Monday, February 12, 2007

Breaking: Post reporter reveals Ari Fleischer as leak source

Editor's note: I am moving over to post at the other blog. Also see new articles below .

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Pincus Reveals Fleischer As Leak Source

Post Reporter Identifies Former White House Spokesman As Source for CIA Story

By MATT APUZZO

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial.

Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days later.

Pincus testified on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby is accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity.

Pincus, a veteran national security reporter, said he was talking to Fleischer for a story about weapons of mass destruction. He said Fleischer "suddenly swerved off" topic and asked why Pincus continued to write about Wilson.

"Don't you know his wife works for the CIA as an analyst?" Pincus recalled Fleischer saying.

Fleischer testified at the trial earlier that Libby had told him about Plame over lunch. Fleischer testified he leaked the information to three reporters during a presidential trip to Africa but he did not mention the Pincus conversation. In exchange for his testimony, prosecutors promised not to charge Fleischer.

Libby argues that he never discussed Plame with Fleischer. Pincus' testimony helps defense attorneys make the argument that Fleischer needed someone to blame to cover up his own leaking.

Novak, whose column triggered an FBI investigation into the leak, was also scheduled to testify Monday, attorneys said.

Novak has said that Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, and Bush aide Karl Rove were the sources for his July 2003 column.

"You're going to hear that," defense attorney Theodore Wells said in court Monday morning. "He's going to testify about that in a few hours."

Novak and Pincus are two of several journalists whom Libby's attorneys planned to call. These lawyers also are fighting hard to force NBC foreign affairs reporter Andrea Mitchell to testify about why she said that Plame's identity was "widely known" even before the Novak column was published.

Mitchell has since recanted those comments and has said that she cannot explain them.

A key dispute in the case involves Mitchell's NBC colleague, Tim Russert. Libby says Russert told him in July 2003 that "all the reporters know" Plame worked for the CIA. Russert said that never happened because he didn't know who Plame was at the time.

Prosecutors say Libby concocted the Russert story to shield him from prosecution for discussing information he had learned through official government channels.

Libby's attorneys want to show that Russert had heard that Plame worked at the CIA. Fleischer has already testified that he told NBC reporter David Gregory about her. If Libby can show that Mitchell knew, too, they think they can persuade jurors to believe Libby's account of the Russert conversation.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mitchell can be called as a witness but he wouldn't allow Libby's attorneys to ask about her inconsistent statements.

In addition to Mitchell, attorneys have said several other journalists are expected to testify this week: New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson, Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas, and Bob Woodward and Glenn Kessler, along with Pincus, from The Washington Post.

Associated Press writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.

US baiting Iran retaliation

Sun Feb 11, 5:02 PM ET

White House officials are taunting Iran into an action the United States could use as an excuse for an attack, a former security official told Newsweek, the magazine reported.

"They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something (the United States) would be forced to retaliate for," Hillary Mann, former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, which reports to the White House, told the New York newsweekly.

US relations with Iran have chilled since President George W. Bush placed Iran on an "Axis of Evil," alongside North Korea and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, in a January 2002 speech.

Earlier on Sunday, Bush administration officials in Baghdad claimed that Iranian-built bombs smuggled into Iraq had killed at least 170 US and allied soldiers since June 2004.

US officials also claim Iran is enriching uranium to make nuclear bombs, while the Islamic Republic claims the nuclear fuel will make electricity.

The New York Times reported Friday that administration officials were concerned about especially lethal roadside bombs built in Iran, which borders Iraq.

The New York daily said its sources insisted they were not laying the basis for an attack on Iran.

Target Tehran: Washington sets stage for a new confrontation

[Published: Monday 12, February 2007 - 08:24]

The United States is moving closer to war with Iran by accusing the " highest levels" of the Iranian government of supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed 170 US troops and wounded 620. The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

Senior US defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shia militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as " explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officials speaking in Baghdad used aggressive rhetoric suggesting that Washington wants to ratchet up its confrontation with Tehran. It has not ruled out using armed force and has sent a second carrier task force to the Gulf.

"We assess that these activities are coming from senior levels of the Iranian government," said an official in Baghdad, charging that the explosive devices come from the al-Quds Brigade and noting that it answers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. This is the first time the US has openly accused the Iranian government of being involved in sending weapons that kill Americans to Iraq.

The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 US soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells (often 120mm or 155mm) taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

Such bombs were used by guerrillas during the Irish war of independence in 1919-21 against British patrols and convoys. They were commonly used in the Second World War, when "shaped charges", similar in purpose to the EFPs of which the US is now complaining, were employed by all armies. The very name - explosive formed penetrators - may have been chosen to imply that a menacing new weapon has been developed.

At the end of last year the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, President Bush has taken a precisely opposite line, blaming Iran and Syria for US losses in Iraq.

In the past month Washington has arrested five Iranian officials in a long-established office in Arbil, the Kurdish capital. An Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad, allegedly by members of an Iraqi military unit under US influence. President George Bush had earlier said that Iranians deemed to be targeting US forces could be killed, which seemed to be opening the door to assassinations.

The statements from Washington give the impression that the US has been at war with Shia militias for the past three-and-a-half years while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein's elite military and intelligence units. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the US and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces.

The US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.

The White House may have decided that, in the run up to the 2008 presidential election, it would be much to its political advantage in the US to divert attention from its failure in Iraq by blaming Iran for being the hidden hand supporting its opponents.

It is likely that Shia militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible that the Sunni insurgents have received some aid. But most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well-supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.

The evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the US and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shias have been at war with the US while in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.

Will They Nuke Iran?

February 10 / 11, 2007

Intelligence Briefings to NYT Notch Up Tension

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

President Nixon, a very good poker player, once defined the art of brinkmanship as persuading your opponent that you are insane and, unless appeased by pledges of surrender, quite capable of blowing up the planet.

By these robust standards George Bush is doing a moderately competent job in suggesting that if balked by Iran on the matter of arming the Shi'a in Iraq or pursuing its nuclear program he'll dump high explosive, maybe even a couple of nukes, on that country's relevant research sites, or tell Israel to do the job for him.

In Washington there are plenty of rational people in Congress, think tanks and the Pentagon who think he's capable of ordering an attack,-- albeit not a nuclear one -- with bombers carrying conventional explosive and with missiles from US ships in the Persian Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardner, who's taught at the National War College recently sketched out on this site the plan as it could unfold: already the second naval carrier group has been deployed to the Gulf area, joined by naval mine clearing ships. "As one of the last steps before a strike, we'll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we'll only be days away from a strike."

Gardiner cautioned that "It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we'll see a few more steps unfold.

"First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led_group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff."

As regards "the outrage stuff", here on cue comes the New York Times' Michael Gordon with a front page story today, February 10, headlined "Deadliest Bomb in Iraq is Made by Iran, US Says", and beginning "The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran."

It's no doubt true that Iran has been arming the Shi'a. What Gordon fails to mention is that over 90 per sent of the IEDs used against US troops in Iraq have been detonated by the Sunni insurgents , who of course are not supplied by Iran. More generally, the prime point of interest of the intelligence briefings given to Gordon and other journalists is the timing. At any point in the past couple of years the US could have gone public with roughly the same accusations.

Shades of the Ho Chi Minh trail! Year after year first Johnson then Nixon would claim that the resistance in south Vietnam was not indigenous but created and armed by North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union and China--which these days has flourishing economic ties with Iran, particularly in the field of energy.

Another tripwire for escalation would be the UN Security Council Feb 21 deadline for Iran to suspend "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA," the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There's certainly disquiet in Congress, particularly after Bush's State of the Union address January 17 where he reprised his notorious "Axis of Evil" address of January 2002, identifying Iran as the number one troublemaker and fomenter of terror in the region.

"Is it the position of this administration that it possesses the authority to take unilateral action against Iran, in the absence of a direct threat, without Congressional approval?" the Virginia Democrat, Senator James Webb recently asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice said she'd get back to him.

The Bush administration is capable of almost any folly, but is it likely that it would bomb Iran's nuclear research labs? Would it really prod Israel into taking on the job?

