Pirates of the Mediterranean

By ROBERT HARRIS
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
September 30, 2006

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: “The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”

Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: “The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.”

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” — “I am a Roman citizen” — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

“Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone,” the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. “There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.”

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his “war on terror,” which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompey’s special command during the Senate debate — was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome’s democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.

Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of “Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.”

Out of the Mouths of Aides

Editorial
The New York Times
September 30, 2006

It has taken five and a half years, but at least some of President Bush’s aides have begun to acknowledge the patently obvious: There needs to be a serious effort to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Without one, the United States has no chance of salvaging its battered reputation in the Islamic world. No chance of rallying moderate Arab leaders to fight extremists or contain Iran. And no chance of ensuring Israel’s lasting security. We just hope that Mr. Bush will now make the long neglected peace effort a central priority for the remaining years of his presidency.

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveling to the region next week, Mr. Bush should give her an explicit mandate to press Israel, and not just the Palestinians, for real compromises. He should also give her the authority to talk to adversaries, and not just friends, about how to support the effort.

For years, Mr. Bush’s advisers have woven an entire mythology about how Middle East peace required tanks on the road to Baghdad, rather than diplomats on planes to Jerusalem, Ramallah and Damascus.

So it was surprising to hear one of Ms. Rice’s closest aides, Philip Zelikow, the State Department counselor, tell a think-tank audience that some sense of progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute is “just a sine qua non” for getting moderate Arabs and the Europeans to cooperate on Iran and the region’s many other dangerous problems. “We can rail against that belief. We can find it completely justifiable. But it’s fact,” Mr. Zelikow said.

We fear that Mr. Bush and his secretary of state haven’t yet caught up to that. As Ms. Rice prepared to leave, other aides said that the most she would do would be to rally support for the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and to solicit ideas on how to revive peace talks.

Ms. Rice should use this trip to commit herself to negotiating a comprehensive cease-fire. She can start by telling the Israelis they need to immediately end targeted killings and halt all settlement construction. Ms. Rice needs to make clear to the Palestinians that while words are important, she is less concerned with rhetoric than the ability and willingness of any Palestinian government to halt, rather than abet, all attacks on Israel.

Washington is already encouraging Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to meet with Mr. Abbas, for more symbolic support. Ms. Rice should instead tell all sides that President Bush’s goal is a full resumption of peace negotiations — and that he will commit the full resources of his presidency to the effort.

Ms. Rice should be willing to go to Damascus — or send a top aide — to tell President Bashar al-Assad that relations can improve if he restrains his clients Hamas and Hezbollah. The Europeans — who have been desperate for the United States to engage — should make the same trip to warn of real punishments should he refuse.

The lesson of this summer’s disastrous wars in Lebanon and Gaza is that the time for listening tours and tactical steps is far past. We hope that Mr. Zelikow’s bosses start paying attention.

Iraqi Journalists Add Laws To List Of Dangers

By Paul von Zielbauer
New York Times
September 29, 2006

BAGHDAD — Ahmed al-Karbouli, a reporter for Baghdadiya TV in the violent city of Ramadi, did his best to ignore the death threats, right up until six armed men drilled him with bullets after midday prayers.

He was the fourth journalist killed in Iraq in September alone, out of a total of more than 130 since the 2003 invasion, the vast majority of them Iraqis. But these days, men with guns are not Iraqi reporters’ only threat. Men with gavels are, too.

Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.

Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who “publicly insults” the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.

On Sept. 7, the police sealed the offices of Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based satellite news channel, for what the government said was inflammatory reporting. And the Committee to Protect Journalists says that at least three Iraqi journalists have served time in prison for writing articles deemed criminally offensive.

The office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has lately refused to speak with news organizations that report on sectarian violence in ways that the government considers inflammatory; some outlets have been shut down.

In addition to coping with government pressures, dozens of Iraqi journalists have been kidnapped by criminal gangs or detained by the American military, on suspicion that they are helping Sunni insurgents or Shiite militias. One, Bilal Hussein, who photographed insurgents in Anbar Province for The Associated Press, has been in American custody without charges since April.

And all Iraqi journalists have to live with the fear of death, which often dictates extreme security measures. Abdel Karim Hamadie, the news manager for Al Iraqiya Television, said he sometimes went months without leaving the station’s compound.

“The last time I went home was three weeks ago,” he said, showing off a small room adjacent to his office where he sleeps each night. “Before that, I spent three months at work. I used to hit my chair because I was so angry. But then I got a new chair.”

