WH: lawsuit for cleric would reveal state secrets

By PETE YOST
Associated Press
Sat Sep 25, 11:44 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Saturday invoked the state secrets privilege which would kill a lawsuit on behalf of U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged terrorist said to be targeted for death or capture under a U.S. government program.

Believed to be hiding in Yemen, al-Awlaki has become the most notorious English-speaking advocate of terrorism directed at the United States.

E-mails link al-Awlaki to the Army psychiatrist accused of the killings at Fort Hood, Texas, last year. Al-Awlaki has taken on an increasingly operational role in al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Justice Department said in a court filing, including preparing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his attempt to detonate an explosive device aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

In its court papers, the Justice Department said that the issues in the case are for the executive branch of government to decide rather than the courts.

The department also said the case entails information that is protected by the military and state secrets privilege.

The courts have sufficient grounds to throw out the lawsuit without resorting to use of the state secrets privilege, the Justice Department said in its filing.

"The idea that courts should have no role whatsoever in determining the criteria by which the executive branch can kill its own citizens is unacceptable in a democracy," the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. "In matters of life and death, no executive should have a blank check."

Al-Awlaki's father, through the CCR and the ACLU, filed the case in federal court in Washington.

"This lawsuit asks for an American court to block the government from protecting its own citizens," Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

"It strains credulity to argue that our laws require the government to disclose to an active, operational terrorist any information about how, when and where we fight terrorism," added Miller.

In a declaration filed in federal court, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he was invoking the military and state secrets privilege on information concerning possible military operations in Yemen, procedures the Defense Department may use in such operations and information concerning Yemen's counterterrorism efforts.

Disclosing information about possible operations would enable targets to evade military action and continue to plot attacks on the U.S., the Gates declaration said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta filed a statement with the court stating that "I am invoking the privilege over any information, if it exists, that would tend to confirm or deny any allegations in the complaint pertaining to the CIA."

Regarding the Christmas bomb attempt, al-Awlaki said in a May 23 interview with the media arm of AQAP that "No one should even ask us about targeting a bunch of Americans who would have been killed in an airplane," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a declaration accompanying the Justice Department papers.

"Our unsettled account with America includes, at the very least, one million women and children. I'm not even talking about the men," Clapper's declaration quotes al-Awlaki as saying.

The lawsuit filed on the cleric's behalf seeks to have a court declare that the Constitution and international law bar the government from carrying out targeted killings; seeks to block the targeted killing of al-Awlaki; and seeks to force the U.S. government to disclose the standards for determining whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.

What al-Awlaki's father is seeking would be "unprecedented, improper, and extraordinarily dangerous," said the Justice Department filing, which neither confirmed nor denied the existence of a targeted killings program.

The lawsuit would necessarily and improperly inject the courts into decisions of the president and his advisers about how to protect the American people from the threat of armed attacks, including imminent threats, posed by a foreign organization against which the political branches have authorized the use of necessary and appropriate force, said the Justice Department filing.

If al-Awlaki were to surrender to the proper authorities, legal principles with which the United States has traditionally and uniformly complied would prohibit using lethal force or other violence against him, the department filing added.

Texas ed board adopts resolution limiting Islam

By APRIL CASTRO
Associated Press
9/24/2010

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas State Board of Education adopted a resolution Friday that seeks to curtail references to Islam in Texas textbooks, as social conservative board members warned of what they describe as a creeping Middle Eastern influence in the nation's publishing industry.

The board approved the one-page nonbinding resolution, which urges textbook publishers to limit what they print about Islam in world history books, by a 7-5 vote.

Critics say it's another example of the ideological board trying to politicize public education in the Lone Star State. Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for religious freedom, questioned why the resolution came at a time when "anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country has reached fever pitch."

"It's hard not to conclude that the misleading claims in this resolution are either based on ignorance of what's in the textbooks or, on the other hand, are an example of fear-mongering and playing politics," Miller said.

Future boards that will choose the state's next generation of social studies texts will not be bound by the resolution.

"This is an expression of the board's opinion, so it does not have an effect on any particular textbook," said David Anderson, the general counsel for the Texas Education Agency, when asked by a board member what legal weight the resolution would carry.

"So this is a cosmetic exercise?" asked board member Mavis Knight, a Democrat from Dallas.

The resolution cites world history books no longer used in Texas schools that it says devoted more lines of text to Islamic beliefs and practices than Christian ones. Chairwoman Gail Lowe said the resolution cites old books because board rules prohibit them from discussing current books more than 90 days after their adoption.