Israel of course has been making plenty of quite predictable hay out of President Ahmadinejad's crack about how "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." Of course the let's-stay- calm types say it was just a stale old one-liner from the Ayatollah Khomeini and please to note he used the word "regime", not "Israel". Plant that one in the graveyard of wimpy rationalizations. Along with the recent"holocaust conference", it's probably the biggest leg-up for Israeli bond drives since the Yom Kippur war. Prime minister Olmert quotes it on an almost daily basis, echoed by his rival, Netanyahu.

Aside from the rhetorical haymaking, the notion of Israel nuking Iran's N-plants is very far-fetched. Indeed, the military wisdom here is that as a practical enterprise, it can't, since among many technical limitations Israel's bombers would require refueling over hostile territory.

Aside from this, Israel still won't officially admit to having a nuclear arsenal. It would a stupefying jump, from that disingenuous posture to being the first power in the region to explode a nuclear device. The point of having a nuclear deterrent is to deter, not to use. Iran is well aware that in 1999 and 2004 Israelis bought Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of carrying nuclear-armed cruise missiles. As President Chirac asked in his recent press conference, what good it would do Iran to have a nuclear bomb, or even two. "Where would it fire that bomb? At Israel? It wouldn't have traveled 200 meters through the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

(Reservations among Irael's elites about attacks on Iran are the topic of an excellent piece by Gabriel Kolko on this site today.)

So the job of attacking would fall to the US Air force and US Navy and there are certainly generals, particularly in the Air Force, telling Bush it would be a snap, just as Curt LeMay, at that time head of the Strategic Air Command, told President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that SAC could "reduce the Soviet Union to a smouldering irradiated ruin in three hours".

But Air Force credibility is low at the moment. LeMay's heirs told Bush that "shock and awe" bombing in 2003 would prompt Saddam to run up the white flag. It didn't. US ground forces carried the day--at least at the outset. But there aren't any US ground forces available to invade a country many times bigger than Iraq, filled with a large population mostly loyal to the regime. After sorties against Iran with bombs and missiles what would the US do?

The problem is that brinkmanship suits everyone's book. Ahmadinejad, facing serious political problems, can posture about standing up to the Great Satan. Olmert can say Ahmadinejad wants to finish off Israel and kill all the Jews. Bush sees Iran as a terrific way of changing the subject from the mess in Iraq and putting the Democrats on the spot.

The Democrats take the lead of their presidential hopefuls, who have no intention of being corralled by the Republicans as symps of holocaust deniers who want to destroy Israel. These days, to be a player, any candidate for the US presidency has to raise about $100 million, of which a large tranche will come from American Jews. Barack Obama and John Edwards call for swift withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. When it comes to Iran they roar in unison with Hillary Clinton that no option can be left off the table. In other words, if it comes to it, nuke 'em .

Is there room for sanity here? The best hope will be for Iran to finish its testing cycle, declare mission accomplished and figure out some sort of face-saving halt in its program by February 21. Can we hope for prudence from the White House? Who knows? Bush is a nutty guy. It was his insistence on democratic elections in Iraq that put the Shi'a in control. Now he's blaming Iran for trying to capitalize on the consequences. This is not a regime that thinks things through very sensibly.

Magazine says U.S. provocates Iran for possible war

The United States has been trying to provocate Iran for a possible war with the Islamic country, the Newsweek said in a report on Sunday, citing a former White House official.

"They intend to be as provocative as possible and make the Iranians do something (America) would be forced to retaliate for," Hillary Mann, the Bush administration's former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, was quoted by the magazine as saying.

The United States has dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Gulf region and this has fueled speculation that the United States will launch a war with Iran, although the White House has repeatedly claimed it has no plan to go to war with Iran.

The United States has also accused Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons and has been meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq. Iran has denied the charges.

Source: Xinhua

Blast Reported Near U.S. Base in Japan: "Investigators suspected a "guerrilla attack""

Feb 12 11:02 AM US/Eastern

TOKYO (AP) -- An explosion was heard near a U.S. Army base south of Tokyo late Monday and police suspected an attempted attack on the base, Kyodo News agency reported.

The blast was in the area of the U.S. Army's Camp Zama, Kyodo said. The report did not say whether there were injuries or damage.

Police found parts of "launch pad" near the base, Kyodo said, and investigators suspected a "guerrilla attack."

No further details were immediately available.

Faking the Case Against Iran

Case Against Iran Made Anonymously

U.S. reheats bogus rhetoric against Iran

Iraqi government distanced itself on Sunday from US charges against Iran

The Media Escalates Its Lies about Iran

Some Bush Advisers Secretly Want an Excuse to Attack Iran, Says Former Administration Official Hillary Man

UPDATE: 'Wash Post' Joins 'NYT' in Trumpeting 'Anonymous' Claims on Iranian Weapons in Iraq

Faking the case for war: "Explosively formed penetrators" rebranded UK shells, and not Iranian?

FABRICATING THE CASE AGAINST IRAN

"Iranian Support for Lethal Activity in Iraq" : DOCUMENT

Two things to pay attention to: first, notice that the briefing just refers to Iranian support of generic "extremists," without specifying Sunni or Shiite, or who is allied to whom. Second, notice that there also isn't specificity about where in Iraq these EFP attacks on U.S. forces have occurred -- which might provide a sectarian hint as to who in Iraq is behind them.

"Iranian Support for Lethal Activity in Iraq" : DOCUMENT

Iran in Iraq: The PowerPoint Presentation

We've just added yesterday's briefing on Iranian EFPs in Iraq to our Document Collection. This is a 16-page brief presented to reporters, and not the transcript of the press conference itself, since the anonymous military briefers in Baghdad did not allow voice or video recordings into the room.

Two things to pay attention to: first, notice that the briefing just refers to Iranian support of generic "extremists," without specifying Sunni or Shiite, or who is allied to whom. Second, notice that there also isn't specificity about where in Iraq these EFP attacks on U.S. forces have occurred -- which might provide a sectarian hint as to who in Iraq is behind them.

'Wash Post': McCain Uses Tactics, Seeks Cash He Once Denounced

McCain Taps Cash He Sought To Limit
Onetime Reformer Calls on Big Donors

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01

Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections.

As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee.

In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishment he has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the same political-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-year crusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists in elections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists as well as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bush defeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries.

After enduring his own brush with scandal in the early 1990s, when he and four Senate colleagues pressured regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association, while collecting donations and favors from him, McCain became a leader in the effort to eliminate "soft money" in elections -- large donations from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. In 2002, McCain joined forces with Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) to finally push through legislation ending soft money and placing strict limits on donations.

But now the contrast between McCain the presidential candidate and McCain the reformer can be jarring. McCain's campaign says that he is still studying whether to forgo the public financing and spending limits he has long supported, but that he will not be handicapped by restrictions his competitors will not face in 2008.

McCain the reformer worked unsuccessfully through Congress and the courts to try to stop nonprofit political groups known as 527s from using unlimited donations to run political ads and fund other activities aimed at influencing voters in the run-up to elections. He reintroduced legislation last week to end 527 donations, but there appears to be little appetite in Congress to pass it.

McCain the candidate now expects Republicans to use the same big-money 527 groups in the 2008 elections to beat Democrats, if the groups remain legal. "The senator believes that both parties should be subjected to an even playing field. If Democratic organizations are allowed to take advantage of 527s, Republican organizations will, too," said Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser. The senator declined to be interviewed.

McCain the reformer relentlessly argued that six- and seven-figure "soft money" checks that corporations, wealthy individuals and unions were giving to political parties to influence elections were corrupting American politics. "The voices of average Americans have been drowned out by the deafening racket of campaign cash," he warned just a few years ago.

McCain the candidate has enlisted some of the same GOP fundraising giants who created and flourished in the soft-money system, including Bush's fundraising "Pioneers" and "Rangers," who earned their designations by raising at least $100,000 or $200,000 for his campaigns.

At least six of McCain's first eight national finance co-chairmen have given or raised large donations for political parties or 527 groups, campaign and IRS records show. In all, the finance co-chairs have given at least $13.5 million in soft money and 527 donations since the 1998 election.

