I Hate To Say It, But We Were Better Off Under Saddam

Three years after dictator's fall our correspondent is reunited with his two Baghdad guides, whose euphoria has given way to despair
By Nick Meo
London Times
March 18, 2006

IN APRIL 2003, as looters ran wild and Iraq woke up to a world without Saddam Hussein, I found two guides to navigate through the chaos. Noor was an English-speaking student and Abu Yasser a streetwise taxi driver who hung around outside al-Hamra Hotel in Baghdad to work for the newly arrived journalists. Together we explored a city gone mad.

Screaming mobs thronged underpasses, convinced that secret underground prisons inside the walls held their missing relatives. Giant fires burnt out of control. Gunfights raged day and night. In traffic jams polite Iraqis tapped on the windows of our car, thanked us personally for getting rid of Saddam, and asked if the American soldiers could now please leave their country. It was a confused but intoxicating time for Iraqis. The tyrant’s statue had been pulled down. What would freedom be like?

Three years on, my friends are still hanging around the Hamra, which is even shabbier than before but considerably more fortified. Abu Yasser has a new car and more cash than he had ever dreamt of, but does not know whether he will live to enjoy spending it.

Noor is still a gentle young man, but much more worldly-wise. Liberation should have offered him so many opportunities. Instead, he is a prisoner in the Hamra, sheltering behind its blast walls and armed guards like the few journalists still huddled there. He tried to set up an electrical goods shop when his employer pulled out as security worsened at the end of 2003. The economy was doing well and Baghdadis wanted to buy goods that they had been starved of for years.

A sure-fire business success ended with a Kalashnikov thrust in Noor’s face. The robbers then spent a leisurely afternoon removing his stock. Later they called him on his mobile phone and demanded $50,000 or they would kidnap him. He has barely ventured out since.

Few Iraqis do these days. They fear being caught in a bomb blast, hit by a stray bullet, rounded up by sectarian killers or abducted by criminal gangs. Three years ago the suburb surrounding the Hamra was full of children playing and grandparents whiling away the day. Now everyone is indoors watching corny Egyptian romantic films to try to take their minds off grim reality. Iraqi army patrols pass the few pedestrians at crazy speeds, training machineguns on them. US troops no longer have the swagger of victory but roar past encased in armour.

Three years ago Noor thought Iraq would be an oil-rich capitalist success story like Dubai by now. He isn’t quite able to explain how it has all gone so wrong.

Most Iraqis simply blame the hated Americans for their plight. In 2003 they were ambiguous, unsure whether they had been liberated or conquered. That ambiguity vanished long ago. Noor is less willing than most to blame the American scapegoat. “We were not ready for democracy,” he said. “Under Saddam the Iraqis had no respect for the law; they were afraid of the law. When Saddam went they had never known what freedom meant. So they behaved like outlaws.”

He is ashamed of the savagery — the kidnappings, beheadings, car bombings. Like most Iraqis he blames Americans, Syrians and Iranians for stoking the violence and hates the foreign jihadi fighters. But Iraqis have failed, he believes, and like everyone else he fears what the future holds now.

Noor is still a friend of America, but no longer an enthusiastic one. Too many friends have been shot by US patrols or humiliated at checkpoints. “I thought the Americans had come to Iraq to help the Iraqi people,” he said. “But we have learnt that they came here for their wants. We still need their help, though, if we are to build our country.”

If anything, Abu Yasser is even more despondent. Many of his friends, drivers and translators who worked for foreign journalists, have been murdered. In Baghdad today anyone working for a foreigner risks death as a spy or traitor.

Abu Yasser remembers that brief spring of 2003 with great fondness. “I thought we would have real freedom after Saddam,” he said wearily, “but now if you criticise a politician or a party, you can be killed the next day. I cannot relax, I suffer tension all the time. If civil war comes I will lock myself in my house and rot there. I would rather die than kill someone. I hate to say it, but we were better off under Saddam.”

Noor still clings to the hope that the political process may work. Abu Yasser believes that civil war is very close. Both could afford to get out of the country but are determined to stay. Abu Yasser said: “I still believe there will be freedom one day. But what will we have to pass through first to get there?”

Egyptian Judges Protest Lack of Freedom

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD
Associated Press Writer
March 17, 2006

CAIRO, Egypt -- Nearly 1,000 Egyptian judges held a half-hour silent protest Friday to demonstrate for full judicial independence and against the government's order to interrogate of six of their colleagues who criticized recent elections.

The justices, wearing the red and green sashes of their profession, gathered outside their professional association, the Judges' Club, in downtown Cairo ahead of an extraordinary general assembly to discuss their grievances.

The protest was larger than previous actions by the judges and drew participants from across the country. Last month, dozens of judges in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria held a similar protest after authorities stripped the immunity of six colleagues.

"The independence of the judges is the battle of the whole nation, and we all have to defend it," Zakaria Abdel Aziz, head of the Judges' Club, told the audience.

State security prosecutors want to interrogate the six pro-reform judges about their contacts with the media regarding parliamentary elections in November and December 2005. They had been outspoken about allegations of fraud.

The general assembly agreed to support the six judges in rejecting the interrogation order, according to a statement issued after the meeting.

Judges have demanded the right to supervise polling stations. The recent election was marred by government supporters intimidating and police blocking voters outside stations, as well as allegations of ballot stuffing.

Egyptian judges also have been urging parliament since 1986 to adopt legislation that would make the judiciary completely independent of government control.

Pull the Plug on UNRWA!

Halting aid to the P.A. means nothing if funds shift to the 'humanitarian' front
Jonathan S. Tobin
Jewish Exponent
3/16/2006

The current debate over a cutoff of aid to the Palestinian Authority is a classic case of good news and bad news coming together in the same package.

The good news is that the United States appears to be holding firm on its refusal to keep money flowing to the P.A. once the recently elected Hamas terrorists are in charge.

Though many thought Washington would quickly fold on this issue, the administration is sticking to its hard line against sending a cent to Hamas. And Congress is poised to enact aid restrictions that may act as a break on any State Department impulse to weaken on the issue.

But along with this comes the bad news. The United States and the European Union (which is also considering an aid cutoff to the P.A.) will be diverting a lot of the money that supported the P.A. kleptocracy to humanitarian aid. That way, it is reasoned, innocent Palestinians won't be forced to suffer from the crimes of their new masters.

That rationale sounds compassionate and logical. The only problem is that the humanitarian group that will receive the lion's share of the aid is one of the most thoroughly politicized and terrorist-infiltrated organizations in the world: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

For 56 years, UNRWA has been the symbol of the world's double standard about the war on Israel by the Arab world.

While the United Nations deals with the rest of the world's refugees with a single agency - the U.N. High Commission for Refugees - the Palestinian refugees have their very own agency - UNRWA - with a particular mission.

Unfortunately, unlike virtually every other refugee aid group (including those that dealt with the hundreds of thousands of Jews who fled Arab lands in the aftermath of Israel's independence), UNRWA's primary mission has never been to help the Palestinians deal with the reality of the post-1948 world. Resettling the Palestinians wasn't the point. UNRWA exists to keep the Palestinians alive exactly where they are, so they can serve as justification for continued conflict with Israel.

A Terror Stronghold

As detailed in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency series running this week in the Jewish Exponent, UNRWA's record is one of complicity not only with the political ends of the Palestinian movement, but with its violent tactics as well.

UNRWA's employees are uniformly Palestinian, and many are members not only of mainstream Palestinian terror factions such as Fatah, but of the Islamist Hamas group as well. UNRWA suffered a major embarrassment when its former director, the Norwegian bureaucrat Peter Hansen, admitted as much two years ago, saying it was no big deal. Indeed, in the recent Palestinian election, a number of UNRWA workers were Hamas parliamentary candidates.

But why should Hansen - who helped spread the lie that Israeli forces had committed a massacre of civilians in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002 - worry about terrorist infiltration?

The man lied not only about the casualties of Jenin, in which Hamas and Fatah gunmen fought pitched battles against Israelis who were seeking to destroy terror bases after Palestinian suicide bombings, but also told tales about the fact that this and other UNRWA camps were, in fact, longstanding U.N.-subsidized strongholds of Palestinian terror groups.

Hansen and UNRWA - and their boss, Kofi Annan - have used the prestige of their "humanitarian" perch to routinely bash Israel for its attacks on the camps, but almost never mention the fact that Israel is reacting to Palestinian terror. But again, this is because the U.N. has always turned a blind eye to the fact that the camps under its jurisdiction were the places where terrorist atrocities are planned and launched.

