January 29, 2007
Hundreds of thou sands of National Guard and Reserve members previously mobilized for tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are exposed anew to involuntary call-up under a policy change unveiled with President Bush's plan to "surge" forces into Baghdad.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he has rescinded a rule, set in 2002, that barred involuntary mobilization of reserve personnel beyond a "cumulative" 24-month ceiling for a wartime emergency.
But Gates also softened the effect of that decision by capping future involuntary mobilizations at 12 months apiece, including training time. This replaces what has been routine 16-to-24-month mobilizations for most Guard or Reserve members including a year "boots on the ground" in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The now shelved 24-month "cumulative" rule had been in effect five years, long enough that some Guard and Reserve members, and their families, might have believed it protected against a second call-up.
But Brig. Gen. James W. Nuttall, deputy director of the Army National Guard, said a majority of Guard soldiers will not be surprised by the policy change, given the nature of the wars they've experienced firsthand.
"The reality is that most soldiers, having served once in theater, knew that this was going to be a long war and that at some point we were going to have to come back to them," Nuttall told Military Update.
David Stein of Hesperia, Calif., agreed. The former sergeant first class with the California National Guard returned from a year in Iraq in May 2004. He said the impression left with his unit, based in Riverside, Calif., was that they wouldn't deploy again for at least two years. That 24-month cumulative rule, if known, wasn't a policy these soldiers had planned their futures by.
Nuttall said "selling" a second round of mobilization to Guard soldiers "is not difficult" thanks to the other policy changes Gates made, particularly his decision to cap mobilizations at 12 months. The idea is to have units conduct as much readiness training as possible before mobilization.
Some training while mobilized, before deploying, still will be needed so time in theater likely will be only 10 months, on average, Nuttall said.
"We would not be able to do this, quite honestly, if it were another 24 months," Nuttall said, referring to the effect on families and civilian careers. "Sacrifices have to be made by these soldiers but the fact that we shortened the mobilization for them is a huge benefit."
Defense officials, Nuttall said, are weighing a proposal to allow commands to apply stop-loss for up to a year before units deploy. Commands now can block personnel from retiring or separating from service within 90 days before mobilization. Once stop-loss is imposed, soldiers must remain in their units through deployment plus 60 days to out process.
Longer stop-loss authority would make more benefits available to affected soldiers and families, he said. It also would be "setting the unit up for success by locking down the formation" so commanders know earlier "these are the people I have trust and confidence in and I'm going to go to war with."
The Army now keeps about 10,000 soldiers in service using stop-loss, said a personnel official.
Nuttall said that out of 350,000 Army National Guard members, roughly 270,000 have deployed since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. The Guard couldn't continue to contribute as effectively to the war effort if the 24-month ceiling on total time mobilized were not removed.
David Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said the cap was imposed in 2002 "to ensure we did not overuse our people." But the actual law governing mobilizations says only that reservists cannot be mobilized involuntarily for more than 24 "consecutive" months.
Chu said Defense officials have been making the point that reservists likely would be mobilized more than once since July 2003 when then-defense chief Donald Rumsfeld signed a memo setting rotations goal for reservists of five years' separation between mobilizations. Ironically, U.S. ground forces haven't been large enough to accommodate that goal. When the next Guard units deploy, Nuttall said, an average of only three years will have passed since their last mobilizations.
In unveiling the surge plan of 17,500 more soldiers into Baghdad and 4,000 more Marines into Anbar Province, Gates also announced strength increases. The active Army is to grow by 65,000. That's 35,000 soldiers atop a 30,000 temporary increase phased in since 2004. The Marine Corps is to grow by 27,000; the Army National Guard by 8,000; the Army Reserve by 1,000.
Gates also wants members who are forced to deploy early or to extend their deployments beyond rotation standards to receive an extra $1,000 a month. Details on eligibility are still being worked. Chu said the payments should go to "those whose expectations we seriously violate" rather than to members who depart a day early or are delayed a day returning home.
"I don't think any of our people believes, nor do I think the American taxpayers believe, we should suddenly give you some big compensation for that," Chu said.
Finally, most future deployments of reservists will involve whole units rather than individual volunteers to improve unit cohesion. Fewer soldiers, Nuttall said, will have to tell spouses or employers that they're volunteering for another tour, and so face the prospect, he quipped, that "one will be handing them divorce papers, the other will hand them a pink slip."
Showing posts with label Gates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gates. Show all posts
Monday, January 29, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Texan Poker Bluff and Persian Chess Moves
Jan 22, 2006
By K Gajendra Singh
"The arrogance of military power has led to a grave crisis - and to a decline of the United States' role and influence." Mikhail Gorbachev.
"The president is living in a dream world,'' US Sen. Barbara Boxer.
On Iran , US Administration has reached the pre-Iraq invasion rhetoric level of 2003 , when against the UN Charter and world opinion ,President George Bush decided to invade Iraq after having assembled a naval armada and air and land forces in the region ,cheerlead by a subservient US media . Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are accusing Tehran of developing nuclear weapons and exporting terrorism, just as Saddam Hussein was allegedly doing. Iran is also not abiding by U N resolutions on its nuclear weapons program, which, like Iraq then, it denies it has. UN Nuclear Agency in Vienna has found no proof of a weapons program .Neither there was one in Iraq in 2003. Almost all accusations made by US President , his deputy and others , exaggerated by US corporate owned media proved to be false.
But after 4 years of blunders and stupidity , the situation is unlike March, 2003 , with an isolated Bush administration now under siege having become unpopular and discredited at home and with allies abroad .In Iran it faces a people with a long history of survival beginning with Alexander and his uncouth Macedonian hordes , Arabs ,Turks , Mongols and others. And they succeeded in civilizing most of them.
Even the new Chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee , John D. Rockefeller (D) took umbrage at the Bush administration's increasingly hostile barrage against Iran .The efforts to portray it as a growing threat were uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetoric about Iraq. "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Senator Rockefeller said in an interview on 19 January. "This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre." "I don't think that policymakers in this administration particularly understand Iran," he added. Rockefeller, a moderate , with good access to most classified intelligence about the threat from Tehran felt that US agencies still knew little about either Iran's internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.
On how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism since 119 attacks, Rockefeller believed that the campaign against international terrorism was "still a mystery" to the President. "I don't think he understands the world," he said. "I don't think he's particularly curious about the world. I don't think he reads like he says he does." He added, "Every time he's read something he tells you about it, I think."
Over Bush's policy of 'Surge ' ie sending additional 21,500 troops to Iraq ,hot words are being exchanged between Democrat party ,resurgent after Bush's Republican party debacle in November elections and the White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are backing a nonbinding Senate Democratic resolution declaring that "It is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the US military force presence in Iraq."
Pelosi warned that President Bush was wading too deeply into Iraq .It should not be "an obligation of the American people in perpetuity." She added that Bush "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder." White House spokeswoman Dana Perino retorted that Pelosi's comments were "poisonous," stating that Bush feels that once additional troops reached Iraq and once they're in battle , the Congress won't cut off funds.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , Democrat front runner for party's Presidential nomination during her recent visit to Baghdad met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. She felt that Bush's strategy had little chance of success. " The Iraqi government is not committed to taking the steps both militarily and politically that would help them to gain control over Baghdad and other places in the country," Clinton told NBC ."I do not think that this strategy has a very high level of success at all attached to it. In fact, I think that at best it's a holding pattern."But she supported " the beginning of a phased redeployment out of Baghdad and eventually out of Iraq completely." She backed placing an immediate cap on the number of US troops in the country, currently about 132, 000.
The arrival of new US reinforcements have met with increased attacks against occupation troops . On 20 January , at least 19 American troops were killed,athe deadliest day for US forces in two years, including 12 brought down in a helicopter crash claimed by the resistance and 5 in an attack by militia fighters in Shia holy city of Karbala A British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb and 4 other soldiers were wounded in the attack in Basra and south Iraq.
Bush raises the stakes;
It was the prospect of " hot pursuit" raids into Iran, raised by Bush last week, that fuelled fears that the Administration was preparing the public for attacks on Iran. Many analysts have been warning since 2004 against a planned US attack alone or in cahoots with Israel on Iran , one of the so called axis of evil , in the hoary Western tradition of demonizing those they want to invade , colonise and then loot.
US accusations of Tehran aiding militias and insurgents who attack US troops in Iraq , have been denied by Tehran. Yes, most of Iraq's Shia ruling elite and al-Badr militia were financed and trained by Iran when Saddam Hussein was a US darling in 1980s.Tehran also extended support to Kurds in north Iraq , whenever pressurized by the Saddam regime.
Having flouted most international rules, regulations , treaties and conventions since Bush was crowned by a judicial sleight of hand in 2000, tarnishing USA's electoral and legal credibility , Washington has now initiated clearly illegal and aggressive actions like the abduction of accredited Iranian personnel in Irbil in north Iraqi Kurdistan .Even the Kurdish leaders , beholden to Washington and thriving under US protection since the end of 1991 Gulf War ,have demurred and protested as have the Iraqi leaders and government 'elected' or selected by US Viceroys since the occupation.
Senior Iraqi Shia politicians , now in power, and beholden to Tehran since decades are now required to implement Bush's policy of 'Surge' ,by adding over 21,500 troops to help fight militias , provide security and reconstruction .They are naturally reluctant in striking against Shia militias and their leaders on whose support they survive , politically and militarily . In spite of public bon homie and some token measures .there are clear signs of a growing rift between the White House and the Iraqi leadership resident in Baghdad's Green Zone fortress , on policies at home or vis a vis Tehran.
A tour of the Middle East by the US Congress harassed Secretary of State Condi Rice , after her August trip last year when she described the destruction of civilian infrastructure and deaths in Lebanon by Israel as the birth pangs of a new Middle East ,evoked little enthusiasm or real support from USA's Sunni allies in the region , who are in panic over Tehran's expanding influence in the region , Muslim Ummah and the world .
After the Lebanese Hezbollah gave a bloody nose to Israel's famed commandos in July-August war last year ,its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both Shias were voted the most popular Muslim leaders even in the Sunni bastion of Egypt and elsewhere much to the discomfiture of regional Sunni leaders ,who had lambasted the Hezbollah after Tel Aviv used the abduction of its two soldiers to launch a full scale war it had prepared for . The continued ramification of Israeli defeat ended in the recent resignation of Israeli Military chief Lt.Gen Dan Halutz. "Since the end of the war we had been expecting Halutz to resign and [Defence Minister Amir] Peretz and [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to follow him," gloated Sheikh Nasrallah .
Iraq's other neighbour; Turkey's position ;
There is little common ground on Iraq between USA and its NATO ally Turkey with a million armed men and a key regional player .Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a US TV channel last month that with the dead in sectarian violence having exceeded 650,000 ... it could only be explained as a civil war. He added that Iraq's neighbors have a huge stake in the Iraqi civil war not spreading outwards .In addition to Iran, Turkey, Syria and US having bilateral or trilateral meetings, there should be an international consensus that includes all neighboring countries and the U.N. Security Council.
As for the 'Surge ' in US troops, Erdogan felt that it was time for a phased reduction of US military presence in Iraq. Erdogan had earlier opposed dispatch of more US troops to Iraqi Kurdistan .He declared recently that if faraway US could ferry troops to Iraq then Ankara had the right to enter north Iraq too ,as the situation there impinged on Turkey directly and adversely.
Thousands of rebels from PKK (Turkish Workers Party ) are now sheltered in north Iraq .Since 1984 over 37,000 have been killed in the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey's South East. Ankara has some times laid claims on the north Iraq city of Kirkuk , floating on oil like Kuwait , where its kinsman the Turcomen have a sizable presence. This region was occupied by the British after the First World War ceasefire following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, of which the region was a province.
Policy differences between Washington and Iraqi leaders ;
The acrimonious exchanges between US Administration and Prime Minister, al-Maliki on implementation of Bush's policy of 'Surge " have become public . To counter US criticism of his failure to halt sectarian violence al Maliki said, "I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don't give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success." To Condi Rice's statement of his government living on "borrowed time", he responded tartly, "Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi government or American administration."
Al Maliki claimed if Iraqi security forces were given sufficient training and equipment, which were denied , Iraq could be stabilized and allow US troops to begin withdrawing ."I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down." But "that's on the condition that there are real strong efforts to support our military forces." US officials are how ever worried that military equipment would end up in with the Shia militias ,which has happened.
Regarding action to eliminate all militias , al Maliki announced that 400 members ,including some commanders of the Mahdi Army loyal to the highly popular and powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were arrested. One Mahdi commander told the AP , "Our top leadership has told us to lay low and not confront the Americans. But if Sadr City is attacked, if civilians are hurt, we will ignore those orders and take matters in our own hands. We won't need orders from Sheik Muqtada ."
Mahdi street fighters have been told not to wear their black uniforms and hide their weapons and make their checkpoints less visible. It appears that instructions are being obeyed. With the US plans a public secret, Moqtda also reshuffled the Mahdi Army command structure, transferring many leaders to new districts and firing others of suspected loyalty.
The six-member Moqtda al-Sadr bloc which boycotted the Iraqi Parliament would rejoin on 21 January , in spite of the arrest of Sheikh Abdel Hadi Al-Diraji, a close aide of Moqtda , who has ordered his men to avoid armed confrontation with the government. The Parliament boycott was enforced when Al Maliki met with Bush in Amman in spite of Moqtda's demand. Al Maliki depends on Moqtda for political and military support .The other Shia Dawa militia is under Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
In an interview out on 19 January in Rome 's La Republica ,Moqtada stated that he never trusted Prime Minister al-Maliki nor his predecessor Iyad Allawi. He accused them of being in cahoots with the US plans to destroy him and his militia. A crackdown on his movement "has already kicked off." "Last night they arrested over 400 of my people. But it is not us they want to destroy, it's Islam," he declared. Moqtda also denied that members of his militia have infiltrated the army and police. "The exact opposite has happened: it is our militia which is full of spies. It is actually very easy to infiltrate an army of the people." He also denied that those who chanted his name and insulted Saddam Hussein at his execution were his men. "Those were people paid to disparage me, to make me appear like the person responsible for the hanging," he declared .
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a former Iraqi Prime Minister , when asked if an increase in US troops would be a threat to Iran, replied: "We don't want Iraq to pose a threat to any country. We also don't accept that any neighbouring country poses a threat to Iraq."
The Iraqi Government and the Mahdi Army could employ the tactics used by Washington's major non-NAO strategic ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan and its all purpose powerful tool ,Inter-Services Intelligence agency ( ISI ). When pressed by Washington , Islamabad produces a few Al Qaeda operatives , mostly low level ,for Washington to garner some propaganda points . Five years on after 911 , the results of the war on terrorism are dismal , with most convinced it is but a charade , to keep US public frightened for Bush Administration to implement its partisan agenda .In return Pakistan has received billions worth of aid , mostly for defence, which has only strengthened the strangle hold of the military over civil society.
Iraq leaders criticise US action in Irbil;
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of SCIRI , leader of the 130-member Shia bloc in the Parliament and thus one of Iraq's most powerful politicians and who was hosted at the White House in early December criticised the US action in Irbil .He described the detention of the Iranians an attack on Iraq's sovereignty. "Regardless of the Iranian position, we consider these actions as incorrect," Hakim, told the BBC. "They represent a kind of attack on Iraq's sovereignty, and we hope such things are not repeated."
