Judge upholds Guantánamo detention

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com
Miami Herald
Fri, Oct. 15, 2010

A detainee walks through the heat at the U.S. detention center for "enemy combatants" on Sept. 16, 2010 in , in this image cleared for release by the U.S. military at the U.S. Navy base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
JOHN MOORE / GETTY NEWS
A detainee walks through the heat at the U.S. detention center for "enemy combatants" on Sept. 16, 2010 in , in this image cleared for release by the U.S. military at the U.S. Navy base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a third straight win for the Obama administration, a federal judge has upheld the Guantánamo detention of a Yemeni captive whose brother is also held indefinitely without charges at the Pentagon's prison camps in southeast Cuba.

U.S. District Court Reggie Walton ruled Sept. 22, in a decision made public last week that Toffiq al Bihani, 38, never truly broke with al Qaeda even though he was a terror training camp washout.

The decision, in the same month as two other federal judges upheld the detentions of Kuwaiti and Afghan detainees, left the scorecard at 18-38. That means judges have ruled for release of Guantánamo detainees two-thirds of the time since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 empowered Guantánamo captives to file petitions of habeas corpus, the mechanism by which a civilian judge gets to review the Pentagon's and president's reason for holding the war prisoners indefinitely.

Dozens more petitions are in the pipeline and experts disagree on whether a trend is emerging on how the judges are analyzing the cases.

Bihani's lawyer George Clarke said the judges have steadily moved toward a standard of what the captive intended -- not what he did -- to justify indefinite detention.

According to the ruling, the Yemeni went from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to kick a drug habit and train with al Qaeda. Although he failed basic training, another brother, now dead, persuaded him to go wage jihad against the Russians.

``Even assuming that the catalyst behind the petitioner's travel to Afghanistan was to prepare for battle in Chechnya, and not against the United States, this fact has no material effect on whether the government can detain the petitioner,'' Walton wrote.

Bihani grew up in Saudi Arabia, along with his kid brother Ghaleb al Bihani, 30, who lost his challenge on Jan. 28, 2009. In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled that Ghaleb's work as an assistant cook with Taliban fighters made him an enemy combatant of the United States nevertheless and justifies military detention.

``After all, as Napoleon himself was fond of pointing out, `An army marches on its stomach,' '' Leon wrote in a ruling that was subsequently upheld on appeal.

Ghaleb went to Afghanistan in spring 2001 after a sheik issued a fatwa to fight with the Taliban against the Afghan Northern Alliance. Pentagon documents show he was sent to Guantánamo in January 2002, a year before his brother.

After Toffiq flunked out of al Farouq camp training, he stayed in al Qaeda guesthouses around the time of the 9/11 attacks, then fled to Iran, which sent him back to Afghanistan.

Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes, a former Washington Post editorial writer, wrote recently in his ``Lawfare'' blog that judges' attitudes are evolving toward favoring the government when a Guantánamo captive can't provide a reasonable alternative explanation for his activities before capture.

``The courts have gone from avowedly refraining from holding a detainee's unbelievable statements against him,'' he said, ``to considering a detainee's lies as affirmative evidence of his detainability.''

But Robert Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas, says three in a row is likely ``a quirk of the sequencing of the cases.'' At issue, he said, is whether the mosaic of claim and counter claim adds up to membership in a terror group that doesn't have rosters or card carriers.

Judges are left, he said, to conclude ``what does that mean if it's not formal membership, if people don't have an ID card?'' So in the case of Bihani, he said, it became a matter of ``the people he was traveling with and the circumstances'' in deciding if ``he had gotten out of or avoided joining al Qaeda.''

Clarke, the Yemeni's lawyer, said he'd appeal the decision in part because his client saw his enemy as Russia not the United States. ``Is this a war against jihad or a war against a defined enemy?'' he asked.

Superbombs and Secret Jails: What to Look for in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs

Spencer Ackerman
Wired.com
October 15, 2010

The Afghanistan war logs were just the beginning. Coming as early as next week, WikiLeaks plans to disclose a new trove of military documents, this time covering some of the toughest years of the Iraq war. Up to 400,000 reports from 2004 to 2009 could be revealed this time — five times the size of the Afghan document dump.

It’s a perilous time in Iraq. Politicians are stitching together a new government. U.S. troops are supposed to leave by next December.

Pentagon leaders were furious over the Afghanistan documents, but the American public largely greeted them with yawns. Iraqis might not be so sanguine.

It’s hard to imagine Iraq will fall back into widespread chaos over the disclosures. But they can’t be good for the United States, as it tries to create a new postwar relationship with Iraq, or for the 50,000 U.S. troops and diplomats still over there.

Will 400,000 Secret Iraq War Documents Restore WikiLeaks’ Sheen?

After a brief quiescence, the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks is about to explode again onto the global stage with the impending release of almost 400,000 secret U.S. Army reports from the Iraq War, marking the largest military leak in U.S. history.

Measured by size, the database will dwarf the 92,000-entry Afghan war log WikiLeaks partially published last July. “It will be huge,” says a source familiar with WikiLeaks’ operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Former WikiLeaks staffers say the document dump was at one time scheduled for Monday, October 18, though the publication date may well have been moved since then. Some large media outlets were provided an embargoed copy of the database in August.

In Washington, the Pentagon is bracing for the impact. The Defense Department believes the leak is a compilation of the “Significant Activities,” or SIGACTS, reports from the Iraq War, and officials have assembled a 120-person taskforce that’s been scouring the database to prepare for the leak, according to spokesman Col. Dave Lapan.

“They’ve been doing that analysis for some time and have been providing information to Central Command and to our allies, so that they could prepare for a possible impact of the release [and] could take appropriate steps,” says Lapan. “There are … things that could be contained in the documents that could be harmful to operations, to sources and methods.”

Continue reading on Threat Level …

We don’t know what’s in the documents. But here’s what we’ll be looking to find in the trove — and some unanswered questions that the documents might address.

The Rise of Roadside Bombs

Iraq is more a war. It was a proving ground for today’s signature weapon: the improvised explosive device. Insurgents raided Iraq’s military weapons silos to jury-rig devices set off by a simple cellphone.

Later, they bent bomb casings into cones to form the deadlier Explosively Formed Projectile, essentially a bomb that shoots a jet of molten metal into and through an armored vehicle.

Conflicting reports credited the “superbombs” to Iran, or not. Look to the WikiLeaked documents for supporting evidence either way.

Early on, the military found that its jammers — devices emitting frequencies to block those believed to detonate bombs — didn’t work. Worse, rumor was the jammers actually set the bombs off themselves.

We could be about to learn a lot more about how U.S. forces endured the first new bomb threat of the 21st century.

Abu Ghraib and Missing Jails

The Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse scandal was one of the worst strategic debacles in recent U.S. history. Aides to Gen. David Petraeus candidly said it inspired foreign fighters to join the Iraq insurgency.

Only one prison scandal came to light after Abu Ghraib: torture at the Special Ops facility known as “Camp Nama.” But journalists lost visibility into how the United States ran its detention complex in Iraq. Only in 2007, when Petraeus put Maj. Gen. Doug Stone in charge of rehabbing captured insurgents, did any sunlight return.

What happened for three years in the U.S. jails where tens of thousands of Iraqis were held?

Lost U.S. Guns

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2007 that the military had simply lost nearly 200,000 AK-47s and pistols it intended for Iraqi soldiers and police. Its documentation was a mess in 2004 and ‘05, when Petraeus ran the training mission. Many of those guns are believed to have made their way to the black market and to insurgents.

The leaks may shed some light on how thousands of guns fell off the back of a truck.

Ethnic Cleansing of Baghdad

Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents each preyed on the other side’s civilians in 2005 and 2006. More than a million Baghdadis were displaced from their homes in a massive demographic shift between March 2006 and July 2007.

It’s never been clear how much the U.S. military knew about the cleansing. Low-level units watched it happen. And American psychological-operations troops certainly played on the religious splits to win local support.

But Gen. George Casey, then the top general in Iraq and now the Army’s chief of staff, has never answered questions about it. If the logs document the cleansing, he may have to speak up.

Drones

As much as the air war in Iraq became defined by the “Shock and Awe” bombing raids of its opening salvo, from the start there were at least ten types of unmanned planes the United States used for surveillance — from the Marines’ Dragon Eye to the Air Force’s iconic Predator.

But how did they prove their value to soldiers and Marines in Iraq? Gen. Petraeus says drones were crucial to the spring 2008 battle in Sadr City, finding targets for the troops below. And a secret task force used drone-fired missiles to kill bomb-planting insurgents.

What other spy gear was employed? Bob Woodward claims a “secret weapon” helped turned the war’s tide.

Could we see hints of it in the new WikiLeaks?

The Air War And More ‘Collateral Murders’

WikiLeaks makes no apologies for its antiwar agenda. Its Iraq and Afghanistan disclosures are designed to weaken support for both wars.

That’s why we should expect to see a lot more material like its gruesome April video showing an Apache helicopter killing people — including a Reuters photographer — who didn’t threaten its crew. The video suggests that other combat aircraft in the confusing urban environments of Iraq might have also engaged in similar mistargeting.

If there are accounts of civilian casualties from what used to be an intense, violent air war — including, perhaps, hidden military documentation about the so-called “Collateral Murder” incident — WikiLeaks is going to publish them.

