasons to doubt the veracity of the story about North Korea helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. Glenn Greenwald and Juan Cole both set out reasons for doubt, and then of course there’s the long history of Administration lying.

The Council on Foreign Relations has an excellent guide, in video, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Watch it.

Ronald Reagan had his Iran-Contra, and now George Bush has his Hamas blowback. Read the whole article. The blurb:

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

And the beginning:

Read the rest of this entry »

From The Atlantic Monthly:

Now that the stereotype of the poverty-stricken terrorist has been dispelled by studies showing that militancy and high levels of education go hand in hand, a new Oxford study tries to explain why so many violent Islamic radicals are … engineers. The authors gathered data on 404 militants from 31 countries, and among the 178 whose principal academic focus could be determined, engineering was by far the most popular subject. Seventy-eight had pursued an engineering degree, compared with 34 in Islamic studies, 14 in medicine, and 12 in economics or business studies. The authors couldn’t find evidence to support the idea that radical groups seek out engineers for their skills. Instead, they speculate that something in the engineer’s mind-set—the emphasis on structure and rules, and on finding singular solutions to complicated problems—may fit neatly with Islamist notions of the ideal society. (In support of this hypothesis, the authors cite surveys from America, the Middle East, and Canada indicating that engineers are more likely than other professionals to be religious and right-wing.) They also note that engineers tend to be high-achievers who rise by merit, which may make them more likely to be frustrated by their interactions with corrupt bureaucracies in the Middle East and North Africa and thus receptive to radical messages.

—“Engineers of Jihad,” Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog, Oxford University Department of Sociology Working Papers

It’s still not clear:

Full story here, which begins:

Sometime after midnight on September 6, 2007, at least four low-flying Israeli Air Force fighters crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission on the banks of the Euphrates River, about ninety miles north of the Iraq border. The seemingly unprovoked bombing, which came after months of heightened tension between Israel and Syria over military exercises and troop buildups by both sides along the Golan Heights, was, by almost any definition, an act of war. But in the immediate aftermath nothing was heard from the government of Israel. In contrast, in 1981, when the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, near Baghdad, the Israeli government was triumphant, releasing reconnaissance photographs of the strike and permitting the pilots to be widely interviewed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Look at this (and more here):

A former FBI agent who pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and then improperly accessing sensitive computer information about Hizbullah was working until about a year ago as a CIA spy assigned to Middle East operations, NEWSWEEK has learned.

The stunning case of Nada Nadim Prouty, a 37-year-old Lebanese native who is related to a suspected Hizbullah money launderer, appears to raise a nightmarish question for U.S. intelligence agencies: could one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups have infiltrated the U.S. government?

“I’m beginning to think it’s possible that Hizbullah put a mole in our government,” said Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief under presidents Clinton and, until 2002, Bush. “It’s mind-blowing.”

A U.S. official familiar with the case said Tuesday that the government’s investigation has uncovered no evidence so far that Prouty, who was employed by the CIA until last week, had compromised any undercover operations or passed along sensitive intelligence information to Hizbullah operatives. After joining the CIA in June 2003, Prouty was an undercover officer for the agency’s National Clandestine Service, the espionage division, working on Middle East–related cases. She was reassigned to a less sensitive position about a year ago, after she first came under suspicion, officials said.

Prosecutors have not charged Prouty with espionage. Nonetheless, the case remains an “ongoing investigation” and “that is obviously something we’re looking at,” a senior law enforcement official said. Her lawyer declined comment today. Under the terms of her plea agreement, she faces six to 12 months behind bars and could be stripped of her U.S. citizenship.

The case is clearly a major embarrassment for both the FBI and CIA and has already raised a host of questions. Chief among them: how did an illegal alien from Lebanon who was working as a waitress at a shish kabob restaurant in Detroit manage to slip through extensive security background checks, including polygraphs, to land highly sensitive positions with the nation’s top law enforcement and intelligence agencies?

Much more at the link.

I just finished reading Chapter Seven of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, by James Bamford, recommended in a comment to this post. It is sickening, but worth reading. Israel lied repeatedly about its role in the war and deliberately tried to sink the USS Liberty and kill everyone on board to cover up their war crimes as they massacred civilians and prisoners on shore. It’s not a good picture. And, of course, there are the Israeli spies working against the US—Jonathan Pollard is but one.

Excuse me for asking, but in realpolitik terms, just what does Israel bring to the party except for a constant sinkhole of US aid? This country committed an act of war against the US, and for that I for one would be reluctant to supply them further with arms or with money.

With the Internet, I assume people in Israel can readily read news from other countries. Here’s the story:

Israel has enforced a news blackout on a recent air strike inside Syria. “The Israeli government has made no comment about the raid on what is believed to be a nuclear installation in Syria and Israeli newspapers have been forbidden to write anything on the subject.”