They include former Bush moneymen such as lobbyist Thomas G. Loeffler and financier Donald Bren, whose personal and corporate donations total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each in recent elections.

In key states, McCain has enlisted the likes of New York financier Henry Kravis, one of the GOP's largest donors over the past two decades, and Texas energy executive Robert A. Mosbacher, the architect of the Republicans' "Team 100" fundraising machine that helped make soft money a staple of politics by raising $20 million in large donations to help Bush's father win the presidency in 1988.

The big moneymen gravitating to McCain are politically pragmatic. They may not always agree with him, but they say they admire the Arizona senator for his work on campaign finance reform, his Vietnam War record, his support of Bush on Iraq and his recent campaigning for GOP candidates.

"He did things for our country that very few people I know would have had the courage to do," said Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and longtime fundraiser for former Florida governor Jeb Bush who signed on this month to raise money for McCain.

Ballard said most of the big-money players he knows are not fazed by McCain's attacks on the political-money and lobbying systems, calling it more of an issue for consultants who make their living off big donations.

"I myself don't mind him calling out lobbyists when they've done something bad," Ballard said.

Lobbyists have been a favorite target of McCain the reformer, who proposed legislation requiring so-called grass-roots groups that organize average citizens into lobbying forces to disclose their financial backers.

But McCain the candidate switched positions and last month voted against that disclosure requirement after influential GOP groups such as Focus on the Family and National Right to Life strongly opposed the idea. McCain also hired as his campaign manager one of the grass-roots-lobbying industry's key consultants, Bush strategist Terry Nelson.

"When the senator heard from legitimate public-interest organizations in January of last year that a provision in the legislation would unfairly penalize them for Jack Abramoff's behavior, he agreed and withdrew his support for the provision at that time," Salter explained, referring to the lobbyist in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy.

In December, Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.), a darling of GOP conservatives and lobbyists, acted as a surrogate for McCain at a fundraising meeting with a group of lobbyists at a Capitol Hill hotel. McCain's political action committee has collected donations -- capped at $5,000 -- from several big-name lobbyists, including Loeffler and fellow Bush fundraiser Wayne Berman, whose blue-chip clients frequently have issues pending before Congress and the White House.

"Both Wayne Berman and Tom Loeffler are longtime supporters of the Republican Party, President Bush and Senator McCain," Salter said. "Senator McCain is pleased to have their support."

Ed Rogers, one of Washington's most influential GOP lobbyists and strategists, said the embrace of McCain is not surprising. "Lobbyists are the ultimate pragmatists, and they deal with the world as is," said Rogers, who last year gave $5,000 to McCain's political action committee, though he says he has not yet endorsed a candidate.

Perenchio, now a member of McCain's finance committee, funneled more than $1.4 million in soft money to Republican causes in the 1998, 2000 and 2002 election campaigns, often in amounts McCain used to criticize. For one GOP fundraising dinner in the spring of 2001, for example, he donated $250,000. Perenchio has also been a major donor to the 527 groups formed to exploit a loophole in the legislation sponsored by McCain and Feingold.

Taking their name from a little-known provision of the IRS tax code, the groups began raising large donations -- some in the millions of dollars -- and running ads and funding other activities designed to influence the 2004 presidential election. Federal election regulators have refused to rein in the groups and their donations in the past two elections.

Perenchio gave $4 million to a pro-Republican 527 group called Progress for America, which helped Bush in the 2004 campaign. In the 2006 congressional races, Perenchio gave $5 million more to the same group.

In the summer of 2005, McCain's allies in the reform movement went to court seeking to force the Federal Election Commission to regulate the 527 groups and make them abide by the same donation limits as other political committees.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, McCain and Feingold specifically cited Progress for America as an example of what was wrong with 527 groups. The court filing cited one of the group's pro-Bush commercials -- which starred a 16-year-old whose mother was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- to illustrate the impact large donations had on the election. Perenchio was not mentioned.

"The deployment of section 527 groups as the new vehicle for using soft money to conduct political activities to influence federal elections is simply the latest chapter in a long history of efforts to evade and violate the federal campaign finance laws," the McCain court filing stated. "Sadly, it is another chapter in the FEC's failure to enforce the campaign finance laws."

Perenchio declined to be interviewed. Salter said Perenchio's support of McCain "pre-dates the existence of 527s. Perenchio served on Senator McCain's fundraising committee in 2000, and the senator is pleased to have his continued support."

That support has come in a number of ways. Tax records show that Perenchio's Chartwell Foundation donated $100,000 on March 1, 2002, to the Reform Institute, a nonprofit foundation of which McCain was co-chairman and which was advocating the end of big political donations.

At the time, McCain was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the broadcast industry, and Univision had numerous issues pending before the government. Cablevision, another broadcaster, also donated $200,000 to the McCain foundation around the same time the senator took action in Congress favorable to that company.

McCain's allies in the campaign finance reform movement seem resigned to the fact that he will not abide by many of the principles he advocated for a decade as a reformer, including public financing and its associated spending and fundraising limits.

"Certainly we are disappointed that he has decided not to take the lead in fixing the presidential-financing system he is competing in," said Mary Boyle of Common Cause, the ethics watchdog that cheered McCain's reform efforts for years. "But it is understandable he is opting out.

"It is apparent to us that to run a competitive presidential campaign inside a system that is still broken, that is what he has to do," she said.

Faking the case for war: "Explosively formed penetrators" rebranded UK shells, and not Iranian?

Alert reader Phoenixwoman writes:

Looks like that “slam-dunk” evidence that Iran is arming Iraqi insurgents is not so slam-dunk after all. NewsHog has the scoop, here and here.

For one thing, the lettering and numbering isn’t in Farsi (the language used by Iranians); for another, the UK uses 81MM shells, and Iran would be much more likely to use Soviet-style 82MM shells.

In addition: As a commenter at NewsHog noted, the UK uses shells of that type, so there’s a strong likelihood that this was grabbed out of a Brit ammo dump in Iraq, given a cursory rebranding, and then ‘found’ in an insurgents’ den.

Fakes? Say it isn’t so!

Case Against Iran Made Anonymously

Bush's masked men make case for attacking Iran
---
Commentary

Stop This Now: Nameless Accusers, Sourcing

Identify US Officials Presenting Disputed Evidence Against Iran

By EASON JORDAN, Posted 16 hr. 29 min. ago

Page from the US's Iran dossier
Dept. of Defense
Page from the US's Iran dossier
Why are US officials hiding behind the cloak of anonymity when presenting the most detailed evidence yet that Iran is supplying weaponry to anti-US forces in Iraq?

After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning "dossier" of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?

That's disgraceful and unacceptable.

The American people deserve straight talk from identified US officials.

Here are some of the reports today:
-- Washington Post
-- AP
-- Reuters
-- AFP

If US officials are so sure of themselves -- their evidence appears credible but is disputed by Iranian officials and others -- then they should agree to be identified publicly and appear on-camera.

Also, the voluminous photographic evidence shared with journalists at the Baghdad news conference should be posted in full on a US government Web site.

But, wait, one of the three supposedly unnamed US officials apparently has been outed by an Iraqi news service, Voices of Iraq, whose report on the Baghdad news conference identified one of the three speakers as Major General William Caldwell, whose portfolio includes public affairs and who holds frequent news conferences and grants one-on-one interviews. So, if the VOI report identifying Caldwell is correct, why did every other news organization apparently agree to grant anonymity to the general who's the official spokesman of the US-led Multi-National Force in Iraq? Why would Caldwell insist on not having his name associated with these allegations today?

After the bogus Iraq evidence debacle in 2002 and 2003 -- allegations that led to war, tens of thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent -- only a fool would accept as the gospel supposed evidence against another country that's presented by officials who insist on making their allegations anonymously.

We deserve better from the US government. We deserve better from the western news media.


Until the War Ends ... : Bob Herbert

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Until the War Ends ...

By BOB HERBERT
Published: February 12, 2007

Senator Barack Obama gave us an excellent reason for being serious about the 2008 presidential election: There’s a war on.


Almost all the talk about the 2008 presidential election is about the horse race: Who’s up? Who’s down? Can Hillary hold her lead? Can a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights candidate like Rudy Giuliani outrun a hawkish maverick like John McCain?