The Bill O'Reilly Fallacy

Reuel Marc Gerecht
The New Republic
October 16, 2010

After recent conversations with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg and others who are of a more conservative bent, I started to reflect on Western scholarship and American conservative commentary on Islam. Western historiography of Islam provides a treasure-trove of sympathetic and hostile criticism of the Middle East’s last-born, earth-shaking faith. A huge body of modern Western scholarship has sought, more often from curious sympathy than malice, to answer the quintessentially liberal question about Islam: “What went wrong?”

And things going astray is a good way to look at some prominent conservative commentary. Although liberals have been quick and careless in hurling accusations of Islamophobia at opponents of the Ground Zero/Park 51 cultural center, there is something historically and philosophically amiss in some conservative ruminations about the Islamic faith. It really shouldn’t be so hard to oppose Islamic militancy, push back forcefully against those who downplay the threat of Al Qaeda as well as a nuclear Iran, and, at the same time, not suggest that all Muslims are, basically, nuts.

There is, to be sure, absolutely nothing wrong with non-Muslim Americans engaging in a debate about faith and violence that ranges far and wide. Western history offers a lengthy chronicle that encourages an exploration of why devout men kill for God; Christian-Muslim parallels provide a lens through which to see where—and where not—sincere believers in the Almighty have interpreted how violence and religion intermarry. So, no, there is no sin in non-Muslims querying Muslims about why so many terrorists tend to be Muslim and why those terrorists advertise their acts of violence as a defense of their faith. There is nothing wrong with asking why so many Muslims have such a difficult time saying that Palestinian suicide bombers have committed acts of evil. There is nothing wrong, either, in asking why it is that Islamic radicals melted two skyscrapers and blew out a side of the Pentagon and yet prompted so little soulful reflection, produced no Émile Zola, no Captain Dreyfus. Short of that, Muslims in the West at least ought to have a few Thomas Friedmans and Roger Cohens crankily telling them what a mess they’ve made.

But all of these serious Islamic problems aside (and any Westerner aware of the quantity of blood that Westerners themselves spilled making the world modern really ought to exercise a bit of charity when it comes to Islam’s travails), we still ought to be concerned when prominent American conservatives—and here I’m thinking first and foremost of Newt Gingrich—blur the line between militant Muslims and the everyday faithful. When Gingrich, whom I’ve long admired and had the pleasure of working with, gave a much-noted speech at the American Enterprise Institute in which he stated, “I believe Sharia is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it. … I think it’s that straightforward and that real,” I could only say in response, “String Theory is dangerous”: Gingrich was looking for an explanation for the Islamic terrorist threat, but, like many on the right, looking in the wrong places. Neatly tying it all together, Gingrich and others have alighted upon the Muslim Holy Law, the Sharia, as the source of all that bedevils the Middle East, and us.

This is hardly the place for a disquisition on Sharia, or how it’s evolved over the centuries. Suffice to say, even some Muslim theologians have seen the strain of despotism in Islamic history as being connected to the static and authoritarian nature of Islamic legal practice. Still, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting with Shiite and Sunni clerics who were teaching Sharia and opining about daily life, and such schooling didn’t strike me then, and still doesn’t, as a good laboratory for terrorists, which is why, I suspect, so few terrorists have had any proper clerical training. A rigorous Islamic education may make you a killjoy, but it doesn’t make you a terrorist. If the empirical record tells us anything, it’s that a skimpy Islamic education combined with a mediocre—even a decent—Western education seems much more likely to produce an explosive mix.

When Westerners, however well-intentioned, start suggesting that Muslim law supplies the foundation for Islamic terrorism, it immediately conveys to Muslims, even secularized Muslims, that Westerners think all Muslims are disordered, that the only route to salvation runs through a renunciation of their faith (that is, they ought to become the mirror-image of Westerners who go to church every so often. Whatever vestigial pride Muslims may have in their religious law (most Muslims aren’t particularly fastidious or knowledgeable about the Sharia, but nevertheless have an understandable historic affection for it), gets crudely pummeled by such commentators.

The blanket demonization of the Holy Law can lead one to view Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shiite thinker in the world, and one who tried desperately and selflessly to keep his country from descending into internecine savagery, as a bigot and a terrorist engine. The same would be true for the late Grand Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, the spiritual father of Iran’s Green Movement and the nemesis of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ruler, himself a very mediocre student of the Sharia.

True, the Holy Law applied can be ugly, not least for women. Westerners, especially Europeans, are quite right to be outraged by the importation of Sharia practices to their shores. And Westerners should cast a very dim eye on any financial institution that sets up Sharia-compliant offices that could, if left unchecked, discreetly normalize anti-Semitic practices in big global institutions. Westerners can only hope that progressive Muslim jurists, who briefly sprouted in the nineteenth century, once more gain force among the faithful. But we should not make the great philosophical and historical mistake of seeing even the staunchly conservative clerical elite of the Muslim world as the handmaidens of Islamic terrorism. If, indeed, Islamic terrorism comes to an end, it will probably be because these men have united to say finally and clearly that a devout Muslim’s distaste for Western values and “cultural imperialism” does not, after all, justify murder.

The intellectual peregrinations of Saudi Wahhabism, the mother-ship of Sunni Islamic terrorism, may be frightful, but, even in Saudi Arabia, the best bet for ending this plague may likely be found among the ranks of its reactionary clergy. What Westerners should dream of is not the elimination of the influence of the Sharia in Muslim lands, but the triumph of a more competitive mindset among those who adhere to the Law. If Saudi Arabia, at home and abroad, would just welcome Hanafis, the most open-minded of Sunni Islam’s law schools, it would be an enormous triumph over Wahhabi intolerance and the hatred that spews forth from that oil-rich land.

Free-lancing, perfectly modern rebels like Osama bin Laden, who believe they alone have the right to interpret God’s message, will no doubt storm forth now and then, but they would have a much harder time if the Sunni clergy were arrayed openly and loudly against them. When, for instance, Iran and Lebanon’s Shiites fell in love with holy war and martyrdom, prominent Shiite clerics went the other way. Among the Shiite faithful, suicide bombing had a short run. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is a wicked zealot who loves to kill Jews, but he is, like his counterparts in Iran, Ali Khamenei and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, of no religious standing. As counterintuitive as it seems to some Americans, it may be divines who are among the most effective opponents of such men.

Misunderstanding Islam’s internal problems and miscasting the Sharia and its clerical custodians as our primary enemies aren’t, however, the biggest problems with some American conservative commentary. Many conservatives—and liberals—utterly fail to appreciate the extraordinary continuing power of Western, especially American, culture among Muslims. Declinism may be all the rage among trend-chasers in the West, but the apocalyptic tactics of Osama bin Laden and his followers offer, among other things, evidence that we, the West, have been winning the war for the hearts of everyday Muslims. Among Muslims fixed to their computers and televisions, we still embody both hope and hell on earth. As Khomeini put it so well, we remain the satanic whisperer, who seduces men—and especially women—from the righteous path.

Contrary to what one regularly reads on conservative websites, we are not yet losing this war. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon and the determined proselytizing of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and among Muslim immigrants in the West are efforts to turn back the tide. But modernity is relentless. The traumatic Westernization of Islam continues. That Westernization led to the Islamic revolution in Iran and to Osama bin Laden, but it also leads, even more powerfully, to a world where Muslims—especially Muslim women—aspire to a more prosperous and democratic way of life. We have reasons to hope that Islam’s passage will be less bloody than our own, though we should prepare, as Gingrich constantly and wisely warns us, for its being worse.

But we shouldn’t see enemies where they are not. The Holy Law is, as it’s always been, what Muslims make of it. In the titanic struggle within Islam between those who fear modernity and those who embrace it, we would do well not to make the clergy our foes. They will go, as they always have done, where the majority of Muslims take them. Like Ayatollah Khomeini before him, bin Laden once thought that most Muslims would rise up to defend his cause. Both gentlemen were wrong. Westerners and most Muslims may not (yet) share with the same intensity and priority that many values, but we share enough to provide considerable hope that the “clash of civilizations” will end, as Grand Ayatollah Sistani no doubt wants it to, in a suspicious, at times tense, but peaceful and prosperous co-existence.

Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a contributing editor at The Weekly Standard.

Somali-American is new prime minister in Somalia

The Associated Press
Oct. 14, 2010, 12:59PM

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia's president named a new prime minister on Thursday, bringing into the government a Somali-American who has taught at a community college in New York state.

Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed replaces Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who had a long-running feud with the president and resigned last month.

A statement from the Somali government said that Mohamed is a former Somali diplomat. He worked in the Somali Embassy in Washington from 1985 to 1988, according to the government's website.

Mohamed has taught conflict resolution and leadership skills at Erie Community College, a member of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, according to his resume. He has a master's degree in political science from SUNY-Buffalo, it said.

Mohamed will be asked to name a Cabinet within one month.

Mark Bowden, a top U.N. official with oversight of Somalia, said Mohamed's Cabinet is expected to be smaller than the bloated group of politicians that Sharmarke had control over. Among officials in Sharmarke's Cabinet was a minister of tourism in a violence-plagued country that sees only a handful of tourists each year.

Somalia's Transitional Federal Government controls only a few blocks of Mogadishu and is generally seen as corrupt, weak and ineffective. The government has accomplished little since its inception in 2004. Somalia hasn't had a fully functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew the president.