You may have seen that a B-52 with nuclear weapons flew from Minot ND to Barksdale LA. The report says that this was an accident:

The US military said on Wednesday it was investigating an alarming security lapse when a B-52 bomber flew the length of the country last week loaded with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

The blunder was reported to President George W. Bush after the nuclear warheads were discovered when the aircraft landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, a military official said on condition of anonymity.

An air force official, who also asked to remain unnamed, said the B-52, which originated at Minot Air Base in North Dakota, had six cruise missiles with nuclear warheads loaded on pylons under its wings.

The US Air Force has relieved the munition squadron commander at Minot Air Base in North Dakota of his duties, and launched an investigation into the August 30 incident, a Pentagon spokesman said.

…  The Pentagon would not provide details, citing secrecy rules, but an expert said the incident was unprecedented, and pointed to a disturbing lapse in the air force’s command and control system.

“It seems so fantastic that so many points, checks can dysfunction,” said Hans Kristensen, an expert on US nuclear forces.

“We have so many points and checks specifically so we don’t have these kinds of incidents,” he said.

A more ominous take on the incident:

Read the rest of this entry »

From Dan Froomkin’s column today:

Jim Lobe writes for the Inter Press Service, an alternative news service: “‘It’s not only too little too late, it’s actually a little more dangerous than that,’ said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. . . .

“‘The hallmarks of this administration’s policy have been neglect when they could do something, then letting ideology trump reality when they do do something, and then being ineffective as a result,’ Zogby said. ‘This has all the earmarks of that.’”

Augustus Richard Norton and Sara Roy write in a Christian Science Monitor opinion piece: “The Bush administration’s approach to the divided Palestinian territories is inviting disaster. By favoring the ‘good’ Fatah over the ‘evil’ Hamas, it is letting a dysfunctional ideology trump a good opportunity to bring progress to the Palestinians — and to the larger quest for peace with Israel. There can be no peace process with a Palestinian government that excludes Hamas. . . .

“How did the US end up in its current predicament? In January 2006, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza cast their ballots. Voting for the first time in 10 years, and resentful of corruption and arrogance in the Palestinian Authority, they decided for Hamas, described by many in the West as a terrorist group. Blindsided by its legitimate victory, the Bush administration faced a stark dilemma. If it accepted the result, a group that has launched terrorist attacks against Israel would be permitted to enjoy power. However, since the US had strongly backed the elections, rejecting the outcome would be hypocritical.

“Seasoned diplomats urged a middle path: Work with Hamas and foster a pragmatic dialogue with Israel. But the US rejected this. Instead, it campaigned to isolate and financially undermine the Hamas government, while working secretly to overthrow it.

“That policy prompted derision of US claims to foster democracy in the Arab world. And it upheld the radical Islamists’ claim that democracy is a sham.”

From Glenn Greenwald’s column:

Aside from his depiction of Bush as the Strong, Determined, Principled Warrior-Leader, Brooks also includes this report:

[H]is self-confidence survives because it flows from two sources. The first is his unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: “It’s more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.”

This has been the great unexamined issue of the Bush presidency — the extent to which Bush’s unwavering commitment to Middle East militarism is, as Bush himself has made clear, rooted in theological and religious convictions, not in pragmatic or geopolitical concerns. That Bush’s foreign policy decision-making is grounded in absolute moral and theological convictions and therefore immune from re-examination or change is an argument I examine at length in A Tragic Legacy because it is one of the principal — and most dangerous — forces driving the Bush presidency. At a September 2006 gathering of right-wing pundits, Bush waxed endlessly about his belief that the U.S. is currently in the midst of a Third Religious Awakening and that the wars over which he presides are a central part of that Awakening. At least in large part, Bush sees the “battles” he is waging in epic theological and religious terms, and as a result, political constraints and pragmatic limits are irrelevant to his actions. It is such an uncomfortable reality that it has been ignored almost completely over the last five years, even though ample evidence exists proving that it is true, beginning with his continuous own statements.

The danger in cynically dismissing religious fervor as a motivating force for Bush — the insistence that Bush’s religious beliefs are contrived and nothing more than a political tool — is that it conceals the true threat posed by having a President who is not merely religious (there is nothing uncommon or dangerous about that), but who draws no distinction between his political decisions and his religious obligations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not from Syria, most of them. Not from Iran. No, they’re from Saudi Arabia. Wonder why Bush and Rice have not commented on this, given the number of times Syria and Iran have been condemned. Here’s the story:

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than those of any other nationality, said the senior U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity. It is apparently the first time a U.S. official has given such a breakdown on the role played by Saudi nationals in Iraq’s Sunni Arab insurgency.