UNRWA employees have used its facilities to shield terrorists from Israel, and even used its ambulances to transport both the killers and the weapons. UNRWA identification documents have also been used for the same purpose. Hamas also operates its new television station from the relative safety of a mosque in the UNRWA Jabalya camp.

And if nothing else serves to alert the world to the reality of the UNRWA camps, the steady toll of Palestinian casualties from "work accidents" - mishaps with explosives during the manufacture of terrorist bombs - at these places ought to pierce the illusions of even the most gullible foreign observers.

Those sympathetic to UNRWA and its charges point to the fact that so many Palestinians are dependent on the aid agency for sustenance. But the only reason Palestinian refugees - or rather, the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees - are still in these camps is because UNRWA and the United Nations have let the Arab world get away with keeping them there, rather than forcing them to recognize that the State of Israel is not going to disappear.

That brings us back to the question of what the United States should do. At a time when the West is scared stiff of the "rage" of the Arab/Muslim "street," it's going to be harder than ever for the United States and its allies to take a stand on UNRWA. But stand they must if the effort to curb Palestinian terror and promote peace is to mean anything at all.

Complete Overhaul Needed

Moreover, the plentiful cash that flows from the United States Treasury to UNRWA (30 percent of the agency's $400 million budget comes courtesy of American taxpayers) is actually a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act requires UNRWA to assure that American money does not go to terrorists. That is an assurance that UNRWA cannot credibly give.

Superficial reforms of the group won't work. Given the almost complete infiltration of UNRWA's bureaucracy by terrorist supporters, nothing short of a complete overhaul will do.

Can the plug be pulled on UNRWA? Given the current pressure on the Bush administration to mend fences with the Arab world, it's unlikely. But if this cause gets a bipartisan push from Congress, it might help the White House focus on the way the agency is spending our money on reinforcing terrorist strongholds. Congress must follow up its legislation on aid to the P.A. with further hearings and action to halt subsidies to UNRWA.

Sadly, it may take another Palestinian terror offensive - in which UNRWA camps will again serve as bases for suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians - to remind the world of the "humanitarian" fraud it's been subsidizing. Even then, the Palestinian propaganda machine, of which UNRWA is an integral part, will do its utmost to prevent the truth from being heard.

But Americans have no excuse for continuing to be complicit in this deception. We - the funders of this half-century-old U.N. fiasco - must face up to the fact that this monster must be decapitated, and then rebuilt as a genuine humanitarian group.

That may seem like an impossible task. But if the pain and grief that UNRWA helps inflict on the region is to be stopped, both the White House and Congress must stop buying into the myth of UNRWA's lies.

Early Mistakes Scuttled Chance For Iraq Victory

By Joseph L. Galloway
Senior military correspondent
Knight Ridder Newspapers.
March 17, 2006

The war in Iraq goes on and on as we enter the fourth year, and still the Bush administration cannot define an exit strategy that should have been made plain before the first American soldier crossed the border.

President Bush, in the first of a new round of speeches this week aimed at convincing an increasingly skeptical public, did little to bolster his sagging poll numbers in a midterm election year that has Republican officeholders running scared.

He talked of having the nerve to carry on. He talked of how we would be handing over control of large chunks of Iraq to the newly formed Iraqi army and police. He said that the Pentagon would be devoting billions to finding a high-tech silver bullet to counter the improvised explosive devices that are, along with low-tech suicide bombers, the weapon of choice of the enemy.

And in words that rang true, he warned that even as we build on successes, there would be brutal and bloody attacks. Recently those attacks have focused far more heavily on innocent Iraqi citizens in the streets and markets of their country.

The president's speech came soon after the Pentagon released more damning photographs of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison; a new book provided more details of Pentagon micromanaging of military commanders and U.S. troop strength in the middle of the 2003 invasion; and authorities continued to find piles of bodies of people slain in the outburst of religious and ethnic violence in recent weeks in Iraq.

The evidence grows that his administration and the defense secretary essentially hamstrung our military commanders and made it impossible for them to control the rioting and looting that broke out when those forces captured Baghdad in April three years ago. Against the advice of ground commanders they canceled deployment of one Army division and delayed deployment of another.

When the ground commander, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, recommended that the drive on Baghdad be halted for a few days while they cleaned up pockets of Saddam's irregular militias who were being bypassed, he was not only overruled but came close to being fired for opening his mouth.

These revelations, contained in a previously classified after-action report, plainly gave the lie to assertions by administration leaders that the operation was planned by the commanders and they were given all the troops they requested both before and since the invasion.

This willful, uninformed and arrogant interference by civilians in purely military matters only set the tone for a string of serious mistakes that together guaranteed that our efforts in Iraq in the first two years would be a costly failure.

A full share of the blame for creating and feeding the homegrown Iraqi insurgency that blossomed and fed off these mistakes must be shared by the Pentagon-appointed U.S. civilian boss in Iraq during a critical period, former Ambassador Paul Bremer. It was Bremer who demobilized the Iraqi army and sent them home, armed, unemployed and angry. It was Bremer who cleansed the Iraqi civil service, firing any and all who had belonged to Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party, thus creating another large pool of angry Sunni citizens who had been told they had no future.

Remember that this was a war urgently ordered because of the threat that Saddam would build a nuclear weapon within a couple of years, and at any minute might slime Israel and his neighbors with chemical and biological weapons. That the war would be short and sweet. That it would be paid for out of the oil earnings of Iraq. That it would implant Jeffersonian democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

In truth, Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong people. The administration turned valuable resources away from controlling and rebuilding Afghanistan and pursuing al-Qaida to the death.

So far it has cost us 2,300-plus American dead; 17,000-plus American wounded; tens of thousands of Iraqis killed by both sides; a bill to our children and grandchildren that will reach more than $400 billion this year; and a U.S. military struggling to find and keep the manpower needed for present and future combat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will be dealing with the consequences and fallout for a long time to come. They are the gang that couldn't shoot straight, and now they are the ones dealing with a much more dangerous situation in Iran. God help us.

The Fifth Horseman

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Washington Times
March 17, 2006

As President Bush's closest advisers enter their fifth year of 16- to 20-hour days, physical and mental exhaustion appears to have produced a dearth of geopolitical thinking.

Mr. Bush still sees translucent light at the end of the Iraqi tunnel he led the coalition into three years ago. Others are afraid this may be the search party looking for survivors -- or Iran's Aladdin lamp showing Shia Iraq how to rub it for a wish back to the dark ages of religious obscurantism.

To sort it all out, Congress has asked veteran bipartisan geopolitical thinkers James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state, and Lee H. Hamilton, former chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, to lead an "Iraq Study Group" of 10 prominent Republicans and Democrats.

With the president's "war on terror" ratings down to 36 percent, the Iraqi "rethink" group came not a moment too soon. Much bigger threats than civil war in Iraq already loom on horizon 2007. Israel is marking its new frontier with a 420-mile, $2.2 billion barrier that leaves Hamas free to cobble together a state from the patchwork of land left, sans East Jerusalem, which can be neither viable nor contiguous, as pledged by Mr. Bush. Intifada III is now only a matter of time -- with rockets and missiles over the wall.

If Pakistan's next elections were held now instead of 2007, Osama bin Laden's Urdu-speaking fan club could easily win a majority -- and inherit control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Today, they already govern two of Pakistan's four provinces.

This time round the South Asia track, Mr. Bush inadvertently humiliated his friend Pervez Musharraf, a "major non-NATO ally" since 2004, by extending to rival India, which is not a major non-NATO ally, a sweetheart nuclear deal denied Pakistan. This was a major boost for Mr. Musharraf's extremist opponents.

The deal, which faces heavy weather in Congress, allows India, which did not sign the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, to separate its military and civilian nuclear programs and buy U.S. nuclear fuel and technology. The Economist magazine's cover put a cowboy-clad George Bush riding a nuclear bomb down to earthly destruction, headlined, "George W. Bush in Dr. STRANGEDEAL -- or How I learned to stop worrying and love my friend's bomb."

The Economist, read by almost half a million movers and shakers the world over, called it a "dangerous gamble" because "in his rush to accommodate India, Mr. Bush is missing a chance to win wider nuclear restraint in one of the world's tougher neighborhoods."

