The War on Al Jazeera

by JEREMY SCAHILL
The Nation
[from the December 19, 2005 issue]

If the classified memo detailing President Bush's alleged proposal to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera is provided to The Nation, we will publish the relevant sections. Why is it so vital that this information be made available to the American people? Because if a President who claims to be using the US military to liberate countries in order to spread freedom then conspires to destroy media that fail to echo his sentiments, he does not merely disgrace his office and soil the reputation of his country. He attacks a fundamental principle, freedom of the press--particularly a dissenting and disagreeable press--upon which that country was founded. --The Editors

Nothing puts the lie to the Bush Administration's absurd claim that it invaded Iraq to spread democracy throughout the Middle East more decisively than its ceaseless attacks on Al Jazeera, the institution that has done more than any other to break the stranglehold over information previously held by authoritarian forces, whether monarchs, military strongmen, occupiers or ayatollahs. The United States bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001, shelled the Basra hotel where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests in April 2003, killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad and imprisoned several Al Jazeera reporters (including at Guantánamo), some of whom say they were tortured. In addition to the military attacks, the US-backed Iraqi government banned the network from reporting in Iraq.

Then in late November came a startling development: Britain's Daily Mirror reported that during an April 2004 White House meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, George W. Bush floated the idea of bombing Al Jazeera's international headquarters in Qatar. This allegation was based on leaked "Top Secret" minutes of the Bush-Blair summit. British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has activated the Official Secrets Act, threatening any publication that publishes any portion of the memo (he has already brought charges against a former Cabinet staffer and a former parliamentary aide). So while we don't yet know the contents of the memo, we do know that at the time of Bush's meeting with Blair, the Administration was in the throes of a very public, high-level temper tantrum directed against Al Jazeera. The meeting took place on April 16, at the peak of the first US siege of Falluja, and Al Jazeera was one of the few news outlets broadcasting from inside the city. Its exclusive footage was being broadcast by every network from CNN to the BBC.

The Falluja offensive, one of the bloodiest assaults of the US occupation, was a turning point. In two weeks that April, thirty marines were killed as local guerrillas resisted US attempts to capture the city. Some 600 Iraqis died, many of them women and children. Al Jazeera broadcast from inside the besieged city, beaming images to the world. On live TV the network gave graphic documentary evidence disproving US denials that it was killing civilians. It was a public relations disaster, and the United States responded by attacking the messenger.

Just a few days before Bush allegedly proposed bombing the network, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Falluja, Ahmed Mansour, reported live on the air, "Last night we were targeted by some tanks, twice...but we escaped. The US wants us out of Falluja, but we will stay." On April 9 Washington demanded that Al Jazeera leave the city as a condition for a cease-fire. The network refused. Mansour wrote that the next day "American fighter jets fired around our new location, and they bombed the house where we had spent the night before, causing the death of the house owner Mr. Hussein Samir. Due to the serious threats we had to stop broadcasting for few days because every time we tried to broadcast the fighter jets spotted us we became under their fire."

On April 11 senior military spokesperson Mark Kimmitt declared, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies." On April 15 Donald Rumsfeld echoed those remarks in distinctly undiplomatic terms, calling Al Jazeera's reporting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable.... It's disgraceful what that station is doing." It was the very next day, according to the Daily Mirror, that Bush told Blair of his plan. "He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere," a source told the Mirror. "There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do--and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

Al Jazeera's real transgression during the "war on terror" is a simple one: being there. While critical of the Bush Administration and US policy, it is not anti-American--it is independent. In fact, it has angered almost every Arab government at one point or another and has been kicked out of or sanctioned by many Arab countries. It holds the rare distinction of being shut down by both Saddam and the new US-backed government. It was the first Arab station to broadcast interviews with Israeli officials. It is hardly the Al Qaeda mouthpiece the Administration has wanted us to believe it is. The real threat Al Jazeera poses is in its unembedded journalism--precisely what is needed now to uncover the truth about the Bush-Blair meeting.

Conservative British MP Boris Johnson, who is by trade a journalist and is editor of The Spectator magazine, has offered to publish the memo if it is leaked to him. It should be published, and if any journal is prosecuted for doing so, it should be backed up by media organizations everywhere. The war against Al Jazeera and other unembedded journalists has been conducted with far too little outcry from the powerful media organizations of the world. It shouldn't take another bombing for this to be a story

Israelis trained Kurds in Iraq

Exclusive: A number of Israeli companies have won contracts with the Kurdish government in northern Iraq to train and equip Kurdish security forces and build an international airport, Yedioth Ahronoth reports; al-Qaeda warning of attack prompts hasty exit of all Israeli instructors from region

Anat Tal-Shir
Yedioth Ahronoth
Dec 3, 2005

Dozens of Israelis with a background in elite military combat training have been working for private Israeli companies in northern Iraq where they helped the Kurds establish elite anti-terror units, Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronot revealed Thursday.

According to the report, the Kurdish government contracted Israeli security and communications companies to train Kurdish security forces and provide them with advanced equipment.

Motorola Inc. and Magalcom Communications and Computers won contracts with the Kurdish government to the tune of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars.

The flagship of the contracts is the construction of an international airport in the northern Kurdish city of Ibril, a stepping stone towards the fulfillment of Kurdish national aspirations for independence.

In addition to Motorola and Magalcom, a company owned by Israeli entrepreneur Shlomi Michaels is in full business partnership with the Kurdish government, providing strategic consultation on economic and security issues.

The strategic consultation company was initially established by former Mossad chief Danny Yatom (Labor) and Michaels, yet Yatom sold his shares upon his election to the Knesset.

But that’s not all. Leading Israeli companies in the field of security and counter-terrorism have set up a training camp under the codename Z at a secret location in a desertic region in northern Iraq, where Israeli experts provide training in live fire exercises and self-defense to Kurdish security forces.

Al-Qaeda warning prompts hasty Israeli exit

Tons of equipment, including motorcycles, tractors, sniffer dogs, systems to upgrade Kalashnikov rifles, and bulletproof vests, have been shipped to Iraq’s northern region, with most products stamped ‘Made in Israel.’

The Israeli instructors entered Iraq through Turkey using their Israeli passports, undercover as agriculture experts and infrastructure engineers.

The Kurds had insisted the cooperation projects were kept secret, fearing exposure would motivate terror groups to target their Jewish guests.

Recent warnings that al-Qaeda may plan an attack on Kurdish training camps, prompted a hasty exit of all Israeli trainers from Iraq’s northern Kurdish regions.

The Defense Ministry said in response to the report that, “We haven’t allowed Israelis to work in Iraq, and each activity, if performed, was a private initiative, without our authorization, and is under the responsibility of the employers and the employees involved."

"The Defense Ministry renews its warning to Israeli citizens who choose to ignore our guidance and travel to banned destinations."

MK denies connection to strategic firm

Motorola Inc. said it is a U.S. company that operates in over 70 countries throughout the world, including in Iraq where it helped set up a cellular phone network and provided communications systems and equipment to Iraqi security forces.

“Motorola’s global operations are in full accordance with U.S. laws, and the laws of local governments,” a Motorola official said.

Magalcom sufficed with the following statement: “Being a public company traded on the NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Magalcom reports on its activities as required by law. The company is not in the habit of disclosing information about its customers beyond what appears in our reports.”

MK Yatom said he has had no contact with the strategic consultation company since being elected to the Knesset.

“I haven’t promoted it and insisted on not receiving updates about its activities,” he said.

Arabs deeply suspicious of US motives: poll shows

Reuters
3 December 2005

WASHINGTON — Arab nations are acutely suspicious of the Bush administration’s “democracy” agenda in the Middle East and believe the US invasion of Iraq has made the region less secure, said a poll released yesterday.

The poll, conducted in six Arab countries in October, found 78 per cent of respondents thought there was more terrorism because of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, with four out of five saying the war had brought less peace to the region.

Asked which countries posed the biggest threat to their nations, a majority chose Israel and the United States.

“The one fascinating outcome of this study is that the respondents view the United States and its policies through the prism of Iraq and Israel,” said Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland, who conducted the poll with Zogby International in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE.

Rather than being a model to inspire Arab nations to adopt democratic goals, Telhami said respondents felt the opposite was true of the United States, whose human rights image has been tarnished by scandals involving abuse by US forces of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and at a US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Bush administration has made spreading democracy in the Middle East a centrepiece of its foreign policy. The State Department in July appointed a special envoy, Karen Hughes, to improve the US image abroad, especially in Islamic nations. However, during her trips to the Middle East, Hughes has come face to face with Muslim anger over the US-led invasion in Iraq.

In the new poll, 69 per cent of those surveyed doubted that spreading democracy was the real US objective. Oil, protecting Israel, dominating the region and weakening the Muslim world were seen as US goals.