In a statement Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, expressed "disturbance and condemnation" of the predawn operation and urged the US military to release the arrested. Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also a Kurd , said that Iraq needed good relations with Iran. "We can't change the geographical reality that Iran is our neighbour. This is a delicate balance and we are treading a very thin line," he said. "We fully respect the views, policies and strategy of the United States, which is Iraq's strongest ally , but the Iraqi government has national interests of its own."
US Iran hostilities would disrupt peace in the region and the growing affluence of Kurdish war lords . In that case Turkey might even intervene. To calm the situation President Talbani , who has been to Ankara a few times , went to Damascus , first such visit in 3 decades by an Iraqi Head of State . Of course he visited Damascus many times during the Saddam era .Post 2003 invasion, Of course Iraq's Shia leadership, with long close relations with Iran have visited Tehran many times. Even convicted embezzler but Minister ,exile Ahmet Celebi, once a blue eyed boy of the Pentagon .
Iranians have played it cool and not made such a big issue of the raid .Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Husseini condemned the raid. "The activity of all those people at our office in Irbil was legal and was in cooperation with and had the approval of the Iraqi side," Husseini told Iran's state-owned Arabic language satellite channel Al-Alam.
In ratcheting up tensions beyond threats, Washington might try to implement the so called 'Khuzestan gambit' i.e. creating dissentions and even intervening across south Iraq in Iran's major oil producing region of Khuzestan , of ancient Elam and Cyrus's Persian empire's capital Susa. Now it is sparsely populated by preponderantly Arab Shias. During the 1980-99 Iraq-Iran war , Shia Arabs on the two sides of the border had fought loyally for their countries .
When the Shias in Basra were quiet watching disenfranchised Sunni elite take on the US troops and harm each other , British James Bonds were active across in Khuzestan .But Iraqi Shia militias would take on all occupation troops if Iran or themselves are attacked. A large majority of Shia population and leadership is now strongly opposed to the occupation. So the un-nerved British forces fled from Basra city to the airport and safe desert bases for easier Dunkirk like run for home, when necessary.
The British had even suggested that they would like to shift their troops to a more important mission in South Afghanistan , where along with reluctant NATO it is now confronted by a resurgent Taleban. With Pakistan having lost over 800 troops in its North West Frontier Province and forced into a peace agreement with the Taleban , attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan have increased .
Muhammad Hanif, a Taliban spokesman captured by British and Afghan troops near the border with Pakistan, on being grilled, confessed that the Taleban Emir Mullah Omar lives in Quetta in Pakistan. "He is protected by ISI," Hanif said. Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, made similar allegations in the past .But Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Pakistan's Interior Minister denied the reports, "We have no information on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar. He is not living in Pakistan."
Following the old European and now US policy of divide and rule ,Washington is successfully igniting dissensions and perhaps succeeding in arousing the dormant historic hatred between Arab Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, who are now savagely killing each other , more so since the US reported that Al Qaeda damaged the Shia Golden Dome mosque in Samarrah early last year . US cracked the first Shia-Sunni fault line in Iraqi nationalism when then President George Bush Senior asked Shias and Kurds of Iraq to rise against Saddam Hussein at the end of 1991 Gulf War .And then did nothing when Saddam Hussein regime attacked by the rebels suppressed the uprising brutally . That would not inspire Shia trust in US words .The illegal trial and lynching of Saddam Hussein under US direction, control and occupation has deepened this sectarian chasm further.
Robert Gates- A strong and a long time US presence in Middle East;
It was quite apparent that the Iraq Study Group Report was just another red herring to mollify a disenchanted US public and keep the new Congress diverted .USA would not walk away from the region .Listen to what a major contributor to ISG report, the newly minted Defence Secretary Robert Gates said about the buildup of US forces in the region, involving the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and Patriot missile defence batteries , apart from US troops.
"We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future," said Gates on the first arrival of reinforcements in Baghdad as part of Bush's "surge" strategy. The US military buildup is intended to signal American determination to remain a dominant player in the region.
"The Iranians clearly believe we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in a position to press us in many ways," Gates told journalists in Brussels. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point." He added that Tehran was seeking to foment conflict in Lebanon through Hezbollah.
But Gates did not rule out the possibility of talks in the future if Iran changed its behaviour. "When the Iranians are prepared to play a constructive role in dealing with some of these problems there might be opportunities for engagement," he said.
Bush 'Stays the Course' - in aggressive mode;
When asked if the alleged killing of Americans by Iranian agents in Iraq constituted an act of war , Bush said he was not a lawyer so could not define what constituted an act of war but "let me just say it's unacceptable". He warned if the US failed in Iraq it would lead to a wider regional crisis, "If the [Iraq] government falls apart and there is sectarian enclaves and violence it'll invite Iran into the Shia neighbourhoods."
On June 21, 2005, General John R Vines, then a senior US commander in Iraq, told reporters that the insurgents had probably drawn on bomb-making expertise from Saddam's battle hardened army. US media and the British keep on claiming Iranian hand in supplying and helping Iraqi militias, even to the Sunni resistance.
Baltimore Times reported that at the current spending rate on the Iraq War, being waged along with the fighting in Afghanistan, the cost of the Iraq invasion will reach $600 billion this year. Much of the funding for the war comes from outside the normal budgetary process , through emergency appropriation bills.
US Congress rallies against 'Surge';
The policy of the 'Surge 'was concocted to counter ISG Report by Neo-Cons of American Enterprise Institute and former Lt Gen Keane . But Democrat Congressman John Murtha, a former decorated Marine and vocal opponent of the Iraq war and the incoming chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee said, "If we have our way there will be substantial change and substantial pressure put on this administration… The allies don't want us over there. The Iraqis don't want us over there and we expect that even the Republicans will support us when we get our bill up."fghanistan, Gates, Middle East,
He then added ominously, (we want a) "redeployment of troops out of Iraq" and (we will) "restrict funding until some of the problems are fixed at home." [ redeployment to new massive bases in Iraq which can house up to 70,000 soldiers !]
Murtha clarified, " You know they say that Al Qaeda is causing the divisions and sectarian violence? The invasion itself is what causes the sectarian violence –It's the occupation causes the violence. That's the problem we have and we have to change directions."
Murtha had raised the alarm in 2005 that the US army had done what it could do in Iraq .It was now broken. It was followed by the Generals revolt , when 8 senior retired generals went against Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and blamed him for defective Iraq war planning and its implementation. The two top Generals, Arabic knowing Gen. John Abizaid ( of Lebanese extraction ) Head of Centcom and Gen George Casey the man on the ground in Iraq who expressed themselves against increased US troops , are being eased out. Along with the naval build up in the Gulf , a Naval Admiral is being appointed apparently to carry out operations against Iran .
But the opposition to the war has seeped even into the ranks of the US forces . Some 1,000 active-duty soldiers and Marines urged US lawmakers to support a quick withdrawal. Although they're duty-bound to carry out the President's orders, they can legally express their views. The statement, carried on the Web site AppealforRedress.org, was signed by 1,080 troops by 16 January.
It urged the US Congress to support "the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," adding, "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price." "Despite our best efforts, Iraq fell further into chaos," said Marine Corps Sgt. Liam Madden at a press conference .He believed that the war "benefits neither the United States nor Iraq, and especially not the American military".
Senate leaders have introduced a non-binding bipartisan resolution opposing the 'surge' policy .It has been drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M.Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) "The whole thing could let Republicans off the hook with a meaningless, toothless vote," said Andrews, who has been meeting with senior Democrats on war issues. "It's a pressure valve that could work against us."
A Pew Research Center poll released on 16 January showed that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Some 60 percent of Republicans support Bush's plan and 33 percent oppose it. Among Democrats, 12 percent support it and 82 percent oppose it.
The media is owned and manipulated by corporate interests who fund elections and employ lobbies with a US$ 2.4 billion treasure chest to get favourable laws enacted. Thus the interests of the poor and the middle classes remain neglected .But even the misinformed and info-challenged US electorate has deciphered the truth in Iraq and in November elections bashed up the Republican party . Only an election deters these , some not so, honourable legislators , afraid of losing the power and the pelf they enjoy . Republicans slated for next elections are opposing the 'surge '.Hillary Clinton , who has announced her bid for the Presidency , a fervid supporter of Israel and a strong supporter of US war on Iraq is now singing a different tune .There would be lot of political maneuverings but US would not easily give up its addiction to cheap Middle East oil and enormous profits for the energy interests and the military industry complex , which promotes wars .They rule the roost in the USA.
Retired US Generals recommend political solution in the Senate ;
A panel of retired generals told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 18 January that sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq would do little to solve the underlying political problems in the country. "Too little and too late," said Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command. He added that American leaders had failed to understand the political forces at work in the country. "The solution is political, not military," he said. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who commanded troops in the first Gulf War, described it as "A fool's errand." Other countries had concluded that the effort in Iraq was not succeeding, and "our allies are leaving us and will be gone by summer." He said that Iraqis should try to make political deals domestically and negotiate for stability with neighboring nations, particularly Syria and Iran.
"The United States did not understand the consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein," said Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. The war benefited Iran and Al Qaeda, not the United States. "There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests," he said. USA is in a 'No Win' situation. Even a plan to start withdrawing US troops carried the risk of the armed Iraqi population to step up the level of attacks. "We will be shot at as we are going out." said Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army.
Iran's counter moves ;
After the ISG recommendation that US talk with Syria and Iran , Tehran was somewhat euphoric and so was Damascus. But that is now gone and Tehran is pondering over its moves carefully to counter political and military moves by Washington. Ali Larijani, Iran's chief negotiator on the nuclear question delivered a joint letter to the Saudi King Abdullah from the Iranian Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad requesting Saudi mediation with the US. The letter was delivered just before Rice's visit to Riyadh. Reuters quoted an unnamed Saudi official saying Iran wanted the Saudi King to relay a goodwill message to Washington to "help bring opinions together" between Iran and the US.
Ever green Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , a former President who lost to Ahmadinejad said that the US having failed to achieve its goals in the region, was now seeking to embark on a new adventure to cover up its defeat. He urged the need for vigilance.
To temper President Ahmadinejad's over blown rhetoric and consequent popularity with the public, but bad press in the West , Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has allowed 150 parliamentarians to attack the President's economic policies. In a signed letter they blamed Ahmadinejad for the raging inflation , high unemployment and failure to even present the budget in time. They decried his going on a tour of Latin America at the time of a crisis. Western media hopefully suggested that the mounting criticism could mean Ahmadinejad's political doom and even impeachment. But on return from Latin America Ahmadinejad reiterated that Tehran's program on nuclear energy would continue.
Like (the Chess King) Ali Khamenei might remove from the centre (Knight ) Ahmadinejad with his awkward moves. Iranians have shown Chess like long term planning and finesse to counter US moves in the region , even offering full cooperation in 2003 ( an honourable draw ) , if US normalized bilateral relations disrupted since 1979 . Always many moves ahead they nurtured SCIRI , Dawa and other Iraqi groups and Kurds .Since the invasion of Iraq , they now occupy and control the centre (as in Chess board) , with open and hidden threats to any US moves .
In Bishop like pincer moves across the region, Tehran has smartly moved with Hamas after its electoral victory in Palestine ,taking it under its wings , with its top political leader Khaled Meshaal resident in Damascus . If Iraq President Talabani is visiting Damascus , so is Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet with President Bashar Assad but meeting with Meshaal did not materialize as no agreement could be reached on a unity government in Palestine . Perhaps both visitors have US acquiescence if not approval .They must also plan if US commitment in the region weakens or dwindles away.
Ahmed Yusuf, an adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, said Hamas ministers had received promises of donations amounting to £500m during recent visits in the Muslim world. But the largest pledge was from Iran, more than that of EU. Last year Tehran pledged £125 m to help Hamas survive the international boycott led by USA. After inroads in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon , Tehran's support to Hamas has created serious concern in US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states- at Iran's rapid expansion as a regional power.
Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's secret service, Shin Bet, warned that international sanctions against the authority were forcing Hamas into a closer relationship with Iran. President Bush has asked Congress to approve $83 million for Abbas 's security forces. Israeli officials transferred $100 million in withheld revenues 9 collected as Tax and Customs dues to the Authority.
Palestine has become an arena of Shia Iran and Sunni Arab rivalry. Apart from Fathah and other cadres ,Abbas is raising a 3,500-strong Presidential Guard, as a bulwark against Hamas' militia of 5,000 gunmen. .If Iran is supplying funds and arms to Hamas then Egypt, Jordan , Saudi Arabia and USA are arming the now discredited and corrupt Palestine Authority .Hamas and Fathah militants are killing each other apart from the Israeli forces genocidal ways in Gaza in another example of divide and rule.
Apparently Hezbollah had abducted two Israeli soldiers last July to also ease intense Israeli pressure off Hamas in Gaza .Of course it did not expect a full blown savage destructive war by Israel as Nasrallah himself later admitted. But it turned out well for them and has altered the strategic power landscape in Lebanon and the region benefiting Iran. Israel must now watch over its shoulders before any reckless military venture.
In spite of blatant Western lies , nationalist Hezbollah movement has very wide support in Lebanon , where USA has now sent in its disruptive agents to counter Hezbollah's peaceful sit in for a role in decision making appropriate to its showing in the war and its popularity .In Syria with over 80% Sunni population , the ruling elite is dominated by Assad family led Shia Alawaites .But no where in the world such a minuscule minority rules as do the Jews and the Israel Lobby in USA. If the Holocaust can not be questioned neither can the influence of Israeli Lobby in USA. A recent book by former President and highly respected peacemaker Jimmy Carter , comparing Israel's apartheid system with that of former state of South Africa has brought the whole force of Israeli lobby on his head.
Condi Rice in the New Middle East after last years birth pangs;
Condi Rice began her safari of the Middle East from Israel and returned via friendly Angela Markel's Berlin and London with Tony Blair still clinging on despite failed policies and other scandals .As for Rice's attempt at rejuvenating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Arab media simply described it as an attempt to change the subject .US has little credibility as an honest broker.
The carefully worded support that Arab allies are offering for Bush's new Iraq strategy highlights the deep suspicion among Washington's few real friends and puppets in the region that Iraq might already be a lost cause. The Bush plan " encountered strong skepticism across the Mideast, where many believe that even with more soldiers, America will fail to break the cycle of violence."
Rice who discussed the 'Surge' plan in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, got only vague commitments and lukewarm response She and 8 Arab foreign ministers in a statement welcomed U.S. commitment to defend Iraq 's " territorial integrity and guarantees of its stability ." The host, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Mohammed Al Sabah, when asked if it was already too late to stop the rising cycle of Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq replied, "Nine foreign ministers are meeting in Kuwait today to try to prevent Iraq from sliding into a civil war." " I think that speaks volumes." Or rather the hopelessness of the situation.
Earlier key Sunni Arab allies while endorsing the goals of Bush's plan, and expressing hopes of success , almost in the same breath suggested that the Shia -led government in Baghdad cannot or would not implement the plan.