It's hard to see the faintest inkling of restraint in Iran. Its nuclear horse is out of the barn. And it is becoming increasingly clear neither the International Atomic Energy Commission nor the U.N. Security Council can persuade Iran's Israel-hating President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up his new role as the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. He's the one called Hades that shows no pity or mercy.

The late author Larry Collins' "5th Horseman" was a nuclear bomb plot in Manhattan circa 1980. What can the U.S. do to thwart fiction becoming reality?

Draconian sanctions voted by the U.N. Security Council are a nonstarter. China, Russia and the European Union have far too much trade at stake. Even if sanctions were possible, Iran has correctly stated, it can dish out as good as it gets.

As long as Iraq is the albatross that sharply restricts military options in Iran, secret high-level diplomacy might be worth exploring. What could the U.S. get in return for a nonaggression treaty with Iran? This could only be plumbed at the level of a secret meeting that stays secret with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei in the holy city of Qom.

The Ayatollah Khamenei says Iran will never retreat from its nuclear ambitions. However, recent emissaries who claim to know his thinking say he wants the wherewithal for rapid production of a nuclear weapon if such a need should arise, but would stop short of acquiring one. Could the U.S. live with that?

The quid pro quo needs triangulating. Would the ayatollah be willing to grease the skids under his firebrand president? If so, in return for what? A free hand in post-U.S. Iraq? What does he seek in Iraq? Breakup of the country or a unitary state? If the latter, on what terms?

The U.S. isn't too good at secret diplomacy in Iran. Last time round, it was a 1986 scheme to fund the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from profits gained by selling arms to Iran in return for the release of U.S. hostages held by Hezbollah in Beirut. The architect of the intricate plot was bridge champion Michael Ledeen whose Iranian go-between was Monte Carlo-based arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar (whose normal 10 percent commission suddenly escalated to a 370 percent markup on 1,000 anti-tank TOW missiles).

Then-former NSC Adviser Robert C. McFarlane and NSC aide Col. Oliver North traveled to Tehran in 1986. They brought a cake in the shape of a key, a symbolic opening of U.S.-Iran relations. On a subsequent trip, Col. North offered his Iranian host a bible signed by President Reagan.

The scheme unraveled quickly after a Lebanese magazine exposed the entire arrangement. Trip organizer and Mr. McFarlane's successor as NSC adviser, Adm. John Poindexter, and Ollie North, who ran the undercover operation, were indicted and convicted of lying to Congress, and later pardoned by Bush 41.

Something subtler, with inbuilt plausible deniability, is now needed to negotiate a geopolitical bargain that would derail a nascent axis of Islamist extremists from Hamas to Baghdad to Tehran to Islamabad (post-Musharraf) to a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The geopolitical stakes are so much larger than the vain pursuit of the ideal in Iraq.

Besides, Israel is not prepared to sit this one out indefinitely. If diplomacy as usual goes nowhere, Jerusalem will strike the country whose president says he wants to wipe Israel off the map -- and the rest of the world will face the mother of all Mideastern crises. Oil at $200 no longer strains credulity.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

U.S. General Praises Syria For Border Tightening

Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2006

WASHINGTON — The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East offered rare words of praise Thursday for Syria, saying Damascus has taken steps to stop the movement of foreign fighters over its border into Iraq.

Army Gen. John P. Abizaid said Syria had begun taking action on long-standing complaints by the United States about foreign fighters, one of several issues dividing the two countries.

Abizaid, the chief of U.S. Central Command, was asked by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) at a Senate hearing whether Syria raised the same level of concern as Iran in relation to U.S. efforts in Iraq.

"No, I'd say that the flow of foreign fighters across the Syrian border has decreased, and that's clear from our intelligence," Abizaid responded. "We know that. We know that the Syrians have moved against the foreign fighters.

"Why have they? Because the foreign fighters represent a threat to Syria, and they certainly don't want to have these organizations and groups operating within their own country that are ultimately going to be a threat to their own government," Abizaid continued. "So, out of self-interest, the Syrians have reacted in a way that has slowed the flow of foreign fighters."

Earlier Thursday, Syrian President Bashar Assad said his nation was central to stability in the region and the West's goals there.

"If they want to talk about peace, then Syria is essential," Assad said in an interview with Britain's Sky News. "If they want a stable Iraq, then Syria is essential."

Besides accusing Syria of inadequate border control, U.S. officials have accused Damascus of interfering in Lebanon, even though Syria removed its troops from there under international pressure after the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

This week, Assad relaxed his government's stance toward a United Nations probe of the killing and agreed to meet with the commission conducting the investigation.

Afghan Oil Reserves 'Bigger Than Thought'

Alexander Kliment, Washington
London Financial Times
March 16, 2006

Afghanistan's untapped oil and natural gas reserves may be much bigger than previously thought, according to the results of a survey by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Afghan Ministry of Mining and Industry. The survey shows that two northern regions could contain as much as 1.5bn barrels of oil and 1,560bn cubic feet of natural gas. The figures represent the mean of several estimates of unproven reserves. The higher range of Afghanistan's unproven oil reserves roughly matched Sudan's reserves, USGS said.

Is Another 9/11 in the Works?

By Paul Craig Roberts
03/15/06

If you were President George W. Bush with all available US troops tied down by the Iraqi resistance, and you were unable to control Iraq or political developments in the country, would you also start a war with Iran?

Yes, you would.

Bush’s determination to spread Middle East conflict by striking at Iran does not make sense.

First of all, Bush lacks the troops to do the job. If the US military cannot successfully occupy Iraq, there is no way that the US can occupy Iran, a country approximately three times the size in area and population.

Second, Iran can respond to a conventional air attack with missiles targeted on American ships and bases, and on oil facilities located throughout the Middle East.

Third, Iran has human assets, including the Shia majority population in Iraq, that it can activate to cause chaos throughout the Middle East.

Fourth, polls of US troops in Iraq indicate that a vast majority do not believe in their mission and wish to be withdrawn. Unlike the yellow ribbon folks at home, the troops are unlikely to be enthusiastic about being trapped in an Iranian quagmire in addition to the Iraqi quagmire.

Fifth, Bush’s polls are down to 34 percent, with a majority of Americans believing that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

If you were being whipped in one fight, would you start a second fight with a bigger and stronger person?

That’s what Bush is doing.

Opinion polls indicate that the Bush regime has succeeded in its plan to make Americans fear Iran as the greatest threat America faces.

The Bush regime has created a major dispute with Iran over that country’s nuclear energy program and then blocked every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end.

In order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran, the Bush regime is using bribery and coercion in its effort to have Iran referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions.

In recent statements President Bush and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld blamed Iran for the Iraqi resistance, claiming that the roadside bombs used by the resistance are being supplied by Iran.

It is obvious that Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about.

Yet, Bush has no conventional means of waging war with Iran. His bloodthirsty neoconservatives have prepared plans for nuking Iran. However, an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran would leave the US, already regarded as a pariah nation, totally isolated.

Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel’s highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some “black ops” group will orchestrate the attack.

One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush’s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world’s doubts of the explanation.

Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn’t it?

Fantasy? Let’s hope so.

Prison Raid Shows Israel's New Freedom

By STEVEN GUTKIN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 15, 2006

JERUSALEM -- Israel's dramatic seizure of senior Palestinian militants from a West Bank jail highlights its new freedom of action with the internationally shunned Hamas poised to take over Palestinian government.

Tuesday's raid also undercuts the authority of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, boosts the electoral prospects of acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and sends a strong warning to Hamas about failing to honor past accords.

In one way, though, it lets Hamas off the hook. Hamas had intended to release the militants, but the raid allowed them to avoid the international outcry that almost surely would have followed had they done so.

Israel, the United States and Britain blamed the Palestinian Authority for the 10-hour siege at a prison in the West Bank town of Jericho that left three Palestinians dead and culminated in the surrender of militant leader Ahmed Saadat and four of his alleged accomplices in the 2001 murder of an Israeli Cabinet minister.

Under a four-year-old agreement, Saadat and the other prisoners were held in a Palestinian jail monitored by U.S. and British guards. But the guards left Tuesday, a week after the United States and Britain warned Abbas they would go unless the Palestinians beefed up security.

Israel, the United States and Britain argued the Palestinians had failed to live up to their commitments under the Jericho accord.

The guards' departure triggered the Israeli raid and a spree of violent Palestinian protests and widespread kidnappings of foreigners.

With Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence in the wake of its surprise Jan. 25 victory in parliamentary elections _ and Israel's insistence it will not do business with a Hamas government _ many Israelis and Palestinians were wondering which agreement would unravel next.