”America’s presence in Iraq is seen as a negative. It is scaring people about American intentions and having the opposite intended impact on Arab public opinion,” Telhami told Reuters.

Asked what their biggest concerns were about Iraq, a third feared the country would split up because of sectarian divisions, while 23 per cent worried the United States would dominate the country after the transfer of power and 27 per cent fretted that instability would spill over into the region.

More than half — 58 per cent — said Iraq was less democratic than before the war and three of four said Iraqis were worse off.

Asked which countries they would like to be the superpower, the most popular choice was France with 21 per cent, followed by China with 13 per cent, Pakistan and Germany tied with 10 per cent, Britain with 7 per cent, the United States with 6 per cent and finally Russia with 5 per cent,

France, which opposed the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, was also seen as the country where people had the most freedom and its President Jacques Chirac, was the leader most admired by respondents. Others included the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat and ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The poll was taken before an outbreak of riots in France by dissatisfied youths, many of them Muslims of North African ethnicity, which provoked Muslim criticism of conditions for minorities in France. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were the most disliked by those polled.

On Iran, most of the respondents said the US adversary should have the right to a nuclear programme and international pressure should cease while 21 per cent said it should be pressured to stop its nuclear ambitions.

The most popular television network for international news was Al Jazeera, favoured by 45 per cent.

Interviewers polled 800 people each from Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia; 500 each were questioned in Jordan and Lebanon and 217 were interviewed in the UAE.

The margin of error was 3.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent in all of the countries, except for the UAE where it was plus or minus 6.8 per cent.

The Revolt of the Generals

"Broken, Worn Out" and "Living Hand to Mouth"
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counter Punch
December 3, 2005

The immense significance of Rep John Murtha's November 17 speech calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq is that it signals mutiny in the US senior officer corps, seeing the institution they lead as "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth", to use the biting words of their spokesman, John Murtha, as he reiterated on December his denunciation of Bush's destruction of the Army.

A CounterPuncher with nearly 40 years experience working in and around the Pentagon told me this week that "The Four Star Generals picked Murtha to make this speech because he has maximum credibility." It's true. Even in the US Senate there's no one with quite Murtha's standing to deliver the message, except maybe for Byrd, but the venerable senator from West Virginia was a vehement opponent of the war from the outset , whereas Murtha voted for it and only recently has turned around.

So the Four-Star Generals briefed Murtha and gave him the state-of-the-art data which made his speech so deadly, stinging the White House into panic-stricken and foolish denunciations of Murtha as a clone of Michael Moore.

It cannot have taken vice president Cheney, a former US Defense Secretary, more than a moment to scan Murtha's speech and realize the import of Murtha's speech as an announcement that the generals have had enough.

Listen once more to what the generals want the country to know:

"The future of our military is at risk. Our military and our families are stretched thin. Many say the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on a third deployment. Recruitment is down even as the military has lowered its standards. They expect to take 20 percent category 4, which is the lowest category, which they said they'd never take. They have been forced to do that to try to meet a reduced quota.

"Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared.

"The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls in our bases at home. I've been to three bases in the United States, and each one of them were short of things they need to train the people going to Iraq.

"Much of our ground equipment is worn out.

"Most importantly -- this is the most important point -- incidents have increased from 150 a week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over a time when we had additional more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revolution at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled."

What happened on the heels of this speech is very instructive. The Democrats fell over themselves distancing themselves from Murtha, emboldening the White House to go one the attack.

From Bush's presidential plane, touring Asia, came the derisive comment that Murtha was of "endorsing the policies of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

It took the traveling White House about 48 hours to realize that this was a dumb thing to have said. Murtha's not the kind of guy you can slime, the way Bush and Co did the glass-jawed Kerry in 2004. The much decorated vet Murtha snapped back publicly that he hadn't much time for smears from people like Cheney who'd got five deferments from military service in Vietnam.

By the weekend Bush was speaking of Murtha respectfully. On Monday, gritting his teeth, Cheney told a Washington audience that though he disagreed with Murtha ihe's a good man, a Marine, a patriot, and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."

One day later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News, ``I do not think that American forces need to be there in the numbers that they are now because -- for very much longer -- because Iraqis are stepping up.'' A week later Bush was preparing a speech laying heavy emphasis on US withdrawals as the Iraqi armed forces take up the burden.

Are there US-trained Iraqi detachments ready in the wings? Not if you believe reports from Iraq, but they could be nonagenarians armed with bows and arrows and the Bush high command would still be invoking their superb training and readiness for the great mission.

Ten days after Murtha's speech commentators on the tv Sunday talk shows were clambering aboard the Bring eem home bandwagon. Voices calling for America to istay the course" in Iraq were few and far between. On December 1 Murtha returned to the attack in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, telling a civic group there that he was wrong to have voted for the war and that most U.S. troops will leave Iraq within a year because the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth".

The stench of panic in Washington that hangs like a winter fog over Capitol Hill intensified. The panic stems from the core concern of every politician in the nation's capital: survival. The people sweating are Republicans and the source of their terror is the deadly message spelled out in every current poll: Bush's war on Iraq spells disaster for the Republican Party in next year's midterm elections.

Take a mid-November poll by SurveyUSA: in only seven states did Bush's current approval rating exceed 50 per consisted of the thinly populated states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi. In twelve states, including California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan, his rating was under 35.

You have to go back to the early 1970s, when a scandal-stained Nixon was on the verge of resignation, to find numbers lower than Bush's. Like Bush, Nixon had swept to triumphant reelection in 1972. Less than two years later he turned the White House over to vice president Ford and flew off into exile.

No one expects Bush to resign, or even to be impeached (though vice president Cheney's future is less assured) and his second term has more than three years to run.

But right now, to use a famous phrase from the Nixon era, a cancer is gnawing at his presidency and that cancer is the war in Iraq. The American people are now 60 per cent against it and 40 per cent think Bush lied to get them to back it.

Hence the panic. Even though the seats in the House of Representatives are now so gerrymandered that less than 50 out of 435 districts are reckoned as ever being likely to change hands, Republicans worry that few seats, however gerrymandered, can withstand a Force 5 political hurricane.

What they get from current polls is a simple message. If the US has not withdrawn substantial numbers of its troops from Iraq by the fall of next year, a Force 5 storm surge might very well wash them away.

Amid this potential debacle, the Republicans' only source of comfort is the truly incredible conduct of the Democrats. First came the Democrats' terrified reaction to Murtha, symbolized by Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi's cancellation of a press conference supporting Murtha. This prompted the Republicans to realize that the Democrats were ready to have their bluff called by the Republican- sponsored resolution calling for immediate withdrawal, for which only three Democrats voted, while so-called progressives like Kucinich and Sanders and Conyers ran for cover.

Listen to any prominent Democrat senator , like Kerry or Clinton or Feingold or Obama and you get the same adamant refusal to go beyond the savage characterization by Glenn Ford and Peter Gamble of the Black Commentator, of Obama's address to the Council on Foreign Relations:

U.S. Senator Barack Obama has planted his feet deeply inside the Iraq war-prolongation camp of the Democratic Party, the great swamp that, if not drained, will swallow up any hope of victory over the GOP in next year's congressional elections. In a masterpiece of double-speak before the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, November 22, the Black Illinois lawmaker managed to out-mush-mouth Sen. John Kerry - a prodigious feat, indeed.

In essence, all Obama wants from the Bush regime is that it fess up to having launched the war based on false information, and to henceforth come clean with the Senate on how it plans to proceed in the future. Those Democrats who want to dwell on the past - the actual genesis and rationale for the war, and the real reasons for its continuation - should be quiet.

"Withdrawal" and "timetables" are bad words, and Obama will have nothing to do with them.

Of course, the "insurgents" are not a "faction," and must therefore be defeated. On this point, Obama and the Bush men agree: "In sum, we have to focus, methodically and without partisanship, on those steps that will: one, stabilize Iraq, avoid all out civil war, and give the factions within Iraq the space they need to forge a political settlement; two, contain and ultimately extinguish the insurgency in Iraq; and three, bring our troops safely home."

Nobody in the White House would argue with any of these points. Point number two in Obama's "pragmatic" baseline is, the containment and elimination of the "insurgency." Of course, one can only do that by continuing the war. Indeed, it appears that Obama and many of his colleagues are more intent on consulting the Bush men on the best ways to "win" the war than in effecting an American withdrawal at any foreseeable time.

They want "victory" just as much as the White House; they just don't want the word shouted at every press conference.

The Black Commentator concludes its excoriation of Obama and his fellow Democrats with these words:

By late summer of 2006, when voters are deciding what they want their Senate and House to look like, if the Democrats have not caught up to public opinion to offer a tangible and quick exit from Iraq, the Republicans will retain control of both chambers of congress.