He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here as suicide bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.

The situation has left the U.S. military in the awkward position of battling an enemy whose top source of foreign fighters is a key ally that at best has not been able to prevent its citizens from undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst shares complicity in sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S. forces, Iraqi civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.

The problem casts a spotlight on the tangled web of alliances and enmities that underlie the political relations between Muslim nations and the U.S.

Read the rest of this entry »

is: what do you do when democracy takes hold and you don’t like the results? The traditional US response has to been to immediately chuck democracy out the cargo door at high altitude and work day and night to undermine the results of the free and fair election—much like the GOP in the US today. (Cf. Chile and a long list of other countries)

Take this story:

Officials in the Bush administration awoke on the morning of January 26, 2006 to catastrophic news.

Hamas, a violent Islamist movement whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, had won Palestinian parliamentary elections — elections that were deemed free and fair and a cornerstone to President Bush’s initiative to bring more democracy to the Muslim world.

For the next 17 months, White House and State Department officials would undertake an all-out campaign to reverse those results and oust Hamas from power.

Instead of undermining Hamas, though, the strategy helped to exacerbate dangerous political fissures in Palestinian politics that have delivered another setback to the president’s vision of a stable, pro-Western Middle East.

The administration’s drive to change the political facts on the ground foundered on opposition in Congress, the differing goals of Middle East allies such as Saudi Arabia, and an inability to provide Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with the full backing he needed to confront Hamas.

Three weeks ago, Hamas leaders outmaneuvered everyone else and seized the Gaza strip in a swift military campaign that vanquished secular Fatah forces loyal to Abbas. Abbas, with U.S. encouragement, responded by dissolving the Hamas-led government and declaring emergency rule. Now, with Palestinians divided into two mini-states in Gaza and the West Bank, mediating a peace deal with Israel will be harder than ever.

The strategy toward Hamas was overseen by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and carried out largely by Elliott Abrams, a leading neoconservative in the White House, and Assistant Secretary of State David Welch.

At its heart was a plan to organize military support for Abbas for what opponents of the strategy feared could have become a Palestinian civil war, according to officials in Washington and the Middle East, and documents.

As recently as March 2007, Jordanian officials developed a $1.2 billion proposal to train, arm and pay Abbas’ security forces so they could control the streets after he dissolved the government and called new elections. McClatchy Newspapers obtained a copy of the plan. While two sources close to Abbas said U.S. officials were involved in developing and presenting the plan, a State Department official described it as a Jordanian initiative.

Ultimately, congressional concerns in Washington and Israeli objections kept any significant military aid from being delivered, even as Israeli intelligence and the CIA warned that Hamas was becoming stronger.

Long term, the U.S. effort to oust Hamas has further deepened doubts in the Middle East about the administration’s understanding of the complex region.

“America is so far away, they are completely misinformed about what is happening,” said Munib Masri, a Palestinian businessman allied with Abbas. “The more they do against Hamas, the more power they (Hamas) get from the people.”

Well before the January 2006 elections, the White House and Rice had ample warning about the risks of allowing Hamas to participate, according to two senior U.S. officials. Among those raising alarms were Arab leaders and Tzipi Livni, now Israel’s foreign minister.

But Abbas argued that elections wouldn’t be credible without Hamas, and Washington went along, said one of the senior U.S. officials, who agreed to be interviewed only on condition of anonymity due to White House-imposed ground rules.

Was that a mistake?

“Maybe,” he said. “The question was debated at the time.”

Once Hamas was elected, the White House gave almost no thought to accepting the results and trying to co-opt the hard-line Islamist group, which the U.S. government deems a terrorist organization, current and former U.S. officials said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Alert Reader passes along this note. You’ll recall that global warming is also moving along faster than initially predicted—apparently three times as fast as first projected. Here’s the story on peak oil:

Scientists have criticised a major review of the world’s remaining oil reserves, warning that the end of oil is coming sooner than governments and oil companies are prepared to admit.

BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, published yesterday, appears to show that the world still has enough “proven” reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates. The assessment, based on officially reported figures, has once again pushed back the estimate of when the world will run dry.

However, scientists led by the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, say that global production of oil is set to peak in the next four years before entering a steepening decline which will have massive consequences for the world economy and the way that we live our lives.

According to “peak oil” theory our consumption of oil will catch, then outstrip our discovery of new reserves and we will begin to deplete known reserves.

Colin Campbell, the head of the depletion centre, said: “It’s quite a simple theory and one that any beer drinker understands. The glass starts full and ends empty and the faster you drink it the quicker it’s gone.”

