Peak Oil resolution in U.S. House of Representatives

A peak oil bill has been filed in the House of Representatives with the support of the newly formed Peak Oil Caucus, founded by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep, MD) and a number of co-sponsors. The members of the caucus are James McGovern, Vern Ehlers, Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Raul Grijalva, Wayne Gilchrest, Jim Moran, Dennis Moore.

Co-sponsors are Tom Udall, Virgil Goode, Raul Grijalva, Walter Jones, Tom Tancredo, Phil Gingrey, Randy Kuhl, Steve Israel, G.K. Butterfield, Mark Udall, Chris Van Hollen, Wayne Gilchrest, Al Wynn, John McHugh, Jim Moran, and Dennis Moore.

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the `Man on the Moon' project to address the inevitable challenges of `Peak Oil'.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
October 24, 2005

Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland (for himself, Mr. UDALL of New Mexico, Mr. GOODE, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. TANCREDO, Mr. GINGREY, Mr. KUHL of New York, Mr. ISRAEL, Mr. BUTTERFIELD, Mr. UDALL of Colorado, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Mr. GILCHREST, and Mr. WYNN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce

RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the `Man on the Moon' project to address the inevitable challenges of `Peak Oil'.

Whereas the United States has only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves; Whereas the United States produces 8 percent of the world's oil and consumes 25 percent of the world's oil, of which nearly 60 percent is imported from foreign countries;

Whereas developing countries around the world are increasing their demand for oil consumption at rapid rates; for example, the average consumption increase, by percentage, from 2003 to 2004 for the countries of Belarus, Kuwait, China, and Singapore was 15.9 percent;

Whereas the United States consumed more than 937,000,000 tonnes of oil in 2004, and that figure could rise in 2005 given previous projection trends;

Whereas, as fossil energy resources become depleted, new, highly efficient technologies will be required in order to sustainably tap replenishable resources;

Whereas the Shell Oil scientist M. King Hubbert accurately predicted that United States domestic production would peak in 1970, and a growing number of petroleum experts believe that the peak in the world's oil production (Peak Oil) is likely to occur in the next decade while demand continues to rise;

Whereas North American natural gas production has also peaked; Whereas the United States is now the world's largest importer of both petroleum and natural gas;

Whereas the population of the United States is increasing by nearly 30,000,000 persons every decade;

Whereas the energy density in one barrel of oil is the equivalent of eight people working full time for one year;

Whereas affordable supplies of petroleum and natural gas are critical to national security and energy prosperity; and Whereas the United States has approximately 250 years of coal at current consumption rates, but if that consumption rate is increased by 2 percent per year, coal reserves are reduced to 75 years:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that--

(1) in order to keep energy costs affordable, curb our environmental impact, and safeguard economic prosperity, including our trade deficit, the United States must move rapidly to increase the productivity with which it uses fossil fuel, and to accelerate the transition to renewable fuels and a sustainable, clean energy economy; and

(2) the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency of the `Man on the Moon' project to develop a comprehensive plan to address the challenges presented by Peak Oil.

American company to fight pirates off Somalia

Reuters
25 Nov 2005

NAIROBI, Nov 25 (Reuters) - The Somali government has signed a two-year contract with an American marine security company in a bid to end an upsurge of piracy off the lawless Horn of Africa country, officials said on Friday.

Waters off the coast of Somalia are considered among the most dangerous in the world.

Pirates firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns earlier this month tried to board a U.S.-owned cruise liner about 100 miles (160 km) off the Somali coast.

New York-based Topcat Marine Security Inc. signed a deal worth more than $50 million with the Somali Transitional Federal Government in Nairobi to escort ships plying Somali waters.

Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Gedi, who witnessed the deal, said his government recognised the damage caused by pirates and hoped Topcat would help end the piracy menace.

"The agreement signed today will defend Somalia's territorial waters, defeat the pirates," Gedi said, "The government wishes to express its dismay at these abhorrent actions."

Peter Casini, Topcat's head of research and development, said once in operation his company would target a mother ship used by the pirates to launch attacks on passing vessels.

"We will end the piracy very quickly, there is no question about that," Casini told reporters. "There is a ship that is launching small ships 75 to 100 miles from the shore, our goal is to take the mother ship."

The International Maritime Board has said that after two years of relative calm, 32 pirate attacks had been reported in Somalia since mid-March.

Somalia has been without a central government since 1991, when rival warlords ousted Mohamed Siad Barre.

Time for An Iraq Timetable

By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Washington Post
Saturday, November 26, 2005; A25

The question most Americans want answered about Iraq is this: When will our troops come home?

We already know the likely answer. In 2006, they will begin to leave in large numbers. By the end of the year, we will have redeployed about 50,000. In 2007, a significant number of the remaining 100,000 will follow. A small force will stay behind -- in Iraq or across the border -- to strike at any concentration of terrorists.

That is because we cannot sustain 150,000 Americans in Iraq without extending deployment times, sending soldiers on fourth and fifth tours, or mobilizing the National Guard. Even if we could, our large military presence -- while still the only guarantor against a total breakdown -- is increasingly counterproductive. A liberation has become an occupation.

There is another critical question: As our soldiers redeploy, will our security interests in Iraq remain intact or will we have traded a dictator for chaos?

There is a broad consensus on what must be done to preserve our interests. Recently, 79 Democratic and Republican senators told President Bush we need a detailed, public plan for Iraq, with specific goals and a timetable for achieving each one.

Over the next six months, we must forge a sustainable political compromise between Iraqi factions, strengthen the Iraqi government and bolster reconstruction efforts, and accelerate the training of Iraqi forces.

First, we need to build political consensus, starting with the constitution. Sunnis must accept that they no longer rule Iraq. But unless Shiites and Kurds give them a stake in the new deal, they will continue to resist. We must help produce a constitution that will unite Iraq, not divide it.

Iraq's neighbors and the international community have a huge stake in the country's future. The president should initiate a regional strategy -- as he did in Afghanistan -- to leverage the influence of neighboring countries. And he should establish a Contact Group of the world's major powers -- as we did in the Balkans -- to become the Iraqi government's primary international interlocutor.

Second, we must build Iraq's governing capacity and overhaul the reconstruction program. Iraq's ministries are barely functional. Sewage in the streets, unsafe drinking water and a lack of electricity are all too common. With 40 percent unemployment in Iraq, insurgents do not lack for fresh recruits.

We need a civilian commitment equal to our military effort. Just as military personnel are required to go to Iraq, the president should identify more skilled foreign service officers to help.

This should not be their burden alone. Britain proposed that individual countries adopt ministries. It's a good idea that we should pursue. We must redirect reconstruction contracts away from multinationals and to Iraqis.

Countries that have pledged aid must deliver it. So far, only $3 billion of the $13.5 billion in non-American aid has made it to Iraq. And the president should convene a conference of our Gulf allies. They have reaped huge windfall oil profits -- it's time they gave back.

The third goal is to transfer authority to Iraqi security forces. In September, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. acknowledged that only one Iraqi battalion -- fewer than 1,000 troops -- can fight without U.S. help. An additional 40 can lead counterinsurgency operations with our support.

The president must set a schedule for getting Iraqi forces trained to the point that they can act on their own or take the lead with U.S. help. We should take up other countries on their offers to do more training, especially of officers. We should focus on getting the security ministries up to speed. Even well-trained troops need to be equipped, sustained and directed.

We also need an effective counterinsurgency strategy. The administration finally understands the need not only to clear territory but also to hold and build on it. We have never had enough U.S. troops to do that. Now there is no choice but to gamble on the Iraqis. We can help by changing the mix of our forces to include more embedded trainers, civil affairs units and Special Forces.

Iraqis of all sects want to live in a stable country. Iraq's neighbors don't want a civil war next door. The major powers don't want a terrorist haven in the heart of the Middle East. The American people want us to succeed.

If the administration shows it has a blueprint for protecting our fundamental security interests in Iraq, Americans will support it.

The writer is a senator from Delaware and the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Thanksgiving in the CIA's Secret Prisons

Detainees Responsible for Terror Attacks Get Bare Minimum to Ensure They Stay Alive
By BRIAN ROSS
ABC News

Nov. 24, 2005 — - A can of Ensure is the highlight of Thanksgiving for the dozen or so top al Qaeda terrorists in the CIA's secret overseas prisons.

Besides the repetitive playing of rap music, they have been made to talk by harsh treatment that includes water boarding, in which water is poured over the face to make them think they are drowning.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such it really amounts to a mock execution," said John Sifton, the Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The inmates rarely see daylight, and the CIA gives them the bare minimum to make sure they do not die in U.S. custody. That includes the cans of Ensure and shots of vitamin B12.

Yet, U.S. officials have little sympathy for the prisoners. Collectively, they have admitted responsibility for the deaths of several thousand innocent civilians.

U.S. Challenged Over Measures Of Its Success Against Terrorism

By David Crawford
Wall Street Journal
November 25, 2005 - Pg. 5

A report to be released shortly by the Congressional Research Service questions the effectiveness of the Bush administration's measuring stick for determining success in countering terrorism.

The report says measures such as the number of terrorist incidents per year and the number of terrorists killed or captured are inadequate. Instead, it urges the use of broader social indicators, like the ability of terrorists to recruit. The Congressional Research Service is a branch agency within the Library of Congress.