All that will be left in November is mush from Kerry, Hillary, Biden, Edwards - and Obama's - mouths.

Canada continues shift toward Israel

A Canadian diplomat said Canada would vote against more of the U.N.’s annual litany of anti-Israel resolutions.

Last year Canada took a more pro-Israel stance on four of the annual package of 20 or so anti-Israel resolutions, and Deputy Ambassador Gilbert Laurin on Thursday told the General Assembly that Canada would vote against three more of the “divisive and unhelpful” resolutions this year. B’nai Brith Canada called the stance a “welcome first step.”

“Canada’s recognition of the injustice of the entrenched ritual of politicized anti-Israel resolutions ought to be part and parcel of a policy of zero tolerance on the part of our government for Israel-bashing at the U.N.,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith’s executive vice-president. According to Shimon Fogel of the Canada-Israel Committee, Canada’s intention to sponsor a more balanced resolution next year “represents a substantial contribution to rehabilitating the U.N.”

Israel: We prefer Assad

Israel told the United States it fears the outcome of regime change in Syria.

At a strategic-dialogue meeting this week among senior officials, Israel laid out for the United States three scenarios if Bashar Assad is toppled: chaos, an Islamist regime or another strongman from Assad’s minority Alawite sect. Israel fears all those options, saying Assad provides a measure of stability.

U.S. officials told their Israeli counterparts that toppling Assad could be “transformative” and dismissed concerns about an Islamist regime taking his place. Israel and the United States favor pressure on Syria to force it to stop hosting Palestinian terrorist groups and supporting Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization.

Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood

The Washington Times
Published December 3, 2005

For an outlawed political party, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has had an impressive showing in parliamentary elections. The group significantly bolstered its presence in 454-seat parliament and has established itself as the leading opposition group in Egypt --an ascent that looms worrisomely behind President Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative.

The Brotherhood's campaign motto has been "Islam is the solution." In practice, it has much more than a purely religious identity. The group has been pragmatic, politically savvy and adept at establishing grass-root networks that address the terrestrial needs and concerns of Egyptians. The party said it is willing to work with other opposition parties in parliament.

In the first two rounds of voting, the party won 76 seats, five times as many as it held in the outgoing parliament and more than the 65 seats it needed to be able to field a 2011 presidential candidate. In the third and final round on Thursday, which was marred by voter repression, the Brotherhood did not win any seats. Runoff elections will be held on Wednesday for the seats in which no candidate won a majority. The Brotherhood is fielding 35 candidates.

The Brotherhood, which renounced violence in the 1970s, is seeking to create an Islamic state through democratic means. The movement began as an Islamic resistance movement to British occupation in 1928 and was banned in 1954, forcing its candidates to run as independents. It has affiliates in many Arab states. The Islamic state that the Egyptian Brotherhood would like to establish would be significantly more hostile to Washington than the current Egyptian government. President Hosni Mubarak has cooperated with the United States on security and intelligence matters.

In August, this page predicted the Brotherhood would boost its representation in this month's elections, due to frustration with economic stagnation and a heightened sense of democratic entitlement in view of greater freedoms for Iraqis, Lebanese and Palestinians. The Brotherhood also represents an anti-American political stance which is particularly popular in Egypt right now. Egyptians are overwhelmingly opposed to the war in Iraq and have long been angered by what they perceive as unqualified U.S. support for Israel.

The spread of democracy has been the unifying theme to Mr. Bush's foreign policy. There has been some confusion about what that policy concretely means and how it will be applied toward autocratic regimes, some of which maintain a working relationship with Washington in a variety of areas. In Egypt and much of the Middle East, democratic reform benefits Islamic parties. In many countries, those parties have been the sole organized opposition force.

The Bush administration has no doubt put such considerations on balance and has not pushed for abrupt reform. U.S. officials should continue to calibrate its push for democracy, since it could have sudden and undesired effects. Mr. Bush is correct in stating that freedom and democracy are the drivers of peace and prosperity -- in the long term. In the short term, chaos or worse can result from an opening, particularly amid the Mideast ferment.

Iraq Fixer, No Exp. Needed, $1B-up

Editorial
The New York Times
December 3, 2005

Anyone who caught a glimpse of President Bush's speech on Iraq this week - delivered from an elaborately decorated stage confidently plastered with "Plan for Victory" placards - may have thought the administration believes that a detailed victory plan is in place. But there's still work to be done, especially if you're in the business of blue-sky consulting.

As the president's speech was being headlined, a far quieter government announcement from the Agency for International Development, the main pipeline for Iraq reconstruction, was offering a $1-billion-plus opportunity for interested parties to dream up "design and implementation" plans for stabilizing 10 "Strategic Cities" considered "critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq."

Talk about outsourcing: here comes the government's open invitation, for all "qualified sources" out there, to come up with $1.02 billion worth of fresh imaginings, even as the "Plan for Victory" is ballyhooed as a fully credible agenda in hand for fixing - perchance exiting - Iraq. Veterans of the think-tank consultancy complex in Washington are rating such an ultralucrative offer - an average of $100 million per city across two years - as eye-popping by the usual scale of Usaid grants. It's even more so when such a sweet deal comes, at least initially, with no specific strings attached.

"The assignment calls for the design and implementation of a social and economic stabilization program," the agency says in its brief proffer, adding, "Invitation is open to any type of entity."

If so, we hope Iraqi urbanites get wind of this thought-provoking windfall. Who knows? They may have a helpful idea or two, once the 10 cities are identified. Then again, the Usaid invitation cautions, "The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time." Hmm. Let's all think about that.

Guard entices ranks to recruit

Finder's fee introduced to help meet Army goals
By Tom Vanden Brook
USA TODAY Page 1A

The Army National Guard, battling a falloff in recruiting, is offering troops a finder's fee for lining up new soldiers.

The Guard Recruiter Assistant Program, launched this week in five states, offers National Guard members $1,000 for enlisting a recruit and another $1,000 when the prospect shows up for basic training.

“Bring in 10 people and you can earn $20,000,” says Lt. Col. Mike Jones, deputy division chief for recruiting and retention at the National Guard Bureau.

The Army Guard and Reserve have struggled with recruiting as the Pentagon has leaned heavily on their soldiers to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Before 9/11, Guard troops counted on drilling one weekend a month and two weeks each summer — not on overseas deployments as long as 18 months and the risk of death. As of Wednesday, 123,000 Guard and Reserve troops were on active duty.

The Guard recruited 50,219 troops — 20% short of its goal — in fiscal year 2005, which ended Sept. 30.

The National Guard has nearly doubled its recruiting force to 5,100 and tripled cash bonuses for some recruits. Those efforts are beginning to pay off, Jones says, noting that the National Guard had 4,050 new recruits in October, 102% of its goal.

But, he says, the Guard can't maintain a large, expensive recruiting force indefinitely. Enter the recruiter assistant program.

Nobody's in a better position to convince a potential recruit than a National Guard member, Jones says. National Guard members have always produced some of the best leads on recruits from family, co-workers or church, he says.

The program is open to part-time Guard members in good standing. They must complete an online training program that covers ethics, values of the National Guard and what qualifies someone to join the military.

They'll receive a kit to help market the Guard. Once they find a potential recruit, they enter the name on a website and full-time recruiters take it from there.

“This is not just a lead program,” Jones said. “It's not just, ‘Hey, I met Johnny, give him a call.' ”

An assistant recruiter is expected to serve as a mentor and sponsor to ensure that the new soldier succeeds.

For now, the program is a pilot project in Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia. It could go nationwide by September 2006, Jones says.

It could be opened further to military retirees or spouses, he says.

Profusion of Rebel Groups Helps Them Survive in Iraq

By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
December 2, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 1 - Here is a small sampling of the insurgent groups that have claimed responsibility for attacks on Americans and Iraqis in the last few months:

Supporters of the Sunni People. The Men's Faith Brigade. The Islamic Anger. Al Baraa bin Malik Suicide Brigade. The Tawid Lions of Abdullah ibn al Zobeir. While some of them, like the Suicide Brigade, claim an affiliation with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Al Qaeda claims them, others say they have acted alone or under the guidance of another group.

While on Wednesday President Bush promised nothing less than "complete victory" over the Iraqi insurgency, the apparent proliferation of militant groups offers perhaps the best explanation as to why the insurgency has been so hard to destroy.

The Bush administration has long maintained, and Mr. Bush reiterated in his speech Wednesday, that the insurgency comprises three elements: disaffected Sunni Arabs, or "rejectionists"; former Hussein government loyalists; and foreign-born terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Iraqi and American officials in Iraq say the single most important fact about the insurgency is that it consists not of a few groups but of dozens, possibly as many as 100. And it is not, as often depicted, a coherent organization whose members dutifully carry out orders from above but a far-flung collection of smaller groups that often act on their own or come together for a single attack, the officials say. Each is believed to have its own leader and is free to act on its own.