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal was perhaps the most positive , who agreed " with the full objectives set by the new plan, the strategy." After talks with Rice earlier , he commented , "This has objectives that ... if it were applied, it will solve the problems facing Iraq." But he emphasized that it was the responsibility of the Iraq government alone. "We cannot be Iraqis more than Iraqis," Saud emphasised. "Other countries can help, but the burden, the whole burden and taking a decision will be the Iraqis'."
It was well put by the Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah which noted, "The Americans are trying to get out of the Baghdad bottleneck and they are looking for agent players in managing their conflict with Tehran to make their new strategy in Iraq successful."
Of course the Sunni Arab world would not trust Prime Minister al-Maliki's government with close ties with Shia Iran. The Shias have become empowered after many centuries , courtesy Washington and would not let go .Rice did admit that" There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an evenhanded, nonsectarian path here. There's no doubt about that."
Bush's plan that al-Maliki use Iraqi troops to crack down on militants from both sides and meet a series of benchmarks to promote reconciliation between Sunnis and Shias is unlikely to succeed. Al-Maliki has resisted U.S. pressure in the past . Before Bush unveiled his plan al-Maliki was made to agree that he would go after his political ally Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
But he has already criticised US for not imparting proper training or providing weapons to Iraqi forces ( aka artillery , tanks and helicopter gun ships ), which US fears might be passed on to the militias and used against US forces .To begin with al-Maliki has appointed his own man as commander of the Iraqi forces in Baghdad against US choice.
Rice tried to exploit fear of Iran among US's Sunni allies, many with substantial Shia minorities, to support its plans, But have not they outsourced their security to USA since decades in return for free exploitation of the regions oil riches by US led West. The Arab states have amassed massive arms inventories , earn fat bribes and subsidise US-UK military industry complex. They can hardly use these arms, as was proved in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Scared and hoodwinked Saudi Arabia allowed US GIs including female troopers, a run of the Arabian peninsula, sacred soil according to Muslims. The rest ie Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is history.
Yes , the statement in Kuwait did contain a coded signal to Iran, which was reportedly not part of the group's discussions. "Relations among all countries should be based on mutual respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states and on the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations," [ Does Washington respect this principle and what did the group do when US invaded Iraq illegally].
Intimidated and nervous, Sunni Arab rulers in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and the Gulf are egging US to stay put in the region , to stop and roll back Iranian influence . They had acted similarly when Saudis, Kuwaitis , Emirates , Egypt , West et al had encouraged and funded 'brother Saddam' and Iraq in its 1980-88 war against a rampant Iran after the Khomeini led Shia revolution of 1979 .Iraq's Shia Arabs had fought against Iran's Revolutionary Guards and young boys seeking martyrdom .And how did the Arabs repay that debt and react to the US controlled and Al Maliki executed Kangaroo Court trials and lynching of 'brother Saddam'? In 2003 many in the Arab world were unhappy that for Arab honour , Iraqi officers and soldiers did not sacrifice themselves futilely against absurd odds in Iraq against F-16 , Cobra gun ships and massive artillery.( They melted to fight another day , as the Iraqi resistance now.)
But who among the Arabs would fight. Egypt initiated the 1973 war to recover its lands and oil fields lost to Israel after the 1967 debacle. The oil Sheikhs used the war to raise oil prices and its nouvo riche citizens went around lording over sophisticated Cairo and Beirut. After the 1979 peace treaty with Israel , Egypt , now on US pay roll retired .There can be no war with out Egypt in the Middle East( against Israel ) and no peace without Syria .During the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war millions of Egyptians worked on Iraqi farms and industries for Iraqis doing the fighting .
It was Pakistani Brigadier Zia-ul- Haq who organized the military operation against PLO guerillas in Jordan and expelled them to Lebanon in 1977. (With the ruler scripting a message for the Pakistani Military Chief for saving his Kingdom , so a retired Pakistani General told me). So who will fight the Iranians or even Iraqi Shia Arabs now in militias , army and police . They and Sunni Iraqi resistance now fought Iran's Shia revolutionary guards and young boys looking for martyrdom.
Western Policy of Divide and Rule;
USA and the perfidious Albion would only succeed in igniting a Shia-Sunni conflagration in the region except that oil prices would zoom and seriously affect the US and world economy. The US dilemma is how to expel Iran and keep control of Iraq, the region with its oil wealth for its use , as hitherto . It is a mission impossible. The British divided Hindustan into Pakistan and India, so that a weaker Muslim Pakistan ( with its ruling military elite ), would perforce ally with the West to protect from USSR , Middle East oil wells ,for exclusive Western exploitation . This can be seen from the British records of the period quoted in a recent book by an Indian diplomat, who was ADC in 1947 to the last British Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten. Following the partition of India there was ethnic cleansing in West Pakistan , exchange of populations and millions of Hindus and Muslims butchered each other . The West is at its old game again in the Middle East.
One can not forget the most disruptive Joker in the pack; Israel .Now in a state of uncertainty and an existential threat in the wake of its defeat by Lebanon's Hezbollah. An Israeli Naval warship was disabled with Hassan Nasrallah giving a running commentary of the attack on Al Minar ,its TV channel , which Tel Aviv could not disrupt during the war .Apparently Hezbollah succeeded in breaking into Israeli communications net work .Some reports suggest among other things , by providing drugs to bored Israeli border guards across south Lebanon.
West and USA are now flaunting its military prowess and would later rewrite history . Except that with online media , internet blogs and many honest and dedicated media persons even in the West , one can surf and ferry out the truth .For example ,in the Second World War , USA played a minor role compared to the Soviet Union in the destruction of the Nazi war machine in which USSR sacrificed tens of millions of its soldiers and citizens .Its economy was destroyed .Come lately US ( it has already spent more time in Iraq now than in that war ) and even UK tried to take all the credit . They produced 'The longest day ' and 'Gen Patton ' and UK dreams up James Bond victories in the battle field and the bed room .Even channels like 'Discovery Channel ' spew lies all the time and brain wash the ignorant . Germans and Russian soldiers were accused of mass rapes and killings. US soldiers raped many thousands women in West Europe and it faced a very high rate of desertion in its troops. But for instant communications now ,you would not have heard of or very little of Gulags like Guantamano, Abu Ghraib , Bagram , genocide in Fallujah ,Haditha and elsewhere , and rendition by CIA for torture of innocents , mostly Muslims in secret places all around the world . This has been the core of the Western mental make up though out the colonial era and even now .
Shias developed the first human bomber , the Assassins and evolved the system of takkyia ie not telling the truth under duress and occupation making them very secretive in their methods as shown in Lebanon . So US would be making a grave mistake in attacking Iran , exposed as it is and fully stretched on the ground .Iran's military build up has not been degraded by sanctions like in Iraq , which had no navy or air force or missiles and even WMDs. US and China and others have provided enough military hardware including sophisticated missiles to Iran and Syria .
As for US righteousness most of the military hard ware US gifted to Pakistan to fight communism was used against democratic India .US now grants Air and Naval aircraft and hardware to counter terrorism in Afghanistan ( and Pakistan ).Israel and USA should not forget the deep tunnels and other innovations employed brilliantly in south Lebanon against such heavy odds.
Conclusions ;
Like Iraq , some fancy schemes are on the anvil in Pentagon. To ward off the threats to the world economy if Tehran curtailed oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the US has reportedly made contingency plans for the indefinite takeover of Iranian territory in Chah Bahar, which would deny Tehran its strategic leverage with Hormuz. Washington might even push for outright "regime change" in Tehran, never mind lack of troops necessary for even a limited war. Theoretically , would this not take the war and US troops to Iran ( via Azerbaijan ) , which will then face Russia across and the Caspian Sea.
During the failed 1979 US hostages rescue operation in Iran ordered by President Jimmy Carter , it was said that USSR had tipped Tehran about Washington's
plans. Both Russia and China have serious and log term stakes in a united and stable Iran.
"The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq," commented Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, "There's a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive."
W Joseph Stroupe , editor of Global Events Magazine wrote recently that the Middle East was already 'like a sectarian tinderbox waiting for a spark to ignite its multiple civil wars-in-waiting. The United States' additional 21,500 new troops will be like a desperate roving band of flamethrowers let loose on the entire region, from Saudi Arabia to Iran. " Stroupe wondered if the current invasion plans were any better than of 2003 .Would it achieve only " an early but short-lived victory over Iran, only to massively lose the longer war, just as happened in Iraq? "
Iraq's sectarian and other militias will not lay down their arms and would fight the US led occupation forces to retain and further consolidate their hard-won power and prestige within their respective regions. Very importantly, the majority of Iraqis , who have come to rely on their respective militias for safety and security in the environment of the abject failure of Iraq's government and the US and British forces to provide such, would not wish to see their favored militias weakened or defanged.
Hence the population can be expected to deny all meaningful support to the US. Many will actively oppose the occupying powers through their respective militias, thereby dooming the entire effort to massive failure." If the US and Britain are perceived by Iraq's Shias as excessively targeting Shia militias while largely ignoring Sunni militias, then they risk mobilizing the entire body of Iraq's Shia population against the continued presence of foreign forces, resulting in a virtual Shia insurrection, with catastrophic results,' says Stroupe.
By unintentionally shoving the entire oil-and-gas-rich Middle East on to a fast track to chaos, the US will empower Russia as the immovable global energy kingpin. Already, Europe and Asia are being forced to reconsider placing too much reliance on the region for energy imports, opening the way for Russia." Africa and Latin America suffer from strategic instability and long distances haulage.
Iran would be helped in its recovery by Russia, China and other key energy exporting and consuming nations of the world. While signing another liquid gas contract with Tehran , Beijing brushed aside Washington's opposition in the spirit of recent UNSC resolution . Iran has excellent relations with Russia and China .The three powers could initiate a global energy consortium opposed to US power. It could be joined by others like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with Iran even becoming a full member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is slowly morphing into a military alliance to counter a rapacious NATO , now getting ensnared in the Afghanistan morass .
" I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible. Our forces are reduced now to very slender proportions… I do not see what political strength there is to face a disaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that in any circumstances any large reinforcements would be sent from here…
There is scarcely a single newspaper… which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. … Any alternative Government that might be formed here… would gain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreover, in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it. …No progress has been made in developing the oil. Altogether I am getting to the end of my resources. --At present we are paying… millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having."
Extracts from a memorandum dated September 1, 1922 , from Winston Churchill , Colonial Secretary to Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whose government was on its last legs.
Both Bush and Blair claim to be great admirers of Churchill, but never come round to read this chapter in Iraq's history or Churchill's naval debacle at Gallipoli . Now another naval misadventure is under planning.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail Gajendrak@hotmail.com
By K Gajendra Singh
"The arrogance of military power has led to a grave crisis - and to a decline of the United States' role and influence." Mikhail Gorbachev.
"The president is living in a dream world,'' US Sen. Barbara Boxer.
On Iran , US Administration has reached the pre-Iraq invasion rhetoric level of 2003 , when against the UN Charter and world opinion ,President George Bush decided to invade Iraq after having assembled a naval armada and air and land forces in the region ,cheerlead by a subservient US media . Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are accusing Tehran of developing nuclear weapons and exporting terrorism, just as Saddam Hussein was allegedly doing. Iran is also not abiding by U N resolutions on its nuclear weapons program, which, like Iraq then, it denies it has. UN Nuclear Agency in Vienna has found no proof of a weapons program .Neither there was one in Iraq in 2003. Almost all accusations made by US President , his deputy and others , exaggerated by US corporate owned media proved to be false.
But after 4 years of blunders and stupidity , the situation is unlike March, 2003 , with an isolated Bush administration now under siege having become unpopular and discredited at home and with allies abroad .In Iran it faces a people with a long history of survival beginning with Alexander and his uncouth Macedonian hordes , Arabs ,Turks , Mongols and others. And they succeeded in civilizing most of them.
Even the new Chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee , John D. Rockefeller (D) took umbrage at the Bush administration's increasingly hostile barrage against Iran .The efforts to portray it as a growing threat were uncomfortably reminiscent of the rhetoric about Iraq. "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Senator Rockefeller said in an interview on 19 January. "This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre." "I don't think that policymakers in this administration particularly understand Iran," he added. Rockefeller, a moderate , with good access to most classified intelligence about the threat from Tehran felt that US agencies still knew little about either Iran's internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East.
On how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic fundamentalism since 119 attacks, Rockefeller believed that the campaign against international terrorism was "still a mystery" to the President. "I don't think he understands the world," he said. "I don't think he's particularly curious about the world. I don't think he reads like he says he does." He added, "Every time he's read something he tells you about it, I think."
Over Bush's policy of 'Surge ' ie sending additional 21,500 troops to Iraq ,hot words are being exchanged between Democrat party ,resurgent after Bush's Republican party debacle in November elections and the White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats are backing a nonbinding Senate Democratic resolution declaring that "It is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the US military force presence in Iraq."
Pelosi warned that President Bush was wading too deeply into Iraq .It should not be "an obligation of the American people in perpetuity." She added that Bush "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder." White House spokeswoman Dana Perino retorted that Pelosi's comments were "poisonous," stating that Bush feels that once additional troops reached Iraq and once they're in battle , the Congress won't cut off funds.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , Democrat front runner for party's Presidential nomination during her recent visit to Baghdad met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. She felt that Bush's strategy had little chance of success. " The Iraqi government is not committed to taking the steps both militarily and politically that would help them to gain control over Baghdad and other places in the country," Clinton told NBC ."I do not think that this strategy has a very high level of success at all attached to it. In fact, I think that at best it's a holding pattern."But she supported " the beginning of a phased redeployment out of Baghdad and eventually out of Iraq completely." She backed placing an immediate cap on the number of US troops in the country, currently about 132, 000.
The arrival of new US reinforcements have met with increased attacks against occupation troops . On 20 January , at least 19 American troops were killed,athe deadliest day for US forces in two years, including 12 brought down in a helicopter crash claimed by the resistance and 5 in an attack by militia fighters in Shia holy city of Karbala A British soldier was killed by a roadside bomb and 4 other soldiers were wounded in the attack in Basra and south Iraq.
Bush raises the stakes;
It was the prospect of " hot pursuit" raids into Iran, raised by Bush last week, that fuelled fears that the Administration was preparing the public for attacks on Iran. Many analysts have been warning since 2004 against a planned US attack alone or in cahoots with Israel on Iran , one of the so called axis of evil , in the hoary Western tradition of demonizing those they want to invade , colonise and then loot.
US accusations of Tehran aiding militias and insurgents who attack US troops in Iraq , have been denied by Tehran. Yes, most of Iraq's Shia ruling elite and al-Badr militia were financed and trained by Iran when Saddam Hussein was a US darling in 1980s.Tehran also extended support to Kurds in north Iraq , whenever pressurized by the Saddam regime.
Having flouted most international rules, regulations , treaties and conventions since Bush was crowned by a judicial sleight of hand in 2000, tarnishing USA's electoral and legal credibility , Washington has now initiated clearly illegal and aggressive actions like the abduction of accredited Iranian personnel in Irbil in north Iraqi Kurdistan .Even the Kurdish leaders , beholden to Washington and thriving under US protection since the end of 1991 Gulf War ,have demurred and protested as have the Iraqi leaders and government 'elected' or selected by US Viceroys since the occupation.