Bush administration officials have argued that the U.S. is prevailing by citing figures such as the arrest or death of two-thirds of al Qaeda's senior leadership and the seizure of more than $200 million in terrorist assets.

The report represents a challenge to the Bush administration's standards for gauging progress in the war against terrorism. It is likely to add to the debate over how the U.S. can prevail in what the administration acknowledges will be a long struggle against extreme Islamic groups, and it will buttress those who argue that winning the war of ideas is as important as the military struggle against armed extremists.

Because the report hasn't been released, officials haven't had a chance to comment. But some leading terrorism experts concur with the report's conclusions. "We emphasize body counts, without acknowledging the elasticity of al Qaeda's recruiting," said Alan Krueger, a Princeton University professor who has written about how governments measure success in fighting terrorism. Mr. Krueger said al Qaeda is able to replace key personnel faster than they are killed or captured.

Congressional Research Service analyst Raphael Perl, who wrote the report, said the government lacks a method of measuring success in combating terrorism, so it is unable to judge whether its policies to combat terrorism are successful. Mr. Perl said methods developed to evaluate the strength of criminal organizations, such as drug cartels, should be applied to assess the strength of terrorist groups. According to Mr. Perl, waves of arrests sometimes strengthen rather than weaken drug cartels, forcing a criminal organization to be more secretive and robust.

In Baghdad, Capital Vistas Gradually Shrink With Insecurity

By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
November 25, 2005 - Pg. C1

BAGHDAD -- Five months after the fall of Baghdad, I went to Iraq with Colin Powell. It was the first visit by a secretary of state in half a century, and although he moved under heavy security, there was an optimistic, forward-looking feel to the trip.

Much has changed about Iraq in the intervening two years. And visits by America's secretary of state -- first Powell, then Condoleezza Rice -- have proved to be a microcosm of America's intervention here.

On our first trip, in mid-September 2003, the State Department entourage and diplomatic press corps stayed for two full nights at the legendary al Rashid Hotel, the high-rise once heavily bugged by Saddam Hussein's security goons. Iraqi vendors in the hotel arcade sold military paraphernalia and souvenirs from the old regime. Medals that Hussein once bestowed on his troops went for 10 bucks -- or less, if you bargained enough.

Back then, we could tool around the Iraqi capital. With a New York Times colleague, I walked through the concrete barriers down the lonely lane that linked the protected Green Zone to the rest of Baghdad. U.S. troops stationed along the route didn't stop us.

Much of the downtown commercial area was shuttered. We stopped by the national museum, looted and closed. We drove by the infamous Information Ministry, a bombed-out shell. We saw government buildings stripped in the postwar chaos, leaving not a chair or telephone or filing cabinet, much less government records.

We also wandered freely around Hussein's favorite Republican Palace, the headquarters for the new U.S.-led occupation government. We marveled at the marble halls. We stopped to gawk at Hussein's gilded throne in a hall festooned with frescoes of giant missiles blasting into the sky.

Back then, Powell would leave the Green Zone -- surrounded by a security "bubble" -- for meetings with Shiite, Kurd and Sunni government officials, and then dinner with a prominent Shiite cleric.

At a news conference in the Green Zone's convention center, Powell was upbeat, citing a city council meeting he had just attended where a new generation of Iraqi leaders debated everything from the environment to the role of women in the city's life.

I asked Powell if he had seen a fair representation of what was happening since he had not left the security bubble in Baghdad or met with anyone unhappy with the U.S. presence.

"There is just a great deal that is happening in this country, whether it's the formation of PTAs in local schools, whether it's our brigade commanders giving $500 to each school in their district as long as that school comes up with a PTA, something unheard of here before. . . . That's grass-roots democracy in action."

My second trip to Baghdad, on July 30, 2004, some 15 months after the fall of the city, was a secret. This time, the press corps traveling with Powell couldn't report it until after we'd landed.

We traveled from the airport to the Green Zone in Black Hawk helicopters, with U.S. troops perched in open windows on both sides manning machine guns that fire as many as 4,000 rounds per minute.

The route was so dangerous that we were all given flak jackets and helmets for the short trip.

This time, we didn't stay even one night. The al Rashid had come under rocket fire in October 2003, when then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was visiting. The attack had killed one American soldier and wounded 15 other people.

The hotel was off-limits even for journalists traveling with Powell. When I pressed the case, a diplomat offered to escort me through a new barricade between the convention center and the hotel, which was just across the street. Unfortunately, she didn't have clearance for the hotel. I didn't get in.

This time, Powell's bubble -- and ours -- was much smaller. America's top diplomat didn't leave the Green Zone and U.S. security wouldn't let the press out, either. I did manage to travel inside the four-square-mile zone with then-Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih to his residence.

We drove down palm-fringed boulevards with ornate villas once home to Hussein's aides, generals and family, and now inhabited by Iraq's new leaders, U.S. contractors and Iraqi squatters. We passed a busy open-air bazaar where gregarious Iraqi vendors hawked trinkets, carpets, T-shirts and techno-gadgets. Complete with parkland, monuments and ministries, the Green Zone is a city within a city. It was only a brief outing, but when I got back, the State Department's security team still read me the riot act for breaking out of the bubble.

Most of the time, the news media waited at the domed and well-guarded convention center as Powell met with Iraqi leaders who had assumed power from the U.S.-led occupation government a month earlier. But there was no connection with ordinary Iraqis or the real Baghdad.

This time, the focus and tone of the secretary of state's news conference at the convention center were notably different.

"We have to make sure that these insurgents understand that we will not be deterred," Powell said. "There can be no other option. The Iraqi people deserve freedom; they deserve democracy. . . . We must not let outsiders or insiders of any kind deny the Iraqi people that which they richly deserve and that which they want."

My latest trip to Iraq, on Nov. 11, 31 months after the fall of the capital, was kept secret even from some of the people on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's plane. The dozen members of the traveling press were summoned to the State Department the day before we left on a trip to the Middle East and sworn to secrecy after a briefing about the additional stop.

We could tell an editor and a family member, but we were asked not to mention it to anyone else, particularly our bureaus in the Iraqi capital -- and not on the phone or by e-mail to anyone, at all, anywhere. If word got out, the trip would be canceled. A leak had forced the postponement of a similar trip in the spring.

The road between the airport and the Green Zone was officially considered safer, but we still flew in armed Black Hawks moving in diversionary patterns through the sky.

On this latest trip to Baghdad, the bubble shrank even more. No roaming the Green Zone. Not even a stop at the convention center. The press corps, including veteran war correspondents, was sequestered in Hussein's old palace for most of the seven-hour stay. We were discouraged from wandering the palace and were provided escorts to go to the bathroom.

Our one venture out was a short hop to the nearby prime minister's office, also in the Green Zone. All we saw were new barricades trimmed with razor wire, concrete blast walls, roadblocks and time-consuming identity checks. No Iraqis. No vendors. In October 2004, the bazaar had been attacked, one of two almost simultaneous suicide bombings inside the Green Zone that together killed 10, including four Americans.

On this latest trip, Rice's biggest task was to talk to Sunnis -- five leaders who represented groups ranging from Islamist to former Saddamists -- still unhappy with the new Iraq.

At a news conference with the prime minister, America's top diplomat emphasized Iraq's responsibility for its future.

"Any people coming out of a period of tyranny, as the Iraqis have, and now out of a period of violence, have to find a balance between inclusion and reconciliation and justice," Rice said. "And that is a process that I'm sure the Iraqis themselves will lead."

For the first time, we pulled out after dark. As we flew from the Green Zone, the Black Hawk gunners wore night vision scopes, which look like little binoculars on eyeglasses, so they could spot suspicious activity through the night. The pilot of the C-17 military transport that flew us out of Iraq did not turn on the interior lights until we had reached a safe altitude -- and were well out of Baghdad airspace.

Tenets of 'just war' theory

* Cause must be just, often limited to self*defense or to redress injury. Scholars dispute whether preemptive or preventive war can be a just cause.

* Public declaration by a lawful authority.

* No ulterior motives. War must be pursued with right intention - justice - not self*aggrandizement or vengeance.

* Reasonable probability of success.

* More good done than harm.

* Use of force only as last resort.

* Avoid harming noncombatants.

* Proportionality * use of the least destructive force possible.

* Intention to restore a just peace.

Replant the American Dream

By David Ignatius
The Washington Post
Friday, November 25, 2005; A37

When I lived abroad, Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday. It was a chance to scrounge up a turkey, gather foreign and American friends, and celebrate what America represented to the world. I liked to give a sentimental toast when the turkey arrived at the table, and more than once I had my foreign guests in tears. They loved the American dream as much as I did.

I don't think Americans realize how much we have tarnished those ideals in the eyes of the rest of the world these past few years. The public opinion polls tell us that America isn't just disliked or feared overseas -- it is reviled. We are seen as hypocrites who boast of our democratic values but who behave lawlessly and with contempt for others. I hate this America-bashing, but when I try to defend the United States and its values in my travels abroad, I find foreigners increasingly are dismissive. How do you deny the reality of Abu Ghraib, they ask, when the vice president of the United States is actively lobbying against rules that would ban torture?

Of all the reversals the United States has suffered in recent years, this may be the worst. We are slowly shredding the fabric that defines what it means to be an American.