Highly visible groups like Al Qaeda, Ansar al Sunna and the Victorious Army Group appear to act as fronts, the Iraqis and the Americans say, providing money, general direction and expertise to the smaller groups, but often taking responsibility for their attacks by broadcasting them across the globe.

"The leaders usually don't have anything to do with details," said Abdul Kareem al-Eniezi, the Iraqi minister for national security. "Sometimes they will give the smaller groups a target, or a type of target. The groups aren't connected to each other. They are not that organized."

Some experts and officials say there are important exceptions: that Al Qaeda's leaders, for instance, are deeply involved in spectacular suicide bombings, the majority of which are still believed to be carried out by foreigners. They also say some of the smaller groups that claim responsibility for attacks may be largely fictional, made up of ragtag groups of fighters hoping to make themselves seem more formidable and numerous than they really are.

But whatever the appearances, American and Iraqi officials agree on the essential structure of the Iraqi insurgency: it is horizontal as opposed to hierarchical, and ad hoc as opposed to unified. They say this central characteristic, similar to that of terrorist organizations in Europe and Asia, is what is making the Iraqi insurgency so difficult to destroy. Attack any single part of it, and the rest carries on largely untouched. It cannot be decapitated, because the insurgency, for the most part, has no head. Only recently, American and Iraqi experts say, have they begun to grasp the new organizational structure that, among other things, is making the insurgency so difficult to stop.

"There is no center of gravity, no leadership, no hierarchy; they are more a constellation than an organization," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation. "They have adopted a structure that assures their longevity."

The insurgency's survivability presents perhaps the most difficult long-term challenge for the Iraqi government and American commanders. The primary military goal of groups like Al Qaeda and Ansar al Sunna is not to win but simply not to lose; to hang on until the United States runs out of will and departs. Even killing or capturing the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, many Iraqi and American officials say, will not end the rebellion.

In a war as murky as the one in Iraq, details about the workings of the insurgency are fleeting and few. But what is available suggests that the movement is often atomized and fragmented, but no less lethal for being so.

A review of the dozens of proclamations made by jihadi groups and posted on Islamist Web sites found more than 100 different groups that either claimed to be operating in Iraq or were being claimed by an umbrella group like Al Qaeda. Most of the Internet postings were located and translated by the SITE Institute, the Washington group that, among other things, tracks insurgent activity on the Web.

Of the groups found by SITE, 59 were claimed by Al Qaeda and 36 by Ansar al Sunna. Eight groups claimed to be operating under the direction of the Victorious Army Group, and five groups said they were operating under the 20th of July Revolution Brigade.

The complex nature of the insurgency was illustrated on Oct. 24, when three suicide bombers, one driving a cement mixer full of TNT, staged a coordinated attack on the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels in central Baghdad. The attack was one of the most sophisticated yet, with the first explosion ripping open a breach in the hotels' barriers. That allowed the cement mixer to come within a few yards of the Sheraton before being hung up in barbed wire.

An American solider opened fire on the driver of the truck, and the bomb was apparently detonated by remote control. Twelve people died, and American and Iraqis agreed later that the attack had come very close to bringing both towers down.

Within 24 hours, Al Qaeda, in an Internet posting viewed round the world, boasted of its role in attacking the "crusaders and their midgets."

But in the small print of the group's proclamation, Al Qaeda declared that the attack had actually been carried out by three separate groups: the Attack Brigade, the Rockets Brigade and Al Baraa bin Malik Suicide Brigade. The three groups, the Qaeda notice said, had acted in "collaboration," with some fighters conducting surveillance while others provided cover fire.

Rita Katz, the director of SITE, which is now working under a United States government contract to investigate militant groups, said the attack on the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels had probably been planned and directed at the highest levels of Al Qaeda.

The leaders may have brought the three "brigades" together to stage the attack, she said, and probably provided expertise as well as the suicide bombers themselves. "This was something that was coordinated at the highest level," she said.

But for most of the attacks, such top-down coordination is uncommon, Ms. Katz and American and Iraqi officials said. Most, they said, are planned and carried out by the local groups, with the leaders of the umbrella groups having little or no knowledge of them.

American and Iraqi experts also say there appear to be important distinctions among the umbrella groups. While Islamist groups like Al Qaeda and Ansar al Sunna attack military and civilian targets at will, other organizations, like the Victorious Army Group, which is believed to be associated with followers of Saddam Hussein's government, appear to attack only American or Iraqi solders.

In recent months, some insurgent groups have refined their target goals even further. In July, Al Qaeda said it had formed a group called the Omar Brigade to focus on killing members of Shiite militias like the Badr Brigade. Since then, the Omar Brigade has taken responsibility for dozens of killings.

Some insurgent groups appear to be limited to exclusive geographic areas. The Zi al Nourein Brigade, whose exploits are regularly proclaimed by Ansar al Sunna, appears to operate almost exclusively in Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Each week, more such groups announce their presence.

"Following Allah's orders to his worshipers, the mujahedeen, to join together and stand in one line against Allah's enemies," a posting on the Internet said July 12, "Al Miqaeda Brigade Groups announced that they are joining Ansar al Sunna."

American and Iraqi officials say they are not always sure that the groups' public claims of responsibility are valid. It is an old trick that guerrilla movements use to exaggerate their size and power.

Other experts who track jihadi Web sites say it is possible to authenticate the claim of an attack by a particular group. Most of the claims of responsibility appear on Web sites that tightly control access to their message boards.

The array of insurgent groups has prompted competition among them. On the streets of Ramadi, the violent city west of Baghdad, a leaflet found on the street, signed by a group called the Islamic Army, said that "the growing number of mujahedeen groups, which grew in number when the people realized their value," had caused confusion about which group was speaking for which.

The Islamic Army leaflet read like an advertisement offered by a product manager worried about imitators.

"We are asking people to reject any statement signed by the Sajeel Battalion of the Islamic Army that does not carry their slogan or seal," the leaflet said.

One question that remains unsettled is the nationalities of suicide bombers. American and Iraqi officials have long said they believe that the majority of suicide attacks are carried out by foreigners.

In June, in an apparent answer to that question, Al Qaeda announced the formation of the Ansar Brigade, which it described as an all-Iraqi suicide unit. Since then, the Ansar Brigade has taken responsibility for few such attacks.

One place where the Ansar Brigade did apparently strike was Jordan last month, when suicide bombers struck three hotels in Amman. The police there determined that Iraqis had carried out the attack.

In a message posted on the Internet, Al Qaeda announced that the Ansar Brigade, its Iraqi suicide group, had carried out the attack.

Plan: We Win

Editorial
The New York Times
December 1, 2005

We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.

It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war.

Instead, Mr. Bush traveled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be a midshipman, you'd have to have been watching cable news at midmorning on a weekday to catch him.

The address was accompanied by a voluminous handout entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," which the White House grandly calls the newly declassified version of the plan that has been driving the war. If there was something secret about that plan, we can't figure out what it was. The document, and Mr. Bush's speech, were almost entirely a rehash of the same tired argument that everything's going just fine. Mr. Bush also offered the usual false choice between sticking to his policy and beating a hasty and cowardly retreat.

On the critical question of the progress of the Iraqi military, the president was particularly optimistic, and misleading. He said, for instance, that Iraqi security forces control major areas, including the northern and southern provinces and cities like Najaf. That's true if you believe a nation can be built out of a change of clothing: these forces are based on party and sectarian militias that have controlled many of these same areas since the fall of Saddam Hussein but now wear Iraqi Army uniforms. In other regions, the most powerful Iraqi security forces are rogue militias that refuse to disarm and have on occasion turned their guns against American troops, like Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Mr. Bush's vision of the next big step is equally troubling: training Iraqi forces well enough to free American forces for more of the bloody and ineffective search-and-destroy sweeps that accomplish little beyond alienating the populace.

What Americans wanted to hear was a genuine counterinsurgency plan, perhaps like one proposed by Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a leading writer on military strategy: find the most secure areas with capable Iraqi forces. Embed American trainers with those forces and make the region safe enough to spend money on reconstruction, thus making friends and draining the insurgency. Then slowly expand those zones and withdraw American forces.

Americans have been clamoring for believable goals in Iraq, but Mr. Bush stuck to his notion of staying until "total victory." His strategy document defines that as an Iraq that "has defeated the terrorists and neutralized the insurgency"; is "peaceful, united, stable, democratic and secure"; and is a partner in the war on terror, an integral part of the international community, and "an engine for regional economic growth and proving the fruits of democratic governance to the region."