American diplomats here say they admire the dedication of Iraqi reporters in covering the war and the government’s efforts to create a democracy.

“Journalists here work under very, very difficult conditions,” said a United States Embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They are taking fire from every direction. They’ve got the defamation law hanging over their heads. They’ve got their political opponents gunning for them. They are trying very hard, and we want to encourage them.”

Under Mr. Hussein, reporters and editors were licensed and carefully watched. Even typewriters had to be registered with the government. During that time, some reporters got by on the conviction that their articles, about the government’s glorious new water projects or certain victory in the war with Iran, were at least patriotic.

“I never praised Saddam himself, never,” said Shihab al-Tamimi, 73, who runs the Iraqi Journalists Union from a battered old mansion here. “But I praised the project, for the good of the country.”

Now, Iraqi journalists still operate with considerable freedoms, at least compared with those in Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries, and many Iraqis have achieved a new level of professionalism by working closely with Western journalists. So despite the growing government pressure, the news media have become increasingly aggressive.

Ethical boundaries, though, often remain murky. It was disclosed last year that the Lincoln Group, an American public relations firm hired by the Pentagon, paid Iraqi news outlets to print positive articles on the American presence here and provided stipends to Iraqi journalists in exchange for favorable treatment.

Even though the Iraqi news media have made strides, the journalists themselves are being killed at an extraordinary rate.

Since the Iraq war began, more than 130 journalists — most of them Iraqi — have been fatally shot, beaten or tortured to death, according to the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, the most prominent domestic advocacy group for journalists to emerge since the invasion. (The Committee to Protect Journalists, which requires more evidence to verify reported killings, lists 79 journalists and 28 news workers.)

Most of the victims — reporters, photographers and editors — were working for local newspapers and television stations.

“Don’t be surprised if you wake up one day to find that I have also been killed,” said Habib al-Sadr, the chief executive of the government-financed Iraqi Media Network, the nation’s largest media organization. In the network’s office lobby, a display case holds the photographs of 13 reporters and editors killed on the job since 2003, including Amjad Hameed, the head of the network’s television channel, Al Iraqiya.

“The road to democracy is not smoothly paved,” Mr. Sadr said during a recent interview in his office, cigarette smoke curling around his face. “It is filled with bombs.”

Despite the danger, Falah al-Mishaal, the editor of Al Sabah, the government-run newspaper in Baghdad, said he enjoyed his job now because he felt like a real journalist.

“Now, we are free,” he said in an interview in late July. “We can write whatever we want.”

Three weeks after the interview, a man drove a minibus filled with explosives into Al Sabah’s rear parking lot and blew it up, killing two people and wounding 20 others.

September has been particularly deadly for journalists.

Safa Ismael Enad, a freelance news photographer, was buying film at his favorite print shop in eastern Baghdad on Sept. 13 when two men with guns walked in, fired two shots into his chest and dragged his bleeding body away.

Three days earlier, gunmen blocked Abdul-Kareem al-Rubaie, a designer for Al Sabah, as he traveled to work one sunny morning, and they shot him through the windshield. Last month, Mohammad Abbas Mohammad, a newspaper editor, was shot to death in western Baghdad, and Ismail Amin Ali, a blunt-spoken columnist, was killed on the street across town on the same day.

The disdain for truly free expression cuts across sectarian lines. The men who killed Mr. Karbouli after warning him to stop his critical reporting on the insurgency were almost certainly Sunni. The former governor of Wasit Province, and the judges and police officials who brought charges against the three journalists for questioning their ethics, were all Shiites.

In April, Mastura Mahmood, a young journalist for the women’s weekly paper Rewan, was charged with defamation for an article that quoted an anti-government demonstrator in Halabja comparing the Iraqi police there with the Baathists who once ran the country. She was arrested and then released on bail.

In May, a court in Sulaimaniya, in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, sentenced two journalists, Twana Osman and Asos Hardi, to six-month suspended jail terms for an article claiming that a Kurdish official had two telephone company employees fired after they cut his phone service for failing to pay his bill.

“These cases show that Iraqi officials are quick to use the same kinds of onerous legal tools as their neighbors to punish outspoken media,” said Joel Campagna, the Middle East program director for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Last month, more than 70 news organizations signed a nine-point pledge supporting the national reconciliation plan of Prime Minister Maliki, promising not to use inflammatory statements or images of people killed in attacks, and vowing to “disseminate news in a way that harmonizes with Iraq’s interests.” Days later, the police barred journalists from photographing corpses at the scenes of bombings and mortar attacks. Since then, policemen have smashed several photographers’ cameras and digital memory cards.