Not so long ago our country really was seen as different. Foreigners queued up outside any institution that called itself an "American university," hoping for a chance at their piece of the dream. My own ancestors were educated at such a college, and their children's and grandchildren's success in the new land was part of a global chain of American affirmation and renewal.

We are eating up this seed corn. That's what I have seen in recent years. We inherited incredible riches of goodwill -- a world that admired our values and wanted a seat at our table -- and we have been squandering them. The Bush administration didn't begin this wasting of American ideals, but it has been making the problem worse. Certainly George W. Bush has been spending our international political capital at an astounding clip.

When I began traveling as a foreign correspondent 25 years ago, I thought I understood what the face of evil looked like. There were governments that used torture against their enemies; they might call it "enhanced interrogation" or some other euphemism, but it was torture, and you just hoped, as an American, that you were never unlucky enough to be their prisoner. There were governments that "disappeared" people -- snatched them off the street and put them without charges in secret prisons where nobody could find them. There were countries that threatened journalists with physical harm.

As an American in those days, I felt that I traveled with a kind of white flag. We were different. The world knew it. We might have allies in the Middle East or Latin America who used such horrifying methods. But these were techniques that Americans would never, ever use -- or even joke about. That was our seed corn -- the fact that we were different.

The United States must begin to replenish this stock of support for America in the world. I would love to see the Bush administration take the lead, but its officials seem not to understand the problem. Even if they turned course, much of the world wouldn't believe them. Sadly, when President Bush eloquently evokes our values, the world seems to tune out. So this task falls instead to the American public. It's a job that involves traveling, sharing, living our values, encouraging our children to learn foreign languages and work and study abroad. In short, it means giving something back to the world.

We must stop behaving as if we are in a permanent state of war, in which any practice is justified by the exigencies of the moment. That's my biggest problem with Vice President Cheney's anything-goes jeremiads against terrorism. They suggest we will always be at war, and so it doesn't matter what the world thinks of our behavior. That's a dangerously mistaken view. We are in a long war but not an endless one, and we need to begin rebuilding the bridges to normal life.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving each year, the Wall Street Journal republishes twin editorials that evoke America's special gifts: "The Desolate Wilderness" and "And the Fair Land." They describe the pilgrims' fears as they departed Europe in 1620, and the measureless bounty they and their descendants found in the new land. The spirit we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day is our most powerful national asset. We need to put America's riches back on the table and share them with the world, humbly and gratefully.

Iraq Kurds Shortchanged, They Say, by Massive U.S. Cash Drop

The $1.4 billion came from prewar oil sales. Officials contend that even more was missing.
By Richard C. Paddock and T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times
November 21, 2005

IRBIL, Iraq — The $100 bills were all new. They came wrapped in plastic and loaded on wooden pallets. Altogether, the money weighed 15 tons, enough to fill three U.S. military helicopters. It totaled $1.4 billion.

In a little-known operation during the final days of the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, American military helicopters flew the shipment of cash to Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan's largest city.

U.S. troops were waiting on the ground at the airport to unload the money and take it under heavy guard to the headquarters of the province's central bank in the city's core.

The cash payment, which was approved by outgoing U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III, was delivered on June 23, 2004, five days before he returned sovereignty to a new Iraqi government in Baghdad and left the country. The money, which came out of prewar oil revenue, was given to top officials with Iraq's two Kurdish provincial governments.

"For us it was so strange," said Rashid Taher, director of finance in Irbil province. "We received it as cash at the airport. Paul Bremer delivered it to us, and we still have the money."

Kurdistan officials say the secret, last-minute shipment highlighted the sometimes-questionable handling of billions of dollars by the United States during the 14 months Bremer ran Iraq.

They say the cash was only part of the $4 billion the region was owed under the United Nations oil-for-food program. And they contend that Bremer improperly used Kurdistan's remaining $2.6-billion share of the U.N. fund for other purposes during his administration of Iraq.

Mahmoud Othman, an Iraqi Kurd who served on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council during the Bremer era, charged that airlifting $1.4 billion in cash to Irbil was an attempt to win the silence of Kurdish leaders after Bremer had squandered the rest of the money. Othman has called for an investigation into the handling of the funds.

"He did this, which is not normal, because he himself had made a mess," said Othman, who serves in the transitional Iraqi National Assembly.

"He had spent part of the $4 billion, and he had to do this to keep their mouths shut about it."

Efforts to reach Bremer, who has said little in public since leaving Iraq, were unsuccessful.

A former top official of the CPA, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the defunct agency, confirmed that the transfer took place and put the amount at $1.6 billion.

He said the CPA considered the payment a fair distribution of Iraqi oil revenue received during the Bremer-led provisional government.

The Kurds' contention that they were owed a total of $4 billion, he said, was unfounded.

"I don't know anybody in the CPA or the Iraqi Ministry of Finance who thought that the higher figure was realistic," the official said. The payment "represented the CPA's view of what was equitable relative to the Kurds."

He said the money was not delivered to Irbil until late June because oil-for-food funds had not been released by the U.N. until that spring, when the CPA received $2.5 billion.

The International Advisory and Monitoring Board, which was responsible for overseeing the Development Fund for Iraq under the CPA, said its auditor, the private firm KPMG, looked at the transfer in advance and approved it.

"IAMB reviewed the transfer to the Kurds and found it properly accounted for," said Bill Murray, a spokesman for the board.

After the money arrived, the finance ministers of the two Kurdistan provinces, Irbil and Sulaymaniya, split it according to the size of their populations. Irbil kept $798 million and Sulaymaniya received $602 million, Kurdish officials say.

Sulaymaniya's share was trucked 3 1/2 hours over the mountains to its capital city, also called Sulaymaniya, in a convoy protected by a large detachment of Kurdistan's battle-hardened peshmerga soldiers.

In a region where corruption is endemic, the unpublicized delivery of such a large amount of cash might seem an invitation to embezzlement.

Late last year, some Kurdish officials and international bankers discussed the possibility of putting some of the money into a Swiss account, said a source in the international banking community who requested anonymity.

A Washington firm employed by Kurdish officials met with representatives of international banks to see if there was a way to transport the money safely out of the country, the source said. In the end, however, the Kurds apparently were unable to find an international bank willing to handle the transfer.

Officials in Kurdistan deny that any meeting took place with foreign bankers to discuss moving the cash. They insist that all the money remains in Kurdistan.

In Irbil, officials said their $798-million share remained untouched at their central bank and would be spent on projects such as dams and power stations.

In Sulaymaniya, officials said they had begun spending their money on similar public works projects but would not discuss how much had been disbursed or to whom. Deputy Finance Minister Dilshad Othman said the province provides an accounting of its expenditures only one day of the year, Dec. 31.

"The money is in safe hands and will be spent transparently," he said.

Finance officials in both provinces noted that an audit by KPMG established that all of the cash remained in the two capitals.

"An auditing team came from America," said the deputy minister, who is from the same clan as Mahmoud Othman but is not closely related. "They reviewed our papers and they made sure that the right procedures have been followed. They even took photos of the money."

The oil-for-food program was set up under the auspices of the United Nations in 1995 to ensure that, despite international economic sanctions, Iraq received sufficient food supplies from abroad in exchange for limited sales of its oil.

Under Saddam Hussein, the revenue was spent in Arab parts of Iraq but not in Kurdistan, which had operated autonomously after the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Kurdistan's share of the fund was set at 13%. At least $4 billion accrued in Kurdistan's name, Kurdish officials say, and some contend that the amount could be as much as $5.5 billion.

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Bremer's appointment as the nation's administrator, Bremer took over the handling of the fund.

In an audit of the CPA this year, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction said Bremer's agency had mishandled billions of dollars earmarked for the country's development, including $2.5 billion from the oil-for-food program.

The $2.5 billion was spent without being included in a CPA budget, the audit concluded.

Mahmoud Othman, the former Governing Council member, applauded efforts by U.S. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) to continue investigating the handling of funds under the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"There are some illegalities, some irregularities," he said. "I think Congress should investigate because whenever the Governing Council talked to Bremer about how much was spent, he would say, 'This is not your business because this is American money, and I am only accountable to the Congress.' "

For many in Kurdistan, which had struggled in isolation for more than a decade before Hussein's ouster, receiving any money from the oil-for-food program was welcome.

"From our perspective, any amount that came to Kurdistan is a victory for us," said Taher, the Irbil finance director. The region will continue trying to obtain more money from past oil revenue, he said, but he fears it is a "hopeless effort."

"We don't know even where the money is," he said. "There is a shadow over this subject."

The 2004 payment was delivered in cash, Kurdistan officials said, because the banking system is so primitive that it was not possible to make a bank transfer of that magnitude. Banks in Kurdistan today still cannot process credit card payments, and businesses here deal in cash — American dollars or Iraqi dinars.

"You know in Iraq there is no effective bank network. The main problem of Iraq in the field of finance is money transfer," Dilshad Othman said. "We believe that when we are able to create a modern banking network in Iraq, then we will be able to rebuild our economy effectively."

Kurdistan officials said the money was transported by helicopter because it was the safest method in the war-torn country.

Even today, payments from the central government in Baghdad are delivered in cash, but now the U.S. military does not provide helicopters and the money must be delivered by road from Baghdad two or three times a month.