The U.S. last month announced a new, dual track approach to Somalia that will see continued American support of the transitional government but also new, direct support of other groups and regions in Somalia. The new approach includes increased support to the semiautonomous Somali regions of Somaliland and Puntland.

Why Would the ADL Honor Rupert Murdoch?

David A. Love
HuffingtonPost.com
October 15, 2010

It is a valid question that demands answers. Why would a prominent civil rights organization -- one which is supposedly dedicated to fighting bigotry and discrimination -- present an award to a man whose cable network profits from race-baiting and hatred?

On October 13, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the nation's foremost Jewish civil rights organization, presented an award to media magnate Rupert Murdoch "for his stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against anti-Semitism," according to a press release on the organization's website.

In his acceptance speech, Murdoch -- who of course is the CEO of News Corp, parent of Fox News -- spoke of the "soft war" against Israel, and the "ongoing war against the Jews." Perhaps the most eye-opening part of Rupert Murdoch's speech was his assertion about the source of most of today's worst anti-Semitism: the Left.

Tonight I'd like to speak about two things that worry me most.

First is the disturbing new home that anti-Semitism has found in polite society -- especially in Europe.

Second is how violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel's greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish state.

Now, when Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century.

Now it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.

The same day, the ADL released its own blacklist of sorts, what it calls the "Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups In America." These are generally progressive peace activist groups, and civil rights and human rights organizations that are critical of Israeli government policy, and advocate for Palestinian self-determination. They include groups such as US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and Council on American-Islamic Relations. Also on the list is Jewish Voice For Peace, which is "the only national Jewish organization that provides a voice for Jews and allies who believe that peace in the Middle East will be achieved through justice and full equality for both Palestinians and Israelis."

Now, no part of the political spectrum has a monopoly on bigotry and intolerance. And as the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, there is some anti-Semitism on the far-left, and some critics of Israel cross the line into anti-Semitism. However, criticism of Israel does not typically equal anti-Semitism, and many critics of Israel are unfairly labeled as bigots. It seems that Mr. Murdoch is painting in rather broad brushstrokes in his condemnation of the left. And he is a hypocrite as well, given the virulent anti-Semitism that viewers will find on Fox News.

As Media Matters recently reported, Fox News has an anti-Semitism problem. Fox host Glenn Beck promoted the racist book The Red Network by Elizabeth Dilling, a Nazi sympathizer who praised Hitler, called "Colored people" savages, and blamed Germany's anti-Semitism on "revolutionary Russian Jews." According to Media Matters, Beck also cited an anti-Semitic smear of George Soros, and promoted Secrets of the Federal Reserve, a book by the anti-Semitic and white supremacist conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins.

In addition, Beck has hosted and associated with other controversial leaders on the right, including Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, and Michael Hill of the League of the South. Even the ADL has said that David Barton, a so-called historian promoted by Beck, has spoken to groups affiliated with the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement.

Moreover, Beck recently defended Ohio congressional candidate Rich Iott's right to wear a Nazi uniform, comparing it to "good cop bad cop" or "cowboys and Indians."

So, what's really going on here?

First, the ADL apparently has decided to eschew its glorious past and become a rigid single-issue organization. It has cast its lot with the neocon crowd in America who want to characterize all legitimate critics of Israel -- including progressive Jews who also believe in Palestinian rights -- as anti-Semites. The goal is to shut off all debate on the Mideast crisis. And he ADL puts itself in lockstep with a hard-right government in Israel that would erode the rights of Jew and Arab alike -- with efforts by the ultra-orthodox to define who is or is not a Jew; enforced gender segregation on public streets, a law requiring Arab and other non-Jewish Israelis to pledge loyalty to a "Jewish and democratic" state, and legislation that would criminalize minority political opposition and human rights organizations who assist refugees.

Second, Rupert Murdoch has deep pockets, and I suppose the ADL will benefit from that reality. But they must hold their nose and look the other way as Murdoch's Fox News serves as the official network of the Tea Party, which the ADL itself says is a recruiting ground for white supremacists. And Murdoch has given $1 million apiece to the Republican Governors' Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, doing his part to further the corporate purchase of American politics and foreign influence over elections, not to mention the outsourcing of U.S. jobs.

Only two months ago, the ADL was embroiled in controversy when it spoke out against the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. That move did much to damage its reputation and integrity as an advocate for civil rights and religious freedoms. And now, it seems the ADL has learned very little from that episode, as it just honored Rupert Murdoch of all people. The organization founded nearly a century ago following the lynching of Leo Frank has come a long way, but not in a good way.

Two questions remain: Will the ADL demand that Murdoch return his award? And will Murdoch repudiate the anti-Semitism of Glenn Beck and his own Fox News network?

David A. Love is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, and a contributor to The Progressive Media Project and theGrio. He is based in Philadelphia and is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. His blog is davidalove.com.

Rupert Murdoch, Accepting ADL Award, Calls For An End Of Efforts To Isolate Israel

New York, NY, October 14, 2010 … In remarks at a dinner where he was honored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for his stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against anti-Semitism, media magnate K. Rupert Murdoch described in stark terms what he sees as an "ongoing war against the Jews" and efforts to isolate the Jewish State through "a soft war" of delegitimization and isolation.

He said attacks against Israel have evolved over the years from conventional warfare to terrorism and international isolation.

"Now the war has entered a new phase," Mr. Murdoch said. "This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battle ground is everywhere – the media, multinational organizations, NGOs. In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah."

Mr. Murdoch was presented with the ADL International Leadership Award last night at a dinner in New York City, where he was feted by film producer Harvey Weinstein, Fox News President Roger Ailes, ADL National Chair Robert G. Sugarman and ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman, among other dignitaries.

Mr. Foxman recalled how his first introduction to Mr. Murdoch was in a private setting, "away from the media spotlight."

"I have come to know the man, not his image," Mr. Foxman said in presenting the award to Mr. Murdoch. "I learned that he cared deeply about the safety and security of Israel. I learned that he was as distressed as I was about efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state, to hold it to a double standard, and to seek its demise by some."

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Murdoch touched on what he described as the danger signs that anti-Semitism is on the rise, and provided examples of how some anti-Semitism from the left comes under the guise of legitimate criticism of Israel.

"When Americans think of Anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century," Mr. Murdoch said. "Now it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel."

Mr. Murdoch said the United States should stand by its ally, Israel, in times of crisis, and that the White House should not distance itself from Israel to seek credibility in the Muslim world. "Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel. My view is the opposite. Far from making peace more possible, we are making hostilities more certain."

Former recipients of the ADL International Leadership Award include Cees Van Der Hoeven of Royal Ahold, Neville Isdell of Coca-Cola, Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones of L'Oreal, and Maurice Levy of Publicis.

Rupert Murdoch: The 'Soft War' Against Israel

Speech by K. Rupert Murdoch
To the Anti-Defamation League
ADL International Leadership Award Dinner
New York, New York, October 13, 2010

Thank you, Abe, for those kind words. And thank you for this award.

I can’t say I have been chosen by God. But tonight I can say this: I am honored to be chosen by His people for this award.

I am especially proud that this award bears the name of the ADL. You were founded a century ago against the backdrop of something we cannot imagine in America today: the conviction and then lynching of an innocent Jew.

In the century since then, you have fought anti-Semitism wherever you have found it. You have championed equal treatment for all races and creeds. And you have held America to her founding promise.

So successful have you been, a few years ago some people were beginning to say, “maybe we don’t need an ADL anymore.”

That is a much harder argument to make these days.

Now, there’s not a single person in this room who needs a lecture on the evil of anti-Semitism. My own perspective is simple: We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews.

For the first decades after Israel’s founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Well before the Berlin Wall came down, that approach had clearly failed.

Then came phase two: terrorism.

Terrorists targeted Israelis both home and abroad – from the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich to the second intifada.

The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world. But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government – and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.

Now the war has entered a new phase. This is the soft war that seeks to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it. The battleground is everywhere: the media … multinational organizations … NGOs.

In this war, the aim is to make Israel a pariah.

The result is the curious situation we have today: Israel becomes increasingly ostracized, while Iran – a nation that has made no secret of wishing Israel’s destruction – pursues nuclear weapons loudly, proudly, and without apparent fear of rebuke.

For me, this ongoing war is a fairly obvious fact of life.

Every day, the citizens of the Jewish homeland defend themselves against armies of terrorists whose maps spell out the goal they have in mind: a Middle East without Israel.

In Europe, Jewish populations increasingly find themselves targeted by people who share that goal.

And in the United States, I fear that our foreign policy sometimes emboldens these extremists.

Tonight I’d like to speak about two things that worry me most.

First is the disturbing new home that anti-Semitism has found in polite society – especially in Europe.

Second is how violence and extremism are encouraged when the world sees Israel’s greatest ally distancing herself from the Jewish state.

When Americans think of anti-Semitism, we tend to think of the vulgar caricatures and attacks of the first part of the 20th century.

Today it seems that the most virulent strains come from the left. Often this new anti-Semitism dresses itself up as legitimate disagreement with Israel.

Back in 2002 the president of Harvard, Larry Summers, put it this way:

“Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Mr. Summers was speaking mostly about our university campuses. Like me, however, he was also struck by alarming developments in Europe.