At Al Arabiya, the Baghdad station shuttered by the Iraqi authorities earlier this month, the studio door handle is sealed in red wax and bound in police tape. (The door is adorned with a photo of Atwar Bahjat, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Samarra in February while reporting on the bombing of a Shiite shrine.)

Some news executives express support for Al Arabiya’s closing.

“It is the right of the Iraqi government, as it combats terrorism, to silence any voice that tries to harm the national unity,” said Mr. Sadr, of the Iraqi Media Network.

Sahar Nageeb and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting.

Cost Of Afghan, Iraq Wars Could Top $549B This Year

The total cost of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan could reach $549 billion this year, a report to Congress concludes.
By Drew Brown
Miami Herald
September 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - The total cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and enhanced security at military bases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks could reach $549 billion this year, a new report to Congress concludes.

The projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service is based on an update in July from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which estimated that war costs will total $110 billion for fiscal year 2007, which begins Sunday.

In fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon spent an average of $6.4 billion a month in Iraq and $1.3 billion a month in Afghanistan. During fiscal year 2006, it's projected those costs will have increased to about $8 billion a month in Iraq and $1.5 billion per month in Afghanistan.

''Everybody expects that troops will come home and that next year will be cheaper, but it just never happens that way,'' said Winslow Wheeler, the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, a policy-research group in Washington.

The report says war costs are expected to continue to grow in the next decade.

Even if U.S. forces were reduced from 258,000 today in Iraq, Afghanistan and other military operations worldwide related to the war on terrorism to 74,000 by 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that war costs still would grow by $371 billion from fiscal year 2007 to fiscal year 2016.

Given the amount already spent, total war funding could reach $808 billion by 2016, according to the Congressional Research Service report to Congress.

But the true figure may prove to be higher, if current trends hold. The Pentagon had hoped to reduce its troop presence in Iraq to fewer than 100,000 by the end of this year, but the military plans to keep at least 140,000 troops there through the spring because of the high level of violence.

Congress has appropriated $437 billion so far for the war efforts, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Rushing Off a Cliff

Editorial
The New York Times
September 28, 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Measure Defines War On Terror

Bush's proposal makes U.S. effort equivalent to war
By Siobhan Gorman, Sun Reporter
Baltimore Sun
September 27, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A little-noticed provision in President Bush's proposal for the treatment of suspected terrorists would for the first time legally endorse the fight against terrorism as equivalent to war, lawmakers and national security lawyers say.

For five years, Washington lawmakers have clashed over whether the U.S. effort to combat terrorism should be considered an armed conflict. The White House has said repeatedly that the anti-terrorism effort should be considered a war.

Critics of the provision, such as former CIA counsel Suzanne Spaulding, said it could amount to a back-door endorsement of the disputed wartime presidential powers that Bush has asserted, potentially strengthening his hand in court battles over the National Security Agency's warrantless spying and permitting defense and intelligence agencies to launch operations in the United States.

"Does it allow the president to basically define the war on terrorism as broadly or as narrowly as he wants?" said Rep. Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat. "The answer is yes."

Critics compare the provision to a resolution passed by Congress in September 2001 that authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush has used the resolution as the legal basis for a wide range of initiatives, including warrantless domestic eavesdropping and the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism, without conferring with Congress or the courts.

Some in Congress have said that the 2001 resolution was never intended to give the president such broad authority and express concerns that the new provision on enemy combatants could be used in a similar way.

The "aggressive" interpretation of the 2001 resolution, which carried no explicit authorization of measures such as the NSA program, suggests that the Bush administration might interpret the new language even more broadly, Schiff said.

Congressional aides who have pored over the complex measure express concerns that lawmakers might approve it without fully considering its potential impact.

"It's not like there's a big neon light around it, saying, 'This is really important,' when it is," said a Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to be quoted by name. "This is the kind of thing that we're going to be talking much more about a month from now, or six months from now, saying, 'Oh, shoot.'"

The proposal now before Congress would recognize and define "unlawful enemy combatant" for the first time. That would give the fight against terrorism the legal status of an armed conflict, because it is impossible to have an illegal combatant without a conflict, lawmakers and security lawyers say.