Senior Iraqi Shia politicians , now in power, and beholden to Tehran since decades are now required to implement Bush's policy of 'Surge' ,by adding over 21,500 troops to help fight militias , provide security and reconstruction .They are naturally reluctant in striking against Shia militias and their leaders on whose support they survive , politically and militarily . In spite of public bon homie and some token measures .there are clear signs of a growing rift between the White House and the Iraqi leadership resident in Baghdad's Green Zone fortress , on policies at home or vis a vis Tehran.
A tour of the Middle East by the US Congress harassed Secretary of State Condi Rice , after her August trip last year when she described the destruction of civilian infrastructure and deaths in Lebanon by Israel as the birth pangs of a new Middle East ,evoked little enthusiasm or real support from USA's Sunni allies in the region , who are in panic over Tehran's expanding influence in the region , Muslim Ummah and the world .
After the Lebanese Hezbollah gave a bloody nose to Israel's famed commandos in July-August war last year ,its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, both Shias were voted the most popular Muslim leaders even in the Sunni bastion of Egypt and elsewhere much to the discomfiture of regional Sunni leaders ,who had lambasted the Hezbollah after Tel Aviv used the abduction of its two soldiers to launch a full scale war it had prepared for . The continued ramification of Israeli defeat ended in the recent resignation of Israeli Military chief Lt.Gen Dan Halutz. "Since the end of the war we had been expecting Halutz to resign and [Defence Minister Amir] Peretz and [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to follow him," gloated Sheikh Nasrallah .
Iraq's other neighbour; Turkey's position ;
There is little common ground on Iraq between USA and its NATO ally Turkey with a million armed men and a key regional player .Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a US TV channel last month that with the dead in sectarian violence having exceeded 650,000 ... it could only be explained as a civil war. He added that Iraq's neighbors have a huge stake in the Iraqi civil war not spreading outwards .In addition to Iran, Turkey, Syria and US having bilateral or trilateral meetings, there should be an international consensus that includes all neighboring countries and the U.N. Security Council.
As for the 'Surge ' in US troops, Erdogan felt that it was time for a phased reduction of US military presence in Iraq. Erdogan had earlier opposed dispatch of more US troops to Iraqi Kurdistan .He declared recently that if faraway US could ferry troops to Iraq then Ankara had the right to enter north Iraq too ,as the situation there impinged on Turkey directly and adversely.
Thousands of rebels from PKK (Turkish Workers Party ) are now sheltered in north Iraq .Since 1984 over 37,000 have been killed in the Kurdish rebellion in Turkey's South East. Ankara has some times laid claims on the north Iraq city of Kirkuk , floating on oil like Kuwait , where its kinsman the Turcomen have a sizable presence. This region was occupied by the British after the First World War ceasefire following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, of which the region was a province.
Policy differences between Washington and Iraqi leaders ;
The acrimonious exchanges between US Administration and Prime Minister, al-Maliki on implementation of Bush's policy of 'Surge " have become public . To counter US criticism of his failure to halt sectarian violence al Maliki said, "I wish that we could receive strong messages of support from the US so we don't give some boost to the terrorists and make them feel that they might have achieved success." To Condi Rice's statement of his government living on "borrowed time", he responded tartly, "Secretary Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the government is on borrowed time, whether it is borrowed time for the Iraqi government or American administration."
Al Maliki claimed if Iraqi security forces were given sufficient training and equipment, which were denied , Iraq could be stabilized and allow US troops to begin withdrawing ."I think that within three to six months our need for the American troops will dramatically go down." But "that's on the condition that there are real strong efforts to support our military forces." US officials are how ever worried that military equipment would end up in with the Shia militias ,which has happened.
Regarding action to eliminate all militias , al Maliki announced that 400 members ,including some commanders of the Mahdi Army loyal to the highly popular and powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were arrested. One Mahdi commander told the AP , "Our top leadership has told us to lay low and not confront the Americans. But if Sadr City is attacked, if civilians are hurt, we will ignore those orders and take matters in our own hands. We won't need orders from Sheik Muqtada ."
Mahdi street fighters have been told not to wear their black uniforms and hide their weapons and make their checkpoints less visible. It appears that instructions are being obeyed. With the US plans a public secret, Moqtda also reshuffled the Mahdi Army command structure, transferring many leaders to new districts and firing others of suspected loyalty.
The six-member Moqtda al-Sadr bloc which boycotted the Iraqi Parliament would rejoin on 21 January , in spite of the arrest of Sheikh Abdel Hadi Al-Diraji, a close aide of Moqtda , who has ordered his men to avoid armed confrontation with the government. The Parliament boycott was enforced when Al Maliki met with Bush in Amman in spite of Moqtda's demand. Al Maliki depends on Moqtda for political and military support .The other Shia Dawa militia is under Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
In an interview out on 19 January in Rome 's La Republica ,Moqtada stated that he never trusted Prime Minister al-Maliki nor his predecessor Iyad Allawi. He accused them of being in cahoots with the US plans to destroy him and his militia. A crackdown on his movement "has already kicked off." "Last night they arrested over 400 of my people. But it is not us they want to destroy, it's Islam," he declared. Moqtda also denied that members of his militia have infiltrated the army and police. "The exact opposite has happened: it is our militia which is full of spies. It is actually very easy to infiltrate an army of the people." He also denied that those who chanted his name and insulted Saddam Hussein at his execution were his men. "Those were people paid to disparage me, to make me appear like the person responsible for the hanging," he declared .
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a former Iraqi Prime Minister , when asked if an increase in US troops would be a threat to Iran, replied: "We don't want Iraq to pose a threat to any country. We also don't accept that any neighbouring country poses a threat to Iraq."
The Iraqi Government and the Mahdi Army could employ the tactics used by Washington's major non-NAO strategic ally in the war against terrorism, Pakistan and its all purpose powerful tool ,Inter-Services Intelligence agency ( ISI ). When pressed by Washington , Islamabad produces a few Al Qaeda operatives , mostly low level ,for Washington to garner some propaganda points . Five years on after 911 , the results of the war on terrorism are dismal , with most convinced it is but a charade , to keep US public frightened for Bush Administration to implement its partisan agenda .In return Pakistan has received billions worth of aid , mostly for defence, which has only strengthened the strangle hold of the military over civil society.
Iraq leaders criticise US action in Irbil;
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim of SCIRI , leader of the 130-member Shia bloc in the Parliament and thus one of Iraq's most powerful politicians and who was hosted at the White House in early December criticised the US action in Irbil .He described the detention of the Iranians an attack on Iraq's sovereignty. "Regardless of the Iranian position, we consider these actions as incorrect," Hakim, told the BBC. "They represent a kind of attack on Iraq's sovereignty, and we hope such things are not repeated."
In a statement Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, expressed "disturbance and condemnation" of the predawn operation and urged the US military to release the arrested. Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also a Kurd , said that Iraq needed good relations with Iran. "We can't change the geographical reality that Iran is our neighbour. This is a delicate balance and we are treading a very thin line," he said. "We fully respect the views, policies and strategy of the United States, which is Iraq's strongest ally , but the Iraqi government has national interests of its own."
US Iran hostilities would disrupt peace in the region and the growing affluence of Kurdish war lords . In that case Turkey might even intervene. To calm the situation President Talbani , who has been to Ankara a few times , went to Damascus , first such visit in 3 decades by an Iraqi Head of State . Of course he visited Damascus many times during the Saddam era .Post 2003 invasion, Of course Iraq's Shia leadership, with long close relations with Iran have visited Tehran many times. Even convicted embezzler but Minister ,exile Ahmet Celebi, once a blue eyed boy of the Pentagon .
Iranians have played it cool and not made such a big issue of the raid .Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Husseini condemned the raid. "The activity of all those people at our office in Irbil was legal and was in cooperation with and had the approval of the Iraqi side," Husseini told Iran's state-owned Arabic language satellite channel Al-Alam.
In ratcheting up tensions beyond threats, Washington might try to implement the so called 'Khuzestan gambit' i.e. creating dissentions and even intervening across south Iraq in Iran's major oil producing region of Khuzestan , of ancient Elam and Cyrus's Persian empire's capital Susa. Now it is sparsely populated by preponderantly Arab Shias. During the 1980-99 Iraq-Iran war , Shia Arabs on the two sides of the border had fought loyally for their countries .
When the Shias in Basra were quiet watching disenfranchised Sunni elite take on the US troops and harm each other , British James Bonds were active across in Khuzestan .But Iraqi Shia militias would take on all occupation troops if Iran or themselves are attacked. A large majority of Shia population and leadership is now strongly opposed to the occupation. So the un-nerved British forces fled from Basra city to the airport and safe desert bases for easier Dunkirk like run for home, when necessary.
The British had even suggested that they would like to shift their troops to a more important mission in South Afghanistan , where along with reluctant NATO it is now confronted by a resurgent Taleban. With Pakistan having lost over 800 troops in its North West Frontier Province and forced into a peace agreement with the Taleban , attacks against NATO forces in Afghanistan have increased .
Muhammad Hanif, a Taliban spokesman captured by British and Afghan troops near the border with Pakistan, on being grilled, confessed that the Taleban Emir Mullah Omar lives in Quetta in Pakistan. "He is protected by ISI," Hanif said. Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, made similar allegations in the past .But Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Pakistan's Interior Minister denied the reports, "We have no information on the whereabouts of Mullah Omar. He is not living in Pakistan."
Following the old European and now US policy of divide and rule ,Washington is successfully igniting dissensions and perhaps succeeding in arousing the dormant historic hatred between Arab Sunnis and Shias in Iraq, who are now savagely killing each other , more so since the US reported that Al Qaeda damaged the Shia Golden Dome mosque in Samarrah early last year . US cracked the first Shia-Sunni fault line in Iraqi nationalism when then President George Bush Senior asked Shias and Kurds of Iraq to rise against Saddam Hussein at the end of 1991 Gulf War .And then did nothing when Saddam Hussein regime attacked by the rebels suppressed the uprising brutally . That would not inspire Shia trust in US words .The illegal trial and lynching of Saddam Hussein under US direction, control and occupation has deepened this sectarian chasm further.
Robert Gates- A strong and a long time US presence in Middle East;
It was quite apparent that the Iraq Study Group Report was just another red herring to mollify a disenchanted US public and keep the new Congress diverted .USA would not walk away from the region .Listen to what a major contributor to ISG report, the newly minted Defence Secretary Robert Gates said about the buildup of US forces in the region, involving the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and Patriot missile defence batteries , apart from US troops.
"We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future," said Gates on the first arrival of reinforcements in Baghdad as part of Bush's "surge" strategy. The US military buildup is intended to signal American determination to remain a dominant player in the region.
"The Iranians clearly believe we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in a position to press us in many ways," Gates told journalists in Brussels. "They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point." He added that Tehran was seeking to foment conflict in Lebanon through Hezbollah.
But Gates did not rule out the possibility of talks in the future if Iran changed its behaviour. "When the Iranians are prepared to play a constructive role in dealing with some of these problems there might be opportunities for engagement," he said.
Bush 'Stays the Course' - in aggressive mode;
When asked if the alleged killing of Americans by Iranian agents in Iraq constituted an act of war , Bush said he was not a lawyer so could not define what constituted an act of war but "let me just say it's unacceptable". He warned if the US failed in Iraq it would lead to a wider regional crisis, "If the [Iraq] government falls apart and there is sectarian enclaves and violence it'll invite Iran into the Shia neighbourhoods."
On June 21, 2005, General John R Vines, then a senior US commander in Iraq, told reporters that the insurgents had probably drawn on bomb-making expertise from Saddam's battle hardened army. US media and the British keep on claiming Iranian hand in supplying and helping Iraqi militias, even to the Sunni resistance.
Baltimore Times reported that at the current spending rate on the Iraq War, being waged along with the fighting in Afghanistan, the cost of the Iraq invasion will reach $600 billion this year. Much of the funding for the war comes from outside the normal budgetary process , through emergency appropriation bills.
US Congress rallies against 'Surge';
The policy of the 'Surge 'was concocted to counter ISG Report by Neo-Cons of American Enterprise Institute and former Lt Gen Keane . But Democrat Congressman John Murtha, a former decorated Marine and vocal opponent of the Iraq war and the incoming chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee said, "If we have our way there will be substantial change and substantial pressure put on this administration… The allies don't want us over there. The Iraqis don't want us over there and we expect that even the Republicans will support us when we get our bill up."fghanistan, Gates, Middle East,
He then added ominously, (we want a) "redeployment of troops out of Iraq" and (we will) "restrict funding until some of the problems are fixed at home." [ redeployment to new massive bases in Iraq which can house up to 70,000 soldiers !]
Murtha clarified, " You know they say that Al Qaeda is causing the divisions and sectarian violence? The invasion itself is what causes the sectarian violence –It's the occupation causes the violence. That's the problem we have and we have to change directions."
Murtha had raised the alarm in 2005 that the US army had done what it could do in Iraq .It was now broken. It was followed by the Generals revolt , when 8 senior retired generals went against Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and blamed him for defective Iraq war planning and its implementation. The two top Generals, Arabic knowing Gen. John Abizaid ( of Lebanese extraction ) Head of Centcom and Gen George Casey the man on the ground in Iraq who expressed themselves against increased US troops , are being eased out. Along with the naval build up in the Gulf , a Naval Admiral is being appointed apparently to carry out operations against Iran .
But the opposition to the war has seeped even into the ranks of the US forces . Some 1,000 active-duty soldiers and Marines urged US lawmakers to support a quick withdrawal. Although they're duty-bound to carry out the President's orders, they can legally express their views. The statement, carried on the Web site AppealforRedress.org, was signed by 1,080 troops by 16 January.
It urged the US Congress to support "the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq," adding, "Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price." "Despite our best efforts, Iraq fell further into chaos," said Marine Corps Sgt. Liam Madden at a press conference .He believed that the war "benefits neither the United States nor Iraq, and especially not the American military".
Senate leaders have introduced a non-binding bipartisan resolution opposing the 'surge' policy .It has been drafted by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M.Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) "The whole thing could let Republicans off the hook with a meaningless, toothless vote," said Andrews, who has been meeting with senior Democrats on war issues. "It's a pressure valve that could work against us."
A Pew Research Center poll released on 16 January showed that 61 percent of Americans oppose sending more troops to Iraq. Some 60 percent of Republicans support Bush's plan and 33 percent oppose it. Among Democrats, 12 percent support it and 82 percent oppose it.
The media is owned and manipulated by corporate interests who fund elections and employ lobbies with a US$ 2.4 billion treasure chest to get favourable laws enacted. Thus the interests of the poor and the middle classes remain neglected .But even the misinformed and info-challenged US electorate has deciphered the truth in Iraq and in November elections bashed up the Republican party . Only an election deters these , some not so, honourable legislators , afraid of losing the power and the pelf they enjoy . Republicans slated for next elections are opposing the 'surge '.Hillary Clinton , who has announced her bid for the Presidency , a fervid supporter of Israel and a strong supporter of US war on Iraq is now singing a different tune .There would be lot of political maneuverings but US would not easily give up its addiction to cheap Middle East oil and enormous profits for the energy interests and the military industry complex , which promotes wars .They rule the roost in the USA.