Dr Campbell, is a former chief geologist and vice-president at a string of oil majors including BP, Shell, Fina, Exxon and ChevronTexaco. He explains that the peak of regular oil - the cheap and easy to extract stuff - has already come and gone in 2005. Even when you factor in the more difficult to extract heavy oil, deep sea reserves, polar regions and liquid taken from gas, the peak will come as soon as 2011, he says.

This scenario is flatly denied by BP, whose chief economist Peter Davies has dismissed the arguments of “peak oil” theorists.

“We don’t believe there is an absolute resource constraint. When peak oil comes, it is just as likely to come from consumption peaking, perhaps because of climate change policies as from production peaking.”

In recent years the once-considerable gap between demand and supply has narrowed. Last year that gap all but disappeared. The consequences of a shortfall would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even the smallest amount, the price of oil could soar above $100 a barrel. A global recession would follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

I deleted a snarky post about Condi Rice after Section 9 pointed out that it did nothing to advance the conversation, and in thinking about what she is currently doing, I have to admit that she’s working hard to get the notoriously stubborn and unreflective George Bush to engage in some meaningful diplomacy with Iran (instead of moving at once to bomb them, as Cheney and his cohorts seem to want) and is undoubtedly the force behind the meeting between Bush and Putin, though I’m dubious that this will have much effect. Still, she’s undoubtedly more effective in this job than when she was National Security Adviser (though that sets the bar flat on the ground), and for the direction she’s going she should be commended.

McClatchy Washington Bureau:

The parallels between the United States’ war in Iraq and Israel’s war against Hezbollah last summer are striking: Both stemmed from surprise attacks, both were overwhelmingly popular at their start and both grew widely unpopular as more troops died and victory remained elusive.

Israel, however, has done something the United States has yet to do: Assess what went wrong and assign blame for the mistakes and misunderstandings.

Credit Israeli law and culture for that. Almost from its inception, the country has embraced a candid culture of criticism, despite the fact that it has crippled some legendary leaders, including Golda Meir and Ariel Sharon.

Now Ehud Olmert, the prime minister who launched the 34-day war with Hezbollah, is being called to account by a special commission whose interim report this week could bring down his government.

“We have a tradition: Prophets go against kings,” said Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an independent Israeli research center. “It’s a society that has an ingrained disrespect for authority.”

There are many reasons to think that Israel would reject an invasive self-evaluation process that reveals its internal divisions and exposes its weaknesses. It’s nearly surrounded by armed adversaries, exists on the front line of the war on terrorism and rarely has gone more than a few years without some sort of major military confrontation.

That very fact, Inbar said, makes it all the more important that Israel correct its mistakes quickly.

“So what if America loses the war in Iraq?” he said. “If we lose a war, it’s an existential threat. We cannot afford not knowing the truth.”

At first blush, the American and Israeli watchdog systems are similar.

Both basically allow two tracks to investigate wrongdoing: One in which the nation’s leader chooses the investigators and one in which an independent body examines the problems.

There are important differences, however.

Continue reading.

I thought Condi was on this:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah called on Wednesday for an end to the international blockade on the Palestinian people and told a summit of Arab leaders that sectarian violence was driving Iraq toward civil war.

In his speech to Arab monarchs and presidents at a two-day meeting in his capital, the king called on Arabs to overcome their disputes and unify to face dangers threatening them in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

“It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force,” the king said.

Saudi Arabia last month brokered a unity government between the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Islamist group Hamas in the hope the international community will end a crippling economic blockade.

Israel insists it will not ease its financial restrictions on Gaza and the West Bank but some countries have agreed to talk to non-Hamas members of the government and increase aid.

The two-day summit comes against a tense regional backdrop, with fears high among Arab leaders that a U.S.-led attack on non-Arab Iran, which has refused to comply with U.N. demands to halt atomic work, could further destabilize their region.

Riyadh, pressed by its ally Washington to show more leadership in the region, has called on Sunni Muslim states to overcome divisions, arguing a united front will help persuade Israel to address Palestinian grievances.

U.S.-allied Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, see the hand of Tehran in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

King Abdullah stressed that Sunni-Shi’ite violence in Iraq threatened the stability of the oil-producing Gulf region.

“In beloved Iraq, blood flows between brothers in the shadow of illegitimate foreign occupation and hateful sectarianism, threatening a civil war,” he added.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m enjoying the mystery The Collaborator of Bethlehem, and happened across this interesting set of maps:

Update: I’ve removed the maps (which can still be seen at their original home—see comment below), and I’ve searched for a more accurate map. The problem is that the maps I’ve found have been either been clearly presented by one side or the other (i.e., possibly propaganda maps) or are not helpful in showing the Palestinian and Israeli territory today.

Post a comment if you have a link to a better map.