Critics say the measure could open the way to a range of unpredictable and unintended consequences.

"There is a concern that [the Bush administration] will rely on that language about enemy combatants in wartime and use it to convince the courts that they should stay out of a whole range of policies that the president is pursuing," said Elisa Massimino, who heads the Washington office of Human Rights First.

Not all national security lawyers agree that the measure would legally recognize the fight against terrorism as a war.

"I don't necessarily see it as legitimizing the war on terrorism," said Scott Silliman, a former Air Force attorney. He said Bush's proposal is focused narrowly on military commissions and interrogation policy.

Bush allies see it as a logical extension of the position the president has taken all along.

"Why is that surprising? The president thinks it's a real war," said David Rivkin, a national security lawyer who served in the Reagan administration and that of Bush's father.

Glenn Sulmasy, a law professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, said the measure provides an important tool with which to fight terrorism.

It "confirms that this is a war, and that we have to have some way to define who is in the fight against international terrorism," Sulmasy said.

Frances Fragos Townsend, the president's anti-terrorism adviser, declined in a brief interview to comment on the provision.

Bush's proposal, expected to be acted on by Congress today, defines "unlawful enemy combatant" as anyone "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its allies.

Coming up with ways to describe the fight against terrorism has been a tense topic, even within the Bush administration. Last year, officials briefly toyed with new phrasing to eliminate the term war.

In May 2005, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began talking about "a global struggle against violent extremism." In July 2005, Gen. Richard B. Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he objected to the use of the phrase "war on terrorism," because "if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution. And it's more than terrorism." He added, "Violent extremists [are] the real enemy here, and terror is the method they use."

But a month later, the Bush administration readopted the term "war on terror," which has remained the preferred phraseology.

War Signals?

Dave Lindorff
The Nation
Mon Sep 25, 2006

As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.

As Time writes in its cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors "suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."

According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21.

The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.

"This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)

Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He says, "I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders' [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date--in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, "You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise." This point was also made in the Time article.

So what is the White House planning?

On Monday President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening session, and while studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered a two-pronged message. Bush told the "people of Iran" that "we're working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis" and that he looked forward "to the day when you can live in freedom." But he also warned that Iran's leaders were using the nation's resources "to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." Given the President's assertion that the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is Commander in Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending "war on terror."

Even as Bush was making not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack on Iran, was in Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program--itself tantalizing evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that those favoring an attack may be winning that struggle.

"I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran," says Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against US law and it's against international law, but I think they've decided to do it." Gardiner says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, "the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the Persian Gulf." Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran's religious rulers.

Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles, and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against which the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush MO to date.

Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on Bush's talk about dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN resolution supporting military action, and rumors of "hushed back doors" being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler saw in Bush's UN speech evidence that "war is no longer a viable option" in Iran. Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush Administration's judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam Chomsky and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an attack is being planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington's leaders aren't crazy, and would not take such a step--though more recently, he has seemed less sanguine about Administration sanity and has suggested that leaks about war plans may be an effort by military leaders--who are almost universally opposed to widening the Mideast war--to arouse opposition to such a move by Bush and war advocates like Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for the online journal TomPaine.com, focuses on the talk of diplomacy in Bush's Monday UN speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means "the realists have won" and that there will be no Iran attack.

But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States, according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking ominous.

Representative Maurice Hinchey (news, bio, voting record), a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War, informed about the Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower Strike Group to head out to sea, said, "For some time there has been speculation that there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in order to exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has cultivated now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will be a very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US. It would only make worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible." He adds, "Military people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the military already."

Calls for comment from the White House on Iran war plans and on the order for the Eisenhower Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National Security Council press office, which declined to return this reporter's phone calls.

McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called "Camp Democracy," about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, "We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening."

One solid indication that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force buildup would be if the carrier Enterprise--currently in the Arabian Sea, where it has been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour--is kept on station instead of sent back to the United States. Arguing against simple rotation of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower's refurbishing and its dispatch were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from the Enterprise on the Navy's official website referred to its ongoing role in the Afghanistan fighting, and gave no indication of plans to head back to port. The Navy itself has no comment on the ship's future orders.

Jim Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia, expressed some caution about reports of the carrier deployment, saying, "Remember, carrier groups regularly rotate in and out of that region." But he added, "I do not believe that there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002 authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend to Iran."