At times, convoys carrying the money have been attacked by insurgents.

"In the beginning they were transferring money by helicopters, but unfortunately right now they do not help this way," said Sulaymaniya Finance Minister Bayez Talabani. "For security reasons we have a big problem transferring money. It is a big danger, but no solution has been found."

For Mahmoud Othman, the U.S. administration's handling of Iraqi funds has encouraged new levels of corruption that in the long run pose as much of a threat to Iraq's stability as the insurgent violence that has swept the country.

"Iraq has been dealt with as a business, not as a country or a people," he said. "Many people have gotten very rich at the expense of the poor Iraqi people and the American taxpayers."

It's no secret: CIA scouting for recruits

By John Diamond
USA TODAY
11/22/2005

LANGLEY, Va. — The CIA has launched a crash program to clear a backlog of job applicants and hire recruits who can speak Arabic, Korean and other languages critical to national security priorities.

As recently as five months ago, CIA applicants with sought-after skills such as fluency in Arabic or Korean faced long delays in hiring if they had relatives living overseas, CIA Director Porter Goss says.

To fill the shortage of experts in key languages and meet a presidential order for a 50% increase in analysts and overseas operatives, Goss started an end-to-end overhaul of the recruiting system.

Today, security issues that once took 18 months to overcome are being handled in a matter of weeks, according to Betsy Davis, the agency's No. 2 recruiting official.

Last year, the commission created to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks criticized the agency's lack of language experts and the delays in obtaining security clearances.

CIA security officers have long worried that job candidates with foreign ties could leak sensitive information. That meant those candidates would have to endure long waits as the agency investigated their families and friends.

While he's concerned about possible security breaches, Goss says those lengthy checks were costing the agency valuable recruits.

Goss says he's more worried about terrorists killing people than "I am about (a) terrorist reading a top-secret report."

Even with the changes, an applicant still takes about nine months to become an officer, Davis says.

Such a time-consuming process didn't deter the candidates who lined up five deep recently at the CIA's recruiting desk at a job fair a few blocks from the University of Virginia's main campus in Charlottesville.

When asked how many of the day's roughly 100 applicants will become spies, Davis says, "As many as I can get through."

It's a big change from a decade ago, when the post-Cold War agency was cutting jobs and hiring hardly anyone for its clandestine service.

While the agency is hiring new operatives, its new challenges are apparent in conversations with some of the students.

"I'd like to do something different for a few years — about two years — then law school," says Anna Lee, a fourth-year marketing and business major. She speaks Korean, a critical language skill given the concern about the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. But after two years at the CIA she'd only just be getting started as an analyst. If she chose to be a clandestine officer, she might not be ready for her first foreign posting after two years. The CIA wants people like Lee not for two years but for 20.

The agency's hiring campaign includes slick ads, more than 800 recruiting events per year and about 200 staffers devoted full time to recruiting. The campaign walks the line between pitching an exciting career and making sure recruits don't confuse the agency with what they see in the movies.

"One of the things frankly we have to do is demystify (the CIA) a little bit," Goss says. "You are not going to be James Bond if you sign up and five years later you're going to be driving an Aston Martin with a beautiful young lady at your side on the Riviera. You might be, but I'm not aware of that program yet."

Several of the students say they're too busy with their studies to follow the CIA in the news. They get their information about the agency from movies and television shows such as Alias and 24.

"It seems exciting," says Eaming Wu, a fourth-year comparative literature major at Virginia. "I would like to know the secrets behind what goes on and to experience the power that goes with knowing those secrets."

Complicating matters for recruiters is the need to find operatives who can speak languages such as Arabic or those spoken in many Asian nations.

"Census data tells us that 1.6% of Americans speak critical languages at home," Davis says. "And how many of those have academic degrees? It's frighteningly small." About 27% of applicants claim proficiency in at least one foreign language, Davis says, though seldom in the languages essential to the war on terrorism.

Stephanie Danes Smith, the CIA's chief administrator, says that as a result of a just-completed "end-to-end review" of hiring and training procedures, a CIA administrator can, with the stroke of a computer key, locate every fluent Arabic or Pashto speaker anywhere in the agency at home or abroad.

The CIA still needs more analysts and operatives fluent in key foreign languages, says former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who regularly consults the White House on national security issues.

"Less than 10% of our analysts of North Korea are fluent in Korean," says Gingrich. He said he believes 40% of intelligence analysis should be contracted out.

Goss has also ordered a shake-up of time-honored assignment schedules that often had field officers rotating out of regions just when they were becoming effective. He can also approve higher pay for people with key language skills and keep officers on assignment longer.

Goss says he was "horrified" to hear that potential applicants waited months, even years, for a reply from the agency.

"I've got to tell you, it was a broken system," Goss says. "It was one of the things I found most stunning when I got here."

Members of the 9/11 Commission said they were stunned to hear from Goss and his predecessor, George Tenet, that getting the right number of spies with the right skills in the clandestine service will take five years. In some areas, Goss says, the agency is ahead of schedule. In other specialties, particularly those involving obscure foreign languages, "we are maybe at the 5 or 10% level."

The CIA is getting better, Goss says, but "there are some very hard aspects of this that take longer. We are an overseas organization. We are an organization that requires what I would call sacrifice of quality of life. ... We are looking for specific people that we think will fit our needs. And that means an aggressive recruiting effort."

Agency hiring data are classified, but Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says his analysis of public statements by agency officials and other information shows that CIA hiring may exceed 2,000 people a year.

Surveying her prospects at the job fair, Davis points to Johanna Peet, who is writing a senior thesis on the assimilation of Islamic immigrants in the Netherlands, where she studied for a year. Davis had already spoken with her and predicted she would join the agency.

While she is considering career options at international organizations such as the United Nations, Peet says, "I'm very conscious of being an American."

She knows that the CIA has been criticized for lapses prior to the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war but says those lapses are not necessarily negatives for her. "It has potential," Peet says. "There's a lot of work cut out for this agency in terms of picking up the pieces after 9/11. I have a lot of faith in the agency. I don't see it as broken."

U.N. Faces New Political Threats From U.S.

By Thalif Deen
Inter Press Service
Date : 2005-11-24

United Nations, 24 November, (IPS): John Bolton, the abrasive U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been dubbed by one New York newspaper as "a human wrecking ball", is living up to every critic's gloomy expectations.

Last week, he threatened U.N. member states, specifically the 132 developing nations, that if they don't play ball with the United States, Washington may look elsewhere to settle international problems.

"It is obvious," Jim Paul of the New York-based Global Policy Forum told IPS, "that Washington has once again threatened the United Nations with its usual warning: 'Do what we say, or we will send you into oblivion"'. He said Bolton's message is clear, "If you don't, we will wreck you."

Addressing a gathering at Wingate University in North Carolina last week, Bolton said: "Being practical, Americans say that either we need to fix the institution (the United Nations), or we'll turn to some other mechanism to solve international problems."

Asked for his comments, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan refused to be drawn into the debate. "I am not the interpreter of Ambassador Bolton," he bluntly told reporters early this week.

Told that it was a "serious statement" requiring a serious response from Annan, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric would only say: "Again, I think the secretary-general's words were that he wasn't going to interpret what Mr. Bolton said, and if he's not, I don't think I would risk it too."

"But we are working with the United States, its Permanent Mission and with Ambassador Bolton very closely, as we are with all the other member states, on the issues of reform that are being discussed right now," Dujarric added.

But Phyllis Bennis, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, had a more critical take on Bolton's controversial statement.

"Bolton himself, who said in a debate with me in 1994 that 'there is no United Nations', has now surpassed his own quote, claiming he is enjoying his job as ambassador to the United Nations because it is 'a target-rich environment'," Bennis told IPS.

She said that since the "failed U.N. summit" last September, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has used the demand for "management reform" as a means of achieving its political ends.

These include disempowering the General Assembly and assuring that future holders of the secretary-general's position will be unequivocally accountable to Washington's unilateralist agenda: an instrumentalist view in which the United Nations provides multilateral cover for unilateral and illegal U.S. interventions and wars, said Bennis, author of several publications on the United Nations and international politics.

She also pointed out that U.S. domination of the world body is hardly a new story. It was back in 1995, during the self-declared "assertive multilateralism" of the presidency of Bill Clinton that then-U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright famously said "the U.N. is a tool of American foreign policy."

"But the Bush team, led by John Bolton, has taken that long-standing domination to an entirely new level," said Bennis, author of "Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the United Nations Defy U.S. Power".

The 132 developing countries of the Group of 77 (G77) say that U.N. reforms are primarily driven by the Bush administration and backed by right wing neo-conservatives who have made U.N.-bashing into a fine art.

The G77 has told Annan that it is strongly opposed to the neo-conservative view that the world body should be run like a U.S. corporation, with the secretary-general playing the role of a chief executive officer (CEO).

Paul of the Global Policy Forum says the Bush administration wants Annan just to be that: a glorified CEO. "This is not compatible with democratic institutions like the United Nations. U.S. corporations are authoritarian, with no decision-making powers with employees," Paul added.

He also pointed out that the Bush administration sees Annan as being "a vector of influence, and pliant to U.S. interests than the U.N. General Assembly will ever be".

Since Washington cannot control the General Assembly, it wants the top leadership in the U.N. Secretariat to be in its pockets, he added.