"I believe that it's happening in the current (social studies books) even though we can't cover that in the resolution," said board member Terri Leo, a Republican from Spring. The resolution sends a "clear message to publishers that it should not happen in the future."

The resolution also claims "more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly, as they are doing now."

Two Republicans broke from their party to vote with the Democrats. Two Democrats — Mary Helen Berlanga of Corpus Christi and Rene Nunez of El Paso — were absent for the vote. The initial vote on the resolution was 7-6, but the board later reconsidered the measure. The second vote was 7-5 after a Democratic board member left the meeting.

The measure was suggested to the board this summer by Odessa businessman Randy Rives, who lost his Republican primary bid for a seat on the panel earlier this year. Members of a social conservative bloc of the board then asked Lowe to put the resolution on this week's agenda.

During public testimony, which included comments from activists as well as a handful of parents, Jonathan Saenz, a lobbyist for the conservative Liberty Institute, argued that the board was "doing the right thing ... to prevent any type of religious discrimination or treat any religion in a way that's incomplete."

Several times during the testimony, Lowe intervened, attempting to calm flaring tempers.

"The Board's mission, and Texas' future, is ill-served when the board chooses to use its limited meeting time to discuss and vote on discriminatory and politically motivated measures, such as this proposed resolution," said Frank Knaack, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

The resolution concludes by warning publishers the "State Board of Education will look to reject future prejudicial social studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."

Social conservatives control the 15-member board for now, although the landscape is set to change after one member of the bloc lost his primary election bid and another chose not to seek re-election. The board in recent years has become a battleground for social conservatives and liberal watchdogs, each accusing the other of imposing ideological agendas into what about 4.8 million public school students learn in Texas classrooms.

In the Wake of 9/11, Israel Put Iran into “Axis of Evil”

Marsha B. Cohen
Lobelog - Jim Lobe blog
September 10th, 2010

On September 11, 2001, after two terrorist attacks occurred on U.S. soil, Israeli political figures anticipated that the Americans would finally be able to empathize with Israel’s vulnerability to terror. In the hours immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Israeli leaders envisioned a massive U.S. retaliation in which Israel was uniquely equipped to be a partner, even a mentor, of the U.S. (1)

“The fight against terror is an international struggle of the free world against the forces of darkness who seek to destroy our liberty and our way of life,” then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared in a televised statement just after midnight on September 12. “I believe that together we can defeat these forces of evil.”

A spate of Israeli pronouncements proclaimed Israel’s own foreign policy priorities. They drew upon a decade of Israeli assertions of Iranian complicity in all things terrorist, and warnings of imminent Iranian nuclear weaponization. A war of civilizations had begun. 9/11 was just the first strike of Islamic fundamentalists. The next might be a nuclear attack by Iran.

The pronouncements constituted the opening salvo in a months-long back-and-forth about how the U.S. would frame its new “global war on terror.” Would the U.S. choose to court the cooperation of regimes in Muslim majority countries — even enlisting governments like Iran who might sympathize with the dangers of transnational terrorism – in preference to its steadfast strategic partner and loyal ally Israel?

Having just visited the U.S. on September 10, and stopping over in London on his way back to Israel, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak said that, while it was “probable,” he couldn’t say with certainty that the attacks were linked to Osama Bin Laden. He offered his expectation of a global response to September 11: “The very scale of these acts and the challenge they pose are such that they should evoke a worldwide fight against terrorism,” he declared, citing Europe’s effort against piracy. According to Le Monde, Barak [currently Israel's Defense Minister], saw a “a new and clear demarcation line,” where the “fight” must go beyond Bin Laden and Palestinian resistance groups to include countries that support and harbor them, including “Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, to a certain degree North Korea and Libya, Sudan and a few other regimes that play a secondary role.” (2)

Benjamin Netanyahu, then between his stints as prime minister (he currently holds the office), warned that the attacks on New York and Washington could be a harbinger of the deaths of millions of people once Iran or Iraq acquired nuclear weapons. He emphasized that he personally had warned of such attacks soon after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism (reissued in 2001). The Jerusalem Post reported Netanyahu’s call for a coalition against “terrorist states like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian entity” that want to “devour the West.” (3)