Retired US Generals recommend political solution in the Senate ;
A panel of retired generals told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 18 January that sending 21,500 additional troops to Iraq would do little to solve the underlying political problems in the country. "Too little and too late," said Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, a former chief of the Central Command. He added that American leaders had failed to understand the political forces at work in the country. "The solution is political, not military," he said. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who commanded troops in the first Gulf War, described it as "A fool's errand." Other countries had concluded that the effort in Iraq was not succeeding, and "our allies are leaving us and will be gone by summer." He said that Iraqis should try to make political deals domestically and negotiate for stability with neighboring nations, particularly Syria and Iran.
"The United States did not understand the consequences of deposing Saddam Hussein," said Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. The war benefited Iran and Al Qaeda, not the United States. "There is no way to win a war that is not in your interests," he said. USA is in a 'No Win' situation. Even a plan to start withdrawing US troops carried the risk of the armed Iraqi population to step up the level of attacks. "We will be shot at as we are going out." said Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army.
Iran's counter moves ;
After the ISG recommendation that US talk with Syria and Iran , Tehran was somewhat euphoric and so was Damascus. But that is now gone and Tehran is pondering over its moves carefully to counter political and military moves by Washington. Ali Larijani, Iran's chief negotiator on the nuclear question delivered a joint letter to the Saudi King Abdullah from the Iranian Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ahmadinejad requesting Saudi mediation with the US. The letter was delivered just before Rice's visit to Riyadh. Reuters quoted an unnamed Saudi official saying Iran wanted the Saudi King to relay a goodwill message to Washington to "help bring opinions together" between Iran and the US.
Ever green Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , a former President who lost to Ahmadinejad said that the US having failed to achieve its goals in the region, was now seeking to embark on a new adventure to cover up its defeat. He urged the need for vigilance.
To temper President Ahmadinejad's over blown rhetoric and consequent popularity with the public, but bad press in the West , Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has allowed 150 parliamentarians to attack the President's economic policies. In a signed letter they blamed Ahmadinejad for the raging inflation , high unemployment and failure to even present the budget in time. They decried his going on a tour of Latin America at the time of a crisis. Western media hopefully suggested that the mounting criticism could mean Ahmadinejad's political doom and even impeachment. But on return from Latin America Ahmadinejad reiterated that Tehran's program on nuclear energy would continue.
Like (the Chess King) Ali Khamenei might remove from the centre (Knight ) Ahmadinejad with his awkward moves. Iranians have shown Chess like long term planning and finesse to counter US moves in the region , even offering full cooperation in 2003 ( an honourable draw ) , if US normalized bilateral relations disrupted since 1979 . Always many moves ahead they nurtured SCIRI , Dawa and other Iraqi groups and Kurds .Since the invasion of Iraq , they now occupy and control the centre (as in Chess board) , with open and hidden threats to any US moves .
In Bishop like pincer moves across the region, Tehran has smartly moved with Hamas after its electoral victory in Palestine ,taking it under its wings , with its top political leader Khaled Meshaal resident in Damascus . If Iraq President Talabani is visiting Damascus , so is Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet with President Bashar Assad but meeting with Meshaal did not materialize as no agreement could be reached on a unity government in Palestine . Perhaps both visitors have US acquiescence if not approval .They must also plan if US commitment in the region weakens or dwindles away.
Ahmed Yusuf, an adviser to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, said Hamas ministers had received promises of donations amounting to £500m during recent visits in the Muslim world. But the largest pledge was from Iran, more than that of EU. Last year Tehran pledged £125 m to help Hamas survive the international boycott led by USA. After inroads in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon , Tehran's support to Hamas has created serious concern in US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states- at Iran's rapid expansion as a regional power.
Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's secret service, Shin Bet, warned that international sanctions against the authority were forcing Hamas into a closer relationship with Iran. President Bush has asked Congress to approve $83 million for Abbas 's security forces. Israeli officials transferred $100 million in withheld revenues 9 collected as Tax and Customs dues to the Authority.
Palestine has become an arena of Shia Iran and Sunni Arab rivalry. Apart from Fathah and other cadres ,Abbas is raising a 3,500-strong Presidential Guard, as a bulwark against Hamas' militia of 5,000 gunmen. .If Iran is supplying funds and arms to Hamas then Egypt, Jordan , Saudi Arabia and USA are arming the now discredited and corrupt Palestine Authority .Hamas and Fathah militants are killing each other apart from the Israeli forces genocidal ways in Gaza in another example of divide and rule.
Apparently Hezbollah had abducted two Israeli soldiers last July to also ease intense Israeli pressure off Hamas in Gaza .Of course it did not expect a full blown savage destructive war by Israel as Nasrallah himself later admitted. But it turned out well for them and has altered the strategic power landscape in Lebanon and the region benefiting Iran. Israel must now watch over its shoulders before any reckless military venture.
In spite of blatant Western lies , nationalist Hezbollah movement has very wide support in Lebanon , where USA has now sent in its disruptive agents to counter Hezbollah's peaceful sit in for a role in decision making appropriate to its showing in the war and its popularity .In Syria with over 80% Sunni population , the ruling elite is dominated by Assad family led Shia Alawaites .But no where in the world such a minuscule minority rules as do the Jews and the Israel Lobby in USA. If the Holocaust can not be questioned neither can the influence of Israeli Lobby in USA. A recent book by former President and highly respected peacemaker Jimmy Carter , comparing Israel's apartheid system with that of former state of South Africa has brought the whole force of Israeli lobby on his head.
Condi Rice in the New Middle East after last years birth pangs;
Condi Rice began her safari of the Middle East from Israel and returned via friendly Angela Markel's Berlin and London with Tony Blair still clinging on despite failed policies and other scandals .As for Rice's attempt at rejuvenating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Arab media simply described it as an attempt to change the subject .US has little credibility as an honest broker.
The carefully worded support that Arab allies are offering for Bush's new Iraq strategy highlights the deep suspicion among Washington's few real friends and puppets in the region that Iraq might already be a lost cause. The Bush plan " encountered strong skepticism across the Mideast, where many believe that even with more soldiers, America will fail to break the cycle of violence."
Rice who discussed the 'Surge' plan in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, got only vague commitments and lukewarm response She and 8 Arab foreign ministers in a statement welcomed U.S. commitment to defend Iraq 's " territorial integrity and guarantees of its stability ." The host, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Mohammed Al Sabah, when asked if it was already too late to stop the rising cycle of Sunni-Shiite violence in Iraq replied, "Nine foreign ministers are meeting in Kuwait today to try to prevent Iraq from sliding into a civil war." " I think that speaks volumes." Or rather the hopelessness of the situation.
Earlier key Sunni Arab allies while endorsing the goals of Bush's plan, and expressing hopes of success , almost in the same breath suggested that the Shia -led government in Baghdad cannot or would not implement the plan.
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal was perhaps the most positive , who agreed " with the full objectives set by the new plan, the strategy." After talks with Rice earlier , he commented , "This has objectives that ... if it were applied, it will solve the problems facing Iraq." But he emphasized that it was the responsibility of the Iraq government alone. "We cannot be Iraqis more than Iraqis," Saud emphasised. "Other countries can help, but the burden, the whole burden and taking a decision will be the Iraqis'."
It was well put by the Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah which noted, "The Americans are trying to get out of the Baghdad bottleneck and they are looking for agent players in managing their conflict with Tehran to make their new strategy in Iraq successful."
Of course the Sunni Arab world would not trust Prime Minister al-Maliki's government with close ties with Shia Iran. The Shias have become empowered after many centuries , courtesy Washington and would not let go .Rice did admit that" There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an evenhanded, nonsectarian path here. There's no doubt about that."
Bush's plan that al-Maliki use Iraqi troops to crack down on militants from both sides and meet a series of benchmarks to promote reconciliation between Sunnis and Shias is unlikely to succeed. Al-Maliki has resisted U.S. pressure in the past . Before Bush unveiled his plan al-Maliki was made to agree that he would go after his political ally Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
But he has already criticised US for not imparting proper training or providing weapons to Iraqi forces ( aka artillery , tanks and helicopter gun ships ), which US fears might be passed on to the militias and used against US forces .To begin with al-Maliki has appointed his own man as commander of the Iraqi forces in Baghdad against US choice.
Rice tried to exploit fear of Iran among US's Sunni allies, many with substantial Shia minorities, to support its plans, But have not they outsourced their security to USA since decades in return for free exploitation of the regions oil riches by US led West. The Arab states have amassed massive arms inventories , earn fat bribes and subsidise US-UK military industry complex. They can hardly use these arms, as was proved in Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Scared and hoodwinked Saudi Arabia allowed US GIs including female troopers, a run of the Arabian peninsula, sacred soil according to Muslims. The rest ie Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is history.
Yes , the statement in Kuwait did contain a coded signal to Iran, which was reportedly not part of the group's discussions. "Relations among all countries should be based on mutual respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states and on the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations," [ Does Washington respect this principle and what did the group do when US invaded Iraq illegally].
Intimidated and nervous, Sunni Arab rulers in Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and the Gulf are egging US to stay put in the region , to stop and roll back Iranian influence . They had acted similarly when Saudis, Kuwaitis , Emirates , Egypt , West et al had encouraged and funded 'brother Saddam' and Iraq in its 1980-88 war against a rampant Iran after the Khomeini led Shia revolution of 1979 .Iraq's Shia Arabs had fought against Iran's Revolutionary Guards and young boys seeking martyrdom .And how did the Arabs repay that debt and react to the US controlled and Al Maliki executed Kangaroo Court trials and lynching of 'brother Saddam'? In 2003 many in the Arab world were unhappy that for Arab honour , Iraqi officers and soldiers did not sacrifice themselves futilely against absurd odds in Iraq against F-16 , Cobra gun ships and massive artillery.( They melted to fight another day , as the Iraqi resistance now.)
But who among the Arabs would fight. Egypt initiated the 1973 war to recover its lands and oil fields lost to Israel after the 1967 debacle. The oil Sheikhs used the war to raise oil prices and its nouvo riche citizens went around lording over sophisticated Cairo and Beirut. After the 1979 peace treaty with Israel , Egypt , now on US pay roll retired .There can be no war with out Egypt in the Middle East( against Israel ) and no peace without Syria .During the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war millions of Egyptians worked on Iraqi farms and industries for Iraqis doing the fighting .
It was Pakistani Brigadier Zia-ul- Haq who organized the military operation against PLO guerillas in Jordan and expelled them to Lebanon in 1977. (With the ruler scripting a message for the Pakistani Military Chief for saving his Kingdom , so a retired Pakistani General told me). So who will fight the Iranians or even Iraqi Shia Arabs now in militias , army and police . They and Sunni Iraqi resistance now fought Iran's Shia revolutionary guards and young boys looking for martyrdom.
Western Policy of Divide and Rule;
USA and the perfidious Albion would only succeed in igniting a Shia-Sunni conflagration in the region except that oil prices would zoom and seriously affect the US and world economy. The US dilemma is how to expel Iran and keep control of Iraq, the region with its oil wealth for its use , as hitherto . It is a mission impossible. The British divided Hindustan into Pakistan and India, so that a weaker Muslim Pakistan ( with its ruling military elite ), would perforce ally with the West to protect from USSR , Middle East oil wells ,for exclusive Western exploitation . This can be seen from the British records of the period quoted in a recent book by an Indian diplomat, who was ADC in 1947 to the last British Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten. Following the partition of India there was ethnic cleansing in West Pakistan , exchange of populations and millions of Hindus and Muslims butchered each other . The West is at its old game again in the Middle East.
One can not forget the most disruptive Joker in the pack; Israel .Now in a state of uncertainty and an existential threat in the wake of its defeat by Lebanon's Hezbollah. An Israeli Naval warship was disabled with Hassan Nasrallah giving a running commentary of the attack on Al Minar ,its TV channel , which Tel Aviv could not disrupt during the war .Apparently Hezbollah succeeded in breaking into Israeli communications net work .Some reports suggest among other things , by providing drugs to bored Israeli border guards across south Lebanon.
West and USA are now flaunting its military prowess and would later rewrite history . Except that with online media , internet blogs and many honest and dedicated media persons even in the West , one can surf and ferry out the truth .For example ,in the Second World War , USA played a minor role compared to the Soviet Union in the destruction of the Nazi war machine in which USSR sacrificed tens of millions of its soldiers and citizens .Its economy was destroyed .Come lately US ( it has already spent more time in Iraq now than in that war ) and even UK tried to take all the credit . They produced 'The longest day ' and 'Gen Patton ' and UK dreams up James Bond victories in the battle field and the bed room .Even channels like 'Discovery Channel ' spew lies all the time and brain wash the ignorant . Germans and Russian soldiers were accused of mass rapes and killings. US soldiers raped many thousands women in West Europe and it faced a very high rate of desertion in its troops. But for instant communications now ,you would not have heard of or very little of Gulags like Guantamano, Abu Ghraib , Bagram , genocide in Fallujah ,Haditha and elsewhere , and rendition by CIA for torture of innocents , mostly Muslims in secret places all around the world . This has been the core of the Western mental make up though out the colonial era and even now .
Shias developed the first human bomber , the Assassins and evolved the system of takkyia ie not telling the truth under duress and occupation making them very secretive in their methods as shown in Lebanon . So US would be making a grave mistake in attacking Iran , exposed as it is and fully stretched on the ground .Iran's military build up has not been degraded by sanctions like in Iraq , which had no navy or air force or missiles and even WMDs. US and China and others have provided enough military hardware including sophisticated missiles to Iran and Syria .
As for US righteousness most of the military hard ware US gifted to Pakistan to fight communism was used against democratic India .US now grants Air and Naval aircraft and hardware to counter terrorism in Afghanistan ( and Pakistan ).Israel and USA should not forget the deep tunnels and other innovations employed brilliantly in south Lebanon against such heavy odds.
Conclusions ;
Like Iraq , some fancy schemes are on the anvil in Pentagon. To ward off the threats to the world economy if Tehran curtailed oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the US has reportedly made contingency plans for the indefinite takeover of Iranian territory in Chah Bahar, which would deny Tehran its strategic leverage with Hormuz. Washington might even push for outright "regime change" in Tehran, never mind lack of troops necessary for even a limited war. Theoretically , would this not take the war and US troops to Iran ( via Azerbaijan ) , which will then face Russia across and the Caspian Sea.
During the failed 1979 US hostages rescue operation in Iran ordered by President Jimmy Carter , it was said that USSR had tipped Tehran about Washington's
plans. Both Russia and China have serious and log term stakes in a united and stable Iran.
"The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq," commented Kenneth Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, "There's a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive."
W Joseph Stroupe , editor of Global Events Magazine wrote recently that the Middle East was already 'like a sectarian tinderbox waiting for a spark to ignite its multiple civil wars-in-waiting. The United States' additional 21,500 new troops will be like a desperate roving band of flamethrowers let loose on the entire region, from Saudi Arabia to Iran. " Stroupe wondered if the current invasion plans were any better than of 2003 .Would it achieve only " an early but short-lived victory over Iran, only to massively lose the longer war, just as happened in Iraq? "
Iraq's sectarian and other militias will not lay down their arms and would fight the US led occupation forces to retain and further consolidate their hard-won power and prestige within their respective regions. Very importantly, the majority of Iraqis , who have come to rely on their respective militias for safety and security in the environment of the abject failure of Iraq's government and the US and British forces to provide such, would not wish to see their favored militias weakened or defanged.