In Egypt, remnant carries on rich fabric of Jewish tradition

By Brenda Gazzar

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt, Sept. 25 (JTA) — During this year’s Rosh Hashanah evening service at the grand Eliahou Hanabi Synagogue, a short walk from the Mediterranean Sea here, all eyes turn toward the three foreign visitors who are making their way quietly to the front.

Word spreads quickly in the women’s half of the synagogue: “We have a minyan,” a couple of elegantly dressed ladies whisper excitedly to one another.

Here in this coastal city known for its cosmopolitan flair, where only four Jewish men and 27 Jewish women remain, the prospect of having 10 males at a New Year’s service is always a reason to celebrate.

The Jewish population is “getting lower and lower,” said Max Salame, the 90-year-old president of Alexandria’s Jewish community and a retired dentist, as he shared a festive New Year’s meal of beans, fried fish and pomegranates with community members. “There aren’t any more Jews.”

A Cairo-born Israeli who happened to be visiting his native country over the holiday, Salame led last Friday night’s service, which was attended by 10 Egyptian Jews, five tourists from France, three more Israelis and an American student living in Cairo. Another Israeli man, who makes the trip each year to lead the High Holiday services for the community, had to cancel after falling ill.

Following the wars with Israel in 1948, 1956 and 1973, many of Egypt’s Jews were expelled by the government or left on their own because of an increasingly difficult political situation.

Today, Egypt’s Jewish community numbers fewer than 100, some of whom are reluctant to discuss the political situation. Their names and the languages they speak — including French, Greek, Italian and Ladino — reflect a rich and diverse heritage that stems from various waves of immigration to the country over the years.

In Alexandria, the Eliahou Hanabi Synagogue — estimated to have been built between 1836 and 1850 by Italian architects — is testament to a once-vibrant Jewish community that boasted 16 synagogues and 35,000 to 40,000 Jews around 1950. Today, members say the youngest Egyptian Jew in the city is a single male in his 30s; most Jews here are older than 65.

Lina Mattatia, 82, who has recorded births, marriages and deaths for the community for three decades, remembers when the cathedral-like synagogue was full of upscale Egyptian Jews — the women high above on a second level and the men far below.

“Sometimes there were marriages inside the synagogue,” said the blue-eyed, fair-skinned and very petite Mattatia in slow, careful English. “Then, they were coming out, nice ladies, very chic, full of jewels.”

Despite the obstacles, many Jews in Egypt made a name for themselves in business. Ben Gaon, the vice president of the Jewish community in Alexandria, says his father once served as the tailor for Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.

“When they kicked out the Jews in 1956 and in 1967 and in 1973, he was always in good hands,” said Gaon, 53, who wears a dark mustache and has a large portrait of Mubarak over his office desk. “Everyone liked him. They knew he was not in politics.”

Mattatia, whose parents were born in Greece, said she has remained in Egypt because her second husband, a Jewish paper salesman 23 years her senior, became ill and that made it difficult to leave the country. But her heart has always been firmly planted in this coastal city.

“I love Alexandria. I was born here and it’s my country,” said Mattatia, who speaks five languages but is most comfortable in French. “And I love Egyptian people. I love them.”

The two daughters of Victor Balassiano, 67, and his wife, Denise, left for America in 2001 at the urging of a Jewish professor at Northeastern University in Boston who visited the synagogue. Today, both daughters, 27 and 25, are graduates of Northeastern and the eldest has obtained a green card.

They also have a 23-year-old son, who left the country before his sisters and is living and working in Jerusalem.

“It’s very difficult to find work, for marrying” in Egypt, said Victor Balassiano, the accountant for the community in Alexandria. “The Jewish became very few. There is no future for the Jewish here.”

On a noisy street in downtown Cairo at the Shaar Hashamaim Synagogue, the armed security forces outside the synagogue outnumber the attendees by about three to one on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Among the six visitors who have come to pray Saturday, only two are Egyptian Jews. A larger crowd of mostly elderly Egyptian women, foreign visitors and members of the Israeli diplomatic corps in the country had commemorated the holiday the previous evening with a kosher meal from Israel.

During Saturday’s service led by a French visitor, the ark was opened and an elderly Egyptian woman, who appeared to be in her 70s, made her way slowly to the front to touch the Torah.

A man with a Muslim name, who said he worked for the government to keep the synagogue secure, questioned extensively this reporter about the article she was writing and whether she thought that Egyptian Jews are being treated well.

If someone has said there are problems with the community, “tell me and I will resolve it,” said the man, who asked not to be identified.