Delicate understandings painstakingly brokered by the United States and Europe after Israel's Gaza pullout last summer _ including a new Gaza-Egypt border crossing monitored by European inspectors _ could meet the same fate as the Jericho accord.

The prison raid "shows the new thrust, the new aim which is complete (Israeli) unilateralism, forget that there's anybody on the other side," said Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas' victory, added outgoing Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, "has stopped any international pressure on Israel, and thus Israel feels it has a free hand to do anything it wants."

Israel rejected Palestinian claims that Olmert ordered the Jericho raid to curry favor with hawkish voters before March 28 elections. Israeli officials said they had no choice but to act in light of recent statements by Abbas and Hamas leaders that the jailed militants would be freed.

Still, the raid was almost certain to help Olmert, whose show of force was a well-timed counterbalance to his recent statements outlining plans to withdraw from most of the West Bank. Israeli analysts agreed that had Olmert not moved against the prison _ and had the inmates gone free after the British and Americans left _ he could have nose-dived in the polls.

"The most important thing is that he was successful," Israeli pollster Camil Fuchs said.

One who did not come out ahead is Abbas, who appeared weak before his people amid his current struggle to sort out a power arrangement with the incoming Hamas government.

Abbas' relationship with the Americans and the British also has been bruised, hurting efforts to channel aid to the Palestinians through Abbas' office as a way to bypass Hamas.

After the Western guards withdrew from Jericho, Abbas took the unusual step of publicly accusing the United States and Britain of abdicating their responsibilities.

The United States and Britain took the unusual step of leaking a March 8 letter to Abbas warning they would leave Jericho unless the Palestinians increased security.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday defended the British departure, saying the move came after careful consideration and months of warnings about problems at the jail.

"The idea that this was either precipitate or uncalled-for or not thought-through is simply wrong," he said in his weekly House of Commons question session.

Israel, too, sent a strong message about life in the new Hamas era.

"Hamas, I think, has to see this as a preview of things to come," Israeli political analyst Yossi Alpher said. "If they are involved in breaking agreements with Israel, Israel is going to respond very aggressively."

Yet at the same time, the Israeli raid appears to have saved Hamas a major headache. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the radical PLO faction headed by Saadat, is expected to join a Hamas-led government coalition, and Hamas had promised to free the PFLP prisoners.

That almost certainly would have antagonized the West at the very moment the United States and Europe are debating whether to cut off life-sustaining aid to the Palestinians in the wake of Hamas' rise to power.

Steven Gutkin is AP chief of bureau in Jerusalem.

US says launches biggest air assault in Iraq

Reuters
Mar 16, 2006

The U.S. military said on Thursday it launched its biggest air offensive in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to root out insurgents near a town where recent violence raised fears of civil war.

A military statement said the operation involving more than 50 aircraft and 1,500 Iraqi and U.S. troops as well as 200 tactical vehicles targeted suspected insurgents operating near the town of Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad.

The statement said "Operation Swarmer" was launched on Thursday morning and is "expected to continue for several days as a thorough search of the objective area is conducted."

Samarra was the site of a bombing attack last month on a Shi'ite shrine that set off sectarian reprisals and pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

"Initial reports from the objective area indicate that a number of enemy weapons caches have been captured, containing artillery shells, explosives, IED-(bomb) making materials, and military uniforms," said the statement.

The U.S. military has launched several major offensives against Sunni Arab insurgents, including one that captured the former rebel stronghold of Falluja, and a series of assaults in the rebel heartland in western Iraq's Anbar province.

But the crackdowns have failed to ease a raging guerrilla campaign that has killed thousands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi security forces and civilians.

As if That Fire Needed Fuel

Editorial
The New York Times
March 16, 2006

Wouldn't it be nice if, just once, the players in the disaster movie that is Middle East politics didn't perform true to type? Unfortunately, the events in the Palestinian city of Jericho this week show that's a pretty far-fetched thought, so the conflict continues its never-ending run, fueled, this time, by Britain and America.

The list of misdeeds is, as usual, lengthy and widespread. The militant group Hamas should not have provoked Israel with chatter about freeing Ahmed Saadat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who is being held in the killing of Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli tourism minister, in 2001.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, should have thought hard before offering his support for such a boneheaded idea.

The acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, should not have allowed the desire to do some election-season muscle-flexing to push him into storming the prison in Jericho with tanks, bulldozers and helicopters. Israeli Army officials ordered inmates to strip to their underwear, which many did, marching out with clothing on their heads, an embarrassing and completely unnecessary provocation that trampled the dignity of any Palestinian watching that spectacle.

Given the humiliations that ordinary Palestinians suffer merely by trying to get through Israeli checkpoints every day, the prison raid just reinforced the already degrading reality of living under foreign occupation.

Most to blame, however, are Britain and the United States, for withdrawing their prison monitors. They cited security concerns that British and American officials maintain have existed ever since a 2002 agreement established the conditions under which Mr. Saadat and five other Palestinian prisoners would be held. "Regrettably, the Palestinian Authority has never in the past four years met all its obligations under the Ramallah agreement, despite our repeated demands that they do so," the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said Tuesday.

That raises the question of why the United States and Britain waited until now to withdraw the monitors. This is an extremely tense time in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, with Hamas working to form a cabinet after its election triumph and Israel heading for elections on March 28. There's no way the British and Americans could not have known that their withdrawal would be tantamount to throwing a match into dry kindling.

Mr. Olmert may have secured a few security points for himself and his Kadima Party in their battle with Benjamin Netanyahu over who will be elected to succeed Ariel Sharon as Israel's prime minister. But it's a sure bet that even if his prison raid helps Mr. Olmert in the elections, it will make the job of governing and steering Israelis and Palestinians toward peace even harder after the election is done. For that, he can thank his friends in Britain and America.

House Panel Votes For Sanctions Against Iran

Washington Post
March 16, 2006

Ignoring White House objections, a Republican-controlled House panel overwhelmingly approved legislation yesterday to tighten sanctions against Iran.

The 37 to 3 vote of the House International Relations Committee reflected hostility toward Iran's Islamic government and the specter that it may acquire nuclear weapons.

The legislation would end U.S. economic aid to any country that helped Iran by investing in its energy sector or permitted a private entity to carry out such investment. The president would be authorized to waive the provision if he deemed such action to be in the national interest.

The administration opposes the legislation, saying it would limit the flexibility needed to pursue a diplomatic solution to the stalemate over Iran's nuclear program.

Rep. Tom Lantos (Calif.), the committee's ranking Democrat, said the goal is "to inflict such severe economic pain on Tehran that it would starve the leadership of the resources they need to fund a costly nuclear program."

U.S. Military Plans to Make Insect Cyborgs

by Shaun Waterman
United Press International
March 14, 2006

WASHINGTON - Facing problems in its efforts to train insects or build robots that can mimic their flying abilities, the U.S. military now wants to develop "insect cyborgs" that can go where its soldiers cannot.

The Pentagon is seeking applications from researchers to help them develop technology that can be implanted into living insects to control their movement and transmit video or other sensory data back to their handlers.

In an announcement posted on government Web sites last week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it is seeking "innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect cyborgs," by implanting tiny devices into insect bodies while the animals are in their pupal stage.

As an insect metamorphoses from a larva to an adult, the solicitation notice says, its "body goes through a renewal process that can heal wounds and reposition internal organs around foreign objects, including tiny (mechanical) structures that might be present."

The goal is to create technology that can achieve "the delivery of an insect within five meters of a specific target located at hundred meters away, using electronic remote control, and/or global positioning system." Once at the target, "the insect must remain stationary either indefinitely or until otherwise instructed ... (and) must also be able to transmit data from (Department of Defense) relevant sensors ... includ(ing) gas sensors, microphones, video, etc."

The move follows challenges the agency says it has encountered in its efforts to train insects to detect explosives or other chemical compounds, and to mimic their flight and movement patterns using small robots.

Several years ago, DARPA launched a $3 million project to train honeybees to find landmines. According to a report by the American Forces Press Service, scientists used sugar-soaked sponges treated with explosives to get the bees to identify the smell as a possible food source.

But last week's solicitation says the project didn't work out.

"These activities have highlighted key challenges involving behavioral and chemical control of insects... Instinctive behaviors for feeding and mating -- and also for responding to temperature changes -- prevented them from performing reliably," it says.