Concurring with Paul, Bennis said that many of the secretary-general's top staff have been replaced over the last two years or so with active supporters of the U.S. agenda for the United Nations.

"That effort includes the U.S.-orchestrated replacement of Kofi Annan's longstanding chief of staff Iqbal Riza with Mark Malloch-Brown (who called Bolton 'very effective'), and the appointment of Bush loyalist and right-wing American State Department official Christopher Burnham as undersecretary-general for management," she said.

But Bennis argued that Annan himself has maintained some level of independence and has not completely collapsed under the coercion (he has not retracted his characterisation of the Iraq war as "illegal," for example) -- but the pressure is rising.

Bennis said that some of Annan's senior advisers have played "a major role in reassuring Washington power-brokers, including Bolton's anti-U.N. backers, that the United Nations remains a pliant and malleable tool for U.S. policy efforts".

Paul said that developing nations should collectively remain united. "If they cave in to U.S. threats now, they will only help open up new threats."

"The United Nations, which consists of 191 member states, cannot be run according to the dictates of a single country," he added.

Iraq conflict still in early stages, report says

By Fiona Symon
Financial Times
November 23 2005

The war in Iraq is still in its early stages and US and British troops are likely to be bogged down in the conflict for decades, a report by the Oxford Research Group said on Wednesday.

The independent think tank’s report will make unwelcome reading for the British and US governments, both of which have indicated that they hope to begin reducing the number of troops in Iraq after the next Iraqi parliamentary elections in December.

Under growing pressure from domestic opponents of the war, both governments have suggested that the improved capabilities of the Iraqi security forces - now numbering 200,000 - may allow them to reduce their military commitment in Iraq next year.

Neither have not put forward any timetable for withdrawal, however, despite repeated calls for them to do so.

Condoleeza Rice, US secretary of state said this week she suspected US forces were “not going to be needed” in the same numbers “for all that much longer”.

But Tony Bair, UK prime minister, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that it was vital not to “back away” from Iraq before ensuring that the country’s democratic institutions were properly established.

“The terrorists and insurgents would take over unless the multinational force was there to safeguard the democratic process,’’ said Mr Blair.

Ensuring a friendly government in Baghdad is an essential part of US security policy, even if this requires a permanent US military presence, because long-term access to oil from the region is essential to the US, given its increasing dependence on imported oil, says the report.

If Iraq can no longer be controlled, and if Iran guards its independence, then the US risks finding its access to Gulf oil diminishing at precisely the same time as China seeks to make gains in the region.

The report by Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University provides a detailed month-by-month assessment of the developing insurgency for a year between May 2004 and April this year.

It points to the growing numbers of civilian casualties, as well as the failure to control the insurgency, even with the use of overwhelming firepower, as with the assault on Fallujah last November, and concludes that the war in Iraq has been a ‘gift’ for al-Qaeda.

Iraq has become a magnet for young jihadists, replacing Afghanistan as a combat training zone, even to the extent that jihadists from that country now travel to Iraq to gain combat experience, taking their skills back to Afghanistan to use against western forces there, it says.

Contrary to some claims, the insurgency is not diminishing and it is likely to prove very difficult to withdraw all the British troops from Iraq unless there is a major change of policy by the British government, risking a break with the United States, says the report.

Were My Captors Worse Than The Guantánamo Jailers?

by Terry Waite
The Guardian (UK)
November 23, 2005

On my first visit to Lebanon since my release as a hostage in 1991 I visited a refugee camp. I met some young people who were on a computer-literacy course. They had made good progress. "What about your future?" I asked. "What future?" one replied. "To get a job in Lebanon is virtually impossible as jobs go first to Lebanese citizens. We have no right of return to the place our grandfathers came from, and how can we go abroad when we are refugees? We are trapped."

That young man uttered the sentiments of thousands of displaced people in the Middle East and beyond. As I left the classroom I thought it remarkable that more young people did not join "terrorist" groups. The point I want to make is this: war, as well as being a blunt instrument, fails totally to deal with the root issues underlying terrorism. In the political realm it requires statesmen and women; individuals who can think beyond the next election and who have the wisdom that comes from making an attempt to understand cultures other than those of the west.

Western democracy has many attractive features and has brought manifold benefits. It takes no intelligence to recognise that it also has its dark side and that it cannot, nor necessarily ought it to be, exported to all parts of the world. If the optimistic statements made by some British and US politicians before the Iraqi war - when it was stated that the conflict would be concluded in weeks - were truly believed then one can only despair at the level of understanding demonstrated.

The destructive eruption following 9/11 has struck at the roots of democratic freedom. The arguments will continue for a long time about which particular category terrorist suspects belong to. The fact is that on the basis of suspicion alone people have been detained, and in some cases subjected to processes that should not be part of a civilised nation.

Let me give a personal example. I was detained by a group of hostage takers in Beirut because they suspected me of engaging in dubious political activity. They blindfolded me and kept me in poor conditions without any contact with the outside world. They subjected me to physical and mental abuse during a lengthy period of interrogation. Had I not been able to convince them of my innocence I would not be walking free today. What is the essential difference between the methods deployed by my captors, who were labelled terrorists, and those of the authorities that detain suspects in Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere? They have been detained on suspicion and treated in a way that no civilised nation ought to condone.

One must make reference to the belief that sometimes evidence obtained under torture has been used against suspects. Such measures should have no place in a society that respects the rule of law. Such methods must be outlawed. One does not fight terrorism by adopting the methods of the terrorist. When one does, the terrorist has won a victory, for he has succeeded in undermining some of the fundamental values of society.

The process has seeped through to Britain, where men have been detained in Belmarsh by legislation rushed through by politicians seemingly anxious to maintain credibility. I don't doubt that some politicians have the public interest at heart; nor do I doubt that it is possible that some of those detained are dangerous. However, it must be stated that the avoidance of due process leads us into deeper difficulties. Our connivance with the war against Iraq is linked with the shallowness of thought that appears to be part of parliamentary decision-making. It seems decisions are taken without any concern for the long-term consequences.

The moral framework of the nation is shaky and it is little use political leaders lecturing the young on morality when their own conduct is so dubious. As a member of the church I am obliged to say that, although some have spoken out against the matters to which I have referred, the church as a body has hardly been vociferous about them. In case any critic accuses me of displaying an anti-western bias, let me say I believe that as a member of a free society one has the responsibility to look at the beam in one's own eye first. Having lived in most parts of the world I am not ignorant of the defects of others. I recognise that there are states that are corrupt. There are evil dictators and brutal regimes. I am aware of the economic imbalance in many Arab states and elsewhere.

But I do not believe the world's wrongs will be resolved by warfare or economic dominance by one nation over another. We must grow into a world community where difference can be celebrated rather than seen as divisive. To progress we need people of stature who will be able to demonstrate compassionate wisdom and political acumen that brings hope to those in despair.

It is likely that such people will have been forged in the crucible of suffering, and through that experience will have learned that suffering need not destroy. They are the ones who can bring hope to this world and enable us to regain the moral dignity that is an essential part of our heritage as human beings.

EU: Iran Papers Solely for Making Nukes

By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
Thursday November 24, 2005

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The European Union is accusing Iran of possessing documents used solely for the production of nuclear arms and is warning of possible referral to the U.N. Security Council, according to a statement made available to The Associated Press on Thursday.

The press statement, made available before planned delivery later in the day, was described by a diplomat as a summary of what Britain, France and Germany would tell a closed session of the International Atomic Energy Agency board which began meeting on Thursday.

The statement said the EU would accuse Iran of possessing suspicious documents that ``have no other application than the production of nuclear weapons.''

``Failure to make progress'' on easing international concerns about Iran's nuclear program ``will hasten the day when the board decides that a report to the Security Council must be made,'' said the statement to be delivered by Peter Jenkins, the chief British delegate to the IAEA.

The European Union also reserves the right to call an emergency board meeting before the next scheduled gathering in March - for possible Security Council referral - ``if Iranian behavior makes it necessary,'' said the statement.

The statement alluded to new revelations of concern contained in a report drawn up for the board meeting by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, including a finding showing the Iranians in possession of what appeared to be drawings of the core of an atomic warhead.

But the main issue is Iran's refusal to give up its right to uranium enrichment, which can be used to generate power but also to make weapons-grade material for nuclear warheads. Iran says it wants only to make fuel, but international concern is growing that the program could be misused.

A plan floated in recent weeks foresees moving any Iranian enrichment plan to Russia. There, in theory, Moscow would supervise the process to make sure enrichment is only to fuel levels.

But Iran insists it wants to control the complete fuel cycle domestically.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday that, while his country was willing to resume formal talks with key European powers on its nuclear program, ``naturally we aim to have enrichment on Iran's territory.''

Currently, Iran's enrichment program is frozen. But negotiations between Iran and France, Britain and Germany broke off in August after Iran restarted the conversion of raw uranium into the gas that is used as the feed stock in enrichment.

For months, Iran has relied on Beijing and Moscow, Security Council members with veto power, to fend off a U.S.-backed push to have it hauled before the council.

While the Americans and Europeans have opted not to lobby for referral at Thursday's meeting of the IAEA board, they could resume their efforts at a later board session if they judge that the Russians, Chinese and other key nations will not stand in their way.