On Sunday morning, the second day of the Jewish New Year, six Egyptian Jewish women came to the synagogue to hear the shofar.

Among them was Celine Curial, 75, who says that even though she is fighting to reclaim property sequestered from her wealthy husband’s family by Nasser — a policy that affected all wealthy Egyptians — she loves Egypt and would never leave the country.

“My pupils used to love me, to tell me, ‘You are our mother,’ ” the high school teacher of 35 years said.

If there are few Jews remaining in Egypt, Albert Arie may be the last of a dying breed: he is believed to be the only Jewish-born Communist left in the country. The 76-year-old Arie was imprisoned from 1953 to 1961 because of his political activism in the country’s largest Communist organization.

Arie was sentenced to eight years hard labor at Turah Prison in Cairo, but he and other Communist prisoners refused to work.

After nine months in prison, he was taken to a detention camp at an oasis hundreds of kilometers south of Cairo.

When Arie’s sentence was up, he was taken to Cairo’s Interior Ministry office to be released. After officials tried to convince him to leave the country because he was a Communist and “especially because he was Jewish,” he refused.

As a result, Arie was sent back to the detention camp for three more years, and was finally released in 1964.

Arie, who became a Communist at age 15 and was obliged to convert to Islam to marry the woman of his choice four decades ago, said he doesn’t practice any faith other than to share in Muslim feasts as a cultural event.

Although he officially converted to Islam, his two sons have had occasional difficulties in relationships with other Egyptians because of their Jewish origins.

But why, Arie wonders, would anyone be interested in the Jews of Egypt today?

“It is archaeology or sociology. It’s like people are digging for Pharaonic tombs,” Arie said from the office of his fruit and vegetable export business. “The Jews are the same. It’s the past.”

Iraqi Parties Reach Deal Postponing Federalism

By Amit R. Paley, Washington Post Staff Writer
Washington Post
September 25, 2006

BAGHDAD, Sept. 24 -- Iraq's fractious political parties reached a deal Sunday meant to prevent the country from splintering into a federation of three autonomous zones until at least 2008.

The agreement forestalled concerns that the debate over federalism, a vague concept enshrined in the constitution but defined differently by various political groups, could cause the country's fragile multi-sect government to collapse.

Sunni Arabs had threatened to boycott parliament over a proposal, introduced by a Shiite Muslim group this month, to create a mechanism that could carve out a predominantly Shiite region in southern Iraq, similar to the semiautonomous Kurdish zone in the north. Sunnis adamantly oppose that plan, which would leave them with a central area devoid of the oil reserves in other regions, and have pushed for a full review of the country's new constitution.

Under the compromise reached Sunday, parliament will form a 27-member committee on Monday to review the constitution and then introduce the Shiite measure on creating federal regions the following day, lawmakers said.

The federalism law would not take effect for at least 18 months after it is enacted, the parliament members said.

The deal appears to have forestalled for now a political crisis over federalism, but lawmakers emphasized that the issue remains unresolved.

"We still need a miracle to save the country," said Dhafer al-Ani, a spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament. "The process of sectarian cleansing is still going on, and the violence is not waning, and this may serve those proponents of federalism who want to make the people believe that living together in a unified country is not possible."

The measure is backed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite political party. But lawmakers from several other parties -- including the Iraqi Accordance Front, secular parties and the bloc of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- said they would vote against it.

Still, Humam Hamoudi, a lawmaker from Hakim's party, said he was confident the measure would pass by Oct. 22, the constitutionally mandated deadline for establishing a mechanism to create federal regions. He said votes from the Kurdish bloc and the Supreme Council would provide the simple majority needed to approve the law.

The Sunnis are lobbying to have a member of their sect named chairman of the constitutional review committee, which they hope will propose major revisions to the constitution. The charter, approved by voters last fall, was supported only reluctantly by the Sunnis on the condition that the federalism issue would be reexamined.

"The main issue is the union of Iraq -- that Iraq stays as one Iraq -- and this should lead to articles in the constitution that properly reflect that on the subject of finances, natural resources, oil, the army, police formation and language," said Alaa Makki, a leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which is part of the Iraqi Accordance Front, when asked what the Sunnis hoped to change in the charter.

In other developments, Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer said Sunday that the former president's defense team would boycott his genocide trial "indefinitely."

"The court committed several violations of the law, and we will not just sit there gagged to give it legitimacy," said Khalil al-Dulaimi, the head of Hussein's nine-member defense team, according to the Associated Press.