Opinion pieces derided Russia and its export of “nuclear know-how and equipment to Iran.” (4) An Iran with a bomb, an editorial in the business daily Globes declared, meant that terror organizations could gain access to it. (5) Dan Meridor, an Israeli government minister without portfolio in charge of Israel’s secret services, dismissed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and spoke to Globes instead about a wider war between the free world and countries that support terror that would span “from Ramallah to Gaza, through the Al-Biqa Valley in Lebanon, the mountains of Iran and Afghanistan, all the way to Manhattan.” (6) The war would come quickly: Yosef Lapid of the Shinui party declared in the Jerusalem Post, once Iran had a nuclear bomb in its possession “within three or, at most, five years.” (7)

Whereas George H. W. Bush had kept Israel on the sidelines during the fist Gulf War, an unnamed “Western diplomatic source” now told the Jerusalem Post that Israel would be a full partner in George W. Bush’s anti-terror coalition. Israel might now be allowed to even “participate in attacks against Iraq, as well as Iran and Afghanistan.” (8)

A few days later, however, Efraim Inbar, Director of Bar Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Institute of Strategic Studies (BESA), suggested in a radio interview that the inclusion of Muslim states in the U.S. “coalition against terrorism,” among them Iran, might require some “compromises” on the part of the U.S. (9) Subsequent reports in the Israeli media built on this apprehension that the participation of Muslim countries would not only restrict Israel’s membership in the anti-terrorist coalition, but might pressure the U.S. to demand Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. Alon Pinkas, the Israeli Consul in New York, informed the Foreign Ministry in a cable eight days after the attacks that a “paradigm shift” was taking place in American thinking that could raise questions about the U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and criticism of Sharon in major American newspapers might be early warning signs of an anti-Israel backlash.

Pinkas noted that the U.S. media was beginning to link Israeli policies and Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the September 11 attacks, and predicted that “this topic will gain currency on the U.S. agenda… and it becomes clear that Israeli and U.S. interests on the matter are not identical.” (10)

Foreign Ministry officials accused Pinkas of being an “alarmist.” But Israel did not appear on any of the televised maps of the “coalition against terror,” and none of the 27 terrorist-supporting organizations whose assets had been frozen by Bush were groups linked to terror against Israel.

Adding to growing concern in Israel was the news that then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair had phoned Bush to inform him of a “remarkable conversation” with Iranian President Mohamad Khatami, and that he was dispatching his foreign minister to Tehran for a three day trip in late September. The Bush administration, the Jerusalem Post worried on September 23, “has no formal links with Tehran but regards Iran as a critical element in legitimizing the coalition and cloaking it in Islamic credibility.” (11)

Israeli politician Efraim Sneh complained on Israeli radio that Iran “will buy itself legitimacy at very little expense.” After the campaign against Bin Laden was over, Sneh predicted gloomily, “[Iran] will continue its support for terrorism, but with a kosher certificate from the United States.” (12) Just before his arrival in Tehran, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw wrote in an Iranian paper that “events over the years in the Palestinian territories” were a root cause of terror. Sneh called the article “an obscenity,” and denounced the trip as a “stab in the back” of Israel. (13)

Israeli President Moshe Katsav refused to meet with Straw during his visit to Israel. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres canceled a dinner in Straw’s honor, but met with him briefly. During their meeting, Peres accused Iran of both funding and directing Hizbullah, publicly calling for the destruction of Israel and of developing nuclear weapons. In the hands of extremist ayatollahs, Peres said, these weapons are “a danger to the entire world.”

In late September, the Jerusalem Post offered the view of a senior IDF intelligence officer, speaking anonymously, that Iran “could have had a hand” in plotting the attacks on the U.S. “We don’t have any information to support the possibility that Iraq is part of the plot,” the officer said. “But we can’t say the same for the Iranians. They are very deeply involved in everything that carries the label of Islamic radical terrorism.” The anonymous officer declared that Osama bin Laden, Hizbullah and Hamas were all from the same school of thought, but Iran was unique as a nation state seeking weapons of mass destruction. (14)

Not surprisingly, 81 percent of nearly 13,000 respondents to a reader survey on the Jerusalem Post website said that they thought Iran was in some way involved in the attack on the World Trade Center. (15)

In Washington, when addressing Congress on September 20, Netanyahu lumped together Bin Laden, Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Palestinian groups as a terror “network.” The catalyst for the network, he said, lay in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution: “This created a sovereign spiritual base for fomenting a strident Islamic militancy worldwide, a militancy that was often backed by terror.” (16)

Sharon’s domestic priorities — including containment of his right wing coalition partners who demanded he get tough on terrorists, expel Arafat and reject once and for all the idea of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza — were on a collision course with growing U.S. concern about how Israeli actions might affect the dynamics of the U.S.’s new coalition. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres [now Israel's president] proposed that Israel reaffirm its agreement with U.S. aims in the “war on terror.” Several cabinet ministers agreed that “the [Palestinian Authority] should be presented in the U.S. as ‘Israel’s Taliban,’ which gives aid and succor to terrorists.”