In Beijing on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters that his country did not think ``it is appropriate now to refer this question to the U.N. Security Council.''

ElBaradei, in comments to the board meeting in Vienna, suggested, he, too, opposed referral, for now, calling for ``robust verification'' of Iranian nuclear activities, combined with ``active dialogue.''

``Clarification'' of aspects of Iran's nuclear program ``is overdue, after three years of intensive verification efforts,'' he said.

The EU statement made available to the AP said Iran's ``failure to provide full transparency ... continues to undermine its claim that its program is exclusively peaceful in nature.''

Debate heats up about the U.S. presence in Iraq

By William Douglas and James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Wed, Nov. 23, 2005

WASHINGTON - Should we stay or should we go?

The fundamental question about what the United States should do in Iraq is being asked with greater fervor across America and in the nation's capital. The Bush administration is arguing that the nation must stay the course to prevent Iraq from becoming an oil-rich haven for terrorists and to keep the country from spiraling into a bloody civil war that could destabilize the Middle East.

"If they are not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation," President Bush said earlier this month at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base.

But Bush is fighting waning public confidence in his handling of Iraq and weariness with a war that's claimed more than 2,100 American lives and costs billions of dollars each month.

"I would list all the arguments that you hear against pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, the horrible things that people say would happen, and then ask: Aren't they happening already? Would a pullout really make things worse? Maybe it would make things better," wrote William E. Odom, a retired Army lieutenant general and former Reagan-era National Security Agency director, for a Harvard University Web site.

Odom, now a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, has called America's invasion of Iraq "the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

What to do in Iraq is a conundrum best summed up by a recent Army War College report.

"The long-term dilemma of the U.S. position in Iraq can perhaps best be summarized as `We can't stay, we can't leave, we can't fail,'" said the report by scholars W. Andrew Terrill and Conrad C. Crane.

Nevertheless, national sentiment is shifting toward getting out - but how? More and more options are being debated in Washington, but no single plan prevails. Here's a look at some of the ideas:

- STAY THE COURSE. This is Bush's approach. He says Iraq is making progress, with a democratic process taking shape and a growing number of Iraqi troops prepared to protect the country.

Last month, 88 Iraqi army and special operations battalions conducted combat operations, according to an October Defense Department report. Of the 88 units, 36 were viewed as being "in the lead" or fully independent, a 50 percent increase since July.

"Iraq is making amazing progress from the days of being under the thumb of a brutal dictator," Bush said at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

However, Bush says Iraq still needs American protection.

But critics say that the Iraqi forces remain largely Shiite Muslim or Kurdish, with few Sunni Muslims and too many infiltrators from religious militias - and from the insurgency. They also argue that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is the problem, not the solution, because it inflames jihadists and nationalists to attack U.S. troops as a foreign occupier.

"You already have a civil war," Odom said. "As for terror, that's the biggest danger there, but it's already happening. Getting out will allow us to focus on al-Qaida. This war has made it easier for al-Qaida - we still haven't gotten Osama bin Laden."

- RAPID WITHDRAWAL. Supporters say it's the best way to stop the killing of U.S. troops, will force Iraqis to take control of their security and future, will prove that the United States doesn't intend to make Iraq its permanent base in the Middle East and thus will lower the passions behind the insurgency and radical jihadists throughout the region.

Rep. John Murtha, a pro-military Democrat from Pennsylvania, caused a stir in Congress recently when he called for the prompt withdrawal of all U.S. troops. Under his plan, troops would begin leaving after Iraq's Dec. 15 election, with total withdrawal within six months. He would deploy a quick-reaction Marine strike force in the region, possibly in Kuwait.

"Our military's done everything that has been asked of them," he said. "The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home."

Murtha's opponents argue that a hasty U.S. departure would be like giving terrorist insurgents the keys to the country. It would undercut Iraq's fledgling government before it gets its footing and almost instantly trigger a civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, while ethnic Kurds fight for their own independent state.

A civil war, they warn, could draw in neighboring Iran as an ally to the Shiites; Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others as allies to the Sunnis; and Turkey as an enemy to Kurds.

Worst-case scenarios see a pro-Iranian Shiite regime in Iraq and Sunni violence spreading to Saudi Arabia, leading to jihadist Muslims ruling the biggest oil producer in the world and spreading instability throughout the Middle East.

It's far better, critics of withdrawal say, to stick with Bush's goal of implanting democracy in Iraq as the first step toward spreading democracy through the region.

"Pulling the troops out would send a terrible signal to the enemy," Bush said in August. "Immediate withdrawal would say to the ... terrorists of the world, and the bombers who take innocent life around the world ... the United States is weak, and all we've got to do is intimidate and they'll leave."

- ADD U.S. TROOPS. This proposal aims to stamp out the insurgency. A plan by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would begin by clearing specific areas of insurgents, using heavy force if necessary, then holding those areas rather than withdrawing. Heavy security, McCain said, would allow reconstruction to proceed without fear of attack and allow civil society to flourish.

Opponents say McCain's idea has little traction with lawmakers heading into next year's mid-term elections and little enthusiasm from a military already stretched thin and struggling to meet recruitment quotas.

"More troops, we tried that in Vietnam," Odom said. "It didn't work."

- GRADUAL WITHDRAWAL. This course appears most popular among those seeking a way out of Iraq, especially prominent Democratic senators who may seek the presidency in 2008.

Their ranks include Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Joseph Biden of Delaware, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Slow reduction of U.S. forces over the next year or two would allow time to train the Iraqi military to defend its country and help the elected government get itself and the country's damaged infrastructure up and running, supporters say, while reducing U.S. targets there.

Pentagon officials this week floated the idea of possibly reducing U.S. troops from 150,000 currently to fewer than 100,000 by the end of 2006. Officials caution, however, that any progress toward withdrawal would be contingent on improving conditions in Iraq.

That trial balloon follows a long line of firmer gradual-withdrawal proposals from lawmakers.

Feingold suggests Dec. 31, 2006, as the target date for completing the withdrawal of U.S. troops. In addition, he wants Bush to clarify the mission and outline a plan for accomplishing it.

Kerry wants a phased withdrawal beginning with the reduction of 20,000 troops after the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, provided it's successful.

Kerry also wants the administration to prepare a detailed plan for the transfer of military and police responsibilities to Iraqis "so the majority of our combat forces can be withdrawn - ideally by the end of next year."

He also wants Iraq's neighbors, plus NATO allies and Russia, to "implement a strategy to bring the parties in Iraq to a sustainable political compromise that includes mutual security guarantees among Iraqis."

"To undermine the insurgency, we must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces linked to specific, responsible benchmarks," Kerry said on Oct. 26.

Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Monday for the withdrawal of 50,000 troops by the end of 2006 and all but 20,000-40,000 troops out by January 2008.

Obama called Tuesday for "limited withdrawal" over the next year without specifying numbers.

In the House of Representatives, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, wants to link U.S. troop reduction to the buildup of Iraqi forces. Under his plan, one U.S. military battalion would pull out for every three Iraqi battalions that achieve "fully capable" status and can operate independently.

Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, and Walter Jones, R-N.C., want Bush to announce a withdrawal plan by the end of this year and begin pulling out troops no later than Oct. 1, 2006. They set no deadline for complete withdrawal. Their plan was viewed as somewhat radical when they announced it in June; today it's among the more modest withdrawal proposals.

Researchers at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, propose a two-phase plan that would move 80,000 U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006, with the bulk of the remaining soldiers out by the end of 2007.

The only soldiers who would stay in Iraq, according to the plan, would be a small contingent of Marines to protect the U.S. Embassy, a small group of advisers to the Iraqi government and counterterrorist units to work closely with Iraqi security forces.

If Iraq needed help, it could come from U.S. forces in Kuwait and air strikes from Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

Bush and other pullout opponents say gradual withdrawal has the same drawbacks as an immediate pullout and would give insurgents a timetable for planning.

"Pulling out prematurely will betray the Iraqis," Bush said in August. "Withdrawing before the mission is complete would send a signal to those who wonder about the United States' commitment to freedom."

Such an approach was also tried in Vietnam, where it was called "Vietnamization." It failed because the South Vietnamese government had limited public support, was riddled with corruption and fielded an army that was no match for communist North Vietnam's. Congress cut off U.S. aid to South Vietnam in 1974, which some U.S. conservatives blame for contributing to South Vietnam's fall in 1975.

Israel Emerges as the Go-To Country for Anti-Terrorism Technologies

Susan Karlin
Forbes
Nov 22, 2005

Israel, by necessity, has become the hotbed for counterterrorism research. Innovating well out of proportion to its size, Israel has spawned companies selling guns that shoot around corners, software that translates dog barks into English-language warnings, and lasers that can detect explosives from 100 feet away. Working their way through labs now are intelligent robotic cameras, and nanolasers and nuclear resonance imagers to detect chemical and bioweapons.

"Much of the homeland security technology in the U.S. is 20 years old. It is unsuitable because the nature of the threat has changed," says Dan Inbar, the Israeli founder of the Homeland Security Research Corp., a Washington, D.C. consultancy. Israeli exports of homeland security equipment will hit $300 million this year, up 22% per year since 2002, estimates Inbar. The global trade in antiterror gear and consulting services is expected to grow from $46 billion to $178 billion by 2015. (The U.S. accounts for half.)