It’s a sport. It’s fun. Why spoil it by being too serious?

Senator Barack Obama, in his speech in Illinois Saturday formally launching his presidential bid, gave us an excellent reason for being serious:

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a war on.

After going through a litany of lofty goals for a new generation to strive for, including health care for all Americans, a rejuvenated public education system, an end to poverty and real progress in dealing with global warming, the senator offered a hard and simple truth:

“All of this cannot come to pass until we bring an end to this war in Iraq.”

The war — which, in addition to its human toll, will ultimately cost $2 trillion or more — has put America in a straitjacket, precluding progress on a range of important issues that will only worsen with continued neglect.

The public seems to understand this. It was voters fed up with the war who snatched control of both houses of Congress from the Republicans in last November’s elections. And they were the ones giving Senator Hillary Clinton a hard time in New Hampshire over the weekend.

***

"... all further progress on important issues here at home depends on whether we can find the will to extricate ourselves from Iraq."

--MORE--

U.S. reheats bogus rhetoric against Iran

Patrick Cockburn pokes holes in the US Department of Defense's Sunday briefing blaming Iran for all the US troops killed in Iraq by sophisticated shaped charges.
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U.S. heats up rhetoric against Iran


Allegations about weapons recall those made about Iraq before 2003 invasion

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent(Feb 12, 2007)

The United States is moving closer to war with Iran by accusing the "highest levels" of the Iranian government of supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed 170 U.S. troops and wounded 620.

The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the U.S. government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

Senior U.S. defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shiite militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.

The officials speaking in Baghdad used aggressive rhetoric suggesting Washington wants to ratchet up its confrontation with Tehran. It has not ruled out using armed force and has sent a second carrier task force to the Gulf.

"We assess that these activities are coming from senior levels of the Iranian government," said an official in Baghdad, charging that the explosive devices come from the al-Quds Brigade and noting that it answers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. This is the first time the United States has openly accused the Iranian government of being involved in sending weapons that kill Americans to Iraq.

The allegations by senior but unnamed U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The U.S. has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.

The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 U.S. soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children's toys or to open garage doors.

Such bombs were used by guerrillas during the Irish war of independence in 1919-21 against British patrols and convoys. They were commonly used in the Second World War, when "shaped charges," similar in purpose to the EFPs of which the United States is now complaining, were employed by all armies. The very name -- explosive formed penetrators -- may have been chosen to imply that a menacing new weapon has been developed.

At the end of last year the Baker-Hamilton report, written by a bipartisan commission of Republicans and Democrats, suggested opening talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Iraq crisis. Instead, U.S. President George W. Bush has taken a precisely opposite line, blaming Iran and Syria for U.S. losses in Iraq.

In the past month Washington has arrested five Iranian officials in a long established office in Arbil, the Kurdish capital. An Iranian diplomat was kidnapped in Baghdad, allegedly by members of an Iraqi military unit under U.S. influence. Bush had earlier said that Iranians deemed to be targeting U.S. forces could be killed, which seemed to be opening the door to assassinations.

The statements from Washington give the impression that the United States has been at war with Shiite militias for the past three-and-a-half years, while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein's elite military and intelligence units.

During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the United States and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces.

The U.S. stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position four years ago. Then, Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device.

Washington is now saying Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.

The White House may have decided that, in the runup to the 2008 presidential election, it would be to its political advantage in the U.S. to divert attention from its failure in Iraq by blaming Iran for being the hidden hand supporting its opponents.

It is likely that Shiite militias have received weapons and money from Iran and possible the Sunni insurgents have received some aid, but most Iraqi men possess weapons. Many millions of them received military training under Saddam Hussein. His well supplied arsenals were all looted after his fall. No specialist on Iraq believes that Iran has ever been a serious promoter of the Sunni insurgency.

The evidence against Iran is even more insubstantial than the faked or mistaken evidence for Iraqi WMDs disseminated by the United States and Britain in 2002 and 2003. The allegations appear to be full of exaggerations. Few Abrams tanks have been destroyed. It implies the Shiites have been at war with the U.S., when in fact they are controlled by parties which make up the Iraqi government.

Iraqi government distanced itself on Sunday from US charges against Iran

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government distanced itself on Sunday from US charges against Iran. Maryam al-Rayyis, National Affairs Adviser to PM Nuri al-Maliki, said that Iraq has deep respect for Iran and other neighbors. She said that the Iraqi constitution prohibits Iraq from being an arena of contestation between other countries.

The same report says that Nassar al-Rubaie, a parliamentarian of the Sadr Movement led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, insisted in an interview that his bloc has never received any support from Iran and he is sanguine that it is not included in the American allegations. (In fact, Pentagon briefers specifically mentioned the Mahdi Army, though they appeared to allow that it was splinter groups from it that set these roadside bombs that killed US troops.)

Almost all roadside bombs in Iraq are set by Sunni Arab guerrillas who deeply dislike Shiites and hate Iran.

posted by Juan @ 2/12/2007 06:27:00 AM 0 comments

Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq

Tomgram: Schwartz on Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq

So far, what exactly is surging in Iraq?

U.S. casualties, which are at a post-invasion high: According to an Associated Press analysis, more American troops were "killed in combat in Iraq over the past four months -- at least 334 through Jan. 31 -- than in any comparable stretch since the war began"; and February, with 34 American deaths in its first nine days, is exceeding this pace. These loses are largely due to roadside bombs (IEDs) and to the fact that U.S. troops are now engaged in almost continuous urban warfare. Before the invasion of Iraq, the possibility of fighting an urban war in the Iraqi capital's streets and alleys was the American high command's personal nightmare. Now, it's their reality -- and the President's surge plan can only make it more nightmarish.

Downings of U.S. helicopters, six in less than three weeks: With road travel, even in convoys, now so dangerous, thanks to IEDs, the helicopter has been a transport workhorse for the U.S. military in Iraq. The sudden surge in downed helicopters raises the specter of new tactics by the insurgents as well as the possibility that they have new, advanced missiles in their hands. It raises a warning flag of the first order. Let's not forget that the beginning of the end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s came when CIA-supplied Stinger missiles began to take down Russian helicopters in significant numbers.

Iraqi and American no-shows: The first Iraqi Army units promised by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the beginning of the February surge in the capital have shown up. But as with everything involving that Green Zone government and Iraqi forces generally, there is a catch: The initial Iraqi brigades are evidently at only 55-65% troop strength. Undoubtedly, these no-shows are Kurds and Shiites who didn't want to leave their home areas to fight in Baghdad. In addition, according to McClatchy's Tom Lasseter, who went out on patrol with Iraqi forces in Baghdad recently, despite the $15.4 billion the American military has so far poured into "standing them up," they are militia-infiltrated, incompetent, and exceedingly corrupt. "Two weeks with American units that patrolled with Iraqi forces in west and east Baghdad found," he wrote, "that Iraqi officers sold new uniforms meant for their troops, and that their soldiers wore plastic shower sandals while manning checkpoints, abused prisoners and solicited bribes to free suspects they'd captured." Nor have most American troops designated to surge into Baghdad arrived yet. Louise Roug of the Los Angeles Times estimates that only 20% of the promised surge forces, Iraqi and American -- about 5,000 troops in all -- have even made it to the capital. (The fifth and final American brigade in this plan isn't scheduled to arrive until May!) In the meantime, senior American diplomats, voting with their analytic feet, are resisting taking posts in Iraq, assignments which, unlike military personnel, they are not obliged to accept. (They are evidently doing so on the same basic what-the-hell-am-I-going-there-for principle as the Kurdish and Shiite troops.)

Iraqi refugees: One out of every seven Iraqis has by now "fled his or her home or sought refuge abroad," reports the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Every day," according to McClatchy's Warren Strobel, "violence displaces an estimated 1,300 more Iraqis in the country; every month, at least 40,000." According to UN officials, in surging Iraq, things are only expected to worsen. "The UNHCR projects that the number of internally displaced in Iraq could grow to about 2.7 million by year's end." An in-depth assessment conducted by the International Medical Corps, a humanitarian organization, suggests that "over one million residents of Baghdad could be driven from their homes in the next six months if Iraq's sectarian violence continues at its current level." That would be a surge indeed.