In subsequent weeks, a series of Israelis came to Washington for visits with Bush administration officials. In a single week in mid-October, over a dozen government officials, envoys and senior military officers visited Washington. The Director General of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission briefed the U.S. administration on Israel’s ent estimate of the progress being made in Iran’s nuclear research, and urged the administration to make Russian support of Iran a foreign policy priority.

During talks with Condoleezza Rice, Sneh complained to reporters that the U.S. seemed to be ignoring Iran’s terrorism record, and that Iran should be disqualified from any role in the U.S. alliance against terror. “Iran stands in first place as a sponsor of terrorism,” Sneh said. “If someone forgets that, we are willing to remind them.” Sneh expressed his certainty that Russia was damaging Israel’s security by supporting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “We believe they cannot be considered as countries that fight terrorism,” he said.

The Israeli visitors were assured that the U.S. would win its war against terrorism and that Israel would benefit from the new international order that would follow. Iran and Syria would be watched carefully, and Hizbullah and other groups fighting Israel would be added to the list of terrorist organizations. However, senior U.S. officials expressed concern that Israel was trying to force the Palestinian Authority to collapse, a move the U.S. would not support because it would undermine regional stability and endanger American strategy by creating friction between the U.S. and moderate Arab states.

Iran was recognized among the “six-plus-two” states that met in New York on November 12, 2001, the day before the fall of Kabul, to decide Afghanistan’s future. Iran’s support of the Northern Alliance was credited with helping the U.S.-led forces seize large swaths of the country. But U.S. insistence that Afghan forces not enter Kabul aroused Iranian suspicions that the U.S. might attempt to install a puppet regime composed of Pashtun remnants of the Taliban hostile to Tehran.

In early December, Sharon met with Bush for a “working visit” that would discuss, according to the White House Press Secretary, “the international campaign against terrorism and the pursuit of peace in the Middle East” (17). Although analysts had expected little from the meeting, what emerged was Israel’s inclusion, at long last, in the frontline of the “war against terror,” and an unprecedented affirmation of Israel’s right to act both defensively and proactively against terrorism.

During the months following the events of September 11 and the proclamation of the “war on terror,” Israel played an active and discernible role in trying to prevent any possible warming of relations between the U.S. and Iran. The pinnacle of its success was Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address on January 29, which, in a passage authored by neoconservative David Frum, declared Iran (and Iraq) to be part of an “axis of evil” comprised of regimes that sought to acquire nuclear weapons so they could provide them to terrorists.

This branding not only pushed Iran further beyond the U.S. foreign policy pale, it also undermined the domestic political position of Iranian leaders who had advocated the possibility of rapprochement with the U.S. While the denunciation of Iran by Bush may have delighted the exponents of the “Iranian threat” in Israel and the U.S., it also blurred, in American eyes, the boundaries between Iranian hardliners and moderates, conservatives and reformists. The failure of the Iranian reformists to achieve and sustain any substantial economic or political gains between 1997-2005 led directly to the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the current hardliners’ hold on power.

(1) See, for example, Greer Faye Cashman, “Katsav Expresses Nation’s Sorrow.” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 12, 2001.
(2) Jean-Marie Colombani, Jean-Pierre Langellier and Georges Marion, “What Ehud Baraq Says About It,” interview. Le Monde, internet version, Sept. 13, 2001.
(3) Gil Hoffman, “Netanyahu: World Must Join to Crush Terror,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 12, 2001.
(4) Shalom Rosenfeld, “Commentary: Historical Leader.” Maariv Hayom Supplement, Sept. 13, 2001.
(5) Editorial, “World Gets a Warning,” Globes, Sept. 13, 2001.
(6) Tzvi Lavi, interview with Dan Meridor, Sept. 12, 2001, “We Will Win in the End, And It’s A Pity That They Won’t Be There,” Globes, Sept. 13, 2001.
(7) Yosef Lapid, “The Warning,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 14, 2001.
(8) Gil Hoffman, “Gulf War-Style Anti-Terror Coalition to Include Israel.” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 14, 2001.
(9) Jerusalem Post Radio, interviewer by Miriam Shaked, Sept. 17, 2001.
(10) Herb Keinon, “US May See Israel as Obstacle to Coalition,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 21, 2001.
(11) Douglas Davis, “British FM to Iran for Historical Visit,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 23, 2001.
(12) Greg Myre, “Israel: Anti-terror Coalition Should Target Iran, Syria.” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 25, 2001.
(13) Steve Weizman, AP, “Sneh Launches Blistering Attack on British FM,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 24, 2001.
(14) Arieh O’Sullivan, “IDF: Iraq not involved in attacks; Iran maybe,” Jerusalem Post, Sept. 23, 2001.
(15) Online Jerusalem Post poll, Sept. 23, 2001.
(16) “We Are All Targets,” transcript of remarks to US House of Representatives’ Government Reform Committee, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 24, 2001.
(17) White House Press Briefing, Nov. 21, 2001.