As far as the development of purely robotic or mechanical unmanned aerial vehicles -- so-called micro-UAVs -- the solicitation says that developing energy sources both powerful and light enough "present(s) a key technical challenge."

Both sets of challenges "might be effectively overcome" by the development of insect cyborgs, says the solicitation.

The devices DARPA wants to implant are micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS. MEMS technology uses tiny silicon wafers like those used as the basis for computer microchips. But instead of merely laying circuits on them, MEMS technology can actually cut and shape the silicon, turning the chip into a microscopic mechanical device.

The solicitation envisages the implanted device as a "platform" onto which "various microsystem payloads can be mounted ... with the goal of controlling insect locomotion, sens(ing) local environment, and scaveng(ing) power."

"Possible methods of locomotion control may be sensory manipulation, direct muscle interface, or neural interface to the insect," says the document, known as a Broad Agency Announcement. It goes on to say that sensory manipulation, for instance by projecting ultrasonic vibrations or ejecting pheromones, is likely to be species-specific, whereas technology to directly control insect muscles or brains "may be more general."

DARPA believes that the heat and mechanical power generated by the insects themselves as they move around "may be harnessed to power the microsystem payload" eliminating the need for batteries or other power systems.

The objective is to transform the insects into "predictable devices that can be used for various micro-UAV missions requiring unobtrusive entry into areas inaccessible or hostile to humans."

Among potential missions, says the solicitation, would be the collection of "explosive signatures from within buildings, caves, or other inaccessible locations."

Although flying insects like dragonflies and moths are "of great interest," the document says, "Hopping and swimming insects could also meet final demonstration goals."

Implanting the devices during pupation is key, says the document, because "the insects are immobile and can be manipulated without interference from instinctive motion."

As part of their honeybee training project, DARPA glued tiny radio transmitters to the bees, to help track their movement.

The solicitation says that the healing processes which insects go through as they change from larvae into adults "are expected to yield more reliable bio-electromechanical interface... as compared to adhesively bonded systems to adult insects."

Inserting the devices in pupae could also "enable assembly-line like fabrication of hybrid insect-MEMS interfaces, providing a considerable cost advantage," says the solicitation.

DARPA will hold a day-long conference for contractors interested in submitting proposals on March 24.

The Final Word Is Hooray!

Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
March 15, 2006

NEW YORK - March 15 - Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Shouldn't the [Canadian] prime minister and all of us who thought the war was hasty and dangerous and wrongheaded admit that we were wrong? I mean, with the pictures of those Iraqis dancing in the streets, hauling down statues of Saddam Hussein and gushing their thanks to the Americans, isn't it clear that President Bush and Britain's Tony Blair were right all along? If we believe it's a good thing that Hussein's regime has been dismantled, aren't we hypocritical not to acknowledge Bush's superior judgment?... Why can't those of us who thought the war was a bad idea (or, at any rate, a premature one) let it go now and just join in celebrating the victory wrought by our magnificent military forces?"
(Washington Post's William Raspberry, 4/14/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of "the green mushroom" over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

Members of Egypt's Democratic Opposition Feel America Has Deserted Them

By ELI LAKE
New York Sun, NY
March 15, 2006

CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian opposition leaders and democrats are asking whether, as America concentrates upon encouraging democracy in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Washington has abandoned its policy of pressing President Mubarak into liberalizing the police state he oversees.

Since November's flawed parliamentary elections, the country's independent judges have been under attack, local elections have been canceled, and boasts from Mr. Mubarak that Secretary of State Rice has dropped the democracy agenda have gone unanswered by the embassy here.

One of Egypt's leading reformer intellectuals, Saadeddin Ibrahim, said, "The public impression is that the United States has put the whole issue of democracy and liberalization on the back burner. They are either preoccupied or have been persuaded by Mubarak of other dangers in the West from the Islamists."

Such words are particularly harsh considering the source. When Mr. Ibrahim was jailed during the first term of the Bush presidency, Ms. Rice, in her role as national security adviser, personally appealed for his release to the Egyptian leader, going so far as to withhold discretionary assistance.

Today, Mr. Mubarak's presidential challenger from last fall, Ayman Nour, finds himself in jail. But Washington's calls for his release are quiet at best. While visiting Cairo last month, Ms. Rice said nothing of Mr. Nour's fate and did not meet with his wife.

A spokesman for the embassy here, John Berry, disputed Mr. Ibrahim's characterization yesterday. "I don't think it's true, it's not what the American government thinks." He pointed to Ambassador Ricciardone's remarks on March 12 at the Model American Congress, where he answered questions from the young people participating in the faux legislature.

In the question-and-answer session, however, the ambassador was hesitant to criticize the Mubarak regime. When asked his thoughts on the arrest of Mr. Nour, the ambassador began by saying, "Do you know I would actually like to ask all of you in this room that question? Because I bet if there are 100 people, I bet I'd get 100 different answers."

He said the perception in the West was Mr. Nour was arrested for political reasons, but never directly condemned his imprisonment. The ambassador joked during the meeting that Mr. Mubarak would probably do well in American elections, because he is a well-known world figure.

"They are continuing to harass Ayman," Mr. Ibrahim said yesterday. "Why didn't Secretary Rice say anything about the case? He has just been charged with harassing a police officer and they are calling him back to the court to face these new charges."

The state crackdown is expanding in scope. A handful of Egyptian judges who protested the second and third rounds of the Egyptian parliamentary elections are under investigation in a move observers here say is retribution for their efforts to block the ruling party from intimidating voters and stealing elections.

The vice president of al-Wafd party here, which is banned by the government from writing about politics in its newspaper, yesterday said that America is simply acting in its interests.

"As for the democracy agenda, I think that the Americans have to deal with more practical issues now: Iraq, Palestine, and Sudan," Mahmoud Abaza said. "So the importance of Mubarak's regime might now outweigh the benefits of attacking him publicly in the present moment. Another important aspect is that the theory of creative chaos has been proven to be dangerous, so yes, they might be withdrawing the democracy agenda for the moment."

This is the view that Mr. Mubarak has tried to convey. He crowed in the state press that last month Ms. Rice was a "good listener," and that democracy issues did not come up in their talk. When asked about Mr. Mubarak's characterization of those discussions yesterday, Mr. Berry said, "I cannot comment on a private conversation between Secretary Rice and President Mubarak."

However, in a June speech at the American University of Cairo, Ms. Rice said, "The Egyptian government must fulfill the promise it has made to its people - and to the entire world - by giving its citizens the freedom to choose."

One reason the Bush administration muted its support for democracy here is because of the electoral gains from both the Muslim Brothers last November in the parliamentary vote and Hamas, which now controls the legislature in the Palestinian Arab territories.

Hamas is included on America's list of foreign terrorist organizations. While the brotherhood has condemned terrorism in Egypt, its members have also helped create Hamas and consider suicide attacks against Israeli civilians to be a form of legitimate Islamic resistance.

The Bush administration is in a precarious situation in Egypt. As the seat of the Arab League, its diplomatic assistance is needed to make a case against Iran at the U.N. Security Council. Also, the Egyptians have stepped up training for Palestinian Arab security forces, a delicate task it could quit if the liberalization talk here became too hot.

"The State department is pretty much ignoring the whole democracy issue now," a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, said yesterday. "The Hamas elections scared them. Rather than fine tune the policy, they are throwing the baby out with the bath water."

A coordinator for the youth wing of the coalition, known as Kefaya, which began staging anti-Mubarak rallies in 2004, agreed with Mr. Rubin's assessment, but considers it is a mistake. "They are fearing that Islamists would have the power to rule the country and this could be the outcome of fast democratization," Ahmad Salih said. "If the government here puts more pressure against us as a secular opposition, this would eventually lead to the opposite effect of what Washington wants. The only way to have a secular opposition is to give us space for democracy."

New DoD Policy Office Studies 'Strategic Shocks'

Defense News
March 6, 2006

A new unit in the Pentagon’s policy office called Strategic Futures is looking at scenarios that could change the U.S. military’s role in the next decade, sources say.

The new office will assess “strategic shocks”: wild-card scenarios such as the emergence of a democratic China or an increasingly fascist and nuclear-armed Iran. While such futuristic thinking has generally been the purview of Andrew Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment, it’s a new area for the policy office...

The QDR said Russia would be “unlikely to pose a military threat to the United States or its allies on the same scale or intensity as the Soviet Union during the Cold War.” But Henry said that the last five years have brought signs that the country might be drifting toward authoritarianism...