The devastation of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad: Some of these are being turned into ghost areas, as Ilana Ozernoy and Ali Hamdani indicate in a limited survey of one street in a Sunni area of the capital that appeared recently in the Atlantic. Other accounts seem to verify this. For instance, New York Times reporter Damien Cave, in a piece on how the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City is beginning to thrive under the protection of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and with reconstruction money from the Maliki government, comments in passing that, in contrast, "middle-class Sunni enclaves are withering into abandoned ghettos, starved of government services."

Massive publicity about the details of the slow-to-happen surge operation: These have been offered copiously by the supposedly security-conscious Bush administration, giving Sunnis and Shiites opportunity to prepare both defenses and evasions. It has meant, according to early American military assessments, that in the first search operations in key neighborhoods, they are finding little or nothing. ("'I don't know if it's bad information, bad intelligence, of if they knew we were coming and left,' said Capt. Isaac Torres of the Army's 3rd Brigade Stryker Combat Team. ‘They were all dry holes.'")

Oh, as for the surge plan itself, Michael Schwartz, whose Tomdispatch pieces on U.S. and Iraqi strategies and tactics in the complex struggle engulfing that country, have regularly been significantly ahead of the mainstream analytic curve, points out that the President's new surge plan has already been tested in the last few weeks and found to be most successful -- in further depopulating Baghdad neighborhoods as well as creating more destruction, greater sectarian violence, and new levels of animosity. His is a devastating piece on another bit of Bush administration planning that takes us right through the "gates of hell." Tom

Baghdad Surges into Hell

First Results from the President's Offensive
By Michael Schwartz

In his Iraq policy address on January 10, President Bush promised three new initiatives: a "surge" of American troops accompanied by a new "clear, hold, and build" strategy in Sunni insurgent strongholds; an offensive against Shia militias, particularly the Sadrist Mahdi Army which "U.S. military officials now identify as the greatest security threat in Iraq"; and forceful action to prevent Iran from further increasing its influence in Iraq and the Middle East.

Events in the last few weeks make it clear that all three prongs of this strategy are being enacted, even while the Congress is engaged in a prolonged debate over its (non-binding) opposition to the "surge" part of the new regional plan. The "surge" strategy was actually initiated one day before the speech was even given -- in an offensive on Baghdad's Haifa Street that briefly dominated the headlines. The new initiative aimed at Shia militias appears to have begun with a battle outside of Najaf in which about 200 members of the Al-Hawatim and al-Khazali tribes were killed by American and Iraqi forces -- apparently because the tribal militias had been involved in a growing (if under-reported) "anti-U.S. and anti-Baghdad" guerrilla war that "has been spreading like wildfire" in the Shia south. And the new aggressiveness towards Iran is now being played out not only in Iraq, but in the increasingly credible threats of an American or Israeli, or combined American and Israeli, air assault on Iran itself.

We may have to wait weeks, or even months, to evaluate the consequences of American actions against those Shia militias and Iran. But the Haifa Street offensive, now almost a month old, already offers us a vivid portrait of the horrific consequences that are the likely result of the Sunni insurgent part of the President's "surge" strategy.

Haifa Street as an Enemy Stronghold

Haifa Street, a moderately prosperous two-mile-long avenue just outside the American-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, has been a center of Sunni resistance since early in the war. Despite the imagery of constant violence associated with the neighborhood in the media, it has, like most insurgent areas, largely been quiet -- except when American troops attempted to pacify it.

Soon after the fall of Baghdad, anti-American forces became the military and political leadership in the Haifa Street neighborhood, setting up local militias to combat a wave of criminal violence that swept through the capital after the Americans dismantled the Iraqi military and police. By 2004, the insurgents were the local government in the area, institutionalizing their form of Sunni fundamentalism but at that early date still tolerating the presence of a Shia minority, who continued to live peacefully among the Sunni majority.

Sustained violence only occurred when American patrols entered the area. Then snipers, IEDs, and gun battles would -- often successfully -- be brought into play to divert the Americans from their goal of arresting or killing suspected insurgents. The ferocity of the resistance led American soldiers to dub the area "Death Street." After one abortive attempt at conquering the neighborhood, the number of U.S. patrols dwindled as Haifa Street became one of many virtual "no-go" areas in the capital (not to speak of the country), "off-limits for American and even Iraqi soldiers."

In November 2004, an IED exploded near one of those occasional American patrols, demolishing a Humvee and triggering a cascading set of events that culminated in an American helicopter shooting into a crowd and killing Mazen Tomeizi, a Palestinian reporter for the al Arabiya satellite news network of Dubai. Because Tomeizi was filming his follow-up to the earlier incident when he was shot, his death became one of the most horrific, widely viewed images of the war -- at least in the Middle East -- with his blood splattering on the camera as he cried, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die." This incident, apparently, convinced the American military command to make another attempt to pacify Haifa Street.

Under the headline, "A Violent Street Finds Calm," Christian Science Monitor reporter Scott Peterson described how the Americans took control of the neighborhood in a six-month military offensive, involving "rooftop snipers" and other "tough measures that reportedly included abuse of detainees." This running battle, which began in January 2005, qualifies as the most violent period in recent Haifa Street history -- until the latest offensive. But in American reportage, the emphasis was on the pacification and quiescence achieved, once -- by the late spring of 2005 -- the Americans had suppressed the active resistance.

Sprinkled in with the positive stories of grateful residents welcoming the end of the fighting were telltale signs of an unpopular military occupation: Some residents would "glower" when American troops passed by; "tensions [were] a little higher" whenever American troops entered a street; and graffiti proclaiming, "Long Live the Mujahideen," were quickly restored after American soldiers tried to obliterate them. Nevertheless, in June of 2005, ABC reporter Nick Watt declared that "Death Street is indeed a thing of the past."

That battle, now two years past, was a perfect example of how the new "clear, hold, and build" strategy that President Bush announced in his recent speech is supposed to work. An American clearing-and-holding operation was to be followed by a transfer of power to Iraqi military units, supposedly already "stood up" through intensive American training and advising. This particular turn-over operation was hailed at the time by occupation authorities as "a high-profile example of how Iraqi National Guard troops -- trained, supported, and let loose by US advisers -- can claw back territory from insurgents." It was heralded as a giant step forward, "a template for spreading government control across Iraq and undercutting the insurgency."

The template, however, ultimately collapsed because the Haifa Street guerrillas did what guerillas normally do: They melted into the population and awaited new opportunities to attack the occupation. Just before the declarations of success were issued, they initiated their own "surge of violence" before again melting into the neighborhood. And even at the moment when ABC reporter Watt was offering an obituary to "Death Street," American troops and their Iraqi protégés were conducting dozens of weekly patrols, breaking into homes in the Haifa Street neighborhood to arrest or kill suspected insurgents. These patrols, together with a massive increase in unemployment, the precipitous deterioration of public services, and economic shocks generated by the removal of government food and fuel subsidies only led to increased support for, as well as membership in, the resistance.

This ever-growing resistance insured that the "build" part of "clear, hold, and build" remained unbuilt. In February 2006, the Americans finally left without securing the neighborhood, probably because the troops were needed for a new Baghdad-wide offensive, which began at about that time.

Soon after, the guerrillas resurfaced and expelled the Iraqi army, thus putting an end to all military patrols, home invasions, arrests, and detentions as well as the sporadic fighting they had generated. Haifa Street once again became a quiescent enemy enclave, and -- with the rise of sectarian violence -- was suspected of "harboring terrorists" of an anti-Shiite variety. As New York Times reporter Marc Santora put it:

"For the past two years, [Haifa Street] has been relatively quiet, but in recent months, as the sectarian fighting has intensified, Iraqi and American military officials suspected it was being used as a base of operations for insurgents concentrating on the Shiite civilian population and American forces."

The Americans Re-enter, Bringing Sectarian Violence with Them

Haifa Street's calm was sustained even while ferocious sectarian violence erupted elsewhere in the capital. Ethnic cleansing, so prevalent in other parts of the city, had not yet invaded the neighborhood and most of the Shia members of the community remained in their homes.