That may be the most grandiose set of ambitions for the region since the vision of Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar, who saw the hand writing on the wall. Mr. Bush hates comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. But after watching the president, we couldn't resist reading Richard Nixon's 1969 Vietnamization speech. Substitute the Iraqi constitutional process for the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Bush's ideas about the Iraqi Army are not much different from Nixon's plans - except Nixon admitted the war was going very badly (which was easier for him to do because he didn't start it), and he was very clear about the risks and huge sacrifices ahead.

A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more.

A Norwegian company begins drilling in the north without approval from Baghdad

Kurdish Oil Deal Shocks Iraq's Political Leaders

By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times
December 1, 2005

BAGHDAD — A controversial oil exploration deal between Iraq's autonomy-minded Kurds and a Norwegian company got underway this week without the approval of the central government here, raising a potentially explosive issue at a time of heightened ethnic and sectarian tensions.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls a portion of the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, last year quietly signed a deal with Norway's DNO to drill for oil near the border city of Zakho. Iraqi and company officials describe the agreement as the first involving new exploration in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Drilling began after a ceremony Tuesday, during which Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish northern region, vowed "there is no way Kurdistan would accept that the central government will control our resources," according to news agency reports.

In Baghdad, political leaders on Wednesday reacted to the deal with astonishment.

"We need to figure out if this is allowed in the constitution," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an advisor to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "Nobody has mentioned it. It has not come up among the government ministers' council. It has not been on their agenda."

The start of drilling, called "spudding" in the oil business, is sure to be worrisome to Iraq's Sunni Arab minority. They fear a disintegration of Iraq into separate ethnic and religious cantons if regions begin to cut energy deals with foreign companies and governments. Sunnis are concentrated in Iraq's most oil-poor region.

Iraq's neighbors also fear the possibility of Iraqi Kurds using revenue generated by oil wells to fund an independent state that might lead the roughly 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iran and Syria to revolt.

Iraqi legal experts and international oil industry analysts have questioned the deal. Oil industry trade journals had expressed doubts that it would come to fruition.

Iraq's draft constitution, approved in an Oct. 15 national referendum, stipulates that "the federal government with the producing regional and governorate governments shall together formulate" energy policy. However, it also makes ambiguous reference to providing compensation for "damaged regions that were unjustly deprived by the former regime."

Iraq's Kurds have argued that the country's existing oil fields and infrastructure, such as those in the largely Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Khanaqin, should be divvied up by the central government but that future oil discoveries should be controlled by each oil-producing region.

In his speech Tuesday, Barzani, the nephew of Kurdish politician and former guerrilla leader Massoud Barzani, eschewed the language of the law and couched the deal in political terms. He invoked the Kurds' years of deprivation at the hands of the Sunni Arab-dominated government of Saddam Hussein.

"The time has come that instead of suffering, the people of Kurdistan will benefit from the fortunes and resources of their country," he said during the ceremony in the western portion of Kurdish-controlled territory.

The Kurds, who during the last several years of Hussein's rule maintained sovereignty in northern Iraq under the protection of U.S. warplanes, made millions in transit and customs fees as the Baghdad government smuggled oil to Turkey in violation of United Nations sanctions. Since the end of the sanctions, the Kurds have sought ways to make up for that lost income.

The eastern administrative half of the Kurdish region also is rushing to sign energy deals with foreign companies without Baghdad's approval. The government of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, based in the city of Sulaymaniya, has signed an electricity agreement with a Turkish company and explored a possible oil deal with a foreign partnership near the city of Chamchamal, the site of several dormant oil wells.

During months of painstaking constitutional negotiations, Kurds insisted on the authority to cut energy deals without Baghdad's approval. Under the draft charter, the task of determining how oil resources will be allocated is left to the National Assembly that will be elected Dec. 15.

The language in the constitution regarding the power of regions to pen such contracts was a major reason that the vast majority of Sunnis voted against the charter in October.

The announcement of the DNO drilling took many Iraqis by surprise Wednesday.

"This is unprecedented," said Alaa Makki, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group. "It's like they are an independent country. This is Iraqi oil and should be shared with all the Iraqi partners."

Makki said Kurds were trying to have it both ways, controlling the Iraqi presidency and several powerful ministries in the national government while also trying to lay claim to extra-constitutional powers in the north. Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, is the Iraqi president.

However, Helge Eide, managing director of Oslo-based DNO, said he believed Iraq's new constitution gave the Kurdish north jurisdiction over certain drilling and oil exploration activities.

"That was clearly pointed out by Mr. [Nechirvan] Barzani," said Eide, who attended the Zakho ceremony.

Oil companies have become used to operating in hostile and unstable territories. DNO, founded 25 years ago, is considered an upstart in the oil business, with projects in Yemen, Mozambique and Equatorial Guinea, the site of a coup attempt last year, as well as northern Europe.

Eide said his company was more than willing to work with the government in Baghdad, though it had not yet signed a deal with the capital for oil exploration. In April, the company signed a deal to provide the Iraqi Oil Ministry with training and technology as "the first steps" to being invited by Baghdad, as well as the Irbil-based Kurdish government, for future oil and exploration work.

Iraq, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, holds an estimated 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, mainly in the south, according to Oil & Gas Journal, an industry publication.

That places Iraq among the top five nations in oil reserves. Iraq could contain significantly more undiscovered oil where energy exploration hasn't occurred, an area that stretches across about 90% of the country, the U.S. Energy Department said.

Iraq exports about 2 million barrels of oil a day, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris.

Bush Acknowledges Difficulties in Iraq

Speech Offers No Timeline For U.S. Exit, Focuses on Effort To Rebuild Mideast Nation's Army
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and JOHN D. MCKINNON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 1, 2005; Page A4

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sought once again to convince Americans he has a victory strategy in Iraq. But the speech was as notable for what he left out.

Mr. Bush said that the number of battle-ready Iraqi army and police battalions has grown markedly -- but didn't address accusations that Shiite and Kurdish security forces are torturing and killing Sunni civilians. He said continued progress means "we will be able to decrease our troop levels" -- but declined to offer a general timetable for when. He said U.S. forces are "learning from our experiences [and] adjusting our tactics" -- but outlined no new administration strategy.

What was new in Mr. Bush's address at the U.S. Naval Academy was his detailed deconstruction of the opposition that U.S. forces face, and his unusually frank admission of problems in training Iraqi forces to counter them. He acknowledged the "sincere" arguments of political adversaries seeking withdrawal of U.S. troops, while vowing "America will not run in the face of car bombers as long as I am your commander in chief."

Less clear was whether the speech can stop the erosion of public confidence in the administration's handling of Iraq, which has rattled fellow Republicans looking ahead to U.S. midterm elections. Democrats edged even further away in the wake of the speech, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi embraced a prompt troop withdrawal.

In the first of a quartet of presidential speeches that White House aides plan for the run-up to the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, Mr. Bush re-emphasized the importance of the war effort and the administration's belief that it had a strategy to win in Iraq. He focused on the status of the U.S.-led effort to create new Iraqi military and security forces capable of effectively battling the country's insurgents, which both parties see as a prerequisite for any eventual American military withdrawal.

Mr. Bush acknowledged that administration missteps in the training and equipping of the Iraqi forces contributed to lingering shortcomings in their effectiveness. But he said those mistakes had been fixed.

"Over the past 2½ years, we've faced some setbacks in standing up a capable Iraqi security force, and their performance is still uneven in some areas," he said. "Yet many of those forces have made real gains over the past year, and Iraqi soldiers take pride in their progress."

Mr. Bush said 80 Iraqi battalions are now able to fight alongside the U.S., with 40 more able to take a lead role in combat. He said the U.S. had turned over more than a dozen military facilities to the Iraqis, who were also assuming full security responsibility for growing portions of the country.

The opposition, he explained, consists principally of "rejectionists" unhappy that Sunnis no longer dominate Iraq, "Saddamists" loyal to Saddam Hussein's fallen regime and terrorists aligned with al Qaeda. The terrorists, he added, are "the smallest, but the most lethal."

Yet Mr. Bush appeared to gloss over shortcomings in the Iraqi security forces playing a greater role in taking on the insurgents. Human-rights groups have offered evidence that the new forces routinely use torture, but Mr. Bush declined to address the accusations. He also declined to address widespread Sunni accusations that members of the overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish security forces have kidnapped and killed hundreds of Sunni men in recent months, a development that is increasing tensions between the groups and raising the specter of civil war.

American officials in Iraq have expressed mounting alarm that Shiite and Kurdish political parties effectively use the security forces as sectarian militias. Both Shiites and Kurds are also believed to run networks of secret prisons across the country where Sunnis are held or interrogated, often with the tacit or active cooperation of Iraqi security forces in such areas.

"If you define success in terms of creating a more disciplined military that will stand and fight, then we're making progress," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a think tank here. "But if you define it as a military that has risen above sectarian loyalties, then we're not making progress."