The QDR singled out China as the emerging power “with the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States.” The review endorsed spending on the kind of expensive conventional weapons that might be needed to fight a near-peer rival, such as advanced fighter aircraft, warships and submarines. Much of the concern stems from China’s communist leadership...

Critics have said the QDR fails to reshape the U.S. military to take on terror groups. Henry said the QDR adequately addressed current and future threats in its recommendations that the U.S. military focus on four areas of emphasis in the review — defeating terrorist networks, defending the homeland, shaping countries at strategic crossroads, and preventing the acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction by hostile states...

Paraphrasing Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, Henry said, “the enemy in the long war is very easy to kill but I can’t find him. So the investment strategy is to start thinking about how we move to the finding and fixing part. We have an awful lot in hand we can use to finish.”

Michele Flournoy, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Pentagon official who has criticized the QDR, said the U.S. military appears to be taking a page out of the Israeli counterterrorism book used during the recent Intifada uprising in Palestine.

Israel emphasized taking out “20 militants in 24 hours and taking them all out at once, which, according to [Israelis], had a chilling effect on recruiting, because not everyone who joins a group wants to be a suicide bomber,” she said. If just being part of a group is a death warrant, “maybe it raises the cost” for the militants.

But Israel largely achieved the results through human intelligence rather than through high-tech aerial surveillance, which is what the Pentagon seems to be focusing on, she said.


Clarification On Tactics
Defense News
March 13, 2006

I am writing in response to an article, “New DoD Policy Office Studies ‘Strategic Shocks,’” in the March 6 issue, in which I was misquoted.

Contrary to what the reporter wrote, I never said or implied that “the U.S. military appears to be taking a page out of the Israeli counterterrorism book.” My description of Israeli operations was an illustrative example offered in answer to the reporter’s general question about how “locate and track” capabilities can be used. At no time did I suggest that the U.S. military was taking a page from the Israeli experience, or that it should.

U.S. military operations against terrorists are governed by a different set of objectives, legal framework and rules of engagement than Israeli intelligence operations against the intifada. I do not believe that Israeli tactics in the intifada are the correct basis for deriving best practices for the U.S. military in counterterrorism operations.

Michèle A. Flournoy, Senior Adviser, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington

Terror database lists 200,000 names

Run-ins with authorities have led to 60 arrests, director says
Terry Frieden
CNN
March 15, 2006

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Terrorist Screening Center marked its second anniversary as keeper of the government's terrorist watch list Tuesday by disclosing it had received about 6,000 "positive hits" of known or suspected terrorists.

But Director Donna Bucella stressed that only about 1 percent of the cases led to an arrest.

In a meeting with reporters at FBI headquarters, Bucella said in most of the encounters, law enforcement officials gathered additional information on the "appropriately suspected" person and released him or her.

Bucella said several of the 6,000 "matches" were repeat inquiries on the same person.

Bucella said the watch list, which is updated daily, contains about 350,000 "identities," which include partial names and identifying marks, but only about 200,000 names of "real people, known individuals."

Most are overseas and have never tried to enter the United States.

The TSC list, conceived after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, combines about a dozen databases from nine agencies that any government official -- from a Customs agent to a state trooper -- can use to check the name of someone who has been screened or stopped, The Associated Press reported.

When there is a possible match, the screening center verifies the information is accurate and advises what steps to take, the AP reported.

Bucella told reporters the screening center, which has ordered flights thought to be carrying terrorism suspects diverted, is improving its methods.

"We're doing a lot better," she said. "We haven't had a plane diverted in a long time."

Bucella said plans to deal with potential suspects on flights into the country are taking place before the flights take off, rather than up to 45 minutes after.

Bucella said one of several improvements the multiagency Terrorist Screening Center has made in recent months is the addition of representatives of the federal air marshals service, who need to be aware of terror suspects traveling within the country, and NORAD, which is responsible for scrambling military jets.

The center was formed in September 2003 to consolidate terrorist watch lists and provide support for flight screeners worldwide. Plans at the time were for the center to be operational by December 2003.

A separate federal program designed to use the center's database and take over screening airline passengers has run into repeated delays.

The Transportation Security Administration said last month that the Secure Flight program was heading back to the drawing board after four years and more than $130 million in development.

TSA Director Edmund "Kip" Hawley told a Senate committee he was "rebaselining" the planned Secure Flight program, and indicated he will drop plans to check passengers' names against commercial databases such as credit reports, one of the most contentious aspects of the program.

The announcement came amid protests from privacy advocates and a stinging evaluation from the Government Accountability Office, which must certify the program before it can take effect.

Pentagon Eyeing Weapons In Space

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
Boston Globe
March 14, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is asking Congress for hundreds of millions of dollars to test weapons in space, marking the biggest step toward creating a space battlefield since President Reagan's long-defunct "star wars" project during the Cold War, according to federal budget documents.

The Defense Department's budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 includes money for a variety of tests on offensive and defensive weapons, including a missile launched at a small satellite in orbit, testing a small space vehicle that could disperse weapons while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound, and determining whether high-powered ground-based lasers can effectively destroy enemy satellites.

The military says that its aerospace technology, which has advanced exponentially during the last two decades, is worth the nine-figure investment because it will have civilian applications as well, such as refueling or retrieving disabled satellites. But arms-control specialists fear the tests will push the military closer to basing weapons in space than during Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s without a public debate of the potential consequences.

"Some of these things are going to be put up and tested and that is where you have the potential to cross the line" into creating actual space-based weapons systems, said Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington and coauthor of a new analysis on space weap ons spending.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, warned that any US move to position weapons in space "will lead countries to pursue countermeasures. Before we cross that threshold, the United States should explore with other countries some guidelines or limits on what is deployed in space."

The big-budget projects are spread across the Defense Department, but most are under the purview of the Missile Defense Agency, which oversees the development of a national missile shield, a system heavily dependent on space-based hardware. The shield could also be used to destroy those missiles or strike back at the adversaries who fired them.

The descriptions included in the budget request mark only what is publicly known about the military's space warfare plans. Specialists believe the classified portion of the $439 billion budget, blacked out for national security reasons, almost certainly includes other space-related programs.

Rick Lehner, an agency spokesman, said there are no plans to base weapons in space, noting that out of $48 billion planned for missile defense over the next five years, just $570 million will fund space-related activities.

"We just want to do some experiments" on weapons technology in space, he said.

Under President Bush, the White House has emphasized what's known as "space dominance" the notion that the United States must command space to defend the nation, a strategy that gained traction under Reagan. The military already has reconnaissance and communications satellites, but the Pentagon says weapons systems in space can protect commercial satellites as well.

In 2004, the Air Force published a paper outlining a long-term vision for space weapons, including an air-launched antisatellite missile, a ground-based laser aimed at low-earth orbit satellites, and a "hypervelocity" weapon that could strike targets from space.

The paper stated that it is essential for the United States to deny its adversaries strategic access to space; success "will require [the] full spectrum, sea, air, and space-based offensive counterspace systems" that the military can muster. The Pentagon has always examined space as a possible battleground, but the budget request marks a transition from laboratory theory to reality. And the Bush administration has sought to keep the military's options open despite international opposition to weapons in space.

Indeed, for the first time ever, the United States voted last fall to block a UN resolution calling for a ban on weapons in space. In the past, the US delegation abstained from voting on similar measures.

"There is a very strong desire among most states to get a negotiation going," said Peggy Mason, Canada's former UN ambassador for disarmament. But the UN Conference on Disarmament operates according to consensus and the United States has stymied talks on the issue, Mason said.

Arms-control advocates believe the space projects in the defense budget, which is under congressional review, explains the opposition.

According to a joint analysis by defense specialists at the Henry L. Stimson Center and the Center for Defense Information, several of these space programs, if brought to fruition, will create "facts in orbit" weapons in space before a public debate is complete.

One $207 million project by the Missile Defense Agency features experiments on micro-satellites, including using one as a target for missiles. This experiment "is particularly troublesome," according to the joint report, "as it would be a de-facto antisatellite test."

The defense budget doesn't have a timetable for that test, but a Missile Defense Agency spokesman said the test is merely intended to study the missile during flight.

In another program, called Advanced Weapons Technology, the Air Force wants to spend $51 million for a series of space-oriented experiments, according to budget documents. A project description says the Air Force would test a variety of powerful laser beams "for applications including antisatellite weapons."