When adjoining Shia neighborhoods also calmed down, an uneasy but genuine peace settled over the area. The foundation of this truce was no mystery: Haifa Street militia members, freed from defensive fights against the American military and strengthened by their victory over the Iraqi military, were mobilized to protect and defend the community against Shia death squads. In fact, all around Baghdad militias have become a critical protection for Sunnis. As Asia Times commentator Mahan Abedin put it, "The residents widely welcome the presence of the guerrillas as vital protection against Shi'ite paramilitaries (often operating as Iraqi security forces)."

The work of the local mujaheddin was complemented by the work of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi's army in neighboring Shia communities. Since al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia began its car-bombing campaign against Shia civilians in late 2004, the Mahdis had been patrolling the vast Shiite slum of Sadr city, and -- for the most part -- successfully preventing such suicide bombings. As the violence spread in Baghdad, the Mahdis also spread, and their arrival in the Shia neighborhoods around Haifa Street insured mutual deterrence on both sides of the sectarian divide.

Until the Americans arrived.

In early January, as part of President Bush's new strategy of attacking Shia militias, American troops entered a border area near Haifa Street and arrested a "senior member" of the Mahdi Army, apparently the local commander in that part of the city. This attack seems to have disrupted the Mahdis' protective patrols and left Shia communities in the area increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attack. Quoting an American military official, New York Times journalist Santora reported:

"The arrest, the official said, created an opening for Sunni insurgents, and they began aggressively singling out Shiites who had relocated south from the neighborhood of Kadhimiya, the official said."

These attacks may or may not have originated in the Haifa Street neighborhood, but when 27 Shia bodies were dumped there on January 6, this became the occasion for the first American offensive in Bush's not-quite-yet-announced "surge." As U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Scott Bleichwehl explained, "It's an area that needed to be brought back under Iraqi security control."

Ali al-Dabaggh, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was blunter: "This area must be cleansed," he said.

Haifa Street residents believed al-Dabaggh, particularly after the American commanders mentioned the 2005 battle of Tal Afar as the exemplar of their new strategy. In Tal Afar, a city of about 300,000 near the Syrian border, the entire population was moved out as part of the pacification process.

Iraqi military forces were sent in to Haifa Street first, but within a couple of days, they had been repulsed. This battle, and the growing sectarian violence in bordering areas, shattered the fragile foundation of sectarian peace within Haifa Street, and Shia residents soon began receiving threats that they would be killed "if they did not leave immediately."

Before dawn on January 9, the Americans and Iraqis attacked in force, backed by helicopters and jets. Washington Post reporters Sudarsan Raghavan and Joshua Partlow offered this description of the battle, quoting Major Jesse Pearson and Sergeant Israel Schaeffer:

"In the pre-dawn darkness, the joint forces took control of the buildings surrounding Tallil Square, a key target of the operation.

"'We showed up in their living room for breakfast,' Pearson said.

"About 7 a.m., the trouble began. 'As soon as the sun came up, the insurgents began shooting,' he said.

"'We started taking it from all sides,' Schaeffer recalled.

"From rooftops and doorways, the gunmen fired AK-47 assault rifles and machine guns. Snipers also were targeting the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. U.S. soldiers started firing back with 50-caliber machine guns mounted on their Stryker armored vehicles. They used TOW missiles and Mark-19 grenade launchers. The F-15 fighter jets strafed rooftops with cannons, while the Apaches fired Hellfire missiles."

After 11 hours of death and devastation, the Americans prevailed and 1,000 American and Iraqi troops began house-to-house searches, arresting and killing suspected insurgents.

The Denouement

One week later, McClatchy News reporters Nancy Youssef and Zaineb Obeid visited Haifa Street to survey the results of the first offensive action in the President's new strategy. Partly what they found was a depressingly familiar scene: massive destruction, police state conditions, widespread suffering, and ongoing fighting. But partly they found something new: Even as the threatened ethnic cleansing of Shias in the neighborhood finally appeared to be completed, there was now a contrary campaign -- mounted by the mainly Shiite Iraqi Army with the support of the US military -- to expel the Sunni majority:

"A 44-year-old Haifa Street resident, who asked to be identified only as Abu Mohammed for security reasons, said that only three or four [Sunni] families of an estimated 60 families remained on his block. He said no vehicles were allowed to drive through the area and that there was no electricity, kerosene or running water. [U.S.] Snipers have taken positions on the rooftops.

"'They are shooting randomly,' he said. 'Today, they shot Raghad Marwan, a 28-year-old young woman who was trying to get food. She got a bullet in her shoulder, and now we don't know how to get her to the hospital.'

"He said several families were evacuating the neighborhood: 'I can see the families with their children walking in the narrow streets of the neighborhood taking nothing but small bags.'

"'The new security plan has given militias permission to go into our houses and apartments and kill people,' Abu Mohammed said. 'This plan targets Sunnis and forces them to leave their homes. And they are.'"

The next day, CBS News reporter Lara Logan provided horrifying visual evidence of conditions on Haifa Street, in a report that only appeared on the CBS website. It showed demolished buildings, deserted neighborhoods, and the results of sectarian torture on both sides. It concluded with a resident who blamed the Americans for the plight of his community:

"They told us they would bring democracy. They promised life would be better than it was under Saddam. But they brought us nothing but death and killing. They brought mass destruction to Baghdad."

According to the McClatchy reporters, "A U.S. military spokesman said he had no reason to believe Haifa Street residents' accounts." U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a press conference, ''I am encouraged by what I have seen."

One week later, the battle for Haifa Street continued. More and more residents were fleeing the area, trying to escape American airstrikes, avoid the crossfire between the Americans and the insurgents, or elude the death threats from either side of the sectarian divide.

Reflecting on the battle for a neighborhood that "the United States has now fought to regain from a mysterious enemy at least three times in the past two years," Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski told New York Times reporters Damien Cave and James Glanz, "This place is a failure…. Every time we come here, we have to come back."

In the meantime, the departing Sunni population viewed the still unfinished battle as the latest episode in American sponsorship of ethnic cleansing. During the first day of fighting, Harith al-Dari, the leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), the political arm of the Sunni resistance, called it, "a bloody sectarian massacre." Nine days later, an AMS spokesman read the names of 12 men who had been killed in the battle on al-Jazeera Television and then commented:

"All of their guilt was that they defended their neighbourhood… The American president said in 2003, 'Mission accomplished.' Now in 2007 he uses jetfighters a few meters from the Green Zone."

The final word for the present was perhaps spoken by another inhabitant of the area, commenting on the ongoing assassination of neighborhood residents by the Iraqi military and police: "The Americans are doing nothing, as if they are backing the militias. This military siege is killing us... If this plan continues for one more week, I don't think you will find one family left on Haifa Street."

The Early Returns Are Not Encouraging

Even before the Americans arrived on Haifa Street in January as the vanguard of the new Bush strategy to pacify Baghdad, previous experience strongly suggested that the effort was doomed to failure. A month later, that expectation has certainly been fulfilled.

Unfortunately, there are some genuinely new, grim elements to the battle for Haifa Street; elements that threaten to make the coming Baghdad-wide "surge" dramatically more damaging than its predecessors. To begin with, there is the far greater application of American airpower; bombing runs and high caliber assaults from helicopter gunships have dramatically increased the death and destructiveness of the still ongoing battle, rendering much of Haifa Street an unlivable graveyard.

Added to this is the systematic and largely successful effort of the Sunni jihadists to expel the Shia minority from the area, an effort triggered by the initial American incursions. And then, overlaid on top of the cleansing of the Shia minority, came the contrary cleansing of the Sunni majority; engineered by the Iraqi military that arrived in the neighborhood with the Americans, and conducted their own purge with the support or acquiescence of the U.S. military.

The Haifa Street battle sadly shows that Bush's new strategy will measurably increase the violence in Baghdad above already intolerable levels. With more troops at their disposal, American generals will try to pacify many more neighborhoods like Haifa Street and cities like Tal Afar that need "to be brought back under Iraqi security control." And when they do this, they will bring the same mix of horror that they brought to Haifa Street, including brutal air power, house-to-house searches and fighting, sectarian violence, massive dislocation, and ethnic cleansing.