Mr. Bush credited influential Sunni clerics for encouraging more Sunnis to join the security forces and help it become a "truly national institution." But military experts questioned whether Iraqi forces had improved as much as Mr. Bush suggested.

In his remarks, Mr. Bush compared the roles played by Iraqi forces in coalition-led assaults on a pair of insurgent strongholds. He noted that, when coalition forces swept into Fallujah last year, American forces did virtually all of the combat and used the Iraqis mainly as backup. During the recent battle in Tal Afar, by contrast, Iraqi forces outnumbered American ones and "primarily led" the assault, Mr. Bush said.

But experts warned against extrapolating too heavily from the Tal Afar assault. They noted that Iraqi forces used in the attack were battle-hardened Kurdish fighters, not new recruits trained by Americans. Iraqi forces played an active role, but the experts said American commanders planned the overall assault and sent U.S. forces into areas where the insurgent presence was believed strongest. And the overall level of combat was far fiercer in Fallujah than in Tal Afar, which insurgents had largely deserted, they noted.

Mr. Bush's speech heartened Republican lawmakers, who have been eager for the White House to go back on the offensive after weeks of sharp Democratic attacks. A few Democrats offered qualified praise, with Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, calling the address "a positive step."

But other Democrats panned the speech as a White House effort to gloss over its problems. Instead of specific measures of success or a timeline for withdrawal, it simply provided "more generalities," said Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.), a former Army Ranger who emerged as the Democrats' point person on the speech. "We have to have a sense of how long it will take," he said.

Yet the demand for a more rapid drawdown of U.S. troops also leaves Democrats with a quandary. Insisting on a timeline allows Republican critics to paint them as soft on defense; cooperating with Mr. Bush's approach risks inflaming the party's increasingly vocal, antiwar base.

Democrats in recent days have conceded privately that they have already used many of their best political weapons, citing the Senate debate last month over a timetable resolution and the call by Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a normally hawkish Vietnam veteran, for a pullout.

Shaking: Torture, Not 'Aggressive Interrogation'

The Washington Post
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A24

Central Intelligence Agency operatives acknowledged that the CIA uses shaking as an aggressive interrogation technique, but CIA Director Porter J. Goss denied that it constituted torture ["Director of Torture," editorial, Nov. 23].

I examined shaking victims as part of a Physicians for Human Rights investigation in 1997 in Gaza and the West Bank. Typically, the prisoner was seated on a stool with his legs and hands bound while the interrogator grabbed him by the shoulders or collar and violently shook him back and forth.

When this kind of violent shaking is done to babies, it can result in brain damage and death.

The same consequences can occur in adults. I interviewed and examined a dozen Palestinians who had been violently shaken while in Israeli custody. Many had personality, behavioral and cognitive changes consistent with frontal

lobe brain damage. At least one man died in custody when violent shaking caused, as an autopsy revealed, tearing of the blood vessels under the skull and lethal intracranial bleeding.

In 1999 the Israeli Supreme Court deemed shaking to be torture and banned it. The effect of the court's ruling has been murky, but the judgment that shaking constitutes torture is inescapable.

LEE D. CRANBERG

Boston

The writer is a clinical instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Gaps in Bush's Plan

By Jim Hoagland
The Washington Post
Thursday, December 1, 2005; A25

President Bush held out the promise yesterday of reductions of American troop levels in Iraq next year -- if they can be made on his terms. His speech at the Naval Academy took a necessary step toward hedging his Iraq policy in the face of popular discontent. But it is unlikely to be sufficient to change hearts and minds.

Bush's political purpose was spelled out on the signboards posted behind him for the television audience: "Plan for Victory." I have one, the president argued in his words and his resolute style. But there were crucial omissions in his attempt to take back the momentum in a national debate that has turned against him.

An effective endgame strategy must center on making U.S. withdrawal the primary catalyst for change in Iraq, rather than a grudging response to the political pressures at home and continuing losses in Iraq.

Those forces helped spark Bush's speech and the elaboration of his conditions for withdrawal. They also prompted the timing of the White House's release of a 35-page "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq."

Both the speech and the strategy document restate and refine Bush's still-firm commitment to finishing what he has started in Iraq. But they also understated or avoided the concrete details of the risks that any form of withdrawal, hedged or precipitous, will raise.

Making withdrawal a catalyst for change means equipping Iraqi forces with lethal U.S. weaponry -- something the Pentagon is reluctant to do. It means letting an elected Iraqi government run its own internal intelligence organization -- something the CIA is reluctant to do. It means taking the kind of big risks on Iraqis that Bush has been reluctant to take since the beginning of the war.

"I am dancing as fast as I can" seemed to be the true subtext of Bush's address. But he failed to show conclusively that his pace is fast enough to calm public opinion or to lead events in Iraq once withdrawals do begin.

Bush did make his first significant admissions that -- in the classic Washington phrase for refusing to assign responsibility -- mistakes were made. He highlighted failures in organizing Iraqi police and security forces into small units that were lightly armed with discarded Soviet-made weapons, if they were armed at all. Nothing more would be needed in the wake of a rapid U.S. battlefield victory and the centering of power in the hands of an occupation authority, it had been assumed.

His admissions indicate an awareness that Iraq turned out to be a very different, much more fragmented and inherently violent land than U.S. policymakers anticipated. Or, worse, than they were willing to admit in the first year of occupation, which featured experiments with sophisticated but unworkable caucus arrangements to choose local officials and idealistic, irrelevant free-market scenarios for a war-devastated economy.

"I watched as we destroyed every weapon we found and assumed that we would be reequipping friendly units with U.S. arms. I was stunned when I saw I was wrong," says a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who worked in Iraq after the invasion. He concluded that U.S. commanders did not have enough confidence in the Iraqis they were recruiting to give them effective weapons.

"We lost a year on training and equipping an effective Iraqi force," Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) told me after listening to the president's speech, which he warmly praised.

Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, confirmed that he has been urging the Pentagon to begin arming Iraqi units with standardized U.S. vehicles, rifles and other equipment to replace the hodgepodge of obsolete weaponry that the previous Iraqi interim government bought from former Soviet satellites in often dubious deals.

One quick way to accomplish this would be for U.S. units that are withdrawn to leave behind at least a portion of their equipment. Warner is considering legislation that would authorize that step if the Pentagon can work out details, he indicated.

"Yes, there are risks. But we have to take them, to say to the Iraqis: 'It's yours. You're a fully sovereign nation.' That will be the tipping point," says Warner.

Americans still have a limited understanding of -- and ability to mold -- Iraqi society. Neither wars nor speeches can change that. But the president needs to return to this subject again in the near future and demonstrate a deepening awareness that the war in Iraq must be fought first of all on Iraqi terms, by Iraqis, for Iraqi reasons.

Book Review: College campuses quiet, but anti-Israel feeling is growing

The Uncivil University: Politics and Propaganda in American Education
by Gary A. Tobin, Aryeh K. Weinberg and Jenna Ferer.

When it comes to raucous anti-Israel rallies, it’s quiet on the nation’s campuses. Too quiet, San Francisco’s Gary Tobin says.

The chaotic, often violent anti-Israel campus demonstrations of 2001 and 2002 caught the attention of the media and provided an easy example for pro-Israel activists to say, “See? This is what we’re up against.”

But as the 800-person rallies of 2002 give way to seven disgruntled socialists shouting into a bullhorn to disinterested lunchtime crowds, it would be foolish to think the problem of anti-Israel behavior on campuses has been whipped.

Far from it, Tobin writes in “The UnCivil University,” a new publication of his Institute of Jewish & Community Research. Campus demonstrations are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“When there are not a lot of mass rallies on campus, it makes the level of anti-Israelism more insidious and more dangerous. The next time there’s a precipitating event, you’ll see the rallies again,” he said.

The real problem doesn’t involve bullhorns and building occupations, he continued: It’s coming in the classrooms, where holding views strongly critical of Israel is not only politically correct but, increasingly, de rigueur.

The Israeli-Palestinian debate is “framed in the politics of race, which is why it has so much currency on campuses. Jews are the white colonial oppressors and the Palestinians are portrayed as the brown victims of colonization. So to be a white, Jewish student in support of Israel means you risk being branded as a racist as a 19-year-old. And that is far more insidious on a day-to-day basis than any mass rally,” Tobin said.

“The whole field of Mideast studies was hijacked by Edward Said and his Orientalism,” Tobin said. “The field on the whole has become mediocre. People are hired and promoted on the basis of their ideology, not on scholarship. You will never find a field so thoroughly corrupted by ideology.”