A Missile Defense Agency project set to begin in 2008, the Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed, would launch up to five satellites capable of shooting down missiles, according to budget documents.

"A space layer helps protect the United States and our allies against asymmetric threats designed to exploit coverage and engagement gaps in our terrestrial defenses," the agency says in its budget proposal, referring to the interceptor test. "We believe that a mix of terrestrial and space-basing offers the most effective global defense against ballistic missiles."

The agency also has asked Congress for $220 million for "Multiple Kill Vehicles," a program that experts say could be proposed as a space-based missile interceptor.

Meanwhile, the Air Force wants $33 million for the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, envisioned as space vehicle capable of delivering a military payload anywhere on earth within an hour, according to an official project description.

Philip Coyle, who served as the Pentagon's top weapons tester from 1994 to 2001, said in an interview that he sees "new emphasis on space weapons" even though "there is no threat in space to justify a new arms race in space."

"US missile defense is the first wave in which the United States could introduce attack weapons in space, that is, weapons with strike capability," he said. "Once you've got space-based interceptors up there, they can just as well be used for offense as defense."

Briton Warned Of U.S. Miscues

By Thomas Wagner
Associated Press
March 15, 2006

LONDON -- Shortly after U.S. forces invaded Baghdad, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's point man in Iraq warned him in two confidential cables that the Americans were mishandling the occupation and losing public support, according to a new book.

On April 9, 2003, U.S. troops swarmed into Baghdad and television footage seen around the world showed crowds toppling a 40-foot statue of dictator Saddam Hussein in Firdous Square.

But a much different picture emerged in the first confidential cable that John Sawers, Britain's ambassador to Egypt and its main official in Iraq at the time, sent to Mr. Blair and his Cabinet, according to "Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq."

The book, by New York Times correspondent Michael R. Gordon and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine officer, was published yesterday in Britain (Atlantic Books) and in the United States (Pantheon).

Mr. Sawers is now the director-general of the political office at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

Mr. Sawers' cable in May 2003 -- titled "Iraq: What's Going Wrong" -- painted a bleak picture.

He said the exhausted U.S. troops occupying the capital lacked an overall strategy for dealing with former members of Saddam's Ba'ath Party, beginning reconstruction projects and handling the media. They also lacked a plan and funding to maintain security, he said.

"The problems are worst in the capital, and it is the one place we can't afford to get it wrong," Mr. Sawers wrote. "The clock is ticking."

His memo said the U.S. postwar administration led by Jay Garner, a retired three-star general, "is an unbelievable mess."

"No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis. ... Garner and his team of 60-year-old retired generals are well-meaning, but out of their depth," the cable said, according to the book.

Asked about Mr. Sawers' two confidential cables, Mr. Blair's spokesman said yesterday, "I don't comment on leaked memos."

"The prime minister has in the past quite openly said that ... mistakes were made in the early days on some of those issues such as Ba'athification. There's nothing new in that, but I'm not going to comment on an alleged leaked memo as such," the spokesman said.

In 2003, Mr. Sawers said the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, which had taken Baghdad, was exhausted and "needs to go home now, and be garlanded as victors." He said Britain should consider sending some of its forces based in southern Iraq to Baghdad.

But, the book says, "For all Sawers' warnings, the United States would continue to shoulder the burden of the Iraqi capital."

American British Letter on Jericho Prison

How the walls of Jericho were breached

By Harry de Quetteville
Telegraph (UK)
15/03/2006

Britain's tiny contingent of monitors left Jericho's jail soon after 9am yesterday, telling Palestinian staff that they were taking their car to be fixed. In reality they had no intention of returning to watch over its 200 inmates, among them Ahmed Saadat, the man accused of masterminding the assassination of Rehavam Zeevi, Israel's tourism minister, in 2001.

Instead, the three monitors headed out of the jail and began the uphill drive from the lowest city on earth to Jerusalem. The Foreign Office later said they were leaving because of fears for their "security" and few doubt that inside Jericho jail the inmates ran the show.

Saadat's cell was more of an office. He had telephones and television sets. The jail's Palestinian guards stayed away from his quarters, which included a kitchen and an area to receive guests.

The British monitors stayed even further back. But to Israel, which has long wanted Saadat in its custody, they guaranteed that men it considered terrorist murderers were at least serving their time behind bars, even if those bars were covered by curtains.

When the British left, that guarantee evaporated, particularly as the newly elected Palestinian militant group Hamas had hinted it might free Saadat. So as the monitors moved out, the Israeli army - long ready for its capture or kill mission - moved in.

The military operation to raid the jail truly began at the moment the British passed an Israeli army checkpoint, according to senior Israeli commanders. "One, two, three, I counted the British monitors out," said an Israeli colonel, second-in-command of yesterday's operation. "We have standing orders to act in this case, so we went in."

Within minutes, a passage of time that provoked furious Palestinian accusations of collusion between Britain and the Israelis, the mission was under way.

Gen Guy Tzur insisted that there had been no co-operation with Britain. The operation had been prompted by Palestinian hints that Saadat and five others wanted for Mr Reevi's killing might be released.

"There are no negotiations," said the colonel of yesterday's mission. "It applies to everybody in the jail. Either they hand themselves over or they will be killed."

In the Old Testament the children of Israel circled the ancient city of Jericho seven times until its walls collapsed.

Yesterday morning more than 100 Israeli combat troops arrived armed not with the ark of the covenant but bulldozers, helicopters, tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

The deployment of such firepower has not been seen in the occupied territories for many months as the wrath of the five-year Palestinian intifada ebbed.

Over the streets of what has recently been one of the most peaceable Palestinian cities, helicopter gunships hovered, with one firing a missile into the wall of the jail compound.

Amid the din of frequent explosions, the Palestinian inmates and staff inside the jail were hailed through loudspeakers and told to surrender or die.

Ordered to strip to their underwear, workers and prisoners handed themselves over to waiting soldiers as bulldozers crashed through the walls. But others, further inside the jail compound, had decided to take a stand.

"We are about 100 people, 70 staff and 30 prisoners," said prison staff member Khaled Shloun, contacted by The Daily Telegraph inside the jail where he said he was sitting in a room next to Saadat. He said the floor was "covered in blood" from those injured in exchanges of gunfire.

As a stand-off developed and tension mounted at the jail, fury spread through the rest of the Palestinian territories, where crowds and armed groups descended on British targets. In the Gaza strip, a British Council building was set on fire after Palestinian security forces were unable to restrain a mob.

No Britons are stationed at the building and its Palestinian staff had been evacuated. But the facility was very badly damaged, according to Sir David Green, director general of the British Council.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, British Council offices were also attacked. But while Britain was the focus of Palestinian fury, any westerner was a target. More than a dozen aid workers, teachers and journalists, from the US, France, Switzerland, Australia and Korea, were taken at gunpoint.

Most of those held, including an American teacher, were released before night fell yesterday. Fighters from Saadat's extreme-Left group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said they regarded foreigners as targets and promised to kill some of those taken if their leader was harmed.

In fact, with the harsh desert sun falling over Jericho, Saadat was on the point of surrendering and the siege was almost over. But inside the jail, Palestinian prisoners and staff continued their defiant posturing.

"We are united, prison administrator and prisoner," said Mr Shloun. "Not one of us is talking about surrender. Saadat is a freedom fighter. He is lifting our morale all the time, telling us God is looking after us."

But later most of the gunfire and shelling had stopped, and the jail was quiet. Then streams of Palestinians poured out. Some, obviously wounded, were being carried.

Saadat and two of the other five were in Israeli custody and checks were under way to ensure that the three others were not hiding in the rubble of the Jericho jail.

U.S. military airstrikes significantly increased in Iraq

By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Tue, Mar. 14, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - American forces have dramatically increased airstrikes in Iraq during the past five months, a change of tactics that may foreshadow how the United States plans to battle a still-strong insurgency while reducing the number of U.S. ground troops serving here.

A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year. Knight Ridder's statistical findings were reviewed and confirmed by American Air Force officials in the region.

The numbers also show that U.S. forces dropped bombs on more cities during the last five months than they did during the same period a year ago. Airstrikes hit at least 11 cities between Oct. 1, 2004, and Feb. 28, 2005, but were mostly concentrated in and around the western city of Fallujah. A year later, U.S. warplanes struck at least 22 cities during the same months.

The spike in bombings comes at a crucial time for American diplomatic efforts in Iraq. Officials in Washington have said that the situation in Iraq is improving, creating expectations that at least some American troops might be able to withdraw over the next year.