Like the other campaigns initiated by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, this new strategy will make things measurably worse.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency as well as on American business and government dynamics. His books include Radical Protest and Social Structure, and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited with Clarence Lo). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites including Tomdispatch.com, Asia Times, Mother Jones.com, and ZNet; and in print in Contexts, Against the Current, and Z Magazine. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.

Copyright 2007 Michael Schwartz

The Media Escalates Its Lies about Iran

Iran Lies

By David Swanson

Here's the latest reason they must be telling the truth about Iran and the need for a new war: they lied about the last one. That's right, according to the latest dispatch from the Associated Press,

"No one who has seen the files has suggested the evidence is thin. But senior officials – gun shy after the drubbing the administration took for the faulty intelligence leading to the 2003 Iraq invasion – were underwhelmed by the packaging."

See? It's just the "packaging." They've got solid proof, and they're even being extra careful in presenting it to us, because we were so hard on them last time. In fact, you can tell just how careful these senior officials are being from the fact that in all the articles in all the newspapers, so many of them (or is it all one guy?) are never identified by name.

The New York Times has even abandoned its stated policies in order to rush these careful claims out without naming any sources: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/NYT_article_appears_to_violate_policy_0210.html

And shockingly, according to one, possibly apocryphal, account, the Times has acknowledged that its reporter Michael Gordon is actually a voice-activated answering machine: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18416

This is brought into doubt, however, by an Email exchange one reader had with Gordon this weekend, in which the apparently real reporter explained:

"I am well aware of the controversy over the WMD intel. I think this case is different. The US intelligence community is not on the outside looking in, as was the case with the WMD intel. The US is in Iraq and this largely reflects intelligence gathered on the battefield. At any rate, I spend some time talking to a range of officials on this issue and quoted the intel reports accurately." [sic]
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18432

So, you see? This case is DIFFERENT. This time we can TRUST the "intelligence" sources. Because, last time, we'd merely had crews of trained inspectors swarming the country for years, and they denied that there were any WMD there. This time, we have amateurs observing the situation in the middle of guerrilla warfare, and they say they've got the goods but can't reveal them. So, you see, it's DIFFERENT.

The headline on the latest AP story (a story written by Katherine Shrader and Anne Gearan) reads "U.S. Considers Proof About Iran: Government Weighs How Much to Divulge About Iraq Connection." Shrader and Gearan assure us that there is 200 pages of proof, but that sadly and inexplicably it's classified. Of course, "No one who has seen the files has suggested the evidence is thin." Another way to say this might be: "No one who would suggest the evidence was thin has been permitted to see the files." It sounds less impressive that way though.

Who has seen the 200 pages? Well, Shrader and Gearan report that "officials from several intelligence agencies scrutinized the presentation to make sure it was clear and that 'we don't in any way jeopardize our sources and methods in making the presentation,' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said." Now, does anyone recall any concerns that previous presentations have been unclear? My memory suggests that the reason for the "drubbing the administration took" was that they blatantly lied, not that they wrote poorly. And, since when does one PR flack at the State Department get to explain the concerns of several intelligence agencies?

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley claims the White House is the reason for the delay in making public the "proof," and he claims the White House is trying to get the intelligence community (is it really a community?) to weaken, not strengthen, its claims. However, the National Review reports:

"At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.

"Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again."
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18431

The AP seems to agree that the "intelligence" services, not the White House, caused the delay. Of course, we all would know this without being told if we simply stopped to think for a moment. The AP article says:

"Privately, officials say they want to avoid the kind of gaffe akin to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's case for war before the United Nations in 2003."

Well that's lovely, and it's nice of them to make their "private" comments so… um, publicly. But do they have no concern over avoiding the kind of "gaffe" President Bush made in his 2002 speech in Cincinnati or on numerous television appearances and in a memorable State of the Union address, or the kind of "gaffes" that Cheney and Rice made over and over again to assure the public and the Congress that Iraq had WMD and ties to 9-11? In other words, has anybody noticed that the same people are still in charge who lied us into the last war?

Now, Robert Gates is out and about claiming that he's got serial numbers that amount to "pretty good" proof of Iranian support for Iraqis. And someone has shown something to select Congress Members, resulting in Joe Lieberman declaring "I'm convinced from what I've seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers." Lieberman, by the way, voted for the last war, and said recently that he does not regret that vote, supports escalating the war, and opposes setting any date by which to end it. http://www.davidswanson.org/?q=node/720

Among the things we have not fully looked into yet are, not only the way the White House sold the last war [ http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/investigations ] but also the way the media lapped up those lies [ http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/18395 ]. As Gilbert Cranberg asked recently, "Why did the Associated Press wait six months, when the body count began to rise, to distribute a major piece by AP's Charles Hanley challenging Powell's evidence and why did Hanley say how frustrating it had been until then to break through the self-censorship imposed by his editors on negative news about Iraq?"

More urgently, why – after the AP published a full debunking by Hanley of the last war's lies [ http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3531 ] -- is the AP playing along with the new ones? Is this all part of selling us on the idea that the old ones don't matter? It's likely to have the effect of making them matter even more. The current display of media credulity in the face of an absence of evidence is serving to remind the public of how we got into the war in Iraq that continues and worsens to this day.

Here's a collection of the growing list of Iran War Lies: http://www.democrats.com/iran-war-lies

Add it to the endless list of Iraq War Lies: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/keydocuments

But let's keep one thing in mind as we demand a thorough investigation of both sets of lies – lies made by the same set of people: In neither case, even were every single claim 100 percent true and accurate, would anyone have established a legal case for war. If a nation's possession of WMDs were grounds for launching a war against it, the United States would be subject to legal invasion immediately. So, while debunking the fanciful claims of Bush, Cheney, and Gates may be entertaining, we may actually do more good if we brush them aside and point out that it does not matter whether their claims are true or not. Aiding a nation in repelling a foreign occupation is not grounds for war. The U.S. still brags about having done this in France 50 years ago. If Iran were doing it in Iraq now, which no evidence yet suggests, the crime would lie in the foreign invaders' refusal to leave, not in the aide supplied by the Iranians.

Peace and War


FABRICATING THE CASE AGAINST IRAN

Another Carolyn Baker.Org Exclusive By Larry Chin

February 11, 2007

[Journalist Larry Chin reveals superbly documented evidence of the Bush administration's rhetoric and actions which are propelling the U.S. into a frightening conflagration with Iran--CB]

Bush administration pushes for attack with provocations, espionage, official deceptions, and false flag terror

The Bush administration will attack Iran as early as spring 2007. The administration is on total war footing.

Over the next few months, the administration and its allies and functionaries will create and provoke a pretext that forces a political consensus behind an attack on Iran. Any or all of the following may occur:

  • Violent resistance to US occupation within Iraq is blamed on Iran. As previously noted, the idea that Iran is arming Iraqi attacks against US forces is a central theme of new Bush administration propaganda. Paul Pillar, former CIA officer and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is among many critics arguing that Iran is not behind the attacks. This will not stop the Bush-Cheney apparatus from spewing lies to the contrary.
  • A major terror attack against US interests is blamed on Iran. In a recent testimony before the US Senate, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the Bush administration is headed down a “downhill track towards a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the world of Islam”---and that the conflict may begin with a major terror attack, either domestically or overseas, against Americans by Iran. (See also here, and here.)

In Brzezinski’s words, the Bush administration’s mismanagement of Iraq is an “historic, strategic and moral calamity”, “driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris” that “intensifies regional instability” and (of primary, if not sole concern to Brzezinski) “undermines America’s global legitimacy”. Brzezinski, a chief architect of the US “Grand Chessboard” geostrategy, which laid the foundation for the 9/11 attacks, has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s “mishandling” of the war. The Bush administration has longed for the right moment to set off "the next 9/11".

  • Iraq-Iran diplomacy characterized as terrorist interference by Iran.
  • Real and imaginary Iranian responses to Bush administration rhetoric or provocations will be characterized as war provocation by Tehran.
  • New evidence of Iranian nuclear “intentions” will be “found”, and presented to the “international community”, in order to sanction punishment.