Effort for review of anti-Semitism on campus meeting new resistance

By Ron Kampeas
JTA
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22

The effort by some Jewish groups to establish a government review procedure to address claims of anti-Israel bias and anti-Semitism on university campuses appears to be under threat just as it’s making serious headway.

Buried in a massive budget bill passed recently by the Senate are two paragraphs with language stating that the U.S. Department of Education must not “mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education’s specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction.”

The inclusion suggests resistance among conservatives in Congress and elsewhere to reforms that Jewish groups say are needed to alleviate what they claim is a hostile environment toward Jewish students on some campuses.

The resistance came to the fore last Friday when three Jewish groups testified on the matter before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, encountering tough questions from the more conservative commissioners.

The Senate language, inserted in the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 and passed by the Senate on Nov. 3, would gut plans to make universities that receive federal funds accountable to the Education Department to the degree that some Jewish groups have sought.

“There should be something in there that requires a balance of viewpoints,” said Susan Tuchman, director of the Center of Law and Justice at the Zionist Organization of America, a group that has been lobbying hard for federal review of universities’ Middle Eastern studies. “It’s not enough to ensure that appropriate changes are made.”

The American Jewish Congress, also a leader in the effort, has been fighting hard to remove exactly the same language from another bill making headway in both houses, said Sarah Stern, the AJCongress’ director of governmental affairs.

Stern said the inclusion of the language in the deficit-reduction bill came “completely under the radar.” Three other Jewish groups involved in pressing for the legislation said they only learned of the language in recent days, some because of JTA’s questions.

At least one of the groups was still reviewing the legislation and wasn’t ready to condemn it outright.

The American Jewish Committee said other provisions in the bill might meet the standards it has been seeking by giving the secretary of education some limited powers of review.

“It has always been our contention that those reforms would not allow the secretary to interfere with academic freedom or autonomy of institutions,” said Richard Foltin, the AJCommittee’s legislative director.

A U.S. House of Representatives version of the deficit-reduction bill that scraped through last Friday does not include the language, and Jewish groups were hoping it might disappear in the version that emerges in the House-Senate conference before Christmas break.

It’s not clear which senator inserted the language during the lengthy process of composing a bill that deals mostly with budget cutting to offset the costs of war and hurricane recovery, but it would have had to pass Republican muster. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the chairman of the Senate’s Budget Committee, initiated the bill, and it passed 52-47, largely along party lines.

As Foltin noted, the bill does provide some redress. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings would be able to suspend federal funding for a university for 60 days if she deems a complaint serious enough, but after that she would be required to resume the funding whether or not the complaint has been resolved. She also would be authorized to take such complaints into account when renewing grants to universities.

Additionally, the bill suggests linking funding for universities to their success in creating a cadre of Middle East experts in government.

However, the language that keeps the education secretary from touching “specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction” means that she wouldn’t be able to require a university’s Middle East studies department to balance a reliance on Arabists such as Edward Said with other historians with a more pro-Western tilt, such as Bernard Lewis.

Groups like AJCongress, ZOA and the Institute for Jewish and Community Research allege that anti-Western bias pervades American universities’s Mideast studies departments. Other groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the AJCommittee, agree that there is a problem but say progress is being made.

“Institutional anti-Semitism, discrimination and quotas against Jewish students are largely a thing of the past,” the ADL said in written testimony to the Commission on Civil Rights.

Should the language survive the House-Senate conference, another bill promoting much tougher measures could fall by the wayside, Jewish lobbyists said. Legislators could argue that a solution is already on the books, so they don’t need to pursue the matter further.

Jewish groups favor another bill that would establish an advisory committee to review complaints of bias, a measure that academic organizations say smacks of McCarthyism. That has passed a House committee but has yet to be considered by the full House, meaning the diluted version passed by the Senate on Nov. 3 is much further advanced.

Witnesses at the Civil Rights Commission hoped they would get a sympathetic ear for the proposed advisory committee. The commission has no enforcement powers, but its recommendations would have moral force in Washington.

Citing a litany of complaints from Jewish students across the country, Stern of the AJCongress, Tuchman of ZOA and Gary Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, painted a picture of a pervasively hostile environment.

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are systemic ideologies in higher education,” Tobin said.

Instead of the sympathy they expected, the witnesses got a sometimes-testy exchange on the role of government in policing campuses.

Significantly, the toughest questions came from commissioners most closely associated with the Bush administration, which recently revamped the commission to more closely reflect its own conservative values.

“I am extremely nervous about administrative oversight on university campuses,” said Abigail Thernstrom, the commission’s vice chairwoman. “You do not want administrators waking into classrooms and deciding what a professor is teaching is acceptable or unacceptable.”

Stern said such worries were unfounded. By mitigating bias, a federal advisory panel that would review complaints would encourage debate, not inhibit it, she said.

“Any intellectually honest person with integrity would say, ‘Wait a minute, there is another side here,’ ” she said.

Tobin said the threat of withdrawing federal funding would be a last resort meant to spur universities into using tools already at their disposal — for instance, increasing the involvement of trustees in hiring and firing decisions.

“This truly is a nuclear option,” he said of the proposed legislation.

The witnesses got a more sympathetic hearing from the two Democrats on the eight-person commission.

“Simply because something happens in the arena of a university does not qualify it as untouchable,” said Michael Yaki, a San Francisco lawyer.

He also chided conservatives on the commission who suggested that only physical harassment was out of bounds, noting that the legal definition of sexual harassment includes its verbal forms.

The conservative commissioners were equally skeptical of a federal role in policing anti-Semitism on campus.

Thernstrom, who is Jewish, said posters that had appeared on campuses that depicted Israelis as baby-killers were appalling, but might be part of the necessary give-and-take of university life.

“I don’t want universities to be comfortable places for students,” she said.

AIPAC seeks Iran sanctions

The pro-Israel lobby called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council for pursuing nuclear weapons. “It will be very disappointing if the IAEA fails this week to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said in a statement Wednesday.

Iran was found to be in non-compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in September, and the IAEA is meeting this week to debate sending the country to the Security Council for sanctions. “With time running out, the international community must work tirelessly to ensure that Iran is not allowed to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons or acquire such a capability from others,” AIPAC said. “The time for Security Council action is now.”

The organization also expressed concerns about a Russian proposal that would allow Iran to continue making precursors to bomb-quality uranium.

Sharon rejects land for peace approach, says aide

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
The Guardian (UK)
Wednesday November 23, 2005

Ariel Sharon no longer regards big compromises over land as being crucial to setting up an independent Palestinian state, says one of the Israeli prime minister's closest political advisers.

The day after Mr Sharon broke from the ruling Likud party to launch a new political movement ahead of a general election on March 28, the adviser, Eyal Arad, said the Israeli leadership had repudiated the central belief of years of negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that giving up land would buy peace.

Mr Arad, the prime minister's strategic policy adviser who was among those who urged the leader to quit Likud, said that Mr Sharon considered the 1993 Oslo accords, which sought peace based on Israel surrendering the territories occupied in 1967, as failed and discredited. Mr Arad said the Israeli leadership had interpreted the US-led "road map" for peace as laying out an alternative philosophy of "security for independence", meaning a "total end of the terrorist war" in return for a "Palestinian national home" but not necessarily based on the 1967 borders.

Palestinian officials described Mr Arad's view as an attempt to assert that Israel's efforts to impose de facto borders, using the West Bank barrier and settlement expansion, were not jeopardising peace. It was also in line with Mr Sharon's contention that the core of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians was not the occupation but Islamic terrorism.

Mr Arad said: "Since 1967, almost the entire international community and at least half the public in Israel assumed the conflict would be solved based on the formula of territories for peace. It was a naive formula and presupposed that the problem between the Israelis and Palestinians was the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip in 1967 and therefore if you remove the occupation ... the security problem, terrorism, will go away.

"This formula is both false philosophically and naive politically. That's why when it was implemented the Oslo agreement failed ... If you look at the bare statistics, since the Oslo agreement terrorism has increased many many times."

Mr Arad said that after Israel offered territorial compromises, including the division of Jerusalem, the intifada erupted. "The territorial problem was not the root cause of the conflict ... What the Palestinians sought was not really territories that they could control and run in the form of the Camp David proposal. What they really sought was independence.

"The road map replaced the falsehood of [territories for peace] with a much more realistic formula - security for independence. The road map postulates ... total dismantling of all terrorist apparatus in the Palestinian territories by the Palestinians ... What the prime minister says and what the road map says is that before full compliance nothing will happen."

In fact, the road map requires the Palestinian leadership to "undertake visible efforts" to stop attacks and start to dismantle "terrorist capabilities and infrastructure". It also says that a negotiated settlement is to be based on "the principle of land for peace".

The Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said: "They have been trying to say borders are not the issue while they use the [West Bank barrier] to build a border. I hope that ... the Israeli people will elect a government that will shoot for the end game, for a peace treaty and they know that to get that they must withdraw to the '67 borders. There is no other way."

Sharon's new party is called Kadima - Hebrew for "Forward"

Ariel Sharon´s new party is called "Forward". The new, centrist party was registered Thursday, with supporters of the Israeli prime minister saying it already had 144 members. Earlier, Sharon aides had opted for the temporary name National Responsibility.