Hence the population can be expected to deny all meaningful support to the US. Many will actively oppose the occupying powers through their respective militias, thereby dooming the entire effort to massive failure." If the US and Britain are perceived by Iraq's Shias as excessively targeting Shia militias while largely ignoring Sunni militias, then they risk mobilizing the entire body of Iraq's Shia population against the continued presence of foreign forces, resulting in a virtual Shia insurrection, with catastrophic results,' says Stroupe.
By unintentionally shoving the entire oil-and-gas-rich Middle East on to a fast track to chaos, the US will empower Russia as the immovable global energy kingpin. Already, Europe and Asia are being forced to reconsider placing too much reliance on the region for energy imports, opening the way for Russia." Africa and Latin America suffer from strategic instability and long distances haulage.
Iran would be helped in its recovery by Russia, China and other key energy exporting and consuming nations of the world. While signing another liquid gas contract with Tehran , Beijing brushed aside Washington's opposition in the spirit of recent UNSC resolution . Iran has excellent relations with Russia and China .The three powers could initiate a global energy consortium opposed to US power. It could be joined by others like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with Iran even becoming a full member of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is slowly morphing into a military alliance to counter a rapacious NATO , now getting ensnared in the Afghanistan morass .
" I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible. Our forces are reduced now to very slender proportions… I do not see what political strength there is to face a disaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that in any circumstances any large reinforcements would be sent from here…
There is scarcely a single newspaper… which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. … Any alternative Government that might be formed here… would gain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreover, in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it. …No progress has been made in developing the oil. Altogether I am getting to the end of my resources. --At present we are paying… millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having."
Extracts from a memorandum dated September 1, 1922 , from Winston Churchill , Colonial Secretary to Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whose government was on its last legs.
Both Bush and Blair claim to be great admirers of Churchill, but never come round to read this chapter in Iraq's history or Churchill's naval debacle at Gallipoli . Now another naval misadventure is under planning.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail Gajendrak@hotmail.com
Saturday, December 16, 2006
So Much for Inalienable Rights
| December 16, 2006 |
| by Gordon Prather |
| Two weeks ago, during his Senate confirmation hearings, nominee Robert Gates was asked if he believed the Iranians were trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Gates said he did. He was then asked if he believed "the Iranians would consider using that nuclear weapons capability against the nation of Israel." Gates said he didn’t. In fact, he believed the Iranians were seeking a nuclear weapons capability as a "deterrent." After all, Gates noted that – "They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf." Notice that Gates was asked not about nuclear weapons, but about "nuclear weapons capability." What’s the difference? Well, to the Likudniks and their Congressional sycophants, there isn’t any. But, as far as the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group are concerned, there is an enormous difference. As an NPT signatory, Iran has an "inalienable right" to develop "without discrimination" the capability to enrich uranium – subject, of course, to an IAEA Safeguards Agreement, entered into for the exclusive purpose of verifying that no "source or special fissionable material" has been diverted to a military purpose. Furthermore, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China – as signatories to the NPT– have all undertaken to "facilitate" that development by Iran. Nevertheless, despite at least a dozen quarterly reports by IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei that he could find no indication that Iran had ever diverted any source or special fissionable material to a military purpose, Bush and the Likudniks have managed to get the IAEA Board of Governors to repeatedly violate the IAEA Statute and the UN Security Council to repeatedly disregard the UN Charter, demanding that Iran give up its rights guaranteed by both the NPT and by the IAEA Statute. Now, you might think that the Likudniks – and maybe even Bush and Bobby Gates – know something ElBaradei doesn’t know. That they are not complete idiots. That they don’t really consider an Iranian capability to enrich uranium in an IAEA Safeguarded facility to be tantamount to Iran having nuclear weapons. But no, one of the more interesting revelations elicited by Seymour Hersh from Scott Ritter during their televised public discussion this past October of Ritter’s latest book Target Iran, was that Ritter had cultivated a close working relationship with Israeli intelligence analysts, beginning while a US Marine intelligence officer, assigned to the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during Operation Desert Storm, continuing through his seven years as Chief Inspector for the UN Commission on Arms Control in Iraq, even informing the books Ritter has written since resigning from UNSCOM. After praising ElBaradei for having conducted a multi-year program of inspections of unprecedented scope and thoroughness, resulting in no evidence of undisclosed nuclear activity, much less a diversion of source or special fissionable materials, Ritter revealed that Israeli intelligence has also been unable – despite considerable use of on-the-ground "human intelligence" and analysis of spy-satellite images – to find any indication of a hidden Iranian nuclear program. Nevertheless; "Israel has drawn a red line that says, not only will they not tolerate a nuclear weapons program in Iran, they will not tolerate anything dealing with nuclear energy, especially enrichment, that could be used in a nuclear program. "So, even if Iran is telling the truth – Iran says, 'We have no nuclear weapons program. We just want peaceful nuclear energy' – Israel says, 'So long as Iran has any enrichment capability, this constitutes a threat to Israel,' and they are pressuring the United States to take forceful action." So, Bush and Gates and the Likudniks don’t know something about Iran’s nuclear programs that ElBaradei doesn’t know, that our intelligence community doesn’t know, that Congress doesn’t know. Speaking of the Best Congress Money Can Buy, what were they doing while Bush-Bolton-Rice were corrupting the IAEA Board of Governors and emasculating the UN Security Council? Well, busy passing the Iran Freedom and Support Act which, inter alia, declared it "should" be the policy of the United States not to bring into force an agreement for cooperation with the government of any country unless "either on its own initiative or pursuant to a binding decision of the United Nations Security Council, suspended all nuclear assistance to Iran and all transfers of advanced conventional weapons and missiles to Iran." That law was aimed at Russia, an NPT signatory still attempting to honor its NPT commitments to Iran. Then, in their final hours, the 109th Congress enacted the US-India Nuclear Cooperation Act, which, inter alia, declared it "shall" be the policy of the United States to "Secure India's full and active participation in United States efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons capability and the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess nuclear fuel, and the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction." What if India is not assessed by the President to be fully and actively participating in such efforts? He is to provide them a report setting out "(I) the measures the United States Government has taken to secure India's full and active participation in such efforts; "(II) the responses of the Government of India to such measures; and "(III) the measures the United States Government plans to take in the coming year to secure India's full and active participation;"As for the Likudniks, upon emerging from a meeting last week with Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert alluded once again to the possibility of Israeli military action against Iran, saying, "the people of Iran must understand that if they do not accept the request of the international community [to give up their inalienable rights], they're going to pay dearly." |
Friday, December 15, 2006
Sy Hersh on Defense Secretary Gates
Posted on Dec 7, 2006
 |
Veteran journalist and Bush administration critic Seymour Hersh speaks to Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now” about what to expect from Robert Gates as defense secretary: “The reality is Gates is a fresh face and there’s a lot of people, [Brent] Scowcroft and James Baker among them, who are very worried about what’s going to happen in ’08.”
Partial Transcript (from Alternet / Evan Derkacz):
SEYMOUR HERSH: Look, you can spend a lot of time going over the past. Iran-Contra was one of the most underreported stories of the time. As much attention as it got, there’s no question that the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and all of the people immediately around him, knew much more. This is one of the worst reported stories of the decade, of the last couple of decades. We really didn’t get to it, none of us in the press corps. It was a failure. Bob Gates was certainly in the middle of this, but I’ll tell you right now, the issue for Gates, you know, if you want to worry about the past, worry about the past. The issue for Gates now is, is he going to throw—he’s president of a major university, he’s written a memoir, he’s come out of it with his reputation pretty much intact—is he going to throw it away by going into the tank?
In other words, one way he’s brought in, one reason he’s brought in, he’s seen as somebody, unlike Rumsfeld, who in case they decide to go to war or they think there’s intelligence that supports going to war with Iran, he’s seen as somebody that can go brief it and be accepted by the Congress. As you know, many of the legislators are Democrats, Joe Biden among them, who voted against Gates, were very—when he was up for CIA director, a decade ago—were very quick to say they would vote for him now.
And so the issue for Gates—Gates is really going to be in a very tough spot. Is he going to throw away 35 years and put himself right back in the maelstrom by being—you know, being a mouthpiece for some of the people who want to do things that he may not agree with, or is he going to tell it straight? But he’s going to have credibility, he’s going to be seen as somebody who is going to be replacing Rumsfeld. Bob Gates is not the worst person in the world. I don’t disagree with what Mel Goodwin says—Goodman says—and he and I have talked about this in the past. But Gates is also very strong-minded, and what he could see as tilting intelligence could be Gates inflicting his views, which is also wrong, but it’s different.
It’s not quite—in any case I’m not apologizing for him, I’m just saying let’s deal with reality. The reality is Gates is a fresh face and there’s a lot of people, Scowcroft and James Baker among them, who are very worried about what’s going to happen in ‘08. The Republicans do not want to lose the election in ‘08 as they lost it in ‘06. They don’t want to see a Democratic president in, and so this is a sort of the last hurrah. The old boys, around George Bush Sr., saying that whatever the kid, the young boy wants to do as a lame duck next year, he better be aware that the party’s future’s at stake and that’s what’s going on here. I think this is really sort of a huge big canvass that we really don’t quite fully understand. But Gates, if he’s going to come in and be the briefer they think he might be on all issues, and spin it the way they want, well that’s going to be his problem. But if he’s going to have some credibility and he’s told friends, he understands his position and he’s not going to, as I say, he’s not going to throw away a lifetime on this issue, let’s just hope that’s right.
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Saturday, December 9, 2006
Baker wants Israel excluded from regional conference
| Issue Date: www.insightmag.com - Dec. 5-11, 2006, Posted On: 12/5/2006 | ||||
The White House has been examining a proposal by James Baker to launch a Middle East peace effort without Israel. The peace effort would begin with a U.S.-organized conference, dubbed Madrid-2, and contain such U.S. adversaries as Iran and Syria. Officials said Madrid-2 would be promoted as a forum to discuss Iraq's future, but actually focus on Arab demands for Israel to withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war. They said Israel would not be invited to the conference. “As Baker sees this, the conference would provide a unique opportunity for the United States to strike a deal without Jewish pressure,” an official said. “This has become the most hottest proposal examined by the foreign policy people over the last month.” Officials said Mr. Baker's proposal, reflected in the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, has been supported by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. The most controversial element in the proposal, they said, was Mr. Baker's recommendation for the United States to woo Iran and Syria. “Here is Syria, which is clearly putting pressure on the Lebanese democracy, is a supporter of terror, is both provisioning and supporting Hezbollah and facilitating Iran in its efforts to support Hezbollah, is supporting the activities of Hamas," National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told a briefing last week. "This is not a Syria that is on an agenda to bring peace and stability to the region." Officials said the Baker proposal to exclude Israel from a Middle East peace conference garnered support in the wake of Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 25. They said Mr. Cheney spent most of his meetings listening to Saudi warnings that Israel, rather than Iran, is the leading cause of instability in the Middle East. “He [Cheney] didn't even get the opportunity to seriously discuss the purpose of his visit—that the Saudis help the Iraqi government and persuade the Sunnis to stop their attacks,” another official familiar with Mr. Cheney’s visit said. “Instead, the Saudis kept saying that they wanted a U.S. initiative to stop the Israelis’ attack in Gaza and Cheney just agreed.” Under the Baker proposal, the Bush administration would arrange a Middle East conference that would discuss the future of Iraq and other Middle East issues. Officials said the conference would seek to win Arab support on Iraq in exchange for a U.S. pledge to renew efforts to press Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Golan Heights. “Baker sees his plan as containing something for everybody, except perhaps the Israelis,” the official said. “The Syrians would get back the Golan, the Iranians would get U.S. recognition and the Saudis would regain their influence, particularly with the Palestinians.” Officials said Mr. Baker's influence within the administration and the Republican Party’s leadership stems from support by the president's father as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Throughout the current Bush administration, such senior officials as Mr. Hadley and Ms. Rice were said to have been consulting with Brent Scowcroft, the former president's national security advisor, regarded as close to Mr. Baker. “Everybody has fallen in line,” the official said. “Bush is not in the daily loop. He is shocked by the elections and he's hoping for a miracle on Iraq.” For his part, Mr. Bush has expressed unease in negotiating with Iran. At a Nov. 30 news conference in Amman, Jordan, the president cited Iran's interference in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki. “We respect their heritage, we respect their history, we respect their traditions,” Mr. Bush said. “I just have a problem with a government that is isolating its people, denying its people benefits that could be had from engagement with the world.” Mr. Baker's recommendation to woo Iran and Syria has also received support from some in the conservative wing of the GOP. Over the last week, former and current Republican leaders in Congress—convinced of the need for a U.S. withdrawal before the 2008 presidential elections—have called for Iranian and Syrian participation in an effort to stabilize Iraq. “I would look at an entirely new strategy,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. “We have clearly failed in the last three years to achieve the kind of outcome we want.” In contrast, Defense Department officials have warned against granting a role to Iran and Syria at Israel's expense. They said such a strategy would also end up undermining Arab allies of the United States such as Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. “The regional strategy is a euphemism for throwing Free Iraq to the wolves in its neighborhood: Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia,” said the Center for Security Policy, regarded as being close to the Pentagon. “If the Baker regional strategy is adopted, we will prove to all the world that it is better to be America's enemy than its friend. Jim Baker's hostility towards the Jews is a matter of record and has endeared him to Israel's foes in the region.” But Defense Secretary-designate Robert Gates, a former colleague of Mr. Baker on the Iraq Study Group, has expressed support for U.S. negotiations with Iran and Syria. In response to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, which begins confirmation hearings this week, Mr. Gates compared the two U.S. adversaries to the Soviet Union. “Even in the worst days of the Cold War, the U.S. maintained a dialogue with the Soviet Union and China, and I believe those channels of communication helped us manage many potentially difficult situations,” Mr. Gates said. “Our engagement with Syria need not be unilateral. It could, for instance, take the form of Syrian participation in a regional conference.” |
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Hey, We Got Beat Fair and Square
Dec 7, 2006
By Mike Whitney
The hearings for Robert Gates were about as weird as it gets.
Gates wasn’t asked one tough question the whole time. It was all a meaningless formality. Besides, Gates had all the qualifications the senate was looking for. In other words, he wasn’t Rumsfeld and that’s all that mattered.
For Gates it was more like Coronation Day than a serious inquiry into past indiscretions. Did anyone care about his involvement in Iran-Contra and his propensity to “fix the intelligence to fit the policy” or were they too busy showering him with praise?
And, what happened to our tough new Democratic majority? Did the midterm elections really change anything?
Oh, yeah; we traded a rubber-stamp Republican congress for a rubber-stamp Democratic congress. Now that’s progress.
No one bothered to ask Gates how he felt about military tribunals, although that will be one of his many responsibilities as Secretary of Defense.
And, no one asked him about Guantanamo Bay, or habeas corpus, or extraordinary rendition, or deploying the military inside the US, or covert assassination programs, or collecting information on American citizens, or placing propaganda in the foreign press.
Not one senator was even curious to know if he would continue to spy on Quakers, antiwar protestors or peace activists. And what about terror suspects; will he give them a fair hearing in front of a federal judge or run them through Rummy’s Star Chamber?