Bashir Insanity

Team Obama has just offered Sudan's genocidal tyrant one last olive branch. A hickory switch might work better.

BY JAMES TRAUB | SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

This past Tuesday, when the punditocracy was raptly focused on the electoral results in Delaware and New Hampshire, the U.S. State Department quietly issued a policy statement on Sudan that offered the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir a path to escape sanctions and restore normal relations with the United States.

Why no fanfare? Perhaps an administration highly sensitive to accusations of equivocation in the face of evil was reluctant to call attention to a policy that emphasized carrots rather than sticks -- or rather, to use the splendidly mangled metaphor of one administration official, offered to the regime in Khartoum "a carrot painted with a finer degree of granularity." Bashir, who has been indicted on genocide charges by the International Criminal Court, doesn't deserve a carrot. But the Obama administration has rightly concluded that absent strong inducements, deserved or not, from the United States and other key actors, the regime in Khartoum could well plunge Sudan back into a horrendous civil war.

In January 2005, the regime and the breakaway government of the south put an end to almost 40 years of war by signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The CPA gave southerners the right to choose independence or greater autonomy within Sudan. The referendum in which they will make that choice is scheduled for Jan. 10, 2011, and no one doubts that voters will overwhelmingly choose the former -- if the referendum is held, and conducted honestly. But Khartoum appears to have no intention of permitting that. Oil has turned Sudan into a boom economy, and 80 percent of the country's oil is located in the south. Moreover, the regime fears -- with good reason -- that granting independence to the South would embolden other regional insurgencies.

Suliman Baldo, a Sudanese scholar with the International Center on Transitional Justice, says that the Bashir government has been orchestrating a domestic media campaign to promote the fiction that all Sudanese seek national unity -- and thus that a vote for independence is intrinsically illegitimate. Baldo and others fear that if Khartoum blocks or refuses to recognize the election, provoking the government of the South to unilaterally declare independence, the decades-long civil war that led to the deaths of two million people will resume.

The Obama administration has responded to this apocalyptic prospect with a belated, but very concentrated, diplomatic surge. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor James Jones have spoken with Salva Kiir, the southern leader, and Ali Osman Taha, Sudan's vice president, urging them to make progress on the terms laid out in the CPA, which they have so far failed to do. President Obama announced last week that he would personally attend a U.N. Security Council session on Sudan chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the upcoming General Assembly meeting; that in turn has persuaded other heads of state, as well as Kiir and Taha, to attend. The administration has beefed up its diplomatic representation in Sudan, in part by naming Princeton Lyman, a veteran diplomat with long experience in Africa, to work with the two sides. And last weekend Scott Gration, Obama's special envoy to Sudan, went to Khartoum to deliver the administration's new offer.

That offer is at the heart of the strategy document released earlier this week. Gration presented the regime with four ascending "stages" of granularized carrot. The administration will immediately change the rules governing the export of agricultural equipment to Sudan, now tightly controlled by sanctions. "Previously there had been an assumption of no," a White House official explained to me. "Now we're going to shift to an assumption of yes." This is, in effect, a gift for showing up -- no strings attached. If the regime permits the referendum to proceed and respects the outcome, the White House will lift further trade restrictions (though not on the all-important oil sector). If Khartoum also reaches agreement on key North-South issues, including the drawing of boundaries and sharing of oil revenue, Washington will appoint an ambassador (the last ambassador, Timothy Michael Carney, was withdrawn in 1996 after Sudan was declared a state sponsor of terrorism). Only, however, if Khartoum also resolves the Darfur conflict does the administration promise to seek full normalization and the lifting of sanctions.