"Kadima" is a term many Israelis associate with the battle-charge of army officers -- suggesting Sharon plans to continue highlighting his own military pedigree on the campaign trail ahead of early elections in March. Sharon quit the ruling Likud Party on Monday, saying ideological infighting was preventing him from pursuing peace with the Palestinians. Several senior Likud members have defected to join Kadima.

Reshaping Israel's Politics

The Washington Post
Thursday, November 24, 2005; A34

THREE MONTHS after its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip remade the landscape of the Middle East, another groundbreaking pullout has reshaped Israel's domestic politics. In this case, it is the departure of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from the right-wing Likud Party, which he helped found in 1973 and which has led the Israeli government for 20 of the past 28 years. Mr. Sharon's new National Responsibility Party separates loyalists of the Israeli leader from Likud members who sought to undermine him and stop the retreat from Gaza; the prime minister is now positioned as the centrist candidate in elections to be held in March. Together with the Gaza withdrawal, this political upheaval could pave the way for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, or another long period of stalemate and violence. Much will depend on the unpredictable decisions of Israeli voters -- and the equally unpredictable Mr. Sharon.

The latest in a lifetime of bold Sharon gambits followed a momentous internal election by Israel's Labor Party, which ousted venerable leader Shimon Peres, Mr. Sharon's partner in a coalition government, in favor of a 54-year-old trade union leader, Amir Peretz. He quickly withdrew his party from Mr. Sharon's government; his supporters believe he has the opportunity to lead Labor back to power by focusing on the inequalities created by Likud's embrace of free-market economics. That move forced Mr. Sharon's hand; though popular among Israelis generally, he has faced bitter resistance within Likud both from political rivals and from die-hard supporters of the Jewish settlement movement in Gaza and the West Bank. The split brought him immediate benefits: About one-third of Likud's parliamentary deputies defected with him, and initial polls showed that Mr. Sharon would defeat both Likud and Labor in a general election.

It remains to be seen whether Israelis really will embrace the new party on an election day four months away. Even murkier are Mr. Sharon's intentions: So far, he has offered few indications of what his party will stand for. Some speculated that the prime minister mainly sought to rid himself of troublesome Likud adversaries and consolidate presidential-like authority in a new government; he told reporters that "life in the Likud has become unbearable." Others suggested that Mr. Sharon made his move so as to enable a decisive follow-up to Gaza. At the first meeting of his new party, he said he would seek "to lay the foundation for a peace in which we set the permanent borders of the state, while insisting on the dismantling of the [Palestinian] terror organizations." In nearly four years in office, Mr. Sharon has preferred unilateral measures to negotiations with Palestinian leaders; does he mean to set "permanent borders" by peace accord, or fiat? The Bush administration, and others with vital interests in the Middle East, will have to wait and see.

Jihadist Iraq just won't happen

By Daniel Benjamin
Los Angeles Times
November 24, 2005

DANIEL BENJAMIN served on the National Security Council staff from 1994 to 1999. He is coauthor, with Steven Simon, of "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It

FROM THE PEOPLE who brought you Saddam Hussein's mushroom cloud and the secret Iraqi-Al Qaeda alliance comes a new specter to trouble our sleep: jihadist Iraq.

In a speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute, Vice President Dick Cheney used this nightmare vision to lash those, such as Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who have argued that it is time to begin withdrawing U.S. forces. "Iraq is part of a larger plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East, making Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against other nations," Cheney said. "In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with [Abu Musab] Zarqawi, [Osama] bin Laden and [Ayman] Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"

The suggestion that a jihadist takeover in Iraq would follow a U.S. withdrawal verges on preposterous. It is the latest in a parade of straw men dispatched to scare up support for wrongheaded and failed policies.

There is no question that the jihadists would like to seize a country as a base for wider operations. But they have nowhere near the capacity to achieve this in Iraq. Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq and other radical Islamist groups have bloodied U.S. forces, the fledgling Iraqi government and the Shiite population. The jihadist organizations lack the heavy weapons and the manpower that would be required to seize control of Baghdad, to capture and hold large tracts of territory that are occupied by hostile Shiites and Kurds who outnumber Sunnis four to one, or to run the country.

The insurgents might remain a formidable force by evading those who tried to hunt them down — as they have done with U.S. and Iraqi forces — but they could not conceivably prevail in the full-scale battles that the takeover of Iraq would entail. Only with the rapid influx of tens of thousands of fighters from outside Iraq could jihadists win control of the country. That scenario is farfetched.

Make no mistake: Much of western Iraq is and will remain a terrorist sanctuary. But neither U.S. forces nor Shiite-dominated Iraqi military units will be able to do much about that against an enemy that has excellent early warning and the capacity to slip away. It will be years before an Iraqi intelligence service can root these networks out.

The real threat is civil war. But here too it is not clear how much the U.S. can do to prevent it. If the Shiites and Kurds do not ameliorate the grievances of Iraqi Sunnis, civil war is probable. Keeping U.S. forces in Iraq in such circumstances would at best delay the inevitable.

There is a rich irony to the administration's argument about a jihadist Iraq. In the run-up to the war, the Bush team repeatedly underestimated the danger radical Islamists posed to U.S. plans for Iraq. The Pentagon, for example, knew well before the invasion of Iraq that Zarqawi was in the country, traveling far and wide to prepare for the insurgency he planned to mount once the United States invaded.

Moreover, the administration had ample intelligence that the toxin ricin was being produced at Zarqawi's base camp in the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq — outside the reach of Hussein's government. The military drew up plans for an attack. But the administration declined to strike for reasons that remain unclear. Later, it portrayed Zarqawi as the key link between Hussein and Al Qaeda. We now know that was false.

Now the administration holds up Zarqawi as the ultimate threat. Opponents of near-term withdrawal of U.S. forces say there will be a surge in attacks against American troops as they begin to depart. To be sure, the insurgents will want to make it seem that we were driven out. But the level of attacks in many categories — especially suicide bombings — has grown enormously without any drawdown.

By blundering in Iraq, the Bush administration has played right into two jihadist claims: First, that we are determined to occupy Muslim countries, steal their wealth and destroy their faith; and second, that we are a paper tiger that cannot accept casualties. By staying in Iraq, we confirm the former for many Muslims around the world and stoke recruitment and radicalization. By leaving, we confirm the latter, thereby encouraging jihadists.

Our departure from Iraq needs to be orderly and serve our own interests. How long it takes should be, unlike our occupation of the country, carefully planned. It should not be postponed by the threat of some imagined cataclysm.

Israel maintains its strategic advantage, says Jaffee Center

By Amos Harel
Haaretz Correspondent
23/11/2005

The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University has determined that the strategic balance in the Middle East clearly favors Israel, Jaffee officials said Tuesday at a press conference during which they presented the center's 2005 report.

"The strategic balance decidedly favors Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbors," the center said in a statement.

The center's head, Dr. Zvi Shtauber, said these conclusions may well affect the buildup of the Israel Defense Forces and the defense budget.

The report says little has changed significantly over the past year in the conventional military picture. The conventional advantage highlights the prominent role Israel has played in the low-intensity conflict waged by its adversaries, according to the center, which warned that despite a weakened intifada, the terror infrastructures have yet to be dismantled.

"The second intifada lost strength in part because Israel devised better methods to counter Palestinian terrorist activity," the center said. "This does not, however, constitute the dismantlement of the terrorist infrastructures, and Israel's deterrence of the Palestinian organizations, particularly the extremist groups, is limited and does not preclude a renewal of terrorist activity."

The West Bank separation fence has "in effect created a two-state situation, and populations on both sides of the barrier are adjusting to this reality," the center said. It cited surveys finding that more than 80 percent of the Israeli public supports the barrier, with 57 percent of Israel's Jewish population prepared, under certain circumstances, to consider the barrier a permanent border.

The Jaffee Center expects the upcoming general elections to "sharpen the divisions within the political map vis-a-vis the public's idea on how to resolve the Palestinian issue" and said elections results "will chart the level of public support for [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's endorsement of limited measures, including unilateral moves."

"The disengagement testifies to a new dominant pattern of thinking in Israel, highlighting demography over geography," according to the center.

The writers of the report expect that Israel's improved strategic position will allow it to continue to be "the dominant party" as it attempts to reach limited agreements with the Palestinians. Until the government chosen in the next elections becomes stable, the coming period of Israeli-Palestinian relations is expected to be characterized by attempts at crisis management rather than conflict resolution.

In the Palestinian Authority, a government coalition including Fatah and Hamas is likely to strengthen the internal debate within Hamas and may encourage more moderate trends, according to the center.

However, Jaffee analysts said stagnation of the political process is apt to intensify the drive among the radical Palestinian organizations to accelerate attacks from Gaza and the West Bank, including rocket attacks. "Israeli responses, which presumably will be especially severe in the pre-elections period, will add to the risk of further deterioration and yet another cycle of violence," the center said.

Meanwhile, the issue of regime stability has regained prominence on the regional strategic agenda, according to the center. It said the Arab world is showing clear signs of internal pressure and the recognition of the need for change, and that Arab regimes are paying greater attention to international norms.

"Spearheaded by the United States, international intervention is increasing in the form of external pressure, be it ideologically motivated or an excuse for the use of force, to launch processes of democratization in the region," the center said.