The attorneys walked out of court Wednesday to protest a government attempt to remove the tribunal's chief judge, a move condemned by human rights groups and international legal experts.

Violence continued to rage across the country Sunday. At least 14 people were killed in attacks, including two car bombings that targeted Iraqi security forces, police said.

The U.S. military also announced that two Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 were killed Sunday in combat in volatile Anbar province.

How to Break Wahhabi Colonialism

Melik Kaylan
Wall Street Journal
18 Sep 06

Arabian fundamentalists concluded that if post-medieval progress in the world made their values unworkable, then it was the world's fault, and the world should be stopped in its tracks. The Islamists found in Afghanistan that this could be done, after a fashion: Reduce the environment to premodern conditions, and, miraculously, the ideology applies precisely - as it did wherever nature, not tamed by progress, had to be tamed by repressive social discipline. An apparently impossible predicament confronts Western policymakers: whether to uphold corrupt and often hostile tyrannies, as in Egypt and Uzbekistan - or to topple them and open the door to religious extremists applying their iron dialectic.

In such Central Asian countries as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan, where sub-al-Qaeda groups now clandestinely offer the only full-fledged religious instruction available to the populace, national leaders should be encouraged instead to revive their own indigenous practices. Both in Western mosques and in the Islamic world, the reintroduction of regional forms of belief and practice should be fostered to break the extreme Islamists' strategy for indoctrination and for sowing jihad. Wahhabists should no longer expect to meet with no counterargument when, as a prelude to conversion, they accuse the locals of ignorance and godlessness. They should be confronted with a literate and self-confident Islam, deeply rooted in local history and all the more resistant to their internationalist template.

Delusion in Damascus

Bashar Assad believes that Syria won the Lebanese war.
The Washington Post
Sunday, September 24, 2006; B06

IN THE aftermath of the summer war in Lebanon, the Middle East is haunted by the hubris of two self-declared winners. Israel and Hezbollah, which did the actual fighting, are both licking their wounds. But Iran is in a triumphalist mood, as the rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations last week confirmed. And so, it seems, is Hezbollah's other foreign sponsor, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Countries around the region are responding to what they see as the new strategic menace from Tehran; witness Egypt's announcement that it would soon propose its own nuclear program. But Syria is more likely to trigger a new round of armed conflict in the near future.

The threat stems from Mr. Assad's overt resistance to the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the war. Among other provisions, the resolution mandated the expansion of a U.N. peacekeeping force along the Lebanese-Israeli border and prohibited any state from helping Hezbollah to rearm. Mr. Assad has denounced the deployment of European troops as part of the U.N. force; last week he described it as a Western plot to divide the Arab world. More significantly, he has threatened that any deployment of the force along the Lebanese-Syrian border would be treated by Damascus as hostile.

Mr. Assad's bluster has successfully deterred the Lebanese and Western governments from taking serious steps to stop the traffic of arms and explosives from Syria to Lebanon. The scores of roads and tracks crossing the border have been the principal routes for missiles and other arms supplies to Hezbollah. They also carry the bombs that Syria's agents have used in a continuing assassination campaign against Lebanese politicians who favor the country's independence from Damascus.

Mr. Assad knows that if he attempts to supply Hezbollah with new weapons he will invite an attack by Israel, which has vowed to prevent any resupply. The Syrian president even referred to that possibility in an interview published last week. But he appears undeterred. In a speech last month he declared that Hezbollah's "victory" in the war had ushered in "a new Middle East," one in which the "enemy" Israel would inevitably be defeated by force of arms. When U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan arrived two weeks later to ask for Syria's cooperation in implementing the resolution, Mr. Assad treated him to "a diatribe . . . depicting the Western powers as bankrupt and powerless," according to a report by Warren Hoge of the New York Times.

Remarkably, Mr. Annan emerged from that meeting to tell the world that Mr. Assad had assured him that Syria would take steps to secure the border. The many statesmen who have tried to do business with the Syrian president in the past -- such as former secretary of state Colin L. Powell or Egypt's Hosni Mubarak -- have discovered that such assurances are not only worthless but deliberately mendacious. Yet Mr. Annan and the European governments deploying troops to Lebanon are essentially counting on those words -- rather than firm measures of their own -- to prevent a new crisis in which their own soldiers would be at risk. That's a lot to expect from a callow and corrupt dictator who believes he is on top of a "new" Middle East.