In the book, co-authored by Aryeh K. Weinberg and Jenna Ferer, Tobin provides several examples of anti-Israel machinations deep within academia, including:

• Robert Johnson, a widely respected history professor at the City University of New York, was denied tenure for “uncollegial behavior” following disagreements with fellow faculty members over his personal pro-Israel views.

• DePaul University professor Thomas Klocek was dismissed without a hearing after pro-Palestinian activists claimed he told them that “most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim.” After dismissing Klocek, Tobin notes that DePaul subsequently invited Colorado University professor Ward Churchill, who infamously referred to victims of the World Trade Center attacks as “little Eichmanns,” to lecture at the university.

Two tactics taken by pro-Israel activists have been endowing chairs of Israel studies and working to educate Jewish students to defend Israel. Neither is adequate, in Tobin’s view. No university would ever excuse derogatory statements about African Americans because of the existence of an African American studies department. And he doesn’t believe students can solve an entrenched institutional problem.

He encourages alumni, donors, trustees and faculty to get involved. Eighty percent of American students go to public schools, so voters ought to get involved as well.

“We should not let higher education get hijacked like this,” said Tobin, who testified about campus anti-Israel behavior before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in mid-November.

And the outcome of this battle couldn’t be more important, he adds. Polls he has taken show college students growing more and more anti-Israel over five-year increments. A poll he will release in the spring of 1,300 university faculty members queried about opinions on Israel — “and they’re not very good.”

“This is a serious problem for the Jewish community. And the Jewish community should not be dealing with this problem alone,” he said.

“We are losing the ideological battle on campus. Over the past 40 years, anti-Semitism has decreased in America, and the American public, on the whole, is still highly supportive of Israel. But give what’s going on, on campus, that’s not going to last forever.”

Bush visit

Naval Academy midshipmen sleep in their seats as they wait for President George Bush to arrive at the Academy in Annapolis, Md., Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005. Bush is scheduled to give a speech later in the morning. (AP Photo/Chris Gardner)

Text of Al-Jazeera Letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair

Regarding "Bush Bombing Memo"
TO THE ATTENTION OF:
The Right Honourable Tony Blair
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Date: 26 November, 2005

Dear Prime Minister,

It is with a great deal of concern that I write to you regarding the alleged statements made in the memo reported in the Daily Mirror this past week. The statements were to have occurred between President Bush and yourself regarding our organization, Al-Jazeera Channel. As alleged in the report the memo states that President Bush disclosed his plan to target Al-Jazeera at a White House face-to-face meeting with you on April 16, 2004. The report goes on to state that you subsequently dissuaded President Bush from doing so. On hearing about the memo we were astonished but we reserved our judgement on the statements until we could verify the claims being made by the report. Consequently, we were hoping that the memo would be made public to clarify the situation. However, we recently learned that the Attorney General has placed an order not to disclose the contents of the memo.

We are troubled and deeply concerned that this latest development is only increasing the outrage and shock felt by both our organization and news organizations across the world as well as by the public. Our profession is built on the value of the freedom of speech, and institutions such as ours struggle hard to maintain and champion these values.

We are calling upon you and your government to put an end to this widespread speculation and to set the record straight. We hope that you would agree with us that disclosing the contents of the memo would be in the best interest of the truth. The idea of either seriously or humorously suggesting the targeting of civilian news organisations is to us abhorrent in an age where the world is struggling for the ideals of democracy and freedom of speech. This is especially critical as the alleged discussion is supposed to have taken place between Mr. Bush and yourself, two world leaders who have stated their public commitment to these values.

Dear Prime Minister, we therefore call upon you to bring transparency to this situation in the best interest of the public good. I request a meeting with you to discuss this urgent matter directly.

Sincerely,

Wadah Khanfar
Managing Director
Al-Jazeera Channel

Our Troops Must Stay

America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists.
BY JOE LIEBERMAN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Tuesday, November 29, 2005

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.

Before going to Iraq last week, I visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has been the only genuine democracy in the region, but it is now getting some welcome company from the Iraqis and Palestinians who are in the midst of robust national legislative election campaigns, the Lebanese who have risen up in proud self-determination after the Hariri assassination to eject their Syrian occupiers (the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militias should be next), and the Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Saudis who have taken steps to open up their governments more broadly to their people. In my meeting with the thoughtful prime minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, he declared with justifiable pride that his country now has the most open, democratic political system in the Arab world. He is right.

In the face of terrorist threats and escalating violence, eight million Iraqis voted for their interim national government in January, almost 10 million participated in the referendum on their new constitution in October, and even more than that are expected to vote in the elections for a full-term government on Dec. 15. Every time the 27 million Iraqis have been given the chance since Saddam was overthrown, they have voted for self-government and hope over the violence and hatred the 10,000 terrorists offer them. Most encouraging has been the behavior of the Sunni community, which, when disappointed by the proposed constitution, registered to vote and went to the polls instead of taking up arms and going to the streets. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.

None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.

We are now embedding a core of coalition forces in every Iraqi fighting unit, which makes each unit more effective and acts as a multiplier of our forces. Progress in "clearing" and "holding" is being made. The Sixth Infantry Division of the Iraqi Security Forces now controls and polices more than one-third of Baghdad on its own. Coalition and Iraqi forces have together cleared the previously terrorist-controlled cities of Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, and most of the border with Syria. Those areas are now being "held" secure by the Iraqi military themselves. Iraqi and coalition forces are jointly carrying out a mission to clear Ramadi, now the most dangerous city in Al-Anbar province at the west end of the Sunni Triangle.

Nationwide, American military leaders estimate that about one-third of the approximately 100,000 members of the Iraqi military are able to "lead the fight" themselves with logistical support from the U.S., and that that number should double by next year. If that happens, American military forces could begin a drawdown in numbers proportional to the increasing self-sufficiency of the Iraqi forces in 2006. If all goes well, I believe we can have a much smaller American military presence there by the end of 2006 or in 2007, but it is also likely that our presence will need to be significant in Iraq or nearby for years to come.

The economic reconstruction of Iraq has gone slower than it should have, and too much money has been wasted or stolen. Ambassador Khalilzad is now implementing reform that has worked in Afghanistan--Provincial Reconstruction Teams, composed of American economic and political experts, working in partnership in each of Iraq's 18 provinces with its elected leadership, civil service and the private sector. That is the "build" part of the "clear, hold and build" strategy, and so is the work American and international teams are doing to professionalize national and provincial governmental agencies in Iraq.

These are new ideas that are working and changing the reality on the ground, which is undoubtedly why the Iraqi people are optimistic about their future--and why the American people should be, too.

I cannot say enough about the U.S. Army and Marines who are carrying most of the fight for us in Iraq. They are courageous, smart, effective, innovative, very honorable and very proud. After a Thanksgiving meal with a great group of Marines at Camp Fallujah in western Iraq, I asked their commander whether the morale of his troops had been hurt by the growing public dissent in America over the war in Iraq. His answer was insightful, instructive and inspirational: "I would guess that if the opposition and division at home go on a lot longer and get a lot deeper it might have some effect, but, Senator, my Marines are motivated by their devotion to each other and the cause, not by political debates."

Thank you, General. That is a powerful, needed message for the rest of America and its political leadership at this critical moment in our nation's history. Semper Fi.

Mr. Lieberman is a Democratic senator from Connecticut.

Israel, Front Line of the Global Jihad

By Robert Spencer
Front Page Magazine
November 29, 2005

Israel has become the world’s new South Africa: the villain du jour, the universal oppressor, the whipping-boy of the United Nations. Its foes have even applied the South African concept of apartheid to its policies. The global Left eagerly propagates the view that Israel, which has been repeatedly attacked by its neighbors, is by virtue of its very existence actually an aggressor state. The only free Western-style democracy in the Middle East (with the increasingly shaky exception of Turkey on the northern margins of the area) has received more world opprobrium than the brutal regimes of Assad, Ahmadinejad, and even the lamented (at least by Ramsey Clark) Saddam Hussein.

Boosters of the Palestinian cause routinely refer to Israelis and their supporters as Nazis. In January 2005, Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain reached the apex of moral equivalence. He announced that his group would boycott a commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp: “we have now expressed our unwillingness to attend the ceremony because it excludes ongoing genocide and human rights abuses around the world and in the occupied territories of Palestine.”

Yet although Muslim spokesmen such as Sacranie, the international Left, and many others -- including some of the Arabic-speaking Christians with whom I am in daily contact -- believe fervently that Israel is the aggressor against an innocent and aggrieved Palestinian people, and that the conflict is wholly and solely about “stolen land,” the facts are otherwise. In reality, Israel is at the front line of the global jihad movement. Ever since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, and even before, it has faced jihadist opposition from groups adamant in their determination to destroy it utterly. Yet I expect that a poll of Americans would find only a tiny minority would affirm that Israel faces the same foe, with the same ideology, as the one the United States has faced since 9/11.