Administration officials present the package as an "intensification" of existing diplomacy, but that is slightly disingenuous. After long, and reportedly heated, arguments inside the White House over the proper balance between carrot and stick, officials have produced a document that is highly specific about inducements and carefully vague about threats. Despite veiled references to "accountability," the statement is silent on the ICC indictments. And after much discussion over whether it's acceptable, or effective, to address the North-South conflict separately from Darfur, the administration plan will allow Khartoum to profit from compliance on North-South issues, though Bashir wins the jackpot only for restoring peace to Darfur.

Some, though not all, members of the advocacy community are appalled at the decision to, quite literally, let the regime get away with murder. John Norris, a Sudan expert at the Center for American Progress and former head of the Enough Project, calls the package "unseemly." Norris points out that in 2005 Western diplomats made a calculated decision to bless the North-South peace agreement even as the regime perpetrated mass slaughter in Darfur. Indeed, from the very beginnings of the killings in Darfur, in 2003, Bashir responded to pressure from the West by threatening to scuttle negotiations over ending the civil war. "Once again," Norris says, "you've got a bunch of diplomats saying that this current situation is so serious that we need to ignore all this other stuff."

So there is both a moral case and a strategic case against offering Khartoum goodies in exchange for behaving itself on the referendum. But if the derailing of the referendum really would lead to mass killing (and some experts I spoke to are skeptical on this score), then it's patent that the moral imperative is to give Bashir incentives to behave himself, and to leave the issue of just deserts to a future date. The only real question is effectiveness. A number of studies (pdf) have concluded that marginalizing Darfur to get the CPA signed was a disastrous mistake that sent Bashir a signal that he could do as he wished with the people of Darfur. Why is it correct now?

Gration was foolish enough to say earlier this year that what remained in Darfur, seven years after the killing broke out, was only "the remnants of genocide." He was quickly forced to retract the comment in the face of outrage from activists. But he was right. Civilians in Darfur still live in a state of terror, and millions remain displaced; but much of the killing now pits rebel groups, or Arab tribesmen, against one another. On the other hand, the steadily rising levels of violence in the South, much of it probably instigated by Bashir and his colleagues, could explode into the kind of mass ethnic reprisals provoked by the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948. As a State Department official puts it delicately, "There is a sense of urgency on both Darfur and the CPA, but there is a growing sense of immediacy on North-South issues." The situation in 2005 was the exact opposite.

That said, Bashir must be made to feel that there is a powerful, and imminent, "or else." So far, the Obama team has hesitated to make threats. Gration in particular has been far too willing in the past to accept the regime's bona fides, as if unaware of the bland reassurances and bald-faced lies that frustrated his predecessors. Even now, he and his team may be putting too much stock in the influence of "moderates" inside the ruling National Congress Party, whom Western officials have been banking on -- fruitlessly -- for years. Bashir is likely to "accept" the State Department's proposal, and then add onerous conditions of his own. A White House official insists that the administration is prepared for that eventuality, and adds that the ability to marshal an international response in case of rejection is "a very important part of the thinking" that went into the new offer. As with Iran, that is, the regime's rebuff of what is seen as a fair offer will help the United States build the case for tougher sanctions than those Sudan now faces.

Will Bashir be suitably impressed by that prospect? Over the years, he has blithely ignored Security Council resolutions, sanctions, threats of prosecution, and global public opprobrium. He has learned all too well how to exploit the weakness of international diplomacy. Now he holds a lit match over a vast bonfire. Perhaps he fears the consequences of flicking it on to the pyre, but the irresolute response of years past have ensured it's his choice -- and his alone.

Xenophobic Postage Stamp Email Resurfaces

A year-old, anti-Muslim email has resurfaced and is curculating once again, riding the latest wave of U.S. anti-Muslim bigotry. The email urges people to boycott a U.S. postage stamp that recognizes the Islamic holiday of EID. The stamp, which rumor-mongers refer to as a "Muslim Christmas Stamp," was first issued about ten years ago, and is one of six seasonal postage stamps the United States Postal Service sells that commemorate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, EID, snowmen and music makers. The email was first sent around a year ago by John Piper, the mayor of Clarksville, Tennessee. In it, Piper urged "all patriotic Americans" to protest a U.S. postage stamp commemorating the Islamic holiday of Eid. Piper accused "Muslim Communist" President Obama of ordering the stamp's creation. The stamp was, in fact, created during the George W. Bush administration. A similar stamp, sort of an Arabic Valentine's Day stamp with hearts and a butterfly on it, is also mentioned in the email. That stamp was created on a Web site called Zazzle, that lets people create their own custom stamps, and is not issued by the USPS. Snopes.com recently updated its page debunking this rumor. The USPS's holiday stamps are available here.