These are important questions, but they never showed up on the senatorial radar.
Why?
Because the rights of “We the People” don’t amount to a hill-o-beans and the politicians don’t give a hoot if we know it or not.
What really matters is Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. That’s why Rep. Steny Hoyer muscled out John Murtha as House Majority Leader. And that’s why the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep Silvestre Reyes, wants to send another 30,000 troops to the Iraqi sinkhole.
The Democrats won’t get us out of Iraq. They’re already arming the war-donkey for another 4 years.
And it’s no different with the Baker group either.
Sure there’s plenty of gloom and doom in the report, but its all window-dressing. We’re not pulling-out. Heck no! Baker just wants to reduce troop levels to patch up the army and bolster public support for the next big bloodbath.
“Let’s talk to our enemies,” Baker opines. “Let’s talk to Iran”.
Okay. But, I’ll tell you what they’ll say. They’ll say:
“Your time is up, George W. Bush. You just did us the biggest favor anyone could ever dream of. You crushed our enemies in Afghanistan and destroyed our arch-rival, Saddam Hussein. You’re army is overextended, your people are fed up, and you’ve spent zillions of dollars that you’ll never see again. On top of that, you’ve thrown your support behind our main agent, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who runs the most feared death squad in all of Iraq; The Badr Brigade”
“Thank you, Great Satan. How can we ever repay you?”
Baker is a smooth-talking attorney and a good diplomat, but he won’t get us out of this mess. His hands are tied. Besides, there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing anyone can do. Its not a matter of whether we keep 70,000 or 140,000 troops in Iraq. The troop-size is irrelevant.
The place is unraveling!
Why don’t the American people understand that?
Iran can’t fix it. Syria can’t fix it. No one can fix it.
Bush can either follow Baker’s advice or go ahead and do it his own way; it won’t make a damn bit of difference. The outcome will be exactly the same. Events on the ground are outpacing all of the political posturing and decision-making. In fact, the Baker report is probably already obsolete. Bush started a brushfire that’s going to zip right across the entire Middle East taking down all the US puppets on the way.
Yee-hah! Isn’t liberation fun?
But what happens when all of our Arab gas station attendants join the resistance and turn off the oil spigot? Won’t that put a hurtin’ on our economy?
Maybe we should’ve thought about that first?
Baker thinks he can stop this madness; this worm of anarchy that is sweeping through Iraq, but he’s dreaming. “Democracy is on the march!” The entire region is sliding towards chaos. By the time the tsunami hits Saudi Arabia even the impervious Bush will be pacing the deck.
The Baker Commission is just a finger in the dike. They can keep braying about “enhanced diplomatic and political efforts”, but that’s just because they’ve run out of options?
The military option flopped. Now what; flatten every city from Baghdad to the Syrian border? It wouldn’t work anyway; just look at Falluja. The Marines want another 20,000 troops just to maintain order in al-Anbar Province and THEY’VE ALREAY REDUCED THE WHOLE AREA TO RUBBLE.
What’s next; bomb the rubble into finely-ground sand?
Hey, we got beat fair and square. Now, let’s pack it in.
Like the report says: “The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing”. The relentless aerial bombardment and the massive counterinsurgency operations have achieved their objective; the country is in a state of collapse.
Isn’t that what Bush wanted?
Iraq will never recover from this war and neither will America.
Even the strongest country can only suffer the choices of idiots for so long.
By Mike Whitney
The hearings for Robert Gates were about as weird as it gets.
Gates wasn’t asked one tough question the whole time. It was all a meaningless formality. Besides, Gates had all the qualifications the senate was looking for. In other words, he wasn’t Rumsfeld and that’s all that mattered.
For Gates it was more like Coronation Day than a serious inquiry into past indiscretions. Did anyone care about his involvement in Iran-Contra and his propensity to “fix the intelligence to fit the policy” or were they too busy showering him with praise?
And, what happened to our tough new Democratic majority? Did the midterm elections really change anything?
Oh, yeah; we traded a rubber-stamp Republican congress for a rubber-stamp Democratic congress. Now that’s progress.
No one bothered to ask Gates how he felt about military tribunals, although that will be one of his many responsibilities as Secretary of Defense.
And, no one asked him about Guantanamo Bay, or habeas corpus, or extraordinary rendition, or deploying the military inside the US, or covert assassination programs, or collecting information on American citizens, or placing propaganda in the foreign press.
Not one senator was even curious to know if he would continue to spy on Quakers, antiwar protestors or peace activists. And what about terror suspects; will he give them a fair hearing in front of a federal judge or run them through Rummy’s Star Chamber?
These are important questions, but they never showed up on the senatorial radar.
Why?
Because the rights of “We the People” don’t amount to a hill-o-beans and the politicians don’t give a hoot if we know it or not.
What really matters is Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq. That’s why Rep. Steny Hoyer muscled out John Murtha as House Majority Leader. And that’s why the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep Silvestre Reyes, wants to send another 30,000 troops to the Iraqi sinkhole.
The Democrats won’t get us out of Iraq. They’re already arming the war-donkey for another 4 years.
And it’s no different with the Baker group either.
Sure there’s plenty of gloom and doom in the report, but its all window-dressing. We’re not pulling-out. Heck no! Baker just wants to reduce troop levels to patch up the army and bolster public support for the next big bloodbath.
“Let’s talk to our enemies,” Baker opines. “Let’s talk to Iran”.
Okay. But, I’ll tell you what they’ll say. They’ll say:
“Your time is up, George W. Bush. You just did us the biggest favor anyone could ever dream of. You crushed our enemies in Afghanistan and destroyed our arch-rival, Saddam Hussein. You’re army is overextended, your people are fed up, and you’ve spent zillions of dollars that you’ll never see again. On top of that, you’ve thrown your support behind our main agent, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who runs the most feared death squad in all of Iraq; The Badr Brigade”
“Thank you, Great Satan. How can we ever repay you?”
Baker is a smooth-talking attorney and a good diplomat, but he won’t get us out of this mess. His hands are tied. Besides, there’s nothing he can do. There’s nothing anyone can do. Its not a matter of whether we keep 70,000 or 140,000 troops in Iraq. The troop-size is irrelevant.
The place is unraveling!
Why don’t the American people understand that?
Iran can’t fix it. Syria can’t fix it. No one can fix it.
Bush can either follow Baker’s advice or go ahead and do it his own way; it won’t make a damn bit of difference. The outcome will be exactly the same. Events on the ground are outpacing all of the political posturing and decision-making. In fact, the Baker report is probably already obsolete. Bush started a brushfire that’s going to zip right across the entire Middle East taking down all the US puppets on the way.
Yee-hah! Isn’t liberation fun?
But what happens when all of our Arab gas station attendants join the resistance and turn off the oil spigot? Won’t that put a hurtin’ on our economy?
Maybe we should’ve thought about that first?
Baker thinks he can stop this madness; this worm of anarchy that is sweeping through Iraq, but he’s dreaming. “Democracy is on the march!” The entire region is sliding towards chaos. By the time the tsunami hits Saudi Arabia even the impervious Bush will be pacing the deck.
The Baker Commission is just a finger in the dike. They can keep braying about “enhanced diplomatic and political efforts”, but that’s just because they’ve run out of options?
The military option flopped. Now what; flatten every city from Baghdad to the Syrian border? It wouldn’t work anyway; just look at Falluja. The Marines want another 20,000 troops just to maintain order in al-Anbar Province and THEY’VE ALREAY REDUCED THE WHOLE AREA TO RUBBLE.
What’s next; bomb the rubble into finely-ground sand?
Hey, we got beat fair and square. Now, let’s pack it in.
Like the report says: “The ability of the United States to influence events within Iraq is diminishing”. The relentless aerial bombardment and the massive counterinsurgency operations have achieved their objective; the country is in a state of collapse.
Isn’t that what Bush wanted?
Iraq will never recover from this war and neither will America.
Even the strongest country can only suffer the choices of idiots for so long.
Goodness Gracious! The Truth! : MAUREEN DOWD - Gates Confirmation
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Goodness Gracious! The Truth!
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 6, 2006
In Iraq, the Bush administration has gone from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.
First Junior took over the house with grandiose plans to remodel it and make it the envy of the neighborhood. But then he played with matches and set the house on fire. So now he’s frantically trying to stop the flames from torching the whole block.
The Bush administration has gone from a breathless plan to change the Middle East to a breathless plan to preserve it, from democracy promotion to conflagration avoidance.
That was the cold shower offered yesterday by Robert Gates, the former C.I.A. chief, on his way to being unanimously endorsed as the new defense secretary by a Senate panel craving a cold shower.
He told the Armed Services Committee, peppered with wannabe future presidents, that the American occupation could lead to a Baghdad as hostile as Tehran, and set off “a regional conflagration” if Iraq is not deftly handled in the next couple of years.
--MORE--
REPOSTED
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Defense nominee Gates: US 'not winning conflict in Iraq'
Last Updated: Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 16:03 GMT
Robert Gates has revealed little so far about his thinking on IraqUS Defence Secretary nominee
Robert Gates has told a Senate committee that the US is not winning the war in Iraq.
Mr Gates told a confirmation hearing he was open to new ideas on Iraq but warned the situation there would shape the Middle East for years to come.
He is set to be confirmed to replace Donald Rumsfeld, who quit last month amid criticism of his Iraq policy.
The next chairman of the committee said Mr Gates would face a "monumental challenge" in Iraq if he got the job.
Senate hearings on Mr Gates's nomination began a day before the Iraq Study Group - of which Mr Gates was a member - publishes its findings.
The start of the hearings also came on another violent day in Iraq.
More than 30 people were killed in shootings and car bomb attacks in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. At least 30 more died in violence in northern and south-western Iraq.
'Broken policies'
Mr Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that all options remained on the table for Iraq.
Profile: Robert Gates
"Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the US will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration," he said at the start of the hearing.
The next chairman of the committee, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, said he would face "the monumental challenge of picking up the pieces from broken policies and mistaken priorities".
Asked by Mr Levin if he believed the US was currently winning in Iraq, Mr Gates replied: "No, Sir."
If the panel approves his nomination, the 63-year-old is likely to appear before the full Senate for a confirmation hearing later this week.
Democratic senators are thought unlikely to oppose Mr Gates's nomination not least because they are keen to see Mr Rumsfeld leave the role quickly.
Mr Gates met Mr Bush for breakfast at the White House before his questioning.
The president said Mr Gates was the right man for the job.
"Those who wear the uniform will know they'll have a friend in Bob Gates," he said.
"He's going to do an excellent job for us. "
Phased withdrawal
Mr Gates stood down from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group - which has been asked to recommend ways of tackling the problems the US faces in Iraq - after President George W Bush picked him to replace Mr Rumsfeld.
The group's recommendations are widely expected to include a gradual phased withdrawal of US troops over the next 18 months.
It is also thought to favour the idea of holding a regional conference on Iraq that would involve Syria and Iran, with whom Washington has refused to negotiate directly.
Mr Bush has indicated he will look closely at, but not necessarily follow, the group's suggestions.
Robert Gates has revealed little so far about his thinking on IraqUS Defence Secretary nominee
Robert Gates has told a Senate committee that the US is not winning the war in Iraq.
Mr Gates told a confirmation hearing he was open to new ideas on Iraq but warned the situation there would shape the Middle East for years to come.
He is set to be confirmed to replace Donald Rumsfeld, who quit last month amid criticism of his Iraq policy.
The next chairman of the committee said Mr Gates would face a "monumental challenge" in Iraq if he got the job.
Senate hearings on Mr Gates's nomination began a day before the Iraq Study Group - of which Mr Gates was a member - publishes its findings.
The start of the hearings also came on another violent day in Iraq.
More than 30 people were killed in shootings and car bomb attacks in Baghdad, Iraqi officials said. At least 30 more died in violence in northern and south-western Iraq.
'Broken policies'
Mr Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that all options remained on the table for Iraq.
Profile: Robert Gates
"Our course over the next year or two will determine whether the American and Iraqi people and the next president of the US will face a slowly but steadily improving situation in Iraq or will face the very real risk and possible reality of a regional conflagration," he said at the start of the hearing.
The next chairman of the committee, Democratic Senator Carl Levin, said he would face "the monumental challenge of picking up the pieces from broken policies and mistaken priorities".
Asked by Mr Levin if he believed the US was currently winning in Iraq, Mr Gates replied: "No, Sir."
If the panel approves his nomination, the 63-year-old is likely to appear before the full Senate for a confirmation hearing later this week.
Democratic senators are thought unlikely to oppose Mr Gates's nomination not least because they are keen to see Mr Rumsfeld leave the role quickly.
Mr Gates met Mr Bush for breakfast at the White House before his questioning.
The president said Mr Gates was the right man for the job.
"Those who wear the uniform will know they'll have a friend in Bob Gates," he said.
"He's going to do an excellent job for us. "
Phased withdrawal
Mr Gates stood down from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group - which has been asked to recommend ways of tackling the problems the US faces in Iraq - after President George W Bush picked him to replace Mr Rumsfeld.
The group's recommendations are widely expected to include a gradual phased withdrawal of US troops over the next 18 months.
It is also thought to favour the idea of holding a regional conference on Iraq that would involve Syria and Iran, with whom Washington has refused to negotiate directly.
Mr Bush has indicated he will look closely at, but not necessarily follow, the group's suggestions.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Robert Gates: Realist or Neo-Con?
The nomination of Robert Gates to replace Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense has fueled claims that Gates is part of the realist-pragmatic group of advisors that served Bush the Older and now are being called upon to help Bush the Younger extricate the United States from a quagmire in Iraq.
It is also not lost on many Washington insiders that, according to Bob Woodward, author of the bestseller State of Denial, that President Bush has turned to Henry Kissinger (the personification of Realpolitik) to assess the dire situation in Iraq which he remarked two weeks ago on the BBC was totally hopeless in terms of Washington's various objectives.
In a major op-ed item in The Washington Post on Nov. 24, Kissinger who argued against a precipitious withdrawl in U.S. troops strongly implied that they had become bargaining chips in prospective negotiations with Iran -- an argument that may have resonated with the President with whom Dr. K may well have cleared the essay before publication.
With regard to the nomination of Gates to oversee the war effort, James Mann, who authored The Vulcans which explored the emergence of the foreign policy team of the current Bush Administration, had questioned Gates's credentials as a realist in an op-ed item in The Washington Post on Nov. 10. Mann pointed (correctly) to Gates's hawkish or neo-conservative worldview on how to deal with the Soviet Union during the Reagan era when he was a loyal deputy to CIA Director Wild Bill Casey.
Little love was lost between the Kissingerian realists and the neo-conservatives personified by Casey and Jeane Kirkpatrick in those years. So where now does Bob Gates fall in this political spectrum among foreign policy experts associated with the Republican Party?
The Kissingerian Clique
Gates joined the CIA during the Johnson Administration and for him to have been part of the realist-pragmatist faction within Republican circles, there should be some traceable connection to Kissinger -- whose career I explored in my intellectual biography of Dr. K entitled Kissinger and the Meaning of History published by Cambridge University Press in 1978.