Far from being dismissed out of hand, anti-Semitism today enjoys support at both the highest and lowest reaches of European society – from its most elite politicians to its largely Muslim ghettoes. European Jews find themselves caught in this pincer.

We saw a recent outbreak when a European Commissioner trade minister declared that peace in the Middle East is impossible because of the Jewish lobby in America. Here’s how he put it:

“There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right. And it’s not so much whether these are religious Jews or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East.”

This minister did not suggest the problem was any specific Israeli policy. The problem, as he defined it, is the nature of the Jews.

Adding to the absurdity, this man then responded to his critics this way: Anti-Semitism, he asserted, “has no place in today’s world and is fundamentally against our European values.”

Of course, he has kept his job.

Unfortunately, we see examples like this one all across Europe.

Sweden, for example, has long been a synonym for liberal tolerance. Yet in one of Sweden’s largest cities, Jews report increasing examples of harassment. When an Israeli tennis team visited for a competition, it was greeted with riots.

So how did the mayor respond? By equating Zionism with anti-Semitism – and suggesting that Swedish Jews would be safer in his town if they distanced themselves from Israeli actions in Gaza.

You don’t have to look far for other danger signs:

• The Norwegian government forbids a Norwegian-based, German shipbuilder from using its waters to test a submarine being built for the Israeli navy.

• Britain and Spain are boycotting an OECD tourism meeting in Jerusalem.

• In the Netherlands, police report a 50% increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by these things. According to one infamous European poll a few years back, Europeans listed Israel ahead of Iran and North Korea as the greatest threat to world peace.

In Europe today, some of the most egregious attacks on Jewish people, Jewish symbols, and Jewish houses of worship have come from the Muslim population.

Unfortunately, far from making clear that such behavior will not be tolerated, too often the official response is what we’ve seen from the Swedish mayor – who suggested Jews and Israel were partly to blame themselves.

When Europe’s political leaders do not stand up to the thugs, they lend credence to the idea that Israel is the source of all the world’s problems – and they guarantee more ugliness.

If that is not anti-Semitism, I don’t know what is.

That brings me to my second point: the importance of good relations between Israel and the United States.

Some believe that if America wants to gain credibility in the Muslim world and advance the cause of peace, Washington needs to put some distance between itself and Israel.

My view is the opposite.

Far from making peace more possible, we are making hostilities more certain.

Far from making things better for the Palestinian people, sour relations between the United States and Israel guarantees that ordinary Palestinians will continue to suffer.

The peace we all want will come when Israel feels secure – not when Washington feels distant.

Right now we have war.

There are many people waging this war. Some blow up cafes. Some fire rockets into civilian areas. Some are pursuing nuclear arms. Some are fighting the soft war, through international boycotts and resolutions condemning Israel.

All these people are watching the U.S.-Israeli relationship closely.

In this regard, I was pleased to hear the State Department’s spokesman clarify America’s position yesterday. He said that the United States recognizes “the special nature of the Israeli state. It is a state for the Jewish people.”

This is an important message to send to the Middle East. When people see, for example, a Jewish prime minister treated badly by an American president, they see a more isolated Jewish state. That only encourages those who favor the gun over those who favor negotiation.

Ladies and gentlemen, back in 1937, a man named Vladimir Jabotinsky urged Britain to open up an escape route for Jews fleeing Europe.

Only a Jewish homeland, he said, could protect European Jews from the coming calamity.

In prophetic words, he described the problem this way:

“It is not the anti-Semitism of men,” he said. “It is, above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer.”

The world of 2010 is not the world of the 1930s. The threats Jews face today are different.

But these threats are real.

These threats are soaked in an ugly language familiar to anyone old enough to remember World War II.

And these threats cannot be addressed until we see them for what they are: part of an ongoing war against the Jews.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for this award. And thank you for all you do.

ADL Identifies Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups In America

Press Release

New York, NY, October 14, 2010 … They organize mass demonstrations featuring extreme anti-Israel and anti-Zionist messages. They seek to undermine the Jewish state by spreading malicious propaganda. They pursue boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel.

They are the 10 most influential and active anti-Israel groups in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

"While there are hundreds of groups that organize and participate in various anti-Israel activities, we have identified the largest and most well-coordinated anti-Israel groups," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "These groups are not promoting peace, they are spreading propaganda to assault Israel's legitimacy. We want to Americans to know who these groups are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state."

In a new online report, ADL takes a close look at the top 10 anti-Israel groups operating in the U.S. The League examines the dynamics of the U.S. anti-Israel movement and the ability of the most prominent groups to organize events, attract supporters and forge relationships with other like-minded organizations.

The Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups, as identified by ADL, are:

· Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER)

· Al-Awda

· Council on American-Islamic Relations

· Friends of Sabeel-North America

· If Americans Knew

· International Solidarity Movement

· Jewish Voice for Peace

· Muslim American Society

· Students for Justice in Palestine

· US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

"These groups demonize Israel through various public campaigns. Their messages are one-sided and fail to take the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into account," said Mr. Foxman. "They unfairly attack Israel while ignoring Palestinian terrorism and incitement. They apply a different standard to Israel than other countries, condemning it for implementing policies to protect its citizens."

Read more online on our web site at http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/5875_62


The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

WikiLeaks says Funding Has Been Blocked After Government Blacklisting

Founder Julian Assange hits out at decision by Moneybookers, which collects the whistleblowing website's donations

by David Leigh and Rob Evans
Published on Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Guardian/UK

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

[WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up a copy of the Guardian after thousands of US military documents were leaked and exposed. (Photograph: Andrew Winning/REUTERS)]WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up a copy of the Guardian after thousands of US military documents were leaked and exposed. (Photograph: Andrew Winning/REUTERS)
Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: "Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed ... to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities."

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: "When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

"Below I have copied the answer I received from them: 'Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'"

Assange said: "This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically."

Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: "We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer." Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: "We stick with our original statement."

"War on terror" psychologist gets giant no-bid contract

By Mark Benjamin
Salon
Thursday, Oct 14, 2010 14:25 ET


The Army earlier this year steered a $31 million contract to a psychologist whose work formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program.

The Army awarded the "sole source" contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university's Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.

Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

Government contracting regulations allow sole-source contracts, but only under very limited conditions, such as when only one company has the ability to do the needed work, according to Trevor Brown, a contracting expert at Ohio State University.

Brown said inappropriately awarding sole-source contracts is an "endemic" problem throughout the Department of Defense.

"I am not an expert on resilience training," he said, "but I know enough to know they could have put out a tender, and my guess is they would have gotten a number of bids. My first reaction was that there is a market for this stuff."

Army resilience training is the pet project of Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, previously the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the darkest days of the war there, from July 2004 through February 2007. Army sources say the director of the Army's resilience program, Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, rammed the training contract through the Army bureaucracy on Casey's behalf.

* Continue reading

Seligman is most famous for his work in the 1960s in which he was able to psychologically destroy caged dogs by subjecting them to repeated electric shocks with no hope of escape. The dogs broke down completely and ultimately would not attempt to escape through an open cage door when given the opportunity to avoid more pain. Seligman called the phenomenon "learned helplessness."

Government documents say that the goal of Bush-era torture was to drive prisoners into the same psychologically devastated state through abuse. "The express goal of the CIA interrogation program was to induce a state of 'learned helplessness,'" according to a July 2009 report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Seligman, described as politically conservative by a psychologist who knows him well, once chastised his fellow academics for "forgetting" 9/11. "It takes a bomb in the office of some academics to make them realize that their most basic values are now threatened, and some of my good friends and colleagues on the Edge seem to have forgotten 9/11," Seligman once wrote on the Edge Foundation website. In that post, Seligman was arguing that any science advisor to the president "needs to help direct natural science and social science toward winning our war against terrorism."

Previous reports have explored how Seligman's fingerprints show up on the CIA and military torture programs -- including his interactions at key moments with individuals and institutions that helped set up and carry out government torture. Seligman told Salon he never intended for the government to use his ideas for torture and described the timing of the meetings as coincidental.

Understanding Seligman's connection to torture requires a bit of background. Bush-era torture was designed by a small group of current and former military psychologists who had been training elite U.S. soldiers to resist torture, an effort that has been in existence in the military for decades in what is called the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program.

In late 2001, both the CIA and the Pentagon first requested interrogation assistance from various SERE psychologists, according to a November 2008 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee and a 2004 CIA inspector general report. A small group of those SERE psychologists agreed to reverse-engineer their torture-resistance training tactics into brutal interrogation methods.

Seligman shows up early on. In December 2001, one of the SERE psychologists who helped establish and run the CIA torture program, James Mitchell, attended a small meeting at Seligman's house along with Kirk Hubbard, then the CIA's director of Behavioral Sciences Research. The New York Times has described this meeting as "the start of the program."

In a lengthy correspondence with Salon over the previous months, Seligman described that meeting at his house as a small gathering of professors and law enforcement personnel as well as at least one "Israeli intelligence person," to conduct an academic discussion about the so-called war on terror. "It was about isolating Jihad Islam from moderate Islam," Seligman said of the meeting. "It did not touch on interrogation or torture or captured prisoners or possible coercive techniques -- even remotely."An interview with another attendee as well as an agenda for that meeting, obtained by Salon, support Seligman's description of that meeting.

Seligman said he interacted with Mitchell at that meeting infrequently, but does recall the SERE psychologist "telling me that he admired my work at a coffee break."