Poll: Most Americans against joining Israel in Iran strike

By Ron Kampeas · September 17, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A majority of Americans would oppose joining Israel in a war should it strike Iran, a poll showed.

The Chicago Council on Public Affairs poll, released Thursday, shows 56 percent of respondents answer "No, it shouldn't" to the statement, "If Israel were to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran were to retaliate against Israel, and the two were to go to war, the United States should or should not bring its military forces into the war on the side of Israel."

Those responding, "Yes, it should" amounted to 38 percent. In other findings, a majority -- 58 percent -- favored "making a major effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" as a measure to fight terrorism, with 39 percent opposing.

The Chicago Council's analysis said support had dropped for including American troops in an international peacekeeping force to maintain an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement; Americans were now split, 49-49, whereas majorities had in the past supported such participation.

Another finding showed that Americans are statistically split on using U.S. troops to defend Israel if it were attacked -- 47 percent in favor, 50 percent opposed.

There was a sharp rise since 2004 in the number of Americans who think the United States should take Israel's side over the Palestinians -- from 17 percent to 28 percent, while 66 percent said it should take no side and 3 percent said it should favor the Palestinians.

Israel scores much higher than the Palestinian Authority on the "warm, favorable feeling" scale, 57 to the P.A's 32.

Other Middle East ratings were 49 for Turkey, 39 for Saudi Arabia and 27 for Iran. Asked the status of relations, 44 percent said "about the same," 38 percent said "worsening" and 12 percent said "improving."

The poll was taken between June 11 and June 22 when tensions between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations were just beginning to abate.

A strong majority -- 62 percent -- said Israel should not build settlements. Asked to rank nations' importance to the United States, Israel placed sixth, tied with Saudi Arabia.

The poll was conducted for the Chicago Council by Knowledge Networks. The number of respondents was 2,596, and the poll had a margin of error of 1.9 percentage points.

Members of U.S. platoon in Afghanistan accused of killing civilians for sport

By Craig Whitlock
Saturday, September 18, 2010; 9:39 PM

AT JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, WASH. The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.

Two more slayings would follow. Military documents allege that five members of the unit staged a total of three murders in Kandahar province between January and May. Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.

Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings and macabre behavior. Nor have they explained how the attacks could have persisted without attracting scrutiny. They declined to comment on the case beyond the charges that have been filed, citing the ongoing investigation.

But a review of military court documents and interviews with people familiar with the investigation suggest the killings were committed essentially for sport by soldiers who had a fondness for hashish and alcohol.

The accused soldiers, through attorneys and family members, deny wrongdoing. But the case has already been marked by a cycle of accusations and counter-accusations among the defendants as they seek to pin the blame on each other, according to documents and interviews.

The Army has scheduled pre-trial hearings in the case this fall at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, home of the Stryker brigade. (The unit was renamed the 2nd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, when it returned from Afghanistan in July.) Military officials say privately that they worry the hearings will draw further attention to the case, with photos and other evidence prompting anger among the Afghan civilians whose support is critical to the fight against the Taliban.
The 'kill team'

According to statements given to investigators, members of the unit - 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment - began talking about forming a "kill team" in December, shortly after the arrival of a new member, Staff Sgt. Calvin R. Gibbs, 25, of Billings, Mont.

Gibbs, whom some defendants have described as the ringleader, confided to his new mates that it had been easy for him to get away with "stuff" when he served in Iraq in 2004, according to the statements. It was his second tour in Afghanistan, having served there from January 2006 until May 2007.

The first opportunity presented itself Jan. 15 in the Maiwand district of Kandahar province. Members of the 3rd Platoon were providing perimeter security for a meeting between Army officers and tribal elders in the village of La Mohammed Kalay.

According to charging documents, an Afghan named Gul Mudin began walking toward the soldiers. As he approached, Cpl. Jeremy N. Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska, threw the grenade on the ground, records show, to create the illusion that the soldiers were under attack.

Pfc. Andrew H. Holmes, a 19-year-old from Boise, Idaho, saw the grenade and fired his weapon at Mudin, according to charging documents. The grenade exploded, prompting other soldiers to open fire on the villager as well, killing him.