For his part, Kissinger did not want serious intellectual rivals near him, but he did have a core group of loyal, competent assistants and aides during the Nixon years, General Alexander Haig (Reagan's first Secretary of State) was Kissinger's deputy on Nixon's National Security Council staff. But the best known Kissinger loyalists were William Hyland, Hal Sonnenfeldt, Winston Lord and Peter Rodman.
Lawrence Eagleburger who was briefly Secretary of State in 1992 and who has just replaced Gates on the Baker-Hamilton Commission is also a longtime Kissinger loyalist from the NSC of 1969-1972. However, his original career track was independent since he had been a career diplomat who had risen at the State Department to which Kissinger only moved in 1973.
Brent Scowcroft (Gates's presumed primary intellectual mentor) was Nixon's military advisor and Haig's replacement as Kissinger's NSC deputy in August 1973. Scowcroft joined Kissinger and Eagleburger in 1982 as the founding partners of the firm, Kissinger & Associates.
The cohesiveness of the Kissinger realist clique has been impressive over the years
Winston Lord's selection as a new ambassador to China by Reagan in 1985 was a clear sign of the more pragmatic influence of Kissinger, Scowcroft and Eagleburger -- the last two being dispatched by Bush the Older to Beijing in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989
Nonetheless, the Kissingerian clique has developed some divisions. Peter Rodman drifted away from Kissinger and toward the neo-conservatives while serving in many top posts at the NSC and State Department during the Reagan-Bush administrations. In fact, Rodman recently resigned from the Pentagon after serving since 2001 as a close advisor to Rumsfeld in the post of Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs (ISA).
The biggest rupture among the Kissingerians is that Scowcroft could not swallow the decision in favor of a preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003, whereas Kissinger ultimately did voice support, though in an oblique fashion, while gnashing his teeth.
As for Gates, there is little doubt that his primary patron following the death of Casey in 1987 has been Bush the Father, who was Ambassador to China and then CIA Director for President Ford in 1976. The elder Bush was a great admirer of Kissinger for the opening to China and the pursuit of triangular diplomacy with the two Communist powers.
Finally, James Baker (Secretary of State 1989-1992) may have been an admirer as well, and seems to share the same realist-pragmatic approach to foreign plicy challenges. But Baker's deepest political ties are to the Bush family, and not to Kissinger nor to Reagan though he served as the latter's White House Chief of Staff. Baker was chairman for the older Bush's unsuccessful campaigns for a Senate seat from Texas in 1970 and for the White House in 1980. Furthermore, Bush the Younger turned to Baker to protect his stake in the Florida vote in the 2000.
Where Does Gates Fit In?
Gates was not originally part of the Kissinger-Scowcroft-Eagleburger realist clique. Given that he joined the CIA in 1966 at 23 and had not studied under Kissinger at Harvard as some like Rodman did, Gates was not in a position in the late 1960s or early 1970s to become part of the original core group of Kissinger proteges or loyalists. In fact, Gates tells us in his memoirs entitled From the Shadows (1996) that while a CIA analyst, he participated in an anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington in the early 1970s.
Evidently not a Cold Warrior, Gates's CIA career advanced but he was impatient to climb through the ranks and decided to jump at an offer to serve under Brent Scowcroft on the NSC staff. Claiming that his superiors warned him of the downside, he arrived at the White House in July 1974 just as Nixon was about to resign over the Watergate scandal. This segment of the memoirs is quite intriguing. Gates remarks that he took over the desk that Hyland occupied as one of the NSC's Soviet experts after Hyland had moved over to the State Department with Kissinger, Lord and Sonnenfeldt.
Given that Gates was an intelligence officer, there is not much of a paper trail outside his memoirs as to whether he privately shared the neo-conservative complaints in the 1970s about policy (both Kissingerian and then Carterite) being too soft toward the Soviet Union. What he says there suggests that he did not.
In his memoirs, Gates offers a balanced, insightful evaluation of the Nixon-Kissinger detente praising them for maintaining the central strategic balance of power with the Soviets. Surprisingly he even strongly defends President Carter for having sustained several weapons programs that protected American strategic interests.
Gates complains that Carter has been given a bum rap about being soft on the Soviet Union and he is very fond of Carter's NSC Chief Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger's critic and rival going back to their days as Harvard graduate students. Gates describes himself as a senior NSC aide to Brzezinski in the late 1970s. In his memoirs, Power and Principle (1983) Brzezinski makes only one passing mention of Gates as one of several aides that he "burned out", though adding that Gates was "the epitome of discretion and good judgment".
No hard core neo-conservative would ever be as generous as Gates is toward these Administrations from Nixon through Ford to Carter -- though perhaps Gates found it politically advantageous to give all Presidents their due in helping to win the Cold War which seemed like ancient history by the mid-1990s. What is amazing is in all this is that in the 1980s Gates became legendary for becoming joined to the hip of the notorious, quite corrupt Wild Bill Casey.
Getting Ahead with Little Strain?
So how did Gates succeed in securing high position in so many Administrations that were sharply opposed to one another? Was he a chameleon? To some degree he had to be. Did he really actively seek to hang on in top posts either at the CIA or the NSC when a new Administration came to power?
In his memoirs, Gates consistently tries to convey the impression that once he arrived at the NSC to work under Scowcroft in 1974, men in power (Brzezinski in 1976, CIA Director Stansfield Turner in 1979, Casey in 1981 and then Scowcroft in 1989) sought him out or were persuaded by others that Gates was the ideal man to serve as a close assistant. Gates never seems to lift a finger to advance his smooth ascent to ever higher positions from one Administration to another over nearly two decades.
All this seems quite disingenuous and in sharp contrast to his vaunting ambition to become someday the CIA Director, which he declared to seasoned Soviet analyst Mel Goodman on Gates's first day at work as a junior analyst at the CIA in Langley, Virginia.
Concerning his view of the neo-conservative critique of detente in the 1970s prior to working for Casey, Gates provides only a few clues since in his memoirs he never mentions the neo-conservatives or the Committee on the Present Danger by name.
He even avoids talking about the controversial decision of the older Bush when he capitulated to the neo-conservatives by inviting them to critique the internal CIA analysis of the Soviet strategic nuclear threat in 1976 -- the notorious Team B Affair. He merely notes that Bush as CIA Director signed off on a national intelligence estimate that reflected this more ominous neo-con view of Soviet capabilities.
Yet ultimately, Gates became Casey's Golden Boy whom many CIA analysts accused in the 1991 Gates confirmation hearings of having given Casey what he wanted or blocking analysis that Casey would not like. There is no doubt that Mann is correct that in this period Gates was a super hawk on relations with the Soviets, vigorously hyped the threat and consistently misread Gorbachev.
The complaint about this slanting intelligence also can be found in the memoirs of George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State, who described in his memoirs Turmoil and Triumph (1993) heated discussions with Gates. Even Baker in his memoirs describes a major confrontation with Gates shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 concerning policy toward the Soviets. Gates at the time was Scowcroft's NSC deputy.
Unlike Richard Perle and Frank Gaffney who were ousted at Defense when Reagan wanted to pursue arms control with Gorbachev in the late 1980s, Gates was able to hang on as CIA Deputy to Judge William Webster, Casey's replacement after Gates was forced to withdraw his own DCI nomination in early 1987 due to his own entanglement in the Iran-Contra scandal.
With nowhere to go inside the CIA, he engineered in 1989 a move back to the NSC to work for Scowcroft.
Basically Gates, the quiet staff man in the 1970s who became in the 1980s a super hawk to fly high with Casey, was able to morph into a moderate realist at the Bush 41 NSC staff during the end game with the Gorbachev regime and during the successful Gulf War in 1990-1991. For his part, Bush 41 in a bold move during Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra investigation, thought it a good thing in mid-1991 to get controversial Gates out at Langley to mind the store there.
But this nomination triggered the big outcry -- nearly 50 analysts came forward to express dismay to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about Gates's game playing with intelligence analysis either directly or though his loyalists and proteges in senior management posts. This was in addition to lingering suspicions about Gates's role in the Iran-Contra affair. Essentially, Gates argued that he was largely "out of the loop" even though he was the number two man out at Langley.
Ultimately with the help of his supporters on the SSCI -- primarily Chairman David Boren and his Staff Director George Tenet -- Gates was able to beat down the sizable anti-Gates chorus. Gates took extra steps to give a personal reassurance to the wavering Senator John Glenn who was still unhappy about the manipulation of CIA intelligence concerning the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. Nonetheless, 31 Democratic Senators could not swallow Gates and voted against him.
Consummate Careerist?
What is Gates then? He was not an original card-carrying member of the Kissinger-Scowcroft-Eagleburger realist clique. Nor is there evidence that he was a hard-core neo-conservative in the 1970s who was just waiting for something like the Reagan Revolution to take place and offer him in 1980 the golden opportunity to bond with such a hard-core Cold Warrior like Will Bill Casey.
He appears to have been a political moderate in the 1970s who converted to the neo-con/Casey view of the USSR to advance his career in the 1980s. That conversion into a true-believer was essential in the CIA once it became totally captive of the notorious Casey. Gates knew that is what he had to do to advance further. Where else could he have gone in 1981? Get someone in the Carter camp to find him a position in a left/liberal think tank like the Carnegie Institute or Brookings?
He did not want that. He did not want to give up his government career or his undying ambition to be CIA Director. Thus, he became a super-hawk in order to advance under the watchful eye and patronage of the all-powerful CIA Director Casey. After the Iran-Contra scandal hit in 1986, Gates bided his time until he could find in early 1989 a path to hook backup with Scowcroft at the NSC to enter into the Bush camp, which prior to that time he had no connections.
These are extraordinarily slick career moves, especially for someone who had become by 1987 highly controversial. Gates's long and astonishing career path has a unique trajectory and reflects the skill and determination of a consummate careerist.
Those with all-consuming ambition know that, given the abrupt power shifts which are inevitable in Washington, for one to have a steady ascent into the upper echelon and then to stay there, one must shift -- make abrupt shifts in some cases -- and ultimately be a chameleon. Otherwise one has to languish for time in political exile as most senior foreign policy experts typically do such as Tony Lake and Sandy Berger did from 1980 to 1992. Kissinger left the government at the age of 53 and has never returned, at least not officially.
There is no reason to doubt that if Reagan had lost in 1980, Gates would have lobbied hard to become Deputy DCI or the DCI himself under a second Carter Administration. He had worked for Brzezinski and was Admiral Turner's Executive Assistant, so he might well have succeeded in that. He only became a neo-conservative super-hawk in the 1980s because it was necessary to survive and thrive in the CIA under Casey.
The price tag for that was inevitably that he had to give up the CIA Director's post in 1993 when Bill Clinton took office.
"The Secret Good Guy"?
Gates is bright, serious about substantive issues, and highly experienced in many areas within the government and knows the Intelligence Community as well as anyone -- though this is not the same has having long experience in the military sphere. Gates's past views concerning the challenge of the Soviet Union are not obviously relevant to how he views the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorist threat.
There have been some hints in recent years that privately he was worried like Scowcroft that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake, and that he thinks opening dialogue with Iran would make political sense. And in his written responses to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates questioned the way the US military effort in Iraq was managed under Rumsfeld.
Gates still has a long track record of speaking Power to Truth in keeping with the biases or desires of his immediate superior whomever that might be. However, it is possible that the danger that Gates actually will "cook the books," or slant the facts to defend the military effort to make it look better than it is, may not be very high.
The situation in Iraq has deteriorated too far for someone to pull that off given the widespread skepticism about success in a nation plunging toward a full-blown civil war and an equally widespread desire among the American voters to get out of Iraq as soon as possible.
Probably the more relevant question is that -- since President Bush in a sweeping statement while at the summit in Jordan ruled out troop withdrawals until the mission is accomplished -- will Gates be willing to resign if the situation makes that goal however it may be defined, look totally foolish? Or will he defend any policy position that the President wants no matter how hopeless out of blind loyalty to the Bush family?
Given that many would agree with Scowcroft that Gates seems "crazy" to have accepted this appointment, why exactly did he take this very high risk position which might entail presiding over a full-blown debacle? After all, he had turned down Bush over possible appointment to the Director of National Intelligence post (DNI) which was later given to John Negroponte.
In an ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, White House Chief of Staff John Bolton stated that if Gates had turned Bush down on the Pentagon job, then Rumsfeld would have stayed -- a very revealing hint of what we now know: namely, that the President sees himself only replacing a cabinet officer and not making a fundamental shift in policy.
For his part, Gates probably owed the Bush family too much to say no twice, especially since what were the odds that Bush could find someone else on short notice just before the election or at any time after the big political hit that the President took? Slim to none.
Gates surely owes the Bush family a lot and not only for his government appointments. It hired him to be the Director of the George Bush School of Government at Texas A & M University and then helped him secure the post of president there. How many distinguished well-known colleges and universities do you know who would have been willing to accept a guy as politically tainted as was Gates (remember Iran-Contra and the controversial 1991 confirmation hearings) as their president? Not very many.
But this large debt does not mean that Gates necessarily has to swallow and defend anything. No one would hold it against him if he bailed out at some point on the White House. Thus, he is in a strong position in that the extended Bush family now needs him more than he needs it.
After all, if Gates feels pushed too far, even for his comfort, then perhaps in his own devious Machiavellian mind, he might calculate that a dramatic, heroic resignation would help set up a future assignment as CIA Director or Secretary of Defense after the 2008 elections if the Democrats take back the White House. Even Brzezinski might put in a good word for him.
More seriously, given the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq, the Democratic leaders in Congress have to decide whether, if in confirming Gates, they are falling into a clever trap set for them by the Bush White House as some have begun to speculate.
If they confirm Gates in a pro forma fashion -- especially if he gives no hint that he will make any significant effort to persuade the President to change policy -- then this would mean for many voters that the Democrats have been suckered into becoming shareholders in the current policy. Surely, the White House would interpret a rubber stamp confirmation of Gates as a clear vote of confidence in its Iraq policy, whatever that is now.
If Gates had been a different person with a less controversial career and more of a record for independence, then the dilemma would not be as great for the Democratic leadership. In 1991, 31 Democratic Senators erred on the side of caution and voted against Gates to become CIA Director. At that time, the Soviet Union was vanishing from history. Today the stakes in Iraq and the Middle East are much greater.
Although many Democratic senators want to get rid of Rumsfeld so badly, and may not press Gates in the confirmation hearings, some senators desiring a higher comfort level probably will seek from him strong, compelling reasons to confirm him given his past and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq. Those Democratic senators with Presidential aspirations will have to ponder the Gates nomination, if they want to distance themselves from the President's apparent preference for "stay the course" in Iraq
For his part, the main challenge for Gates may become quite similar to that which Kissinger faced during the Vietnam War: namely, the need to give the Democrats, the media and the public at large the impression that he is some kind of "Secret Good Guy" who once back in on the inside, can carry the cause of those growing numbers of Americans who are now highly skeptical of, if not outright opposed to, the continuation of the war. That is a tall order, requires a lot of trust and is now a difficult task made more difficult by the President's sweeping statements at the Jordan Summit, especially the remark that there will be no withdrawals until the mission is accomplished and there will be "no graceful exit from Iraq".
Peter W. Dickson was a political-military analyst at the CIA on European Affairs and nuclear proliferation issues for more than 20 years.
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