Another interaction between Seligman and the architects of Bush-era torture came a few months later, in the spring of 2002. Jane Mayer's 2008 book "The Dark Side" shows that Seligman made a three-hour presentation at the Navy's SERE school in San Diego in the spring of 2002. Mayer said Hubbard, the CIA official, was involved in arranging Seligman's presentation. Hubbard confirmed that in an e-mail to Salon.

In e-mails to Salon, Seligman said that Hubbard, the CIA official, also attended the presentation. So did Mitchell and Mitchell's partner in setting up government torture, another SERE psychologist named Bruce Jessen. Seligman said the audience included 50 to 100 SERE officials. "I was invited to speak about how American troops and American personnel could use what is known about learned helplessness to resist torture and evade successful interrogation by their captors," Seligman wrote.

Seligman did allude to discussions at that time with SERE officials about interrogating al Qaida suspects, but said those talks were limited because of security clearance issues. "I was told then that since I was (and am) a civilian with no security clearance that they could not detail American methods of interrogation with me," he wrote. "I was also told then that their methods did not use 'violence' or 'brutality,'" he wrote.

Seligman's colleagues estimate that the famous psychologist charges between $20,000 and $30,000 to present a speech. Seligman waived his fee when he presented to the SERE officials.

The Senate report says that at around the same time during that spring of 2002, Mitchell's partner, Jessen, wrote for the military a "draft exploitation plan" for use on detainees. The Senate report says that at the same time, a number of SERE officials became involved in developing the torture program. "Beginning in the spring of 2002 and extending for the next two years (SERE officials) supported U.S. government efforts to interrogate detainees," the Senate report says. "During that same period, senior government officials solicited (SERE) knowledge and its direct support for interrogations."

Another related thing was going on at the same time in the spring of 2002. The CIA had also just recently taken custody of al Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah, the first so-called "high-value" detainee subjected to CIA abuse. Mayer's book documents how Mitchell, the SERE psychologist, led the team that tortured Zubaydah that spring of 2002. She quotes an unnamed source present at the scene who says Mitchell described his plans for Zubaydah "like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he's so diminished, he can't resist."

(Mayer's book also explores the ironic leitmotif of Bush-era torture: that SERE officials are not trained interrogators and the methods they employed were originally designed by Communists to produce forced confessions, not good intelligence.)

In his correspondence with Salon, Seligman said the CIA and military appear to have hijacked his learned helplessness work without his knowledge or consent. "I am grieved and horrified that good science, which has helped so many people overcome depression, may have been used for such dubious purposes," he wrote in an e-mail. "Most importantly, I have never and would never provide assistance in torture. I strongly disapprove of it."

Similarly, Seligman says he doesn't know anything about how or why the military early this year steered the $31 million resilience-training contract to his psychology center with no other competition allowed. "I just don't know," Seligman wrote. "Government contracting is way above my level of knowledge or competence."

"You will need to ask General Cornum and (Army Chief of Staff.) Gen Casey about their process," Seligman added.

Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman, said in an e-mail that the Army steered the contract to Seligman for the benefit of soldiers. "The decision not to compete was affected by a compelling reason to execute this contract as quickly as possible, as the impact of current operations (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD] incidents) and a suicide rate reported to be sixty percent higher than in 2003 posed significant concern for the well-being of our Soldiers," Tallman wrote. He said the contract also went to Seligman because the psychologist had "the only program available that demonstrated it could meet stated requirements such as 'longitudinal efficacy in randomized clinical trials, with improvement well documented in published research.'"

Tallman said Casey and Cornum declined Salon's interview request.

* Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon based in Washington, D.C. Read his other articles here. More Mark Benjamin

US military says 77,000 Iraqis killed over 5 years

By LARA JAKES (AP)
10/15/2010

BAGHDAD — A new U.S. military tally puts the death toll of Iraqi civilians and security forces in the bloodiest years of the war thousands below Iraqi government figures.

The little-noticed body count is the most extensive data on Iraqi war casualties ever released by the American military. It tallied deaths of almost 77,000 Iraqis between January 2004 and August 2008 — the darkest chapter of Iraq's sectarian warfare and the U.S. troop surge to quell it.

But the tally falls short of the estimated 85,694 deaths of civilians and security officials between January 2004 to Oct. 31, 2008, as counted last year by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry.

Casualty figures in the U.S.-led war in Iraq have been hotly disputed because of the high political stakes in a conflict opposed by many countries and a large portion of the American public. Critics on each side of the divide accuse the other of manipulating the death toll to sway opinion.

"Even casualty rates are a political issue in Iraq," said Samer Muscati, a Middle East and North Africa researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

The new data was quietly posted on the U.S. Central Command website without explanation in July, and a spokesman at its military headquarters in Tampa, Florida, could not answer basic questions Thursday about the information, including whether it counted government-backed Sunni fighters among Iraqi security forces or insurgents among civilians.

Officials with the Iraqi Health Ministry, which tracks how Iraqis are killed through death certificates, refused to discuss the U.S. casualty data Thursday.

The figures were discovered this week during a routine check by The Associated Press for civilian and military casualty numbers that were first requested in 2005 through the Freedom of Information Act.

In all, the U.S. data tallied 76,939 Iraqi security officials and civilians killed and 121,649 wounded between January 2004 and August 2008. The count shows 3,952 American and other U.S.-allied international troops were killed over the same period.

The figures did not specify whether the civilian deaths were caused by sectarian violence, but appeared to track charts previously released by the Defense Department of Iraqis killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom who died as a result of hostile violence — as opposed to accidents or natural causes.

Those charts — which did not provide concrete numbers — were based on data compiled by U.S. and Iraqi government figures.

The U.S. count falls short of casualty figures compiled by Iraq's Human Rights Ministry.

The ministry said in its report released last October that 85,694 people were killed from the beginning of 2004 to Oct. 31, 2008, and that 147,195 were wounded. The figures included Iraqi civilians, military and police, but did not cover U.S. military deaths, insurgents, or foreigners, including contractors. Like the new U.S. figures, the Iraqi report did not include the first months of the war after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

A tally by the Iraq Body Count, a private, British-based group that has tracked civilian casualties since the war began, estimates that between 98,252 and 107,235 Iraqi civilians were killed between March 2003 to Sept. 19, 2010. The group has used media reports and other sources to reach its tally.

Until last month, The AP compiled its own daily body count of Iraqi civilians killed in sectarian violence, excluding insurgents. Overall, The AP tallied 49,416 Iraqi security officials and civilians killed since April 28, 2005 until Sept. 30, 2010. That figure underrepresented the true casualty number because many killings went unreported, especially in more remote areas.

The Central Command figures represent the largest release of raw data by the U.S. military to detail deaths during the Iraq war. The military has repeatedly resisted sharing its numbers, which it uses to determine security trends.

A notable exception, however, came this year when U.S. military officials in Baghdad decided to release their July 2010 Iraqi casualty tally to refute the Iraqi government's much higher monthly figures. That decision was made weeks before U.S. forces withdrew all but 50,000 troops from Iraq — as ordered by President Barack Obama in an attempt to wind down the war and tout the nation's improved security.

Even so, counting the number of Iraqis killed has always been difficult, and tallies have widely varied depending on the source.

Associated Press Writers Mazin Yahya and Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad and AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

My Loyalty Oath

Crossing My Fingers

By JONATHAN COOK
CounterPunch
October 15 - 17, 2010

Nazareth.

In all likelihood, I will be one of the very first non-Jews expected to swear loyalty to Israel as an ideology rather than as a state.

Until now, naturalising residents, like the country's soldiers, pledged an oath to Israel and its laws. That is the situation in most countries. But soon, if the Israeli parliament passes a bill being advanced by the government, aspiring citizens will instead be required to uphold the Zionist majority's presumption that Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”.

My application for citizenship is due to be considered in the next few months, seven years after my marriage to a Palestinian citizen of Israel. The country's 1.3 million Palestinians -- usually referred to by officials as "Israeli Arabs" -- are a fifth of the population. I, like a few others in my position, am likely to make such a pledge through gritted teeth and with my fingers crossed behind my back. Whatever I declare publicly to interior ministry officials will be a lie. Here are the reasons why.

One is that this law is unapologetically racist. It applies only to applicants for citizenship who are non-Jews. That is not because, as most observers assume, all Jews in Israel would willingly make the pledge but because one significant group would refuse, thereby nullifying their right to become Israelis. That group is the ultra-Orthodox, religious fundamentalists distinctive for their black dress, who are the fastest growing group among Israel's Jewish population. They despise Israel's secular state institutions and would make a loyalty oath only to a state guided by divine law.

So Israel is demanding from non-Jews what it does not require of Jews.

Another reason is that I do not believe a Jewish state can be democratic, any more than I believe a democratic state can be Jewish. I think the two principles are as incompatible as a “Christian and democratic state” or a “white and democratic state”. I am not alone in this assessment. Eminent academics at Israel's universities think the same. They have concluded that the self-declared Jewish state qualifies not as a liberal democracy but as a much rarer politlcal entity: an ethnocracy.

One of the leading exponents of this view, Professor Oren Yiftachel of Ben Gurion University in the Negev, points out that in ethnocracies, the democratic aspects of the regime are only skin deep. Its primary goal is to maintain one ethnic group's dominance over another. Israel, it should be noted, has many laws but none guarantees equality. The discrimination, Prof Yiftachel notes, is legislated into the structure of citizenship so that one ethnic group is entitled to privileges at the expense of the other group in all basic aspects of life: access to land and water, the economy, education, political control, and so on.