In statements to investigators, the soldiers involved have given conflicting details. In one statement that his attorney has subsequently tried to suppress, Morlock said that Gibbs had given him the grenade and that others were also aware of the ruse beforehand. But Holmes and his attorney said he was in the dark and opened fire only because Morlock ordered him to do so.

"He was unwittingly used as the cover story," said Daniel Conway, a civilian defense attorney for Holmes. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Morlock, Holmes and Gibbs have each been charged with murder in the shooting. Attorneys for Morlock and Gibbs did not return phone calls seeking comment.
A father's warning

On Feb. 14, Christopher Winfield, a former Marine from Cape Coral, Fla., logged onto his Facebook account to chat with his son, Adam, a 3rd Platoon soldier who was up late in Afghanistan. Spec. Adam C. Winfield confided that he'd had a run-in with Gibbs, his squad leader. He also typed a mysterious note saying that some people get away with murder.

When his father pressed him to explain, Adam replied, "did you not understand what i just told you." He then referred to the slaying of the Afghan villager the month before, adding that other platoon members had threatened him because he did not approve. In addition, he said, they were bragging about how they wanted to find another victim.

"I was just shocked," Christopher Winfield said in a phone interview. "He was scared for his life at that point."

The father told his son that he would contact the Army to intervene and investigate. It was a Sunday, but he didn't wait. He called the Army inspector general's 24-hour hotline and left a voice mail. He called the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and left another message. He called a sergeant at Lewis-McChord who told him to call the Army's criminal investigations division. He left another message there.

Finally, he said, he called the Fort Lewis command center and spoke for 12 minutes to a sergeant on duty. He said the sergeant agreed that it sounded as if Adam was in potential danger but that, unless he was willing to report it to his superiors in Afghanistan, there was little the Army could do.

"He just kind of blew it off," Christopher Winfield said. "I was sitting there with my jaw on the ground."

Winfield said he doesn't recall the name of the sergeant he spoke with. Billing records that he kept confirm that he called Army officials; he also kept copies of transcripts of Facebook chats with this son. He said he specifically told the sergeant of his son's warning that more murders were in the works.

Army investigators have since taken a sworn statement from Christopher Winfield, as well as copies of his phone and Internet records.
Other killings

Eight days after Winfield tried to warn the Army, according to charging documents, members of the 3rd Platoon murdered someone else.

On Feb. 22, Marach Agha, an Afghan civilian, was killed by rifle fire near Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar province, where the 3rd Platoon was stationed. The Army has released few details about the slaying but has charged Gibbs, Morlock and Spec. Michael S. Wagnon II of Las Vegas with murder.

Wagnon has also been charged with possessing "a skull taken from an Afghan person's corpse." He allegedly took the head sometime during January or February 2010, but court documents do not specify whether it belonged to the Afghan he is charged with killing.

An attorney for Wagnon, who was on his second tour in Afghanistan and also served in Iraq, did not return a call seeking comment.

More mayhem followed in March, when Gibbs, Wagnon and three other soldiers - Staff Sgt. Robert G. Stevens, Sgt. Darren N. Jones and Pfc. Ashton A. Moore - opened fire on three Afghan men, according to charging documents. The documents do not provide basic details, such as the precise date of the shooting, the identities of the victims or whether they were wounded.

Members of the 3rd Platoon found their next victim on May 2, documents show. Gibbs, Morlock and Adam Winfield - the son of the former Marine who said he tried to alert the Army three months earlier - are accused of tossing a grenade and fatally shooting an Afghan cleric, Mullah Adahdad, near Forward Operating Base Ramrod.

Winfield's attorney, Eric S. Montalvo, said his client was ordered to shoot but fired high and missed. He and Winfield's parents say they can't understand why the Army has charged their son, given that his father tried to warn officials about the platoon.

Military police caught wind of the final killing a few days later, but only by happenstance. Records show they were coincidentally investigating reports of hashish use by members of the 3rd Platoon.

After word leaked that one soldier had spoken to military police, several platoon members retaliated, records show. They confronted the informant and beat him severely - punching, kicking and choking the soldier, then dragging him across the ground. As a last warning, the documents state, Gibbs menacingly waved finger bones he had collected from Afghan corpses.

However, the informant talked to the MPs again and told them what he had heard about the slayings, according to court documents.

Some members of his unit, he said in a statement, "when they are out at a village, wander off and kill someone and every time they say the same thing, about a guy throwing a grenade, but there is never proof."

This time, the Army acted quickly and made arrests.