On Monday, President Bush stopped short of promising a withdrawal. But he said he expects that Iraqi government forces will control more of Iraq, allowing U.S. forces to carry out more targeted missions.

"As more capable Iraqi police and soldiers come on line, they will assume responsibility for more territory - with the goal of having the Iraqis control more territory than the coalition by the end of 2006," Bush said. "And as Iraqis take over more territory, this frees American and coalition forces to concentrate on training and on hunting down high-value targets, like the terrorist (Abu Musab al) Zarqawi and his associates."

There are risks to a strategy that relies more on aerial bombings than ground combat patrols. In the town of Samarra, for example, insurgents last month were able to spend several hours rigging explosives in the dome of a Shiite shrine that they later destroyed, in part because American troops patrolled less. The shrine's destruction triggered a week of sectarian violence that killed hundreds. U.S. soldiers interviewed in Samarra three weeks earlier said patrols in the city had been scaled back because the number of troops had been reduced by two-thirds.

Airstrikes also risk civilian casualties, driving a wedge between American forces and Iraqis, Iraqis say.

Osama Jadaan al Dulaimi, a tribal leader in the western town of Karabilah, a town near the Syrian border that was hit with bombs or missiles on at least 17 days between October 2005 and February 2006, said the bombings had created enemies.

"The people of Karabilah hate the foreigners who crossed the border and entered their areas and got into a fight with the Americans," al Dulaimi said. "The residents now also hate the American occupiers who demolished their houses with bombs and killed their families ... and now the people of Karabilah want to join the resistance against the Americans for what they did."

The U.S. military has said repeatedly that it uses precise munitions and targets insurgent locations that are verified by various intelligence sources.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said that the airstrikes reflected U.S. soldiers' ability to target more sharply insurgents across Iraq.


"This is one more tool that they have pulled out ... as they have been able to better refine their tactics and procedures," Johnson said. "Airpower has always been available. I don't see a ramping-up; I see a refinement" of intelligence that allows for more airstrikes.

Johnson also disputed the idea that the bombings exact a political cost.

"The same thing could be said of anything we use to target the enemy," Johnson said. "If they take up arms against Iraqi and coalition forces, they are going to be targeted with the weapons the commander on the ground deems most effective to eliminate the threat."

Knight Ridder compiled the statistics from about 300 daily press releases provided by the U.S. Central Command's air forces unit, which describes itself as the "predominant owner of air assets in the region." The releases detailed bombing activities, but they didn't include actions of Marine Corps units, so the number of bombings probably is higher.

Air Force officials who reviewed the statistics confirmed that they were correct.

The statistics show that U.S. and coalition planes dropped bombs or missiles on Iraqi cities on at least 76 days from Oct. 1, 2005, through Feb. 28, 2006 - or one out of every two days. During the same period a year earlier, bombs or missiles struck on only 49 days, the tabulation showed.

Bombs were dropped on more days in each of the last five months than they were for the same months the previous year. For example, the U.S. military launched bombings and missile strikes on 20 days in December 2005, compared with 12 in December 2004, and 10 in January 2006, compared with five in January 2005.

The figures also indicate that the insurgency has branched out after American forces retook the city of Fallujah in November 2004, robbing the insurgents of their main base of operations in Iraq.

In Anbar province, Fallujah was hit hardest in the 2004 to 2005 period. During the heaviest fighting there in 2004, from Nov. 10-16, American aircraft dropped at least 54 bombs or missiles on the town.

But from October 2005 to February 2006, Fallujah wasn't mentioned in the daily reports, though eight other cities in Anbar were.

Stories of American missiles hitting the homes of innocents are passed between Iraqi men at teahouses and during Friday worship services.

"Residents worry that their homes will be bombed at any time," said Hussein Ali Jaafar, who owns a stationery shop in the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, which was targeted by bombs or missiles at least 27 times between October 2005 and February 2006. "Most of the bombing is unjustified and random. It does not differentiate between militants and innocent people."

A tribal sheik who lives on the outskirts of the troubled Anbar town of Ramadi, who asked that he be identified as Abu Tahseen instead of by his full name out of fear of possible retribution, said that the strikes create more insurgents than they kill because of the region's tribal dictates of revenge.

"They (the Americans) think: `As long as there are resistance fighters operating in this spot, we will wipe it out entirely,'" Abu Tahseen said, using the term for insurgents favored by Iraqis sympathetic to their cause. "As you know, our nature is a tribal one, and so if one from us is killed, we kill three or four in return."

Comparing the total number of bombs and missiles dropped from one year to the next isn't possible because the Central Command releases began late last year to refer to "precision guided bombs" or "precision guided munitions" instead of the actual number and type of bomb used.

"The change in nomenclature reflects internal angst about whether or not it is appropriate to give the specific types of ordnance dropped,'" said Air Forces spokesman Maj. Robert P. Palmer in an e-mail exchange.

Senators press Bush on Saudis

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Mar 14, 2006

A bipartisan slate of U.S. senators led by Jews from each party asked President Bush to urge Saudi Arabia to cancel a meeting on an Israel boycott.

Saudi Arabia is hosting an Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting this week, and a Saudi official reportedly said one session would be dedicated to reinforcing the Israel boycott — though Saudi Arabia vowed last year, when it joined the World Trade Organization, not to boycott Israel.

“Mr. President, the United States cannot remain silent on Saudi Arabia’s intolerant boycott of Israel, and should insist that Saudi Arabia uphold its obligations as a member of WTO,” said the letter initiated by Sens. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and signed by 15 others.

Newspapers move US mad cow story off front pages

By Bob Burgdorfer
Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:16 PM ET

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mad cow disease is no longer front-page news at many leading newspapers. which put stories of the latest U.S. case on the inside of Tuesday's editions.

One exception was financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal, which ran a one-paragraph notice of the story in its "What's News" summary of important items on page 1 and carried the story on page 2.

The move off the front pages appears to support the U.S. beef industry's claims that consumers are not as concerned as they had been that the disease is a threat to the food supply. Also, the industry claims that as consumers learn more about the disease they gain confidence in the safety measures being taken.

However, economists warned that the government must remain vigilant in testing for mad cow and safeguarding the food supply because consumer confidence is fickle and could quickly change for the worse.

The U.S. Agriculture Department on Monday said a 10-year-old beef cow in Alabama tested positive for the disease. The two previous U.S. cases were in Washington state in December 2003 and in Texas in June 2005.

"The focus right now is on avian flu. Mad cow has taken a back seat," said Harry Baumes, an agricultural economist at Global Insight, an economics information analysis services firm.

Avian flu, or bird flu, is spreading overseas and has killed about 100 people. It has never been found in the United States, but U.S. leaders are preparing for its possible arrival.

USA Today ran a short story entitled "Agriculture Dept. confirms 3rd case of mad cow" across five columns on page 9 of the front section. It ran a short bird flu story on page 6.

The New York Times ran its mad cow story across five columns on page 19 of the main section, but it had a notice on page 2 that guided readers to the story.

The Chicago Tribune ran its mad cow story as a short one-column story on page 6 in an "Across The Nation" summary.

The Washington Post ran a news service version of the story across the top of page 3 and the Los Angeles Times ran the story across four columns on page 17 of the main section.

The first U.S. mad cow case in December 2003 scored much larger media coverage and generated attention overseas, as foreign buyers quickly banned U.S. beef. Since then the reactions have been considerably more subdued.

"The bottom line for consumers remains the same: Your beef is safe," the National Cattlemen's Beef Association declared on Monday after the latest case was announced.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday said it has received far fewer calls from the news media regarding the latest case than it did on the first two cases.

"I can certainly tell you there were a great deal of calls after those two cases were announced. After this one you are my first call," CDC spokesman Dave Daigle told Reuters.

While Daigle could not say if consumer concerns regarding the disease had diminished, he said the drop-off in calls from the news media would indicate a lessening of interest.

"That is one of the factors that would play into consumer concerns," he said.

Cattle traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange also appeared to have lost interest in the disease. The CME April cattle contract closed down 0.525 cent at 83.100 cents per lb on Tuesday, but traders blamed the selling on technical factors rather than the mad cow news.

Cattle futures had started the session -- the first trading since the latest case was announced late on Monday -- higher.

Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is a fatal brain wasting disease in cattle. It is believed humans can contract a similar fatal disease by eating infected parts from contaminated cattle.

CDC's Daigle said there has never been a human case of the disease in the United States.