Even the ethnic group's majority status is maintained through sophisticated gerrymandering: Israel gives citizenship to Jewish settlers living outside its recognised borders, while banning the Palestinians it expelled in 1948 from ever enjoying immigration rights that are shared by Jews worldwide.

The third reason is that the new oath itself strengthens an elaborate structure of institutionalised discrimination based on Israel's citizenship laws.

Few outsiders understand that Israel provides citizenship under two different laws, depending on whether you are a Jew or a non-Jew. All Jews and Jewish immigrants, as well as their spouses, are entitled to automatic citizenship under the Law of Return. Meanwhile, the citizenship of Israel's Palestinians -- as well as that of naturalising spouses like myself -- is governed by the Citizenship Law. It is this bifurcated citizenship that made possible a previous outrage: Israel's ban on the right of its Palestinian citizens to win citizenship, or often even residency rights, for a Palestinian spouse through naturalisation.

It is again the Citizenship Law for Palestinians, not the Law of Return for Jews, that Israel is preparing to revise to force the spouses of Palestinian citizens, myself included, to pledge an oath to the very state that confers on them and their Palestinian partners second-class citizenship.

The fourth reason is that this oath is a classic example of "slippery slope" legislation. Despite the exultations of Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right minister who campaigned under the election slogan “No loyalty, no citizenship”, this law in its current formulation will probably apply to only a few hundred applicants each year.

Currently exempt are all existing citizens, whether Jews or Palestinians; non-Jewish spouses of Jews naturalising under the Law of Return; and Palestinian partners blocked entirely from the naturalisation process. Only the tiny number of non-Jewish spouses of Israel's Palestinian citizens will have to take the pledge. But few believe that the oath will remain so marginal for ever. A principle of tying citizenship rights to a declaration of loyalty is being established in Israel for the first time.

The next targets for this kind of legislation are the non-Zionist political parties of Israel's Palestinian minority. The Jewish parties are already formulating bills to require parliament members to swear an oath to a “Jewish and democratic state”. That is designed to neuter Israel's Palestinian parties, all of which share as their main platform a demand that Israel reform from a Jewish state into a “state of all its citizens”, or a liberal democracy.

Next in Lieberman's sights, of course, are all of Israel's 1.3 million Palestinians, who will be expected to become Zionists or face a loss of citizenship and possibly expulsion. I may be one of the first non-Jews to make this pledge, but many are sure to be forced to follow me.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A Plan B for Obama

A stagnant economy. Declining American influence. Dictators on the march abroad. And a more Republican Congress coming soon. Barack Obama is in big trouble. But it's never too late. Foreign Policy has a plan, 14 in fact, for how the president can find his mojo again.

FOREIGN POLICY

NOVEMBER 2010

Nearly two years ago, Obama swept into office promising to defeat terrorism, withdraw "responsibly" from Iraq, make peace in Afghanistan, forge "greater cooperation and understanding between nations," pursue a world without nuclear weapons, and "roll back the specter of a warming planet." And that was just one paragraph of his inaugural address.

"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans," the new U.S. president declared. "Their memories are short."

If Obama's optimism wasn't immediately tempered by his predecessor's daunting legacy -- two inconclusive wars, an economy in free fall, soaring deficits -- it soon became evident that his vision might have exceeded his grasp.

Twenty-two months later, Obama has notched a few significant achievements, and he remains popular around the world. But he faces rising discontent at home and a much less supportive Congress after midterm elections as economists warn ominously of a "double-dip" recession. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to Middle East peace to Iranian nukes has been scant -- and it's hard to find an autocrat who has unclenched his fist.

In other words, it's time for a fresh approach. Take it from a president who knows a thing or two about missteps: "If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes," wrote Bill Clinton. "It's how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit." So read on for Foreign Policy's Presidential Plan B: 10 things Obama should do now, so that the next two years don't go to waste. From a politically savvy idea for raising taxes -- really! -- to a serious antidote for our oil addiction to unorthodox new ways to speak to Muslims around the world, here's how the president can get back on track.

• Avoid the Double Dip Nouriel Roubini and Michael Moran
• Take It to the People Robert Shrum
• Get Off Oil R. James Woolsey
• Build Up the West Bank Elliott Abrams
• Make a South Asia Command Bruce Riedel
• Stop Fawning Over America's Muslim Allies Ellen Laipson
• Rewrite the Rules of War Will Marshall
• Give the Public a Green Check James Hansen
• Cut (Really Cut) Military Spending Christopher Preble
• Dump the Nukes Joseph Cirincione
• Change the Rules of the Game in Pakistan Ashley J. Tellis
• Divide the Iranian Leadership Dmitri Trenin
• Get Tough on Human Rights Kenneth Roth
• Turn South Nancy Soderberg

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Robert Shrum
TAKE IT TO THE PEOPLE

Facing a continuing array of grave challenges abroad and an even more divided and hostile Congress a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue, Barack Obama will have to either surrender to short-term political pressures or invent a new form of public diplomacy, one aimed at Americans themselves.

His situation is very different from that of U.S. President Harry Truman after the 1946 midterm elections that decimated Democrats. Indeed, Truman's greatest achievements -- like the Marshall Plan -- came during the next two years. For that Republican Congress, at the dawn of the Cold War, politics stopped at the water's edge. Not today. Every question, from basic constitutional rights to the fight against terrorism, has become grist for the exceedingly fine grind of the partisan mill.

And that was before the midterm elections. Imagine what the rest of Obama's term will be like.

The United States can't afford two years of stalemate in foreign policy. At the same time, the president can't, for instance, leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences to keep the support of his own party, or stay forever to avoid accusations from the opposition that he's "soft" on national security. Those attacks will come no matter what he does. To lead in the national interest, Obama should go beyond the familiar pattern of forging a bipartisan coalition of "responsible" members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. There won't be enough of them. On critical issues like Afghanistan and Iran, Obama will need to take his case to the people directly, as he did so convincingly as a candidate. This means a continuing conversation in town halls and speeches that connect both emotionally and logically with a majority of Americans. Foreign-policy-speak just won't do.

Only if he moves public opinion will he be able to move Congress. Otherwise, he will be a prisoner of partisan maneuver and division. It's not just economic underperformance that could send Obama back to Illinois in two years. So could a festering, unpopular war or an appearance of weakness, waffling, or defeat on big-stakes questions like a nuclear Iran. Obama needs to become the diplomat-in-chief -- not just for U.S. allies overseas, but for his own citizenry at home.

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Robert Shrum, a senior fellow at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, was a senior advisor to John Kerry's and Al Gore's presidential campaigns.

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R. James Woolsey
GET OFF OIL

Americans borrow $1 billion a day to import oil. This is a huge share of the U.S. trade deficit and a major factor in weakening the dollar. Hundreds of billions a year go to the Middle East and end up funding improvised explosive devices and Wahhabi schools, which teach hatred of other religions, the stoning of women, death to apostates and homosexuals, and the need to work toward a worldwide caliphate. It is not an accident that 8 of the 10 largest oil exporters are dictatorships or autocratic kingdoms whose rulers profit massively from oil's gigantic economic rents.

Oil also causes terrible environmental problems. Not only are its carbon emissions nearly as much as those of coal, but the so-called "aromatics" (benzene, toluene, and xylene) that constitute about one-quarter of what's in our gasoline tanks are highly carcinogenic. Careful and authoritative studies put the cost of dealing with the aromatics' damage to our health and consequently shortened life spans at well over $100 billion annually.

For too long, American politicians have said that "foreign oil" is a problem and then gone on to propose ineffective or impossibly expensive solutions. Barack Obama needs to move away from oil, period. "Drill, baby, drill" can help some with the U.S. balance of payments, but will do nothing to undermine OPEC's control of the oil market. Nor are expensive nuclear power plants or wind farms the answer -- only 2 percent of U.S. electricity comes from oil. Cap and trade? The only major environmental policy measure that Obama has seized on is possibly a useful tool, if done right, for discouraging high-carbon electricity generation -- but it has almost nothing to do with oil's use in transportation. And besides, Obama hasn't been able to get it passed by Congress -- nor will he.

Obama should not devote resources to solutions, such as hydrogen, that will take many years to develop and have high infrastructure costs. Instead, he should turn to a portfolio of steps that can move the United States off oil in the near term. Here are five things he can do now: 1) Create incentives for the large-scale production of plug-in hybrid cars and all-electric vehicles; 2) Mandate that fleet vehicles, such as city buses and some interstate trucking, be fueled with natural gas; 3) Follow Brazil's lead and move to an open-standard, flexible-fuel vehicle requirement so that alcohol fuels can compete with gasoline; 4) Require drastic efficiency increases for internal combustion engines; and 5) Encourage auto companies to move toward carbon composites, which will lighten automobiles and require smaller engines to propel them.

Even if each of these solutions reduced oil transportation demand by only about 10 percent over the next decade, Obama could shatter oil's transportation monopoly -- now about 95 percent in the United States. If the president doesn't take such steps immediately, Americans face a grim future: falling ever more heavily into debt, funding terrorism, empowering dictators, contributing to climate change, and giving themselves cancer.