I was recently offered, and immediately seized, an opportunity to see for myself. Last week, I had the chance to:

• Explore the Muslim Quarter and other sections of Jerusalem’s Old City, the world’s holiest place and largest tourist trap. The ancient streets are barely passable, crowded as they are with tiny shops (all holding pretty much the same inventory, with a few minor variations) in which canny Muslim entrepreneurs sell Christian religious articles to eager Western visitors (“And because I love you like a brother, and see that you appreciate the finer things, I will give you a special price…”). One told me how happy he was to see tourists again, after years of intifada had driven them away.
• Visit and pray at the Western Wall, site of so much human longing.
• Peer into Syria from an Israeli bunker on the Golan Heights. The mountainous Golan is breathtakingly beautiful, although that beauty is broken here and there by the remnants of the 1967 and 1973 wars: bullet-riddled bunkers, rusted hulks of war machines. But most of this has been cleared away, for Israel has no room to spare; virtually every inch of land right up to the present border with Syria is cultivated. In stark contrast sits the Syrian ghost town of Quneitra, which the Syrians have left abandoned as a monument to Israeli atrocities ever since the Israelis withdrew from it in 1974. The international media has swallowed this tall tale as well, despite abundant evidence that Quneitra was in ruins before the Israelis ever got there.
• Travel by bulletproof bus through the West Bank, and inspect the security fence.
• Sleep (fitfully) in a Bedouin tent in the desert, and savor the stark magnificence of the rocky, mountainous landscape.
• Walk through the 700-year-old streets of Safed, modern-day home of, among other things, a notable artistic quarter. In this I was not too far from where Hizb’Allah rockets fell – unprovoked, as was noted even by the United Nations -- a few days later near Kiryat Shmona and Metulla.
• Stroll around modern Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

I also had the honor of meeting the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Jerusalem, Shlomo Moshe Amar, and Soviet dissident and heroic human rights activist Natan Sharansky. In the course of Sharansky’s moving address he noted that Israel had again and again aided Christians -- at their own request -- against Islamic violence and injustice, most notably when the Church of the Nativity was occupied by jihadists in 2002. Yet international Christian leaders, he said, have not responded with similar gestures toward Israel. This is unfortunate in the extreme both for Israel and for Palestinian Christians: those Christians are going to be in for a rude surprise when the Islamic state so many of them are abetting actually takes power, and they find life more difficult for them than it was in Israel. Christians in the Middle East are in a virtually impossible position (which is why they are streaming out of the area). If the support the Islamic agenda, they are signing their own return to the second-class status of the dhimma, as mandated by the traditional Islamic law that jihadists are bent on restoring. If they support Israel, they risk being targeted by the jihadists, who surround them on all sides.

I met a couple who had recently been evacuated by the Israeli government from their West Bank “settlement,” where they had lived and worked for twelve years, and endured daily gunfire from Palestinians since the Al-Aqsa intifada began in September 2000. I met an American who now lives and works on a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, cultivating land just across the Syrian border, in defiance of the danger involved. Like so many other Israelis all over the country, he must carry a gun at all times. I photographed a large, confidently imposing, and clearly thriving mosque near my hotel in Tel Aviv, the very existence of which stands as poignant refutation of the charge that Muslims are oppressed in Israel -- especially in light of the glaring non-existence of synagogues in Muslim lands and the precarious existence of churches in them.

Israel is a country at war, a country under siege. Everywhere I went, even into a shopping mall in Tel Aviv, armed guards stood at the entry, searching everyone. Many Israelis with whom I spoke discussed the weariness of the people after decades and decades of war. They said that many, and maybe even a majority, are willing to cut any deal, even one involving giving up half of Jerusalem, in order to buy a peace that they themselves acknowledge will last only a few years.

Yet the game is by no means over. At the same time, there is a tremendous spirit among the people. I saw the greenhouses and agricultural projects making the desert bloom, and the determination of so many not to be intimidated, not to bow in the face of jihad violence. Long may they prosper.

Israel stands virtually alone in the world not only because of lingering antisemitism, but because Palestinian Arabs and their allies have succeeded in convincing opinion-makers that their land was taken illegitimately by Israel, and that they are oppressed there. The facts are otherwise, as I have discussed in a previous article here. The state was established legitimately and with the approval of the United Nations, and even the “occupied territories” were obtained according to what have been universally recognized throughout history as the rules of war. (Or should the United States give up the “occupied territories” of California, Texas, and other Western states? Should Russia withdraw from its “occupied territories” in Königsberg, eastern Finland and eastern Poland? Should Muslims across North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, India and Southeast Asia withdraw from those “occupied territories” back to Arabia?)

While I am sympathetic to genuine Palestinian Arab refugees, and with my friends from Ramallah and Jenin, I can’t help but notice the role of the neighboring Arab states in exacerbating and prolonging the refugee problem for political reasons that are ultimately rooted in the jihad ideology. I can’t help but notice that I was able to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Mount Tabor, and other Christian holy sites in Israel, which mean a great deal to me personally, while Bethlehem, under Palestinian Authority control, has become a dangerous place from which Christians are fleeing as quickly as they can. I can’t help but notice that there was no call to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when those territories were under Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively -- despite the alleged difference of nationality between Palestinians and Jordanians and Egyptians.

Ultimately, if the nations of the world are interested in defending universal human rights and the equality of dignity of all people, they need to stand with Israel. Misdiagnosis of the problem -- that is, the unwillingness or inability of Western governments to acknowledge the motives and goals of the jihadists who want above all to destroy them -- has largely prevented this.

Yet as Benjamin Franklin said long ago in a far different context, we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly all hang separately.

Israeli institute tops survey

An Israeli institute was named the top place to work in international academia.

The Weizmann Institute of Science topped the survey of international institutions among academics surveyed by The Scientist magazine. More than 2,600 academics participated in the annual survey.

Syria opposes relief-agency accord

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
30 November 2005

Syrian objections seem unlikely to scuttle an accord paving the way for Magen David Adom’s acceptance in the International Red Cross.

“This agreement was hammered out and everyone wants to see it done, therefore it is highly unlikely that Syria would be able to derail it,” officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told a delegation of U.S. congressmen Monday in Geneva, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) told JTA.

A recent pact between Magen David Adom and the Palestinian Red Crescent guarantees Palestinian ambulances speedier passage through West Bank checkpoints.

In addition, the sides agreed in principle on a non-denominational red diamond emblem, as Muslim states refuse to recognize the red Star of David.

A resolution to be discussed next week among Geneva Convention signatories would officially introduce the new emblem. Engel characterized the Syrian objections as “nonsense and mischief.” The congressional delegation also included Reps. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), Silvestre Reyes (D- Tex.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Candice Miller (R-Mich.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.).

AIPAC slams White House on Iran

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee criticized the White House for not pushing the U.N. nuclear watchdog to recommend sanctions for Iran.

The Bush administration backed a European Union bid last week to reopen negotiations with Iran that would allow Iran to continue with its nuclear program as long as it exports its uranium to Russia for enrichment.

The agreement, which kept the International Atomic Energy Agency from referring Iran to the Security Council for sanctions, would supposedly keep Iran from obtaining weapons-grade uranium. AIPAC and some leaders in Congress oppose the plan, saying Iran could work around it and suggesting that Russia is not trustworthy.

“Last week’s decision allowed Iran to win a critical round in its game of cat and mouse with the international community,” AIPAC said Wednesday in a rare public disagreement with the White House. The statement released by AIPAC added: “We disagree with these decisions and are concerned that these efforts will facilitate Iran´s quest for nuclear weapons, hampering the diplomatic effort to stop Iran before it is too late. This poses a severe danger to the United States and our allies, and puts America and our interests at risk.”

U.S.-Israel Strategic Dialogue

U.S. Department of State
Press Statement
Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
November 29, 2005

On November 28, 2005, the United States and Israel conducted a strategic dialogue led by Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Tzachi Hanegbi to strengthen the already close strategic cooperation between our two countries.

Discussions covered a broad range of regional issues. Both sides also expressed concern at the Iranian government's growing radicalization and its irresponsible policy on nuclear issues. The talks reflect the deep, abiding friendship and understanding between the United States and Israel, based on shared values and common interests. The strategic dialogue constitutes a further step in fortifying and enhancing the strategic relationship between the two countries.

In addition to Minister Hanegbi and Under Secretary Burns, other participants included, from the Israeli side: Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon, the Directors General of Israel's Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, and National Security Advisor and other senior officials. The U.S. side was represented by:Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, National Security Advisor to the Vice President John Hannah, Ambassador Richard Jones, Assistant Secretary Welch, NSC Director Elliott Abrams, and other senior officials. The United States and Israel look forward to continuing this dialogue in the Spring of 2006 in Israel.