Will the world fall for it again?

Gates lays the propaganda groundwork

In a just-completed testimony that may lay the official foundation for the coming Iran attack, Defense Secretary and Iran-Contra participant Robert Gates has asserted that Iran is “very much involved” in arming Iraqi “militants”.

This new assertion (which Gates has not backed with verifiable proof from a credible source) is based on serial numbers allegedly found on the remnants of bombs used against US forces in Iraq. Gates also stated that material seized during the (illegal and Bush-ordered) raid of the Iranian liason office in Irbil, Iraq is being included in the larger case of cooked and false intelligence against Tehran.

Gates, who skated into his post as Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement posing as a critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq war policy, is now the Bush administration’s number one weapon of mass deception on Iran.

Covert operations

The Iran-Iraq region has been brimming with CIA activity for well over a year. It is already a known fact that George W. Bush personally ordered provocative covert operations several months ago, aimed at baiting Iran into a war.

Iran’s intelligence minister Gholam Hossein Ejeli claims that Iran has uncovered a network of 100 CIA and Mossad agents.(Also see here.)

This comes in wake of a Bush "shoot to kill" order: hunt down and kill Iranians in Iraq.

Militarily and politically encircled

Events are unfolding exactly as warned by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, whose book Target: Iran has predicted every step the criminal Bush administration and its allies have taken.

In the view of John Pilger, the war is already on.

As noted by Dmitriy Sedov, preparations for devastation of Iraq in the spring are well underway. Among the many clear signs:

“-The UN Security Council Resolution envisions that a further tightening of the sanctions imposed on Iran must take place after February 21, 2006. From the standpoint of international law, this is a pretext (essentially a poor one, but one that does exist) to legalize an aggression against a country.

-Two US aircraft carrier groups armed with nukes are moving into the region. The US aircraft carrier groups have been on missions 5 times over the past 15 years. In 4 cases out of 5, they launched military offensives. In March 2007, both groups are to take their combat positions.

-Additional ground forces are shifted to the border between Iraq and Iran. Preparations for a new phase of hostilities are underway.

-In February, Patriot missile defense systems will be ready to defend Israel and the aircraft carrier groups from enemy airstrikes.

-British combat engineers are entering the regions of the future fighting, clearly in order to operate in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranians are most likely to lay mines.

-The US and Israel launched a powerful information and propaganda campaign preparing the global public opinion for aggression.

-CENTCOM’s Commander John Abizade, an opponent of the war with Iran, resigned. His position was taken over by Admiral W. Fallon, a veteran of the 1991 Iraq and 1995 Bosnia campaigns.”

The Bush administration is pushing for a “surge” of up to 50,000 troops to the Middle East. Although ostensibly for Iraq, but this force is clearly intended to coincide with action against Iran.

The murder and cover-up of an Iranian diplomacy effort

In 2003, Tehran sent a sweeping proposal to the Bush administration (via the Swiss Embassy) for dialogue and regional cooperation. Bush administration officials confirm that this memo was widely circulated and discussed---and flatly rejected by the White House.

New charges of possible criminal cover-up have emerged regarding the sudden "memory lapse" of top Bush administration figures regarding this proposal.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice confirmed the memo in a recent interview on National Public Radio (“what the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one-on-one with the United States”), but suddenly reversed course. She now claims “I don’t remember ever seeing any such thing”. According to the Washington Post, Flynt Leverett, Rice’s staff member at the National Security Council, the Iranian proposal was received, and discussed.

In an interesting twist, Leverett claims that it was not his responsibility to “put it on Rice’s desk” because Iran-Contra co-conspirator Elliot Abrams was in charge of Middle East policy. Like Rice, Abrams, who now serves as the deputy national security adviser in charge of Middle East “democracy promotion”, also claims “no memory of any such fax and never saw or heard any such thing.

Former State Department officials also claim to have seen the Iranian offer, and note that it was incorporated into a 2003 memo to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, proposing a “grand bargain” with Iran. According to the officials, Powell did not forward the memo to the White House.

Worldwide “terrorism” resurgence

The Bush administration’s buildup comes simultaneous with new and resurfacing threats from “terrorists” working covertly on behalf of Anglo-American interests. Bush-Cheney’s “war on terrorism” criminal network is ramping up for a new phase of violence that it will connect to Iran.

According to unnamed US and British intelligence officials, "Al-Qaeda" has regrouped, and is once again “capable and intent on launching mass attacks around the globe”.

In Afghanistan, under US occupation (and, not surprisingly, in the middle of a once again mushrooming heroin industry), the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, both of which serve as military-intelligence fronts for the US, are “back”. New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall reports that the new Taliban surge in Afghanistan is connected to Pakistan, and Pakistan’s ISI. In course of her investigation, Gall was assaulted by ISI agents.

Gall has clearly hit a major nerve. Pakistani civilians "fear the ISI", and for good reason.The activities of the ISI (a virtual branch of the CIA), the connection between the CIA and the ISI, cuts directly to the heart of ongoing Anglo-American military-intelligence operations across the Middle East and Central Asia. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered in 2002 during his investigation of the ISI, and connections between the ISI and “Al-Qaeda”, and 9/11.

Even as Tehran has attempted repeatedly to assist the Bush administration in hunting down terrorists, the Bush administration continues to blame terrorism on Tehran. A report that Osama bin Laden’s son was located in Iran will no doubt be used as fodder by the Bush propaganda apparatus.

Wag the dog

In addition to its many long-term geostrategic agendas behind an attack on Iran, the publicly despised Bush administration is facing political fallout domestically, and competition from the neoliberal faction (the Democrats) positioning for new political gains.

The administration also faces the prospect of embarrassing, and potentially devastating, revelations from the Scooter Libby/Dick Cheney/Plamegate trial, and other investigations of Bush administration crimes. Cheney, and George W. Bush himself, have now been directly implicated in the Libby proceedings.

In other black eye for the administration, a just-released report from the Pentagon's Inspector General blasts Office of Special Planning, headed by neocon (Project for a New American Century) stalwart Douglas Feith, for manufacturing “dubious” intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, including a “predisposition” to link Iraq with Al-Qaeda.

The greater the damage to the Bush administration, the greater the odds of a new “wag the dog” distraction--- "the next 9/11"---orchestrated by the Bush administration and Karl Rove.

Washington virtually silent on Iran

The “mismanagement” of the Iraq occupation, and feeble attempts to wrestle control of the Iraq political agenda, remains the focus of endless Washington political posturing and procedural wrangling.

Iran, and Bush-Cheney’s provocations, have not been major topics of argument. Based on what little discussion there has been on Iran, the leading Democrats are reportedly split over the issue.

But they are uniformly behind the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism”, which seals Iran’s fate. A convincing pretext would easily bring the Democrats in line to support an attack.

Iran’s oil

According to Michael Klare, conflict with Iran must be viewed as a chapter of resource war. According to some Iranian estimates, there is enough energy to last many decades. The Bush administration must also be infuriated that Tehran has shown intense interest in doing energy business with foreign investors (not American ones), and maintains good ties with both China and Russia.

As Peak Oil and Gas makes itself in earnest, and the lifeblood of the Anglo-American empire disappears drop by drop, Iran’s geostrategic importance (as a target) looms.

The gates of hell open wider

Some skeptics have maintained for years that the Bush administration will not attack Iran, based on the rational concept that not even the Bush administration and its neocons would be insane enough risk a full-blown superpower nuclear war.

But in a testimony before Congress, Robert Gates declared that the Pentagon, indeed, has plans for full-scale war against Iran, Russia and China. This statement, a virtual promise of world war, suggests that the Anglo-American establishment is prepared to wage the endless war. So much for sanity.

In his strongest criticism yet, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the Bush administration for its “almost uncontained use of military force” and “unilateral, illegitimate actions”. Said Putin, “One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

The next murderous overstep will be the destruction of Iran.

Larry Chin is an Associate Editor of Online Journal, and a contributor to Centre for Global Research and formerly to From The Wilderness.