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R. James Woolsey, chairman of Woolsey Partners, is former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

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Elliott Abrams
BUILD UP THE WEST BANK

Forget the peace talks. A lasting, final Israeli-Palestinian agreement is nowhere in sight. With the negotiations as background music, Barack Obama should get serious. The rest of his term should be spent building the institutions of a Palestinian state in the West Bank -- not chasing a dream.

Over the past two administrations, Washington has given substantial aid to the Palestinian Authority. An increasingly reliable and well-trained PA police force -- in place of the late Yasir Arafat's criminal gangs masquerading as security forces -- has been created, and cooperation between Israel and the PA against terrorism is growing. The United States has supported the efforts of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to prevent the corruption endemic in Fatah, Arafat's stagnant political party, from infecting the PA again. West Bank GDP grew at an impressive 7 percent clip during 2009, even amid the global economic recession. But though many gains have been made, the Palestinian economy is still highly dependent on international aid, and extremist groups have proved that they still retain the capacity to launch attacks on Israel from the West Bank.

If you build it, they will sign. The only way to reassure Palestinians that a state is possible is to make one, and the only way to reassure Israelis that their security will be enhanced rather than diminished is for them to see it with their own eyes. That won't happen for either side at Camp David or Oslo or Annapolis -- only right there on the ground in the West Bank.

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Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was deputy national security advisor handling Middle Eastern affairs in George W. Bush's administration.

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Bruce Riedel
MAKE A SOUTH ASIA COMMAND

South Asia is the epicenter of terrorism and the most dangerous place in the world today: Pakistan is a fragile state with what may be the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal; India is an emerging great power, but one with precarious internal rifts; and Afghanistan is just struggling to survive. Yet the U.S. government is alarmingly unprepared to engage with the region -- even at the most basic organizational level. Instead of treating South Asia as a whole, the U.S. national security establishment has carved it up into an array of parts: In the military, Central and Pacific Commands each have a piece of the region, and, more confusing still, the desks at the State Department and the National Security Council that handle "AfPak" are separate from those that deal with India. This may make the Indians happy -- they don't want to be linked with failing states -- but it makes no sense for the United States.

If Barack Obama is to really get serious about the region, he needs to create an executive bureau for Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan -- one that spans across the U.S. government. Good organization does not guarantee good policy, but a poorly constructed bureaucracy is almost always a recipe for bad policy. A new military command that puts Pakistan and India in the same theater would help enormously in improving U.S. strategic thinking about South Asia. No longer would one commander talk to the Pakistanis and another to the Indians; the Pentagon would have just one voice. And likewise for Foggy Bottom: An empowered assistant secretary of state for South Asia could travel regularly on diplomatic missions between Kabul, Islamabad, and New Delhi.

Obama was right to recognize that the Afghan war could not be effectively prosecuted without dealing with Pakistan. But it's foolish to think that Pakistan can be effectively assisted without dealing with the issue that dominates its own strategic calculus: India.

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Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, was a senior advisor to three U.S. presidents on Middle Eastern and South Asian issues.

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Ellen Laipson
STOP FAWNING OVER AMERICA'S MUSLIM ALLIES

Barack Obama needs to rethink his approach to engaging the Muslim world. After the promise of his seminal June 2009 Cairo speech, his administration has not focused on any serious initiatives and has fallen into the trap of fawning over Muslims in ways that are contrary to America's core values. The message about religion should be tolerance, full stop. Holding a Ramadan iftar dinner in the Ben Franklin Room of the State Department, a faux ritual that predates the Obama administration, is particularly problematic. Public spaces should honor secular, civic virtues. Good intentions have gotten in the way of common sense and American values.

Obama would be better off skipping symbolism and working to improve the effectiveness of Middle Eastern states in delivering services and expanding the participation of their citizens in public policy. The case of Egypt and its upcoming presidential election is a good place to start. The White House must try to ensure that the 2011 contest be fair and legitimate, for Egypt's sake and ours. But America's good work with grassroots activists needs to be complemented by a bolder public stance and even tough measures when governments fail to advance the most basic democratic reforms.

In the end, Obama's legacy to U.S. relations with the Muslim world would be best served by strengthening public institutions, promoting democratic values and practices, and speaking out when gross injustices occur, even in states that are officially friendly to America.

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Ellen Laipson is CEO of the Stimson Center and was vice chair of the National Intelligence Council.

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Will Marshall
REWRITE THE RULES OF WAR

George W. Bush, in the absence of broadly agreed-upon guidelines for fighting and meting out justice to terrorists, stumbled badly in attempting to write his own rules for the "war on terror." Barack Obama has done better, but his administration is just as bollixed up over the right way to detain and try suspected terrorists.

Nine years after 9/11, let's get it right once and for all. Obama should lead an international effort to clear up confusion and ambiguities surrounding terrorism, war, and the "right" to resistance invoked by groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah to justify attacking civilians and using them as human shields.

Specifically, Obama should call for a new Geneva Convention -- the fifth -- to provide a common legal framework for combating terrorism. This would help the world resolve the "neither soldier nor criminal" quandary that has bedeviled two successive U.S. administrations. More importantly, it would stigmatize the routine use of violence against civilians in fragile or disordered countries around the world.

A tough new anti-terrorism convention would give the international community new weapons in the struggle to discredit violent extremism. By designating mass casualty and suicide terrorism as crimes against humanity, it would take some of the glamour out of violence. It would also provide the legal basis for international tribunals to indict those who recruit the killers and plan the attacks. Finally, leading the charge for a new Geneva Convention would reinforce a core theme of Obama's foreign policy: restoring U.S. moral leadership within a framework of international cooperation for mutual security.

Because terrorism is a global scourge, it makes no sense for every country to write its own rules for combating and punishing terrorists. It's time to arm the civilized world with the legal tools it needs to fight and defeat terrorists -- in a civilized way.

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Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute.

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James Hansen
GIVE THE PUBLIC A GREEN CHECK

Climate policy is not rocket science. Our fossil-fuel addiction cannot be solved if fossil fuels are the cheapest energy. But fossil-fuel energy is cheapest only because the producers of fossil fuels receive direct and indirect subsidies and are not made to pay for their costs to society -- such as health risks and long-term climate-change remediation. Until Barack Obama tackles this fundamental incongruity, the United States will remain stuck in useless and costly political battles like the rancid, partisan, congressional cap-and-trade debacle of the last two years.

Instead of getting a free ride, fossil fuels should pay their fair share via a gradually rising carbon fee collected from fossil-fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed directly to the public on a per capita basis via a monthly "green check." This will spur the U.S. economy and promote clean-energy innovations. In the short term, more than 60 percent of the U.S. population would receive more in their green check than they would pay out in increased energy prices. (This won't be true for the wealthiest Americans, as they tend to use more energy.)

The best part about a rising carbon price is that it provides the only realistic chance for an international climate accord. Obama was right not to depend on last year's 192-country, cap-and-trade talkfest in Copenhagen. But he can't give up on an agreement between the world's two top emitters: the United States and China.

The Chinese will never agree to a "cap" on their carbon emissions. But China seems willing to negotiate a carbon price. Why? Not only are its leaders concerned about the country's environmental quality, they also want to avoid the fossil-fuel addiction that has hobbled the United States. More importantly, they stand to profit: Beijing is making enormous investments in nuclear, wind, and solar power. If the United States were to strongly incentivize green choices, China's factories would struggle to keep up with consumer demand. And once the United States and China agree on what the right carbon fee should be, most other countries will go along.

Lest we forget, stabilizing climate change is a moral issue. Our fossil-fuel addiction, if unabated, threatens our children and grandchildren, and most species on the planet. If Obama dreams of being a great president, he needs to take on the great moral challenge of our century.

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James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is author of Storms of My Grandchildren.

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Christopher Preble
CUT (REALLY CUT) MILITARY SPENDING

Despite all the hype about Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his cuts of big-ticket military projects, the Pentagon's $680 billion budget is actually slated to increase in coming years. This is unconscionable at a time when taxpayers are under enormous stress and when the U.S. government must reduce spending across the board. Barack Obama can save big bucks without undermining U.S. security -- but only if he refocuses the military on a few, core missions.

Unfortunately, the president has shown no real interest in cutting military spending or in revisiting the purpose of U.S. military power. Why not? For all his talk of change, Obama has continued on the path set by his predecessors. Like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, he sees the U.S. military as the world's sole policeman, and its armed social worker. It is this all-encompassing mission that requires a large military -- and a very expensive one. Americans today spend more on their military, adjusting for inflation, than at any time during the Cold War, even though the threats that they face are quite modest.

If Obama is serious about reducing the deficit and keeping U.S. troops out of "dumb wars," as he famously dubbed them, he should put his money where his mouth is. Cutting defense spending is the only reliable way to stifle Washington's impulse to send U.S. troops on ill-considered missions around the globe.

The hawks will scream, but America will be just fine. Obama can capitalize on the country's unique advantages -- wide oceans to the east and west, friendly neighbors to the north and south, a dearth of powerful enemies globally, and the wealth to adapt to dangers as they arise -- by adopting a grand strategy of restraint. The United States could shed the burden of defending other countries that are able to defend themselves, abandon futile efforts to fix failed states, and focus on those security challenges that pose the greatest threat to America. A strategic shift of this magnitude will not only reduce conflict and make the United States safer, but it will enable Obama to reshape the military to suit this more modest set of objectives, at a price that's far easier for taxpayers to swallow.

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Christopher Preble is director of foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free.

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Joseph Cirincione
DUMP THE NUKES

Barack Obama needs to get real about actual cuts in America's still-enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons -- or his nuclear legacy won't even match that of Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush.

So far, the president has made modest progress shrinking stockpiles and preventing new nations and terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. But these gains have been hard won, and his entire strategy is now at risk: Negotiating the New START treaty with Russia took too long, and political opponents slowed Senate approval.

Delay is dangerous. It threatens other planned efforts, including nuclear-test bans and a global lockup of all weapons materials. And it will create diplomatic havoc. Other countries agreed to stronger efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation based on Obama's promise to convince nuclear-armed states to reduce their arsenals. If reductions stall, so will cooperation. Countries will hedge their bets, and nuclear materials and technology will spread.

But Obama can regain momentum by executing reductions that don't depend on Russia or the Senate. The first President Bush did this in 1991, unilaterally eliminating more than 3,000 weapons and denuclearizing the U.S. Army and surface Navy. Obama should begin by taking limited measures: disclose how many weapons the United States has in its nuclear stockpile, step up the pace of dismantlement of the estimated 4,200 excess bombs (Bill Clinton took apart about 1,000 a year, George W. Bush just 300, and Obama could get to 450 easily), and immediately cut the deployed strategic weapons to 1,550, instead of waiting the seven years the New START treaty allows.

Then it's time for bold moves: Obama should unilaterally reduce the active U.S. arsenal to 1,000 weapons (which is still three times more than U.S. Air Force experts judge are necessary) and remove the 200 U.S. nuclear bombs that remain in Europe.

Such cuts won't hurt U.S. or global security in the least -- and Obama has plenty of bipartisan, expert support for cuts of this size. They would put him on the road to fulfilling his compelling promise of a truly nuclear-free world.

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Joseph Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund.

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Ashley J. Tellis
CHANGE THE RULES OF THE GAME IN PAKISTAN

Ever since Islamabad reluctantly joined the U.S. campaign against terrorism in 2001, it has consistently pursued a strategy of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. To this day, Pakistan's security services continue to support various terrorist and insurgent groups -- such as the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, and Hezb-i-Islami -- that attack Afghan and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, even as Islamabad continues to extract large amounts of aid from Washington. As the July 2011 deadline for beginning the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan approaches, Pakistan's continued protection of the insurgents will undermine Barack Obama's plans to improve conditions sufficiently in Afghanistan so as to begin an orderly withdrawal.

Yet both the Bush and Obama administrations have tolerated Pakistan's duplicity with regard to counterterrorism, primarily because the country remains the principal artery for transporting U.S. cargo -- food, water, vehicles -- and fuel delivered to Afghanistan. And, as the recent border closings by Pakistani forces have shown, the Obama administration must implement a Plan B that denies Pakistan the ability to hold the coalition at ransom: It must begin by planning to move larger quantities of supplies through the northern distribution network that runs from Georgia through Azerbaijan, to Kazakhstan, and then Uzbekistan to Afghanistan. Although U.S. forces now receive more supplies through this route than they did before, the dependence on Pakistan is still substantial -- and so consequently is Islamabad's capacity for blackmail.

As a complement to increasing reliance on the northern route, U.S. assistance to Pakistan (totaling roughly $18 billion in civilian and military aid since 9/11) should be tacitly conditioned on Islamabad's meeting certain counterterrorism benchmarks. For starters, all transfers of major military equipment to Islamabad should be contingent on Pakistan ceasing support for militant groups that threaten coalition and national forces in Afghanistan. More extreme (and hopefully unnecessary) options would include expanded drone and air-power operations inside Pakistani airspace. Or -- and this is certain to catch Islamabad's attention -- more open support for Indian contributions to Afghan stability.

The most important problem is that suddenly challenging Pakistan after a decade of acquiescence to its mendacity is tantamount to abruptly changing the rules of a game that Washington and Islamabad have gotten used to: It could result in even greater Pakistani obduracy and further support for its jihadi proxies. Although that is certainly an unpalatable possibility, the bitter truth is that the current state of affairs -- in which Washington indefinitely subsidizes Islamabad's sustenance of U.S. enemies -- poses far greater dangers to the United States. The Obama administration must make the difficult choice now and show Islamabad that the rules of the game have changed.

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Ashley J. Tellis is senior associate of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Dmitri Trenin
DIVIDE THE IRANIAN LEADERSHIP

Despite all that Barack Obama has to preoccupy himself with in Afghanistan and Iraq these days, it is Iran that is likely to be the U.S. president's most serious foreign policy-challenge in the coming months. By now it is clear that Iran is headed toward nuclear weapons -- and that's plural weapons, not just one. Iran's goal is a nuclear weapons arsenal. The only question that remains is whether this will be maintained for deterrence and regional power politics or actually used. That answer will depend on the balance of power within the Iranian leadership.

Obama essentially has two options: He can provoke the Iranian leadership, or he can seek to influence it, tipping the balance in favor of the moderates. The options mentioned in policy circles so far include striking Iran, supporting an Israeli attack, or imposing ever more stringent sanctions. None will work, however, and each will backfire -- empowering the regime's most radical elements by offering them a pretext to attack Israel or the West. The president must resist the temptation to use highly visible, but blunt instruments of power.

Instead, the Obama administration must work to isolate the religious fanatics and their allies among the Revolutionary Guards, empowering the moderates. Elements of such a strategy include: increasing economic and cultural openness toward Iran; coordinating closely with foreign partners, from Europe and Turkey to Russia and China; and aligning NATO's missile-defense plans with its erstwhile rival, Moscow. There is no guarantee, of course, that this strategy will succeed. What it does ensure is -- at the very least -- that the United States will not make matters worse by throwing a public-relations softball to Iran's radical fanatics. Iran's bomb may be inevitable; its use is still preventable.

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Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

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Kenneth Roth
GET TOUGH ON HUMAN RIGHTS

In the 1990s, the United States, though hardly perfect, did more than any other country to promote the responsibility to protect people facing mass atrocities. In Bosnia and Kosovo, though tragically not Rwanda, leaders learned that the slaughter of their people risked a forceful response from Washington.

Unfortunately, President George W. Bush tainted such action when, finding no weapons of mass destruction, he tried to justify the invasion of Iraq retrospectively in humanitarian terms. Yet as Barack Obama recognized in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, "Force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans."

Obama needs to put this principle into practice, and there is no better case for the humanitarian use of force than the urgent need to arrest Joseph Kony, the ruthless leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), and protect the civilians who are his prey. And far from requiring a non-consensual intervention, Kony's apprehension would be welcomed by the governments concerned.

The LRA began as a rebel movement in northern Uganda, but it now terrorizes the civilian population of northern Democratic Republic of the Congo as well as southern Sudan and the Central African Republic. Its cadre often descends on a remote village, slaughters every adult in sight, and then kidnaps the children, some shockingly young -- the boys to become soldiers slinging AK-47s, the girls to serve as "bush wives." Over more than two decades, many thousands have fallen victim to these roving mass murderers.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Kony and other LRA commanders, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity, but the court depends on governments to make arrests.

So far Uganda has done the most to pursue the LRA, but ineffectively. The LRA is not large -- an estimated 200 to 250 seasoned Ugandan combatants, plus at least several hundred abductees -- but as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni recently told me, Uganda lacks the special forces, expert intelligence, and rapid-deployment capacity needed to stamp out this enemy.

In May, Obama signed a bill committing the United States to help arrest Kony and his commanders and protect the affected population. Now it is high time to act. Arresting Kony would reaffirm that mass murder cannot be committed with impunity. And it would show that, despite the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, the humanitarian use of force remains a live option at the Obama White House.

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Kenneth Roth is executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

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Nancy Soderberg
TURN SOUTH

Barack Obama must start looking south, not just east and west. Like it or not, the U.S. economic recovery, success in the war on terrorism, and meeting the climate-change challenge all depend on successful partnerships with the developing world -- partnerships we just don't have. To get there, we need to dramatically restructure the leadership of our global institutions -- from the World Bank to the U.N. Security Council -- to better represent Brazil, Nigeria, India, South Africa, and the other countries that make up the world's 4 billion poorest.

Take climate change, for instance. We can't get a deal unless the developing world sees us as helping it adapt to the effects of global warming. This will require money, not just rhetoric: Obama, instead of simply vowing to end fossil-fuel subsidies, should redirect those funds specifically for the purpose of meeting the U.S. share of the global pledge to provide $100 billion through 2020 to help the developing world take on climate change.

But money alone isn't the issue. We also lack the basic tools to meet these challenges. For too many years, the U.S. military has been Washington's most visible outreach into the developing world. Diplomacy counts, and Obama needs to reinvest in the State Department. The president's modest proposed increase of nearly $4 billion won't cut it -- and Congress even axed that. What is needed is a generous 10-year plan to develop adequate State Department resources; otherwise talk of 21st-century diplomacy is just that. For when America shows up in times of need -- during this year's Pakistan floods or in fighting AIDS in Africa -- we not only reduce poverty, disease, and conflict, but also eliminate safe havens for terrorists. And that's something we can all get behind.

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Nancy Soderberg is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and president of the Connect U.S. Fund.